It seems like the WWDC keynote was only yesterday. Well, it was, but I’ve been playing with iOS17 ever since, and found numerous little things that were not spoken about in the keynote, so I thought I’d point them out here. Also, I need to sleep now.
Notes Listen, I love Apple notes, but there are a few things that are lacking to make it great. Unfortunately, Apple never seemed interested in its stock apps until the last few updates, and Notes once again gets quite a few teaks in iOS17.
For quite a while, I’ve had this feeling that my system of writing notes in my notebook was needless. That I was writing too many things down, and generally speaking, I didn’t refer to them. Which meant that my practice was a waste of time and energy. That was until I experienced someone else looking for something they had written down only a few weeks ago, and I instantly felt better about my system.
Nilay Patel for The Verge:
We live in an information ecosystem whose design is dominated by the needs of the Google Search machine — a robot whose beneficent gaze can create entire industries just as easily as its cool indifference can destroy them. This is exactly correct. Every website must conform to their standards, bow to their non-disclosed algorithm changes. Google not so much shapes the web, more smashes it into its image.
Ever since the pandemic hit in early 2020, I’ve mostly been enjoying the comfort of working from home. Of course, there have been a few weeks here and there when I had other commitments that required me to be elsewhere. But at least 3 out of 5 days, you can find me tucked away in my cozy spare bedroom, diligently working away. Working from home has brought me incredible benefits like improved focus, work-life balance, and so much more.
Every so often I see posts, usually on Reddit, that say something similar to “what would you tell your 15-year-old self” and I always think through the same things. There have been times in my life that I’d rather had avoided. Terrible, painful times that have left emotional and physical scars on myself. However, as an ever showing optimist, it was all worth it to get here.
I could tell myself to not play in that football game that ended my career.
In my tendency to over simplify things, I wrote a post about how to maximise your productivity. There are no apps involved, just a notebook and something to write with. No fanciness, no expensive things, just a tried and tested method of keeping everything with you – the problem is: How on earth do you put it to use?
There’s a practice that is rife in productivity, it keeps people busy and keeps whole companies in business, it’s called the collectors' fallacy.
One thing I love about consuming so much written on the internet is that it raises interesting thoughts in my head. Sure, I get annoyed at the constant cycle of AI this, metaverse that, but newsletters like this edition for Garbage day from Ryan Broderick really made me think.
He discusses a friend who passed away, leaving behind herself scattered over the internet, and ponders on what will stay behind. The below passage brought up thoughts about the excellent Disney film CoCo, that you die twice, once in physical form and again when the last person alive forgets about you.
Can I apologise if this post triggers you in any way, these are simply my thoughts after using a ‘mechanical keyboard’ for a bit, and they may not be all positive. The people that love using these types of keyboard are plentiful online, so I may get an influx of name-calling after this, but please bear with me. I decided to have a bit of an experiment and dove in knowing absolutely nothing, so this very well is the reason behind my thoughts.
A few years ago, I read the book Ruined by design. You could consider it Hooked written by an ethical designer. It talks a lot about doing the work that you want to do, and not compromising on your morals and values. At various points in your life, that might be extremely difficult or impossible, but you must know what your values are and stand for them in everything you do.