Duncan McAlester

@mcalester.design

Design Technologist • Dot Connector • Culture Builder Former Lead Astro UX Design System

It’s such a bummer that system-ui fonts across platforms don’t universally support slashed-zero and disambiguating glyphs. I *think* only Apple’s San Francisco does — though it uses more obscure CSS to implement.

Hot take. VisionOS is by far Apple’s most polished UI. The underlying fundamentals (spacing, typography, contrast) are objectively better while the not-quite “liquid glass” effects are more subtle, sophisticated and less “gee whiz”.

My octogenarian dad just got hired as a consultant. He retired 17 years ago and he was never very good with technology. Imagine jumping back in to work after the SaaS takeover. Slack, Google Docs, MFA apps … I don’t have to as I’m now adhoc IT over messages.

I have never been so happy to see a thick marine layer roll in. I thought I would end the day today looking like someone had just opened the Ark of the Covenant in front of me.

Anyone else notice IKEA has started to sell more products that are solid wood? MDF/particle board based products are still dominant, but I was surprised picking up a new bed for a growing kiddo to see it was solid birch as were a noticeable amount of other products.

I’ve long considered Apple’s Shortcuts to be a secret weapon in AI workflows, the upgrades in iOS 27 are solidifying that idea. Beginning to wonder if Shortcuts might not be the HyperCard of the AI era (hopefully with a better end of course)

Echoing others, but Siri AI is legitimately good. It’s not game changing, but it’s a very solid foundation and as app intents and the upgraded Shortcuts start to take hold I think it could give things like Clawdbot a run for its money as a personal assistant.

Just noticed AirPods with adaptive noise cancelling will lower the volume of the music if they detect an emergency siren. So the siren isn’t ear splitting, but it still takes priority over all other audio. Clever.

The scoreboard graphics are so bad. Unnecessary white outlines around the flags and jersey colors. Worse are the random colors borders. Orange & red for the Netherlands and lime & mauve for Japan. Why? Cyan background for the scores, again why? The 26 and tiny trophy add even more noise.

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Despite not understanding Spanish, World Cup coverage on Peacock en Español is so much better than Fox’s coverage for a host of reasons, not the least of which being 100% less Alexi Lalas.

Apple Wallet has been in desperate need of more nuanced organization and custom passes is going to exacerbate the issue quite a bit. Would be great to have geolocation preferences that associate card or cards with a specific location.

It’s funny to see the stratification of response to Apple’s AI announcements yesterday. There’s clearly a large contingent of folks who think AI = Frontier Model and yesterday was a letdown. Then there’s the folks who see 20B param model on device w/unique architecture and think “wow”

Forward Deployed [Some Normal Job Title] … I don’t like this trend, but then again, I’ve always found the job title adjective-expansion in knowledge work jobs to be eye rolling. My sink is backed up, I’m checking for a local Bilateral Fluid Systems Engineer.

When you create a new empty React app, how many people have the ability to run code on your computer? Let's say you get started with, bun create vite my-app --template=react-ts Unique deps: 180 Unique maintainers: 168 168 targets for a supply chain attack ... just to start.

Fantasy dream jobs change a lot through one’s life. Astronaut, football star, video game developer … I’ve entered the phase of life where I want to be part of the panel show cohort, hopping from one thin premise of a show to another and just having a lark with my mates.

Minimum font size expressed as points or pixels is classic cargo cult behavior. Most of font size studies cited were conducted on 72dpi monitors with poorly translated print typefaces. Users should determine their min font size. Your job is to ensure the app doesn’t break.

Fungibility and ergonomics are two of the more important concepts in AI. There’s an initial tension between the two, but if you can resolve it, they amplify each other rather than conflict.