Empower Apps

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

BusinessInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

214

Latest episode

Oct 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

October 26, 2026Episode 21542 min

Then 20 Years Later with Georg Tuparev

Georg Tuparev stops by to chat about software that outlives its plans: projects scoped for a few months that are still in development 20 years later. We get into running a small team of physicists and astronomers, why WebObjects and EOF are still in production, where AI helps and where it falls short, server-side Swift with SwiftNIO, and storing exabytes of telescope data from observatories no cable can keep up with. Guest Georg Tuparev - Tuparev Technologies @tuparev@mstdn.social - Mastodon Georg Tuparev - LinkedIn tuparev (Georg Tuparev) - GitHub Georg Tuparev (@tuparev) - X SkyObserver Related Links Exabyte Data Storage - Georg Tuparev - ServerSide.swift Exabyte Data Infrastructure - Tuparev Technologies Astronomy & Space - Tuparev Technologies SwiftNIO - GitHub ServerSide.swift Related Episodes We Don't Have Any Futures or Promises Anymore with Tim Condon The More You Know with Stewart Lynch Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko Objective-C Today with Graham Lee Chapters 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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/ )

October 16, 2026Episode 21446 min

We Don’t Have Any Futures or Promises Anymore with Tim Condon

Tim Condon stops by to chat about Vapor 5, the biggest Vapor release in six and a half years. We get into dropping futures and promises for Swift concurrency all the way down the stack, Span and strict memory safety, and the new shared Swift HTTP server. Guest Tim Condon Tim Condon (@0xTim@hachyderm.io) - Mastodon Tim Condon (@0xtim.bsky.social) - Bluesky 0xTim (Tim Condon) Vapor Related Links Vapor 5 Beta - Vapor Blog What's New in Vapor 5 Beta - Vapor Blog Announcing the Networking Workgroup - Swift.org swift-http-server - GitHub Swift OpenAPI Generator - GitHub Related Episodes Year of the Server with Tim Condon - Part 1 Year of the Server with Tim Condon - Part 2 Server-Side Swift with Tim Condon Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Swift Server Workgroup with Joannis Orlandos Chapters (00:00) - Server-Side Swift Today (02:29) - Vapor 5, Span & Memory Safety (13:38) - Package Flags & Dropping EventLoopFutures (18:36) - Streaming & the Swift HTTP Server (24:21) - VaporTesting & Macros (33:18) - OpenAPI & the Future of Fluent (38:48) - AI, Open Source & the New Networking APIs 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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/ )

October 9, 2026Episode 21344 min

The More You Know with Stewart Lynch

Stewart Lynch stops by to chat about using AI to learn faster instead of just letting it write your code. We get into planning in stages before you build, why Markdown is the universal language of AI, and the tiny "donkey work" tools he vibe codes for himself. Guest Stewart Lynch Stewart Lynch 🇨🇦 (@StewartLynch@iosdev.space) - Mastodon Stewart Lynch (@stewartlynch.bsky.social) - Bluesky Stewart Lynch - YouTube Stewart Lynch | LinkedIn Stewart Lynch - All Social Links Createch Solutions Blog Related Links How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills - Anthropic Sosumi.ai - Apple docs as Markdown Typora - Markdown editor Related Episodes How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 1 How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 2 Practical Agents with Donny Wals Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich Chapters (00:00) - Xcode 27 & the New Device Hub (03:36) - Why YouTube Teaching Is Changing & Using AI to Synthesize New APIs (11:24) - Why Learn When AI Can Build It? Staged Plans & PRDs (16:29) - Markdown as the Universal Language of AI (22:07) - AI Costs, Hallucinations & Learning Smarter (27:48) - Xcode + Claude Code Workflow (30:53) - "Donkey Work": Building Small Tools With AI (35:55) - What to Delegate to AI vs. Control Yourself (40:22) - OS 27 Support, the iPhone Dual & Side-Project Playgrounds 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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/ )

September 30, 2026Episode 21254 min

Skynet Came and Automated Everything with Jared Sorge

Jared Sorge stops by to chat about Arborist, his native Mac command center for Git work trees. We get into running agents in parallel with work trees, when to drop from SwiftUI down to AppKit, and selling a Mac app outside the App Store with Sparkle, Stripe, and RevenueCat, and somehow end up talking about the iPhone Duo. Guest Jared Sorge Jared Sorge (@jsorge@mastodon.social) - Mastodon jsorge (Jared Sorge) Jared Sorge | LinkedIn Jared Sorge (@jsorge) • Threads Arborist - A native macOS command center for Git repositories and worktrees Taphouse Software Related Links Arborist Baseplate - Track your LEGO collection Tower - Git client Nova - Panic mise - dev tools, env vars, task runner just - a handy way to save and run project-specific commands swift-subprocess - GitHub Sparkle - Software update framework for macOS RevenueCat Managed Payments - Stripe Documentation SQLiteData - Point-Free - GitHub Sharing - Point-Free - GitHub Swift Navigation - Point-Free - GitHub Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs - Anthropic Mac-Assed Mac Apps - Daring Fireball Tuist XcodeGen - GitHub Shipaton 2026 - RevenueCat SwiftCon iOSDevUK Bushel - Mac virtualization for developers Related Episodes Practical Agents with Donny Wals Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman macOS Indie Deep Cuts with Aaron Vegh Mac Dev in 2021 with Daniel Jalkut How to Learn New APIs with Stewart Lynch - Part 1 Automation Fun with Jared Sorge Chapters (00:00) - Why Work Trees (06:56) - The Idea Behind Arborist (11:14) - SwiftUI vs. AppKit (17:05) - Picking the Right Tool for the Job (21:27) - From Problem to Product (25:30) - Shipping Outside the Mac App Store (29:59) - Licensing, Sandboxing & Subprocess (36:30) - Agentic Coding & the Product Engineer (45:17) - What's Next for Arborist 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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/ )

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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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: Welcome to our new monthly supporters work design 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/ )

Is this your show?

Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.

Claim this listing

More Business podcasts

Business Of Weather | Weather Intelligence For Improved Decision Making

BusinessTechnology

Domain Details Page

BusinessInvesting

The Bottom Line

Alexander Spencer