This is the Brennan Monorail, a train from the early 1900s that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Not only did it keep itself perfectly balanced on a single rail, but it mysteriously leaned into corners without any driver input.
It’s kind of incredible how well Brennan’s system worked. It’s ingenious. (via messy nessy)
One more thought re: the item I posted this week speculating on what Apple will name their much-rumored two-screen folding iPhone this year. If they do name it “iPhone Ultra”, I think Apple using that name for the folding iPhone will imply that they have no plans whatsoever to ever make a “rugged” iPhone — a model akin to Apple Watch Ultra.
I suspect Apple has no plans for a dedicated rugged iPhone. People who want that just buy extra-thick cases for regular iPhones. A watch is different. I know some people put their Apple Watches in ungainly protective “cases”, but they look hideous, which is why you see so few people using them. For aesthetically pleasing ruggedness, the watch case itself needs to be designed for it. But maybe there is a large enough potential market for such an iPhone — especially if such a device had the same relative longer battery life compared to a regular iPhone as an Apple Watch Ultra does to a regular Apple Watch.
But Apple calls the folding iPhone “Ultra”, stop holding your breath for such an Apple-Watch-Ultra-style iPhone. In the same way that “Air” means very different things on Mac, iPad, and iPhone, so too might “Ultra”.
Feature story and short film, well worth watching, from Apple:
One winter day in January 2024, 16‑year‑old Rory Goss experienced
something jarring while in construction class at Abbey Christian
Brothers’ Grammar School in Newry, Northern Ireland. He could no
longer see the whiteboard at the front of the room.
As a straight‑A student in 11th grade, Rory was in the midst of
studying for his A‑levels and was about to start applying to
university. Passionate about golf and cars, and eager to start
driving lessons, he had no idea what was happening to his
eyesight.
Within weeks, he was diagnosed with Leber’s Hereditary Optic
Neuropathy, a rare genetic condition that damages the optic nerve
and can lead to sudden, severe vision loss. Over the next six
months, his vision deteriorated by 95%, meaning he was legally
blind as he began his 12th grade exams.
Apple just posted this feature this week, but it’s serendipitously aligned with my recent (and not-so-recent) posts about the screen zooming features in MacOSand iOS. Goss zooms in and out with extraordinary dexterity and fleetness. It’s quite extraordinary. Particularly moving for me is his illustration — created on an iPad, using Apple Pencil — where he attempts to illustrate what his vision now looks like.
The Scientific Method is immensely helpful, but so is literal magic. Would the power of science prove to be more powerful than the power of wizardry? It’s tough to say, but author Cameron Johnston certainly speculates on the idea in the Big Idea for his newest novel, First Mage on the Moon. Read on to see how the Space Race might’ve happened with the help of a wizard’s staff.
CAMERON JOHNSTON:
For a bunch of wise folk that meddle with reality and break the rules of standard physics on a regular basis, wizards and mages in fantasy media seem a remarkably uncurious lot. Sometimes magic users are far more interested in other dimensions and eldritch creatures than in the mortal world they themselves inhabit. How many of them look up at the stars and wonder what they are, or gaze at the moon and ponder what that shining silver disc really is…and how they might get there?
First Mage On The Moon was born from a single Big Idea (OK, OK…the idle thought of a fantasy-fan): Without science, how would wizards describe gravity? Inevitably, that grew arms and legs and tentacles and thingamabobs into: What would they make of outer space? How would they breathe in a spacecraft when they don’t even know what oxygen is or why air ‘goes bad’. What about aerodynamics? and a whole host of other questions I didn’t then have answers for. When you only have a magical understanding of the world and the closest thing to science is the semi-mystical and secretive practice of alchemy, well, then things get complicated if you want to build something to visit the moon. Magic is not going to solve everything if you fly straight up and try to hit a moving object like the moon, and don’t factor in the calculations for orbits, gravity… or indeed the speed/friction of re-entry.
Science is an amazing and collaborative process and Earth’s 20th-century Space Race was a species-defining moment, but what if that happened in a fantasy world of mages, golems, vat-grown killing machines and grinding warfare. What if a group of downtrodden mages sick of building weapons of mass destruction for their oligarch overlords decided to go rogue and divert war materials into building a vessel to go to the moon, the home of their gods, and ask for divine intervention in stopping the war. When you have no culture of shared science, where do you even begin?
