The best laptop ever made

Apple has made many great laptops, but the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012–2015) is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been (and may never be) surpassed.

Wish I’d written this. An open love letter to a great machine. I still think that an used 13in MacBook Pro is the best value for a laptop nowadays.

Albert Watson’s story behind the famous image of Steve Jobs

Love hearing the context for famous photos like this one.

(Not) Difficult

Being privileged makes it easy to think that taking a risk is difficult. It’s scary because the inertia of the status quo makes too many scenarios look suboptimal. Life could continue to be as it is, and you’d be ok — but any less than this, would be bad.

This is as stupid as complaining that you have to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. What may sound as an uncool plan would literally be considered heaven for most people that lived in the last thousand years — and sadly, even most still alive today.

So we’re taking a risk. For most people — and hopefully us in hindsight — it will look childish to worry about. But it felt difficult and counterintuitive, and at the same time like the right thing. Will report from the other side.

The sunshine after the storm

A month ago we welcomed the newest member of our family. Bettina Maria was born at 11:35AM on Sept 12th in Miami.

That was roughly:

• 4 hours after the hospital reopened.
• 18 hours after we got electricity (and water) back.
• 26 hours after her mom had to climb 27 floors up to the apartment.
• 48 hours after Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida
• 80 hours after her mom and grandma arrived at another hospital shelter for the storm.
• About 99 times after someone jokingly called her Irma Bettina — to her mom’s gritted teeth.

In contrast to Robie’s minutely planned arrival and its choreographed fanfare, Bettina’s arrival was an excellent (and at times literal) example of Bruce Lee’s:

Be like water making its way through cracks.

Ana was brave, practical and unapologetically sentimental. My wife is the most amazing mom, and her only worry was being separated from Robie and myself — since children weren’t allowed in the hospital shelter.

Being a grownup sometimes sucks, and we had to agree that she would take care of herself and Bettina with her mom in the hospital, in case the baby decided to arrive early.

Meanwhile, Robie, my parents and myself stayed at home to ride out the storm. Luckily we have great neighbors, which meant that Robie basically thought we went indoor camping with them. He also loved going up and down the stairs — again… 27 floors.

But being a grownup sometimes rocks, and a month ago I got to pickup this plump and healthy half mini-me. Holding her, I felt objectivity evaporate as I’m now convinced she’s the most beautiful and intelligent newborn since Robie. It’s an amazing feeling — which gets even more surreal with forthcoming lack of sleep.

So the new adventure begins. My best analogy for parenthood the first year with Robie was that it reminded me of platformer games: as soon as we had mastered something (sleep time, eating, etc) and felt comfortable, Robie would bring up a challenging new level.

My working analogy with Bettina (and she’s going to hate this), is that it’s like rewatching a horror film. You know what’s coming, so overall you are more relaxed — but it still can be scary at times.

Regardless of horror movie or Nintendo game, we couldn’t be more grateful to be healthy and together. In this crazy thing some call the human experience, all other things are accessories.

Filmmaker Ken Burns interview:

The finished film, what’s shown is the thing. For me, it’s the process of making it. If I can sort of convince myself when I put my head on my pillow that I’ve made that film better that day, I feel a little bit better, and I go to sleep a little bit faster.

Really enjoyed this quote. It’s a really good interview regarding his new Vietnam War documentary. Recommended.

Maxims and Affirmations

I put together 5 of my favorite quotes and highlights from my notes. Original plan was to write them down everyday as I woke up, but Robie ended up always taking my notebook — and either way I memorized them after a couple of days.

This is the price I am willing to pay for retaining my composure.
~ Epictetus

Difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
~ Isaac Asimov

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.
~ Cicero

Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.
~ Richard Hamming

Trade expectations for appreciation.
~ Tony Robbins

I’ve found some interesting calming effects in taking a pause throughout the day and repeating these. Not being religious, it seems to scratch a similar itch in resetting my mind.

How a recording-studio mishap shaped ’80s music

Over the past few years a general nostalgia for the 1980s has infiltrated music, film, and television.

Great video. But the playlist is a soundtrack worth saving.

Jason Fried: Your Company Should be Your Best Product

Enjoyed this video from Basecamp’s Jason Fried. Lots of interesting concepts that are useful regardless of what tool you use.

If you want answers from people, you have to ask questions and if a system asks a question, it’s a process. If a persons does, it’s nagging.

This comment left me thinking.

