In a previous essay, I briefly expressed some thoughts about why Liquid Glass is inappropriate for the Mac: I’m having a much harder time seeing how Liquid Glass will benefit other platforms like the Mac or Apple TV (where Apple doesn’t even make the screen). Forcing tactility where it’s not needed or wanted feels like a misstep. I’ll now go into depth regarding these thoughts. In 2010, John Gruber wrote The Future of the Mac in an iOS World for the Macworld back page. He explained wh...| furbo.org
I submitted the following feedback today. If you ever plan to change your business model from a paid up-front to freemium model, read this report and avoid a day of headache and stress. Title: The sample code for a business model change was written by someone who’s never submitted an app to the App Store Please describe the issue and what steps we can take to reproduce it: The source code example using in Supporting business model changes by using the app transaction does not work if you’...| furbo.org
The addition of UITabAccessory in iOS 26 is welcome. It does, however, create a problem as far as backward compatibility is concerned. How do you present the new accessory view on older versions of iOS? This backward compatibility is especially important for Triode. A lot of folks turn an older device into a dedicated radio player. I have an old iPad in the kitchen, for example. So what do you do on the other side of the availability check where you set UITabBarController.bottomAccessory? You...| furbo.org
Whether you love it or hate it, there is no shortage of opinion on Liquid Glass. I have thoughts about what it is, but today I want to focus on why it exists. Apple’s public rationale for the new design language is that it offers a universal solution across platforms that takes advantage of recent […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
furbo.org is Craig Hockenberry's place to write for the web. He makes app and runs websites.| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
The first thing I installed after the WWDC25 Keynote was the beta for iPadOS. There was only one reason: it had the windows we have all wanted for so long. And generally, windows on iPad work exactly how we want them to. But there’s a problem, and I suspect that the root cause is that […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
furbo.org is Craig Hockenberry's place to write for the web. He makes app and runs websites.| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
I’ve been developing on Apple products for a long time: typing PEEK and POKE code from magazines into an Apple ][, figuring out how QuickDraw worked using the Inside Macintosh pre-prints, having my mind blown by Mac OS X and every new thing prefixed with “NS”, and then jailbreaking the first iPhone so I could write an app that eventually won an Apple Design Award. It’s been an exciting adventure. Until now. The engineering behind Apple products continues to be amazing: Swift and Swift...| furbo.org
We’ve recently released a new product. There’s no shortage of marketing or technical information about that. What I want to talk about today is the fun we had making it. Tapestry was a challenge on many fronts, but I’ve found that if you add a bit of humor and mischief to development, it helps get […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
I’ve been thinking about all the generative AI slop that’s appearing, especially with tools like “Reimagine”, and I think it’s going to be a great thing for the open web. Why? Because Google is unwittingly shooting itself in the foot in a way that will change the character of the web. How? The web has […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
This site now supports Dynamic Type on iOS and iPadOS. If you go to System Settings on your iPhone or iPad, and change the setting for Display & Brightness > Text Size, you’ll see the change reflected on this website. This is a big win for accessibility: many folks make this adjustment on their device […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
A toot by my friend Casey brought back some frustrating memories about expired subscriptions that haven’t expired (yes, really). This blog post will hopefully help you avoid having these same recollections. It all begins when a customer contacts you with a screenshot that looks something like this: Your code and the App Store don’t agree […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
Last week, one of my colleagues informed me that the word “tweet” was now included in the Oxford English Dictionary (see “Quiet announcement” at the end of the page.) The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
Well, it happened. We knew it was coming. A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Phony Stark did it. My mom passed away just before Christmas. Her decline was something everyone in the family saw coming and we prepared for her demise. It still hurts like hell, but […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
This past summer we narrowly avoided a major user interface regression on Apple devices. The story ended well, but I think it’s important to look back on the situation and ask a simple question: Why did this happen in the first place? My answer is something I call “consistency sin”. Understanding the cause lets us […]| Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry
