I like to think of HTML and CSS like the 2×4 in construction: When the nail gun replaced the hammer or the power drill replaced the screwdriver, they changed the context, speed, and process of building a home—but the 2×4 is still the most stable structure.
I love this piece.
#A splash video on Arc’s expansion to Windows with some Q&A on YouTube. The app was officially released on Tuesday. In my last full-time role, I lived in Arc — it worked incredibly well for keeping things organized, especially as a person who worked on several different projects with dozens upon dozens of tabs.
#In case you missed the news earlier this week that Tesla laid off more than 500 employees, InsideEVs does a good job here of talking with former employees about how things were going and how flummoxing this change in strategy is to them. Lots of great quotes, including this:
“We couldn’t keep up. And now the network is even larger,” he said. “Now, guess what? There are even more consumers. There’s gonna be a lot more issues that could possibly come up.”
See also, from Electrek: “Tesla is already pulling back Supercharger plans after firing team”
#Not to become an iPad blog (see: ‘Where Does iPad Fit?’) but David Pierce has an essay in The Verge about what the platform needs ahead of Tuesday’s event. His take?
I think the iPad’s modular potential is actually much bigger.
If Apple wants to get there, it needs more accessories — so, so many more accessories. The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it.
I agree in principle with this thought and process, but embedded in this idea is the mistaken belief that Apple needs to be the one providing all of these accessories. Third parties should be the ones who are incentivized to build the kinds of extensions to the “Naked Robotic Core” (to use a term from John Siracusa) that make iPad a maximally flexible platform.
That said, Apple needs to do its own work to make that worthwhile — hopefully by getting their entire product line in order to play nice with a broad ecosystem. They started with getting everything onto USB-C as a connector but things like keeping the Smart Connector in the same place or aligning on USB 3 or 4 would be welcome enhancements.
#Some links that have been bouncing around the internet and worth noting, without comment:
Speaking of The New Yorker and baby-led weaning, treasured food writer Helen Rosner wrote on the newsletter The Green Spoon about her 1.5-year-old’s meals. The name, for the uninitiated, is a play on The Grub Street Diet, a fun and sometimes enlightening tale of eating, usually in New York City. From Helen’s piece:
While the mushrooms were cooking I supremed a Sumo citrus, for no reason other than I wanted to be able to say I’d done that while writing this food diary.
She gets it.
#The New Yorker has a good and very aesthetic feature on baby-led weaning as part of their Food Issue:
(The “weaning” part refers to the practice of introducing solid foods alongside breast milk or formula, rather than just replacing them.) As the name suggests, it requires following a baby’s lead, which some adults find challenging. Babies are, well, babies. What do they know that we don’t?
It’s relatively progressive idea about allowing children first learning to eat explore food on their own rather than be fed purées. We do it, and while I don’t think it means my daughter won’t eventually beg for dino nuggets, buttered noodles, and a plain cheese quesadilla, she’s getting the chance to test out an expansive palette.
#Long, beautiful remembrance of The Ithaca Times movie critic Bryan VanCampen, who died in September. Lots of great anecdotes by “rival” critic Beth Saulnier, with whom he did the movie-review show Take Two on local public access.
From Pete Croatto’s piece in Poynter:
#“I really feel like Bryan, until the last movie of his life, had this wide-eyed wonder of the joy of going to the movies,” Saulnier said. His appetite was insatiable.
Liz Lopatto on the Spotify-based game, Music League:
Music League makes music social in a way that social media algorithms, ironically, do not. Every league I am in has a group chat that erupts when a new playlist drops, and again when the votes are in. The comments on the songs are often very funny and might be my favorite part of the game.
The short version of how it works: Each session contains a text-based prompt for music (e.g. tracks with a good bass line), you anonymously submit one or more songs, then the league votes on submissions.
