Douglas Hill’s recent posts
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3 July 2026
I’m seeing a regression in Apple Shortcuts where “Count Characters in …” says “Unable to decode file contents” when passed rich text. Workaround: Add a “Get text from (rich text)” and count with that instead. (I’m on macOS 26.5 but this might have been there for a while.) »
Limited social connection was always a challenge with remote work, but with AI human-to-human communication is further minimised. We exchange messages with people’s robots, or more likely we have our robots talk to their robots. Efficient, but makes me think it would be nice to hang out with people. »
1 July 2026
Notes from attending the RustWeek conference in Utrecht. »
24 June 2026
Looking forward to being back in Wales in September to talk about Rust at iOSDevUK. Early bird conference tickets are available until the end of this month. It’s my favourite and best-value iOS conference. Also let me know if you’re interested in hiking in Eryri/Snowdonia the weekend before.
19 May 2026
WWDC labs are conspicuously missing from the activities this year. (The private WebEx calls usually with the person who worked on the thing you're asking about.) At Nutrient, we found these the most valuable part of WWDC. »
I’m excited to be learning new things at the RustWeek conference in the Netherlands. »
1 May 2026
We’re trying something new for NSLondon this month: If you’re a woman, non-binary, or otherwise feel underrepresented in the London iOS developer community, you can request an early-access spot by filling in this very short form. General availability opens at 1pm BST this Monday on Meetup. »
14 April 2026
TIL about the ContactProvider framework on iOS (not Mac). Sounds like a way to build an end-to-end encrypted replacement for iCloud/CardDAV contacts sync if you can get your head around the difference between ContactItemEnumerating and ContactItemEnumerator.
3 April 2026
Interesting evening yesterday at Rust London learning all sorts. Dan Groshev spoke about picking a dominant colour from an image. (I used a similar approach in Jamie Oliver‘s Recipes in 2014.) Jérôme Étévé gave a talk on Mokaccino and Evadne Wu on sandboxing AI agents. »
1 April 2026
At NSLondon we’re meeting for coffee on Sat 18th followed by a stroll in Hyde Park if the weather is fine. Bring a laptop and show your coding project. I’ll be there with non-iOS projects. »
12 March 2026
I hope everyone going has a fantastic time at NSLondon at Apple Battersea this evening. Beautiful space, and both talks sound really useful. Bit of a shame I’m away. »
11 March 2026
One day I assume there will be a Mac with Internal Headphones to explain the need for this precise copy writing.
20 February 2026
Here’s a roundup of upcoming Swift/iOS conferences in Europe. UK conference scene is strong! »
19 February 2026
Great evening at Engineering Kiosk Alps hosted by Cloudflight. Similar format to NSLondon. Talks:
- Anna Larch: Nextcloud is good place to work. Like Nutrient: ~160 people, remote, high trust, no fixed hours.
- Beate Öttl: Still good to avoid building the wrong thing fast. »
12 February 2026
This trick from Cult of Mac to disable iOS 26 update nags seems to be working well on my iPad running iOS 18: Enable iOS 18 Developer Betas. Suddenly the OS is “up to date”. No more red badges or notifications that can’t otherwise be turned off. »
31 January 2026
In 2025, I read 50% more books than in 2024, all DRM-free, mostly audiobooks. I wrote about my reading trends and shared some book picks from the year, featuring Min Jin Lee, Marjan Kamali, Sarah Wynn-Williams and more. »
30 January 2026
Removed LinkedIn way to follow my posts, since it wasn’t working anyway. The cross posting from Micro.blog doesn’t seem reliable, and I don’t want to look at LinkedIn to check for replies. »
😳 rdar:45025538
23 January 2026
I’ll be away, but London people we have an NSLondon pub evening this coming Thursday 29th on Chancery Lane. This is in coordination with the organisers of the SwiftCraft conference in Folkestone in May, which had great speakers last year and is in a lovely venue by the sea. »
5 January 2026
Vivaldi tip: The setting to disable autofilling previously entered text in any form field is mislabeled as “Save and Fill Addresses”. Also note that disabling then enabling this setting will suggest text from before you disabled it.
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