Steve Troughton-Smith

https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith

I make apps, paint minis, do neat stuff with generative AI, and hack things. Husband. 🏳️‍🌈 He/him. I make Broadcasts (npub1kf5…yya3), Pastel (npub14s0…9ap7), Grace (npub1ezl…40pp), and more. Do not interact if you intend to bring negativity

Web: https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/steventroughtonsmith
GitHub: https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith
Threads: https://threads.net/@steventroughtonsmith

Public Key

npub1p3tcm8sn2vthncy77k9leyzxysaw8c94whmw3y5dxq2r6jhetmmqfgjet5

NIP-05 Address

stroughtonsmith_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqc4udncf4x9meuz00tzlujprzgwhruz6htahgj2xnq9paftu4aasut08ph

Author Public Key

npub1p3tcm8sn2vthncy77k9leyzxysaw8c94whmw3y5dxq2r6jhetmmqfgjet5

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Last Notes

2024-07-05 14:02:46

"Apple has twice rejected documents it submitted to launch the Epic Games Store because the design of certain buttons and labels was similar to those used by its App Store, the video-game publisher said.”
It'll be fun to watch Epic steamroll its way through the illegal ways Apple is using the Notarization process to prevent legitimate apps in the EU
https://mastodon.online/@9to5Mac/112733944236541136

2024-07-02 02:20:06

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that's just Swift's method structure. Disassembly tools have a harder time interpreting it than ObjC code

2024-06-27 22:36:01

I’m not entirely sure commentators are aware that Apple has not been shipping its full featureset around the world for decades. My country never got TV shows in iTunes. I’ve had an iPhone for 17 years without access to Visual Voicemail. Apple’s News app isn’t available here. There’s no cellular Apple Watch. And so on. No tears will be shed for Apple Intelligence in the EU

2024-06-22 16:17:52

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I remember books!

2024-06-21 23:08:57

The DMA is only vague if you're trying to game it. The rules amount to “don't be a dick”.
Apple's out here asking “well how will I know if I'm being a dick?? I can’t operate under this environment!”
Whereas most people don't have to ask themselves that question

2024-06-21 17:04:59

Apple could have built its new features in such a way as they would have no issues shipping in the EU at launch.
Instead, they scraped all your websites, without your knowledge, to fuel their LLM.
Priorities, right?

2024-06-18 14:05:26

Journalists are massively misunderstanding what the 'Threads API' actually is.
It's not for third-party clients, it's for automation & marketing. You can’t access a timeline via the API, or do search, or anything like that. It's for posting, reading replies, and replying to replies of a post. Bots and CRMs
"You may use the Threads API to enable people to create and publish content on a person’s behalf on Threads, and to display those posts within your app solely to the person who created it.”

2024-06-17 02:16:55

I'm finally catching up on Andor, and y'all weren't joking — it's great scifi

2024-06-15 18:54:53

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I was glad you got a chance to ask about both the DMA and iPad. It was instructive

2024-06-11 13:40:38

I think macOS Sequoia is the last release you can reasonably expect to run on Intel; half the WWDC keynote was AI features that don't run on Intel Macs, including Xcode's new editor functionality, and the visionOS SDK already requires ARM. You can only expect more from here. The writing is clearly on the wall; if we get next year's release, it would be unnecessarily generous of Apple

2024-06-11 11:30:56

I still have so many questions about 'Apple Intelligence' after yesterday. Does Siri just… not get better?… on anything below an iPhone 15 Pro? No improvement to the cloud-based Siri on older devices? No HomePods? Can we as developers not rely on an improved conversational, smart Siri across devices when building our new Siri features?

2024-05-22 09:30:58

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Of course, they might have been working on some other kind of product or technology behind the scenes that isn't immediately obvious from what they shipped — though that sounds like bandwidth that could have been used elsewhere. But is that worth a billion dollars?

2024-05-22 09:28:19

I'm struggling to see an acquisition path for Humane; what unique technology would a potential acquirer be picking up? The hand projector? Software wise any AI features they've demonstrated so far (even if working as advertised) are going to be rapidly outstripped by newer, better models. A talent acquisition? They certainly have some beautiful industrial design, but you don't really need to buy the entire company if you want to poach that. Brand? 😅

2024-05-13 18:01:02

A $3,000 Mac has the ability to run iPad apps. It shouldn’t be controversial to suggest that a $3,000 iPad should have the ability to run Mac apps

2024-05-05 13:54:15

The Helldivers 2 furore is bonkers. If you missed it, Sony, seemingly against wishes of the dev studio, pushed to add a mandatory PSN Network sign-in months after launch on one of their biggest, most popular games on PC, and not only did the community revolt (dropping review score into the teens), but the game is now pulled from 177 storefronts and Steam are issuing refunds (as PSN only works in certain countries). The studio has told players to make their voices heard
https://www.eurogamer.net/helldivers-2-has-been-pulled-from-sale-in-177-countries-as-its-psn-linking-requirement-rolls-out

2024-05-02 23:00:44

Most of Apple's ‘Services’ revenue is Apple taking credit for 30% of other companies’ revenue, right?
Just so I'm clear on this one 😅

2024-05-02 18:13:41

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will buy every copy 💸

2024-05-02 18:07:42

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you might be braver than most indies 😂

2024-04-29 10:20:38

Good news! iPad will join the sideloading and alternate app stores club
https://mastodon.social/@macrumors/112353997864098829

2024-04-18 15:34:19

One of the big Qs from pundits before the DMA was ‘what are all these 'great' apps we're missing out on because of Apple's App Store restrictions, and do they even exist?’.
Mere days after a major App Store rules change, [@delta](https://indieapps.space/@delta) (which has been denied for years), is the top app on the App Store.
For every Delta, there are a thousand great apps that were simply never started because they would never fly. Dreams that never left the whiteboard, market segments that were never given chance to exist

2024-04-18 04:05:52

Here’s your AI astonishment/nightmare fuel for today:
"TL;DR: single portrait photo + speech audio = hyper-realistic talking face video with precise lip-audio sync, lifelike facial behavior, and naturalistic head movements, generated in real time.”
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/290/244/118/322/877/original/07e5c5cb354f2fef.mp4

2024-04-17 16:31:46

🥳 AltStore PAL, the first alternative app marketplace on iPhone, is available now in the EU for a nominal <€2/yr subscription price (to cover the Core Technology Fee), which includes access to [@rileytestut](https://mastodon.social/@rileytestut)’s Delta (which plays NES, SNES, GB/C/A, DS, N64 and Genesis games). It’s not fully open to third party devs yet, but there's a whole lot more to come in the future. Distributing your apps will be as easy as hosting a JSON file and pointing it at your notarized IPAs
https://altstore.io/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/287/513/137/169/831/original/8d7b66e4eb280ac7.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/287/513/530/965/078/original/609378bf982469a3.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/287/514/015/645/884/original/a4e676018d05ed39.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/287/514/756/017/755/original/67322bc97e55ceb8.png

2024-03-27 16:27:37

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Honestly, we need more people actually saying this stuff out loud, on the record, and not behind closed doors. How many people has Setapp reached out to and got a ‘…no thanks’ for their upcoming iOS store?

2024-03-27 16:25:45

As a developer based in the EU, of course I want to be able to sign on to Apple's new business terms and access the hard-won benefits of the DMA (like external distribution).
But there’s no way I ever would with the specter of a CTF hanging over, even if I never build an app that hits 1M annual downloads.
[@rileytestut](https://mastodon.social/@rileytestut) tried to convince me to build something for AltStore, and I've had several huge Cydia-distributed projects in the past. But Apple's new business terms are currently a no-go