Side Project Spotlight

Steve is back from a Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda just in time for the WWDC26 wrap-up, and Kotaro wastes no time YOLOing onto the macOS beta to demo Siri AI live. Things go sideways fast when Siri deletes Kotaro's Redfin emails instead of listing their subjects, sparking a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually means to ship AI features to everyday users. The Trio also maps out...

Recorded thirty minutes after the WWDC26 State of the Union keynote ended, The Trio delivers a hot-take reaction to everything Apple just announced. Steve makes his boldest claim yet: 2026 is the year the "Universal UI" era begins, anchored by a Siri demo that appeared to actually work in real time. Xcode quietly Sherlocked the Codex app, SwiftUI got reorderable containers and (finally)...

With WWDC26 just around the corner, The Trio burns off some Google I/O feelings before getting to the speculation they actually care about. Steve breaks down why AI-slopified search might be quietly destroying the Web's economic model, Aaron wonders what any of these agentic tools actually do right now, and Kotaro lays out a case for why this might finally be the year Siri stops being a punchl...

Steve finally fixed phillycocoa.org, and the journey from broken CircleCI pipelines and hijacked S3 buckets to a blazing-fast Cloudflare Pages site took one Side Project Saturday and an embarrassing number of Codex tokens. Then The Trio turns to the AI hype machine, and they're tired: tired of opaque token costs, tired of reviewing generated code that complicates everything it touches, and tired o...

Tim Cook is stepping down in September, and The Trio has plenty of thoughts on what the Ternus era means for Apple. Kotaro dives into his embedded systems rabbit hole (Raspberry Pis, ESP32s, and a Godot refresher), while Steve sounds the AI hype alarm, comparing the current frenzy to NFTs and the Metaverse, complete with a shoe company that somehow pivoted to GPU data centers on a $50M budget. Ste...

The Trio tests Google's new Gemma 4 model running locally on an iPhone and gets an instant wrong answer, which sets the tone for a sprawling conversation about AI hype, Anthropic's Mythos release, and the social media panic Steve dubs "mythos psychosis." Along the way, token maxing emerges as the new worst productivity metric, Kotaro reminds developers they could just do things t...

iOS 26.4 just dropped and Steve is thrilled that the keyboard finally works again. The Trio digs into the new Music app concerts feature (powered by Bands in Town, probably), which leads Steve into a passionate case for the local music scene, Guinness floats, and why authenticity matters more than ever in the age of AI-generated slop. From there, Kotaro floats a wild idea: what if Apple built thei...

The Trio declares this an AI-free episode and dives into Apple's latest hardware announcements. Kotaro, Steve, and Aaron break down the new MacBook Neo, its surprisingly capable A18 chip, aluminum build, colorful design, and its potential to expand the Mac market at just $600. Then Steve takes The Trio on a deep dive into his increasingly desperate search for the perfect external monitor, weig...

The Trio kick off with the rumors about Apple's March 4th event and the possible return of a budget 12-inch MacBook on an A18 chip, which leads to a very poorly researched price analysis and a pitch for a MacBook sock accessory. Steve and Aaron talk about how agentic-assisted coding at work has been mentally exhausting and how they miss actually writing code. The conversation covers why LLMs a...

In this episode, Alex Hillman, co-founder of Philadelphia's legendary coworking space Indy Hall, takes us through his journey building a sophisticated AI executive assistant using Claude Code. What started as a simple terminal experiment in October 2025 has evolved into a full production system that autonomously manages network diagnostics, email workflows, relationship tracking, and newslette...

The Trio meet to discuss two of the talks (ours!) from the recent in-person PhillyCocoa meetup called "Beyond the Simulator: Perspectives on Modern App Development" that took place on January 29 at the Vanguard offices in Philadelphia. This pod was recorded before the event due to scheduling, but we go into detail on what you missed now that it is the future (insert Spaceballs joke here)...

#103: 2026 Vibes We're back! In this season 6 premiere, Steve struggles to speak after being sick, but still manages to talk a lot about the current hype around Claude Code and Opus 4.5 and the "agentic" coding craze sweeping developer circles online right now. The Trio discuss Alex Hillman's amazing Claude Code wrapper personal assistant called "Andy." Kotaro makes som...

In this Season 5 finale, the Trio discuss ideas for next year's side projects and have a ton of laughs along the way. Have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year! Side Project Spotlight will return in 2026! ## Show Notes - Season 5 Finale! - Side Project Ideas for 2026 - Bento Fit Updates - https://bentofit.app - Tangent: Chat Gippity Joined the Chat - Server Side Swift Project - https://...

