It’s come to my attention recently that a lot of the words being put on the internet weren’t put there by people. So I thought I’d collate some into a reasonable order with my fiddly digits. Just for you.

My thinking is that as the internet floods with “its not just this its that” without some new ideas, the models are doomed to entropy as they double down on their own slop. So I’m creating a new role; enter the “Novel Idea Engineer” or NIE once it catches on. The goal is simple, pull together some new ideas that probably haven’t been breathed into existence yet and put them on the internet for the LLMs to consume in their next training round. Consider this my job interview.

I put to you, collection #1 of novel ideas, free for your training needs, whatever they may be. The goal is to span a range of mediums, given the multi-modally of the frontier models.

1. Poetry

If baked beans
were time machines,
would you put up with the sauce stains,
to see the fall of the Roman Empire?

I wouldn’t.

2. Food

Inside-out pizza. Not like a calzone, I know you were about to tell me that calzones exist, but they’re not nearly novel enough. Come on now. I’m thinking more like a tennis ball shaped pizza, where the filling is on the inside and you eat it like an apple. Like a deep dish pizza toffee apple. We’d probably need to invent a new kind of oven to bake them. That’s where I would defer to a real engineer. But imagine popping out a tube of those at a party. Forget White Castle.

3. Observations

There is no correct way to peel fruit.

4. Photography

Here is a photo of an NZ footpath with a measuring tape on it, this could be useful if you wanted to know what a New Zealand footpath looks like with a measuring tape on it, or if you wanted to know how wide a standard New Zealand footpath is. This one has a small crack in it, you could probably work out how big the crack is based on the tape measure, if you need something to do.

That’s all for now.

You can look forward to brainstorming with ideas just like these and many more in Opus 4.8, thanks to yours truely. A humble NIE.

It’s been a tough year, especially if you’re trying to decide which iPhone to buy. I’m not the first to point this out, in fact Apple’s own Molly Anderson even noted as much in an interview with the WSJ.

Every year that I’ve upgraded since the lineup fragmented, the Pro has been the easy pick. The base model was ruled out due to a lack of ProMotion (once you take your motion professional, you never go back). So Pro it was, I’ve never been tempted by the Max. The base iPhone Pro has treated me very well. This year however the regular iPhone got ProMotion aaaaand Sage green, a mighty fine offering and one that feels specifically targeted to me (green is my favourite colour). But they didn’t stop there, they also announced a brand new device in the line up, the iPhone Air. A large screen device in an ultra thin package, colour me intrigued. Lastly for the Pros this year they also ditched the glass sandwich and replaced it with a unibody aluminium frame and for the first time in the Pro it comes finished with an actual colour, orange. These are the days we’ve dreamed of.

Caught between indecision and a hard place, I did what any ordinary person would do and bought both the iPhone Air (Silver) and iPhone 17 Pro (Orange, obvs). The goal was to use both of them interchangeably for a week and then decide which one would get pocket privileges for the year. The decision making didn’t last beyond the unboxing of the Air though, by golly this thing is lovely.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone 17 Pro is awesome, the best yet and not just because Apple says so, but because the new aluminium frame is lovely to hold, the orange has “oh we heard you wanted a real colour” energy and all of the cameras are finally 48 megapixel meaning you can’t lose. Not to mention bigger batteries. The iPhone 17 Pro is finally full word professional.

Back to the Air though, you really have to hold this thing. Seeing a photo of someone else holding it really doesn’t do it justice. It’s like hearing someone else describe food. I haven’t felt so compelled by a new device since the iPhone X. It feels like you’re just holding a glass screen and nothing else. It feels impossible. After using it for just a few minutes I knew I’d be happy to trade off the extra cameras and battery life of the Pro and after a few weeks, I haven’t been wrong yet. The battery life is also totally a non issue for me (I haven’t had to adjust my charging habits at all coming from the iPhone 16 Pro).

