I’ve had my Logitech MX Master 3S have its low res moments from time to time, but lately, it has gotten way worse. After trying out various solutions, I found the following works perfectly well. I’ll share the solution first and then explain what it is.
is used to change the Bluetooth coexistence mode on a Mac computer. Bluetooth coexistence mode is a setting that determines how Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices share the 2.4 GHz radio frequency band. There are three possible coexistence modes:
Performance: This mode prioritizes Bluetooth performance, which can sometimes cause interference with Wi-Fi.
Balanced: This mode tries to balance the performance of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Hybrid: This mode prioritizes Wi-Fi performance, which can sometimes cause a slight decrease in Bluetooth performance.
The bluetoothCoexMgmt Hybrid setting tells the computer to use the Hybrid coexistence mode. This mode is generally recommended for most users, as it provides a good balance of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance. However, if you are experiencing Wi-Fi interference, you may want to try changing the coexistence mode to Balanced or Performance.
Conclusion
I will keep an eye out to see if there’s any performance hit on my Wifi experience. So, far I’ve been using it for a couple of days and haven’t had any issues.
Before we get to the post, I just want to say one thing. Yes, even I was offered the Interim CEO role at OpenAI. I declined it. Now let’s go on with my post.
better cable management for simpler switching between the two cables, power and display
I wanted to solve these in a sleek and minimal way too. This seemed like a bigger challenge.
Considerations
At first, I considered having a better cable management strategy and researched a lot for it. I almost finalized on a solution that basically required me to fix a casing to the table that’d hold the cables underneath it.
Then, one day, at work, I noticed a Dell monitor that had support for both power and display. Immediately, I realized that this essentially would solve both the problems. This made me switch my research into monitors that supported this feature.
Solution
I searched a lot of monitors and fixed on the Apple Studio Display. There’s a few particular things that made me pick this one to solve the remainder of my targeted problems and then some.
No extra cables. Just one power + video cable. This replaces 3 cables on my desk with 1.
Ability to control the brightness and not having to deal with different contrast/color levels nonsense. I hated configuring the contrast, sharpness, brightness, etc on my old monitor.
Tilt + Height control is an underrated feature.
In-built webcam so I can use it in meetings with much ease. I refuse to use a third-party external webcam and instead, been using the iPhone camera with continuity.
Here’s the old setup –
Old setupOld cable setup
Here’s the new setup –
New setupNew cable setup
With that, I don’t think I have anything else I would like to change on my desk at this point of time. To switch from one computer to another, I do the following –
You know what’s harder to scale than performance of web servers? Finding foundational ideas that scale for 20 years and still feel good. That requires a level of foresight.
11 years ago, I wrote a post about The Cloud & I. I wanted to revisit it and provide an update on my current usage.
In terms of the tools and services I use, not a lot has changed over the decade.
Music
Apple Music
I don’t store music anymore. I just use Apple Music. I rarely download songs for offline listening. It doesn’t seem necessary anymore given the ubiquity of mobile data service. However, I was curious to see what happened to my music collection on Google Music and tried clicking the link and it led to this –
figures…
I tried checking Grooveshark and it just looked spammy. I forgot my Last.fm credentials and I didn’t bother resetting the password either.
Photos
I still use Flickr. I’ve been a paid subscriber since 12 years. I rarely use Dropbox. I haven’t logged into my SkyDrive (now OneDrive) in ages. iCloud is my primary cloud storage. It’s just convenient.
Notes
Evernote was great, but it just couldn’t compete with the other tools. For the longest time, I used Apple Notes. Right when the pandemic started, I switched to Roam and it serves as my primary note-taking tool. I still use Apple Notes every now and then.
Code
GitHub. I love it. Shows how good the service is. I’ve never thought of switching, even once.
Articles
I stopped using Pocket a few years ago. I started using it when it first came out. Back then it was called ReadItLater. I used to be a paid subscriber for a long time and then ended my subscription once I realized that I was just saving the articles and never actually reading them. It just wasn’t for me anymore.
Browsers have evolved to support storing your bookmarks and syncing them over to other computers, natively. So, I use Chrome/Safari bookmarks and sync them across my computers.
