When paranoia becomes projection

Gruber on Musk fixation on Apple and ChatGPT in a recent blog post: Remember Musk’s Suit Alleging a Conspiracy Between Apple and OpenAI? — Daring Fireball

Musk alleges that the top downloads list is crooked too. That’s just projection. If Musk ran a popular App Store he’d put his thumb on the scale to make sure his own apps always top the list. That’s what he’s done with his personal account, and accounts aligned with his politics, on Twitter/X. Because that’s what he would do, he thinks that’s what Apple does.

He’s probably right: Cheaters are often suspicious of others cheating too.

Frustration buildup

I don’t know if I should trust the news, but it seems that opposition to data centers and artificial intelligence is growing. Nowadays, you have to be cautious about what the media spreads. Controversial topics sell, but they don’t always reflect reality. Still, I get the feeling that frustration is gradually building. 🤨

Working for the soon-to-be-winners?

Apple lawsuit reveals how many of its former employees now work at OpenAI — 9to5Mac

While Apple doesn’t get into specifics, we know from Bloomberg reporting that Apple employees across countless teams inside Apple have left for OpenAI. Most recently, OpenAI poached Paul Meade, who had been in charge of Apple Vision Pro and Apple’s smart glasses project.

Maybe those former Apple employees think that Apple is no longer THE place to be to invent the best possible user experiences or the next revolutionnary device? Or maybe OpenAI simply pays more than Apple? Or maybe a combination of both?

The boring side of the tech world

I understand that companies want to protect their intellectual property. But this new saga between Apple and OpenAI represents what I dislike about the tech world: it’s just noise that distracts me from more fundamental and interesting things. Apple is very fond of these legal battles, and I find it all tiresome.

On Getting a new Windows laptop

Yesterday I got a new Windows laptop at the office. It’s called an Autopilot laptop, and I’m not sure what it really means other than that it’s deployed and managed using enterprise management software. The migration from my older laptop went surprisingly well, but nothing like using Apple’s Migration Assistant, and I suspect this is because most of my data and settings are stored in OneDrive. It’s an HP laptop. While it doesn’t come close to Apple’s MacBook in terms of build quality and general design, I can see improvements in Windows laptops over the years. Even so, Windows still feels bloated due to a plethora of security-related and must-have software, because it still isn’t secure.

Claude Cowork unleashed

Anthropic is unleashing Claude Cowork, which means artifacts can now be run in the cloud rather than on the machine where they were created. This means that if an artifact depends only on cloud resources and services, it can be executed in the cloud and accessed from anywhere, on any device. Until today, I was looking for a way to migrate my artifacts from my MacBook Air to my desktop Mac, but there were no easy solutions. So far, I have four artifacts that I use daily, and I plan to build more.

On MacSurfer's Headlines Evolution

I often revisit MacSurfer’s Headlines website because I’ve been a fan since it launched. Here are some thoughts from my latest visit: the wave logo has been revamped, and I like it — it looks glossy and modern. Now, readers can hide articles behind a paywall, a feature I don’t recall seeing on similar sites. In this screenshot, 19 out of 40 articles are paywalled, which is very useful. Also, readers can subscribe to a newsletter; I’m not sure if this was always available. Lastly, Amazon ads appear on the left sidebar and inline, which has always been part of MacSurfer and has returned after the recent site reboot. Unfortunately, that’s a bit disappointing. I hope MacSurfer continues to thrive by relying solely on human curation. Do we need another OpenAI Pulse or Kagi News, both of which are AI-based?

Anthropic: you can do better

From the DF Archive: ‘Electron and the Decline of Native Apps’:

The ironic frustration with Anthropic’s Claude app being an Electron turd is that Claude and especially Claude Code are so capable of helping to create good native Mac apps. It’s one thing for a big company or organization with cross-platform aspirations but no institutional Mac expertise, like Notion or Slack or Discord, to choose Electron to create their Mac client. It’s another when it’s a company like Anthropic, whose only product’s single most impressive ability is generating programming code, including high-quality AppKit and SwiftUI code for the Mac. To return to my hammering-screws-into-the-walls metaphor from yesterday, it’s as though the building into which Anthropic decided to hammer all the screws is a renowned screwdriver factory.

Bingo.