A Personal Hub

This is a core tenet of my approach to technology. Everything I build and everything I use adheres to that idea—technology should enhance, not replace; and the best technology is that which helps you build your "home base". Dia is my home base for the web. macOS is my home base for desktop and productivity. iPhone Duo is looking like it will be my home base for everything else.

I've used the biggest iPad Pros and the smallest iPad minis and I've still not been able to find one that really fits what I need. A 13" iPad Pro is too much like a Mac, but not good enough to be a Mac. An iPad mini is a great size, especially for reading and general couch computing, but it's not portable enough.

A device that can be both my phone and an iPad, but not also try to be my Mac, is a great middle ground for me. I can see the applications for this being the news reader, the book reader, the video streamer, the email monster, the ultimate Codex remote. And best of all: it's built on my preferred productivity stack and the hardware is pretty killer.

Listening to Apple's Philosophy

Listening to John and Joz talk about what went into making this thing is really interesting. You can tell that they were super excited about coming up with these novel ways of doing a phone UI. That excitement and that energy is palpable in the device itself and that's one thing that I can greatly appreciate. Thinking of the little things like the opening/closing animation, the way the camera hole/island works with Live Activities, even down to the new glyph for battery and connectivity are so meticulously thought out that I can't help but want to play with it myself.

Thoughts

Ultimately, the thing that Apple got right here isn't just the hardware and software. It's the user stories. It's the ethos of the product's design—what it does, what it doesn't do, what it's for, what it's not for, and the why behind all of that. It's such a classic Apple trope, but they stuck to it in full form this week.