All those thoughts and ideas stewed away in the back of my brain while I was writing my previous novel, The Last Shield. As all authors know, there comes a stage of writing a book when your brain goes “Ooh, look at the shiny new thing!” Very helpful, brain, coming up with magical rocket ships when I’m trying to write a book set in a fantasy version of the Scottish Bronze Age – thanks very much! That idea of wizard-science and magical engineering lodged there, immovable, and my next book just had to become First Mage On The Moon. Which was handy, as I was contracted to write another standalone novel.
While the US/USSR Space Race and modern science of our very own Earth was inevitably a huge influence on my novel, so too were the theories and writing of its ancient thinkers. Around 500 BCE, Pythagoras proposed a spherical world, and Aristotle later wrote several arguments for the same theory, such as ships sailing over the horizon disappearing hull-first and different constellations being visible at different latitudes (all of which may have given the Phoenician sailors and navigators certain thoughts too). And then comes Eratosthenes, Chief Librarian of Alexandria, and a very smart dude who was able to calculate the circumference of Earth by using two sticks in two locations and comparing the angles of their shadows. If those ancient Earth scholars could calculate such things, then surely fantasy mages, with all the magic at their disposal, could do more than fling fireballs at each other. There had to be some among them with the desire to explore beyond the bounds of myth and magic, gods and monsters, and given the opportunity to work with like-minds to build something that has never been done before, they would surely take it…despite the risks.
Found family, magical engineering, and mad ideas of actual science in a magical world all came together to form First Mage On The Moon. As much as I love my morally grey characters in realms of swords and sorcery, it was deeply satisfying to write something that little bit different, a hopeful story about human ingenuity in an increasingly fraught world.
I mentioned this book in a previous post but it deserves its own thing: Timothy Ryback’s 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy will hit shelves in September. A must-read for me.
Next Wednesday is Administrative Professionals Day, so let’s talk about the weirdest or most ridiculous requests you’ve ever seen made of assistants. To start us off, here are a few that have been shared here in the past:
• “In my first job out of college, my boss asked me to dry his shoes, which got wet in the rain. He plunked them down on my desk and said he needed them dry for a meeting in 15 minutes. I’m still not sure what he expected me to do because at a certain point, only time can dry things. The hard -unabsorbent paper towels from the bathroom weren’t going to cut it. I was a receptionist but in no way a personal assistant.”
• “I once had an office-assistant-type job at a wedding and event venue. Turns out, my MOST ESSENTIAL duty, which was not listed in the job description and did not come up in the interviews, was to make the GM’s meal-replacement shake at lunch and then check on him every half hour to see if he finished it, remind him to finish it if he hadn’t yet, then wash the shake container and return it exactly to the correct spot in the cabinet. Other work needed doing? If it was in the afternoon, it wasn’t getting done.”
• “We had a new associate one year who, come to find out, had grown up very well-off and was accustomed to being waited on, and then expected the support staff at the firm to take up where their household staff left off. I don’t even think they were a month in when their practice group chair came and had a chat with them about the fact that their administrative assistant was, in fact, not their personal assistant. For example, the AA would not be picking up any coffee order on her way in (much less the ridiculous one the new associated wanted), nor would she be getting their lunch every day. We also don’t ask our assistant, who sits further from the supply closet than they did, to get up and get them a single pen or two file folders, especially when the AA is working on a deadline filings or client billing. First year associates were generally expected to walk themselves the 10 feet to the supply closet and get their own stuff. The AA would also not be placing all of the first year’s calls, picking up their dry cleaning, nor getting their personal credit card billing issue straightened out.”
Have you ever wanted to eat stinky tofu while binge watching reruns of the Bionic Woman? Or fall in love with a boy named Pajamas?Have you ever thought there was an alien in your stomach trying to kill you?
Coming out is hard when you have two gay moms. At least it is for Simon Bugg. It’s his senior year, and nothing’s going as planned. When his mom scores a dream job, Simon’s world is turned upside down. Stuck at a new school in a strange town, he spirals, torn between the only friends he’s ever known and a growing circle of freaks and geeks who welcome him in.
Things start to look up for Simon when he meets the handsome PJ in drama class. That is, until he derails their first date in spectacular fashion. With a little help from his friends, Simon finds his way back to PJ. But how can he have a relationship with the boy of his dreams when he’s convinced he’s going to die?
