Ever since I experimented with the Swift server-side framework Vapor last year, I’ve been interested in actually seeing it in operation in the wild. I know there have been a number of companies, including Apple itself, that have started using it for their server-side applications, but it’s nice to see some concrete examples of it.

I’ve been following the official Swift blog for a while now, but I just recently discovered two posts about companies that are using Swift and Vapor at large scale to run their server-side applications.

The first of which is the syncing service for the very popular Mac/iOS productivity application, Things. I’ve played around with Things before in the past, but it’s too expensive for my basic needs, so I don’t use it. Nonetheless, it is still a very popular application and the fact that Swift and Vapor power its syncing backend is great news for those who are questioning the framework’s reliability or scalability.

You can read more about Things using Swift and Vapor here. The post also includes more information about their infrastructure in general.

The second usage I found recently was for the TelemetryDeck analytics service. Unlike Things, I had never heard of them, so I can’t say a whole lot about them, but they apparently have a massive amount of traffic that Swift and Vapor handle flawlessly.

You can read about it here.

Of course, something to keep in mind is that both of these posts are on the official Swift blog which is unlikely to report on any negative experiences that companies have had with server-side Swift. However, I still find it great that companies are having success with using Swift and Vapor in production environments with large traffic loads.

If you know of any other examples of server-side Swift in the wild, let me know. I’d love to read about it — good or bad!

A couple of months ago, I took my 11″ iPad Air M2 with me to the city of Regensburg to try working with it as a laptop replacement. Unfortunately, the tiny 11″ screen and the non-standard, smaller keyboard made it less than a stellar experience. However, I thought I could mitigate those problems while taking advantage of iPadOS 26’s new windowing feature by using a normal keyboard, mouse and a large external screen — essentially, turning it into a desktop replacement.

Equipment

My equipment list for this experiment isn’t as exciting as it was for the laptop replacement experiment because I just used my usual desktop accessories:

• Logitech MX Keys keyboard
• Apple mouse
• LG widescreen monitor that supports USB-C

Normally, I use a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse instead of the Apple mouse, but I’ve already used up all three device connections that it supports, so I had dig out my old Apple mouse. Otherwise, the most important part was the monitor with USB-C support. With that, I could just plug my iPad in and it not only activated external display mode, but importantly, it also charged.

My Experience

I know that the iPad is limited as to what it is capable of doing primarily due to the limitations of iPadOS. Development is nearly impossible on it which already means it’s not a viable desktop replacement for me full-time. However, I also write a lot, so I thought the best way to test it was to do some writing.

On my Mac, I use Pages anyway and most of it gets saved to iCloud Drive. As such, writing in Pages on the iPad means there isn’t really much of a change of workflow. I already knew that from when I tried using my iPad as a laptop replacement, but what I didn’t count on what the severe limitations I ran into when using the mouse and keyboard.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that iPad apps are not optimized for them. That didn’t surprise me at all, but what did surprise me was just how limited it would be. Even first party-applications like Pages were severely restricted. For example, there is no way to correct a misspelled word with the mouse and keyboard. You have to use the touch screen to tap on the word that is underlined in red and then you get the popup menu with the spelling suggestions. There is absolutely not way to replicate that functionality with the mouse and keyboard which means I had to drag Pages from my big screen down to the iPad’s touch screen to use it — not a good experience at all.

Also, for some reason, forward delete doesn’t seem to work at all on the iPad. A full-size Mac keyboard has its own forward delete key and on the smaller Mac keyboards (such as on the MacBooks), you use fn+delete. Neither of those worked on the iPad at all which made trying to edit text much more tedious.

Even worse, though, were third-party apps. For example, I tried watching a YouTube video using the YouTube app. I could click on a video, but couldn’t exit it. There was literally no way to leave the video or access buttons like “Save” or “Like”. It just didn’t work at all. Again, I had to drag the app down to my iPad’s screen and use the touch interface.

The worst issue I kept encountering, though, was that the iPad would regularly crash entirely. As in, both screens would go black and there would be a loading spinner on the iPad’s screen that lasted for several seconds before I could use it again… except all of the apps I had open were closed. That happened with startling frequency even with only three of my most-used apps open: Mail, Safari and Pages. So much for windowed multitasking.

