Slade Watkins

  • My WWDC24 Wishlist

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    I usually make one of these every year, so with less than two weeks’ time left to go before Dub-Dub, how about I share what I’m wishing for? Keep in mind, this is all from the perspective of an Android user.

    • A nice design refresh for iOS/iPadOS 18 — bring it more in line with the rest of the OS family! Both have felt more or less the same, or similar, since iOS 7. Shake it up!
    • macOS Big Sur and later icons on iOS, PLEASE. iOS needs to feel less bland and flat.
    • macOS 15 should be improvements focused, don’t cram too much new stuff in. Make battery and other performance improvements. Double down and do some summer cleaning!
    • watchOS 11 could do with some improvements too. Battery improvements on older models, especially…

    If there’s anything else, I’ll update this… but I don’t really care about the other platforms so much. So this what I really, really want! I’m watching the events with a friend on event day, and I couldn’t be more excited! Love WWDC, favourite time of the year!

  • Goodbye Windows, For Real This Time

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    Well, I think it’s time to migrate the remainder of my computers running Windows to Linux. I can’t throw my hat behind Microsoft anymore, and frankly, their OS has been awful and bloated for well over a decade now. With the AI features coming to Windows 11 (and even Copilot getting backported to 10), it feels as though Microsoft have decided to borderline infringe on user privacy instead of make quality software people actually feel comfortable using.

    This decision from the company has already resulted in tangible performance hits in my workflow, to the point where my M2 MacBook Pro has become the better option to get things done. I’ve leaned more on a Linux VM inside of macOS than my Windows computer directly, or even the Windows VM I have. Granted, I have a bias due to growing up on Linux (thanks Papa) but it’s still rather depressing, considering I used Windows for years after I moved out of my grandfather’s house.

    Now, I’m no stranger to having wanted this switch before. I linked that blog post there. But I decided to do this “last year” and never actually followed through due to various program compatibility issues. Now, at least according to some threads I’ve found on Reddit along with constant (and massive) improvements to Valve’s Proton compatibility layer, I think I actually have a real shot at making the leap. So I’m going to.

    Today, my only big question mark will be games. But Proton has become so good that I think I can (probably) find a way to make it work for me. I’m really bummed that it has come to this. Uprooting and returning to Linux isn’t something I thought I’d be able to do. Linux and games have never been synonymous.

    To make everything easier, I’ll be adopting Pop!_OS by System76 across the board. I grew up on Ubuntu, so its base is familiar, and the out-of-box support for hybrid graphics is something I need for a couple PCs around here. Plus, it’s made by a company whose mission I firmly believe in, with staff who truly care about the open-source community, AND their users.

    I’ll keep you posted!

  • “Contact sales for pricing”

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    There’s that phrase I hate, and I’ve got this really hot take about it: it’s all over the internet these days, and I hate it. “But why, Slade? What’s so wrong with it,” you ask. Well, it’s a barrier to entry for your customers. The more hoops you add between you and your customers, the less likely they are to purchase your product. If you obfuscate your pricing, more would rather walk away than talk to you. In most cases, they have a budget in mind and are just looking for the fastest and most cost-effective solution. They don’t have time, nor want, to talk.

    I’ve run into this a few times in my short time doing freelancing since I graduated high school. Back when I was first doing email for my domain, I shopped around for more “enterprise-y” solutions for email–including hosting on my own servers–because I didn’t want to “just get Gmail.” I ended up doing just that because of all this “contact sales for pricing” bullshit scattered across the internet.

    There are times where, of course, it makes sense to put a human on the other end of the line. More recently, when I was shopping around for an organization to work with in the D.C. area to move my servers from Albany, NY, to Washington, D.C., I had a strict set of requirements that “required” me to talk to someone. I went back and forth for months. The funny thing is that I didn’t even have to negotiate pricing–that was a flat rate that I thought was fair–but I had to give them all this really detailed information over email before even having the OPPORTUNITY to utilize their services.

    They needed to know what I needed, how I needed it done, and frankly all of those things could have just been done in a sign-up flow. I wasted hours of people’s time (including my own) giving them this information that they could have gotten quicker if there was just a quick questionnaire to fill out. (Even funnier: the day I signed the contract, I was in D.C. I could’ve just stopped by their office and did everything there, it was that tedious. )

    Why was any of that grunt work and back-and-forth even necessary, anyway?

