The tech monoculture is finally breaking

> A Timex ad went viral this year: “Know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.”

Having to micromanage notifications is why I have two phones - one without a SIM card. It's nice to be able to do stuff on the phone and know it won't bug you. I simply put the one with the SIM card elsewhere (other room, leave in car, etc). No - I'm not going to spend too much time learning how to "effectively" manage notifications on a smartphone (and if I do, have it change on me with some future update).

I've been saying it since around 2004-2005 - even before smartphones - that consolidating everything into one device is a bad idea.

One thing I really miss from the 80's and 90's: When you buy a product (hardware or software), its features and capabilities were stable. You never had to worry about some update changing the behavior on you.

I really like some of the health features on Apple Watch. But I won't buy it because I don't want it to be my watch, and I don't want to pair my Apple account with it. I just want the health features and nothing else.

The refurbished pebble has been perfect for my iPhone. The more limited functionality is exactly what I want. It tells me if someone is calling, but I can’t answer on it. It displays calendar notifications/reminders. It doesn’t do social media, it doesn’t text, it is just a glorified beeper and fun little gadget basically.

> Antitrust pressure has slowed consolidation, opened app distribution, killed the anti-competitive iMessage and AirDrop moats

iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware. Apple’s malicious compliance has made developing apps for third party app stores a no-go. I have AltStore installed but there are no apps worth installing.

What a weird techno-optimist blog post, full of cherry-picked examples, with a twist of consumerism. Refreshing take in a sea of nihilism, but saying people are interested in Pokémon and N64 games again when it's mostly post-NFT "everything is an investment" mentality is cute in its naivety.

My ideal situation is that AI becomes commoditized so much that it yields relatively little value for the producers and an incredible amount of value for the consumers.

I don't really expect the prices to be this cheap for much longer, but my hope is that the seeds for the next generation of tech have already been sown.

It would be cool if software becomes so mundane and interchangeable that tech once again distinguishes itself with hardware.