09JUN2024

Happy Sunday, everyone! Welcome to the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION of the report! I sincerely thank everyone who has taken the time to read this weekly missive, send feedback, and share it with friends and family. It’s been a blast working on it. As I head into the next year, I’d like to ask for your feedback so I can make sure I’m bringing my A-game for you all, and so I can give you all a little something back in exchange. I’ve set up a very short (~1 minute) survey, which includes the option to provide your mailing address if you’d like me to send you some Hiro Report Anniversary Edition stickers! (While supplies last.) Fill out the survey here.

On to the good stuff—

• 🎥 Kino - Pro Video for iPhone - I’ve mentioned before my love of Halide] for complex iPhone photos. Now, the team behind Halide has released their take on a beautifully crafted, manual control video app, and it’s dreamy. I particularly like their integration of real-time color grading features (LUTs), which let you achieve the “look” you’re going for in-camera while shooting, while still preserving the raw LOG video details for later editing.
• 📱 Anker Grip Case for iPhone - I’ve had at least one model of iPhone every year since they were first released and have tried A LOT of cases over the years. There are some great ones out there—I really like the cases from Peak Design and Moment. That said, I’ve ditched both and am all in on this new Anker case. It’s relatively thin but strong, with a small ring that unfolds for extra grip and rotates to serve as a kickstand in either landscape or portrait orientations. The real win is that you can both do MagSafe charging through the ring and it features extra strong magnets that allow you to attach your phone to any sufficiently metallic surface. I’ve attached mine to the fridge while cooking, to the squat rack while working out, and to an airport rail while waiting for a flight.
• 📆 Up Ahead App - With Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference coming up next week (aka Nerd Christmas), I was reminded of how much I like and appreciate this little iOS app that lets you see how many days remain until dates/times of your choosing. I have it set up to show how many days until WWDC, key family birthdays, major holidays, etc. Is this essential information? No, but it’s fun to see, and the fun design of the app makes it enjoyable to check via widgets on my home screen or in the app itself.
• 🚀 The Lunacy of Artemis - Maciej Cegłowski writes a lot (his site’s tagline is “brevity is for the weak”), and he often goes DEEP on what should be very dull topics like infrastructure. Somehow, instead of being dry academic treatises, he makes the subjects fun to read about. This past month, he turned his sights on NASA’s Artemis program to return American astronauts to the Moon. While an analysis of government contracting failures and budgetary bureaucracy should be a snooze fest, I was laughing (and, at times, ruefully sobbing) through this epic ~8,000-word essay.
• 💮 Portland Stamp Company - With a grandiose sweep of the hat to Ben Brown over on Mastodon for surfacing this, I fell in love this week with the idea of getting vintage poster stamps made. These stamps have no financial or postal value whatsoever, but they are a beautiful vintage throwback and would be super fun to throw onto letters just to confuse the postman.