David Smith

I just got back from a 3 day, 61 mile hiking trip in the Scottish Highlands testing the Watch Ultra. Overall I was very impressed. It retains what makes the regular Apple Watch so good, while pushing out the edges of what it can handle. Review/Video: david-smith.org/blog/2022/09/2…

The best place right now to follow what I’m working on and what I’m learning is my blog (david-smith.org) where I’m writing a daily diary of my design and development process (just posted my 7th entry). I’m also now on Mastodon, just in case. @_Davidsmith" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith

@alpennec @BenRiceM Oh lovely, thank you so much for letting me know. I looked but couldn’t find it

@_DavidSmith @BenRiceM Previews for Live Activities are now available in Xcode 14.2. Use the ‘previewContext(_, isStale:, viewKind:)’ method. You can specify if it's for the Dynamic Island (+ size) or the Lock Screen (content).

Design Notes Diary #4 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12/0… Doing some design work on my Live Activities…and pondering the question. To Notch or not To Notch.

@scottsmithdev It was inspired by this Hacking with Swift tutorial, which is a good overview of the technique. hackingwithswift.com/plus/swiftui-s…

@_DavidSmith I'd love to see your approach to creating the confetti effect in SwiftUI. You're right, people LOVE confetti!

Design Notes diary #6 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12/0… Better graph scrolling, adding colored confetti in SwiftUI and an unexpected difference between iOS 16.1 and 16.2.

@sdw @jordibruin Ooo, ooo, and if we’re doing an SDW blogging renaissance…I learned so much from Cocoia back in the day. 😁

@jordibruin Yep! I think it’s time to bring it back! :)

It took me far too long, but I finally canceled my Prime subscription. Amazon is nothing but a crooked counterfeit garbage shop. It used to be an example of customer service & operational excellence; now it blatantly lies about 2-day shipping times and peddles nothing but junk.

@BenRiceM Exactly! That’s the kind of change that I’ll be iterating on next. To give as many affordances as possible to indicating what is happening

Design Notes Diary #5 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12/0… My process for capturing issues with my apps in development and designing a better system for scaling my step count graphs.

@jonasclindgren 🤔 that is very interesting, thanks for passing it along

@_DavidSmith This app does basically the same thing but has a y-axis. I think it would be visually helpful if the lines in the background scrolled as well

@nielsmann Thanks for the kinds words, it is very encouraging to hear!

@_DavidSmith I am 100% ready to give you all the money for this update. Beyond excited for the trends and workout route elements specifically, but all of this looks super exciting. Thank you very much for your hard work!

@parrots Thanks for the tip! I’m doing a similar approach currently (simplifying with the Douglas-Peucker algorithm I only half understand). In my case what also helps a ton is that I only need to send over points that are visible which is typically pretty small.

@_DavidSmith FWIW, when I was setting up Strava exports, I had to worry about HTTP POST size for GPS coordinates for map generation. I found it very effective to use a path simplification algorithm, cutting my size to like 10% of original.

@jjrscott I wrote my own custom system so that I could be 100% confident it wasn’t collecting anything I didn’t want it to be. But I’ve heard great things about @Telemetry_Deck for a privacy respecting analytics system.

@_DavidSmith Please forgive the direct question but what tool are you using for analytics? I want to use the least nefarious tool possible without building my own.

It looks like the Apple Watch Ultra is selling very well. Essentially keeping pace with the 45mm Series 8, and actually outselling the 41mm amongst Pedometer++ users. [For context the most used model right now is 44mm Series 6 at 11%, followed by 38mm Series 3 at 10%]

@kylebshr It’s a really interesting idea. It certainly makes it a lot less noticeable.

@_DavidSmith What if the map is always in dark mode in the island? Does the pill look bad in that case?

@_ChrisHarris Yup, the map is coming from an OS maps API. I had the same idea with the corners. There is definitely something funny about the shape right now.

@_DavidSmith Is the map coming from an Ordance Survey API or something? Just curious. :)

@ekurutepe Very nice! I hope you see good improvement.

cc @_DavidSmith @marcoarment BTW your recent episode about paywalls was the kick that I needed to start doing this.

Design Notes Diary #1 david-smith.org/blog/2022/11/3… More experiments with the Workout Screen.

Design Notes Diary #1 david-smith.org/blog/2022/11/2… I’m trying a new approach to sharing my development process in a way that takes more ownership of the content, lessens my dependence on Twitter and hopefully increases the depth of the insight. A daily design/development diary.

@mkflint Whoops! Thank you so much for letting me know