    Companies that insist on doing all this grunt work to hinder customers from buying their products will always baffle me. 37signals semi-recently launched Campfire, a service you buy one time and host yourself. They don’t require this song and dance with an “Account Manager” or “Representative” or some other god damn person to buy any products or services from them–you just fill out your information and you’re done. If a company their size can do this in the tech industry efficiently with next to no one babysitting sign-ups, anyone can.

    The fact of the matter is, your “Accounts” staff are better off spending their limited time dealing with new and existing customers, not “potential” customers that you have to screen in. Until Congress or other legislative bodies step in and end this really awful practice of hiding products behind this “Contact sales for pricing” bullshit, it will continue. I think that’s stupid. Be transparent, offer a public-facing form to fill out that generates a quote and/or put your pricing on the internet.

    Or just be content with losing customers. You do you, I guess. But my advice is to stop wasting everyone’s time.

  • Google Needs to Get It Together and Fix Their Reputation

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    Google has a problem: despite being the literal parent of Android, they can’t get Android updates (or substantial Feature Drops) to their products in a timely manner. Yeah, Google, despite your huge media marketing campaigns to the contrary, I noticed the last two Feature Drops have been very… small. Updates have either been consistently late, or never appear at all on their old (or even new) premium phones as they promise to. I think I’ve maybe gotten two new features on Pixel 6 in the last four Feature Drops? That phone isn’t that old, and it was the first Tensor Pixel!

    There’s no excuse.

    I don’t know how Google has managed to fail so spectacularly at literally anything they do. The fact that Samsung is way ahead of Google on Android updates and feature releases that lay underneath One UI is a kick in the balls for Google. Samsung are a third-party that builds on top of Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code, they have no reason to be so far ahead of Google. I cannot understate how bad this is for Google as a company.

    They have no credibility. They consistently shut down services with no recourse and little notice. If they want to fix this problem, I think they need to get aggressive and do the following two things:

    1. Google must match software and hardware support for the Pixel 6 and 7 series, as well as the Fold and Tablet, to that of the Pixel 8. 7 years total, across the board, from the original launch date. They need to prove their commitment to their Tensor hardware and software experiences, this is how they do that. I’m not saying they need to bring every feature (that’s certainly not feasible), but if some Pixel 8 features can run on Pixel 7, there’s no reason they can’t run on Pixel Tablet or even Pixel 6 depending on complexity.
      • Pixel 6 has barely received any new features besides OS updates since launching in October 2021. It is planned to be barred from feature updates in October 2024. That is unacceptable.
    2. With Android 15, non-Tensor Pixel devices will be unsupported on Google’s own flavor of Android (“stock” as it’s commonly called). This is the perfect opportunity to reimagine feature drops. Put more in there for those on older devices! Keep them alive and kicking. Not forever, but at least until the end of their limited shelf life. Less e-waste is a great thing for the environment, you know!

    Google has a bit of a reputation problem. I don’t know if they have a team in charge of killing services or something, but it seems to happen a lot, and there’s a graveyard dedicated to them at this point.

    I hold Rick Osterloh and Dave Burke, who essentially lead Pixel and Android respectively, in high regard. They’re awesome to the Android community and always have been! But, they need to get on their A-game if they want to restore their reputation. Articles like this one from Android Authority, which accuses Google of breaking their promises, shouldn’t be cropping up. It’s time to take control and do right by their consumers and community.

  • The Little Apple Silicon MacBook Pro That Could

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    It should come as no surprise that I don’t like Microsoft. I grew up on Ubuntu Linux, but was forced to use Windows when my parents got married. We had XP on the family computer, and then I eventually got my own computer that had Windows 8.1 (later downgraded to 7 literally for Aero Glass) on it.

    In 2016, I switched to Mac and haven’t returned to using Windows as my primary OS ever since. macOS and I have become very well acquainted over the years. That said, I have always kept a Windows computer around, mainly just for games. The two Windows computers I have now still run Windows 10. There are good things about 11 (the design is actually really pretty) but I think the performance is a significant downgrade from 10 and 7. I have fast computers so that they go fast. 11 is not a “fast” version of Windows.

