Hey, I'm Matt Birchler! I'm a UI and UX designer at NMI, and I do YouTube, which I think you'll love.
Nothing beats familiarity when it comes to "good UX" (members post)
Nothing beats familiarity when it comes to "good UX" (members post)
"Good UX" means balancing a lot of (sometimes conflicting) priorities. What's good UX when you can't make everyone happy?
I’ve written 1 million words in the past 8 years
I was getting the feeling lately that I’ve been writing a lot here lately, and I already had an export of all of my blog posts, so I decided to check my word count each year over the last 8 years. As of yesterday, I’d written 167,824
Dare to dream
Dare to dream
Apparently the last week of online discourse around Meta’s new Orion prototype struck a nerve with me because I posted an all-timer in terms of snark recently. This comes after years of two general frustrations with how some people cover and talk about technology online (especially on social media)
Why is anyone talking about Meta’s Orion glasses?
Why is anyone talking about Meta’s Orion glasses?
Good lord am I seeing a lot people talking about Meta’s new prototype hardware, Orion. Are people losing their minds? Why is this anything of note? Why even comment on this thing at all? It certainly hasn’t caught my attention. No sir, I’m a technology fan who
NotebookLM tries to pin me down
NotebookLM tries to pin me down
NotebookLM is an interesting project from Google that lets you upload a ton of documents about whatever you want, and then "chat" with them. Another thing they just released is the ability to generate a "podcast episode" about the things you've uploaded. The audio
They lasered my eyes (or, why I’m so happy I got Lasik, members post)
I got Lasik 2 years ago and here’s how it’s going.
You never know what’s going to hit
You never know what’s going to hit
Lee Peterson: Sometimes It Takes Just One Random Post to Grow Your Blog This was completely random and it shows that sometimes you don’t need some sort of plan, just write what comes to mind and that you want to share. You’ll get found and readers will come
X does that thing again, but it’s totally chill this time
X does that thing again, but it’s totally chill this time
Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge: X blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossier X is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that’s alleged to be the Trump campaign’s research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist who wrote the newsletter,
The core thing that makes WordPress, WordPress isn’t what you think
The core thing that makes WordPress, WordPress isn’t what you think
This might be the longest quote ever on Birchtree, but stick with me here. This is Matt Mullenwerg, CEO of Automattic, writing on the official WordPress blog (emphasis his): WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is
When does it become worth it? 🔋
Earlier today I saw a post from someone who has had their iPhone stop charging at 80% for the past year and they didn’t see much, if any difference in battery health than their coworkers who didn’t do anything, and let the iPhone do its “optimized charging” over
Why do these YouTubers keep talking about video editing?
Why do these YouTubers keep talking about video editing?
I saw a post on Threads recently that is of a general genre of conversation I see on a regular basis. The first post was: Just going on purely laptop tech reviews you would think 90% of the US population were employed as video editors. Which got the reply: You
Why I'm so fired up about macOS Sequoia's screen (and a solution!)
The above screenshot is from my computer. There are 16 apps that have screen recording permissions, and each one of them not only needs that permission, I intentionally gave them that permission when I installed them. I've been carrying along with my life, happy with how these apps
The “nobody buys a new iPhone every year” lie
The “nobody buys a new iPhone every year” lie
I recently posted this on Threads: My regular reminder that anytime someone says “99% of users” is completely making things up and has done precisely zero investigation outside of their own experience. Once you notice this, you start to see it everywhere. People have a very bad habit of assuming
My great subscription reset of 2024 (members post)
My great subscription reset of 2024 (members post)
Last year I cancelled a bunch of subscriptions to see what was actually worth my money. That went great, so this year I'm doing it again!