Updated Colophon

Missed two Apps that I use every day on the Mac:

Pastebot clipboard manager:

Much more powerful than the LaunchBar clipboard tool. Still not crazy about its implementation of combining clipboards — but the other features outweigh this.

Better ad/tracker blocker:

Works great on iOS also. I’ve had very few issues with sites loading incorrectly, and I trust their blocking rules.

On men and memos

The Google memo bothers me. It’s a smart-sounding piece of contrarian opinion that cherry picks facts to drive a point. It misappropriates real problems and assigns convenient explanations.

I don’t think it’s worth debunking, because it’s not even posing a question. The writer clearly assumes that he knows better than us. He’s mansplaining in the most ironic way: to other men and incorrectly.

First, my beliefs: women are equal to men in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. You can generalize on the differences between men and women — it’s not fair, but it’s efficient. You shouldn’t be reductionist based on these generalizations — that’s unfair, and inefficient.

Second, my opinion: working on tech for women is not easy. The same situation where a male PM can get kudos from his team will result in shaken heads with a female PM — bossy vs. leader, bitchy vs. detailed, flirty vs friendly. Add the current vicious cycle of mostly male teams and it’s not easy to imagine what an unfriendly environment it can be.

I’ve worked with great female developers. I’ve worked with mediocre male developers. Anecdote is not evidence, so I shouldn’t say all female devs are great — but saying the opposite is just as incorrect.

Gruber: I Don’t Think There’s Going to Be an ‘iPhone 7S’

iPhone, iPhone Plus, iPhone Pro

This sounds right to me.

Logistics at my scale

Shopify beats estimates as revenue jumps 75%

In fact, its 56 per cent growth in North America in the quarter was far surpassed by its pace of expansion in Asia, South America and Africa.

This is interesting. While Amazon continues to become a 500 pound Gorilla in the US, its international expansion has been slower — and mostly limited to developed countries.

I believe that Amazon’s superpower is overcoming complexities of logistics at scale. However, when you move from large markets into smaller ones, you face restrictions that don’t scale at all.

Say you figure out logistics in Mexico, whatever expertise you acquired will do very little in figuring out Guatemala. You can repeat the example throughout South America — and I’m willing to bet in Asia and Africa too.

Shopping has morphed since the beginning of the web. Although most players are currently experimenting with mixed models, a simplified look at their strengths could look something like:

I’m very curious about the edge cases where Shopify and Postmates exists. While scale is more difficult to achieve, there’s a lot of flexibility that allows for more niche segments to crop up. Still, within large markets, the advantage doesn’t last long. As soon as product X had enough demand, the centralized infrastructure takes over with its lower costs.

But when the large market is actually a combination of smaller markets, there should be a lot more space for middle of the road logistics scale. Especially when there’s variations of tastes that don’t benefit exactly the same products in each of the markets.

Still need to work through this, but I believe (and hope) Amazon.com will not be the only online store in the future.

Deplete Inventories 2

When shaving with a safety razor and brush, you usually fall down a rabbit hole of shaving creams and soaps. Last December I started to anxiously calculate when I should replace my favorite shaving cream — or maybe trying a new one? That’s when my frugal resolution for 2017 started.

Almost 8 months later, I still haven’t bought a new shaving cream or soap. Half-used and completely new ones keep appearing.

I miss having a new shaving thingy, but it feels great to finish up existing ones.

Read the chart out loud

When dealing with large datasets¹ remember to tell yourself the story of the resulting chart.

Most of us usually create charts with some sort of agenda. We kinda know what we want to show, and therefore aren’t surprised with the chart if it fits our expectations.

The problem is that good data organized incorrectly can still look right. The most painless way I’ve found to try to catch these issues is taking a step back and telling a story of what the data is showing without thinking about your slide title. Just really read the data calmly, and you will likely catch a surprise or two.

Thankfully I’ve avoided a few charts with volume numbers until December 2017 (US vs world date formate), 1000x sales numbers (coma vs period thousand’s separator), and my favorite: 70 weeks per year (careful when how you use the DATE() formula).

Ride it out

There’s a moment at the end of a swim lap that you have to decide between stretching out and riding out your inertia — or doing one last stroke to reach the wall.

Of course there are different personalities: some prefer to hit the wall at full force, others do a final all out push just before the wall to glide into the finish.

A similar dynamic can also happen on projects. Some push their teams until a few hours (minutes?) before the deadline. I usually end up with a hard week and working weekend on the final stretch, but on the final days I let the team inertia set the pace.

