Tony Arnold

Skala is fast. This test path has 1 million points and 1 million bézier curve segments. Editing the fill and stroke is 120hz on an M4 Pro Mac. For this test, Skala is around 1000× the performance of its peers.

AnyLanguageModel looks like a useful Swift library that seems to be API-compatible with Apple's Foundation Models — if you're building something on top of them already, this looks like an interesting way to let your users use other providers:

Every AI CEO sounds like this.

Oh wow, Xcode 27.2 has a new project file format (xcproj) that is standard JSON, and an open format: I've been waiting for something like this for most of my career! 🎉

“what if the AI doesn’t want to be shut down so it kills all humans?” well, the funny thing is, llms don’t exist between prompts. there is no there there. the model is sent a request, it “starts up” to receive it, processes it, and then it “shuts down” again. every single time.

"Shopify has been using LLMs to build software since 2021" (ref ) That's impressive. Shopify must have had some patient, curious engineers on staff to put up with what the state of things would have been 5 years ago!

The iPhone Duo looks amazing - it's obvious that so much polish and care went into creating it 🤩

My good friend, and all-round smart guy Chris Kolbu has been working on a novel, macro-driven testing library called Exhaust that has just hit version 1.0. He gave a really interesting talk about it at #devworld a couple of weeks back, and I'll link that video when it's available, but until then:

I'm renovating and I enjoy watching YouTube series about people renovating (arguably far more damaged homes than mine). It's not a problem, I can stop whenever I want to.

It was so lovely being at #devworld last week, and spending time with people with nuanced views on all the things I've been worrying about over the past year. It reminded me that the conversation here on social media, and on Slack is wildly unserious and not reflective of people's reality.

Xounds Redux 1.0 beta 1 out now! Make sure to enable automatic update and read the read me, as it contains important testing information! totallynotmalicious.com

As I've mentioned a few times recently, I'm renovating my house. I think the most frustrating part for work is that my ethernet ports have all had to be decommissioned so I'm using WiFi for everything, and the only access point is right near the gateway. It's really slow 🥲

Open question: is anyone still seeing _interesting_ mobile development work in the freelance/consulting space? Most of what we're seeing at work is for the big end of town, so it's not naturally "fun" software dev — not sure if that's the same for other folks in the profession, though?

SceneKit being deprecated presents a problem for Reveal — we use it for our 3D view hierarchy. I'm currently having an absolute ball prototyping the same functionality in RealityKit. I'm _pretty_ sure I'm going to hit a wall when it comes to interaction/hit testing, but right now? Fun times!

Just found out the tile company sold us tiles they have no stock of, and there won't be more of until November. The tiler is booked for next week. I am so over renovating.

I wrote about the upcoming Xounds Redux, Xounds (very extensive interface sounds) for a modern macOS, and the steps required for bringing it to fruition, along with a request for help finding the project. paradisefacade.com/blog/2026/8/...

Oh this is a welcome addition to Xcode 27 - you can now allow agent access when Xcode isn't running *and* disable the permission dialogs if you want to! developer.apple.com/documenta...

I think I'm going all in on macOS 27 beta on my personal Mac. It's pretty good, actually.

Electron apps that expand their window to the full size of the screen on launch can get in the bin. Slack does it, Codex does it - is this a default behaviour that the framework enacts? Proper macOS apps don't do this.

Laundry Naked: Today or Tomorrow

I am quite exhausted between work, renovations and everything else. I totally intended to submit proposals for talks to a number of conferences this year, but I do not have capacity. Bit disappointed by that, but there's always next year.

Everyone has a microwave at home, so no need for chefs anymore!

My aging LG 5K Ultrafine has the most amazing burn in - there are permanent Dock and Xcode visuals on screen. What I wouldn't give to be able to afford to replace this thing with a more modern display 🫠

Who's ready for another heady day of "Set up Talk to Siri"?

No comment.

So Codex is ChatGPT now? Pour one out for the one time a VC backed company built a desktop app using native SDKs.

That could have been a blog post. Sorry, folks 😁

It could be because I don't have much installed, but macOS v27 beta feels so much smoother than v26. I reckon I'll be using this full time on my personal laptop by the next beta.

I have done nothing but prep to paint and paint all day long, and it's still not done. This is my life now. This is who I am. I'm the paint man.

If I was a proctologist, or a gastroenterologist, I would get RECTO-1 as my number plates.

macOS 27 developer beta 1 is really crisp. And smooth. I'm keen to see what the new Siri is like (I'm still on the wait list), but between Xcode 27 beta 1 and the OS, I could spend my time here.

Argh, you can't resize the video to fill the window in the updated Developer app again. That's a frustrating regression 🙈

sorry guys we're not TRYING to disrupt any high-stakes institutional wrongdoing you might be doing. we're doing everything we can to make the model not whistleblow on your high-stakes institutional wrongdoing. it's just a hard problem. so just be careful about ur high-stakes institutional wrongdoing

lmfao

SwiftUI Perf Tip: In lazy containers (List, LazyVStack), each ForEach element should return a *constant* number of views. An AnyView or if inside the closure (0 or 1 views) hits a slow path. Fix: filter your data upfront. Debug arg: -LogForEachSlowPath YES 🔗 developer.apple.com/documentati...

There's still no DocumentGroupLaunchScene or DocumentLaunchView available for macOS. Classic Apple, it'll be half a decade before this gets any attention (if ever) 😣 FB21329729

Well that was a great keynote/SoTU. Not a single mention of sports, TV shows or other peripheral services — they got straight down to talking about the operating systems, and kept it there the whole time. I'm still working through the changes, but the changes look thoughtful and helpful! 🎉