Empower Apps

Hosted by Leo Dion, Principal CEO and Swift Developer at BrightDigit

BusinessInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

211

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

About the show

An exploration of Apple business news and technology. We talk about how businesses can use new technology to empower their business and employees, from Leo Dion, founder of BrightDigit.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 24, 2026Episode 21148 min

Swift on Windows with Saleem Abdulrasool

Saleem Abdulrasool joins us to chat about bringing Swift to Windows. We get into server-side Swift, SwiftWin32, Swift's C++ interop, and how to get started yourself. Guest Saleem Abdulrasool compnerd (Saleem Abdulrasool) Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) - Fosstodon Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) / X Related Links Porting by a 1000 Patches: Bringing Swift to Windows (2019 LLVM Developers' Meeting) - YouTube Swift/Win32 - A Windows application framework for Swift - GitHub Swift/COM+ - GitHub Swift/WinMD - Windows Metadata Parser in Swift - GitHub Swift/WinRT - Swift Projections for WinRT - GitHub DXSample - Sample Program for DirectX 12 + Swift - GitHub vigil - A caffeinate-inspired power management tool for Windows - GitHub swift-winrt - Swift Language Projection for WinRT - The Browser Company swift-winui - Swift Language Bindings for WinUI3 - The Browser Company Install Swift on Windows - Swift.org Related Episodes Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Deconstructing Xcode with xTool with Kabir Oberai Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko Swift on Android with Marc Prud'hommeaux Swift, Server Side, Serverless with Sébastien Stormacq Swift Server Workgroup with Joannis Orlandos Swift Package Index with Dave Verwer and Sven Schmidt Backend Decisions with Mikaela Caron Chapters (00:00) - Why Swift on Windows (08:40) - Command Line Tools, PowerShell & WSL (16:35) - Server-Side Swift & Building Desktop Apps (24:46) - The History of Windows UI Frameworks (33:15) - Getting Started with Swift on Windows (41:32) - Interop, SwiftUI & Future Plans Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

July 12, 2026Episode 21050 min

Practical Agents with Donny Wals

Donny Wals returns to talk through a year of agentic coding. We go through how it's changed his architecture decisions, reviewing PRs he didn't write himself, managing tasks and context across parallel agents, and the gym-workout crash he fixed from his phone mid-set — plus where he still doesn't trust the agent: SwiftData migrations. Guest Donny Wals Donny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — Bluesky Donny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / X Donny Wals (@donnywalsdev) • Instagram photos and videos donny wals - YouTube Donny Wals (@donnywals@chaos.social) - chaos.social Donny Wals | LinkedIn Related Links Cursor - https://cursor.com Bitrise - https://bitrise.io Notion - https://notion.so Raycast - https://raycast.com Grill with Docs - https://www.aihero.dev/grill-with-docs Maxine - One Rep Max Tracker (Donny's workout app) - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/maxine-one-rep-max-tracker/id6615073254 GRDB.swift - https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift SundialKit (Leo's watch communication library) - https://github.com/brightdigit/SundialKit Fluent (Vapor's ORM) - https://docs.vapor.codes/fluent/overview/ NSPersistentCloudKitContainer - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coredata/nspersistentcloudkitcontainer Practical Core Data - https://practicalcoredata.com Practical Combine - https://practicalcombine.com Practical Swift Concurrency - https://practicalswiftconcurrency.com Related Episodes Independence Update Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham Actually Really Useful Practical Year - Part 2 with Donny Wals Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals Practical Entrepreneur with Donny Wals Practical Combine with Donny Wals Chapters (00:00) - The Agentic Coding Shift (15:55) - The Gym Crash Story (20:54) - Architecting for Agents (34:04) - Task & Issue Tracking (37:40) - Core Data vs. SwiftData Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

July 4, 2026Episode 2098 min

Independence Update

After almost 250 episodes, Leo gives an update on what he's working on and what he's interested in. From passive timer apps, static site generation, to sub repos and RSS feeds. Related Links WWDC 2026 & Celestra Celestra WWDC26: What's new in the Foundation Models framework WWDC26: Meet Core AI Bushel swift-build brightdigit/swift-build Introducing swift-build (blog post) Swift.org Nightly Toolchains At Least At Least brightdigit/SundialKit brightdigit/SundialKitStream brightdigit.com Website Upgrade brightdigit.com repo JohnSundell/Publish JohnSundell/ShellOut JohnSundell/Ink swiftlang/swift-subprocess swiftlang/swift-markdown kabiroberai/node-swift (NodeSwift) Tailwind CSS git-subrepo ingydotnet/git-subrepo Ben Scheirman Community & Outro Consultation (ZCal) Patreon Newsletter Donny Wals Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) Swift on Windows Related Episodes Actually Really Useful 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Milk Diary with Kaya Thomas Deconstructing Xcode with xTool with Kabir Oberai The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman Hacking with Ignite with Paul Hudson Now You Know What I'm Doing This Summer Chapters (00:00) - WWDC 2026 and Celestra (01:35) - swift-build (02:23) - AtLeast (05:26) - brightdigit.com (05:45) - git-subrepo (06:47) - Join the Community Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