Productivity Apps and Subscription Pricing

Michael Tsai:

Instead, we’ve seen subscriptions combined with price increases, customers balking, and insinuations that people just don’t want to pay for anything anymore. With more than one variable changing at once, I don’t think we can conclude that people hate subscriptions.

This ring true. It’s not as simple as saying I don’t like subscriptions.

Ghost != Medium

Dave Winer:

Think about Medium this way. It’s a big public legal pad. In a perfect world, no one owns the pad. When you want to write something you tear off a sheet, write, when you’re done you tack it up to a global bulletin board where everyone can see it. […] Ghost is not such a place, and neither is WordPress.

There has to be space for a pinboard.in for blogging/writing. A one-person operation that can renders pretty static html and can survive with respectful display ads or non paid accounts.

Microsoft boasted it had rebuilt Skype ‘from the ground up’. Instead, it should have buried it

Chief among the issues is that the redesign imagines Skype as a youth-oriented social media app along the lines of Instagram or Snapchat, rather than a staid business communications tool.

I wanted to give the new version a chance… and I hate it so much. An I told you so is in order.

Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job?

[…] I’ve basically figured out all the traps to the point where I’ve actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me. So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.

Although a particular case, this sort of question will become more common with AI, machine learning, and other deep learning applications.

But as Battlestar Galactica thought us, all of this has happened before and will happen again — From Planet Money episode 606: Spreadsheets!:

And what happened was this accountant, he got a rush job from one of his clients. It was the kind of thing that in the old paper universe would’ve taken a couple days. This guy has this new electronic spreadsheet. So he plugs in the numbers, does the work in just a couple hours. Then, what he does - he just waits, let’s the thing sit on his desk for, like, two days, FedExs it back to the client. And the client was like, wow, you did it so fast.

There’s space for a lot of debate on ethical questions like this. But there’s opportunities created when industries

/now

What I’m doing now

It’s summer in Miami in summer.

My son Robie¹ is 19 months old — and a functioning mini-person. This doesn’t stop amusing me yet. My wife Ana is 6 months pregnant with Bettina, due in September.

At work we’re less than 3 weeks out from having my latest PM project be feature complete. Private beta ETA is August 1st… it’s going to be tight.

I’m trying to grow my Javascript non-skills with a few bookmarklets for Ulysses, Amazon and Trello. More failures and successes, which still is a net-positive results.

We’re seriously considering moving with Aeropost.com to San José, Costa Rica for a year or two. Back and forward with this. It makes rational sense, but we actually like Miami now.

This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.

The Secret Lives of Playlists

For all of its talk about prioritizing “discovery” and “knowing your tastes” […], what Spotify feeds to Browse and pushes to Discover is influenced largely by whether an artist already has a massive marketing campaign and corporate push behind them.

I’ve been using Google Play Music — instead of Spotify — for the last few weeks¹, and I’m amazed with how much I enjoy the playlists.

Initially I thought it was a bit of placebo effect, but I’m now sure there’s some magic — or less influential marketing campaign — workings with Google Music Play’s playlists.

Seriously considering switching over from Spotify. Plus, the YouTube Red value of not showing commercials is great.

Parenting : Who is it really for?

[…] I realized that the parenting things I do for him are also for myself. And that’s an idea worth sharing.

I’ve re-read this blogpost a few times today. It has made question a few things and start doing others differently. Can’t think of a higher praise for something you read.

Day One Goes Premium

This week we’re releasing the Day One Premium subscription service. It includes the ability to create more than ten journals and access all future premium features.

Not crazy about adding yet-another-subscription-service to my budget. But this is the new model for software companies, and I’m happy my favorite apps can find a way to exist¹.

How The iPhone Was Born: Inside Stories of Missteps and Triumphs

On the iPhone’s 10th birthday, former Apple executives Scott Forstall, Tony Fadell and Greg Christie recount the arduous process of turning Steve Jobs’s vision into one of the best-selling products ever made.

A cool new software keyboard development story from Forstall to add to the folklore. The rest I’ve read before, but still fun to see each of them telling the stories.

The Last Mile for the iPad

7 years after the iPad release, some of us are still trying to parse out if it is a real computer. I, for one, have given up.

Great points of the rough edges that become apparent when you seriously try to use the iPad as your main computer.

While some are deal breakers right now, I think the iterative polish iOS will continue to get will address them eventually.

However, the lack of sustainable model for big iPad Apps is worrisome. This is likely a chicken and egg problem which Apple believes will improve once more pro Mac users pick up an iPad as a pro device and the demand appears. But for now, I strongly believe his gut feelings:

From the outside, it looks like the Mac is a platform to build a business on and iOS is the place to sell your passion products.

