Ironically fitting day here in Portland to launch a major update to an AQI app.

My passion project, 2 years in the making: Breathable 4.0 is officially available on all your devices, including now on Apple Vision Pro! Completely free everywhere. Added PurpleAir support, Trends, more widget customization, custom fonts, so much more. breathable.app

I'm trying to get Breathable 4.0 out for all users today, but Apple review might take a day or two. In the mean time, if you want to use 4.0 to track the awful smoke conditions across the country, please join the TestFlight: testflight.apple.com/join/vvl... Breathable is completely free!

Nearing release of Breathable 4.0, still looking for TestFlight testers: testflight.apple.com/join/vvl... New in v4: → visionOS version! → PurpleAir and WAQI support → Custom fonts in widgets → New Apple Watch widgets → Trends charts → Countless other things! → Still completely free!!

Lots of folks suffering from poor air quality right now. By coincidence, I'm wrapping up 2 years of work on Breathable 4.0, a massive rewrite with new services (PurpleAir, WAQI), syncing, trends, and visionOS support. It's still free! Join TestFlight: testflight.apple.com/join/vvl...

From the team that brought you Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, please preorder our new game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. No this is NOT confusing and yes both games are basically about the same thing. But this one is $80. No I said eighty with an 8

45. Mentally still in my 30s, physically sometimes feels like I'm in my 50s, overall feeling pretty good as I settle into the meaty part of middle-aged. The grays multiply daily but I'm enjoying it.

Past 7 days: Karbon 16-year anniversary 🎉 15-year wedding anniversary 🎉 My mother started chemotherapy 💉 Kiddo with the flu 😷 Flat tire 🛞 Worked about 60 hours 🫠 Cranked out some terrific product requirements 😎 Played a little Marathon 🎮 Fuck cancer. Proud of my mom. Kiddo is feeling much better.

Yesterday, Bungie released their new game, Marathon. Having spent thousands of hours in Destiny and Destiny 2 in the past 10 years, I wrote a long post today about how I'm all-in on Marathon and hoping Bungie can make this game a success: karbonbased.io/posts/2026/03/...

Karbon Based — Betting on Bungie

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboards, video games, technology and photography.

karbonbased.io

Today's our 15-year wedding anniversary. Last night I worked until 1AM when our son—who has the flu and feels terrible—woke up my wife, which made it impossible for her to fall back asleep. I didn't fall asleep until 4AM. Now I'm downing espresso during meetings while my wife fails to nap. 15 years!

It's 2026 and we're back to Apple's biggest display size being 27 inches. What a disappointment. I don't understand why we're permanently locked into the idea that 27 inches is the biggest a display needs to be.

Over the weekend, we celebrated Karbon's 16-year anniversary. I wrote a little bit about this milestone and what a journey it has been: karbonbased.io/posts/2026/03/...

Karbon Based — Sixteen

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboards, video games, technology and photography.

karbonbased.io

Just saw the news about James Van Der Beek dying after his fight with colon cancer. So awful. My generation grew up watching Van Der Beek every week on Dawson's Creek and talking about the episode around the cafeteria the next day. RIP.

Recently, @gruber.foo wrote a DF post (in reply to a New Yorker article by Kyle Chayka) about something near and dear to me: “The Relief of Simple Software”. Today, I wrote about how 22 years ago this became the catalyst for me writing my first native app, xPad: karbonbased.io/posts/2026/0...

Karbon Based — TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboar...

karbonbased.io

@bsky.app Do you have plans to fix the app icon on iPadOS? It doesn’t support dark mode.

Hobbies I am currently putting effort into, when I have free time: Blogging again, photography, modeling for 3D printing, video editing and color correction, gaming, reading, restoring a few old Macs. The free time I end up having for these hobbies? Nearly zero.

Imagine breaking a core feature of macOS that has worked for 40 years just because iPhones have screens with rounded corners. karbonbased.io/posts/2026/01/...

Karbon Based — Grabbing Air

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboards, video games, technology and photography.

karbonbased.io

The year is 2003. I’m 17 years old. I’m watching Democrats fail to appropriately oppose an illegal war for oil. The year is 2026. I’m 40 years old. I’m watching Democrats fail to appropriately oppose an illegal war for oil.

Prior to playing Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, I kept thinking, "Why did it take Retro 8 years to finish this game?" After playing, I realized that's how long it took to QA collecting all the green crystals in that god-awful desert.

A few follow-ups to "And Stay Out" after reading thoughtful replies from Jason Snell and Eric Schwarz: karbonbased.io/posts/2026/01/...

Karbon Based — Follow-ups to ‘And Stay Out’

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboards, video games, technology and photography.

karbonbased.io

After reading Louie Mantia's blog post "And Stay Out", some of my thoughts about Alan Dye leaving Apple, Jony Ive's influence on Apple's interface and hardware design before Dye, and the general lack of playfulness in everything Apple makes these days. karbonbased.io/posts/2025/12/...

Karbon Based — And Stay Out

Karbon Based is the internet home of Garrett Murray. Garrett is the Founder & Managing Director of Karbon, a mobile apps design and development agency. His current interests include mechanical keyboards, video games, technology and photography.

karbonbased.io

All of these things are true: 1. Alan Dye should never have had the role he did at Apple 2. Dye damaged Apple's software for years (and for years to come) 3. Tim Cook should have removed him long ago 4. It's a huge win for Apple's users that he left 5. Meta has such poor taste that they wanted him

Our older son turned 13 today, so we are now the parents of a teenager. We feel too young to have a kid this old, but as we barrel through our mid-40s, I think it's probably time to stop thinking that way. The time dilation effect of watching children grow continues to increase.

People bombarding me with "why do you care if Liquid Glass sucks or doesn't!" seem to forget or not realize it is LITERALLY MY JOB TO CARE. It is my business. I have made my living for the past 16 years building apps for people and clients on these platforms. I am also a user of these platforms.

Think about how many collective millions of dollars in time and effort have been spent by developers and designers to try to adopt Liquid Glass in the past year, only to have Apple start to walk it back on the very first minor release since launch. This is an admission, and embarrassing.

Just a quick note that while work is on-going to bring Breathable into the world of OSes 26, I've just released version 3.0.2, a compatibility update to ensure things continue to function properly in the meantime. breathable.app

Breathable

An air quality index widget for iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and macOS.

breathable.app

Looking forward to the public release of OSes 26 next week when everyone who didn't use the beta opens Messages for the first time and sees all the dumbass backgrounds I set for our chats.

"People keep quitting the app." "But... we make our money when they're using it." "Yeah, but sometimes they quit it because they don't care about us making money, they just want to browse the web." "Make it so quitting doesn't work. Make it require a different way to quit and tell them every time."

am i having a stroke

One thing I've been thinking about a lot since writing this is that we just finally got into a good spot with iOS UI/UX. It took nearly a decade for the drastic over-correction of iOS 7 to smooth out and be refined, to find middle ground again. And so of course Apple throws a grenade in the room.

Garrett Murray@garre.tt · last yr.

Keep coming back to the same question: Why? Doesn't make things better, doesn't provide new insight or UX. It's just shiny chrome that makes it harder to read things on the screen. The ecosystem will spend millions of dollars to coerce their apps into this design system for nearly no gain for users.