OrchardNest

Dr. Brad J. Cox Ph.D. 1944 - 2021: Dr. Brad Cox, Ph.D of Manassas, Virginia, died on January 2, 2021 at his residence. Dr. Cox was a computer scientist known mostly for creating the Objective – C programming language with his business...

From the study: The researchers saw little to no response to code in the language regions of the brain. Instead, they found that the coding task mainly activated the so-called multiple demand network. This network, whose activity is...

I'm looking for some folks to help test out the next major version of Acorn. Does that sound interesting? If so, send an email to [email protected] and I'll add you to the list. What's new? Now optimized for Apple Silicon,...

NYTimes: A New Population of Blue Whales Was Discovered Hiding in the Indian Ocean The covert cadre of whales, described in a paper published last week in the journal Endangered Species Research, has its own signature anthem: a slow,...

An Ernie Ball documentary on one of my favorite guitarists, Buddy Guy. Buddy on Muddy Waters: "The rumor was he was sick, let's call him and go out there. And he answered. 'I ain't sick motherfucker, just keep the blues...

I'm hearing from a number of people that some old versions of Acorn aren't working correctly on Big Sur. This isn't unexpected, as apps that haven't had updates in 5-10 years probably aren't going to work on the latest...

In short, to make a boot disk for MacOS: sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume I had no idea Apple was including a shell tool as part of the OS distribution,...

Capo is an app that helps you learn songs by ear, available on both the Mac and iOS. It's one of my favorite apps and I use it on both iOS and the Mac to help figure out tricky guitar solos (Hendrix, SRV, etc.). The new version has a...

In short, Apple has created a fork of TensorFlow (a machine learning package) which is accelerated on Macs (including the new M1 Macs). One of the problems I've encountered when trying out machine learning ideas is that a lot of sample...

Starting January 1, 2021, App Store developers can apply to have their commission rates dropped from 30% to 15% if they made less than $1 million in proceeds the previous year. This is very good news and I'm happy to see a reduction in...

James Allworth: Indeed, that deal between Apple and Intel was more important for Intel than it could have ever possibly realized. But it wasn’t because Intel had sewn up the last of the desktop computer processor market. Instead, it was...

First up, I released Retrobatch 1.4.3 this morning as a Universal Binary, meaning it will run natively on the new Apple Silicon Macs. There are also a couple of bug fixes, features, and compatiblity fixes for MacOS 11 Big Sur. It's...

There's lots of celebrating, not just in the US but around the world, that Joe Biden has won the US presidency. We heard fireworks this morning when all the networks called it. The impromptu celebrations in the streets right now are...

I received my US election ballot yesterday, filled it out today and dropped it off at the nearest drop box. Voting up here in Washington State has been mail in (or drop off) for a long while now, and it's pretty awesome. No lines and...

Maciej Cegłowsk has some good advice: When the George Floyd protests began to spread nationally in the summer of 2020, I noticed many people on social media asking Hong Kongers for advice on protest tactics–which apps to use, what...

This past September 18th was the 50th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death. He would have been 77 years old. Hendrix was amazing. Beyond amazing. Something on a whole other level. It's hard to explain. It seems that the longer I...

School started yesterday for my daughter Madeline. She's entering grade 3, but classes are all virtual because of the ongoing covid crisis. This generally sucks, but like the majority of parents in our area, we weren't going to...

Marc Edwards: SVGs can now be used as assets for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS apps. The most exciting part of this new feature is that there’s not much to say — it’s full SVG support, and it just works.

The Corona-Warn-App is an app that helps trace infection chains of SARS-CoV-2 (which can cause COVID-19) in Germany. The app is based on technologies with a decentralized approach and notifies users if they have been exposed to...

I'm really enjoying the format of the WWDC videos that are coming out. The talks I've been interested in are short and focused, so I don't have to fast forward through sections I'm not interested in. The code sections in...

I feel like I have whiplash. I'm super happy that the Mac is finally moving to  processors and I've already applied for the dev kit. Hopefully I'll be getting it soon. Can we call it the Chip, instead of "Apple...

Wil Shipley on the App Store: We have all been asking for years now for these changes. I've filled out three or four of these surveys before. I know Phil specifically says he doesn't want to hear about upgrade pricing anymore, but...

With all the recent rumors flying around about the Mac transitioning to ARM processors, I've seen some assertions about what this means for software going forward. I thought I could chime in on this as someone who's been developing...

Shortly after the 2016 elections I found myself, my wife and daughter (almost 5yo), and a couple of thousand other people down in Seattle for an event around Green Lake. It was a moment of everyone joining together, a show of solidarity....

Acorn 6.6 is out. You can update to this release via the App Store as or the Acorn ▸ Check for Updates… menu if you bought it directly from us. Originally this was going to be a bug fix release but I kept on adding useful things and it...

It's now spelled with a capital M.

A new podcast from Ben Thompson and John Gruber. Three episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more. I've really been enjoying Dithering. I already regularly listen to their existing podcasts...

Dan Moren: Back in the mid-’90s, my friend Jason and I started up an online magazine devoted to fantasy and science-fiction. We originally set out distributing it on local bulletin boards as a self-contained app generated by a program...

I recently received a support question that basically went like this: Why are screenshots pasted into Acorn twice the size as those pasted into Keynote? A screenshot on my MacBook Pro at 1000x500 becomes a 2000x1000 image in Acorn. If I...

Quarantine life continues. I'm starting to get into a groove. Work hasn't been very consistent lately, but Kirstin was off for a number of days this week and was able to handle all of Madeline's school work. I was then able to...

Mark Gurman writing for Bloomberg: Apple Aims to Sell Macs With Its Own Chips Starting in 2021. Apple Inc. is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year, relying on designs that helped popularize the...

Bob Nystrom on making his new book "Crafting Interpreters": I hand letter everything. It takes a long time. I used to do graphic design, and I have this weird tic where any time I see something that looks handwritten, I look for...