I just learned that friend of the Variable, Lucas, developer extraordinaire, developed the Monologue app for iOS, taking the initial concept and prototype that was vibe-coded based on the Mac app and turning it into an absolutely killer iPhone app. Still not a huge fan of the extremely AI bullish Every, but knowing that a developer like Lucas, who puts time, care, and attention into everything he does, is working on it now means this app should progress and only improve for the better. Iāve now switched to it from SuperWhisper for all my transcription needs.
apps
13 postsPosts tagged with apps
š± The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is āground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.
Honestly, I really love this idea. Itās so easy to just fall into doom scrolling and go down a never-ending rabbit hole. So forcing some kind of decision-making to continue is a good idea, given some of the addiction weāve seen arise from these types of apps.
Iāve also been thinking defaulting to an algorithmic timeline should be nixed. If a user wants to make that decision and switch over, let āem. But even on Instagram, where you have the following feed, you have to switch to it every single timeāthat should be the default. Then you can switch to a discover feed or the algorithm or whatever if you so choose.
Or maybe Iām just a weak human being with no self-control. But both could be true.
š mist
Iāve talked before about my desire for a Google Docs alternativeāone where I could share docs with writers, suggest changes, etc.āand I even wrote up some requirements for it in the hopes that someone might magically decide to build it for me.
mist is 95% there. I couldnāt find a note about it being open-source, but Iām dying for someone to run with this and add file organization to it so I don't have to worry about the 99hr expiration.
š Miniroll & Miniship
These are two brand new webapps from Chris Hannah that I absolutely adore already. Miniroll is a simple and sleek way to make an embeddable blogroll and Miniship does the same, but for changelogs. They are both super simple, have a fun vibe and aesthetic, and are a joy to use.
Iāve started putting together a changelog for Foofaraw and a Friends of Foofaraw blogroll. Iām excited to continue building these out, creating more, and seeing where Chris takes his little āminiā empire.
š§āš» Why Sell Lifetime Plans, in a Default Subscription World?
When that happens, companies (especially the VC-backed kind) now need to contrive new and increasingly stick-like reasons for customers to pay again. From made-for-marketing āfeaturesā that suck to use IRL, to breaking compatibility with older versions, to spamming you with marketing notifications and embedded ads. Their relationship with customers goes from symbiotic to parasitic.
Pirijan, the creator of Kinopio, is always incredibly thoughtful with his approach to building and his writingāthis is no exception. Longtime readers will know my distaste for where the economy is going with āventure predation,ā and the growth-at-all-costs approach in the tech and financial spaces. As Pirijan notes, it all leads to parasitic relationships. Rather than build the best product that users want to use and pay for, they do their best to look flashy, attract new users, and trap them in their ecosystem.
š ProNotes
So this is a genius app/extension to Apple Notes that works on top of Apple Notes to give you better formatting tools, markdown, slash commands, backlinks, and templates. It has me rethinking where I keep my notesācurrently in iA Writerāespecially with the idea of the Forever Notes framework for Apple Notes.
