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Notes, mostly on things that broke.

Platform engineering, cloud-native in practice, applied AI and shipping products solo. Occasional, but hopefully useful.

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elsewhere

Published elsewhere.

11 Sept 2026

HackerNoon

The Best Paragraph in My App Review Notes Was the First One I Deleted

I published my App Store review notes in full, then deleted a third of them four days later. The paragraph that worked best was the first to expire.

#app-review #app-store-connect #ios Read on HackerNoon ↗

09 Sept 2026

HackerNoon

Apple Rejected My App Because Its Buy Button Was Too Hard to Find

Rejected under 2.1(b) for an in-app purchase that worked. Every layer of the stack was healthy; the reviewer simply could not find the Buy button.

#app-review #iap #ux Read on HackerNoon ↗

02 Sept 2026

HackerNoon

I Gave an On-Device LLM a Search Tool. It Ignored It and Made Up Data Instead

I handed Apple's on-device model a Spotlight search tool. It never called it, invented two snippets that do not exist, and twenty answers in a row passed.

#on-device-ai #swift #rag Read on HackerNoon ↗

01 Sept 2026

HackerNoon

Can You Give a Hackathon Judge a Free Unlock Before You Submit? No, and Here Is the Exact 409

Fingertips' 14-day trial could expire during Shipaton judging. Apple's approval process made every alternative access route harder than expected.

#shipaton #iap #app-store-connect Read on HackerNoon ↗

20 Aug 2026

HackerNoon

One Early Return Turned My 14-Day Trial Into a Free Licence

One launch with no network turned my 14-day RevenueCat trial into an unlimited licence. The cause, why my second safety net failed too, and how to test yours.

#revenuecat #iap #testing Read on HackerNoon ↗