usethis

> What the fuck? Seriously what the fuck?

Please stop overreacting, especially in this manner. Nothing says they're planning to implement it, for all we know it could be a preventive patent, so no other can use the technology without Apple's consent.

I wholeheartedly agree, WeChat OA / apps were borne out of a need for a simpler, faster and lighter mobile communication channel as opposed to bloated websites and apps. Message bots reduce the barriers for interaction and offer a more focused experience: they simplify payment, reduce data load, remove or simplify account setup, offer better discoverability, etc. They are also easier to add / remove and don't install anything on your OS.

Some of these issues can be solved by the OS: offering a unified notifications center with a better customizable UX, a per channel notification history, and more freedom to define follow-up actions. But unless the OS offers an alternative to apps, the barriers to install an app will remain bigger than installing a message bot, especially for one off communications.

I see an interesting future in a consolidated, block-chained B2C communications app, with a unified API for payments, notifications, and common UI elements. I can easily add contacts, and if I want marketing, I'll install the app or visit their website.

ps. I can recommend the recent discussion around bots on the a16z podcast.

I am excited about Rails API becoming an official part of the Rails ecosystem. I don't expect Rails to solve my client-side needs (templating was always slow, sprockets suboptimal), but I love to use it as an API and have a simple node server to proxy my website calls to that api. An additional benefit of this is that your client consumes the same API, as your other clients, so you don't have to worry about two api versions anymore and it improves your TDD.

The cartoons are a very key part of this story. By censoring them, you're censoring a part of the news, which has nothing to do with the voice or stance of your newspaper.

Sure, email is not perfect, but it is the most flexible communication method the internet has to offer. It is not tight to a single organization, or "owned" by a single company and reasonably portable with an open protocol. Tools will be invented to further optimize the experience, but in essence it will remain the same, just like a telephone call hasn't changed. I will not commit an essential part of my business again, to a single company's closed-sourced product (like for instance MS Office in the past, though OSX being the exception).

I recently started using Mailbox as my personal Email Client again, and I am very impressed in how they "optimized" the experience. It basically converts your emails into task items, with different priorities, in lists etc. When combined with notes, it could make any task / note app obsolete.

Unfortunately it only works with GMail and iCloud, but I hope Dropbox keeps investing in the product.

> Just from a UX perspective - security aspects aside - this is worse by a magnitude.

This is not true, clicking a link in an email, or copying a number from an sms is much easier than first logging into my password manager, finding the entry and then copy it into the field.

Also, this also works for apps as well, not just the browser.

Besides, password manager usage might still be quite low. So what the writer advocates is not less secure than having a single password for almost all their websites, like most people have.