My Books

• Fun with AI

  There is a lot of debate in the developer community regarding the use of AI and its long term implications for our jobs. I feel like I occupy a middle ground: I'm not a "never AI" person and I'm not an "AI solves everything" person. I've been having a lot of fun using AI a lot in the past month, so I thought it was worth writing up what I have been doing, how well it works, and how it changes my workflow.

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• macOS Apps Step by Step Minor Update

  macOS Apps Step by Step has had a minor update to version 4.1.

  The book is available for purchase or update at Gumroad.

  If you bought a previous edition of "macOS by Tutorials" or "macOS Apps Step by Step" from me via Gumroad, version 4.1 is a free update that you can download from your Gumroad library.

  If you bought the first edition of macOS by Tutorials from either Kodeco or Amazon, please email me for a 50% discount code.

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• WWDC 2026 First Thoughts

  Most years, I am deeply interested in what happens at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference and what is announced. This year, I am on holiday in the depths of rural Queensland, Australia with very limited connectivity. At least this meant that I didn't have to wake at 3 am to watch the keynote like I usually do, although I have to confess that I wasn't that excited for this year's announcements anyway.

  Thank you to everyone who posted their reactions on Mastodon as that enabled me to keep up with the major features.

  I've now managed to watch most of the keynote, so I have some preliminary thoughts. I have watched none of the session videos, so deeper analysis, especially with regard to my beloved Mac app development sphere, will have to wait.

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• In Praise of SwiftUI

  Recently, I have seen multiple posts on Mastodon suggesting that SwiftUI is a failure, that nobody is using it, and that Apple should have focused on improving or replacing AppKit and UIKit instead of wasting everyone's time with SwiftUI. While I have great respect for some of the people saying these things, I disagree. I love using SwiftUI, I think a large number of developers are using it, and I want to explain what I find so great about it.

  Perhaps one problem was the name. Yes, it allows you to define your user interface in Swift, but so do AppKit and UIKit. For me, the part that I miss most when going back to work on an older project is the data flow and the reactive nature of SwiftUI, and that's not reflected in the name at all.

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• macOS Apprentice: 3rd Edition

  The third edition of macOS Apprentice has been released!

  If you're a beginner or near-beginner who wants to start learning Swift, SwiftUI and AppKit for building Mac apps, then this is the book for you.

  This edition has been updated for Swift 6, macOS 26 and Xcode 26. It now includes details on using the new Icon Generator as well as major changes in the chapter that deals with embedding an AppKit view in a SwiftUI app. All the code and screenshots have been updated to reflect changes in Xcode, Swift, SwiftUI and macOS.

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