Your mileage may vary on the social aspect — the groups I’ve been in have not been quite as chatty — but it’s definitely a great way to push yourself to experience more music. Personally, I’ve found myself using it more as nostalgia digging, revisiting work I enjoyed earlier, and the right prompt can really put a huge variety of new work in front of you.
#From Curbed:
#This is turnstile No. 602 in Fare Control Area R238, at one of the entries to the Grand Central–42nd Street subway station. It looks about the same as every other one in the subway system, but it has a special distinction: It’s probably the hardest-working turnstile in the city.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has reported to be cutting even deeper into initiatives like free 3-K and pre-K, another brick in the wall that is an unaffordable city. From The Cut:
“Parents are really struggling to find affordable, high-quality child care,” Accurso said in a TikTok on Tuesday. “Here in New York City, our mayor cut $400 million from early-childhood-education programs and is proposing more cuts.”
She’s also headed to DC to speak with representatives because the child-care affordability isn’t just an urban issue. From the comments on her TikTok: “Sometimes you’re my childcare, so thank you!!!”
Update, Apr. 19: Some of the funding has been restored, according to Gothamist.
#Rob Conery, referencing Steve Martin and his recent Apple TV documentary, notes that journaling is a major part of his craft:
He talks about his journaling process a lot in his various biographies and documentaries, but, in short: it’s a tool he uses to reflect and improve.
I’ve had that documentary on my radar and I’m more excited to watch it now. For Rob’s essay, I feel like it’s a great reminder about the importance of documenting as you go and taking that time to reflect.
#Not sure why I didn’t link it at the time, but Josh Topolsky dropped a link on Threads announcing his new financially focused site. The venture was originally announced back in January 2023 with a drumbeat of news in Ben Smith’s media newsletter in Semafor.
I’ll be curious to see how this one goes. Visually, it has very strong echoes of Gawker and The Outline, but with the added richness of data visualizations like Datawrapper and Chartr, which Sherwood Media smartly acquired late last year.
Disclosure: Josh and I used to work together at BDG, where we launched and redesigned several sites including Input and Gawker, may they rest in peace.
#Originally, I wasn’t going to write about Matt Birchler’s article on missing his iPad. It felt more like a follow up on feelings about Apple Vision Pro, which I’ve yet to demo, but as it sat with me it and others commented on it, it made more of an impression. Finally, a feature on iPad at 14 on Inverse convinced me I needed to write about it.
For background, I’ve tried working exclusively off an iPad for a long time. I’m no Federico Viticci, but I saw iPad as a means for flexible computing from the very start.
Today, I own two iPads: a mini and a 12.9-inch Pro. The smaller one takes the bulk of my usage despite its less-impressive specs. It’s the device I’ll grab whether I’m catching up on YouTube (via Play), cooking using Mela, or triaging RSS feeds in NetNewsWire.
The Pro, by comparison, waned in its value to me over the years. I purchased the original in 2015 and update with generation new version until the 3rd. As many have noted, the software hasn’t kept up with the hardware, so despite the more impressive screen and blazing SoC performance, the cost didn’t seem worth the upgrade.
Considering some highly anticipated new iPad hardware, largely underwhelming software updates, and the renaissance of Mac hardware, I think it’s an opportune moment to look at the strengths and weaknesses of iPad.
While I bristle at the idea that iPad is only meant for consumption (in fact, this post was entirely composed on iPads), there is something that’s light and easy in the ability to plow through inboxes and lean back with reading or watching. This is a natural primary use and I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
For a next level of light productivity, there’s a lot to recommend for the Magic / Smart Keyboard. It’s more difficult to suggest this with a 12.9-inch iPad Pro — it’s so much heavier than say, a MacBook Air — but the versatility of removing the keyboard is pretty nice.
Additionally, for the working artist, iPad has really done a tidy job of covering pen-based input. Surface may come on top for features like an integrated kickstand, but its writing implements are wanting.