After this happened four times in a half an hour, I gave up on the experiment and went back to my Mac.

Conclusion

Needless to say, I won’t be using my iPad as a desktop or laptop replacement anytime soon. After the experiment with trying to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, I went into this one less than optimistic. Unfortunately, my pessimism was confirmed by the experience.

I find it really disappointing that, despite the improvements Apple made to desktop mode in iPadOS 26, it still doesn’t even come close to being a viable, reliable option. Frankly, my iPad with its M2 processor is several times more powerful than my old Intel MacBook Pro, but the software cripples it to the point of irrelevance.

The idea of having a truly all-in-one, portable device is extremely appealing to me. I love using my iPad to read my RSS feeds, eBooks, articles online, magazines, etc which is what I primarily use it for. While I have an Apple Pencil, I rarely use it to take notes or draw anything. Unfortunately, unless Apple makes some major changes to iPadOS, it’s just going to remain a glorified electronic reader for me.

As some of you may have noticed, my websites keep going down and are not reachable for hours at a time. I’ve been having some stability issues with my server and, of course, it always happens over night German time which is why it takes me hours to get to it. I only see it when I get up in the morning.

Ubuntu has been killing the Apache and MariaDB services due to out-of-memory issues despite my monitoring reporting RAM usage only reaching 20% of the server’s full capacity. However, I have discovered that there is a massive spike in traffic during that time and I suspect it’s due to bots. I still need to confirm my theory though.

In the meantime, I’ve reconfigured the Apache and MariaDB services to automatically restart when they die. That should at least solve the immediate problem of my websites being unreachable for hours at a time. I could have sworn that I’d already set them to automatically restart, but apparently not. Oh well.

I’m excited to announce that ScratchBook is now available as a free download on the Mac App Store!

If you are interested in downloading it, you can visit its page on the Mac App Store.

I’m especially excited about this release because it is the first time I’ve published anything on any app store and because it’s a much needed update to the original ScratchPad whose Objective C codebase dates back to Mac OS X Tiger.

Unfortunately, ScratchBook is still waiting for review. Apparently, it’s tough to review a simple application. Most likely though, it just doesn’t have much priority. It’s a small, free application from an unknown developer that Apple isn’t going to make any money from.

I submitted it for review on Tuesday, March 3rd. According to the email I received from Apple confirming its submission, the average approval time for 50% of submitted apps is 24 hours and for 90%, it’s 48 hours:

Apparently ScratchBook falls within that 10% where it takes much longer. I have no explanation for this as I have received absolutely not communication from Apple since its submission. No change in status, no emails, no notifications, deafening silence.

In any case, I’ll post again here when it’s been approved or denied.

Recently, I’ve been posting quite a bit about my project, ScratchBook (formerly ScratchPad). Just today, I submitted it to the Mac App Store for review and I anxiously await the results. However, I haven’t been content to just stop with just releasing a single app.

Instead, I’ve been working on a small software entity I’ve dubbed “Haunted House Software.” Obviously, it’s a play on my interest in horror, ghosts and, well, haunted houses. While it is not a legal entity (yet), I do intend to use the name to release not only ScratchBook, but also a couple of other apps I’ve been working on. Maybe someday I’ll turn it into a proper company, but for now, I’m content just to use it as a collective for my apps.

I’ve spent most of my afternoon finishing up a website for it which you can find at www.hauntedhousesoftware.com. Conveniently, I just shut down my horror blog, Haunting Alex, which meant I could reuse some of the styling and images. I happened to really like the logo I made for the blog, so I reused it for the Haunted House Software:

There will be more announcements coming because I’ve got big plans. However, I do first have to actually sit down and finish up releasable versions of the other apps I’ve been working on. Unlike ScratchBook, they are not only for Mac, but also for iOS and iPadOS.

As always, I’ll post them here on my blog.

