Manton Reece

We are getting ready to roll out a major update to Micro.blog. The web version and all the native apps are being updated at the same time. The new version will launch Tuesday, September 29th.

What’s new? To start with, the web version has been redesigned with a new sidebar, bringing common areas of your microblog like managing posts and uploads to the top-level of Micro.blog so they’re easier to access.

In the iOS and macOS apps, we’ve added new Pages and Uploads section, so you can create or edit standalone pages, and upload podcasts or other files to your blog. There are new icons in the sidebar and the layout in many screens has been improved.

On the Mac, creating a new post has been moved to its own window. This makes it easier to see the timeline while you are typing a new post or reply. You can also drag photos from the Uploads section into a new post.

We are expanding what the current $10/month plan can do, renaming it Micro.blog Premium. In addition to hosting podcasts and video, Micro.blog Premium will archive the contents of bookmarked web pages, with a special reader interface for highlighting text. You can quickly create a new blog post from highlights in Micro.blog.

I’ll be talking more about the new bookmarks and highlights as we get closer to launch. I’m excited to bring something totally new to Micro.blog, but in a way that stays true to Micro.blog’s mission of making it easier to blog.

And there are many other bug fixes and minor improvements, such as (finally!) editing replies. I can’t wait for everyone to check it out next week.

I’ve heard the excuses and I get it. You have family on Facebook. You have friends on Instagram. Maybe you can’t completely give up on those platforms. But you can shut them down for a month.

Facebook has not made enough progress in the last 4 years to deal with misinformation and hate. In the final stretch of the presidential campaign, why are we supporting any platform that risks the consequence of fake news and conspiracy stories spreading unchecked? Are we going to stop using Facebook and Instagram now, or are we going to wait until after Trump is reelected?

You don’t have to use Micro.blog. But don’t spend another minute on Facebook-owned platforms until after the election.

With my iPhone X glass broken, I needed a replacement phone quickly. The timing is not great because Apple has an event tomorrow, likely for the iPad and Apple Watch, with an announcement for new iPhones to follow within a few weeks. On the other hand, it has been nearly 3 years since I bought my iPhone X, so I don’t feel bad upgrading even to last year’s iPhone.

Meanwhile, there’s Android. As Daniel and I have been discussing on Core Intuition, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with how Apple manages the App Store. It would be good for me to have more experience with Android, eventually developing an Android version of Micro.blog.

Last year I bought a cheap Android tablet (Galaxy Tab A) to use for testing. I’ve been using it much more often, and it has become my “catching up on email, surfing the web, and Slack-ing while in the living room” device. The hardware is slow, but it runs Android 10, and already it has been useful for seeing how Android users experience Micro.blog.

iMessage lock-in remains the biggest problem with Android for me. I tried AirMessage, which Ben Thompson had good things to say about on Dithering. AirMessage runs on your Mac and essentially forwards messages back and forth to Android. It’s clever, but because I use a MacBook Pro exclusively, AirMessage will stop working if I close the laptop or take it somewhere else.

One option I seriously considered is getting a Pixel 4a and using an old iPhone (or ordering a new iPod Touch) just to run iMessage, Micro.blog, and anything else that I needed iOS for. It doesn’t make sense to go all-in on Android while I’m in the middle of wrapping up a major iOS upgrade to Micro.blog 2.0. Having 2 inexpensive devices would force me to live in the Android world while also keeping iMessage and everyday testing for Micro.blog 2.0. It looked like I couldn’t get a Pixel 4a shipped very quickly, though.

In the end, I’ve decided to upgrade to the iPhone 11 Pro. It arrives tomorrow. It’s the 3rd version of the iPhone X-style phone, so I know it’s a stable, better version of what I already have. I don’t know what the iPhone 12 is going to look like, whether the quality will be rushed because of COVID, or what features they’ll stick in that I don’t need. I’ll continue to tinker with Android, and maybe that will be my next phone, but it felt a little too early for such a disruptive change.

The latest episode of Core Intuition is out. From the show notes:

Manton and Daniel review Daniel’s experiences as his first podcasting sponsorship airs, and they talk more generally about being willing to “sink money” as part of a learning process in business. Manton talks about his interest in developing for Android, and we lament the increasing feeling that we need to hedge our bets against being “all-in with Apple.”

We’ve also been publishing more episodes of Extra Intuition, our podcast just for members, with the 10th episode out this week. You can subscribe for $5 and get a special podcast feed for the extra show, plus access to a members-only channel in Slack.