My M1 Mac mini arrived today, so of course the first thing I did was download my favorite iOS apps to see how they fared in macOS. In the end it was 50/50 for me whether an app was good enough to remain installed or not.

I gave my parents a HomePod mini each for Christmas. My mother did not know what it was based on the box alone. Basically all it had were pictures and the word “mini” on it. “HomePod” was very small and not that easy to read, color-wise. I guess that’s an Apple package for ya.

I just got the email from Apple welcoming me to the App Store Small Business Program. Nothing special on it, but still welcome.

Pinstachio is now available in the App Store! apps.apple.com/us/app/pi…

If you use Pinboard for bookmarking, I hope you’ll give it a try.

It’s so satisfying getting a book you preordered on your iPad as 11 PM hits (CST), knowing you’ve got a couple of hours of reading time before sleep.

It’s even more satisfying when you’re on vacation, so you can read a bit more.

Cherry on top: the book is Ready Player Two.

It’s definitely a fingerprint magnet… but I love how the blue, shiny, metal band around this pacific blue iPhone Pro looks.

Small delay with UPS or not, the big blue phone is here ahead of the 18th originally quoted by Apple on checkout!

Opinion you’ve heard hundreds of times before: the PS5 is an absolute unit.

Welp. So the big blue phone I ordered definitely made it here for launch day, but won’t be delivered by UPS because of… who knows?… until next week.

Oh, good! The monolith I ordered is here even if a few days late.

Looks like my big blue phone is being prepared for shipment regardless of an estimated delivery date of the 18th…?

I’ve finally updated my main Mac to Big Sur. Shiny.

All new phones and their varying capacities and colors have a delivery date of the 18th here, so maybe it’s a quirk of my location.

I wasn’t able to secure a launch-day order because either I wasn’t quick enough or it’s a quirk of my new location, but my new blue phone should get here on the 18th.

Do you use Pinboard? Check out Pinstachio for iOS via TestFlight: testflight.apple.com/join/E8g1…

Tropical storm Zeta is expected to become a hurricane shortly before hitting us here in the peninsula. After my last frenzy with Delta, I’ve decided to post no more about it after this. 🙃

I am so relieved that after weeks of issues I was finally able to pay the Apple dev membership. I’ll try to have a beta of a new app that I’ve been working on as soon as possible… almost complete. Motivation is returning… Apple had drained my motivation with these issues.

It looks like it’s over. Light rain remains. Biggest event was a small tree falling in the backyard, but no damage. Power was unstable as expected, but held well. So glad this is over. I heard other areas like Cancun did not do as well, sadly.

Delta hit land and went down to a cat 2. It is now starting to hit us. Sky looks scary and it’s raining, but that’s it so far. Let’s wait and see what the next couple of hours hold.

Delta is now a category 4 hurricane. And to think when I posted this morning it was a 2.

We still have the remnants of Gamma above us; now here comes Delta!

I was able to play today Star Wars Squadrons on PC, complete with a pair of flight sticks and a VR headset. The experience completely blew me away. This is one of the best VR experiences to date. And no motion sickness so far despite how I tend to perform aggressive maneuvers.

Despite the continuous rain, looks like Gamma missed us. State alert levels are back down to low and very low risk.

We’re in for a fun weekend with Gamma coming in.

I am genuinely curious if Setapp’s iOS app subscription flew under Apple’s radar because of Epic or something else happened. They seemed to be playing with fire.

Full disclosure: I am a very happy Setapp subscriber on Mac; not getting iOS out of fear of Apple nuking it.

I wanted to ship an iOS 14 app on release day, but Apple just surprised us all. Oh, well.

Congrats to everyone who managed to get theirs out on time.

So today we got the GeForce RTX 3800 reviews. We got a bunch of new Apple OS releases. And PS5 announcements with preorders. Eventful tech day.

PS5 preorder secured, apparently. Crossing fingers it doesn’t get canceled.

Over two months ago I started having issues with my thumbs. It’s trigger finger. (Or… trigger thumb, to be exact?)

Probably related to my dev lifestyle. I am currently attending physical therapy hoping to avoid surgery.

Fellow devs, take care of your health, hands included.

I’ve done it. I’ve installed iOS 14 on my main phone and will be rolling back the development device to 13.

