19MAY2024
Happy Sunday to everyone! This week's report is being typed with love and care on a new 11" M4 iPad Pro. Obviously the new iPad Pro is bonkers fast and sublimely built, as every other reviewer has mentioned. Agreed. I also agree that a lot more could be done on the software side to make the most of all the horsepower these machines are packing. (I'm withholding final judgement though until we all see whatever Apple is planning to reveal for iPadOS 17 next month.) All that said, for someone who primarily uses it to read books and comics, type journal entries and emails, sketch (poorly), and produce music (even more poorly), I'm totally loving it. Until earlier this week, I'd been using a 4-5 year old 13" iPad Pro with a scuffed up screen, and I'm really digging going back to the smaller form factor. It has me second guessing my plan to try out the iPhone Pro Max this fall.
On to the good stuff--
- 💻 Cleanshot X - For someone who is not a professional designer, I still take a crazy amount of screenshots each day. Whether it's capturing a quote from an article, a great piece of design I want to show someone, a screen recording to show a friendly how to do something on the computer, or capture a weird error message I need to share with the IT department, I just wind up having a lot of times I want to share something from my screen with others. Cleanshot X is a little utility that makes it both easier to capture your screen, and makes sure that you screenshots look nice. It supports all kinds of handy little features, like letting you add custom backgrounds behind your screenshots, easy markup to highlight or draw arrows pointing to what you want to call out, or even make little animated GIFs of your screen recording to make the file smaller. It's one of those remarkably well designed apps that just makes little things easier and more delightful.
- 🗣️ OpenAI Chat GPT 4o Demo - I'm as wary as the next guy of all this AI stuff. Not so much the "AI is going to take all our jobs" and "fire ze missiles" wariness (yet), but rather more wary of a bunch of well funded tech bro's with great marketing teams blowing a whole lot of smoke. There are some legitimately cool AI technologies out there, but there are also A LOT of grifters looking to make a quick buck. So it's with that said, I'll note that this week's demo from OpenAI of their new ChatGPT 4o model totally blew my hair back. IF it is as good as it seems (again major caveat emptor), this feels like it could be a massive leap forward for the potential applications of this technology. It's worth watching the short demo to get a sense of some of the possibilities (for good or ill) that this tech can bring. (While the full chat functionality that was demoed won't be out for a few weeks, I've set up my iPhone's action button to open a voice chat with the current generation ChatGPT voice chat, which I'd not really used previously, and have been consistently impressed with it. I'm eager to try out the new version later this month.)
- 🃏Star Wars Unlimited - I linked to an article a few weeks back that listed Star Wars Unlimited as on of the best tabletop and card games of 2024 (so far). My son and I picked it up this week and have been playing a round or two every day since. It's a lot of fun, easy to learn, but also with some interesting strategic possibilities to add some complexity. We just got the starter set that comes with two pre-built decks-- The booster packs filled with additional cards are currently sold out across the US, and can only be bought with major mark-ups on eBay. That said, the starter decks have provided plenty of fun for us so far, and my local game store (shout out, Dragon's Lair!) says that the availability of boosters should normalize by July.
- 🌊 Carryology x Miir Water Bottle - I need another water bottle like I need another gray hair on my head, and yet the fine folks at Carryology's new collaboration with Miir, was just too much for me to resist. What can I say about it other than it looks great, has better proportions and is grippier than my Yeti(s), and so far has managed to keep my cold drinks nice and cold despite the rising temperatures in Austin.
- 🧘🏻♂️ The Way App - I've tried a lot of different meditation apps over the years, and almost always tend to favor the ones that just let you sit in silence, only chiming in with pleasant bells when you want a reminder to refocus or when you want to know that it's time to get on with your day. No distracting voice prompts, etc. My favorite of this pleasant style of meditation aid is still Zenitizer. That said, I had heard positive things about The Way app by Zen Master, Henry Shukman, and decided to give it a try. I've been using it daily for about 2 weeks now as a complement to my regular practice, and have really enjoyed it so far. For me, the stand out feature is that there is a set path of sessions for you to follow-- no decision fatigue figuring exactly which type of guided calm or focus you're looking for in the moment. Instead, this app provides a practical guided course in Zen meditation, with a set curriculum of 10 minute guided lessons every day as you make your way through the course. I appreciate that I not only am getting to sit, but am also learning a new modality for meditation practice as I go. Worth checking out if you're at all curious about meditation, mindfulness, or practical Zen, as the first 30 lessons are free and can be repeated forever.
That's it for this week, be well everyone!