Logitech already has a forever mouse. No need for an MBA CEO to reinvent the wheel.
The G500s I bought in 2013 is still going strong, the only thing that’s missing is updated and functioning software to go with it. Logitech’s own driver offering was always absurdly bloated and after a couple of years dropped support for this particular model.
Most people should not bother with specialized productivity software but just see how far they can get with what’s already on their phones: Reminders, Notes and the likes. Apple has made these unassuming tools absurdly powerful without losing too much on usability.
https://fredbenenson.medium.com/advanced-topics-in-reminders-and-to-do-lists-c5edec286670
Threads works functionally but as a product it’s very bad. As this article mentions being on Threads is a slow-motion exercise in going insane. Threads actively disables many things that make microblogging work and for the rest of the experience there’s very little thought that went into it other than “let’s make a text-based Instagram and see what happens”.
Threads makes Mastodon feel engaging (and that’s saying something).
https://maxread.substack.com/p/threads-is-the-gas-leak-social-network
The comments online around the Apple Vision Pro have been pretty deranged in a stupid kind of way. Lots of people jumped to the foregone conclusion that Apple released a failure or that it “wasn’t going to be a success”. Most of that seemed to have been motivated by clout chasing.
I don’t think that really matters that much other than serving to have the person making the comment show their ass for the entire world to see.
I feel that Apple Vision Pro is a deeply interesting and conflicted technology which is also the conclusion that Cortex reaches here. You’ll notice that Grey and Myke actually used the device and they are fairly knowledgeable about apps and ways of working/playing.
I got to take one home for a weekend and I can testify similarly except for missing out on a bunch of features. Because it’s only out in the US, I could not access a paid App Store or get an Apple Arcade subscription. That means I could only get the free vision apps out there which are incredibly lacklustre.
What everybody seems to have done is to take whatever IP they had lying around, wrap it into a VisionOS starter project and throw it onto the App Store. That will probably be the modus operandi for a while going forward. If you look at the absolute dregs on the App Store and now realise that making a good VisionOS app is probably at least 10x as difficult as making a good iOS app, then things are not looking good.
The only really compelling experience was the Encounter Dinosaurs app which is genuinely disconcerting and scary. But because of its very high production values, it’s also only a couple of minutes long.
Most compelling is using the Vision Pro to consume media. Watching movies in Disney+ is a fantastic experience if the device wasn’t so uncomfortable to use. Being able to watch sporting events on a massive screen with sidecar screens and 3D views of the course/track seems like it would also be excellent. It would be even more interesting if we would see a proliferation of 360 cameras to be able to place yourself in a Formula1 car or on a sports pitch. The amount of embodiment it yields, seems like it could go a long way to make remote meetings feel more real.
I agree with this review that this device is a devkit. I’ll wait for the real deal.
After trying apps by Sony and Garmin I think that Apple should be the only hardware manufacturer who’s allowed to write software.
Late to the party but I very much love this interview with Karri Saarinen, the co-founder of Linear. Their way of working, “The Linear Method”, will be waved away by companies (“we can’t do that because…”) but with leadership with the right mentality and experience I don’t think it’s that far off at all. Ask your leadership how you can work like this.
Also I already know I’m going to use the term “side quest” a lot.
We don’t use Linear but we recently moved all our stuff from Jira to Github Projects which—even though it is mostly abandoned—is Linear-enough.
Most importantly, it is right on top of our codebase which is where I believe all engineering work should happen anyway.
Notion has formulas now (!) and here’s a formula to calculate a Cost of Delay column based on two other columns:
if(Value=="Killer" && Urgency=="ASAP", "1 Very High", if(Value=="Killer" && Urgency=="Soon" || Value=="Bonus" && Urgency == "ASAP", "2 High", if(Value=="Killer"&&Urgency=="Whenever"||Value=="Bonus"&&Urgency=="Soon"||Value=="Meh"&&Urgency=="ASAP", "3 Medium", if(Value=="Bonus"&&Urgency=="Whenever"||Value=="Meh"&&Urgency=="Soon", "4 Low", "5 Very Low"))))
As much as it pains me, I’m teaching myself Helix and trying out the Jetbrains IDEs. Code has been the first editor that really clicked for me but as with all free things, there’s a hidden price to pay for it.
(Also the quality of VS Code seems to be going downhill. At some point if they keep developing software past completion, the software becomes crap.)
After trying so many note taking apps coming in back from nvAlt and friends, it’s fine to have found one that sticks with Obsidian. I have a relatively tricked out Obsidian setup (which I’ll maybe write about at some point) and for personal notes I’ve been using Bear also for years now.
Some good insights in reading about Flipkart’s popularity in India and how they achieved that.
https://newsletter.theindianotes.com/p/how-did-flipkart-convince-indians