Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 1d

Screen Sizes by @trevorkay.bsky.social is amazing. Version 3 was just released. www.screensizes.app

Screen Sizes

A complete guide for Apple displays

www.screensizes.app

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 11d

I wish I knew! The icons get set by the weather provider, so we don’t control that logic.

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 16d

I’ve been working on the iStat Menus, Pinwheel, and Skala Icon Composer app icons. Pinwheel’s icon was updated a couple of weeks ago, and iStat Menus will be soon. It’s great that the mono versions can be entirely different, if you’d like.

The app icons for iStat Menus, Pinwheel, and Skala. Each icon shows two versions: The full colour version, and the monochrome version.

6

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 16d

It’s an Audio Unit version 3 plugin, which doesn’t require an installer. You just download the app and run it once. Most current Audio Units are version 2, with installers. We’ll see how it goes, but we have lots of other plugin ideas.

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 16d

It was a lot of fun, given we both hadn’t developed an audio plugin before. Lots of mistakes were made. In fact, we gave a talk about the history, why we built it, and documented the mistakes. youtu.be/xQ497ywGjM0

We Built Daft Punk’s Vocoder as an Audio Plugin!

YouTube video by AUC_ANZ

youtu.be

1 2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 16d

I built a vocoder audio plugin with @rustyshelf.bsky.social! Say hello to Robot Rocket. bjango.com/plugin/robot...

Robot Rocket

A vocoder plugin that rules the nation.

bjango.com

1 2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 21d

Visualising an audio file in a not very useful way.

An audio waveform drawn with lots of white dots on a black background. The dots get larger as the amplitude increases.

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 24d

Brother used to make synthesisers. Yes, that Brother. The printer company! It included a drum machine, microphone input, and speakers.

A photo of the Brother Auto Emillion GX-151, including all its accessories and manual.

A closer photo of the Brother Auto Emillion GX-151, highlighting its keyboard and controls.

3

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 25d

They’ve taken something that is easy for a computer to display accurately, and chosen to show the wrong time, just so it can animate.

2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · 25d

Surprisingly, my two biggest gripes with macOS 26 are the lock screen clock animating to the current time, and the new terrible window tabs. The clock seems to animate only when the laptop lid is opened, rather than every time macOS wakes. It’s incredibly distracting.

1 2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Sep 12

Remember your comment next time you search for an answer online and stumble on a blog post where someone’s spent a lot of time researching and writing up exactly what you need.

2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Sep 9

The new iOS 26 and macOS app icon shape looks like it is based on the iOS 7 app icon shape with a larger radius, rather than a superellipse. Here’s an image diff with my best attempt matching a superellipse. It’s not quite the same.

A black image with some small white edge details. The white portions indicate where the superellipse is different to the macOS 26 app icon shape.

1 2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 30

Can the new Icon Composer Mac app icons use Display P3 colours? It seems like the answer is yes, from my testing. Next thing: The Finder and QuickLook preview of Display P3 Icon Composer Mac app icons is incorrect. marcedwards.me/images/share...

marcedwards.me

3

Reposted by Marc Edwards

bjango.com @bjango.com · Aug 25

Pinwheel 1.6.1 is out! It fixes some bugs and adds the ability to copy colours in any format and colour space. If you’d like to copy colours in the format that matches their properties, just use “copy”. bjango.com/mac/pinwheel/

A screenshot of Pinwheel’s interface, showing the context menu with the “copy color as Display P3” menu open.

1 1 6

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 18

Fixing issues like this matters a lot more to me than Liquid Glass or AI or building cars or VR headsets.

2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 6

❤️ They’d need to know your address etc, but probably not worth the risk!

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 6

This is a far better idea for iOS 26 and macOS 26. And honestly, an obvious one. Maybe make them look like fully 3D capsules with a bit of a highlight on the top as well? parkerortolani.blog/2025/08/04/t...

Tinted Liquid Glass Should be the Future of User Interfaces on Apple Platforms

It’s certainly no secret that I am a huge fan of …

parkerortolani.blog

1 2

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 5

Please don’t post photos of keys online. Someone could replicate them from a photo.

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 3

We were able to swap the firmware for the production model and the prototype, and both seemed to boot okay. That likely means anyone with the production model can use the features that are only on the prototype.

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Aug 3

Finally opened up the Talker prototype and was able to dump the firmware with the help of a friend. It seems like a late prototype, but there are still wires on the board and one of hole on the back panels has been cut by hand.

A photo of a DigiTech Talker prototype circuit board.

1

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Jul 25

Another speedrun attempt for the 1976 American Bicentennial symbol. This one is also far accurate. It’d be nice if Illustrator’s corner radius widget snapped to shapes.

4

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Jul 24

It looks like Apple is preparing the App Store for the Online Safety Amendment changes coming to Australia in December 2025.

Email from Apple to developers:

We’re reaching out to let you know that we’ve updated the age rating system for apps and games in order to provide people with more granular age ratings. We’ve also introduced new age rating questions to help identify sensitive content in your app and added the ability to set a higher rating to reflect your app’s minimum age requirement. Based on the current response to the age rating questionnaire, the rating for each of your apps has been automatically updated to align with this new system and will be reflected on Apple devices running beta versions of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26.

The updated age rating system adds 13+, 16+, and 18+ to the existing 4+ and 9+ ratings. Age ratings are assigned to each country or region and may vary based on region-specific suitability standards.

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Jul 21

This worked for me and was a weird experience: New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes. dynomight.net/colors/

New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes

Can optical illusions take you outside the human color gamut?

dynomight.net

1 2

Reposted by Marc Edwards

bjango.com @bjango.com · Jul 21

Pinwheel 1.6 is out! Colour format is now remembered per-colour, which means you can use hex values for sRGB colours and oklch() for Display P3, if you want. bjango.com/mac/pinwheel/

A screenshot of Pinwheel 1.6’s UI, showing lots of pretty colours.

1 1 4

Marc Edwards @marc.bjango.com · Jul 18

1976 American Bicentennial symbol speedrun.

1 1 10