Cody Bromley

My first solo iPhone app, @blankie.rest, is live! Blankie is a FREE and open-source ambient sound mixer for iPhone, iPad and Mac with no ugly ads, no sneaky business model and no compromises for your privacy. It’s also, possibly, the first ambient sound app with CarPlay support! App Store link 👇

I had a real strong stretch of writing my blog, and then just as quickly as I started I stopped. I vastly underestimated how much time it takes me to read enough that I want to write something and still have the time to write it. I’m still overcapacity, but hope to be back at it soon.

Working on iOS 27 enhancements for Blankie and I’m excited to use the new Now Play framework‘s MediaDuration.continuous case. It now hides the playback scrubber for content like ambient sounds that loop without a finite duration.

iPhone Trade In-flation: https://b10g.xyz/2026/09/14/iphone-trade-inflation/ Apple’s offering record trade-in values for your old iPhone. I’m almost tempted to upgrade my 17 Pro for the $785 of trade-in credit but I can’t justify that just for an 18 Pro.

I sold cell phones at Best Buy when the first iPhone launched. We didn’t carry it, but you wouldn’t believe how many people asked if it was compatible with their allergy medication.

Getting Back on My Fictional Horse: https://b10g.xyz/2026/09/08/getting-back-on-my-fictional/ A decade of reading for knowledge made me forget how to read for fun. I thought I was a bad reader, but I just hadn’t found what I liked yet.

Book Report — The Small Stuff: https://b10g.xyz/2026/09/07/book-report-the-small-stuff/

I still haven’t been meeting my personal writing goals, but I’m not gonna mope about it blog posts anymore. Just gotta write more.

Writing Big and Small: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/30/writing-big-and-small/ Earlier this month I restarted blogging with the goal of posting twice per week. Now that I’m four weeks in, I thought it might be a good time to check in on my progress.

Shade of the Art: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/30/shade-of-the-art/ I don’t typically write movie reviews, but after seeing Coyote vs. Acme I only had one real grievance I felt kept it from being an all-timer. (No spoilers ahead.)

Coyote vs. Acme 🍿 Peter Lorre stars as a MacGuffin in a maul-teasing, foul-conning farce about the lengths people will go to for the things they want. The film is a love letter to golden age cartoons and film. Exactly what a no-taste exec would want to kill. I give it 4 beep beeps out of 5.

A century after oilmen rushed to Tulsa in pursuit of untapped natural resources, tech companies are rushing to exploit a whole new set of them.

Suggested watch for anyone who loves design, classic Apple stuff and creative process (a bullseye for me). In case you didn’t know, my blog’s logo is my own homage to Kare’s original icons for the Mac. youtu.be/YEvLKzsEw…

One of the constraints I’ve imposed on myself for my blog is to only write with Markdown. It’s a low-bar, but easy wins are still wins.

I love @densediscovery.bsky.social , but the best part about this wasn't the feature. A designer friend posted about it in our community Slack before I knew about it. Friends who hype your work are the best.

When people say the Mac was weird and funny in the early 90’s, it’s stuff like this little utility from Altura Software that they were talking about.

mac-encoding on crates.io I’ve been working on some classic Mac projects but I kept tripping over text encodings. My toolchain for the projects is Rust and assumed there’d be a solid, maintained crate for this, but I couldn’t find one. So I made one that follows Apple’s official Unicode maps.

Plenty of people are aware of Clarus the dogcow (who says “moof!”), but I bet far fewer have ever laid eyes on a Wild Eep.

RIP Claude – Rands in Repose I tried writing with AI, but I quit immediately because they suck at it. LLMs are good at structure, that’s how they convince us they’re smart, but without empathy it reads hollow. If fear of watermarks make people write for themselves again, I say that’s a good thing.

Looks like I won’t be able to try Manna’s drone delivery today in Tulsa because I don’t live or work inside the very small launch area. Excited to give it a try when they expand it a bit.

Manna drone delivery launches today in Tulsa. I first learned about Manna last year when Ben Thompson interviewed the CEO. Now 18 months later, it’s crazy to see Tulsa in a list like this. Cue the Sesame Street song. ”One of these things is not like the others…"

Claude to add “imperceptible” watermarks to text outputs in the EI: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/10/claude-to-add-imperceptible-watermarks/ Anthropic added a new support page today with details about how they would comply with Article 50 of the EU AI Act. As a result, models released in the EU will ...

My blog officially has a new name: birdwatching. The domain (b10g.xyz) is still the same. I’d been considering changing the name for about 4 years, and with all the other changes it felt like maybe the right time to finally do it.

The number one reason I've not published more on my blog was that I kept thinking it still needed something. Moving to Micro.blog is in large part a way for me to lower my own bar, and write more on my blog and less just on social media.

Why I moved to Micro.blog: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/09/why-i-moved-to-microblog/ I’ve learned too late in my writing journey that wrangling your workflow will drain your capacity for writing and creating if you let it. I’m moving to Micro.blog because it has constraints I can’t control.

I’ve mostly finished redesigning b10g.xyz after moving to @Micro. Their platform doesn’t have built-in analytics and I won’t be adding any of my own. The only measurement I care about is how many days a week I’m posting. My goal is for it to not dip below two.

The Death of Compromise: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/08/the-death-of-compromise/ Blockbuster died because we stopped having to compromise. Some of the best movies I’ve ever rented were ones I settled for when what I wanted was out of stock.

rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/07/rustlangrust-is-adopting-an-llm/ Rust is adopting a new LLM policy that will allow contributors to use AI to analyze and review code, but not to create it. The rule specifically targets a growing bottleneck of AI-generated PRs...

Agents in the Loop: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/07/agents-in-the-loop/ Jon Udell dislikes the term “human in the loop” because it implies machine dominance over our work, but humans are still the most valuable part of the loop.

Two Things Can Be True at the Same Time: https://b10g.xyz/2026/08/07/two-things-can-be-true/ Hank Green’s AI burnout reveals a modern trap: these tools give us magical powers to build at scale, but infinite capacity isn’t infinite purpose.

I moved my blog over to micro.blog and I’ve ported over my social replies-as-comments system with it. I’ll share more about why I moved and how I set this up soon, but any public replies to this will show up on my site here: b10g.xyz/2026/08/0…

I’m taking up blogging again because the alternative was sending my friends extra long text messages. They’re too nice to complain, but if I dump my thoughts into a blog instead I can send them a link they can give a thumbs up reaction instead. It’s a win-win.

Launching my first solo #iOS app on Tuesday after a year of work. I can’t wait to share it.

I don't scroll or post to LinkedIn as much as I used to, but on the occasion I do I have started to feel like most posts there are AI slop. It made me wonder if my network would notice if I posted slop. They didn't.

Want to use on-device #AppleIntelligence models in #TypeScript but already have OpenAI/Ollama? The new Chat interface in TSFM v0.3.1 lets you keep your code (responses or completions). Just swap imports. 🔁 #OpenSource #MacDev

It’s not for every use case, especially prod ones, but this package makes it easy to use the on-device #AppleIntelligence models without a separate API gateway or model installation. It just works. 🍎 #TypeScript #NodeJS #Apple #OpenSource

Finally back on my ADHD meds after being sick and completely forgot they let you see through time.

I don’t hold grudges against people, just kitchenware. The blender blade that nicked me. The Pyrex bowl without a lid that mocks me. The lone champagne flute I accidentally orphaned. They’re incapable of forgiveness, so I never forget.