Things we're writing about.
Notes from Remiam — latest tech, applied AI, hardware, live broadcast, design systems. What we're testing, building, and paying attention to.
Apple Silicon, five years on: what we'd buy now.
Five years since WWDC 2020. M-series chips are now in every Mac and most of the iPads. The studio runs on them. Here's the configuration matrix we use when we're sizing a new machine for the team.
2026
2 notes- 10 Feb 2026→
Apple Silicon, five years on: what we'd buy now.
Five years since WWDC 2020. M-series chips are now in every Mac and most of the iPads. The studio runs on them. Here's the configuration matrix we use when we're sizing a new machine for the team.
- 22 Jan 2026→
Form design is the conversion feature you forgot to build.
Every system has a form. Most of them are bad. Here's what we've learnt shipping forms that people actually finish.
2025
13 notes- 2 Dec 2025→
NativeScript vs React Native, revisited: where we landed.
Seven years on from our 2018 comparison, the landscape's moved. Capacitor showed up. React Native shipped a new architecture. NativeScript is quieter but alive. Here's the current call.
- 14 Oct 2025→
AI in client systems: building with it, not around it.
Clients in 2025 don't ask us 'should we use AI?'. They ask us where it goes, what it costs to run, and what it can't do safely. Here's the answer we've been giving.
- 10 Sept 2025→
Stripe is winning the SaaS infrastructure war.
We've shipped on every payment provider that matters. Stripe keeps quietly taking territory. Here is what they got right, the full comparison matrix, where Paddle / LemonSqueezy / GoCardless still earn their keep, and the decision tree we use on every new SaaS.
- 4 Sept 2025→
3D TVs: the trend that died very, very quietly.
Every TV had it in 2012. Every TV stopped having it by 2017. A short fond elegy for a feature that solved nothing, that briefly cost everyone an extra £200, and that nobody quite remembers being asked about.
- 12 Aug 2025→
Twenty-five years of browsers: where we are now.
From Netscape's collapse to Chrome's dominance. Edge's two lives. Firefox's slow decline. Brave, Arc, and the niche browsers that matter more than their market share. The state of the web's most important software in 2025.
- 8 Jul 2025→
Cookie banners, consent, and the lazy compromise we don't recommend.
Nobody loves cookie banners. The lazy version — accept-everything, hidden reject button — is also the version regulators love to fine. There is a middle path that protects users, satisfies regulators, and quietly improves conversion. Here it is.
- 12 Jun 2025→
BlackBerry: the keyboard empire that built the modern phone.
Push email, a clicky keyboard, and a trackball. Before the iPhone made all of it obsolete, BlackBerry made enterprise mobile a real category. Some affection for the device that taught the iPhone what to copy.
- 4 Jun 2025→
Nuxt vs Next, revisited: seven years later.
We wrote this comparison in 2018. Nuxt and Next have both shipped two major versions, an entire rendering model shift, and a complete rethink of how data fetching works. Time to revisit.
- 8 Apr 2025→
Headless CMS vs WordPress, revisited in 2025.
Three years after we wrote about WordPress 6, the headless landscape has matured. Strapi, Sanity, Directus, Nuxt Studio. The answer is different now — and the criteria are clearer.
- 25 Mar 2025→
Why we still write CSS in 2025.
Tailwind is on every project. Styled-components died quietly. CSS-in-JS is mostly gone. And yet our team still writes hand-rolled CSS in places — here's why.
- 4 Mar 2025→
Rebuilding our design system on Nuxt UI 3 and Tailwind 4.
We've been on Tailwind since v0.x. We've been on Nuxt UI since the early days. The 2025 jump to v3 / v4 was bigger than expected — and worth it. Here is the migration walk-through, the @theme approach, and the patterns we ended up with.
- 18 Feb 2025→
Five years of eye tracking in user research.
We set up our first Tobii rig in 2018. Half a decade later, the gear is better, the methodology is sharper, and the findings still surprise us every cycle.
- 9 Jan 2025→
iPod Nano: the seven-generation product nobody could pin down.
Apple shipped seven Nano generations across eight years and never quite settled on what it was. A tall thin scroll-wheel, then a watch face, then a tall slim square. Each version was confident and obsolete.
2024
12 notes- 2 Dec 2024→
Remote work, five years on: what actually stuck.
March 2020 sent every studio home. Five years later the dust has settled and the verdict is clearer than the discourse suggests. Here is what stuck, what didn't, and how we now work.
- 4 Oct 2024→
Nintendo 64: the strangest controller that ever made sense.
