jordansmithnz

A few observations I’ve made.

1. Many criticisms of AI’s usefulness focus on the present/past. They may well be right about the current state, but the trajectory things are improving at (unless we’ve hit a brick wall) means they’ll probably be wrong in a few years.

2. Some of the most vocal anti AI statements I’ve heard have come from people the most impacted by its disruption. Does the concept it cheapens your prior work, or perhaps threatens to replace you, not lead to a huge amount of bias?

Like any technology, AI has good and bad aspects. There should be criticisms of it, we need those. But focusing on where it’s headed, and being aware of bias, is going to produce the most important discussions.

I think the Air makes a lot more sense through the lens of a foldable iPhone.

Even for Apple, there are a significant amount of challenges in building a best-in-class foldable. Supply chain, manufacturing, hardware design, software. Apple is well known for planning ahead; breaking down problems by tackling some in an Air model first seems in line with how they operate.

The price difference really drives this home. It’s only $100 difference between a Pro and an Air. By the time you buy the perhaps-essential battery pack it’s the same price.

I don’t expect this model to continue more than a year or two, it’s a niche option only there to set the stage for a foldable that will take its place.

Having used it very briefly, I think it’s a reasonable direction. Before you all jump to tell me why I’m wrong:

1. It makes depth and layering extremely clear.

2. It prioritizes focusing on the content.

These are good principles and I think they’ll last the distance. There are plenty of refinements needed, especially for accessibility. I suspect over the next few years we’ll see the direction toned back a little while still retaining the best parts.

The article feels shallow. It’s real but my experience is that the reasons can be more complex.

- some friends are more selfish than you realized and that only becomes apparent when they put their preferences above short term needs you have

- some parents are exhausted and stop putting in the work needed to maintain friendships

- some friends don’t want to see their social circle become parent-filled, whether that’s because they’d feel left behind or because it doesn’t match their sense of self

- becoming a parent will lead to some sort of change in worldview or who you are, and that’s not always compatible with the friends you had

- as a parent you might just want to talk to people that ‘get it’

People grow apart sometimes and that’s part of life. Other times of course it’s about harder discussions and working through things.

If you actually want to write software without bugs:

Assume that your code will have bugs no matter how good you are. Correct for that by making careful architecture decisions and extensively test the product yourself.

There’s no silver bullet. If you put in enough time and make some good decisions, you can earn a reputation for writing relatively few bugs.

While this did happen and obviously isn’t great, there’s a more skeptical side too.

The ‘trapped’ man is the CEO of an AI consulting firm. He posted the video to linked in, didn’t press the abort button, and had a relatively successful customer support experience (5 minutes delayed and not charged for the trip). Apparently he is using a PR firm to handle questions.

Make of that what you will. Waymo can clearly do better, although for what it’s worth — my worst uber experiences have been much worse than this (legitimately unsafe driving decisions).

While interesting this is just… wrong. Imagine a world where:

- I tell people I’m 50 years old but I’m really just 49 1/2

- My phone says it’s Jan 7th but it’s really afternoon on Jan 6th

- My coworker says they’re a sr engineer because they’ve been told that they’ll definitely be promoted soon

Rounding shouldn’t be applied everywhere. Some things in life are supposed to use a floor function; common sense applies and most folks intuitively know that 1:00pm means ‘between 1:00 and 1:01pm’.

No one wants dark/cloud kitchens, and I don’t think anyone wants dark software either.

It’s extremely hard to do many things well. If a restaurant specializes in pizza, they’re going to get good at doing that — their employees will know the best way to cook them, their recipes will slowly evolve over time, etc. If a restaurant rarely cooks a pizza, none of that experience and refinement is there.

Not to mention, DoorDash doesn’t have any obvious health ratings visible for restaurants in NYC. I’ll happily order from somewhere I know, but not some unknown restaurant. And what’s to stop a poorly rated dark kitchen from closing shop and reopening the next day under new branding?

The whole model feels gross. It’s centered around profit and questionable tactics, rather than making a genuinely good product that people come back for.

Think about it from the parent’s perspective: the safety of your toddler while you’re at a crowded amusement park is of high value.

Losing a young child must be terrifying, even if they’re found shortly after. I think the value proposition justifies the price, at least for a reasonable amount of parents.

When I was 18 years old, a security guard kicked me and a friend out of a grocery store, much to our confusion.

After talking to them and requesting the store manager, it turns out they had a photo of a shoplifter that looked very similar to me. Eventually we were let back in the store and it was all OK.

So, it’s not an entirely new problem? Although with facial recognition I guess there is less recourse; a manager is not as likely to believe they got it wrong if their computer tells them otherwise.

Some cases yes, but in plenty of cases, this wouldn’t be great.

- Browsing HN, and your scroll gesture happens to start where a link is? Before you know it, you’ve navigated away.

- Long pressing to delete an app, and the app opens in the meantime? Awkward UX.

In the majority of cases, press gestures are competing with other gestures like scrolling. Waiting until you’ve released is often the first moment that it’s 100% clear which gesture you intended. If both gestures get invoked, it will probably lead to much worse problems.

I’m sure there are cases where act on press makes sense, but I don’t think it’s as dramatic as the tweet makes out.

Does this tool actually generate vectors? Or is it really just an AI image generator with an image to SVG converter added on.

Based on the complexity of the logos it generates, I suspect it might be the latter.

‘Nobody’ is a large assumption. For developers with a consistently small download base, they can switch with little concern.

The consensus here seems to be that Apple don’t want anyone to switch. I’m not sure I fully buy into this, because most developers don’t have the size problem, so switching could be beneficial for them.

Thanks -- this is a relief. I hope it lasts though, I could see Apple deprecating this option in a few years, once most apps have adopted the newer terms.