Toutouxc

You might want to fire up a flight sim or at least read up on what “autopilot” actually means. It’s pretty much 3D cruise control and that’s it.

> We needed to get to a point where adding touch didn't make the product lesser in any way. It didn't make it heavier. It didn't make it thicker. That came together with the OLED screen, the best display we've ever put into a Mac. All of these things, and, oh yeah, it has touch as well.

My idea of a good product has always been that either the product embraces a feature and makes it part of its identity, or the feature shouldn’t really be there. Putting touch on a laptop (“first and foremost an indirect-input device” in their own words) just because sometimes someone might find it a bit more convenient for scrolling is an admission of cluelessness.

That’s not a killer use case, that’s just running two apps next to each other. There are tons of phones and tablets that can do that.

I want to know why I want my phone to cost twice as much and have a dozen delicate moving parts in order to fold. Like the movie quote: “sell me this pen”. I’m waiting for someone to sell me a folding phone. I thought Apple would be able to do it, but they haven’t even tried.

Oh wow, it’s like they’re trying less and less.

When they introduced the Apple Pencil and people were like “haha it’s a stylus”, the thing was decidedly NOT a stylus (it actually couldn’t be used to control some parts of the UI). It was an actual digital pen, something that used to be specialized and expensive external hardware, and it worked beautifully with the iPad. It was literally “stylus but GOOD”. I saw it and thought “people will make memes about this, but Apple totally gets it”.

When they introduced the Vision Pro, VR was just kind of shit. Bulky, ugly, uncool. Vision Pro tried to resolve some of the issues, but it was still kind of half-assed. Like they wanted to have a VR device but couldn’t actually make it work. Good resolution, but not great. Vergence-accomodation conflict not addressed. Still bulky and ugly. Isolation kind of addressed (with the AR-ish UX and the “see-through” display), but not enough.

Now we got the foldable iPhone and a touchscreen MacBook.

Foldable phones are still awfully delicate and the whole concept doesn’t have a clear “killer” use case. There’s no new UX, no new features, it’s just an iPad Mini in a marginally smaller device that’s expensive as hell. Apple didn’t even try to address the obvious shortcomings, they just built the same stupid thing everyone else is failing to sell.

Touchscreen laptops still wobble, they still get covered with fingerprints, they’re still uncomfortable and there’s still no meaningful UX. This thing doesn’t even try to address any of that. Their marketing images literally just show hands hovering above the keyboard and touching the screen for no good reason. They’ve been mocking touchscreen laptops for years now and now they release one like it’s the most obvious thing ever. 1984 vibes.

I'm not saying I personally like them, but they're not as bland as the rest of the language. FWIW, I watched 3 non-dev people around me learn Python in uni (biologist, lawyer, graphics designer) and they all liked the list comprehension syntax.

As a Ruby dev I'm kind of primed to hate on Python a little bit, but I have to agree. I've written some Python over the years, I've tried to like it, but it just doesn't feel good to me. There are things that are really great about Rust, Elixir, C#, Swift, Java, Common Lisp... Sometimes it's the standard library, sometimes the package manager, sometimes a feature (borrow checker, pattern matching), sometimes a principle (everything is an object, the code is just data). In Python, everything is kind of meh. Like they came up with the list comprehension syntax and that was it for cool things.

Yes, I can actually do many other things and I know a bit about other fields than software development. And I don't think my job is significantly easier than what people deal with in those other fields. If we're saying that AI can take over my job, I don't see how it can't take over basically any white-collar job in existence.

Transition to where? If a LLM can do the entire job of a senior software developer, humanity is done and there is nowhere to transition to.

I'd argue that there's more delusion going on in people leaving software development because of "what is coming" and somehow ending the thought there.

Somehow this is making it even worse. Like, I'm having issues explaining the whole thing to my wife, because I can't come up with a metaphor or parable that's even remotely as ridiculous as what they've done. Anyone's got a good one?

Maybe, like, setting up a factory that builds both LHD and RHD cars and building cars with two passenger seats in the front for two years straight without anyone noticing?

I live in Europe and public restrooms don’t feel like fentanyl naptime rooms. Maybe that’s more of a North America thing?

Huh? F1 has always been meant and actively steered towards being a testing ground for consumer car tech.

Cold gas thrusters are big pressure vessels that vent through nozzles. You can build one in your garage and propel yourself on an office chair. People put them on drones for fun.

I refuse to believe these people aren’t just LARPing Idiocracy at this point.

I have to agree, in Czech the car is referred to as the “kachna” (duck). No negative connotations and no obvious connection to the ugly duckling story (“ošklivé káčátko” in Czech).

I was hoping for the thing where you play through like half of the game and only then it shows you the title against a dramatic vista.