Three handles. A trident in beige. An analog stick before anyone else shipped one. And a game library that defined what 3D could feel like. Some thoughts on a console that doesn't quite have an heir.
- 18 Sept 2024→
View Transitions: the smoothest thing the web shipped this year.
Multi-page transitions that feel like a native app. Element-to-element morphs across navigations. The View Transitions API quietly became one of the best browser features in a decade — and replaces three libraries with twenty lines of CSS.
- 30 Aug 2024→
Edge installations: when on-prem is a feature, not a compromise.
Some systems belong on the edge. The cloud-first reflex is wrong more often than the industry will admit. Here is the framework we use to decide, the hardware we deploy, and the conversation we always have with clients before specifying.
- 22 Aug 2024→
iPod Shuffle: music without a screen.
The most committed product in Apple's history. No screen, no menus, no playlists in the usual sense. Just press play and accept what comes next. A meditation on doing less.
- 18 Jun 2024→
Copilot+ PCs and the ARM Windows moment.
Microsoft just launched Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon X chips. The hardware is genuinely competitive with Apple Silicon. The software still has work to do — but the platform is real this time.
- 14 May 2024→
The M4 iPad Pro is the most interesting iPad in a decade.
Apple just put their newest, fastest chip in a tablet — months before it's appeared in any Mac. The hardware story is genuinely strange. The software story is more familiar than it should be.
- 15 Mar 2024→
The Nokia 3310, and the phone that survived everything.
A week of battery life, a screen the size of a postage stamp, and the ringtone that defined a generation. Some affection for the phone that taught us hardware doesn't have to be fragile.
- 25 Feb 2024→
Apple Vision Pro: should your clients care?
Apple shipped its $3,500 headset this month. The reviews are mixed. The hype is real. Most clients shouldn't build for it yet — here's the framework for deciding.
- 15 Feb 2024→
Core Web Vitals: what actually moves the needle.
LCP, CLS, INP — three letters that decide whether your site ranks. Here is what they really measure, what fixes them in practice, the thresholds Google uses, and the audit we run on every production site every quarter.
- 4 Feb 2024→
How Apple Silicon actually works.
Unified memory, performance and efficiency cores, the Neural Engine, the media engine. An honest walk through what Apple's chips do differently — and why it matters for the kind of work we do.
- 30 Jan 2024→
Chrome Manifest V3: what just changed, what just broke.
Google is enforcing Manifest V3 across every Chrome extension. Five years after the proposal, the transition is real, painful, and uneven. Here's the practical state of it.
2023
9 notes- 12 Dec 2023→
Adobe XD is gone. Figma was right.
Adobe quietly removed XD from Creative Cloud last month. Four years after we wrote a head-to-head, the answer turned out to be all of one of them. Some reflections.
- 26 Oct 2023→
Snapdragon X Elite: Qualcomm is finally serious about laptops.
Qualcomm announced the X Elite this month. It's the first ARM Windows chip with believable single-thread performance. Apple Silicon now has a real competitor — eventually.
- 10 Oct 2023→
Meta Quest 3: mixed reality lands properly.
Full-colour passthrough. A real Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2. Pancake lenses. The Quest 3 doesn't replace the Quest 2 — it opens a new category. And it sets up an interesting collision with Apple in February.
- 21 Sept 2023→
Why we mostly use Supabase now.
Postgres, auth, storage, realtime, edge functions — all in one place, all open-source, all running on infrastructure we can leave at any moment. After two years of production deployments, here's the honest cost-benefit and the patterns we've landed on.
- 13 Sept 2023→
Bun 1.0 is interesting (but not for production yet).
Bun hit 1.0 this week. It's fast, it's ambitious, and it covers a lot of surface. We're keeping an eye on it without rewriting anything yet.
- 25 Jul 2023→
Google Tag Manager: set it up once, properly.
Most GTM containers we inherit are a graveyard of duplicate pixels, broken triggers, and tags that fire on the wrong pages. Here is the discipline that prevents that — the setup we apply, the conventions we enforce, the audits we run, and what we now refuse to put in GTM at all.
- 6 Jun 2023→
The Apple Silicon transition is complete.
Apple just launched the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra. Three years to the month after the WWDC 2020 announcement, every Mac in the lineup is now on Apple's silicon. The Intel era is officially over.
- 18 Apr 2023→
Computer vision in retail, without the creep.
On-premise anonymised footfall pipelines, why the data should never leave the building, and how to talk to a client about it without scaring them off.
