There are three real ways to drill down into them:
This Google Calendar settings menu that I have open is wonderful; itβs document-style with a table of contents, and all of the settings have beautiful visual metaphors to help you understand how to navigate the page.
The Apple menu? Not so great, especially because they try to βownβ technical language and obscure actual features, like saying βpro displayβ instead of 120hz or similar. This creates Apple tribalism and helps some die-hard fans feel more integrated - but choosing different names for products and settings from the colloquial standard basically alienates any casual user - which, IMO, is bad for a product like a MacBook that should be a tool usable by everyone. I donβt want to have to look up what an βepic pro max XDR ultraβ is - just use the language everyone else does. Please!
Major shoutout to the browser company shader this morning. When you first open the app, the full-screen blob and intro animation with music is so, so beautiful - maybe the best animation Iβve seen from software in a long time. That intro sequence is immaculate. Iβm blown away by the work that these teams are doing on MacOS native apps. Developing those tools to be mac-native is feeling awfully temptingβ¦ wondering how easy it would be to port beautiful animated features like this back to Linux and wayland.
Using this Mac has helped me develop a new appreciation for my Linux setup though. All of the animations are beautiful and expressive on MacOS, sure, but my minimal Sway setup feels cold and efficient. Everything happens pretty much instantly without βaffordancesβ or motion blur or 120fps animations - it βjust worksβ. The machine feels functional, efficient, and responsive. I would love to build more beautiful apps that feed into this βfeelβ while taking some of the innovative visual cues from programs like MacOS. ** 10:16 Writing and recording these daily notes is probably - for better or worse - the highlight of my day. This is great practice. Keep noticing details and working on it! ** 11:10 Made another classic prioritization mistake today. Always make the minimum viable changes necessary to release a usable product for other people. I prioritized doing more βin-depthβ work before preparing a deployment of our product at work. Be more careful next time - propose a minimum viable plan, finish that plan, and iterate, adding more if we need. Do not do more up front than is necessary.
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