Happy Saturday. It’s entirely too hot here in Texas. The kids are back in school. I’ve rounded third base and I’m approaching the launch of a major new app build that’s taking all of my time and energy! More on that another time, but it’s been a busy week elsewhere. Here’s a roundup of a few links from the week…

Google’s Pixel 9 Phones

Nice updates and announcements from Google this week on its Pixel lineup. The Gemini Live AI assistant looks really cool. Will anyone buy the foldable phone? Probably not.

Neuecast

A delightful and thoughtfully designed new podcast app. I don’t mind the new Overcast update as much as some people do, so it’s still my default. But love seeing new entrants into the podcast player market. Especially with this nice of a design.

Unread for Mac

Speaking of new apps, Unread for the Mac is here and it’s lovely. I’m giving it a spin this week. I still love my NetNewsWire, but the design and typography of Unread are so well done.

Structured Outputs in OpenAI API

This is a very welcome update. We’ve been twisting ourselves into knots sometimes to format JSON output from the ChatGPT API into a specific format for consumption by our apps.

Making the case for Apple to buy WBD

M.G. Siegler, continuing to make his case that Apple should and could buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Apple TV+ has become my goto streaming service lately. Its hit-to-miss ratio is very high and is reminiscent of the great Richard Plepler era of HBO. Apple has proven themselves a worthy producer of video content, I’m all for this.

A Roundup of My Favorite Bartender Alternatives

This link is from earlier in the summer, but I missed the news that Bartender was silently acquired in a less than trustworthy way. Nice roundup by Niléane for Macstories of a bunch of worth alternatives. I’m trying out Hidden Bar and it seems like a simple and worthy replacement. And it’s completely open source.

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