CEO of @OmniGroup, a small Seattle-based software company who have won five Apple Design Awards (for @OmniFocus, @OmniGraffle, and @OmniWeb).
Enthusiastic about doing things early: university at age 14; AppKit on NeXT in 1989; apps on launch days for Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, watchOS, and visionOS.
Gamer. Helped Wizards launch Magic: the Gathering. Helped with Doom on NeXT; with Quake, Oni, and Fallout 1/2 on Mac OS X.
#searchable #fedi22
@hjhornbeck That's a good qualifier!
To clarify my own comment, I think it's _possible_, but I don't know if it's actually been done successfully (by Swiss AI or anyone else). I feel like a model could be trained pretty well just using older material explicitly in the public domain (e.g. from Project Gutenberg), along with material explicitly made available for it to use. (E.g. our business welcomes models being trained using our reference manuals and support articles and MIT-licensed code.)
@hjhornbeck @danielleigh @glyph
I do think it's possible to train models ethically, and I appreciate Swiss AI's approach developing the Apertus model (https://www.swiss-ai.org/apertus), released in October 2025:
> … the entire development process, including its architecture, model weights, and training data and recipes, is openly accessible and fully documented.
(I recognize ethically trained isn't solving the same problem as being safe from hacking your brain.)
Ultimately, with NSFNet expanding in '88 and commercial ISPs emerging in '89, we had more network and computing available than ever—just not on the IBM mainframes hosting Bitnet.
Jarkko Oikarinen took inspiration from Bitnet's Relay and built the Internet Relay Chat (irc) for Unix. It was a little slow to take off, and has had its own drama (with net splits, etc.), but anyone with a Unix system can run their own server—and as a result, some 36+ years later it's still around.
At the 1987 Spring NETCON, Jeff Kell gave a presentation on Relay where he concluded "Relay is on the verge of collapse. […] It is no longer due to network load. It is only marginally due to CPU load. It is due to the users."
The Bitnet Relay software was rebuilt in compiled Pascal, with a binary network protocol that was much more efficient.
So focus turned towards reducing CPU usage. Eric Thomas (who went on to create LISTSERV for automating mailing list signups) got involved and helped make Relay more efficient, converting some core routines from Rexx scripts to assembly.
Of course, the user base just kept growing: by the summer of 1986 we were seeing 150 users, straining systems again. Signup restrictions were added, etc., but the users just kept coming, with a crop of new students joining the chat in the fall.
Through August we started seeing as many as 20 users chatting on relay at the same time. By the end of 1985, we were averaging daily peaks of 50 users or so, sometimes reaching 80.
This started taking up way too much CPU on some of the servers (like Bitnic), so they started shutting it down for days at a time. But while not running a local relay reduced CPU load, it placed more burden on the network again: users didn't stop chatting, they would just find a more distant relay to use.
In early 1985, Henry Nussbacher sent a letter to all Bitnet contacts calling for admins to hunt down and destroy every chat server because a dozen users actively chatting could bring file transfers to a halt—file transfers being the primary purpose of the network.
Jeff Kell realized that the problem wasn't chatting itself, but redundant traffic from independent connections. So he built the first Relay chat system. I got involved in August, setting up the 10th relay server and contributing code.
In this episode of The Omni Show, we sit down with Ken Case to unpack the 2026 roadmap. With OmniGraffle 8, the expansion of Omni Links, Kanban and new sync servers for OmniFocus, and a thoughtful approach to Apple Intelligence that keeps privacy front and center. If you care about powerful tools, intentional design, and software that keeps getting better while staying true to what made it great, this one’s for you. - https://theomnishow.omnigroup.com/episode/the-omni-group-2026-roadmap
The future is undetermined, the stakes are enormous, and the work is ours to do.
That's the most optimistic thing I can imagine.
The future is still up for grabs.
So grab it.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/a-soft-landing-manual-for-the-second-gilded-age/
Test builds of OmniOutliner 6.1 are now available, with a bunch of new Shortcuts actions provided by App Intents. Feedback welcome!
@nwreg Speaking of stumbling onto a live Depeche Mode performance…
In the summer of 1988 I was in London studying the history of drama, and one late evening after seeing a play some classmates and I were walking back to Passfield Hall and noticed some video being projected on one of the buildings.
Curious, we paused to check it out, and stumbled onto Depeche Mode setting up for a video. They invited us to hang out, so we watched them live as they recorded some of the Strangelove '88 video.
Hey folks - it looks like someone is impersonating me here on Mastodon.
The fake account is
James__Dempsey @ mastodon.social
If you get a follow request from that account, it is *not* me.
@mejofi We agree that's an important issue! We've intentionally designed the syncing in all of our apps, including @OmniFocus, so that customers can choose where their synced data is hosted. You can self-host by setting up WebDAV on any stock Apache web server, or you can work with a trusted provider to run that WebDAV service for you.
Do you sync OmniFocus from a location outside the United States? Our team is looking for volunteers to help us test new sync server hardware located in Europe and Southeast Asia. More information about this user test, including how to sign up, available here:
Today on Omni's blog: our 2026 roadmap! Reflecting on the launch of OmniOutliner 6, looking ahead to the release of OmniGraffle 8, and more.
Here in Seattle, we're excited for the Seahawks' return to the Super Bowl this weekend. Did you know that OmniGraffle, developed right here in the Emerald City, helps bring the Super Bowl halftime show to life every year? Chris Conti, Chief Innovation Officer at PRG, gives you a behind the scenes look on The Omni Show:
https://theomnishow.omnigroup.com/episode/how-chris-conti-uses-omnigraffle
OmniOutliner has powered serious thinking for 25 years, and version 6 changes the game. New episode of The Omni Show with Ken Case & Sal Soghoian: Omni Links, Apple-intelligence automation, Vision Pro workflows, and the future of outlining. - https://theomnishow.omnigroup.com/episode/the-release-of-omnioutliner-6
OmniOutliner 6 Is Here: https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2026/01/omnioutliner-6-is-here/
@StevenJackson If you've registered it to your Omni Account, then yes to both questions. (You can reinstall v3 from the App Store to register your purchase if you haven't already.)
