Thank you! It's been super freeing to work on it this way! If ... • Aaron Parecki

Steven https://pi.swb72.us/ • Oct 30
I am loving the updates that Aaron Parecki has been making to the Overland tracking app as a beta tester via Apple TestFlight. This is a good case study for using AI code tools alongside existing legacy code to add new features and clean up potential holes.

Can now use automations in Shortcuts to, for example, auto-start a car trip when my iPhone connects to CarPlay (I don't have one set to end the trip when it disconnects, because CarPlay sometimes disconnects and reconnects, and the pause is just long enough to convince Overland to end the trip). I'm looking for other ways to automate things like starting walking trips when starting an Outdoor Walk workout (or vice versa), &c.

Screen widget lets me see an active trip and end it from the home screen without needing to open the app.

Additional trip types, including running, e-bike, hiking, &c. (Although I somewhat jokingly suggest there should be one for amusement park ride—Disney World frequent flyer).

And to the idiot who saw fit to criticize the use of an AI tool to help write code—you're certianly welcome to go back to writing Assembler code if you like, have fun with it.
Thank you! It's been super freeing to work on it this way!

If it wasn't obvious before, I am definitely not good at iOS development, and I often dreaded needing to make updates when Apple added new APIs, so most of the time things would just never get done and it would be years between app updates.

And frankly, most of the recent iOS platform integrations are not terribly creative, they involve following Apple's docs on what to do, which it turns out is a great task to outsource to the giant statistics machines.

I hope it's clear that I am still driving the development of this with my Product hat on, and now I'm able to move much faster! This lets me focus on the fun part to me, which is to make the decisions about how the app works, and not have to get into the weeds on how Apple wants me to write the code this year.

Portland, Oregon • 44°F

Fri, Oct 30, 2026 8:34pm -07:00 #ai #llm #ios #overland

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