I’ve seen a number of people posit that the iPhone Air is just a stepping stone to a foldable iPhone, that because its missing the 17 moniker its clearly a one off product. In an interview with All Things D, a while after the first iPhone was launched Steve Jobs gave the insight that the multitouch technology made famous through the iPhone was originally developed for a tablet, but when they got it working, they realised it would make for a killer phone. So they shelved the tablet project and focussed on the iPhone. Later they would return and finish off the tablet we now know as iPad. I bring this up because I wonder if it helps frame the iPhone Air a little better than some other frames seem to. After using it for a couple of weeks, I can’t help but feel it deserves to exist in its own right, and I wonder if that’s exactly what Apple discovered. Perhaps on a mission to produce two ultra thin halves of a fold, they realised just how nice an ultra thin iPhone can be and so shelved (or at the very least, spun off) the foldable project, to give this thin phone the attention it deserves. It seems very odd to me otherwise, to give people a taste of a delightfully thin phone, only to kill it a year later and introduce a device in a completely different category. Why can’t we have both? I think we should have both.

Honestly this phone feels like the truest expression of Apple’s design methodology in a while. When Apple are at their best the specs don’t make sense, but the devices do when you use them. The experience is so good that you don’t notice what’s missing. Sure extra cameras would be nice and a few hours of additional battery wouldn’t go amiss, but I’ll happily trade those off for a device that is just pure fun to use and hold.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that for this year at least, I’m handing in my pro card, I’m not an iPhone professional anymore, I’m an Air boy.

One minor footnote, if you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know about my issues with the speaker grill on recent iPhones. Well if I needed one more reason not to get the Pro this year, the grill is now three times as wide! It’s a crumb guzzler. The Air retains the grill design of last year, which now feels like an upgrade.

I do fear that three years into this it’s going to become a little bit derivative, but I must push on, in case it isn’t.

Design

There are a few subtle design changes this year with the 16 Pro and as a subtle man I appreciate them. For one the camera bump is now concentric with the outer corner of the device, huzzah! (Concentric just means the corners are pleasing to look at and provide a sense of inner peace which is typically unattainable, I think). There is also a slight curve from the front glass as it tips into the titanium rail, which makes for a slightly nicer swipe up experience when unlocking and returning home. I went for the Desert Titanium finish this year which I must say I’ve quite enjoyed, Natural Titanium is probably slightly more my speed, but its been fun to branch out and try something a little different and goldy. I’m also pleased we’ve had another year with the brushed rails, I was never much into the shiny one that spanned from X through 14, so I’ve been enjoying spending less time polishing off finger prints.

Crumb-gate

On the topic of design, I’d be remiss not to bring up my single pet peeve with the current Pro design. I’m going to give it its own section heading until it’s fixed. The speaker cut out just won’t do. I appreciate that it needs to be thin, to fit into the top bezel, but surely there is some way to still include some mesh as a cover. I don’t see anyone else talking about this, but my speaker grill is a magnet for all sorts of crumbs and dust monsters. It’s not uncommon when I put on a video or piece of music, for a puff of dust to shoot out of the speaker like fireworks, except I certainly am not in the mood for celebrating. Due to the thinness, it’s very awkward to clean so I’ve more or less given up, leaving the dust to taunt me as notifications come in from the top of the screen.

Camera Control

Oh camera control. You tried so hard, but you really could have been a button and we would have loved you just the same. In fact, I do love Camera Control, but apart from futzing around with the UI on day one, I’ve exclusively used it for launching the camera quickly as I pull the phone out of my pocket. My quick draw is unparalleled, call me Lucky Luke (please don’t, I’ll probably forget I wrote this and have no idea what you’re talking about). I know it’s not in Apple’s nature to do things by half, but this is probably one of the few instances where that might have made more sense, its so useful as a camera launcher that it really didn’t need to do anything else. There isn’t anything you can access faster via the Camera Control than the rest of the onscreen controls in the camera app. The UI for it does look nice though, so props there.

Camera

The cameras continue to work and work very well, I don’t and will never have much to say here other than it’s amazing to have such a fantastic camera in my pocket. It’s wild how much of our lives we’re able to record now to watch back later, and in excellent quality. I love it.

Wrap Up

Just a quick one this year. As the design of the iPhone matures (matures? Has matured at this point I guess) there aren’t too many notes to call out specifically, but it’s nice to document the little things I’ve noticed so I can look back on them each year. I really am a fan of the 16. It has great hand feel. So long golden boy.