No one knows about the nightly alien attacks at 11:22. Why then, and why are they getting worse? Simon must face a dark secret before he loses his chance with the boy he loves.
1: Stinky tofu is pretty damn tasty…in fact, it’s delicious!
Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in books. So, when I set out to write Somewhere in Nowhere, I made diversity a priority. I wanted my cast of characters to be as colorful and vibrant as the friends I had growing up in Montgomery County, Maryland. This approach opened doors to new experiences as I did research for my characters.
When I first learned about stinky tofu, I was obsessed.
This can’t really be a thing, can it?
Turns out it is.
Okay, but people don’t really eat this, do they?
Yep. They do!
And how bad does it really smell?
Pretty bad!
I had to know more. I investigated its history and the intense fermentation process it goes through to become the odorous, night-market delicacy beloved across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. But one thing was missing. I had to try stinky tofu for myself.
It wasn’t easy, but when I found a restaurant with stinky tofu on its menu (East Dumpling House in Rockville, MD if you’re asking), it was steps away from where my protagonist and his merry band of misfit friends go to high school. A stinky match made in heaven.
For the big, taste-testing night, my spouse and I took friends to East Dumpling House. I don’t want to give too much away, because I put it all in the novel, but I’ll tell you my spouse sort of liked it, but it was a gag-worthy moment for our friends. What about me, you’re wondering? I loved it! Every stinking bite. The fun part for all of us, though, was experiencing a new culture and trying foods out of our comfort zone.
I’ve since learned about hairy tofu. Who’s up for the challenge?
2: Sorry, Ripley. The only alien in my stomach is a-n-x-i-e-t-y.
At the risk of sounding clichéd: it’s okay to not be okay. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once in my life, and it was never more poignant than when I was writing Somewhere in Nowhere. I was in the throes of crippling anxiety and panic attacks. I would be up all night. Then, in the morning, I would lay my experiences bare on the page. What Simon was feeling and going through was what I was feeling and going through.
I needed to take my own advice, and I wanted to share this message with readers who may be going through their own mental health struggles. (Spoiler alert: the alien isn’t real.) Simon’s challenge is my challenge. And it may be yours, too. Though his story is fiction, the anxiety and panic Simon experiences is very much my story and my truth. And writing this novel was way cheaper (and did more to help me) than all my years of therapy.
3: Are you there, Hector? It’s me, Simon, and I can’t breathe.
When I set out to write my debut novel, I knew it had to be three things:
a classic LGBTQ+ coming-of-age story
about a boy dealing with mental health challenges
written in the vein of Judy Blume (my favorite childhood author!)
Judy Blume’s books were everything to me as a kid. They were the ones that kept me reading. I learned about the world from her—things my parents didn’t tell me. She also helped me feel not so alone, and she inspires the books I write today. YA that deals with tough, real-life issues. I think this was where the seed was planted for my dark-meets-light writing style. I want my readers to feel all the feels. To laugh, and to cry. That’s real life, after all.
4:How a 20-sided die made me a better storyteller.
The idea for becoming an author came about at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. As I passed The Writer’s Center booth, someone asked if I was a writer. When I said no, they probed further, asking what I did for a living. When I replied, “singer-songwriter,” they said: You’re a writer. It’s in your title. It was a light bulb moment for me.
I thought about that conversation a lot over the next year andwhen the pandemic wiped out my work as a performing songwriter, I decided it was time to sit down to write that novel. But I still wasn’t sure I could do it. After all, I drew cartoons and daydreamed during school. I got Cs and Ds in English class. I loved books my whole life, and escaped into them, but never thought about myself as an author. And I certainly didn’t know how to write a book. Or so I thought.
Then it hit me, I’ve been telling stories for most of my life. Most recently, it’s been through four-minute folk songs, but before that, it was as Dungeon Master for countless Cheeto-dusted D&D games. As a kid, I never wanted to be a playing character, I wanted to create the world and tell the story of the game. This is where I learned about pacing, foreshadowing, and planting clues. Turns out, I’d been preparing for novel writing my whole life. Let’s go!
5: My Jewish family guilt has nothing on your Taiwanese family guilt.
“I swear to God, Mags, you have the nagging skills of a middle-aged Jewish mother.”
“Fine! Make fun of the weird girl! Who just happens to be worried about you! Also, you should know better than to bring up this old feud. You know very well that your Jewish family guilt has nothing on my Taiwanese family guilt. My mother’s guilt, and her mother before her, and her mother before her, and so on and so on, is steeped in a long lineage. It’s basically science. How many times are we going to have this argument?”