Files
iCloud. Again, it’s the convenience.
That’s it. This is how I use the cloud now-a-days.
Today, I’ve enabled it on my blog and it is live. Feel free to follow my blog at https://mastodon.social/@cx@iam.mt on any of your federated platforms such as Mastodon.
Recently, I had to learn Scala for a project at work. I wanted to share the path I took and my thoughts on the Scala programming language the same way I did when Learning Go.
Features I like
My absolute favorite feature is the case classes. Combine them with pattern matching, that just makes it such a powerful feature. This alone changes the way you write Scala code. It’s such a cool feature. I wish other programming languages copied this feature. It’s that good.
Infix notation which allows you to define method names such that you don’t have to call them using the “.” notation. This is very similar to Ruby.
Function currying implementation seems well implemented and the syntax is actually pretty good. This is a unique take, very specific to Scala.
Developer Experience (DX) 🐎💨💩
Like Java, Scala has a horrible DX. Programmers defending Java/Scala’s DX are typically the ones suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or plain masochists. You haven’t seen or tried good DX, so STFU. Disagree with me? That’s fine. Scala has been around since a long time now and still isn’t a popular programming language for this very reason, besides poor marketing.
Documentation
Their API docs and landing page definitely need some love from the community. Compare that to Golang, it’s night and day. The Golang tour is by far, the best tour a programming language has. It’s fantastic and just going through the tour would be good enough for you to get a decent amount of knowledge for a beginner. Java, JavaScript (MDN), Ruby, Golang etc, all have top-notch documentation. Everything is clear and concise.
Ease of setup
This is where Scala shines and blows the other languages out of the water. You essentially install Coursier using Homebrew, that installs the cs command and run cs setup to install Scala. That’s it. Coursier made it so simple. I had Scala installed on my computer in less than 6 mins. Didn’t have to struggle with the setup at all. I don’t think I have ever had such an experience with any other programming language. Installing Ruby for the first time on Linux took me longer than that. Kudos to the team for coming up with such a tool.
IDE
The fact that I have to use an IDE to get the most out of Scala is a buzzkill. I’m not a fan of IDEs and I just like my light weight text editors as my coding environments.
Getting Started
I recommend the following resources to get a good idea of the Scala programming language –
Also, I was going over this video of Martin Odersky, a seemingly nice dude, and found it funny when he mentioned that Scala is superior to Python as a first course in universities.
I was a fan of Elon Musk and his vision in late 2000s and early 2010s. As he became more active on social media, I found him annoying.
I wanted to pick a new book to read and started looking into any interesting books out there. I enjoy reading biographies. So, I chose to go with Elon’s biography, which seemed like an interesting one to pick up next, especially since Walter Isaacson authored it. Oh boy, the book did not disappoint. I highly recommend the book.
The way Walter navigates Elon’s life is fascinating. Going over the various incidents covered in the book was exciting to say the least. My favorite part was how Elon achieved manufacturing 5000 cars/week throughput from the Fremont and Nevada factories during the Model 3 production in 2018. They could totally make a Hollywood movie around the whole Tesla saga. While I was going over this section, it felt like Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay in my head. The quick cuts with a high tempo storytelling as fixing one thing leads to breaking another. It was thrilling.
Some of the highlights I really enjoyed from the book –
Obviously, Walter’s navigation of Elon’s life.
The way Elon solves problems and his Algorithm (I’ll list it towards the end of the post) and his willingness to jump in to solve problems.
How people around Elon perceive his actions and how he switches from being a fun guy to an asshole.
How Elon executes his vision, particularly around SpaceX and how SpaceX achieved rocket reusability at a low cost.
How Elon inspired his teams at Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Twitter.
Elon’s business genius. His focus and sheer will to see his ideas succeed.
The Algorithm
Elon has a famous algorithm that came out of the struggle around manufacturing around 2018. Here it is –
Question Every Requirement: Doing anything without knowing why there’s a requirement is just counter productive. Tying a name to the requirement makes it easy to question it and get clarification.
Delete Any Part or Process You Can: If you delete too much, it’s fine, you can add them back later. In fact, if you don’t add at least 10% of them back later, it means you haven’t deleted enough.
