Dusting

[It’s been awhile since I’ve written here. No apologies, but we’ll see if I’m back.]

I’ve been in a bit of a rut of late. I used to love creating apps and would tinker with things on the side. But it’s been difficult to muster any enthusiasm for that in far too long. I still haven’t entirely figured out why. Is it burnout? It’s not because I’m writing too much code these days; most of my time is spent in project wrangling and communication. Part of it is that the native app side of our business has fallen off. It means I get to learn a broader range of tools by needing to handle Android and also writing in Xamarin. But it also means I don’t get to do a lot of work in any one tool set. And if you’re going for efficiency, using a tool set only once every year or so is definitely not the way to go.

Recently I found myself wanting to create another useful to me toy app and I decided to use that as an excuse to dip my toes into SwiftUI finally. And it hasn’t been bad. I like that it isn’t an entirely new ecosystem and is instead an adjunct to Swift. It also feels like an excellent way to develop interfaces that work well across a wide variety of screen sizes and aspect ratios. And yes, it’s nice to be able to enjoy learning something new in my trade. It also makes me think that if I had my choice, I’d prefer to be working entirely in Apple ecosphere, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and even watchOS. (I still haven’t worked with watchOS yet) I need to think about that.

Speaking of Apple and covid, they announced that their stores were open again, and they are. I’ve been dealing with an irritation with my iPhone and have been waffling between putting up with it until new devices are announced this year, seeing if I can get my current phone fixed, or just going ahead and buying a new one. I walked into my local Apple store yesterday and found out that the soonest Genius Bar appointment I could get was Saturday. Ugh. So could I just buy a phone today? Well, yes and no. If I went online to make my purchase I could pick it up there, but if I needed to actually talk to someone, then I’d need to make an appointment, and the soonest available appointment was this weekend. It didn’t appear to be an issue with the number of employees as there seemed to be as many of them on the floor as I was used to seeing pre-covid, but I could be mistaken.

I did not pass Go. I did not spend over a thousand dollars. I left. And then I went online to make a Genius Bar appointment for this weekend so I can find out if it’s an easy fix. Then I should have enough information to decide whether to go ahead and get an iPhone 12 or wait for the new models. I’ve already had this one for a year longer than I had planned, so I will be buying a phone one way or another, it’s just a matter of which one. And now I’m thinking about whether this is all a good sign for Apple, because there are a lot of people willing to schedule appointments to spend money with them, or a bad sign because they might not have the staff to service the demand. And then I think about how I’m planning on replacing my laptop next year and how much money I spend on Apple products in any given year.