Ron Howard signed up to direct Star Wars spin-off Han Solo movie

The Da Vinci Code’s Ron Howard has replaced The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller as director of the Han Solo spin-off movie, the much-anticipated new instalment of the Star Wars standalone series.

It’s seems Disney is not afraid to change directions if not happy with how a movie looks. Can’t complain.

John Markoff interviews iPhone team members

Museum Historian John Markoff moderates a discussion with former iPhone team members Hugo Fiennes, Nitin Ganatra and Scott Herz, followed by a conversation with Scott Forstall.

Finally saw the video last night, and it’s so good ¹. Amazing insights and fun stories from hardware and software.

A few random thoughts:

• Loved the fellowship between the first speakers.
• When a questions was above their pay grade, none flinched before not answering.
• Scott Herz is hilarious
• Favorite moment is when Scott Herz says that he’d like a better text selection method on iOS. Here, here.
• Scott Forstall personality feels acted. But I get the impression he’s a really smart person that gets into normal mode character to be able to communicate.

Very recommended.

 Stephen King Comic: The desk

Stephen King stars in the ‘The Desk’, adapted from his wonderful book On Writing.

Great comic from a passage of the even greater On Writing book.

iPad Pro 2017 versus MacBook Pro 2017

Barefeats comparing the new iPad Pro’s to new MacBook Pro’s:

The top configured 2017 MacBook Pro 13-inch costs roughly 3 times more than the top configured 2017 iPad Pro. Yet the laptop is only slightly faster running CPU intensive apps and slower running the GPU intensive apps.

As he says in the conclusion:

I am not implying that the iPad Pro can replace the MacBook Pro. They are two different animals, though there is clearly some overlap in capability. It’s just encouraging to know that the iPad Pro development has brought it up to laptop level performance.

The tablet vs laptop overlap has arrived. There’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all answer, but after iOS 11, the iPad Pro vs Macbook consideration will not be for early adopters anymore.

macOS 10.13 Bluetooth

Updated the Core Bluetooth framework to match across iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS, and marked call availability based on platform.

I so very hope bluetooth headphones will work better on High Sierra. The experience in Sierra has been terrible for me.

Day One is launching iOS and Mac v2.2 with End-to-end encryption.

End-to-end encryption utilizes a user-generated, private key to encrypt all entries before they reach Day One servers. With possession of the encryption key held only by the end user, maximum security is assured for journal data. 

Long time coming, very happy for this. I don’t pour thoughts without filters into my journals, but in the back of my mind there’s always some additional caution.

Will be signing up ASAP.

To note, IFTTT will not work on encrypted journals initially, so plan ahead.

Back into Podcasting

This week, I’ve been podcasting again in Spanish with Mauricio. It feels great, and I’m enjoying the low friction that using the Bumpers App allows. It doesn’t sound nearly as great as when Mauricio removed all my ums in the past, but it’s not bad for a recording done on the iPhone with my Airpods ¹.

Hope we can keep it up. Here’s the latest version:

Inside One Founder’s Personal Fast Club

But Libin doesn’t really think skipping a meal or two counts. “People who are doing 16/8,” he says, referring to a schedule in which you fast for 16 hours of a day and eat regularly during the remaining eight, “to me that’s not fasting. That’s eating.”

Wow.

It’s true that my weight loss — and then average weight — was lower when I was doing 24hr fasting twice a week. There’s also some research about doing a long fast every so ofter. But going a few days without fasting seems a bit extreme even for me.

I’m currently vaguely doing 16/8 twice a week, and my weight has crept slightly up, but still held on my 78kg.

5 word review WWDC 2017

• iPad Pro 10.5-inch: The next home desktop PC
• iOS 11 (iPad): macOS light for the iPad
• iOS 11 (iPhone): Augment Reality each and everyone
• watchOS 4: More Siri and fitness, fatso
• New App Store: Much nicer window shopping
• HomePod: I want… wait, no Spotify?
• macOS High Sierra: Not really a Snow Leopard
• iMac Pro: Please shut-up about Pro now
• iMac: Whoops, we forgot in 2016

Some tidbits I found interesting:

• Surprised the didn’t leave the current iPad Pro as a mid-tier device.
• The new Files app support for 3rd party services like Box, Dropbox is very aggressive.
• Notes App now supports simple tables — on the Mac at least.
• watchOS still supports the original Apple Watch.

