I was in college when XHTML was all the rage and everything we wrote had to pass validation. I still get uncomfortable adding breaks without closing them.
It seems Apple is using Catalyst more and more to make their apps on macOS. So instead of the Mac getting a real version of its own, it gets the iPad version.
This feels like a step backward. iOS and iPadOS get versions that are tailored to those unique platforms, and macOS just gets the scraps.
I can see where they would want to dog food their own technologies, but as they do it more and more, it starts to feel like they don’t care about making macOS as good as it could be… it can only be as good as the iPad, which constantly gets criticized for the software not living up to what it could be for the hardware (read: it’s not desktop software). It feels like they’re going in the wrong direction just to save money.
> They text when they have no reason to text. They suggest the coffee. They make the plan. They do not keep score.
Not keeping score is an important part. A lot of people reach out, then think it’s the other person’s turn.
My dad has maintained a large group of friends into his 70s. People from all stages of his life. He understands people are busy with their lives, and doesn’t take it personally when they don’t call to set things up. He reaches out, he makes the plans, and as a result he has a rich social life in retirement.
I have this example, but still find it difficult. I imagine it gets easier with practice.
From ING Direct to Capital One Discover. From fuck Wellsfargo, I'll never do business with them again to two of my subsequent mortgages being sold to them over the last 20 years without my consent. This entire world is designed explicitly to fuck people over at literally every turn as long as someone in the chain somewhere can pocket an extra buck.
But surely if we demonstrate just how evil Nestle is just one more time, the rest of humanity will wake up and boycott them and it will be the end of suffering! Crazy to think I was libertarian minded when I was nineteen. Then again, who could actually maintain it much older? We're talking believing in the tooth fairy levels of delusion wrt to its interactions with the real world.
Somehow I managed to make it to just last year with only seeing the first Harry Potter movie. I decided this would be a good opportunity to read the books, then watch the movie… something I had never done before. I’m currently part way into the 4th book.
While watching The Prisoner of Azkaban, I finally understood by book readers hated movie adaptations so much. Massive, meaningful, plot lines were completely missing from the movie. Places where the movie deviates from book create issues of believability that didn’t exist in the book.
I’m now excited to read the rest of the books, but less excited for the movies, lol. And here I thought the carrot of the movie at the end would help drive me to finish the books.
That sounds like a recipe for burnout, or workaholics trying to justify their drug of choice and push it on others.
Normalizing having a dozen streams of income as what one needs to get by will end up leaving us with economic results that leave this as a requirement, rather than a nice to have. A similar thing happened with the two-income household. As the idea was pushed, it went from a way for some to make ends meet, to what a majority feel they need just to get by. Is this the world we want to create?
Your job doesn’t need to be your identity. That is true with one job, the same as it is with having 10 jobs. If you’re looking to diversify where your identity lies, other prongs to that base can be rooted in family, friends, and hobbies. We don’t need to be monetizing every second and aspect of our lives.
I think the goal is to make it easy to use without sacrificing what makes it useful.
The most effective way I see this done is to make the basic feature or features every easy to pick up and use, to get people in the door and avoid those day 1 learning curve issues. But for those who want to go deep, let them go down the rabbit hole.
Obsidian and Apple Notes both do this pretty well. At their core, a user can open them up and start writing and creating new notes within a a minute of first use. However, both have a lot more functionality buried under the hood for those who want to do more, so people don’t feel limited by the apparent simplicity. VS Code would fall into this bucket as well.
Compare this Notepad from Windows XP or orgmode. With Notepad, you can open it and write, but that’s it. If the user wants anything more, sorry, to find something else. Orgmode has the opposite problem of a high learning curve, step one, learn emacs… you just almost everyone outside of HN.
With a simple app, it’s easy to quickly see that it can’t fit your needs. With a complex app, maybe it takes longer, but it’s usually someone quitting over frustration, or not being able to get past the learning curve just to handle the basics.
I like the Obsidian example. Getting started is easy, maybe what we need is a neat way to tuck away complexity and let advanced users choose when to use it.
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