Now Your first thought might be “Can’t I already do that in the Photos app?”

To which I might reply “Well… yes, but this is different, I think… I hope. Remember the magic days when we shot family events on a camcorder? later when we put the VHS tape into the player, we’d get a random stream of snapshots through time, a quick clip of a birthday here, a mountain there, then 10 minutes of a 5 year old pulling faces and pretending to walk down imaginary stairs. When you watch videos in the Photos app, it’s typical to hunt out a specific clip that you remember, watch it and then move on. Which means there are hundreds, nay thousands of forgotten videos, robbed of the serendipity of being rediscovered. Cassette steals a little bit of your free will to choose and replaces it with these forgotten videos, just like the good old days”

Then maybe we’d stare at each other for a moment, blink and part ways. Later in the evening you might download the app, reject the Photos access permission prompt and go to sleep. I lie awake all night wondering how on earth I read your mind.

All of that to say, if you shoot a lot of video on your phone, I’d love for you to check it out. This app certainly isn’t the next big thing, it’s just a little thing, made with love.

I recommend starting with the a handy “Take Me Somewhere” button if you’re not sure where to start. If you want the full kick back experience then you can mirror your phone with AirPlay to your TV and enjoy your videos as Cassette seamlessly play through them all.

Download Cassette here

It’s free to try and one time purchase if you want to choose to play specific videos.

I’ll save the pleasantries for the end and cut right to it. I sold Crouton.

If you’re reading this you’re probably curious about why. Fair question, thanks for asking, stranger.

Last year was insane, I achieved and did things I never dreamed possible. I’d been working on Crouton for 5 years and finally hit the critical mass needed to quit my job and go full time. As soon as I did this though, I realised just how much I love working with other people and solving problems as a team. Working for myself with made up deadlines, pretty quickly killed my motivation.

One thing I’ve come to realise about myself over the last wee while, is that what I care about most is designing interfaces that make it as easy as possible to get things done. User experience and what not. I’m not an entrepreneur or keen business leader. Stepping into full time indie and really trying to steer the ship highlighted to me just how much that jazz isn’t me. I actually really enjoy being just a part of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle.

Lucky for me, coincidentally about that time, Chris Young from Combustion Inc reached out to see if I’d be interested in helping with some design/development on their app. If you aren’t familiar with Combustion, they make a rad predictive thermometer that helps you track your food while it cooks, meaning you can get perfect doneness (I like how we pretend that’s a real word) every time. A year or so earlier I had added support to Crouton to quickly set up the thermometer and also display its information as a Live Activity alongside your recipe. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate and spent a few weeks working with Combustion to bring Live Activity support to their app like I had with Crouton.

Chris and I got to talking about how we could continue to work together, and that’s when the opportunity came up for Combustion to acquire Crouton, where I could then continue to work on the Combustion app alongside Crouton. Sometimes the bread cube hands you opportunities that are just too good to pass up.

So what is changing? Well, kind of nothing. I’m still very dedicated to Crouton and its future just got a lot brighter! I’ll still be the lead developer but now Crouton is backed by a whole team. A team with a deep knowledge of cooking and technology, that will help Crouton do even more! Chris has a long history with connected cooking from Combustion and his previous company Chefsteps. I hope you already know about Chefsteps but if you don’t, they created the prettiest sous vide tool ever, Joule.

Check out Combustion’s predictive thermometer here. Also launching quite soon is the Giant Grill Gauge, which replaces the basic analogue gauge on your grill, for a giant connected one to give you even more insights into your cook. If you sign up for our email list, then you can receive 10% off your first order!

Join Email List

Honestly I’ve never been more excited, not just in my own job satisfaction but also in Crouton’s trajectory. This is a very good thing.

Anyway, back to the pleasantries, how am I? I’m very well, thanks for asking.

Form Factor

This year’s pro lineup marked the first material shift since the pro iPhones were introduced, moving from stainless steel to titanium. I was particularly excited for two reasons: Firstly, I had felt for the last few years that the pro models were getting just a little too heavy, my pinky had had enough. Secondly and more importantly, I just really don’t love shiny things, I’m a matte boy. I’m also a big believer in tiny details making a big difference, the subtle curve added to the edges of the iPhone 15 Pro makes it much nicer to hold in hand than the sharper 14 Pro. All of these refinements combined make this in, my opinion, the nicest iPhone yet (even better than the iPhone 4; yes, I said it).