Seth’s Blog: Greatest hits are exhausting

The web has pushed us to read what everyone else is reading, the hit of the day. But popular isn’t the same as important. Popular isn’t the same as profound. Popular isn’t even the same as useful.

A note to self on this. I usually fall into the popular and must read trap with books. Agonizing over which book to read next — just so I don’t waste time with one I don’t like.

I forget that wasting time starting a book I don’t end liking, is actually an investment even if I don’t finish it.

Interview: Dick Costolo talks to Walt Mossberg about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Taco Bell at Code 2017 

Great interview, stories, and fun goodbye to Walt.

Developer earnings from the App Store top $70 billion

From Apple PR:

Apple today announced that its global developer community has earned over $70 billion since the App Store launched in 2008.

Apple announcing App Store numbers a week before WWDC probably means a packed keynote. Oh yeah.

Swift Playgrounds now supports robots, drones, and other toys

Swift Playgrounds coding app enables kids to program and control LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3, the Sphero Robot, Parrot Drones and more.

This is very, very cool. Can’t wait until I can play with this with Robie (and/or Bettina) in a few years.

Also telling, next week’s keynote must be very packed if none of these (literally) cool toys are getting a demo.

New Skype design

The Skype you know and love has a fresh design and a ton of new features to stay connected with the people you care about the most.

I understand that mobile has to be the priority for any platform, and that naturally means competing with iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat, etc. But, anecdotally I think most people use Skype differently than those platforms.

Skype is closer to LinkedIn than Snapchat, and this redesign makes it feel like a me too app, rather than stand up on it strengths. This makes it more likely that you’ll start using the other — more popular — apps for what you use Skype, than the other way around.

My bet would have been to a friendlier Slack type solution, that takes advantage of pre-paid credits rather than paid plans for advanced features.

The return of the iBook

Apples latest iPad represents the return of the iBook and white MacBook device in the lineup. A solid “current” version that’s easy to recommend without having to attach footnotes or corollaries.

An iPad with trackpad and keyboard

The iPad with keyboard already exists. Visit apple.com/ipad and the third hero image shows an iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard (with multitasking and App switching).

The iPad with trackpad also exists… on software. Use two-finger gestures on the iPad software keyboard and you get a mouse pointer. A way to use this feature with a hardware keyboard is inevitable, at least if Apple expects us to consider the iPad a viable alternative to MacBooks.

A locked-down ARM MacBook

A recent rumor made the rounds about ARM-based MacBook’s with a locked down macOS. This makes little sense to me. You can basically get the macOS mentioned in the rumor with App Store and OS auto-update options already available on macOS.

Locked down macOS vs iOS with mouse support

Both of these are blasphemous on their own way. Diminishing users system access on macOS and adding a mouse pointer to iOS, both break a basic assumption of the platform.

However, both platforms are already going down a slippery slope towards these unnatural features. On macOS, the arrival of the App Store and iCloud Drive started a questionably successful path to lock down the OS and filesystem.

Even on iOS, the all terrible mouse has shown up in disguise since version iOS 9 — with Trackpad Mode — which is useful with the virtual keyboard, and frustratingly missing on hardware ones.

Apple doesn’t need an answer to the Chromebook

A classic error when looking at Apple is to assume they worry about providing an answer to a category: Netbooks, PDAs, wireless speakers, etc.

Apple provides innovative answers to problems with high-margin solutions they can iterate on. Sometimes, these answers overlap what a few of the things the industry was trying to address with a category, but not focus on the one thing Apple set out to.

I do think Apple could benefit from a similar answer to the Chromebooks — and it involvers the iPad with a Smart(er) Keyboard.

Essential PH-1 Phone

The Essential Phone is expertly crafted using titanium and ceramic, has a stunning edge-to-edge Full Display and captures stunning images (even in low light) with the world’s thinnest dual camera system ever built for a phone.

This is a beautiful phone. At $699, also extremely well priced given specs: 128GB storage, 4GB RAM, titanium/ceramic body, etc¹

No, Soylent isn’t Healthy. Here’s Why.

Is it worse than McDonalds? Probably not, but at least you don’t feel good about eating McDonalds, and that’s where the problem is. This idea that Soylent is healthy tricks you into thinking that if you have your Soylent, you’ve done your good-eating-deed for the day, instead of thinking of it as a last resort like a protein bar.

Good point.

I think that Soylent is a great alternative to most lunch options around my office, which is why it’s my default meal. But the combination of fasting and Soylent does make me go overboard for dinner sometimes. So will be giving this some thought.