I mentioned earlier, representation matters. And own voices in literature are important. That’s why it was clear to me that Simon needed to be gay and Jewish. These are things I know and can write about from an honest place. A place of lived experience. That doesn’t mean Simon and I are the same person, we’re not. But we share a common denominator in lifestyle and experiences. These identities have not always been easy in my life. I had my own struggles coming out as a teenager, and I have never been a religious person. But I discovered in writing this novel that we tend to fall back on our traditions when times get tough. I realized there’s comfort and lessons to learn in accepting these truths about ourselves and our community.
Bonus Thing: Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea.
Sure, you might open a mostly empty refrigerator and see nothing to drink and only stale bread to eat. Or you could brew a cup of delicious tea and make that stale bread all hot and toasty. Mmmm.
Sure, you might lose your work and not know how to pay your bills. But you were also given a gift of time. How will you use it?
Sure, you haven’t slept all night because your anxious mind was trying to kill you. But you can pour this trauma into your art and write about it from an honest place.
So, to sum it all up, the main thing I learned was: put the kettle on, toast the bread, and write your truth.
Steven Gellman is an award-winning songwriter turned author. Inspired by his early love for Judy Blume’s groundbreaking stories, Steven has found his passion for writing coming-of-age fiction that centers LGBTQ+ voices and the real-life challenges of navigating adolescence in an ever-changing world. He has long championed authentic queer storytelling — first through song, now through fiction.
When he’s not writing, Steven can be found sipping a cup of Dark Rose tea and plotting new adventures for his book club, Tea & Peril. Steven lives in Maryland’s Piedmont region with his husband and a houseful of rescued companion animals. Somewhere in Nowhere is his first novel.
Well, the 2026 game awards season has finally begun. The American Tabletop Awards have been around since 2019 and they feature an interesting division of games into four categories. The winner in the Complex category is Molly House, designed by … Continue reading →
As part of his RealTime series, artist Maarten Baas has created The People’s Clock, a timepiece that lives in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. To create the clock’s “workings”, Baas recorded more than 1000 volunteers moving as the clock’s hands over a 12-hour period. If you look carefully, you can see a single individual dressed in orange at the edge of the circle acting as the second hand:
Each of the installed clock’s faces is a looped video of that recording, synced to the current time. Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes video of how the clock was made:
The Great American GLP-1 Experiment. In the last few years, people have come up with all sorts of off-label uses for GLP-1s, including treating concussions, menopause, long Covid, IBS, drug addiction, anxiety, hair loss, and arthritis.
Times change. Things that we think are normal today weren't normal years, decades, centuries ago. Things that were normal back then aren't normal now.
Take a simple lifestyle change, or something that would be considered unusual today, and make it an everyday feature of your campaign world. It can add to the otherworldliness of the setting, serving as a constant reminder that isn't just the world your players are used to with monsters.
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Ooooh. Hm. Hmmmm. I'm not quite sure what to think of this, and I'm not even directly affected by the revelation.
I think that Finn/Annie might be taking a bit of a back seat or spending some time off screen now. Possibly Poe/Jim as well. Kind of like how Annie and Jim had that argument where they needed to step out in Episode III for a bit, or where Corey was distracted with online arguments and then ran out in Episode VII following the website hack. Having a possibly life-changing realization and working through that is definitely going to take priority over playing a role-playing game.
The Composograph image above is illustrating the 1926 Peaches and Daddy Browning scandal, in which 15-year-old actress Frances "Peaches" Heenan married, and then swiftly tried to divorce, 51-year-old real estate developer Edward West "Daddy" Browning. The Evening Graphic's coverage included allegations that Daddy kept a live goose in their bedroom.
It doesn’t matter what the past was really like, it’s what narrative the present chooses for it and the present narrative has nothing to do with reality.
1. I’m allergic to my coworker’s perfume, and HR says I have to manage it on my own
I work hybrid and am required to be in office a couple days a week. I’m also allergic to certain scents and perfumes. Things like vanilla and citrus don’t bother me, but strong floral scents cause my sinuses to swell up, culminating in a migraine. It’s not pleasant, so I try my best to avoid anything that triggers it.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to take scent allergies seriously or know they exist at all. My colleague, Linda, wears a perfume so strong that I can smell where she’s been 10 minutes after she’s been there. There’s an entire quadrant of the office I avoid because she’s sitting there and I can’t bear the miasma emanating from her cubicle.
