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The Shape of Everything
Personal blog · shapeof.comprogrammingdesign
The Shape of Everything is a personal blog at shapeof.com about programming and design. Since 2010, 30 different Hacker News readers have linked it 59 times, most often “Acorn 8”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Acorn 83 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-12-16
- The Hype is Real3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-21
- Dynamic Swift2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-16
- Apple Needs to Get Out of the Way with AI2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-11
- Moving to Metal Episode II2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-15
- Retrobatch: Workflow tool for image processing in macOS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-05-04
- Acorn's File Format Documented2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-12
- We Need A Standard Layered Image Format2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-30
What Hacker News says?
Here's an excellent blog post that explores that option (at the end): http://shapeof.com/archives/2012/03/brent_simmons_on_deflati...
Comment linking /archives/2012/03/brent_simmons_on_deflation_and_introductory_pricing.html
on “The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades”Submitted We Need A Standard Layered Image Format as a story · 246 points
HN discussionYes, it's a mixed bag with some things better and others worse. But having a great JavaScript engine with the JIT enabled is pretty important for many applications. But breaking up the browser into different processes and communicating via messages and sharing textures in GPU memory between processes (IOSurface, GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES, etc) is the inextricable direction of progress, what all the browsers are doing…
Comment linking /archives/2017/12/moving_to_metal_episode_iii.html
on “WKWebView, an Electron alternative on macOS/iOS”Submitted What's Going on with HEIF and Mac OS 10.13 as a story · 85 points
HN discussionThe Mac image editor Acorn uses SQLite as its file format. It's described here: https://shapeof.com/archives/2025/4/acorn_file_format.html The author notes that an advantage is that other programs can easily read the file format and extract information from it.
Comment linking /archives/2025/4/acorn_file_format.html
on “On File Formats”Submitted Educated Guesses on Software Transitioning to macOS on ARM as a story · 27 points
HN discussionI think the UI is cleaner and more Mac-like; Pixelmator felt a little too comfortable throwing consistency and OS X UI standards out the window. It's been a while since I tried Pixelmator, though, so maybe this comparison is no longer fair. Also, though it probably won't matter for most people, Acorn's file format is pretty ingenious: http://shapeof.com/archives/2013/4/we_need_a_standard_layere...
Comment linking /archives/2013/4/we_need_a_standard_layered_image_format.html
on “Show HN: Copy any code to clipboard in OS X, adding proper syntax highlighting”Submitted Apple Should Open a Seattle Office as a story · 24 points
HN discussionIt doesn't sound like you've read any of the articles. There are details and tradeoffs and limitations found by the people talking about them. And there is a massive knowledge vacuum because if there is a good solution, it's not something that is obvious and well discussed by Apple. Ignoring and dismissing them doesn't make them actually go away. Here's two on just the Responder chain: http://inessential.com/2016/05…
Comment linking /archives/2016/5/dynamic_swift.html
on “Dynamic Swift”Submitted Apple Needs to Get Out of the Way with AI as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThat's also how SunView worked on SunOS in 1982, and Sun's later GX graphics accelerated framebuffer driver worked in the 90's. The kernel managed the clipping list, and multiple processes shared the same memory, locking and respecting the clipping list and pixel buffers in shared memory (main memory, not GPU memory!), so multiple process could draw on different parts of the screen efficiently, without incurring sys…
Comment linking /archives/2017/12/moving_to_metal_episode_iii.html
on “GTK: Introducing Graphics Offload”Submitted Acorn in the f'n WWDC 2025 Keynote as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Acorn's File Format Documented as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Marzipan as a Path to ARM Based Macs as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Brad Cox, Creator of Objective-C, Passes as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hello HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Acorn 8 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Acorn 8 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Moving to Metal Episode II as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dynamic Swift as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Microsoft, Apple, and Disappointment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who is Acorn for? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Get Rejected from the Mac App Store as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Apple Needs to Get Out of the Way with AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Acorn 8 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted MallocNanoZone=1 Makes for Hard Debugging as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Apple's April Security update for 10.15.7 breaks Acorn version 6 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted German's Corona-Warn-App Uses FMDB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Performance and Working Fast as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Acorn 6.3 Postmortem as a story · 2 points
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