Thoughts on Technology

“Apple could put ads in Maps as soon as this summer”

Oof, this is bad news. I remember when Apple sold hardware and made excellent software that people wanted to use because it was in service of selling their hardware. Ads are a path to enshittification—there just aren’t many companies who can pull off ads without being user hostile.

Finally Finishing Our Cord-Cutting Project

A couple years after cutting the cord, I finally fixed our flaky over-the-air TV and now have a reliable, free(ish) source for our nightly Jeopardy! habit. Hopefully this post can help anyone wanting to run their tuner on power-over-ethernet like I did.

“Best launch week ever”

According to Tim Cook, “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers. We love seeing the enthusiasm!” It’s hard to not read that as, “The MacBook Neo launch has been a huge success”. As a fan of the Mac, I’m happy to hear that the Neo is finding such a positive welcome!

MacBook Pro with M5 Max (Early 2026)

★★★★★ This machine is a beast. The Verge is being stingy giving it an 8/10. It’s objectively the best Mac I’ve ever used (and I’ve used a lot of Macs), and there’s a strong argument that it’s the best laptop ever made, period.

“OpenAI is planning to unify its apps…”

I agree with Manton here: I don’t want the rest of that stuff in the Codex app, which has been getting solid improvements over time. Crowding it with the other stuff sounds bad.

“Codegen is not productivity”

I enjoyed this post, and I think it’s got some really good observations. I do think it underestimates the power of having working software that really does something, gives you a sense of what you wish it did instead, etc.

The MacBook Pros with M5 Max & Pro

I’m a long-time laptop user who recently experimented with a Mac Studio and a 13″ M4 MacBook Air but ultimately decided to return to the MacBook Pro for its superior processing power, particularly for native app development.