Simplify and Optimize: Simplifying and Optimizing is not meant for parts or processes that don’t need to exist in the first place. It’s meant to simplify and optimize the absolutely necessary ones.
Accelerate Cycle Time: Only after you perform 1, 2, and 3, execute this step.
Automate: This is the very last step where you automate your process that’s efficient.
Personally, the Algorithm hit home with me, ’cause I operate the same way, especially 1, 2, and 3. I highly recommend the book.
My rating of the book: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5
Walter Isaacson closes the book by saying the following –
Would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringe-worthy, sometimes, even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.
Have an audio version. So, my entire blog would be available as a podcast. Anytime I post a new blog, it’d be converted from text to audio and published as an episode in my podcast. Bonus: Use my voice to generate the audio. iOS 17 supports this feature natively. So, this is actually feasible.
Both of these will have to be fully automated. There are a few solutions out there, but none of these fully support my requirements. If I’m unable to find a solution that satisfies both of my requirements, I might end up creating something.
The other day, I was watching the MadeByGoogle ’23 Keynote and saw that Google is launching a bunch of new features powered by AI. One of the new features is summarizing the content of a webpage. It’s quite helpful really.
This got me thinking. Today, there’s a ton of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that any author of a website does to their web pages. Some, like me, don’t give a shit. But, most people do. Up until now, this was enough to have good visibility when qualifying or showing up in search results. Moving forward, with these new summarization capabilities (Google already uses these in Google Search), web authors might end up having to focus on AI Summarization Optimization (AISO) too.
I can see folks trying to make it easy for these AI tools to summarize their content. With summarization coming for free, lot of users will resort to using these and this means that most blogs, articles, website marketing pages, etc will resort to optimizing their content to manipulate the AI summarization models.
It’d be hilarious if people start using AI to AISO their content for the AI summarization tools.
Today, I woke up to the wonderful news of Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon’s south pole. This is a phenomenal achievement by ISRO. Congrats to them and everyone involved in the project.
I see a lot of people worried about AI taking over the world. The Writers Guild of America are on a strike, while AI isn’t their primary concern, it does seem like it’s their secondary concern.
Take a look at the following video by Casey (with the help of AI).
Casey basically asked GPT-4 to write a vlog including dialogues and sort of, screenplay, too. The AI generated a screenplay and he shot it as is, following the script. It was definitely not fun. Nope. Casey also expresses how bland the vlog was and how it lacked any depth.
Casey’s idea of using the AI to solely come up with the script and make an experimental vlog in itself is a fun idea. I enjoyed the experiment, not the script the AI created. If used the right way, AI can make for a powerful assistant. AI has the potential to unlock a lot of cool ideas from existing ones.
People from various fields are already abusing the use of AI. If you search Google Scholar for “As an AI language model” (removing “ChatGPT” & “LLM”), you’ll see these surprising results. This is what it has become. There have been cases where there were lawyers who trusted ChatGPT and got their asses handed to them. There’s a ton of small content creators that use AI to create content. You can tell that the quality is low.
So, an efficient path forward is to embrace AI and improve your game. You can be an artist and focus on the art while your AI assistant handles the boring boilerplate nonsense. It’s all about finding the right balance.
Independent Publisher 2 has been the theme on my blog for about 4 years now. I love its minimalism and simplicity. WordPress has introduced several new features ever since and it looks like the theme doesn’t support these features. This maybe due to the fact that it’s not actively being developed to support these new WordPress UI features. Over the past few months, I’ve discovered many UI bugs in the theme due to these changes.
I haven’t been able to fully focus on my writing due to me spending time focusing on fixing these bugs. So, I’ve been trying out new themes.
If you’ve visited my blog every day, over the past 5 days, you might’ve noticed a different theme each day. That’s ’cause I’ve been playing around with a few themes and settled on this theme for now. It is bold and has an emphasis on typography, which I appreciate. I might stick with this until I find a new one.
If there’s a new social network doing rounds, I’m 100% going to try it out. I will genuinely give it a shot. I belong to the 1% in the 90-9-1 rule. When I use social networks, I actually post content. I don’t just lurk around and form an opinion. I share my thoughts, use the platform for a bit, be it 2 weeks or 2 months or even more, and then measure the value I get from the network.
For me, the real value is from learning from the posted content. Right now, there’re way too many of them. I don’t follow folks with monetary interests. The ones that I do follow, seem to post the same content on all the platforms. Since that is the case, why do I need to be active on all the social networks?
I got this exact thought while I was on a call with my sister last week. So, I decided to test out a new strategy to avoid using too many social networks.
Currently, I use –
YouTube
Twitter
Reddit
Instagram
Threads
Bluesky
Facebook
T2
Retro
LinkedIn
I get real value from (in decreasing order) –
🥇YouTube: Pure gold. Entertainment + learning
🥈Reddit: The communities are just way too valuable
🥈Twitter: This is where I keep up with everything new
🥈Instagram: To keep up with friends’ lives
🥉LinkedIn: Strictly professional networking purposes
I don’t find any real value from the other social networks. Since I don’t delete or disable my social profiles, I just delete the apps on my phone to stop accessing them. Instagram is an exception. I use Instagram on my phone’s web browser and not the app. I install the app to post and immediately delete the app. The iOS app doesn’t have the simplicity anymore. I’ve been doing this since almost 4 years now.
Anyway, for the next 2 weeks, I will just stick to these networks and see how it goes. My goal is to see if I really miss the other social networks. If I do, why? I will post my findings and the outcome of this experiment after 2 weeks.
Update (09/01/2023): Nope, no real value. I’ll stick to the these for now. I will use FB though, I follow some friends there.
CSS has been evolving at a good pace over the past decade and CSS Container Queries is going to be huge. These are available in major browsers since almost a year now and I am excited about these. Check out the docs on MDN.
When Media Queries dropped, it changed the way the websites adapted to various window/screen sizes. This was a total game changer since websites went from using %age based fluid layouts to completely viewport based layouts. The Container Queries seem like the logical next step to it.
With Media Queries, we could query the viewport and use that information to organize our layouts. With Container Queries, we can now query the size of each container (HTML element) and change their displays based on the size of the nearest parent container.
Ever since I read it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. The more I think about it, the more it seems to make sense. Naturally, I googled a little to see if I could find any sources to back this up and found this NYTimes article (opinion piece). Here’s another piece by The Guardian.
Palo Alto has one of the richest neighborhoods in the Bay Area (and possibly the country), and is filled with trees. It looks really beautiful. After reading more about this insight, it just makes more sense. I never thought about it this way and this blows my mind.
A week ago, I got back from Las Vegas after a trip with my buddies from school. My Southwest flight gate was in the Harvey Milk Terminal. I flew from SFO several times since the terminal opened up, but never got the chance to check it out. My god! The terminal is beautifully designed.
I was so happy looking at the terminal, it seemed state of the art. The restrooms, restaurants, water filters, staircases, etc, everything looked nice. I mean, check it out here: https://aiasf.org/the-harvey-b-milk-terminal/
The art installations are pretty cool. The walls have pictures of Harvey Milk all over. The design is beautiful and the typography is delightful.
The terminal has the whole San Francisco vibe. Any person new to SF can feel the instant cultural shift walking in to the terminal. I loved it. As I was checking out the photos on the walls and the text written underneath, I came across a welcome sign at the terminal exit, written in huge font that read – “Welcome to San Francisco”.
Something about the text seemed so beautiful that I just stood there for 5 mins looking at it. The text color, a variant of black, the font, the font weight, everything about it was so…neat. That’s it, I just had to learn more about the design.
I started reading up about the design and found a few good sources that were directly involved in the projects. Apparently, Dalton Maag consulted on the project and came up a new font for it. I couldn’t find much about the particular font, but from what I remember, it looked very similar to the Myriad font.
If you know which font it is, please let me know.
Read more about the Harvey Milk Terminal project –
Ever since I was a kid, I always loved playing video games. I played a ton of games. At one point, my friends and I even considered pursuing careers as professional video gamers, playing Counter Strike and moving to Sweden.
One of the video game developers I like is Naughty Dog. I’ve always enjoyed playing the Uncharted series and The Last of Us series.