    I also hate how they shove Edge down your throat, disrespect your defaults, collect your data and advertise to you (despite the fact that the OS is literally paid), among other things. I worry about the implications of that fact…

    Until 2022, I used a 2014 Mac mini and 2011 MacBook Pro (the latter with patches to get it relatively up to date) in combination with each other for a while. Both had SSDs, and I kept everything synced over iCloud so it was easy to drop a project on one computer and pick it up on another. AirDrop was indispensable to me in high school, and having my Mac be able to interact (without setup!) with my iPad and other devices was super helpful.

    My current desktop on macOS 14, as of publishing.

    In 2022, I switched to Apple silicon — M2, specifically. My tiny 13-inch MacBook Pro absolutely obliterates both of my other x86_64 based computers running Windows 10. Combined. And the Windows 11 VM I have in Parallels also leaves those computers in the dust, too. ARM certainly isn’t a new thing — Linux enthusiasts like me have enjoyed the benefits of it for years now — but Apple has absolutely found their way here.

    Apple isn’t free from criticism. No one is. But they have an advantage here, and they deserve to be applauded for making decent software. (Even if the new System Settings app introduced in macOS 13 is a joke.)

  • It Might Be Time For Us to Break Free from Apple’s “Ecosystem”

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    It’s official, Apple has shuttered Epic Games’ ability to create an “alternative app marketplace” on iOS–shutting down their Swedish developer account on the 6th of March. It seems that Tweets critical of the company by Epic Games‘ CEO recently may have sparked the response. Despite Epic Games trying to operate in good faith with Apple, the multi-trillion dollar company chose a path of bad faith: shuttering the competition before they even stood a chance. It’s sad to see–I’ve spent several years now as an Apple customer, even recently switching back to using their devices primarily, but now I can’t trust them on mobile.

    The biggest reason is that developers are going to stop trusting them soon enough. Frankly, Apple is becoming the very thing they sought to destroy almost forty some-odd years ago. The fact that they’re becoming more and more litigious is enough evidence, to be honest.

    The company is simply on a power trip, fueled by a hunger for control and dominance over every industry in which they take part, even if that means costing themselves a significant amount of goodwill among their vast community of developers and enthusiasts. At least Microsoft’s former CEO Steve Ballmer understood that developers mean everything to a thriving platform. That said, Ballmer was controversial as a CEO, and most of that reputation is his own fault.

    Every move the company has made, from RCS support and beyond (especially recently), has been done in a way that is nothing short of malicious compliance. Developers from across the industry, including several third-party developer alums, have come together and spoken out against these moves. Whether it’s independently, or through the Coalition for App Fairness, or through some other alliance.

    Spotify, for example, is a member of the Coalition whose CEO was incredibly vocal against the proposed DMA rules set forth by Apple. They released another letter to the European Commission on Apple’s “lack of DMA compliance” just last week. Apple responded, with an incredibly anger-filled press release on Monday:

    “Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world. A large part of their success is due to the App Store, along with all the tools and technology that Spotify uses to build, update, and share their app with Apple users around the world.”

    Keep in mind, the EU recently fined them €1.84 billion EURO ($2 billion USD) as a result of the anti-trust litigation between them, Spotify, and this is just a result of their distaste in their loss. The fact of the matter is–the Apple beast has become too powerful. We, the consumers, have given them this power–and we’re the only ones who can seize it once more.

    Google isn’t exactly a saint either, to be clear. They’ve had their own myriad of bullshit and muddy bodies of antitrust and litigation of all sorts that would take ages to wade through. However–Android has, and will continue to be, an open platform in both source and user choice for as long as the Android Open Source Project exists and smartphone manufacturers (who aren’t Apple) continue making phones.

    For Apple to succeed in interfacing with developers in the long-term–beyond their evangelists and most dedicated users who have zero understanding of how Android, Windows, or Linux works–they must stop alienating them and being so disrespectful when given constructive feedback. I’m not sure why their knee-jerk reaction is to play the victim card so much, especially when I’m sure they have a million other cards to play, but they continue to choose it.

    For sympathy? Probably.

    I believe it’s time for us iOS users to rebel in the only way Apple has given us the ability to do: take our business elsewhere. The grass is certainly greener on the other side of the wall. Even DHH, a well-known lover AND critic of Apple (being an Apple evangelist for a long ass time–perhaps 99% of my life–will do that), has switched to Android and Windows and has no reason to leave for a while.