One of my first impressions from a full day of use is that alternate app icons for light/dark mode may become more important; widgets are creating significant contrast.

I really, really liked Greyhound. Not much going on story-wise, to be honest. But the movie hooked me. Tense action scenes were done perfectly. I hope more films like this make it to Apple TV+.

It’s nuts that my beta phone, an iPhone 6s Plus, is still able to run iOS 14. And that it still feels sufficiently responsive.

Credit where credit is due: Apple read my reply to their rejection and they seem to have understood they made a mistake. (Or it’s a birthday present, like @macgreg may have predicted.) Anyway, update is approved and now I can properly worry about the next OS features tomorrow!

Less than 24 hours until WWDC, so here’s my wishlist in no particular order:

Do Not Disturb Mode API for iOS.

Network Extension for tvOS.

Xcode for iPad.

Custom watch faces in watchOS.

Better iPad multitasking and window management.

A better macOS post-Catalina 🙃

The games begin anew with Apple rejecting the update submitted on Friday. I admit one cited reason is an error of mine, but the second reason… they seem to be confused and even gave me wrong instructions on how to rectify it. I’ve replied; let’s see how long this goes.

Made it! I’ve submitted an update to a personal app the weekend before WWDC. Now, will it pass review before the keynote?

PS5 looks like a baby Alienware.

Cristobal went easy on us compared to many others who were affected. We only lost power and had a room that we use for storage flood. Doing well now.

Rewatching Contagion with the family tonight. I was surprised to see that Apple now includes a COVID-19 PSA from the actors and health experts in the iTunes version of the movie.

Reviving an old, personal Objective-C app. It still compiles several years after its last update. Giving it dark mode support in macOS was a breeze.

One of the things I miss about Texas is Whataburger. A very good friend learned about this and sent me a surprise package. No burgers but this is perfect!

Saturday mornings with some ongoing tech nerdery is an enjoyable activity. But in these times, it helps take my mind off things. Still, I do recognize I am very blessed at the moment.

Unpacked my 2014 Mac mini and set it up as a kind of “lite” server. Trying different things, but the first script I have running every X minutes is an Amazon stock checker for quarantine goodies.

Next up is to unpack my real PC server with lots of storage for Plex and more.

“You know, if we’re to catch the coronavirus, it would be here because people from all over the world visit this place, right?”

That’s what I told my father late in January at Disney World when news of its spread in China and quarantines really started making the headlines.

Not surprised at all that WWDC has gone online for 2020. The question is whether there’s going to be virtual labs at a cost or not. Very interested to hear details.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Pixar movie with my family. Onward was the perfect movie to rectify that. My not-so-inner nerd enjoyed the portrayal of fantasy beings in a modern, albeit family-friendly, setting.

And on that note, Apple’s CallKit framework is interesting. Too soon for me to decide whether I love it or hate it, though 🙃

Feeling satisfied with a weekend project: I built a phone replacement app using Twilio. It’s unpolished and very niche, so I don’t think I’ll release it. Besides, there are bigger apps that do this better already. I just didn’t find any to my liking. Happy about this one, though.

As I was making a connecting flight in Mexico City, they separated a lot of people from an incoming flight and seemed to be testing them for the coronavirus or something. Good to see them being proactive, but also kind of scary to see it in person.

Good and caring customer service is always important, no matter where. (Emphasis on caring when things go sideways.)

Hands down, Disney beats Universal in this. This was evident in their parks, rides, and services in general… night and day difference.

Here’s me trying to grab some quick video of the broken down Rise of the Resistance ride after we’d been evacuated from the transport cart. It was an interesting perspective, after all. Only to be shut down by cast members 😂

It took three attempts on the same(!) day to experience Star Wars Rise of the Resistance in WDW because the first two times the ride broke and evacuated us. One time was halfway through the ride. Because of this, I don’t have the best impression of it. But it is good, I’d say.

Finally made my little app Pinstachio to be fully compatible with Catalina by notarizing it. Progress!

Thanks to two very good friends, a maxed out (except storage) 16” MBP was waiting for me at home. One of the first things I did was to install Xcode and create a new build for an existing project. Too bad I no longer have my older MBP for comparison, but it feels very fast.