Jim Nielsen

  1. Celebrating SIM Cards

    It’s time to celebrate a little win. The other day, my mom contacted me saying her 10-year-old iPhone wouldn’t turn on. After getting a hold of the device and doing some family IT support, I concluded the battery was dead. So I bought her a new (old) one on Walmart (SE 3rd gen., if you must know). Her…

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  2. Why My Dad Didn’t Have a Cell Phone

    Here’s Dave Rupert writing about all those emails, texts, phone calls, etc. we’re getting these days: Once upon a time it had utility, now it’s all noise and grifter slop demanding our attention and giving us to-dos That last part really hit: “giving us to-dos”. I feel this. So many of the messenger…

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  3. No Need for Retirement When Utopia Is Around the Corner

    I’ve mentioned before my interest in the history and development of nuclear weapons. Currently, I’m reading The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers renown). In the first chapter, Ellsberg talks about his time working at the RAND Corporation during…

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  4. No More Icons In Every Menu By Default

    Have you heard the good news? I bemoaned the approach of putting an icon in every menu item by default which shipped with macOS Tahoe — but now it’s gone in Golden Gate! John Gruber wrote about this reversion back in June, including the fact that Apple’s new Human Interface Guidelines specifically call…

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  5. We Need All the Disciplines

    From where I sit, figuring out what to build, building it, and shipping it are all part of the art of making software. Many disciplines have emerged through the years to facilitate this work: product, design, engineering, devops, etc. We need all these disciplines to make great, dependable software …

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  6. The Dock on Mac, From OS 10 to macOS 27

    I wrote the chapter on app icon history for The iOS App Icon Book. The other day I found an old note stashed away where I had started researching the macOS version of that chapter (which Michael ultimately ended up writing). At the time, I didn’t know what to write. I mean, how do you write a history…

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  7. The Fascinating World of Domains

    Pete Millspaugh has a lovely article over on WIRED that peers into the world of domains. (If you’re as interested in the esoteric details of domains as I am, follow Pete’s writing at Dot Com Press.) You should just read the article, but here are a few things that stood out to me. The .com Registry Did…

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  8. “Getting off the Modernization Treadmill”

    My notes from this talk by Alexander Petros at Big Sky DevCon 2026. Alex starts by noting how “modernize” used to mean something along the lines of “update this thing that was made before I was born”. But now “modernize” means something more like “update this thing from 5-10 years ago” (hence the framing…

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  9. Apple’s App Icon HOA

    Louie Mantia has a great post about how app icons are converging towards the squircle on iOS and macOS. His post reads like a history. If you’re wondering, “How did we get to a place where all app icons are becoming squircles?” Mantia’s post answers that question by starting at the beginning. It’s hard…

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  10. “I’m Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry”

    That’s something Ben Thompson said a recent episode of Dithering. He was referring to how he felt while trying to help his mom get control of her digital life. Everything was just too hard and convoluted and he felt embarrassed as someone who works in tech. That very same evening, I randomly got this…

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