I don’t remember liking any screen adaptations of the video games I played and liked. I didn’t like the Uncharted movie. So, when HBO announced that they were making a TV show based on The Last of Us, I was slightly apprehensive. Even though HBO has a great track record of producing high quality shows, I wasn’t fully sure about this one.
After watching The Last of Us Season 01, I felt happy. I liked the first season. I loved the fact that they chose to make the backdrop look exactly like the one in the game. There were so many resemblances to the game and I enjoyed it.
Great casting by the show producers. I’m calling it now, Bella Ramsey is going to win an Emmy for her portrayal of Ellie. Pedro Pascal did a fine job as Joel. Also, I was very excited to see Nick Offerman in the show (parks and rec fan).
I recommend watching the show.
Back in 2020, Naughty Dog released the sequel to the The Last of Us series. I liked it. The screenplay in the game is cool.
Just finished the game “The Last of Us 2”. The storyline could’ve probably been a little better with some more content, but the gameplay is nice. I enjoyed the ending too. #PS4#TLOU2
— Mohnish Thallavajhula (@thisprofileismt) August 1, 2020
I look forward to the 2nd season, which apparently is scheduled for 2025.
Now, I really want to see HBO make a show based on Ghost of Tsushima — one of the best story based games ever.
This is perhaps the biggest secret to the productivity and viability of our two-person teams at 37signals. All our web designers work directly with the native materials of HTML, CSS, and usually even a fair bit of JavaScript and Ruby. Not in Figma. https://t.co/Fu29nvteCx
The comment section is filled with developers agreeing with him. Which makes total sense.
I get his intention behind the post. He’s mentioned Figma here, but it doesn’t really matter which design tool. He could’ve mentioned any other design tool and I’d still disagree with him. The point of these design tools is to give the designer the freedom and the utilities to create, iterate, and collaborate on designs. Imagine the pace at which you’d create designs if you were rawdogging it in HTML/CSS. This might be slightly reasonable if you were to just make some simple modifications to the existing designs or introduce new components that basically fully rely on the existing designs.
Building a new design means going through so many iterations, re-doing a lot of things. Doing it in HTML/CSS works when you are the designer and the developer. Even then, it’s not always true. I’ve created designs myself and worked on implementing them. Almost all the time, I work faster designing the app in one of these tools and then implementing it in HTML/CSS.
In a web world that’s increasingly been subdividing its expertise into ever smaller specialities, that might sound like a bit of a unicorn quest: Great designers that can also make their creations real? Good luck finding THAT! And yet we have, repeatedly, at 37signals, and we’re drawing huge dividends in productivity from doing so.
I’m not a fan of 37Signals’ designs.
Leave Figma to the early conceptual stages of web design. Or put it to good use for native mobile development, when you rarely have a choice. But embrace doing the bulk of the design for the web directly in the core elements of its periodic table.
Most apps these days have a mobile and web version. Designing mobile apps in a design tool and web apps in the web just doesn’t scale. You want to design everything in the same tool. Iterating through designs on any platform is faster in a design tool. I don’t think any designer would disagree.
His post feels like an unhappy backend developer venting about being forced to work on the frontend.
Anyway, like I said, I like DHH. He doesn’t shy away from sharing his thoughts, which is great. He’s been wrong a number of times in the past and I’m sure he’s wrong about this one too.
I’ve been using the Cornell Note-taking system since a little over an year now and I can say that it has been pretty good. If you don’t know what it is, check out the 4 min video above.
Luckily, the reMarkable 2 tablet ships with with a Cornell Note-taking system template and that worked out perfectly well for me. I mostly find myself using it while reading technical papers, tracking new project onboarding, learning new technologies etc. It works well for gaining clarity around a concept that you’re trying to grasp. As the video suggests, it’s easy to implement on a plain paper.
Software engineers during the early stages of their careers have a tendency to think that building software successfully means getting things right during the initial stages. I was that guy too. Over the years, I’ve learned that this is almost never the case. I can’t just say that it’s never the case ’cause there might be times where this is crucial, especially when implementing anything around user privacy, payments, handling sensitive information, etc. For the remainder, the key to succeed at building good software lies in its ability to change.
You almost never get things right in the initial try. The initial try is usually accompanied by multiple iterations based on one of the most valuable things – user feedback. As you capture user feedback, you build a spec that essentially ends up being version 2.0 of your original software.
This is not only true for products, but also software in general. These will help you build good software that your users like and appreciate.
I’ve unknowingly always been bound by similar principles while blogging and it felt very nice reading this post. It sort of validated my ideology around blogging.
Ever since Elon took over Twitter, there have been a lot of users claiming to quit the platform and move to other alternatives. Not so surprisingly, a few very similar alternatives popped up. All of these applications are not open to sign up. They are all invite-only, except for Mastodon. I finally got the chance to sign up to all these networks and so far, they seem decent.
I’ve compiled a small list of alternatives that I’ve tried below
This was by far the toughest invite to get. People have been going crazy over the invite codes. They have a huge demand and apparently they’re going for $200-$400 an invite. The app needs some love in term of UX. It has the early-days-of-twiter vibe. Bluesky’s authenticity check is done via domain name verification. This is an age-old technique and a great one at that.
There’s not a lot of people on the platform yet, but I see potential. One of the most promising alternatives IMHO.
I don’t have any invites at the moment (as seen in the screenshot). If you need one, leave a comment below and I will share one as soon as I get one. A buddy of mine already has dibs on the first one.
T2 doesn’t have a mobile app yet, but the mobile web app is very nicely implemented. Personally, I enjoy using it. It’s clean and minimalistic. The UI is really nice and I love the icons. The community seems very welcoming. The platform definitely needs more users. I am their 5026th user.
T2 has a unique way of checking for authenticity. You can schedule a call with their co-founder. They will hop on a video-call with you and verify your Govt. ID. This process costs $5.
This is 100% not going to scale, but, seems like a very interesting way to verify that a person is who they say they are.
I have 3 invites to T2. If you’re interested, let me know by leaving a comment below and I will share the code with you.
Mastodon is by far the most boring social network I’ve used. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something very bothersome about the application. I got on to Mastodon back in 2018 and I’ve posted 3 times ever since. I signed in to my account after 4+ years and still feels the same to me. I don’t see myself using Mastodon in the future.
This was the network of choice for all the folks with the “I’m going to leave Twitter” claims, in the initial days of Elon’s Twitter 2.0. The best part is that there’s a ton of servers out there and you don’t need an invitation to sign up for an account.
Posts is a confusing app in terms of context. Initially, it seemed like a professional network. After a month or so, now it seems more casual. I see users posting random things, like on Twitter.
The UX feels sluggish. I haven’t used the iOS app yet and I honestly don’t intend to. It seems overly basic, to an extent where you don’t want to use the application.
What’s next?
Personally, I only enjoyed using Bluesky and T2. Both have potential. Twitter is definitely not going anywhere. The only way to dethrone Twitter from its spot is by quality user acquisition. It’s a hard problem to solve. Bluesky has a better chance at this and I want to see how they handle it.
Right now, I want to stay active on Bluesky, T2, and Twitter. I might use Bluesky and T2 for posting and Twitter for consuming content. Doing so will surface the pros and cons I care about in these networks and make my decision-making easier. I don’t know how I’ll continue using these platforms. Whatever new platforms show up, my blog will always be my #1 place to post my thoughts.
I woke up at 07:15 and got ready and hopped into an Uber by 07:45. I reached Apple Park Visitor Center at 08:15. I checked-in at 08:30 and picked up my badge for the event and some Apple Swag and stood in the line for security check.
I was in a hurry to get in to the line and didn’t realize I wasn’t smiling for the selfieWWDC23 Swag
That was it. Usually conferences have a ton of swag, but it’s usually from all the attending/participating companies. WWDC is fully managed by Apple. So, you can’t really expect much else.
Once I got past the security check, which took around 45 mins, I went on my way to enter the Apple Park, The Ring, the Spaceship campus. I was blown away by the beauty of the building. It’s massive and yet doesn’t feel that way. It’s just so very well built. You can tell that a lot of effort and planning went into it. The insanely clean glass, the structure, the plants, trees etc outside The Ring, everything looked beautiful.
I was running out of time to grab my breakfast, which I didn’t want to miss out as I was quite hungry and so, I got to Caffé Macs, a cafe at the Apple Park. This cafe is nice, big and has a massive seating area. The seating area is where Apple setup their WWDC23 screening area.
Me in front of the main screenThe secondary screening area behind the main one
I thought the event would be live and at the Steve Jobs Theater, but to my surprise, I got to know from a Staff member that the event was pre-recorded. I was slightly disappointed, but it didn’t bother me.
At 09:50, the welcome presentation by Tim Cook and Craig Federighi began.
Tim Cook on the stage before the screening of the Keynote. Craig Federighi joined him a couple of mins later
At 10:00 sharp, the Keynote screening started. Of course, it was great and I really loved some of the new features Apple introduced into macOS, iOS, and watchOS, but the One More Thing stole the show. I loved how insanely cool Vision Pro is.
The keynote ended at 12:00 and all the developers headed for lunch at the same Caffé Macs. After waiting for food in the massive line, I was happy to grab food and finally settle down. They had some good food options. I found a table in the seating area and started eating and that’s when I noticed iJustine. At first, I thought I was confusing some other person with her and then I noticed Marques Brownlee. They were a few feet away from my table and taking pictures with some fans. I ran over to them to take a selfie with them and they obliged. Some other guy wanted to take a photo with them and he offered to take a photo of me with them if I did the same for him. Justine was very sweet and she said she would take another pic with me.
My selfieThe pic the guy took of me with the two legends
I then went back to my table and finished up my lunch. It was 13:00 and the next session was the Platforms State of the Union (SoTU) at 13:30. I figured I’d head down to the seating area to get a good seat. Luckily, I was on time and was able to get a seat in the 3rd row, up close to the main stage.
For those who don’t know who Craig is, he’s the guy in blue shirt with gray hair, to the left of the guy wearing the hatCraig was sitting 2 rows in front of me
At 13:30, the session started.
It was fun. Unfortunately, the seat I picked was between two people who were clearly not interested in being there. The guy on my right kept saying that he didn’t like Apple and he’s an Android guy and kept mocking Apple. The lady on my left slept during the presentation…with a god damn snore. The session was scheduled for 1.5 hours. After about an hour, I moved to a different seat, so that I could focus on the presentation.
At 15:00, the session ended and everyone headed out for some snacks, which included fruit from the Apple Park.
Next up was the tours. The tours of –
The Ring
The inner meadows
I wasn’t particularly interested in the inner meadows tour, but I was really interested in The Ring tour. The thing is, both these tours required conference attendees to register early. It was limited and the registration was full by the time I even opened the web page to register.
So, I started wandering around. I wanted to head to the restroom and started walking towards it. As luck would have it, the first batch of The Ring tour had started. The folks leading the tour thought I was part of the first batch and just included me in it. And boom! I got into the tour 😀
The tour was fun. I got to checkout The Ring and my god, it’s a beautiful building.
The Ring from the outsideThe famous Rainbow from inside The RingA pic from inside The RingRainbow at Apple Park
The Ring is well documented online and you can find a ton of photos. That’s why I didn’t take a lot of photos as I wanted to focus on the tour of the beautiful building.
Part of the tour was an art museum at the entrance.
The art museum had various soils from the Apple Park
After the tour, I went and hung out with the developers from the Swift and Developer Tools team, Design team, and a few other teams. I had some fun and interesting conversations with the developers and the designers as I talked to them about my app.
I then headed back out to the seating area to see what was up next. As I was walked back, I bumped into Phil Schiller.
Phil seemed really chill
He seemed like a great guy. I spoke with him for a good 5 mins, something I didn’t expect to do with a person of his stature. He was patient and took time to answer my questions. I thanked him for his time and left.
It was 16:40 and the only event left was the Apple Design Awards at 17:30. I was tired of walking around The Ring the whole day and decided to head back home.
I walked 0.5 mile over to the Rideshare spot and booked myself an Uber and got home.
Overall, the conference was very good. Apple did a phenomenal job at organizing the conference. They even had a team to help disabled attendees. I loved the conference and the sessions. I would love to go back again next year. I tried to attend this conference for 13 years and got lucky with the lottery this year. I am definitely applying again next year.