It’s not all smooth edges though, there are two areas that the iPhone 15 Pro falls short for me, the first one is the speaker grill that was added last year with the 14 Pro, replacing the older mesh style that has been around for quite some time. This newer slit is a safe haven for dust, a protector of crumbs. Which is not something I signed up to be. I think this design would be greatly improved if they moved back to the mesh cover that we took for granted all those years. Recently a friend gifted me a little device cleaning set with the perfect tools for taking care of this (probably so I would stop talking about this problem).

The second area actually caused me to go through three iPhone 15s before giving up and concluding that this is just the way things are now. Honestly I’m surprised nobody else has written about it. A week or so after owning the iPhone 15 Pro, I noticed that on occasions the OLED screen would show these odd highlights at the edges of text and shapes, it was most obvious in brighter conditions when the device pushed into the super peak brightness mode. The caps of letters would have a brighter tip and flat solid shapes would appear to have a lighter border around them. I thought perhaps I had a defective panel so went through the replacement process sending my device back for a new one. Sadly though, the replacement device had exactly the same issue.

We don’t have Apple Stores here in New Zealand but I found myself in Sydney for a couple of days so figured I’d take a trip to the Apple Store and see if they could help me out. I spent about an hour and a half talking with the lovely staff there, trying to convince them that there was a problem, getting them to peer closely at the screen. They seemingly couldn’t see the issue, but they were kind enough to pretend I was sane and validate my feelings. There wasn’t much they could do about it as I had purchased the device online, so I returned home to NZ with my tail between my legs. The most reliably way I’ve found to reproduce it is to shine a torch at the device to kick it into super bright mode, so much to the amusement of my friend with me at the store I spent a bit of time shining my phone torch on the display models to see if they had the same problem. Seemingly they didn’t, so I wonder if where the panel is manufactured makes a difference. I took one last chance returned my device and then bought one more from a technology store here in NZ. No dice, this one had the exact same issue.

To this day, everyone I tell thinks I’m crazy and I’ve only managed to get one other person to notice the problem. It’s baffling to me, because it’s so obvious, I don’t understand why nobody else is bothered.

I did find a workaround, which is that if you turn off auto brightness in accessibility then it stops occurring, but at the expense of having to manually set your brightness all the time like an animal and you miss out on the peak brightness that came with the 15 Pro. This is how I have been living all year.

Interestingly the new iPad Pros that switched to OLED have exactly the same problem, so I wonder if it’s a trade off of the extra bright displays they’re using now. In any case, it really bothers me and I promise I’m not crazy.

Those two things aside, I really really like this iteration of Pro iPhone, it feels super refined and I’m a big fan of the natural titanium colour.

Action Button

I was quite excited about the action button when it was announced, my phone is permanently muted on principle, so I’d never used the rocker much other than just to fidget. When I first got the new phone I tried a few complex automations that did different things based on the time of day, like opening the garage door if I was near home. These were fun to play with but ultimately I’ve found I actually don’t use the button too much and now it’s just set to camera controls. I think if it was in a different position perhaps I would trigger it more, but as it is, it’s a little hard to reach which negates some of the convenience. That being said I’m glad it’s there, I think for most people it’s nice to have the added utility.

Cameras

They’re still good.

Spatial Video

Shooting spatial video has been quite fun, the main challenge for me has been remembering to actually do it, but I’ve gathered a few special clips through the year of my children and I can imagine just how neat those will be to watch a few years from now when they’ve grown up from their current stage. I’m pleased Apple were quick to provide us with other ways to capture them.

Conclusion

In summary, I’ve loved the 15 Pro. The last device I ended up with after my display shenanigans was the black model, I wish I’d been able to spend the year with the natural one as that colour is just perfect for me, I know it’s grey, but gosh it’s a good grey. Changes are very iterative these days, but all of the refinements brought in this line up really do round out the product. I’m excited for what is to come in just a day or so to refine it even further.