June 25, 2026Episode 2081 hr 28 min

Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich

Software development has changed a lot. On today's episode, Joe Fabisevich talks about building with AI without falling into the trap of "work slop," why prompting is a communication skill, where Apple fits in, and Broadcast — his new Swift logging library for developers and AI agents. Guest Build.ms Joe Fabisevich :verified: (@mergesort@macaw.social) - Macaw-Social Joe Fabisevich (@mergesort.me) — Bluesky Github (@mergesort) https://www.threads.net/@mergesort fabisevi.ch Related Links Artifacts | Fabisevi.ch Supporting Markdown Search For LLMs AI (Without the Hype) Workslop Being A 1.5-10x Developer mergesort/Broadcast: Simple and composable logging for Swift apps, servers, and coding agents. AtLeast — Passive Timer for Apple Watch MonthBar - Track your month's progress Related Episodes 120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Actually Really Useful Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals Plinky with Joe Fabisevich ChatGPTovski with Kris Slazinski Chapters (00:00) - Work Slop (13:02) - Verifiable Tasks (25:51) - Building Agents (32:06) - Careers & Hiring (43:31) - Daily Setup (53:00) - WWDC 2026 (01:09:07) - AI Economics (01:20:33) - Broadcast Logging Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

June 18, 2026Episode 20759 min

120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz

Cihat Gündüz returns to break down everything from WWDC 2026. We go through Swift 6.4's quality-of-life wins, Apple turning Foundation Models into a full agentic harness, Xcode 27's agent and built-in skills, Device Hub, and where we land on the iPhone Fold. Guest Cihat Gündüz (@Jeehut) / X Cihat Gündüz (@Jeehut@iosdev.space) - iOS Dev Space Cihat Gündüz (@jeehut) on Threads FlineDev Related Links WWDCNotes My Top 5 AI Wishes for WWDC26 – FlineDev FlineDev/SiteKit: AI-first static site generator written in Swift QwenLM/Qwen3.6: Qwen3.6 is the large language model series developed by Qwen team, Alibaba Group. Related Episodes Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham Actually Really Useful Swift Toolkit with Natan Rolnik WWDC Notes with Cihat Gündüz Hacking with Ignite with Paul Hudson Chapters (00:00) - What's New in Swift & SwiftUI (09:09) - SwiftData (14:09) - Foundation Models (28:29) - Xcode 27 (38:09) - AI Costs & the "AI Apocalypse" (48:09) - iPhone Fold Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

June 9, 2026Episode 20640 min

Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham

Peter Witham joins us to talk about today's Platforms State of the Union. Is Apple Intelligence here? Is Liquid Glass here? Where's John Ternus? Guest Peter Witham - Developer, Podcaster, Streamer CompileSwift Podcast Peter Witham | LinkedIn Peter Witham - YouTube CompileDev - Twitch Peter Witham (@compileswift) • Instagram photos and videos CompileSwift | Facebook Peter Witham (@Compileswift@iosdev.space) - C.IM Peter Witham - Compileswift.com - Twitter Related Episode Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Actually Really Useful Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte v26.0 with Peter Witham Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko SOTU 2024 with Peter Witham WWDC Notes with Cihat Gündüz Chapters Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

June 5, 2026Episode 20547 min

Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos

Joannis Orlandos stops by to chat about WendyOS, an operating system for bringing Swift and AI to robots, drones, and edge devices. We get into running Swift on NVIDIA Jetson and Raspberry Pi hardware, the future of cross-platform Swift across Android, Windows, and Wasm, and somehow end up arguing about whether you should let LLMs format your code at all. Guest Joannis Orlandos Joannis Orlandos (@joannis@fosstodon.org) - Mastodon Joannis (Joannis Orlandos) Joannis Orlandos | LinkedIn Joannis Orlandos (@joanniso.bsky.social) • Bluesky WendyOS — The open-source OS for Physical AI Related Links Wendy Labs Inc. — GitHub WendyOS Documentation Swift on Server — Joannis Orlandos Hummingbird — Lightweight Swift web framework MLX — Apple's array framework for machine learning Swift Android Working Group — Swift Forums Build and Packaging Workgroup — Swift.org Swift Evolution Bringing Swift to Android — Goodnotes Related Episodes Swift Server Workgroup with Joannis Orlandos Swift on Android with Marc Prud'hommeaux Swift, Server Side, Serverless with Sébastien Stormacq Chapters (00:00) - What Is WendyOS (05:15) - Swift, Hardware & Getting Started (16:18) - Swift Everywhere: Multi-Platform Future (21:24) - Swift on Windows, SQL Server & WWDC Preview (30:19) - AI, Skill Files & LLM Workflows (42:30) - Swift 6.4 & Wrap-Up Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

