Interesting how Apple redesigned the Settings app in iOS 18:

• Explainers at the header of all the major sections
• First party apps are now equally discoverable to Third party apps, since they’re all in the new “Apps” subcategory
• The seem to be developing a language where the background (blue versus grey background) of some of the sections seems to pertain to their controls

AI generated art fills that perfect niche of “stuff I used to throw together for fun in photoshop based off some stupid idea”

What a fun little guitar toy. 🎸

It looks like you’re writing a blog post.

Would you like help?

• So Microsoft re-announced Clippy after a 20-year hiatus
• It now has a voice and is called Copilot+ (Plus?)
• Makes for a nifty prerecorded demo
• Will be curious if they’ve learned from their mistakes

1. Yes, it really does work as well as those demo videos show.
2. It turns out all those recent smart assistant devices could just be an app! (Not to mention it has access to all the useful features a smartphone already has.)
3. It seems the stage is set for this to replace Siri. With first-party support for app and service integration, you have an opportunity for a very compelling new interaction paradigm.

I know I’m late to the commentary party, but who the hell at Apple saw that iPad crush ad and thought, “Yep, good to go”?

Super tone deaf, and the idea itself was totally salvageable if they had been a little more creative with the imagery.

Not to mention this exact idea has been done before.

Although my Oreo Dipper 9000 may seem like a silly use of GPT image generators, in product design, particularly during the initial stages, the utility of these tools cannot be overstated. They rapidly create preliminary visualizations of your concepts, enabling faster and more effective communication of your ideas. This tool also helps identify gaps in your thought process, as it fills in details you may not have considered, prompting a reevaluation of your approach.

Via The Register:

The advisor said that “it is a known issue in the Cybertruck that when you do a screen reset, instead of resetting in the standard two minutes, it takes five hours.”

I will never tire of hearing about this appliance-on-wheels’s woes.

As far as I’ve seen, most of these smart assistant devices that have been coming out can’t answer a pretty obvious question– why can’t this just be an app?

Seriously, I don’t know anyone who is going to want to carry another device around to capture this functionality, and the tradeoffs in functionality you lose from not having your phone (as fancy and sleek as some of these devices look) make you worse off. All of these demoes rely heavily on everything working out correctly, and you going along with what the assistant is saying it’s doing. You know what you’re going to want when something isn’t working? A large screen with direct input on the algo / AI that’s running the task (oh hey, like a phone!).

Paradoxically, the form factor is also the limiting factor for using a phone as one of these smart devices (size, weight, portability). So instead of an entirely new device, why not an accessary that takes all the strengths of a assistant-focused device and pair it to the phone as the processor?

The capture device (probably a combination camera, microphone, and minimal interactive interface) can be much lighter since they don’t need to handle processing on-device, and can probably be even more minimalistic since you you can offload secondary interactions to the phone.

Basically what I’m imagining is a revamp of the old iSight: a camera, microphone, and (now) interaction interface that is paired to your phone and serves as your assistant’s eyes into your context. Something like this:

The irony is not lost on The Atlantic, I suppose.