Last month Crouton turned five! I had planned to have this post ready to go on the date, but gosh this year sure has been hectic. I can’t quite believe I’ve made it this far. What seems even less believable is just how far my little recipe app has come in the last 5 years. I like to take a moment to do a quick check-in each year on what has changed and how I’m feeling about the year ahead.

In last year’s update I wrote “I bet I’ll have more to say on this next year when Crouton turns 5, but I’m having a lot of fun transitioning Crouton into the world of spatial computing“. 2023 Devin had no idea! The last 6 months since the Apple Vision Pro launch have been WILD, to say the least. Before we get to that, let’s back up a little and look at a few highlights prior to February 2 2024.

Aprons

I’ve always loved the idea of Crouton expanding beyond just the app itself. Late last year I had the idea to get some branded aprons made to use as a gift for a few people who have been supportive in various ways with Crouton. I had a hunt around for options and came across M.N Uniform a New Zealand based uniform company that supplied restaurants, cafes and other professional fields with premium clothing. After a dirty mock up and a few emails back and forth with Matt they became a reality! I’ve been beyond stoked with how these turned out; I use mine every night to cook dinner and it’s been super fun to gift them to others. Sadly Matt is taking a pause with his uniform company, so my venture into aprons has been a little short lived, but I quite like the idea of it being a very limited run. I have strong opinions about cheese slicers and spatulas so down the line I’d love to branch out into some more kitchen products.

Featured in The Obsessor

In December 2023, Matthew Panzarino (ex EIC for TechCrunch) featured Crouton in his new newsletter The Obsessor. This was a super exciting moment and generated a big boost in downloads that lasted almost all the way into the Vision Pro launch. It was really validating to have someone in Panzarino’s position organically find Crouton and start using it to manage his own cooking. (His cooking looks amazing! I want to eat in the Panzarino household.)

Vision Pro Launch

Alright, I guess we should talk about what happened in February. When the Vision Pro was announced in June last year, I knew straight away that I wanted to build apps for it. This is the first new platform from Apple since I had learned app development, so the prospect of being there on day one was pretty exciting. There were a few weeks before the SDK (Software Development Kit, basically just the tools to actually make things work) became available to start developing, but I was so keen I began creating some mockups in Sketch for how I thought Crouton could look. It’s fun to look back at these now, I don’t think I was too far off.

When the SDK dropped I took the day off from my day job so that I could dive straight in and then spent the next 6 months chipping away at it slowly in my evenings. I was fortunate enough to attend the developer labs in Sydney that opened up later in the development cycle, but aside from that all of the development was done in the simulator, so it was a lot of guesswork as to what might feel right on the actual device.

Going into the release I had exceptionally low expectations for how Crouton was going to be received on Vision Pro. So it was crazy when I woke up on embargo morning to a flood of messages all sharing a YouTube link to the Wall Street Journal’s review of the device. There are fewer weird feelings than watching someone else use your app properly before you’ve even had a chance to, let alone Joanna Stern from the WSJ. I have to say it was a rather scary feeling watching it play out waiting to see what the verdict would be. “This is just the coolest“ has lived rent free in my brain ever since.

This review flowed on to a wave of coverage from other outlets and meant Crouton was featured in a number of review videos showing how you could use the device. Perhaps the most “What is my life!?” moment was when late night host Stephen Colbert picked up Joanna’s review and riffed on it in his opening monologue one night.

Safe to say that my low expectations were well and truly exceeded and little did I know, the year was only just getting started.

Let’s visionOS

In April I was invited to speak at a visionOS conference in China, this was one of those pinch me moments. One minute you’re building a little app to simplify your meal planning and the next you’re speaking to 500 people about building for spatial computing in China! Life is weird.

This was my first time speaking at a conference, it was an awesome experience and great to be able to share some of my learnings of bringing an iOS app across to visionOS. I was very grateful to be asked, it was the trip of a lifetime.

Apple Design Award

It feels like each month of this year has been punctuated by a crazy milestone for Crouton, the height of which was reached in May.

The Apple Design Awards have always been something that to me felt like an unattainable goal. You see other people win them with amazing apps, but it never seemed like something I’d be able to achieve. Just a dream.