My manager, knowing how miserable I have been, reached out to HR about it because we didn’t want to cause any awkwardness or discomfort to Linda and wanted to go about things on the level. HR told her it’s the employee’s responsibility to manage their own allergies. They asked what I do in public. For one thing, in public, I have the option to remove myself from the situation, whereas I’m required to be here for my job and don’t have any avenues to escape. Furthermore, I’m having to isolate myself socially and politely decline invitations for coffee runs from people since being in the elevator with Linda for a few minutes is enough to derail my whole day. As such, after HR’s callous verdict, I’ve spent the past two years silently avoiding her and that part of the office, feeling like there’s nothing I can do to improve my situation.
I’ve gently told her a few times I’m allergic to perfume. Things came to a head a few weeks ago when she was crowding me in a tiny room and I had to reiterate that I’m allergic to her perfume, and she was totally shocked by this revelation, asking everyone else in the room if she smelled. My director was there and smoothed things over with, “She just has a sensitive nose!” The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Why am I being forced to tiptoe around someone’s need to smell pretty at the expense of my right to exist in comfort?
After that incident, I cried in the director’s office and told her about what HR said. She told me Linda is a kind person and I should speak to her directly about it. I feel so awkward about this suggestion. I’m not uncomfortable with talking to people to resolve conflicts, but, having never been put in a situation like this, I have no idea how to approach it. I’m not anywhere near the level of demanding nobody uses laundry detergent or needing unscented soap in the bathrooms, but even so, this feels like an unfair stance by HR. How would you suggest I approach this problem? Should I talk to Linda directly? If so, what should I say?
“It’s the employee’s responsibility to manage their own allergies”? Legally speaking, that’s only true to a point. If your allergies are severe enough, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires them to try to find a way to accommodate you, and in a lot of cases implementing a fragrance policy would be considered a reasonable accommodation under the law. (Here’s some info from the Job Accommodation Network on this, and here’s some more.) They could also consider creating a fragrance-free zone for you and others who need it, but that would need to include accommodations for things like elevators too. So first and foremost, HR isn’t doing their job here, and you and your manager should feel free to cite the law and push back.
Beyond that, though, it’s not a bad idea to try to talk to Linda directly since she’s the main source of the problem right now. Since it just came up, you have an easy opening. Sample language: “I’m so sorry to ask this, but I do seem to be allergic to the perfume you wear. It’s a lovely scent but it gives me sinus problems and migraines. Would you be willing not to wear it to work?” If she refuses, then you can say, “In that case, please understand that I can’t be in a small room with you — it’s nothing personal, just a medical thing.” But at that point, HR is really the right next step (preferably with your manager’s involvement this time).
2. Is a thumbs-up emoji an acceptable email response?
I am fully prepared that this is a “me” thing and not worth the battle, but I’ve recently been introduced to Gmail’s emoji response feature. I emailed my direct report and they used the “add reaction” feature to reply with a thumbs-up.
Professional communication is important in our work. I don’t feel disrespected that he replied that way to my email, but I’d be horrified if he did it to someone senior to me or to one of our clients. It just strikes me as unprofessional.
Am I overreacting? I don’t want to be a micromanager, but this does bother me.
I think “horrified” is a bit much, but if you don’t want them to use that feature in certain situations, just let them know that! It’s perfectly fine to say, “I’ve noticed you using the Gmail thumbs-up response recently, and I want to make sure you know it’s fine with me but you shouldn’t use it with higher-ups or clients since some people will find it too informal for those contexts.”
3. When a company actively avoids naming a salary range, are they trying to lowball you?
I applied for a job that might be a slight step back from my director level position now. I’ve had two conversations and a brief email exchange with HR where they keep asking me what I’m looking for, and I at one point politely but directly said I was looking for what they’ve budgeted for the position and how the bonus structure works and an overview of benefits as I’ve requested before. They promised before to send something and now committed to having someone call with the info. I suppose I can presume they hope to lowball someone, right? Otherwise why do this? This is a large, publicly traded company on NASDAQ.
Yes, companies do this because they hope to be able to pay you less. They don’t always consciously think of it that way — it’s less likely that they’re rubbing their hands together with glee while they contemplate lowballing you and more that they think, “We don’t want to pay more than we have to, so let’s see what people are looking for” — but at the end of the day, it amounts to the same thing.
