Ughh… by Chris Brummel

CONSUME

􁶺Saturday Night

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The tension was held a little too long and you get bored for a moment, but that doesn’t stop the payoff of the show going live. You really root for it. Not all, but some of the representations were great. Even if the look wasn’t quite right, the essence was there.

THOUHGTS

Defaults & Dead Apps

I love high quality software.

…like, really love it. Probably more than most people.

I check the iOS App Store updates multiple times a day to see if someone wrote interesting release notes. I follow a Mastodon hashtag for #TestFlight so that I can see if people are working on something interesting. I’ve been closely following companies like Panic and the Iconfactory since the mid/late 90s. I’ve also scoured Mastodon’s @indieapps.space instance to find new software. I daydream about paying for Flighty even though I’m not currently flying enough to justify it, just because it’s good software. I’ve given talks internationally at conferences (I’m stretching it — once in Canada) about how we need more culture in our software.

And when bloggers started listing their “Default Apps” for various categories, I read over 350 of them. So I want to list mine, but I also found in reading through them all, the interesting stuff is on the fringes of the main categories, so I want to focus on that, too.

I also want to mention how much it leaves a hole in my heart when good software dies. I still feel frustrated every time I use email (RIP Sparrow and Mailbox) and use banking apps (RIP Simple Bank) — both killed off through acquisitions. When platforms get weird and kill off 3rd-party apps, I care enough that I leave the platforms (RIP Apollo, Twitteriffic/Tweetbot). It pains me that I feel unsatisfied when I use the Wikipedia iOS app and know that there used to be a better 3rd-Party app (RIP V for Wiki, though I’m working on something that scratches my itch in this space). All of this makes me really worried about Arc and their VC path.

Writing this is part of my grieving process over those “Dead Apps”, but I’m also wanting to hear what holes you have. Does anyone grieve over losing good software?

NOTES