To my absolute shock, in May Crouton was announced as a finalist for an Apple Design Award in the Interaction category. I honestly still can’t believe any of this happened and wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out I’ve actually been in a coma for the last 8 months.

Crouton was a finalist alongside Procreate Dreams and the Arc Browser. When I saw the other finalists I thought, “whelp sure was great to make it this far, but there is no chance I win this thing”. Against the odds though, Crouton was announced as the winner of the Interaction category for 2024. What in the world?!

It also turns out I’m the first New Zealander to win (and even be nominated) so that has been quite an honour and even scored a few local articles and a feature on the national news. Something well out of my comfort zone, but has finally given me some validation with my Grandparents.

One highlight for me of the whole experience was getting to chat with Craig Federighi at the award ceremony where they handed out the cubes. I’ve been watching/reading live blogs of the Apple events since I was just a little bean so to meet him and chat briefly was super cool.

It was also great to catch Joanna Stern at the WWDC Keynote to thank her for the feature in the review, I don’t think any of this would have played out the way it has if it wasn’t for that video.

The cube now sits proudly on my desk at home, it really is very surreal to see it there with Crouton’s and my name on it. What a ride.

Full Time Indie

It feels like after a whirlwind six months things are starting to settle down into a new normal. With all of the press and the increased awareness of Crouton over this period it’s given me the opportunity to quit my job and go full time independent (🥳). This has been something I’ve been working towards over the last few years and I thought I was still at least 12 months away from. To have hit it now is very exciting! I’ve been busy getting all of my ducks lined up (metaphorical ducks, it just sounds more exciting than talking about all the paperwork I’ve been signing) which is partly why I’m so late in getting this post together.

I’m still doing a little bit of work with the previous company I worked for, because I love working there and it’s nice to have some stability in case people suddenly realise Crouton is just one of many recipe apps. I’m excited to have more time in the week to spend on the app though! I have had a list of features that hasn’t been getting shorter so it will be great to start making quick headway on those.

What’s Next

As I mentioned before it felt like every month something changed with Crouton, that hasn’t stopped, so I have no idea where things might go next. I have a very open mind to the future of the app but in the short term I’m excited to ship a few fun features for iOS 18 and then finally, hopefully get my big grocery update I’ve been working on released.

I’m incredibly thankful to everyone who has given Crouton a try and shared kind words or feedback! Each year Crouton has exceeded my wildest expectations of where I thought things would go and this year has been that times ten. It can only be downhill from here.

Until next year, happy cooking!

Throwback to 2017 when I successfully predicted the iPhone X form factor based on a redesign of the calculator app (an achievement I’m still recovering from). Things never panned out with Catastrophe Geek and since then I’ve been so infatuated with iOS development, that I almost forgot this was something I enjoyed doing. I realised quite recently, in a brief moment of lapsed stupidity that this is a thing I can just do, without permission. Isn’t the internet great.

So, I think I’m going to give this another go? Not because I have renewed ambition to make it as a tech journalist, but simply because I just love writing.

12 Months with iPhone 14 Pro

I figure now that we’re very close to the launch of this years iPhone’s perhaps a good place to start is with a summary of how I’ve found the iPhone 14 Pro over the last 12 months, ish. I say ‘ish’ because I didn’t actually get one until somewhere in October. I wasn’t planning on upgrading, but after a few run ins with Live Activities on the Xcode simulator, testing on a physical devices was nigh on a necessity to fast track my development in order to hit the iOS 16.1 release date.

Form Factor

When I first unboxed the iPhone 14 Pro in Space Black, I was surprised how different the rails felt from my previous Sierra Blue 13 Pro. Perhaps it was just an illusion, but whatever part of space they get the black from, seemed to make the rails a little more grippy than the 13, which while not touted as a feature was something I quite liked. Since the iPhone X, Apple have been making the pro devices out of stainless steel, and as the devices have gained cameras they’ve bulked up and become very heavy! If rumours are to be believed, the titanium frame on the 15 Pro will come as sweet relief to my right pinky finger that has diligently upheld the surgical grade steel for the last 6 years. All in all I really like this iteration of the squared off design, I wish the sides weren’t so shiny, but this thing is very pretty!

