Dan Bricklin @danb@qoto.org

@Gte Guy: Take a look at what I wrote about having the new Apple Pencil (with an iPad) for use with Apple VisionPro.

Thoughts after Apple iPad event with implications for #VisionPro: Today, Apple positioned iPad and VisionPro for professional use, including movie production and sound editing (e.g., FinalCut & Logic Pro on the iPad), and training (VisionPro). They also updated the Apple Pencil. Here's an exciting idea:

An issue to some with Vision Pro has been the lack of strong integration of hand controllers, especially compared to more gaming-centric headsets. For serious use of VisionPro's initial major pro app, Excel, I think it helps to use a physical keyboard and trackpad, which it does support. But that's not rich enough for many more advanced uses.

I think in the not-too-distant future we’ll see the iPad integrated with VisionPro like the Mac started, if not more so. You’ll use an iPad, perhaps with a Magic Keyboard, and the new Apple Pencil Pro for professional-level control. Having both a pencil, with squeeze, twirl, haptic-feedback, hover, etc., along with the current full-motion hand and arm movement in 3D-space, gives you the start of a very rich and precise way of interacting with spatial computing. Moving on the hard iPad surface could be quite superior to waving something in the air or using a joystick. The Mac is not for using a pen, but the iPad is. I’m thinking long-term, not just the current headset. The videos they showed of their pro-apps on iPad, and the VisionPro update which included touting a film director using it to oversee the editing and visual effects for an upcoming film, hinted towards this convergence to me. I wonder if it's true.

@shanselman Thank you, Scott, for always making me think and learn! I had just been listening to your recent podcast with Kate Kalcevich about Innovation in Accessibility (https://hanselminutes.com/942/innovation-in-accessibility-with-fables-kate-kalcevich) when I came up with this framing about #Connections. The podcast included how one needs input from others to understand what helps make something accessible to them -- you can't always just imagine yourself.

@shanselman Scott: I've been thinking about your observation that the NYTimes #Connections puzzles can be "sometimes very not fun" because it's "competing" on opinion. I highly value your feelings about things so I was trying to figure out why I'm not as bothered. One thing I thought of was two approaches in software product development, both valuable. One is to figure out a way that works. Any solution is OK. For most under the hood stuff, that's good. In fact, "elegant" clever solutions are often highly valued and are fun. Alternatively, when building an app for others to use, the choice of affordances depends upon understanding those others who may think differently than you. Getting into someone else's head may be where the joy comes from even if it's a odds with your own feelings. Two different types of fun.

@shanselman I love Connections. Yes, some require knowledge you won’t have. (E.g.: I keep Kosher and don’t eat pig, so didn’t know cuts of pork. I don’t know lots of popular music culture.) But I like a puzzle that’s makes you look at things from different ways, and that isn’t just about spelling.

@codinghorror I love mine, too. I've used it for CO2, but also just for temp and humidity when traveling or around the house. Small enough to fit in pocket, and does OK for CO2 in there, I think.

In these examples, the cost of the headset is not an issue because if the application is valuable enough to take the users' time, the hardware cost will be a small concern. Software development will be a concern, though, until the right tools are available, I guess.

New long press release from Apple about #VisionPro: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-vision-pro-brings-a-new-era-of-spatial-computing-to-business/ with several specific examples of real, serious, productive use of VisionOS. The Porsche engineers following a race in real-time video is an interesting example (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/videos/apple-vision-pro-porsche-race-engineer-app/large_2x.mp4).

Fits with @mimsical WSJ article from March 29th (https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apples-new-face-computer-is-for-work-788e2750 - paywall) about how knowledge workers are a key audience. "I think I've described using the Vision Pro to other people as like, just having an infinite number of iPads to pull out for work," Steve Caruso is quoted in the article.

@lauren Should you explain it...? (What I get from doing NYTimes #Connections so regularly.)

@lauren (Nice pun.) However, in the olden days, to compute, we did have to rub two sticks together, just like making a fire...

@mikesax Yes! That’s one of the fun things about it. Imagining the author chuckling as they put them in.

I just love doing the NYTimes’ Connections game. When playing it I feel like I’m zigzagging around my brain, looking at so many angles and points of view and enjoying the matches (or potential matches). I feel so clear when it all fits into place. Such an inner- and cerebrally-focused thing in today’s externally messed up and stressful world. (I do “cheat” some at times, though, by looking up definitions…)

@lauren That's the type of more specific discussion I was looking for. It addresses the history of scraping. Of course, there's nuance in what the search engines do, too, as @not2b points out. Thanks!

@lauren Hmm. A thought: Compare and contrast crawling the web to fill AI's models vs in order to index the web for search (e.g., AltaVista in the 1990's, Google, Bing, et al, since then). I believe there is a difference, but it's worth exploring the intent, expectations (of authors), and how much value (and what type of value) goes to whom.

Joy of being a grandparent: One of my granddaughters showed me her newest prized possession: A Foxtrot comic by @billamend that he signed in front of her at PAX East. I had introduced her to Sunday comics, and especially Foxtrot, a few years before. She ended up buying lots of Foxtrot books. One reason Foxtrot is special to me is because years ago it had one of the earliest times I saw my creation (VisiCalc and its descendants) being referenced in mass media as something accepted. It was a strip where you needed to know at least something about a spreadsheet to appreciate the humor. (The first time I remember was a WSJ editorial.)

@michaelslade It may be what we have been trained on. Also, it's not just less-sharpness in vision, it's multiprocessing of cues from what we are seeing. In old graphical games terms, as I have found as we age, we can track fewer sprites simultaneously.