🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #307

Wednesday is the perfect day to reflect and refocus!

#AppleSiri - Apple reportedly is talking to Anthropic and OpenAI for help with Siri. They may want to use the services of these companies run Siri instead of creating their own AI from scratch.

#VSCode - As promised last month, VSCode has open sourced their Github Copilot Chat extension. You can now explore the code base and learn how the agent mode was implemented!

Appsforbharat Raises $20m In Series C Funding For Hindu Devotional App Sri Mandir
AppsForBharat, the Indian startup behind the popular Hindu devotional app Sri Mandir, has secured $20 million in a new funding round, just nine months after its previous $18 million raise. The app has seen significant growth, with over 40 million downloads and 1.2 million users performing online prayers and making offerings at over 70 temples across India. The startup aims to continue digitizing Hindu devotional services and expand its user base globally.

Quick Delivery Getting Costlier
Instamart, Zepto, and Blinkit are introducing new fees to make up for losses. They're now charging more for smaller orders, and even adding fees for things like rain or peak hour deliveries. It's all about trying to make a profit, but it might affect how much you pay for your online orders.

X Hires Former App Creator Nikita Bier As Head Of Product
X, a social media platform, has made a significant hiring move by bringing on board Nikita Bier, a renowned app designer and creator of viral apps "tbh" and "Gas". Bier's expertise in user dynamics could be a game-changer for X, which has been struggling to regain growth momentum. He plans to leverage X's features to create hyper-relevant timelines and help users better understand what's happening on the platform.

Claude Code - Hook feature added, allowing users to define custom shell commands that execute at various points in the app's lifecycle for deterministic control over its behavior.

Cloudflare - Pay per Crawl. Allows content owners to charge AI crawlers for access to their content.

Microsoft Teams - The team behind “Teams” shared a list of all updates carried out in June 2025. You can find them here.

Apple Music - Celebrating 10 Years of Apple Music Radio with special live programming, artist-led shows, and a countdown of the service's top 500 most-streamed songs.

Instagram - Now allows users to share a preview of a Spotify song in IG Stories, enabling in-stream audio playback of shared music.

Microsoft Authenticator - Autofill feature discontinued, passwords and addresses synced to Microsoft Edge.

Google Calendar - Available as a new app for Apple Watch with simplified event and task viewing, including a 1

Call To Action Gallery - A curated showcase of top-tier Call‑To‑Action designs across industries, featuring buttons, modals, forms, subscription prompts, and more. Scroll through real-world examples that inspire high-converting CTAs. Whether it's compelling button text, sleek pop‑ups, or sign‑up forms, it’s your go‑to for boosting your website’s performance.

Undo / Redo Systems In Creative Software: Challenges And Solutions
Learn about the challenges of designing an undo/redo system for a complex visual app, a brainstorming and writing tool for TTRPGs. They will understand the importance of context-awareness, the risks of context-blind undo/redo, and how to implement a robust and intuitive system using action classes, action stacks, contexts, and containers.

Advice For Aspiring Managers
The world of management is undergoing a significant transformation. With the pandemic, recession, and high interest rates, the environment has become more challenging for managers. Gone are the days of easy hiring and rapid scaling; today, the focus is on expanding impact and doing more with fewer people. Managers must adapt to a new reality where they need to be hands-on, efficient, and focused on maximizing output. The pure manager role may no longer exist, and the path to leadership positions is more competitive and demanding.

Dev Survey Results Are In
A new survey from the "State of Devs" team shows that while layoffs are still a concern, they're not as prevalent as feared, with only ~8% of developers reporting being laid off in the past year, and most seeing salary increases.