Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Apple Vision Pro (The Sometimes Device): Book Notes

I got an Apple Vision Pro. My history with Apple products is that I once was proud of this mountain of empty white Apple boxes that I kept under the bed. I bought the first iPad on launch day. I didn’t buy the first iPhone. I had an iPod Nano (probably forever my favorite design for a thing). I had an iPod Shuffle. A bunch of MacBooks. Etc. etc.

Conclusion: I’m keeping it and alternate between “man this is so cool” and “man this is an expensive browser”. I’ll keep it to continue trying new VisionOS experiences as they come out. I also have this idea that at some point in my life I’m going to learn to program again. (Once upon a time I was paid to write pretty good CSS combined with spaghetti jQuery.) And I think it’ll be fun to trying to make some widgets for the Vision Pro.

I want to make a video looking at the Vision Pro through the lens of books about the history of Apple.

But first, I’ll need to grab highlights from the books about the history of Apple. I was about to start a doc and realized I should slowly write a growing blog post instead. So here we go.

Apple Vision Pro - brain.fm and Notes

Is the Vision Pro wonderful? (sometimes!)

“Make Something Wonderful” compiles Steve Jobs’s thoughts into a book, in his own words. Here’s an example of what he’d describe as wonderful:

“And when we sit down to design products [at Apple], we don’t think, “Oh, well, our target audience is fifteen to twenty-nine, male.” We don’t think that way. We think about making a great product for just about everybody. And the beauty of the products we make is they can be tailored with software to do almost anything.

So we weren’t thinking, in the iPad, of any specific audience, but we’re thinking about everybody.

We don’t have to go home at night and tell our kids when they say, “Well, what do you do? What did you do today?” “Well, I worked on our next-generation server, you know, that’ll be powering something or other.” We can say, “I worked on our next-generation iPad. You know, the ones that you use in school.”

And that’s a really wonderful thing.”

I’m excited to see how the software evolves. Sometimes the Vision Pro makes it possible to see the future. “Sweet I can look at this 3D scan I took last year and it brings me right back to that meal. Imagine when it’s going to be able to…”

Sometimes you hit a brick wall in the OS. I got pumped by David Sparks’s virtual writing cabin setup turned my environment to 100%, set up the bluetooth keyboard, played Brain.FM up in Safari, pulled the Notes app up to write, pinched to tap “Hide others” and was ready to go…

The music went out.

It was a little unexpected with how “Hide others” would work on MacOS. And VisionOS is closer to iPadOS which doesn’t have “Hide others”. So I had the MacOS expectation and it wasn’t met.

“Make Something Wonderful” highlight might be more like “I worked on our next-generation Vision Pro. You know, the ones that you use in _____” and I’m curious what the blank will be filled in with as time goes on.

Some thoughts from Cal Newport

For years, people wondered if Apple was going to release its own TV. A giant display with tvOS built in. Squint and the Vision Pro fulfills that need.

Here are Cal Newport’s thoughts on it (full video):

I don’t know that everyone yet is still on the same page that I’m on, which says the whole reason why Apple is investing in the Apple Vision Pro, the whole reason why they’re doing this is because you don’t need to, once this technology is sufficiently advanced, you don’t need to own separate screens.

Once you can fit an Apple Vision Pro into a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, I don’t need a phone and an iPad and a laptop and a TV and an office computer. I just need these glasses, which can put similar-sized screens wherever I happen to be, so why buy all those things?

It’s a huge industry.

The consumer electronics industry is huge. Apple’s profit comes almost entirely from building physical screens in nice brushed metal boxes.

If those all go away, Apple’s in trouble, so they want to own the virtual screen future, and I’m still convinced that’s where we’re going to end up.

If I want to make a phone call, I put a screen in front of me projected by my glasses.

If I want to watch TV, there’s a screen put on the wall projected by my glasses.

If I want to write, a screen comes in front of me at the coffee shop projected by my glasses.

I don’t need to own other bits of electronic.

I just need whatever drives those glasses.

Like the iPad, it looks like it’s going to fulfill entertainment consumption needs before it fulfills productivity needs.

(TO BE CONTINUED…

… I want to chip away at this post. I’ll add a book quote at a time until… I guess until the posts feels done?)

Meal prep ideas from Bart Kwan

I’m always up for a good meal prep video.

Bart walks through meal prep with sirloin steak, rice, and the normandy vegetable mix.

I’ll try this pretty soon and he points out that the sirloin is really pretty tender and doesn’t know if it’s a Costco thing or what. From what I understand, it is a Costco thing—they blade tenderize their meat. Which I remember being pointed out in some other video as a bad thing but can’t remember what it was exactly. Certainly it wasn’t a big enough deal to stop me from buying sirloin from Costco. It really is a great cut.

I had some good progress in January 2024—I was working out on most days and also tracked food for something like 28 of 31 days in the month. Then I stopped tracking food and started to miss more workout days here and there.

No excuses.

(But if you happen to be interested in my excuses!…  Been pretty busy at work, family staying over, planning to host, health, etc.)

But I’m ready to get back on it.

I’m writing this on the treadmill. I won’t get quite to 10,000 steps today. Need to go spend time with said family staying over and not hide in the garage.

I’m working out again. Got a few days of a streak going. Hit the last day of the sets of 7 for the Fighter Pull Up Program. (A couple days off then 8-7-6-5-4).

I took Booster on a long walk today. She’s gotta get her steps in too.

And of course, I’m feeding some meal prep content into my info diet.