- 22 Feb 2023→
Container queries are finally here.
Twenty years of media-query-driven responsive design. Now CSS components can size themselves by their container, not the viewport. Here is why this matters more than the spec sounds, with examples, browser support data, and the patterns we now default to.
2022
5 notes- 12 Sept 2022→
Search Console: the part everyone skips.
Most clients have Google Search Console set up, then ignore it. The signal in there is the difference between a site that grows and a site that flatlines. Here is what to actually look at, what to do with the data, and the reports that matter most.
- 30 Aug 2022→
Astro 1.0: islands for content-first sites.
Astro hit 1.0 this week. It is unusual in a way most frameworks aren't: it does less by default, and that turns out to be the point.
- 20 Jun 2022→
Internet Explorer is dead. Now what?
After twenty-seven years, Microsoft has officially retired IE. Every web developer's worst client requirement is gone. Here's what we get to delete, and what to use the headroom on.
- 28 May 2022→
WordPress 6 and the Gutenberg question.
WordPress hit version 6 last week, and the block-editor era is now firmly the default. We still ship WordPress sites. We are also more careful about when to.
- 14 Mar 2022→
Vue 3 and the Composition API, two years in.
Composition over options. After 24 months in production across half a dozen systems, here is what worked, what hurt, what we would do differently, and the composable patterns we now reach for by default — with real code from real projects.
2021
4 notes- 8 Nov 2021→
M1 Pro and Max: the Mac for serious work is back.
Apple just launched the redesigned MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. After four years of fan-noise complaints and butterfly-keyboard apologies, the Pro line is genuinely Pro again.
- 8 Oct 2021→
Why we use Nuxt for almost everything we ship.
Nuxt isn't trendy. It's just the right shape for the systems we tend to build — operational, content-heavy, SSR-first, with realtime in the corner. After 30+ production projects, here is the full case, the patterns we default to, and the brief categories where we still reach for something else.
- 22 Jun 2021→
Shipping a Nuxt PWA straight to Google Play.
Trusted Web Activities turned our Totton Timber PWA into an installable Android app — without a single line of Kotlin. Here's how, and when it's worth it.
- 9 Mar 2021→
SEO is a feature, not an afterthought.
Most bespoke systems we inherit have SEO bolted on at the end. They never recover. Here's what shipping SEO-first actually looks like, the architectural decisions it forces, and the audit we now run on every new project.
2020
7 notes- 28 Dec 2020→
Variable fonts in production: design system breakthrough.
One file, infinite weights, smaller payloads. Variable fonts have been theoretically excellent for three years. We finally shipped one in production — here's what happened.
- 15 Dec 2020→
The Apple Silicon transition: the studio just got faster.
We've been running M1 MacBook Pros for three weeks. Builds are faster, fans are silent, battery actually means something. Here is what it changes for a small studio, the real benchmarks, the gotchas, and the buy-now recommendation per role.
- 30 Nov 2020→
When the Christmas tree pings an API.
Westfield needed Santa during a Covid Christmas. We built a WebRTC video-call platform — and let kids pick the tree lights live with an Arduino on the other end. Here is the technical walk-through, the production challenges, and the lessons we still apply to every hardware brief.
- 19 Oct 2020→
Meta Quest 2: standalone VR is finally good enough.
$299. No PC. No wires. 4K-class display. Hand tracking out of the box. The Quest 2 is the first VR headset we'd actually recommend to a non-enthusiast — and it changes what we'll build.
- 24 Jun 2020→
WWDC 2020: Apple's silicon bet.
Apple just announced it is moving the Mac off Intel and onto its own chips. The keynote was confident. The two-year transition window is ambitious. Here is what it means for studios, for the laptop market, and for the next decade of computing — plus the transition history that explains why we think it works.
- 12 Apr 2020→
Building for the pandemic, in real time.
When every live event got cancelled, the brief changed overnight. Here's what we built when everyone needed to be in the same room without being in the same room — the architecture, the team rituals, the lessons that survived 2020.
- 26 Feb 2020→
What an eye-tracking lab teaches you about your product.
We started running our own usability sessions with a Tobii eye tracker eighteen months ago. The lessons changed how we design — here's what we got wrong, and what we now do on every project.
2019
7 notes- 26 Nov 2019→
A year of moving everything to TypeScript.
We made the call at the start of 2019: every new project, TypeScript. Every old project, gradual migration. Twelve months on, here's the verdict — what got better, what got harder, and the patterns we now recommend by default.