Haunted House Software Links

• Website: https://www.hauntedhousesoftware.com
• GitHub: https://github.com/Haunted-House-Software

I’m excited to announce that I just submitted my very first app for review to the Mac App Store! Hopefully, all goes well and ScratchBook will be available for free soon. Of course, I’ll post about it when it is available to download.

As you may have noticed, I did decide to rename ScratchPad to ScratchBook in order to better distinguish it from another application in the Mac App Store called Scratchpad. I wrote about it in more detail here.

In my opinion, the most tedious part was preparing the images and the text for the application description. This is the description I went with:

Take notes, keep them organized. ScratchBook is a free, simple, easy-to-use, multi-page scratchpad application for macOS.

ScratchBook is version 2.0 of a small application that used to be called ScratchPad. This version is a complete rewrite from the ground up using modern macOS technologies such as SwiftUI. It runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and supports modern macOS features such as Dark Mode.

Features:

• Jot things down quickly and simply: no choosing folders, adding tags or any other distractions.
• Multiple pages allow you to just add a new one when you need a new note. Your existing notes stay safe.
• ScratchBook takes advantage of macOS’s built-in rich text capabilities. You can change fonts, colors, add images, make lists, and so much more.
• Automatic saving.
• Notes are saved in TextEdit-compatible .rtfd files which can be stored anywhere on your Mac or iCloud.
• You can keep ScratchBook above all other windows for easier note-taking.
• You can make ScratchBook as transparent as you’d like to see what’s behind it while taking notes.
• Export individual notes as TextEdit-compatible .rtfd files.
• Import all your notes from ScratchPad 1.0.
• Full support for Liquid Glass, including both dark and light modes.
• Free and open source.

And, of course, here are the images:

As a little easter egg, I used a section of the default wallpaper from Mac OS X Tiger as my background for these images in a nod to ScratchPad first being released for Tiger about twenty years ago.

It will certainly be interesting to see whether the application will be accepted or not. As always, I will keep you up-to-date here on my blog.

Since my last post, I discovered a video of a live demo of ElementaryUI in action. I can highly recommend watching it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmQ881sOTIc

The project has really piqued my interest, but I haven’t had time to try it out yet. It’s high on my priority list, however, as I’m really excited to see what it’s capable of.

You can read more about the project on their website.

Here is a simple overview of what is new:

• Real-time collaboration
• “Notes” for individual blocks (like comments in a Word document)
• New Abilities API for AI
• The admin area is getting a new design
• New blocks for breadcrumbs, etc
• Better responsive editing for block-based content

You can find a more detailed write-up of the features here.

Unfortunately, the new release is making WordPress even more bloated than it already was with features I absolutely do not need. The only thing that might benefit me is the redesign for the admin area.

When I chose WordPress for this blog in 2007, it was a lean publication platform that focused on individual blogs: hence, the name. Over time, the focus has shifted from publishing to more of a full-fledged CMS with visual block editing and now, collaboration tools and AI.

Simple, individual bloggers like me have been entirely forgotten about and are being left in the dust. There haven’t been any new features or improvements that focus on what WordPress was originally supposed to be for many, many years.

I’ve written about my desire to replace WordPress several times in the past couple of years (for example, here, here and here), but have never actually gotten around to it. There have been many attempts made at writing a custom CMS tailored exactly to my needs. I’ve also attempted to create an application that just simply skips the CMS aspect altogether and uses a file-system based solution with Markdown files. I’ve gotten close to finishing both, but have never actually finished the transition. Primarily, that is because WordPress still works just well enough to keep me lazy.

I’ve also looked into alternatives like Ghost and ClassicPress which are both very good options. ClassicPress is a fork of WordPress that has been stripped of its bloat and focuses on blogging much like what WordPress was originally intended to be — which is actually exactly what I’m looking for. Ghost is an entirely different approach to blogging and its entire focus is on publication — also exactly what I need.

When I first launched my now-defunct horror blog, Haunting Alex, I originally wanted to use Ghost. Not only was the name appropriate, but I thought it would be great to try it. However, Ghost’s system requirements are pretty strict in that it assumes you have nginx and MySQL 8 instead of Apache and MariaDB which is my current setup. I’ve seen that it might work with Apache and MariaDB, but I like stability and not “might work” since that tends to break with updates. So, I abandoned it and went back to WordPress.

