Core Intuition

Manton and Daniel react to macOS Sierra, and enjoy a brief discussion about the user-facing presentation of file systems on macOS and iOS. They talk about Scott Stevenson's "Thanks, Daniel" project, acknowledging the community contributions of Daniel Steinberg. Finally, they indulge in a little speculation about Apple's car project, and the recent rumors of a related acquisition.

Daniel and Manton talk about Daniel's decision to buy an iPhone 7 after all, critique Apple's decision to ship Jet Black phones in spite of their proneness to scratching, and question whether it's worth shipping a product whose defects will garner ridicule. They talk about the new Messages features in iOS 10 and how well or poorly those features downgrade on other platforms. Finally, they talk about the presence of features (such as drawers in OS X) that stick around even though "everybody" knows not to use them.

Manton and Daniel discuss announcements from the Apple iPhone 7 event, including the new hardware and anticipated Mario runner game from Nintendo. They also talk about the lack of wisdom in Daniel's annual iPhone buying plan, the removal of the headphone from the iPhone 7, and Apple's recent promise to start clearing out crufty apps from the App Store.

Daniel and Manton react to the European Union's €13B retroactive tax demand to Apple, talk about the impact of tax laws on indies and small companies, and weigh in on Apple's purported AI and machine learning triumphs. Finally they catch up on their ambitions to be more productive as the busy summer transitions to fall.

Manton and Daniel talk about so-called lifestyle businesses, and how they afford both unlimited and always-limited vacations. They also talk about the merit of unlimited or mandatory vacation in workplaces, and go on a deep dive about the challenge of making a living as an indie software developer.

Daniel and Manton look towards the end of summer as they continue to discuss the challenge of balancing summer family time, vacations, and work commitments. They appreciate Apple's becoming a well-oiled machine for beta releases, and speculate about the possibility of new Mac hardware to coincide with Sierra. Finally, they touch base with Manton's Kickstarter progress, and talk about the value of setting up a VPN or "Back to my Mac" configuration for accessing home computers while traveling.

Manton and Daniel talk briefly about Xcode 8 Extensions, and reflect on the fragility of poorly designed plugin systems. They talk about vacationing as an indie developer, and share tricks for coping with the overwhelming aspects of a large software project. Finally, they come to term with financial realities and the value of using a spreadsheet to account for cash flow.

Daniel gets verified on Twitter, and has mixed feelings. Manton thinks out loud about quality filtering for content-based services. The two discuss Erik Person's response to Marco’s "10 year challenge", and the commitment it takes to go from nothing to successful as an indie.

Daniel and Manton talk about the struggle of tackling the last issues remaining in a project, which are often the ones you've put off the longest. They discuss tricks for gamifying productivity progress, and other time management hacks. They reflect on Swift 3 reaching a milestone of preserving source compatibility, and discuss the costs and benefits of sticking with Objective C vs. moving forward with Swift.

Manton reacts to negatively to the Swift 3 decision to disallows subclassing by default, while Daniel tries to see the bright side. The two discuss Twitter's new invitation to apply for @verified status, and Daniel's attempt to do so. And they quickly touch base on the upcoming Apple-sponsored reality show, "Planet of the Apps."