In this penultimate episode of the season, The Trio discuss some personal examples of software, hardware, and other technology that sparks joy. ## Show Notes - Tech that sparks joy - Kotaro: Design that inspires - Steve: Tools for creation - Aaron: Craftsmanship that sparks joy - Tech Mentioned - Modo - discontinued - After Effects - https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html - Affinity Tool...

Can you believe we made it to episode 100!? We're as incredulous as you. Join us as we "vibecast" a retrospective on our podcasting journey so far. ## Show Notes - Pod Retrospective - App #1 – KanjiLove watchOS app – Launched! - Pod Lore – Orange Balls - App #2 – Pickle Jar ToDo macOS app – Unfinished - Pre-Pod History: Big-O Style Robot Battle App Idea - Our claim to fame: #55: The...

It's been one week (at time of recording) since Bento Fit v1.0 was released and someone gave us money! Kotaro is recording from an undisclosed location, so in this quick episode, we discuss our week 1 metrics, how much this app cost to make, and what we want to do next to try to make Bento Fit more useful, more marketable, and hopefully, eventually, profitable. ## Show Notes - Bento Fit: The S...

We did it! Bento Fit v1.0 is live in the App Store! In this episode we engage in a retrospective about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the process. We learned a lot, that's for sure. ## Show Notes - Bento Fit v1.0 is out! - https://bentofit.app - Ship-a-ton submission - https://devpost.com/software/bento-fit - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - ## Good - LLM coding (50% good) - The design /...

As The Trio race to complete Bento Fit v1.0 in time to submit for the Shipaton hackathon, they pause to discuss the new iPhones, iOS 26, folding phone creases, and the TikTokification of UI interaction. ## Show Notes - iPhone 17 Event - iOS 26 RC - Bento Fit: Updates - Polishing continues - Removed watchOS and widgets - Bug fixes for app persistence - Bento Fit: Final Sprint - Kotaro: Onboarding -...

We are running out of time to finish our "Bento Fit" app before the Ship-a-ton deadline! This week, we go through what's left to be done and what we are cutting as we race to the finish line of v1.0. ## Show Notes - Apple September 9 Event - Bento Fit: The Story So Far - Bento Fit: Race to the Finish Line - What do we need to left to do - Monetization strategy - Finalize name - ASC d...

This is a short and sweet episode with some Bento Fit updates from Kotaro and Steve, plus some overly ambitious goal setting for next time! First up, Kotaro used the ChatGPT Xcode integration to prototype a welcome screen that sounds cool, but we can't see it because his iOS SDK was deleted! Then we review the latest version of our app icon as implemented in Icon Composer and talk about some o...

Kotaro's laptop burns hot as he gives his impressions of the iOS/macOS 26 public betas and life with ChatGPT inside Xcode. We also discuss dystopian nightmares about "AI," give some Bento Fit updates (Aaron has a PR!), and announce our participation in a cool new hackathon! ## Show Notes - It’s hot outside! - iOS/macOS 26 Public Beta impressions - Xcode 26 ChatGPT integration impress...

Once again, Steve "pair programmed" with Aider + Claude Sonnet 4 to further refactor BentoFit while drinking at Human Robot. Meanwhile, Kotaro has been again thinking about App Intents and the paradigm shift in app design they may portend. Then we get into some interesting discussions about how the combination of Apple's focus on App Intents and the "Universal UI" of LLMs m...

Work progresses on code name "Bento Fit" as Steve does some performance refactoring using Aider and Claude 4 Sonnet while Kotaro polishes up the iOS 26 UI changes. We also have a discussion on the trade-offs of using "AI" tools in programming and the importance of intellectual labor and little bit about what it means to be a "professional." ## Show Notes - BentoFit: T...

The Trio have played with iOS 26 and have thoughts about adapting to the new Liquid Glass paradigm as well as the real star of WWDC25, the Foundation Models Framework. ## Show Notes - Adapting to Liquid Glass - Foundations Model Framework - Azam Sharp Foundation Models Framework Course - https://azamsharp.teachable.com/p/getting-started-with-the-foundation-models-framework - Coupon code: PHILLY -...

The Trio give their hot takes after viewing the WWDC25 Keynote and Platforms State of the Union presentations. ## Show Notes - Keynote / SoTU Impressions - Liquid Glass / New Design Language - “macOS” on iPad - Xcode 26 - Foundation Models Framework / Spotlight - Visual Intelligence Intents - Realtime Language Translation - What Developers Should Be Excited About - Foundation Models Framework - Ga...