- 4 Nov 2019→
SwiftUI: Apple's declarative bet.
Apple just announced SwiftUI at WWDC. A declarative, cross-platform UI framework for the whole Apple ecosystem. The ambition is huge. The 1.0 is rough — and that's still the right call.
- 30 Oct 2019→
Next-gen consoles are coming. What does it mean for the web?
Sony and Microsoft have shown the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The hardware is impressive, but what we keep thinking about is the browser running on it. The living-room screen is about to become a real web target — and almost no brand site is ready.
- 8 Oct 2019→
Surface Pro X: ARM on Windows is here, almost.
Microsoft's first serious ARM laptop just shipped. The Snapdragon 8cx is fast, the battery is impressive, and the software story is exactly as broken as you'd expect.
- 19 Aug 2019→
Figma vs Adobe XD: a head-to-head from a working studio.
Adobe has thrown serious money at XD. Figma has thrown serious focus at design itself. We've run the same project through both this year — here's the verdict, the feature comparison, the pricing reality, and the recommendation we now give every client.
- 12 Jul 2019→
Valve Index: PC VR's high water mark.
Valve just shipped the most ambitious consumer VR headset yet. 144Hz displays, finger-tracking controllers, $1000 for the headset alone. Glorious for enthusiasts. Not for everyone else.
- 22 Apr 2019→
Dark mode is everywhere. Should every product ship one?
macOS Mojave shipped it. iOS 13 is about to. Android Q is on the way. Every client meeting now ends with 'and a dark mode'. Here is our answer when it does — and the design-system work that has to happen first if the answer is yes.
2018
7 notes- 5 Nov 2018→
USB-C on the iPad Pro. Finally.
Apple just put a real port on the iPad. After eight years of dongles and proprietary connectors, the implications are bigger than the announcement suggested — particularly for studios shipping installation work where the iPad has been quietly the most-used screen in the box.
- 30 Aug 2018→
Nuxt vs Next: the meta-framework decision in 2018.
Two frameworks. Two ecosystems. Same pitch — server-rendered, file-based, batteries included. After shipping production work in both this year, here's the head-to-head we keep coming back to and the decision tree we use on new briefs.
- 8 Jun 2018→
GDPR is law. Here's what we changed across every client site.
May 25, 2018. A two-year warning shot finally landed. We spent the last six weeks auditing every client system we own — here's the punch list, what it cost, and the architectural decisions every team should be making from here on.
- 26 Apr 2018→
React Native vs NativeScript: shipping cross-platform in 2018.
Two ways to write one app for iOS and Android. We've shipped real production work in both. Here's the head-to-head comparison, the decision tree we apply on every brief, and the real-project case study where we picked NativeScript and it paid off.
- 4 Apr 2018→
Where VR actually is, in 2018.
Two years after the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive launched, the 'year of VR' keeps being next year. Here is the state of consumer VR for studios actually shipping projects.
- 2 Mar 2018→
ARKit and the AR moment that almost arrived.
Apple shipped ARKit with iOS 11. Google shipped ARCore alongside. Suddenly there are hundreds of millions of AR-capable phones. The question every brand is asking is 'what should we do with it?'. The honest answer, after six months of testing: less than they think.
- 19 Feb 2018→
Figma is eating design (and it deserves to).
Sketch ruled UI design for five years. In the last twelve months we've watched Figma quietly become the default in every client project. Here's what changed, why it's working, and the practical migration playbook for studios still on Sketch.
2017
4 notes- 14 Nov 2017→
HomePod, Alexa, and the voice-UI moment.
Apple finally ships its smart speaker. Amazon has had Alexa for three years. Every brand we work with is asking about voice. After a year of building Alexa skills and watching client expectations evolve, here is the honest playbook.
- 13 Sept 2017→
The notch, Face ID, and the end of the home button.
Apple just shipped an iPhone with no home button, a screen interrupted by a black cutout, and a camera that unlocks the phone by looking at your face. Every product team needs to think about this week — and every web project we ship needs an audit.
- 18 Jul 2017→
Progressive Web Apps are real now.
Service workers, offline-first, installable web apps, push notifications. We've been quietly shipping PWAs in production for six months — here's what works, what doesn't, what we'd tell a client today, and where we think the platform is heading.
- 21 Mar 2017→
The Switch is a category, not a console.
Nintendo just shipped a hybrid handheld-TV-tablet thing and outsold every prediction. The interesting part isn't the hardware — it's what 'category creation' looks like up close, and what builders of any product should learn from the last three weeks.