Apple Vision Pro first impressions

Apple PR photo of the Apple Vision Pro viewed from the front.

This morning I tested out Apple’s Vision Pro in an Apple Store. And I’ve decided to write about it, mostly for my own future nostalgia, but also because my experience was markedly different to what’s been widely reported in tech news. I had intended to just buy an Apple Vision Pro on release day, but… Read more

Creating files safely in Mac apps

Creating a file is a pretty basic and conceptually simple task, that many applications do (whether they realise it or not – library code often does this too, at least for temporary files such as caches or for communicating between programs). So you’d think it’d be trivial to do correctly. Alas, it is not. ☝️… Read more

Swift code syntax highlighting in WordPress

ContentsBaseline: XcodeCommon limitation: no Light/Dark mode supportThe contestantsCode Block ProPerformanceProsConsCodeColorerPerformanceCode Syntax BlockPerformanceProsConsEnlighterPerformanceProsConsHighlighting Code BlockPerformanceProsConsPrismaticSyntax-highlighting Code Block (with Server-side Rendering)PerformanceProsConsSyntaxHighlighter EvolvedPerformanceProsConsUrvanov Syntax HighlighterPerformanceProsConsThe winnerWhat are other websites using? The built-in “code” block for WordPress (the CMS I use for this site) is virtually useless – it’s just a <pre> block, essentially. The appearance may vary depending… Read more

Apple Watch Ultra is a poor dive computer

Note: this was written in 2021 (and updated in 2022) based on version 1 of the Oceanic+ app. In September 2023 version 2 of that app was released, and it appears to have fixed quite a few limitations (e.g. you can finally export your log book, as a standard UDDF file). Once I’ve gathered some… Read more

Nikon Z 100-400 centre vs Nikon 80-400G & Sigma 150-600 C

This is the second post in a series of evaluations of the Nikkor Z 100-400. Please refer to the first post for details about the test equipment & methodology. In this post, I’m going to compare performance in the image centre between these three telephoto lenses at 400mm: Unlike in the first post, where the… Read more

Nikon Z 100-400 centre performance

Last week my Nikkor Z 100-400 arrived. I’m in principle upgrading from the AF-S 80-400G, which has been my all-time favourite lens (both sentimentally and in terms of the yielding the greatest proportion of my favourite photos). Of course, it’d be nice to see how those two lenses actually compare – I suppose I could… Read more