The Ultimate Vader

Fun fact I hadn’t heard before:

“There were two major candidates for the role of Big Van Vader, who was going to be the monster foreign heel, one being White and the other being Jim Hellwig. Hellwig signed with Titan Sports and of course became The Ultimate Warrior just before the decision as to which one of the two was supposed to be Vader, although the original Vader drawings called for a large muscular man built more along with likes of Hellwig.” — The Wrestling Observer Yearbook ’93: The Year of Major Beginnings and Major Endings (Wrestling Observer Newsletter 1) by Dave Meltzer

There are a bunch of these Wrestling Observer Yearbooks on Kindle Unlimited. No brained if you’re a wrestling fan. Each is organized by topic and then the articles are curated by topic in chronological order. It’s great. Just tons of small details about my favorite periods in wrestling.

The Vader and Ultimate Warrior fact above is an example.

Another is that, yes, I had read that Sid and Arn Anderson got in a fight with scissor stabbings. But the chapter in The Wrestling Observer is where I first heard the specific type of scissors: round tipped safety scissors instead of the sharp tipped kind. The latter probably would’ve lead to someone dying.

What’s the tenuous creativity lesson I should pull from here? Not sure other than that it’s fun to read old magazines.

And don’t run with scissors (even if they’re round tipped).

Neville Medhora and Noah Kagan: old school web

Noah is doing the rounds on podcasts for his book launch and was on Neville’s show. Always fun to listen to close friends talk because of how good the chemistry is.

Especially with the idea of “doing the rounds” in the first place. That implies you’ll hear some of the same stories across a few different podcasts. Repeat the narratives that work.

With close friends, you know they probably won’t be sticking to the usual questions.

Anyway, Neville mentioned that he’s been quietly posting to his blog again. That inspired me to open up WordPress in bed right before sleeping. (Really just delaying my sleep actually.) And to quietly write this post.

I was journaling then realized I should start shifting my daily writing habit more toward public writing. Add to and tend the garden here.

Noah’s company makes millions promoting software. But he sticks to a few relatively basic tools like spreadsheets instead of an array of the latest startup tools.

Oh yeah, his book. I just started it and I’m pretty sure the one takeaway I’ll have is “Now, not How.”

I know your inner negotiator may be saying, “That sounds great, but MY idea needs more time.” Stop! Power comes when you automatically implement NOW, Not How in everything you do. So no more negotiating with yourself. You’re just a doer. Say it to yourself: NOW, Not How.

A reason I think it’ll be good to make writing my daily content is that, well, I can do it from start to finish from my phone. I can take an idea and write a post Now (not How do I script this, how do I represent this in visuals, how do I make this fit in a minute….)

Short form vertical video made it easier to be consistent with video because you can shoot it with your phone. You just have to find a topic and format that works that’s an easy lift.

“Just.”

The short form format I chose takes a bit more work. (Not implying it’s elevated or better, it just takes a bit more in editing.) Recently I’m often using a few different apps. Figma and Descript and Screenflow. Even for a short I’ll frequently end up opening all 3 at some point.

Even more recently I’ve been using a Vision Pro. POV sharing seems to be a way that might work for me to live the holy-grail-of-consistency “Document, Don’t Create” life. POV over the shoulder stuff documenting the process of creating… something each week. Using web apps. Could be interesting!

Descript editing in the Vision Pro and Safari might be a good video idea. We’ll see.

Otherwise, I’d like to increase the amount of writing I post. If anything, as mentioned in my previous post, I can just share a few thoughts about a podcast I listened to that day. As long as I remember, I’ll aim for a post a day.

Sometimes in the middle of the night in my bed.

Things to practice (that we sometimes forget)

“Free to Focus” by Michael Hyatt:

If you fall victim to this limiting belief, replace it with this liberating truth: Productivity is a skill I can develop.

There are some skills we know take some practice to build up. There’s a clear progression or some indication you’ve learned something new. You’re learning to program and now you’re able to build something that would’ve seemed impossible a few months ago.

Productivity sometimes seems god-given or, if not, we can be less patient with the timeline required. The time saving hack should be working right away. I should be able to do my 4 pomodoros then take the long break in exactly 2 hours as prescribed.

Focus takes practice. And practice takes time.

Steve Jobs didn’t like the Mac vs. PC ads (on paper)

From “Insanely Simple” by Ken Segall:

You’d think that such a brilliant advertising idea would have been green-lighted from the start. In truth, the campaign had shaky beginnings, as Steve rejected many of Chiat’s scripts over the course of several meetings. Refusing to give up on their idea, the Chiat team decided that the best thing to do was to go out and shoot some real ads using the proposed actors. They spent an intense weekend doing just that and shared the ads with Steve on Monday. Seeing them on the screen instead of on paper, he loved them.

Imagine ‘Iron Man’ without the suit or ‘Avatar’ without Pandora’s breathtaking visuals. It’s like Harry Potter waving a twig instead of a wand – the magic just isn’t there.

In “Getting Real”, DHH and Jason Fried write about the importance of coded prototypes.

Don’t worry about the size of your headline font in week one. You don’t need to nail that perfect shade of green in week two. You don’t need to move that “submit” button three pixels to the right in week three. Just get the stuff on the page for now. Then use it. Make sure it works. Later on you can adjust and perfect it.

Details reveal themselves as you use what you’re building. You’ll see what needs more attention.

You’ll feel what’s missing. You’ll know which potholes to pave over because you’ll keep hitting them. That’s when you need to pay attention, not sooner.

It’s about making it real, tangible, something that pops off the screen and grabs you.

Sometimes you need a New Zealand landscape.

Sometimes Justin Long and John Hodgman will do. (Or whoever the prototype versions of them were.)