Food for thought The RSS feed for Food for thought.

  • Every designer knows this thought:

    _"Everything made around me has a form and a function. So everything had to be shaped by a designer. But who are they? Where are they? And whyβ€”if they really were designersβ€”why were they so careless?"_

    Seeing the rise and fall of the interaction design industry I am beginning to doubt if everything really is designed in the proper sense of design, as a discipline that gives shape in the tension between thinking and acting. Things are simply carelessly produced.

    I would say: every designer who really cares knows this thought.

  • I just finished a quick Facebook session to see what’s new for my Mac Pro that I put for sale on the marketplace. I switched to my late father’s Facebook account to see if something needed attention. Nothing. Depressing. What the fuck is Facebook now?

  • @Denny wrote:

    I don’t view myself as a “content creator” and recoil at that phrase. I keep a blog as a way to stay involved in the world. Simply put, my motivation is to write, share, read, engage, learn. My contribution is a drop in the ocean and irrelevant to me beyond it being my tiny contribution to the collective whole.

    This thought really resonated with me. So much that I’m considering to replace “compulsive creator” to “compulsive contributor” in my bio. It is so much more meaningful and positive.

  • On Writing Inline Links

    Each time I write a sentence with an inline link to something else, I’m hesitating. Here are two examples. V1: When I read this article I simply couldn’t believe it. V2: When I read Gurman: No iPad Announcement Planned for March 26, I simply couldn’t believe it. Which version makes … read more

  • Not Everything Should Be "Timeless"

    Today, I came across a blog via someone’s else blogroll, and to my surprise, while browsing the blog’s content, I couldn’t find a single post with a publication date. So, let me be clear: I’m not feeling at ease when visiting a blog that don’t display publication date … read more

  • Apple seems to be on a streak of really questionable decisions regarding the App Store and the developer’s community in general that will take years for them before they can say: oh gosh, we fucked up. But it might be too late when they do because developers will be doing their things elsewhere. I’m looking for the day Apple more openly admits it is doing wrong.

  • Must Have Public Mental Health Disclaimer

    I’ve been reflecting on blogrolls deeply in recent days and started writing an article on that subject. While doing so, an idea came up and I decided to write something that I think anyone who builds and shares a blogroll should add on it as an introduction. I’m reproducing it here. This … read more

  • Never Tamper Someone's Desire for Creative Tools

    My wife gave me a surprisingly mildly negative reaction this morning when I shared with her my intention of getting a Nikon Zf mirrorless camera before going to Croatia this summer. Not because it’s not the best camera for this situation, no, because I already own an iPhone 15 Pro Max and a … read more

  • The future doesn't belong to optimists or pessimists. It does what it wants. Here's what's plausible to me: Apple has a lot of brains, brand loading and market power... So AVP will find its place. To me, this didn't change everything. The iPhone had that effect. On top of that, the device doesn't have the usual Apple fetish character. It doesn't say "You want this, don't you?" **It doesn't make you look good and part of a cool tribe. From outside makes you look confused, foolish and sad.**

    Oliver Reichenstein writing about his experience with the Apple Vision Pro. Emphasis is mine.

  • What is the best way to fix the FOMO syndrome when it comes to RSS feeds? Simply hit “mark all as read”. You are welcome.

  • Why is Dave Winer still caring about Twitter and Facebook? Mr. Winer is such a proponent of the open web… and interoperability… Twitter and Facebook are the antithesis of those principles.

  • When my sons got old enough, I offered them their first email address on Gmail. That made them happy. They didn’t have an iPhone to use it but they could sit down in front of a computer and start writing emails. I wonder if I came up with an empty but ready-to-use blog if they would react the same? Probably not.

  • Isn’t it strange that looking at the Apple Vision Pro today I find it’s look somewhat outdated. Already. Should I say β€œretro”? Is this design really iconic? πŸ€”

  • AI Training: Ethics or Coverage?

    Some authors on the internet are against using their content without permission to train the models behind generative AI. As a blogger, this question often comes to my mind. On one hand, I believe that training without permission poses an ethical issue. I am unsure if we have genuinely addressed … read more

  • One Big Regret of My Digital Life

    One of the things I regret the most is not having had the idea of creating a blog in the 90s (and keeping it until today). Surprisingly, I learned about HTML, web servers like Apache and Netscape when it became popular1. I didn’t click with the idea of owning a small portion of the Internet to … read more

  • Yesterday, while writing and editing a report for one of our clients, I used ChatGPT for two different use cases. One use case was to ask for a summarization of what “firmware” is and how critical it is. The second use case is to define the pillars of a data management and governance policy in the enterprise. On that one, I asked for more details about managing unstructured data. The ChatGPT results were mind-blowing. I know a lot about this specific IT field, and I could validate the correctness of the answers. I saved a lot of time because of ChatGPT.

    But what about my ethics?

    Should I write a disclaimer in this report that says GenAI was used to put together some portions of this report? Is the client ready and mature enough to read this disclaimer? Will he understand that ChatGPT is in fact like an assistant to whom I asked to summarize what a data governance policy is? How do I cite my sources?

  • When people are nervous and under pressure, their worst tendencies often surface easily. 😌

  • Microsoft supports the Apple Vision Pro headset with Office 365 Suite, Teams and Copilot. At least five apps, on day one, for a use case (productivity) still to be demonstrated as viable. For the most probable day-one use case of the Apple Vision Pro, Netflix refuses to create a single app, a “simple” video library browser and player. WTF? Politics. πŸ˜‘

  • Today, I was watching many YouTube videos and was thinking about how impressive it is that some people1 build their online careers as YouTubers for talking about one application or ecosystem2.


    1. Like Thomas Frank↩︎

    2. Notion is a great app offering many possibilities to talk about for a long time. ↩︎

  • Thought of the Sunday morning: The biggest problem in my life is that I have too much to explore and do and not enough time. Unsolvable. πŸ˜