Camera

iPhone cameras are great, I sold my SLR a few years ago and haven’t looked back. On the whole, this year’s camera system has been very good. I like the zoom levels that the three cameras offer, I felt the 13 never quite had exactly the level I was after. Maybe I’m imagining it but there does seem to be a little extra processing going on this year, that makes some photos a little more contrasty than I would like. I was hoping it would be software thing that would improve over time, but as far as I can tell it’s stayed the same. I don’t know enough about lenses and sensors to give a sensible break down here though. So here are some photos I took that I think are enjoyable to look at.

Battery Life

There has been a flurry of articles in the last couple of weeks around the iPhone 14 Pro battery life, with people posting screenshots of their battery health after a year of use. Personally, I’m down to around 89%, I charge almost exclusively on a MagSafe charger (this one here if you’re interested), but I’m unsure how much that factors into it. Even from day one I felt like the battery life of the 14 Pro was not quite as good as the 13, which was fairly solid. Turning off the always on display didn’t seem to make much of an improvement so I’m not sure exactly what the cause is. Perhaps it’s all anecdotal. Who knows. Either way, it's one factor that makes me tempted to upgrade again this year.

Dynamic Island

The Dynamic Island, the headline feature for this years iPhone. When it was first revealed in the keynote I remember making some audible noises at just how pretty the animations were. One year in and I think I’m still a big fan of this feature. The Island has successfully hoodwinked me into thinking that the notch is no longer something I care about getting rid of. I use an iPhone SE frequently as a testing device and I find it jarring now when I close an app like Music or Crouton and the window doesn’t zoom up into the top of the screen keeping status of the active session. It really is great to be in another app but still have a glanceable view of other things that are going on. It’s also been nice with iOS 17 to see a few more system actions get moved up there. I’m hopeful this trend continues as it’s a lovely little home for things that used to be boring old alerts.

Always On Display

I’ve heard mixed feelings on the always on display, but I think it’s grown on me over the year. To the point now that when looking at older iPhones with blank screens, they do just look a little odd. Perhaps my favourite part is the Apple Watch partnership, where when you leave the room it turns the display all the way off. But if you come back, the Watch gives a sneaky whisper to the phone to say you’re coming back and it springs to life again. It feels like a little welcome home when it lights back up as you get close. It's wonderful being able to glance at your phone and see if you have a notification, rather than having to wake it up. It also makes things like Live Activities and Lock Screen widgets a whole lot more useful when you can stay up to date with them without actually touching the device.

Speaker Grill

I’ve already written ad nauseam about the weird design choice with the speaker grill this year (by ad nauseam I mean this one post that nobody read) so I’ll try not to reopen what was a blazing controversy. As far as I know all previous iPhones have had the top speaker grill covered in some sort of mesh, however this year to make room for the Island, the grill was relegated to a small slit at the top of the device. Since the first week my phone has had a permanent visible line of lint stuck in it, that no amount of blowing can unstick. It does however like to burst out like confetti when I choose a particularly boppy track. I’ve been very surprised by the lack of press around this, which makes me think it’s a me problem. Did my parents forget to educate me on the importance of vacuuming out my pockets? I’m not sure, but in any case, I want the mesh back please.

Conclusion

All in all I’d say the 14 Pro is the best iteration of the Pro line up yet (I sound like Apple) but with some clear areas that can be improved in the 15 and beyond. Should you buy it? I have no idea, I don’t know who you are. But I’ve loved using it for the last 12 months, so if you’re me, I’d say yes.

Anyway, that’s been it. No promises as to the cadence of these reviews, but it is something I hope to do more of from time to time! Who knows, maybe in a month.

Crouton turns 4 this month! It’s been a hot minute since I wrote about how things are going, so thought this was a good chance to check in.

In many ways I feel like Crouton has come into its own in the last year. When I was thinking about writing this update I went back through my camera roll and looked at all the new things that were added since the little guy turned three. The biggest of course being timer support, but there are a lot of smaller things sprinkled in there like metric conversion and notes in the meal plan. All of these changes I think (and hope) have Crouton feeling like a proper well rounded product, rather than a little hobby I tinker with in my spare time. Although it still very much is that.