June 3, 2026Episode 20416 min

Actually Really Useful

After ten months away, Leo's back. He covers Swift Craft 2026, the rest of his speaking year (Beer City Code, iOSDevUK), and his honest take on AI dev tooling. Plus updates on MistKit, SyntaxKit, swift-build, MonthBar, and a new watchOS app called AtLeast (in TestFlight now). He's open to work, offering free 30-minute consultations, and a live WWDC 2026 episode is coming. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Related Links Free 30-min consultation — Zcal Swift Craft 2026 — Folkestone, May 2026 Beer City Code — Grand Rapids, Aug 14–15, 2026 iOSDevUK — Wales, September 2026 AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It AI-assisted development talk (Boston) — YouTube MistKit — GitHub SyntaxKit — GitHub swift-build — GitHub MonthBar — month.bar AtLeast — atleast.app (TestFlight) Bushel — getbushel.app Related Episodes Ep 200 — Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte Ep 199 — v26.0 with Peter Witham Ep 178 — SOTU 2024 with Peter Witham Ep 196 — Swift on Android with Marc Prud'hommeaux Ep 203 — Milk Diary with Kaya Thomas Chapters (00:00) - I'm Back (00:43) - Conferences 2026 (03:54) - AI in 2026 (05:59) - Swift Automation (07:34) - Projects 2026 (12:02) - Free Consultation (14:37) - Thank you Watch Click here to watch a video of this episode. Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript. Support the Show ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our supporters: Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton Welcome new supporters: Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im YouTube - @brightdigit X - @leogdion X - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod ( https://incompetech.com ) License: CC BY ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

July 31, 2025Episode 20333 min

Milk Diary with Kaya Thomas

Kaya Thomas ( kayathomas.is ) comes back after half a decade to tell us about how motherhood inspired her new app Milk Diary ( milkdiary.com ). She talks about using new APIs like Foundation Models, SpeechAnalyzer, and AlarmKit to handle the complex stuff other feeding apps miss: intelligent scheduling and reminders, combo feeding that's actually easy to track, hassle-free tracking for twins and smart milk management. Guest Kaya Thomas Kaya Thomas (@kayathomas@mastodon.social) - Mastodon Kaya (@kayathomas.is) — Bluesky kmt901 (Kaya Thomas) Kaya Thomas | LinkedIn Kaya Thomas (@kayathomas.is) • Threads, Say more Milk Diary App Related Links Rob Napier - TIL:AI. Thoughts on AI AI Code Reviews | CodeRabbit | Try for Free Related Episodes Notifications with Kaya Thomas Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte Plinky with Joe Fabisevich ChatGPTovski with Kris Slazinski The Making of Callsheet with Casey Liss Apples, Glasses, and HAL, Oh My! Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion TikTok - @brightdigit Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im Youtube - @brightdigit BlueSky - ‪@leogdion.bsky.social‬ Twitter Leo - @leogdion Twitter BrightDigit - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (00:00) - What is Milk Diary (04:20) - Foundation Models (10:56) - The Feeding App Market (13:59) - Liquid Glass (17:01) - AlarmKit (19:34) - Local and Server Side Storage (22:28) - SpeechAnalyzer (25:13) - Developing with AI Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

July 18, 2025Episode 20239 min

Swift Testing with Rachel Brindle

Rachel Brindle, maintainer of Nimble and Quick, comes on to talk about what's new in Swift Testing and what the future of Swift Testing may hold. Guest Rachel Brindle Rachel Brindle (@younata@hachyderm.io) - Hachyderm.io younata (Rachel Brindle) Rachel Brindle (@rachelbrindle) • Instagram photos and videos Related Links What's new in Testing, 2025 Edition nalexn/ViewInspector: Runtime introspection and unit testing of SwiftUI views Quick/Nimble: A Matcher Framework for Swift and Objective-C Quick/Quick: The Swift (and Objective-C) testing framework. pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing: 📸 Delightful Swift snapshot testing. swift-evolution/proposals/testing/NNNN-polling-confirmations.md at younata/testing-polling-expectations · younata/swift-evolution Related Episodes Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte The Case of the Crimson Test Suite with Daniel Steinberg Empowering Accessibility with Via Fairchild It Depends with Brandon Williams Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals SwiftUI Tips and Tricks with Craig Clayton Mobile System Design with Tjeerd in 't Veen Social Media LinkedIn - @leogdion GitHub - @brightdigit GitHub - @leogdion TikTok - @brightdigit Mastodon - @leogdion@c.im Youtube - @brightdigit BlueSky - ‪@leogdion.bsky.social‬ Twitter Leo - @leogdion Twitter BrightDigit - @brightdigit Credits Music from https://filmmusic.io "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (00:00) - Comparing Swift Testing and XCTest (11:08) - SwiftUI Testing (17:37) - Advanced Testing Techniques and Tips (23:47) - Future of Swift Testing Thanks to our monthly supporters Steven Lipton ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★