Kevin Grant

@kmgrant
0 Followers
10 Following
12 Posts
I am a computer engineer who has been primarily working on software in the semiconductor and consumer electronics industries for many years. Developer of the retired open-source terminal “MacTerm”.  My most recent project is the video game “Celtreos”.
🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🏳️‍🌈
Personal web sitehttps://www.kevingrant.name/
Celtreos on Mastodon@celtreos
Kevin Grant1d ago

I blame Apple for essentially breaking my app-update flow.  I no longer trust simply updating apps, thanks to their stupid Services drive: I now must manually pick through them and avoid the updates that bring nothing of value except paywalls (like Pages).  Sorry, I will never install these apps that do nothing except upsell; I paid too much for this hardware to endure such disrespectful behavior.

#apple #macos

Show threadKevin Grant1d ago
@marioguzman We need the modern equivalent of GM CDs again so there is a real cost to get it right the first time before shipping. Imagine if the law was: “Apple, you get one download per month per user to patch ALL your products; if you screw up, you must pay $100 per user to issue new updates”; I bet software quality investment would improve real fast.
Kevin Grant4d ago

iPhone Mirroring:
1. “iPhone in Use: Lock your iPhone to connect.”
2. <locks phone>
3. “Unlock your iPhone: Follow the instructions on iPhone to unlock and use it on this Mac.”
4. <unlocks phone>
5. “iPhone in Use: Lock your iPhone to connect.”
6. <locks phone>
7. <Mac connects to iPhone>

What are we even doing, Apple?

#iphone

Show threadKevin Grant6d ago

@daringfireball The cookie ones are probably EU-mandated and sites are too lazy to make EU-specific versions so they show up everywhere (still a stupid implementation…would love to see standard browser settings for these).

What makes dickovers even “dickier” is when you inspect them, e.g. ad-blockers that can select elements; many contain _layers_ and _layers_ of crap HTML to make them hard to block.

Simple policy: if a site pisses me off, I never return. Their content is not that valuable.

Show threadKevin Grant6d ago
@marcoarment It is more important than ever to train users to follow direct links to apps. Hear about an app online, or from a podcast? *Click the link*, e.g. from show notes, do *not* search for it in the App Store, or who knows what you will get! Unfortunately, I think most people do search, and that allows Apple to double-dip (or more if you buy Apple ads too but I refuse to do so on principle, as they take $99 + % already).
Show threadKevin GrantMay 28
@siracusa @marioguzman @seanreilly 60 Californias and zero liters on Wednesdays!
Show threadKevin GrantMay 28
@ddbeck This really applies to everything in a project. Substitute “coding work”, or “testing”, or “marketing”, or “responding to community comments”, or a dozen other things that take serious time. Simply put, all _tasks_ in open-source have costs and most are ignored by regular users and certainly by the companies that benefit from them. Recall xkcd comic 2347, “project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003” is too accurate.
Kevin GrantMay 28
@lapcatsoftware @jaffathecake I ran this query 3 times and got 3 different answers: first “there are 2”, then “there are 1”, and finally “there are zero (0)”. WTF. Not only did it take identical input and produce 3 answers but it took 3 tries to get the right answer and all were expressed with the same confidence. This is the kind of thing I point out to people about AI: great for brainstorming or anything that doesn’t “matter” but never simply trust what it says.
Show threadKevin GrantMay 27
@marioguzman I bet that it doesn’t even show a tooltip with the rest of the text. :( They seem obsessed with these minimal window sizes instead of just auto-resizing. Even if they feel they _must_ have it this size, there are multiple ways they could improve this design to dedicate more space to the relevant information and fit at least one more line. Sigh.
Kevin GrantMay 20

No excuse for Safari’s extension UI to take so long for basic tasks.

Try this on a site in mobile Safari:
1. Tap extensions icon; _completely_ unnecessary one-second animation to open menu.
2. Select extension (note, order is randomized after updates, no muscle memory); _another_ animation, then NO UI is visible, before extension UI appears.
3. Ask to open extension UI. MULTIPLE SECONDS pass before the UI even appears!

This is insane. Powerful phones, modern UI is a mess.

#safari #browser