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  • Writers & Non-Writers

    Seth Godin writing about the need to be clear in concise in your writing, even if you don’t consider yourself a writer: Nobody asks you to design a bridge, write a sonnet or do open heart surgery. We leave these essential tasks to trained professionals. But many job descriptions carry the unstated addendum, “and write.” Write memos, proposals, and even instruction manuals. One of the overriding things that I experience in my everyday life is the idea that everyone can write, or no one can write.
    Read Post
    Essay
    20 Aug 2024
  • Opening Your Wallet

    Matt Birchler is an expert on payments, so when he writes about them, you listen:

    I can’t see the future, and I don’t work directly in card issuance, but this is my very strong instinct. They want to win the payment volume game, and you don’t do that by restricting where your card can be used, you win that by being able to tell your customers, “you can use our card ANYWHERE!”

    I quoted Matt’s post last time he wrote about opening Apple Wallet up to other payment providers and I still stand by my comments. I think the frustration will be when every reward or membership offering wants you inside their app.

    Matt’s comment also reminds me of the frustrations I have every time I try to use an Android phone. I bank with Barclays, and whilst they now support Apple Pay, their card is not available everywhere. To use my card on a Samsung phone I must change the default to Google Wallet, which is a frustrating mess that only half works. In fact, it took them an absolute age to even do that, instead choosing to develop their own app with a permanent notification on the Lock Screen!

    I’m hoping the times are gone, but not all banks seem to be made the same in my experience of ones outside the US. I’m hoping that most are so used to using Wallet now they just stick with that, as Matt points out the fees are negligible.

    Read Post
    Essay Link
    20 Aug 2024
  • The Best Computer Is The One You Have With You

    Cole blogging about writing on their iPhone: Using my iPhone to write blog posts feels more casual and personable. It’s like drafting a note to a friend or texting them about the latest happenings. I am often down on smartphones. If I had a real choice, I wouldn’t have one, yet it is by far the best computer I have. Like Cole above, I use mine for writing the majority of my blog posts, and catching up on my favourite things on the web.
    Read Post
    Essay
    19 Aug 2024
  • When It’s Time To Leave The 'Cult'?

    Matt Birchler writing about his feeling from incident the Apple “cult”: I do wonder if the Apple enthusiast crowd as we know is in permanent decline. You don’t need Daring Fireball, Panic, ATP, Birchtree, or anyone else like us to be massively financially successful (just look at Microsoft and Samsung), but I do find it a bit sad to see Apple stroll down the road to being a totally heartless mega corp like the rest
    Read Post
    Essay
    16 Aug 2024
  • Who Pays For This?

    Of all the questions I have around the new AI on the block, Friend, I must admit that this one is the least of my worries. Like the rabbit that went before it, this gadget promises to address problems that are of a questionable existence. I understand that’s marketing 101 — overstate a concern and sell people a fix. However, they intend to do this by faking a conversation with a ‘friend’ and with it burn through resources that don’t fit their income stream.
    Read Post
    Essay
    13 Aug 2024
  • Asynchronous Is The Future

    MGX posting on their blog about the benefits of work that fits into your time frame: An asynchronous work model, for example, empowers individuals to tackle complex problems on their own schedules based on critical thinking rather than constantly reacting to requests in real time. If you are a knowledge or creative worker, and perhaps if you’re not, you will know the struggle of fitting your work into deadlines based on a regular 9-5 job.
    Read Post
    Essay
    12 Aug 2024
  • What Is An App?

    Vidit Bhargave, developer of Look Up, writing about what is expected of a modern app: Not only is the iPhone app not the center of a user’s interaction on the phone. It’s increasingly becoming one of the many parts of an ecosystem where apps are expected to scale both in terms of interface and functionality starting from something as small as an Apple Watch and going all the way up to an unbounded experience like Vision Pro.
    Read Post
    Essay
    11 Aug 2024
  • Would macOS Touch Finally Stop The Moaning?

    Matt Birchler, once again writing about macOS allowing touch interaction: I contend that pretty much the entire “I wish the iPad did more” narrative is built on a wide and undying desire for macOS to get touch input and more flexible and portable hardware. Think about it, if I could walk into an Apple Store today and get a MacBook Touch with a hyper-portable form factor, an M4 processor, and a beautiful OLED screen, would I then also complain about the limitations of iPadOS?
    Read Post
    Essay
    11 Aug 2024
  • Is Anything Real In The Valley?

    Matteo Wong writing another great summary of the data surrounding AI failure to return on investment: Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs’s head of global equity research, told me, “If we’re going to justify a trillion or more dollars of investment, AI needs to solve complex problems and enable us to do things we haven’t been able to do before.” I am starting to think that big tech companies are just a long line of bubbles.
    Read Post
    Essay
    11 Aug 2024
  • Do Hard Things

    Jarrod Blundy writing in You (And I) Can Do Hard Things Doing the hard thing isn’t always fun. It’s often not the thing you want to do. There may be many reasons for you not to do the hard thing. But there’s almost always a good reason that you should do the hard thing. And I hope you remember that you can. A few months ago I read The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, and it introduced the concept of misogi.
    Read Post
    Essay
    08 Aug 2024
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