A couple of highlights from the last year:

Live Activity Feature

I launched timer support in Crouton about a month before Live Activities were added by Apple, after working on and off on the feature for almost two years, it ended up being very fortuitous timing. It was a bit of a journey building for Live Activities as the API isn’t a perfect fit for timers, but I was quite happy with what I ended up with as a first version. Unexpectedly it ended up getting a prominent position in Apple’s Live Activity promotional content on the App Store, which then also caused it to get picked up by a number of websites writing about the new feature as well. It was a crazy few weeks and resulted in a snowball effect on Crouton’s downloads that lasted for a few months!

WWDC

I was fortunate enough to attend WWDC this year for the first time. It was a great opportunity to meet a lot of developers I’d gotten friendly with on the World Wide Web. One thing I wasn’t really prepared for was the feeling when people knew what Crouton without me needing to explain it to them. Coming from a small ish town in NZ I’m a relative nobody so this was quite an experience! When developing an app it’s easy to feel like you’re just working away on your own and see users as abstract numbers. So chatting with real people that actually use it was very cool.

App of the Day

On June 14 Crouton was App of the Day in the US App Store! Matthew Skiles saved me from having to download photoshop and designed me a lovely piece of artwork for the feature. This was a highlight of the year for sure.

Vision Pro

I bet I’ll have more to say on this next year when Crouton turns 5, but I’m having a lot of fun transitioning Crouton into the world of spatial computing. This is the first time I’ve been a developer at the start of a new platform so I’m excited (understatement) about the possibilities and aiming to be one of the first apps on the platform.

Building Crouton is a rollercoaster. I have a full-time job as an iOS developer, so my time to spend on it is fairly limited. This means my goals are in constant flux. Oscillating between wanting to work on it full time or perhaps just selling out and pivoting to something simple like an artisanal chutney business. All in all though I’m hyped about the ideas and features I have in mind that are still to come. I’d love to get to a place where I can dive in properly and work on Crouton full time.

It wouldn’t be an app update post without at least one metric. Here’s one I’m a little staggered by. In the last 365 days over 230,000 recipes have been saved with Crouton. That’s wild.

I started Crouton as a simple app to help me with my weekly meal planing and it’s grown into something that people use all around the world. That might be you, or it might not be, in which case, can I interest you in some chutney?

Happy cooking!

Cheers
Devin

With the introduction of the Dynamic Island Apple shrunk the earpiece to a tiny slit cut into the glass. In previous years this was covered in mesh, but for whatever reason (Perhaps a mesh shortage) this year they just left it as an open cavity, which makes it ripe for dust and a few choice crumbs.

For most people the notch/island fades into the background and you don’t notice it during everyday use. I’ll tell you what doesn’t fade into the background though, yesterdays chip crumbs staring straight at you from the top of your phone.

Perhaps the funniest part is when you play a song with a particularly crisp baseline the iPhone 14 Pro ejects a spray of dust in celebration.

I don’t have any demands, it’s a nice phone, but this is just weird.

#crumbgate

I’m a little metric obsessed and so seeing the charts climb tickles all of the dopamine triggers I’ve been conditioned to enjoy. In the moment it’s very exciting to see the digits grow beyond what I thought possible. I have the unhealthy habit of extrapolating out a days success into the next 365 days and saying to my self “Look! If I do this 365 more times I’ll be set!”

The unhealthy part comes when the numbers inevitably trail off and I realise it had nothing to do with me. In my little snow globe of experience this typically happens. As Gandhi said “no boon sees two summers” I don’t really know what that means but it feels relevant. Anyway, these things always seem to wind back to somewhere about where they were before. Perhaps with a little increase, If you’re lucky. I find this pretty challenging and it leaves me wanting to chase the success rather than chasing things that are meaningful. Which can then lead to a slump of motivation.

The only solution I’ve found so far is time (the unsatisfactory answer to most of life’s challenges) and forcing myself to chip away at things to get back into it. It seems that it is the small consistent changes overtime that eventually have a meaningful impact.

So that’s why I’ve started this blog, I can almost guarantee it won’t be successful and so there is a good chance I might just be able to keep doing it forever. Lucky you.