Finally, I recently had the opportunity to use a fifth-generation iPad Pro on the same setup as my MacBook Pro. The improved Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 along with other creature comforts add up to an impressive upgrade, and you really could get through the vast majority of a modern creative professional’s workflow this way. Some specific notes here:
I’ll save my specific gripes for a future installment.
What holds iPad back isn’t apps per se, although I would argue poorly maintained apps or ones that don’t follow OS conventions (stares annoyedly at Google’s suite) are not helping. It’s actually Apple’s most important app on iPadOS, Safari.
If iPad is supposed to scale from a Chromebook rival to a laptop replacement, the browser is at the center of both of those experiences. And if iPad, like the Mac, is the kind of platform that needs as many expressions of applications as possible to run as easily as possible, today that means the web. While plenty of websites are poor sports, optimizing for Chrome at the expense of Safari, the browser still stands to be improved so it can recede when needed for web apps.
“Add to Home Screen,” for example, is a great if still-not-fully-baked idea. Where it falls down is in knowing the whole browser is right there at the edges. Using Figma, for example, feels revelatory at first. A project loads, you start to click around successfully, and then you try to rename something. There needs to be a greater disconnect between web apps and Safari as the chrome that surrounds it, and I don’t see anything from the DMA requiring this kind of work to happen.
GitHub Codespaces is another example of a web-based tool that just does not feel at home on iPad. You can get it to work, sure, but there’s just something about that experience that’s lacking. Maybe it’s as simple as disabling some of Safari’s keybindings on an installed webapp, but it needs love.
Beyond the browser — which should not be taken lightly — there’s the continued challenge of multitasking. While better, Stage Manager isn’t quite there. It needs things like a higher limit of app windows, named/pinned/restricted groups of app windows that don’t disappear, and a fix for the many varied bugs and challenges involved with app switching. If you’ve never encountered a focus issue like accidentally closing a window you thought was in the background, you effectively haven’t used Stage Manager.
We’re entering a moment where gadgets are about to proliferate to attempt to squeeze out old computing forms, either as sidekicks to or replacements of what you carry in your pocket or bag. Many allege themselves to be contextual computers, and in this generation I’d say they aren’t aiming that high.
iPad still has some serious legs in terms of its ability to better insinuate itself into the regular flow of people who have since pushed it aside in this manner.
It’s largely still in the hands of Apple’s OS and Safari developers to make an experience that treats the web as a first-class citizen and tightens up the docked experience. That said, I think this hardware renaissance has the opportunity to give fresh ideas to iPad’s ecosystem: foldables and dockables just scratch the surface of what could make it a better contextual computer.
#Missed posting this last week when it was first published but was reminded of it on an episode of The Vergecast. I agree with the premise though I would say the underlying issue with notifications is that people are generally predisposed to allow them because of FOMO. (I do not; I am ruthless with most notification requests.)
That said, it pairs nicely with a recent MrMobile video recalling the Palm Pre, with an excellent walk down memory lane of the early WebOS days.
#I thought this process shot, shared by Bethany Bongiorno on Threads, was worth seeing.
Updated Apr. 13: It’s a real shame about the state of Ai Pin at this point. The reviews have been unkind to be delicate (see also: requisite Michael Tsai roundup), with that overwhelming sense that it just wasn’t ready.
I think the team certainly deserves at least credit for getting to launch, and you can hear the painful earnestness of the vision of Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno in Raymond Wong’s interview with them on Inverse. But vision isn’t enough, and the execution so far (according to the reviewers) is rough. Hopefully time will help them right their way.
Speaking of Raymond, his review is much more generous than most, and speaks to this hope:
#[S]imilar to how the Apple Watch didn’t get good until Series 3, if Humane can make some big improvements by the second or third generation, I think this AI-powered wearable that hangs off your shirt could have a future.
Tabs and personalization in Docs: Now with tabs you can organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive to find what you’re looking for. We’re also making it easy for you to personalize documents with full-bleed cover images that extend from one edge of your browser to the other. Both features will be generally available in the coming weeks.