    Wild that we’ve gotten here. I’m doing the same thing, too–plotting my course out of the “ecosystem.” Perhaps it is that time. If Apple has a sincere change of heart, sure, but I don’t think developers are going to stick around for long with their attitude lately. Without developers, a platform is nothing. Without COMPETITION, a developer is nothing. If Apple truly is seeking to destroy both, iOS may as well be deemed irrelevant now.

    Unless you want to eventually be stuck without any third-party apps in the future… I’d start looking at your options and plotting your exit plan. Samsung Galaxy S is probably the closest choice, but Google Pixel has a great line, too. That’s my take.

  • In Loving Memory of my Great Aunt Rose

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    For those who don’t know (find my first Tweet here and my follow-up here), my Great Aunt Rose unfortunately passed away last week. She was a beautiful and kind-hearted woman who truly loved her family, despite rarely getting to see everyone in-person. The first (and last) time I had saw her since I was a baby was July 2019. We had a wonderful time, and made so many memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

    Love you, Great Aunt Rose! We’re all going to miss you!

    1955 – 2024

  • I Found An Old Screenshot Laying Around and Was Instantly Hit With Nostalgia

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    In case you were curious how I had my computer set up in this month in 2017, I found a screenshot laying around of a client’s website, but for some reason, it was my entire desktop. I don’t work with these folks anymore — so it’s blurred out here — but I believe the computer this was running on was a Mid 2010 Mac Mini running macOS Sierra!

    At some point down the line, I switched to an Early 2011 MacBook Pro, and then eventually upgraded to a 2014 Mac Mini and the 2022 M2 MacBook Pro that I currently use. macOS returned to a more skeuomorphic-inspired look. I believe they call it “neumorphic” or something like that.

    For giggles, here’s what my desktop looks like today! A lot has changed. I actually store files on the Desktop now, and I don’t keep my RAM monitor in my Menu Bar anymore. I went for a tidy yet functional set up.

    My Dock is hidden off to the right-hand side of my screen–with a Terminal tweak to make it instantly appear and reappear. For folder management on the Desktop (where I store in-progress projects), I use Stacks and I move the labels to the right. I use SoundSource to manage my audio interface, CleanShot X for screenshot management, and an app called Tiles to bring window snapping from Windows 7 and later to the Mac. Oh, and I keep Downloads in the Dock now, and don’t remove the shortcut anymore–it’s handy.

    I suppose the only things hardware-wise besides the machine that has changed was my keyboard–I’m using a model of the Logi Pop Keys line that’s red/pink/off-white. Reason being is that it supports macOS keyboard shortcuts. On my other computers, I use a SteelSeries Apex 5.

    Was kind of interesting to see this. Chrome certainly changed a lot, and macOS looks like a completely different piece of software. That screenshot I found was taken only about three months into my switch from Windows to Mac, too. Incredibly nostalgic! Wonder if I have any more old screenshots laying around somewhere…

  • I Think Snapchat is A Healthier Form of Social Media: Intent-Based Platforms Matter

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    Honestly, being on a self-imposed break from checking social media too often has left me wondering what “social media” can be for me. My circle of friends is incredibly small, but scattered all across the United States’ East Coast, as well as parts of Europe, and Australia. Social media is basically required to keep up with any of them.

    In middle school and high school, at least here in the US, you had a few options: iMessage or Snapchat. And basically everyone had Snapchat. It’s what we all used to communicate with each other. I’ve been on the app since 2012, when it first became available on Android, and I’ve grown used to Snapping back and forth with classmates or whatever.

    Even after all these years, and the drama that shit on Snapchat caused during high school specifically, I think it is one of the healthier platforms out there. Twitter certainly isn’t, Facebook feels like a place to go for “old people drama,” and Instagram is fine, I guess but really isn’t the same. Which is why I elected to keep Snapchat on my phone: most of my friends are on it, and there’s an incentive to keeping in regular contact with them.

    I have my own gripes with Snapchat, of course, but they aren’t shoving ads down your throat or some algorithmic timeline. It’s an intent-based social media network: you want to talk to your friends, you talk to your friends. You can either Snap them, or Chat them, or both! You can talk almost daily and inevitably start a streak. There are no barriers to entry, and no algorithms telling you what you can or can’t see based on what you might like. The timeline’s there, of course, but you have to go looking for it.

    Bottom line is: You just do the thing you want to do and just like that, it’s done.

