Under The Radar

As David celebrates five years of Widgetsmith, we discuss choices we make to keep our businesses scalable without giving up the working styles we prefer.

With our iOS 26 updates submitted, we reflect on the summer, customer reactions to the redesigns, and what we're looking forward to doing next.

Laying groundwork for future analytics, insights, and utility needs.

A pragmatic and productive path through the final weeks of the iOS 26 beta season.

Fighting through the motivational challenges and choosing a direction when the system design isn't an easy, universal win.

Should we adopt Liquid Glass or stick with our existing designs? And if we do adopt it, how much should we redesign and rethink along the way? (tl;dr: yes; much.)

Tradeoffs for requiring iOS 26 this fall, and a clever strategy to manage compatibility with iOS 18.

Initial impressions of WWDC 2025 and what we're going to be doing this summer.

Expectations and preparations for WWDC 2025.

Motivating ourselves to get back into coding after time away.

Thoughts and feelings about the Apple anti-steering injunction, the way Apple views developers, and how the relationship could constructively move forward if Apple so chose.

Testing our apps for power consumption and adjusting behavior to maximize battery life.

Whether "anyone" can make apps now with AI tools, and how that affects our apps, relevant skills, and careers.

Designing our apps to run without our constant involvement.

Identifying and distinguishing the difference between optimism, pessimism, and fear, and the paths we're choosing to take.

The principles and goals we consider important in our apps.

How our values have diverged and our perceived relationship has changed with Apple, forcing our motivations for iOS development to evolve.

Qualities and perspectives that help us stick with indie development over time.

In the fourth of a multi-part series sharing the apps that we use to develop software, we discuss task management, collaboration, and a final assortment of miscellaneous apps.

In the third of a multi-part series sharing the apps that we use to develop software, we discuss documentation, code from the web, and LLM-powered code generation.