Brent Simmons
Mac and iOS developer; created NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, co-created the JSON Feed format, and blogs at inessential.com.
Brent Simmons did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsUsers have shown — again, I don’t need to prove this — that they don’t think about a stock Mac app vs. custom.
↗That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UIinessential.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Our reading
Using stock Mac UI no longer saves developers work; it can mean more work than custom UI.
Their wordsBut my app NetNewsWire has a very stock Mac UI, and Liquid Glass adoption last year was a lot of work. Using stock Mac UI didn’t save us much — in fact, we had more work to do compared to the apps with more custom UI.
↗That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UIinessential.com 2nd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsWell, I still think Apple has the best collection of UI designers in the world, but, for whatever reasons, the guidance from above on how the Mac UI should look is missing the mark.
↗That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UIinessential.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsAnd we’re left with no real reason to stick with stock Mac UI (except for wanting approval from longtime Mac people like me, and you really shouldn’t care about that at all).
↗That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UIinessential.com 4th of 4 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsWe will not be doing any AI features, even local AI features, any time soon. I’m cautious about this kind of thing and I know how difficult it is to remove features, and I don’t know right now that AI is right for this app or how it might be right.
↗After Fixin’ the Bugsinessential.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Their wordsAnother consideration is NetNewsWire’s job in supporting the web. Which features advance the goal of interoperability and making the web itself the social network? This is why NetNewsWire exists, after all.
↗After Fixin’ the Bugsinessential.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsAgain, yes, it’s not just okay but proper to criticize public people for their tech choices, but I try to remember my own imperfect choices before I do.
- 6 months earlier
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Their wordsWhen you have many engineers working on a project, it’s best if the language you use is one everybody knows well.
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Their wordsReplacing Objective-C code with Swift is clearly a win.
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsI could charge for NetNewsWire, but that would go against my political goal of making sure there’s a good and free RSS reader available to everyone.
↗Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web Appinessential.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
A world where everything is on the web and nothing on machines we own has lost a core freedom.
Their wordsA world where everything is on the web and nothing is on the machines that we own is a sad world where we’ve lost a core freedom.
↗Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web Appinessential.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsWhat I want to see happen is for Apple to allow iPhone and iPad users to load — not sideload, a term I detest, because it assumes Apple’s side of things — whatever apps they want to. Because those devices are computers.
↗Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web Appinessential.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAnd it seems retro in the worst way that we’re still using anything other than a scripting language for most of our code.
↗Writing Mac and iOS Apps Shouldn’t Be So Difficultinessential.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsAnd at some point I suspect these things are going to be table stakes for any platform that wants to attract developers.
↗Writing Mac and iOS Apps Shouldn’t Be So Difficultinessential.com 2nd of 2 in this piece