They know the range they’ve budgeted. It’s not a mystery to them. They’re just trying to avoid telling you because they think that if they do, you’ll be more likely to ask for or expect the top of that range.
4. Who should be in the loop when someone is out on medical leave?
Our office manager is upset because she didn’t know about another staff member going on medical leave (using FMLA). After some dramatics, I forwarded her the email sent previously letting her and the management team know about the employee’s upcoming leave. The office manager doesn’t need to know about the leave but insists on knowing absolutely everything. (She doesn’t manage scheduling, calendaring, or time off. She does manage another admin who manages scheduling/calendaring.)
My boss scolded me, even after I showed her the email/paper trail. I suggested that the management team share major updates in a private, password-protected notebook since things were getting lost in email. This is a work approved, fire-walled notebook tool. She said that this was a violation of FMLA laws. I have whiplash from her aggressive stance. Sharing through email is fine but sharing in a password-protected notebook isn’t?
Am I violating FMLA laws by sharing the fact that a staff member is on FMLA with the entire management team? To clarify, this would just be a note about their leave dates, not the “why” or any other details of their leave.
It’s not illegal to share that an employee is on medical leave (or going to be out on medical leave), as long as you don’t share the specific reason for the leave (because that’s private medical information that FMLA requires be kept confidential from people without a true job-based need to know).
It’s not clear why your boss is okay with informing the management team by email but objects to your password-protected notebook idea, but both would be fine under the law. It’s also not clear why your boss objected to you forwarding the office manager an email that she’d apparently already been included on originally.
5. What to do after being a misclassified contractor
My mom recently got a new job after two years of being a 1099 contractor in an office. She was required to work in-office at specific hours for 40 hours a week, and had to request days off. She was also sometimes expected to be on-call over the weekend (not sure if there was any additional compensation). To me, there is no world in which this wasn’t a misclassification; they were treating her as an employee while paying her as a contractor (she paid her own payroll taxes and received no benefits). She also wasn’t the only one — there were at least two other women with the same terms.
In an area with few opportunities, while she was employed it was too risky to raise the issue as she would have just been fired and lose the employment altogether. I know the next piece of advice is “hire an employment lawyer.” But can you give more information on what that entails and what that process looks like?
Actually, in this case she doesn’t even need a lawyer. She can simply request that the IRS determine what her correct employment status should have been by filing IRS Form SS-8 (Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding). She’ll answer a series of questions about the nature of her work and the structure of her relationship with the employer; once the IRS receives the form, they will investigate and issue a ruling. It’s free to file it, and it’s fairly straightforward and absolutely worth doing. (She does need to factor in that her former employer will figure out that she did this, but it’s likely still worth doing.)
David Pierce, last week in his Installer column/newsletter for The Verge, singing the praises of the version 5.0 update to Sofa (the praises of which I just sang):
Sofa 5. A huge update to an Installerverse favorite, this app is
now a great way to manage everything you want to watch, read,
play, and even do IRL. I never quite made it stick when it was
mostly just movies and shows, but now I think of it as like a
Notion for my personal life. Apple devices only, alas, but boy do
I love this app.
Pierce, I just noted today, also just wrote a feature story at The Verge about his decision to buy a new iPhone — after trying an array of new Android phones and admitting to a (questionable, IMO) personal preference for Android over iOS — because there are so many better apps on iOS that don’t have equivalent-quality counterparts on Android. In that earlier piece, Pierce wrote:
Lots of the apps I use every day — apps like Puzzmo,
NotePlan, Mimestream, and Unread — either
don’t exist on Android at all or only exist as web apps. Most of
the ones that do work on both platforms are better on iOS. And
forget about the kind of handcrafted, small-developer stuff — apps like Acme Weather, Current, and
Quiche, just to name a few recent favorites — that’s all
over the App Store and absolutely nowhere to be found on Android.
These apps don’t just happen to be both exquisitely crafted and exclusive to iOS (and in some cases, MacOS). They’re exquisitely crafted because they are idiomatic native apps designed to adhere to Apple’s platforms. Not all native apps are great, of course, but most great apps are native — and most great native apps are native to iOS or MacOS.
So there ought be no “alas” to describe Sofa being exclusive to Apple devices, but instead a “thank you” to developer Shawn Hickman for keeping it exclusive, and thus keeping it great.
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