04OCT2026: A sweaty Victorian explorer

Happy Sunday, everyone!

This week I've been marveling at this perfect, fully functional recreation of Teenage Engineering's OP-1 Field that you can play in the browser, browsing vintage sofubi over at Vicious Fun, building my own Game Boy Color from a kit, and playing with some amazing X-Men-themed Tarot cards.

Note that some of the links in this issue of the Hiro Report are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.

On to the good stuff!

📷 FrameDrop: Camera Import for iOS - This is a buy-it-once $2.99 indie app that does one simple thing really well: plug in a USB camera or card reader, preview your shots, and pick exactly which RAW and/or JPEG files get pulled over into Apple Photos or a Files folder. You're probably thinking that you can do all of this wirelessly via your manufacturer's app. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just cannot get my phone to connect to my cameras, and the native Apple camera import is not that great either. It's nice to see developers making simple, effective utilities like this.

👾 Tapotron 2.0 for iOS - The creator of this charming, weird little app sent it to me to check out, and I've found it to be a ton of fun. It is essentially a fidget toy on your iPhone. You are presented with three different modes that all involve some sort of satisfying tapping mechanic — a board of tappable squares that make pleasing sounds, a series of retro arcade games that rely on tapping (like Space Invaders, Breakout, Snake, etc.), and a pocket loop machine with pads for layering drums, synth, bass, etc. Every time you tap anywhere in the app, it adds to a global tap counter, which is monitored by this cute robot. There are no ads, no subscriptions, just optional additional content like more retro games or loop machine sound banks that you can unlock with extra purchases.

☕ Breville Spiral Luxe Auto Pourover - Breville announced their first automatic pour-over machine this week, and it actually looks pretty great. It grinds and doses fresh beans, then swings a precision spout over the cone to trace the same slow spiral you'd make by hand with a gooseneck kettle. If you're in a hurry, you can push one button and pick a strength, or, if you want to nerd out, you can fine-tune your brew ratio, temperature, and the number of pours and pauses. Do I think that the ritual of making your own pour-over by hand is one of life's great delights? Absolutely. Does everybody in the world have the time/patience to do it every day? Absolutely not. For those folks, I think this could be an awesome pickup.

🖊️ Bolt Action Multi Pen by Bigidesign (Kickstarter) - I've bought a whole bunch of stuff from the dudes over at Bigidesign for years, and they once again have my wallet dabbing sweat from its brow like a Victorian explorer in a Cairo antiques market. This week they launched their umpteenth Kickstarter, this time for a titanium-bodied, bolt-action EDC multi-pen. You remember those sweet multi-pens with four different colored ink cartridges in them that you could click through? Well, this is the grown-up, expensive version of that. Super fidgety and awesome, and I am adding it to my Christmas wishlist.

🔠 72pt: Fonts for Designers - This is a cool indie app I found via the excellent Hulry newsletter that helps you break free from using the same handful of default fonts for all of your projects. It's a curated library of 700+ typefaces that you can browse, favorite, preview at different line heights and widths, etc. It's a remarkably nice app, with a fun swipe interface, and it's completely free for the core functions. For a one-time payment, you can unlock the ability to install fonts to your Mac from the app, get CSS snippets, and get suggested font pairings.

That's it for this week! May you discover a new flavor that keeps you coming back for more.