    It’s the same thing with platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are similarly intent-based: you tell it what you want to do, and it does the thing you want it to do. It doesn’t complain, it doesn’t tell you you’ll lose functionality (because you don’t), it just does. It makes things less addicting and more engaging. In my opinion, that’s a balance we all need to have in this heavily internet-connected world. I’m so happy to have finally found that balance.

    And frankly, there’s something to appreciate about that approach to creating software: giving users the tools to use the thing however it works for them. Especially in this day and age, where companies demand more and more control over how their things work alone, or with other services (or, rather, how they don’t do either and close off their products to other third-parties, requiring first-party subscription services for the device be fully functional. I’m looking at you, Apple.)

    I’m happy with what Snapchat has offered in this space. Intent-based social media apps matter, and regardless of some of my own complaints with it, it has honestly made a significantly positive impact on my friendships, and helped make them stronger… so I can forgive some of its shortcomings, for sure.

  • Will Your In-House CMS “Beauregard” Open to the Public?

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    Previously, I announced following Slade’s Corner‘s leave from Substack that this site runs on Beauregard, a content management system (and alternative to the Substack platform) that I’ve been building from scratch since the whole, er, situation blew up over there. Since then, I’ve built so many features into the site: native Cloudflare integration, linklog support, autoposting to Mastodon (and derivatives), and even native Cloudinary support for super fast image hosting!

    Beauregard is the successor to BeauCMS, which itself was based on WordPress 6.0 and 6.1. It was born out of wanting something less clunky, more fluid. Thus, it’s a more mature content management system, one that is modern, written from the ground-up in native PHP, JavaScript, and HTML, but still fluidly compatible with WordPress’s fancy Gutenberg editor, along with its blocks, plugins, and themes. Beauregard isn’t WordPress. It’s literally brand-new code underneath!

    There’s a lot on the roadmap for Beauregard. Paid subscription support (to have the ability migrate my friends still on Substack off at some point), native email support, among other things. But a question I’ve been getting a lot is “Will you be opening this up to the public?” Honestly, thinking long and hard about it, the answer’s no. There are a few reasons:

    • Running something like that for more than a few people I trust is expensive. Server hardware is expensive and while my point of presence being in DC now helps, it’s still costly. Beauregard is lightweight enough that I won’t kill a server or two with it, but it’s still a big piece of software.
    • Beauregard just wouldn’t be cost-effective or make sense for most people. I’m really looking for people who love writing to the same degree that I do–I’m talking essays, articles, that sort of thing–and want to make some money off of it. For some of my friends, the platform makes sense, and that’s why they have access.
    • Setting up Beauregard is a very manual and time-consuming process. I still have to go in and install each new instance fresh manually. It got to the point where I had to write a script to automate most of the setup for testing on my Mac because it was so time-consuming. To go public, I’d have to streamline that process significantly, potentially even figure out how to make that bodged-but-somehow-working script work at-scale, and I just can’t be arsed. (I learned the word “bodge” from Tom Scott. Because of course I did.)
    • Even if I could somehow resolve all those concerns, I’d need to make a lot money off Beauregard, too, when scaling the platform up to potentially hundreds of accounts for any of this to make sense. I’d need to make more than enough to cover development costs, hosting costs, equipment costs, contractual obligations, and more. I couldn’t afford to run at a loss. I’m a self-taught developer who learned through many thousands of hours of Google-fu and StackOverflow. I just don’t think it’d be good if I was the only one building this for so many people.

    To be clear, I wish I could make it make sense and build a side business out of it–but I’d be way out of my comfort zone and burning myself out in the process. I just don’t know how to make it work. That said, I plan to onboard friends onto the platform. I can do a few people that I know–that’s manageable. That’s what will happen.

    I’m sorry if that’s not the answer some were looking for. I wish I could offer Beauregard to everyone. It’s a huge passion project of mine and it’s absolutely brilliant! I love what I’ve done with it! This post is being composed and displayed to you by it, for God’s sake! But again it’s a niche piece of internet software, and I just don’t see any way I could make it profitable at that scale. I also just don’t want to deal with licensing crap. So we’re just not doing that either.

    Thanks for understanding, though. If it changes, I’ll let you know–but I think this is the final decision: Beauregard shall remain a friends-only accessible and usable project from now until the end of time!