A Remarkable, Unremarkable Thing

Recently, we had a family celebration. The reason is irrelevant, but the means of our celebration was our usual. We went to Disneyland. We’re fortunate to live close, and two of the four members of my immediate family work for Mickey.

So, we went to “the park,” where we shared a meal at a restaurant, rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, shared a delicious cookie, and stretched our legs by walking through the park before heading home. It was delightful.

While eating our meal, there was another family of four at the table next to ours. Mom, Dad, and two girls, just like us. Although the girls in this case were both under 10, and mom and dad were a bit younger than Daisy and I.

The thing is, I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. As soon as they got seated, both girls got on iPads, and both mom and dad got on their individual smartphones. For the entirety of their meal, they were all eyes on screens. After a while, I shared the observation with my family, and we made a little game of watching and waiting to see if any of them would talk to each other throughout the meal. The answer was, for all intents and purposes, that they didn’t.

Because I visit Disneyland often, I witness this remarkable yet unremarkable phenomenon frequently—kids in strollers with iPads, parents and couples in lines with iPhones. You’d think that after the expense and hassle of going to a place like Disneyland, you’d want to experience it a little, but remarkably, many people don’t.

I’ve been taking my girls to Disneyland their entire lives. Over the years, chatting with my girls while strolling, eating, and waiting in line turned into some of the most memorable conversations of my life. Why would you surrender that for an App?

We often talk about how people can’t put their phones down while in line at the market, but what about during moments of joy? When taking in a theme park with your family, at the beach, or on vacation? Those moments are found solely in your immersion in the now.

Pay attention the next time you are at a place like Disneyland. Notice how many people are remarkably, yet unremarkably, not even there. Don’t let that be you.

A Voice-Based Future?

I’m still thinking plenty about this collaboration between ChatGPT and Jony Ive. The Frontier Model LLMs are a revolutionary technology, but perhaps there is a new hardware paradigm for using them we haven’t seen yet.

Still, I think it’s going to be hard for people to give up their screens, but clearly that’s exactly what Altman and Ive are looking for. I do believe the paradigm of voice computing is underrated. We’re all so used to our keyboards and screens. It’s hard to imagine a world where your primary interface is your voice.

I’ve always been a fan of dictation, so voice computing makes more sense to me than it does to most people. But we never really had the technology to explore it fully until recently, and yet we still really haven’t gone very far in that experimentation.

Personally, I’ve been trying to work more with the ChatGPT and Gemini voice interfaces just to explore the rough edges of a future that is more based in voice computing, and I’m finding it more useful than I thought it would be, even at this early stage.

One of the best uses is as a thought partner, where I can talk about something I’m thinking about, writing about, or working on, and ask for constructive criticism of the idea. The voice interface will point out flaws in logic and thought in a way that is way more fluid than it would be with a keyboard and screen.

Granted there are still vast swaths of my computing that wouldn’t make sense with this paradigm, but what if it could evolve? Several years ago, there was a movie called Her, where the protagonist fell in love with his AI operating system, which seemed silly at the time, but now not so much so.

What’s interesting, however, was the hardware he used was just a little earbud. That was his computer. It talked to just him, and he talked back to it, and it handled the administrative details of his life. I could easily see such a computing interface becoming common in the not-so-distant future.

Liquid Glass in Beta 3

This week we got the third iOS 26 beta, and, unsurprisingly, Apple continues to tamp down a bit on Liquid Glass. In the below image, from Zac Hall at 9to5 Mac, you can see the clear trend toward legibility.

This comes as a surprise to nobody that pays attention to Apple Beta cycles. They always start at an extreme with beta 1 and slowly dial it back not just in the beta process but also over the process of years with new software iterations.

I continue to generally enjoy Liquid Glass on my beta devices. My favorite part of this years visual overhaul: whimsy.

Jam Pack Nostalgia

Stephen Hackett recently wrote a delightful article on Apple Jam Packs that made me smile. If you were using Apple gear during a certain decade, saving up for and buying Apple Jam Packs was one of the delights of the platform.

I remember slowly adding to my collection over a few years and the thrill of exploring all the loops, rhythms, and instruments with each new purchase. Folks that were there may disagree as to what the best Jam Pack was, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, so long as they acknowledge that, without a doubt, the World Music Jam Pack was the clear winner.

If you have the original first edition OmniFocus Field Guide, first, bless you, and, second, all the transition music in it was World Music Jam Pack loops.

The Omni Road Map

Speaking of Ken Case, the Omni Group recently posted its post-WWDC roadmap. There are some nice new features heading to OmniFocus, including mutually exclusive tags (for things like priority and Kanban status), better repeat, and a new, third date field for “planned” dates. It all sounds pretty useful.

Mac Power Users 804: From NeXT to Liquid Glass, with Ken Case

Ken Case is the CEO at the Omni Group and has been developing for Apple platforms for decades. On this episode of Mac Power Users, he shares how he got his start in technology, what Apple gear he uses, his approach to customer communication, and his thoughts on WWDC.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password: Never forget a password again.
  • Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code MPU.