As someone who’s spent an inordinate amount of time organizing documentation within Google Docs in past lives, this is a huge deal.
#Matt Haughey preaches on the unique experience that is the total solar eclipse:
It was truly an amazing experience. That 2017 summer day in Oregon at home blew my mind completely and utterly. I can confidently say I would willingly travel to the ends of the earth to see another again now.
Here in Rochester, we had significant cloud cover so we weren’t able to see the sun. That said, watching darkness coming from the horizon and passing through totality for more than three minutes was still breathtaking.
#A depressing but unsurprising tale of Trader Joe’s stringing on small businesses only to steal their products in Taste. Brooklyn Delhi, a small producer of South Asian-inspired sauces, is the main subject of the story. Its founder was also featured in an episode of The Sporkful, “The Problem With The International Aisle.”
See also: David Chang’s Momofuku packaged goods company (remember when he ran restaurants?) is attempting to trademark “chili crunch” and sending cease-and-desist letters to other producers.
#Speaking of Louie Mantia, he’s made a few updates to his personal website. Simple but inspiring.
#A long piece detailing everything Matt would love to see in a CMS focused on blogging. He describes Ghost, which he currently uses, as “the least bad one out there.” The combination of features and functionality he describes are hugely challenging to pull off — like I said, it’s a long one — but it would be the project I’d want to work on.
#This was mentioned offhand on a recent Waveform podcast on productivity apps guest starring The Verge’s David Pierce. I’ve been trying it out the last few weeks and it’s an interesting mix of productivity tool with an eye towards personal knowledge management. It released in February after an initial May 2020 (!) announcement.
You may remember the Superlist folks from their previous work, Wunderlist, which was infamously purchased by Microsoft to become the basis of their To-Do app.
#I’m embarking on a project I’ve been thinking about for more than a decade — I’m starting a blog in 2024.
There’s a lot of chatter about starting (and restarting) blogs these days. Some of my favorites: Louie Mantia’s plain and direct instructions for getting started, Anil Dash once again reminding us about the opportunity of being free of platforms, and of course Jason Kottke just carrying the torch this whole time.
It finally hit a solid rolling boil this spring watching old RSS feeds alight once more with people’s words and the drumbeat of those revolutionizing the media through blog posts. It had me checking in on some of my blogroll of the early aughts to see whether they’ve been coming back — some have, some never left.
So here I am, putting my shingle out, either a decade too late or maybe right on time.
In the pandemic, I had the opportunity to be deeply observant of my local neighborhood keeping up a (now-defunct) site of businesses, and I’ve missed that habit along with the general fun of tinkering with websites by extension. I’m hoping to do all that here in addition to quick linkposts of things that catch my attention around the web.
Pardon the dust as things get started; I literally created the repo today. RSS and the website are functional right now, and I’ll get to refining and building out some of the features that have been in my mind here these past dozen or more years.
As I close, I’m also reminded of the classic Field Notes tagline: “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.” Recently, I understood the words more deeply, and they’re resonating with me these days.
I’ll see you out there on the web.
#The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle with a long takeout on the evolution and ultimate end of the effort to create a business improvement district downtown.
#The work of Professor Kahneman and Professor Tversky, [David Brooks] concluded, “will be remembered hundreds of years from now.”
Thinking, Fast and Slow is an excellent book.
#I remembered walking through Wake when I first went to Seattle. Powerful work.
#Just lovely. I didn’t quite follow his advice, but kinda close.
#A better look at the pin with more faces and details about future plans, and much more human (to use a term) than their first demo. Others noted the delays in response time, but the thing that strikes me is the poor quality of the voice. To add insult to injury, listen to some of the location instructions. Cities, states, and ZIP codes for addresses in SoHo?
#A cofounder of the seafood restaurant wrote a Bourdain-esque requiem for Brooklyn Magazine.
#