At the time, I didn’t know about ClassicPress yet, unfortunately, and I probably would have tried that instead. Next time, I will definitely give it a shot though. I may even attempt to move one of my existing blogs to it since they offer a WordPress plugin that will convert the WordPress instance to a ClassicPress instance without any hassle. That is the advantage of being a fork of WordPress, I suppose.

In any case though, enough rambling from me. WordPress is heading in a direction that is divergent from what I require and if I can overcome the laziness-inducing “it still works just well enough,” I think I will move on to another platform that is more tailored to my needs, whether that is a custom solution or not.

In my free time this past weekend, I’ve been working on finalizing a few convenience features and fixing a sandbox bug I’m really glad I caught before releasing ScratchPad 2.0 to the public. Otherwise, I’ve been testing quite a bit and am very happy with how it’s currently running.

However, one thing I discovered is that a quick search on the App Store shows that there are already two applications called “Scratchpad” (see screenshot above). While the casing is different (Scratchpad vs ScratchPad), it’s essentially still the same name. So the question now is whether I should rename my application.

Many years ago, before Apple Notes existed, I started work on a much more expansive version of ScratchPad that would have essentially had the same features as Apple Notes. I abandoned it because, well, it was sherlocked before I was even far enough along to release it.

That project I dubbed “ScratchBook” which seems like it might be a fitting new name for ScratchPad. Searching for “ScratchBook” in the App Store didn’t return any results, so I may end up going with that.

Even if I decided not to rename it, Apple still may reject the submission due to other apps already having the same name. I may try it anyway and see what happens. Or I might rename it so that it’s easier to search for and find.

What do you think about it?

I finally bit the bullet and moved my blog, Haunting Alex, to this one. It’s something I’ve been kicking around doing for a while as you’ll know if you’ve read any of my earlier update posts.

I set up redirects so that the old links to the posts will still work. That said, I didn’t move all of the pages or the stories section because it was a lot of work to maintain and was actually a hurdle to writing book reviews since it required me to find extra images, links and book information. It was tedious to maintain. Without it, I can more freely write book reviews which I’m looking forward to.

You can find all of the imported posts in the Horror section and all of my book reviews in the Books section.

I have some unbelievable news for anyone who has used my basic note-taking program for Mac called ScratchPad. I have a more or less final build of version 2.0. The last time I attempted a version 2.0 of ScratchPad was over ten years ago. You can see my post about it from 2014 on my blog here.

The only question yet to clarify is whether I’m going to distribute it online or via the App Store. I’m thinking the App Store because then I don’t have to worry about implementing an update mechanism with Sparkle as is the case for the current version.

I released the original ScratchPad 1.0 in 2008 for Mac OS X Tiger. At the time, I wrote it using Objective C. ScratchPad 2.0 is a complete rewrite from the ground up using Swift and SwiftUI. You can have both ScratchPad 1.0 and 2.0 installed at the same time and you can also import notes from 1.0 into 2.0, although due to Apple’s sandbox policies, you have to do it manually. I made it as easy as possible and there are in-app instructions on how to do it. It’s a non-destructive import which means your old notes are only copied and not moved so there is no risk of data loss.

In any case, here are some screenshots to prove it’s actually real:

It has exactly the same capabilities as the old ScratchPad using macOS’s built-in rich text editor. However, since I am using modern SwiftUI with Liquid Glass, it does require macOS 26 Tahoe. Older versions of macOS aren’t supported. It will be a universal application that will support both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

Also, I now belong to the Apple Developer Program which means that, unlike ScratchPad 1.0, the new version will be certified and can run without any tricks. That is also why I’m considering using the App Store to distribute it.

I’m planning on testing thoroughly over the weekend and will hopefully be able to fully release it next week.

As with ScratchPad 1.0, the new version is also open source. You can view the source code on GitHub:

• 2.0: https://github.com/eiskalteschatten/ScratchPad
• 1.0: https://github.com/eiskalteschatten/ScratchPad-v1