diff --git a/drafts/The State of Mastodon Clients on iOS.md b/drafts/The State of Mastodon Clients on iOS.md index 41072450..015e1d41 100644 --- a/drafts/The State of Mastodon Clients on iOS.md +++ b/drafts/The State of Mastodon Clients on iOS.md @@ -4,9 +4,11 @@ ## A safari through the enchanting space of third-party Mastodon clients on iOS. -Apple's second virtual World Wide Developer Conference came and went as I wrote this guide - you can metaphorically picture me looking up from my machine having overheard the news of the [2021 Apple Design Award Winners](https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/) announcement. Perusing through them, I saw two I would have voted for, myself: [CARROT Weather](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/carrot-weather/id961390574) - the [beautifully vulgar](https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/status/1368223231111557125), grumpy bitch frontend for your preferred weather information service, and [Craft](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/craft-docs-and-notes-editor/id1487937127) - perhaps the most innovative take on word processing of the past two or three years - listed under "Finalists." (Read: losers.) The most positive personal discovery of (all?) WWDCs: an app called [**Be My Eyes**](https://www.bemyeyes.com/), which "connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and company representatives for visual assistance through a live video call," along with an exceptionally crafted, cross-device accessible-as-fuck TTS solution called [Voice Dream Reader](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-dream-reader/id496177674). *However*, a double take in games from Genshin Impact and [the fucking *League of Legends* game](https://apps.apple.com/ph/app/league-of-legends-wild-rift/id1480616990) certainly sours the mouth and suggest yet further just how much Apple, Inc. has *sold out*. Also, the fact that [Poolside's app](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/poolside-fm/id1514817810) made the page at all is incredibly frustrating, despite how cheeky I've found its vaporwave-informed UI fuckery since beta. +Apple's second virtual World Wide Developer Conference came and went as I wrote this guide - you can metaphorically picture me looking up from my machine having overheard the news of the [2021 Apple Design Award Winners](https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/) announcement. Perusing through them, I saw two I would have voted for, myself: [CARROT Weather](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/carrot-weather/id961390574) - the [beautifully vulgar](https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/status/1368223231111557125), grumpy bitch frontend for your preferred weather information service, and [Craft](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/craft-docs-and-notes-editor/id1487937127) - perhaps the most innovative take on word processing of the past two or three years - listed under "Finalists." (Read: losers.) The most positive personal discovery of (all?) WWDCs: an app called [**Be My Eyes**](https://www.bemyeyes.com/), which "connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and company representatives for visual assistance through a live video call," along with an exceptionally crafted, cross-device accessible-as-fuck TTS solution called [Voice Dream Reader](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-dream-reader/id496177674). *However*, a double take in games from *Genshin Impact* and [the fucking *League of Legends* game](https://apps.apple.com/ph/app/league-of-legends-wild-rift/id1480616990) certainly sours the mouth and suggests yet further just how much Apple, Inc. has *sold out*. -I know you almost certainly did not arrive here to hear one motherfucker's complaints about WWDC, but - as with everything Apple, Inc. does - every morsel of curatorial expression/discrimination/favoritism from The Great Money God within this platform *must* be scrutinized and criticized. +The continued prioritization of Growth for Growth's sake over any and all other considerations (namely, users,) is not unexpected from even the most valuable company in the history of the world, I suppose, but there *is* an actor at this point in the story who is catastrophically and demonstrably failing to fulfill their role: all I really know is that technology media has fallen into a trough of total uselessness when it comes to qualitative, authoritative analysis of consumer-targeted software. The necessity of this guide - and the bizarrely silent ignorance of even the "fringes" on its subject - is unimaginably severe. Before me has been (for years, now,) the "answer" to a Jolly Big Load of what tech and marketing types lament in more and more existential language, yet *hardly any* of the humans with the most to lose from their negligence - regular, casual social media users - have been delivered to these experiences. The story is not being articulated. **The journalism is not being done.** + +I know you almost certainly did not arrive here to hear one motherfucker's complaints about WWDC, but - as with everything Apple, Inc. does - every morsel of curatorial expression/discrimination/favoritism from The Great Money God within this platform *must* be scrutinized and criticized. Quite frankly, I found myself completely at a loss as to how *not* to dwell on the Discovery Disparity, here. Despite how deeply I've gone into iOS this year, I do not believe myself to be a qualified judge of software design, but I no longer believe Apple to be, either. Regardless of the revenue-related controversies of late, Apple have simply become terrible stewards of the App Store. Scams and blatant intellectual property theft abound, while the majority of the most innovative entries I've ever seen remain entirely obfuscated and uncelebrated by all of Apple. Inc.'s mechanisms. If you required an explanation for the amount of time I've invested into App Guides - a space to which I never would have imagined intentionally bringing *The Psalms* - I hope you can understand.