Maciej Szamowski

Senior marketer who codes. Building native Mac apps: @horacalendar and others. Sharing what works, what breaks, and the tiny details.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

I'm Maciej, a marketer who codes.

Building native Mac apps: @horaCalendar + Pixel Helper for Safari.

Here I share what works, what breaks, and the tiny details along the way. Code, design, marketing, and the occasional rabbit hole.

https://t.co/UqBXuVBydK

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@danburonline @NotionCalendar @NotionHQ What's been breaking for you? Curious if it's sync or the app itself.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@snake2022 Those shadows in the caves 🤌

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

As someone who writes software, the part of Gears of War: E-Day that broke my brain isn't the gore. It's the lighting.

The Coalition and Epic pushed UE5's ray-traced MegaLights so far that thousands of shadow-casting lights run on a 2020 Xbox Series X. Plain old AMD RDNA 2.

Best-looking game of this generation.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@joeyonaraft Fair. That's the cost of the trick: MegaLights only samples a few lights per pixel and the denoiser fills in the rest, so noise shows up when it can't keep up. On Series X it held up better than I expected.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@ghrenato Which mode do you stick with?

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@Armxndx12 It’s really a masterpiece of clever programming, not just a use of Unreal tools but merging it with knowledge and skill.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@DanTheNoob Exactly, and on 2020 hardware.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@Zmidins Fair point, and respect for buying an Xbox for Gears. For me the lighting more than makes up for it.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@Armxndx12 RDNA 2 does have hardware ray accelerators, one per compute unit. They're just slower than newer GPUs. The trick in MegaLights is not tracing every light: it samples a few per pixel and lets the denoiser fill in the rest.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@lexrus Versus in my case, $ 250 usd for 1 install of a Mac app from Google Ads is a great result.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@AndrewBuilds98 I will keep it for ever :)

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

Apple rejected my app's name.

Then the subtitle "Works with Google Calendar".
Same guideline both times: 4.1(c).
Nine days and one formal appeal later, it got approved.

What happened, and what I'd do differently: https://t.co/lRhHMOuo2Y

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@AndrewBuilds98 It was appeal after the app is already in the store for 2 months.

[Marty O'Donnell @MartyTheElder]

This was Microsoft’s confidential international Halo research from October 2000. Only Jaime and I went to the presentation.

The first conclusion they came to was that we shouldn’t call it Halo.

And that point, I checked out and never listened to a word they said again.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@abue_ammar Here https://t.co/bQngqQ12gC, but honestly it is not a conversation it’s another system with 0101 possibilities.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@AndrewBuilds98 Works with Google Calendar - it’s on thankfully 😅

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@artizdat Welcome to real world.

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@enokk888 @Giulio6686 +1

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@idky1515 Review Board form - Resolution Center was not enough 🤣

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

Finally someone done it. I don’t know how it will work but if you’ll need some help @HiTw93 I’ll gladly contribute.

[Tw93 @HiTw93]

🦫 Mole is getting AI Cleanup & Care. Old sessions, worktrees and unused AI tools kept piling up on my Mac.

I'm building a way to review and clean them up, alongside caches and old versions. You choose which sessions to keep. Coming in the next release.
https://t.co/b7nt1wfON2

[Maciej Szamowski @szamski]

@Joshua_WD Thanks Josh – I thought that I’m loosing my mind to be honest after a while.