A unified OS
I wrote about unifying app experiences on mobile a few years ago and called it Othara. Back then, I thought of it as “forcing developers to use the unified layouts of the OS,” just like I can quickly set up a SwiftUI application that will absolutely feel like an iOS app. But with the rise of AI, it’s actually possible to have the AI generate the user interface on the fly based on templates—better than ever. If every app is the same, built using a set of components and filled with content, then AI could learn how to do things easier and better than it ever could with current systems like Apple’s App Intents.
Why is there a need for apps to look different? Why does WhatsApp have to look different from Messages, or Spotify from Apple Music?
Apple
Phones are stagnating. It didn’t feel exciting at all moving from an iPhone SE 2nd gen to an iPhone 16. Imagine how it would’ve felt going from, for example, an iPhone 12 to the 16. OS updates get me excited, but this wasn’t it.
How can it be that Apple’s UI is full of little issues—animations missing or gradients being cut off? That doesn’t reflect well; they used to care more. How come no QA person cares? Why do I have a list of 10 UI bugs just in the onboarding when you get your iPhone?
Artificial Intelligence
AI. Not sure the world needs another chatbot. I side with Giannandrea on that, even though that’s a bold statement. But people want smart experiences.
They’re working on the new Siri right now. Something I’ll never understand is—why haven’t those in charge for years, at Siri, Bixby, Alexa, etc., just watched a “Siri vs. Google Assistant” video in 2018, written a list of what didn’t work, and just hard-coded improvements in? Something must have been architecturally so bad in those systems that this wasn’t possible—which is crazy to think about.
You can’t learn coding faster than AI progresses. Right now, AI can replace half a programmer, but it’ll be a whole programmer by the end of next year—two by the end of the next year, and so on. But at the same time, coding is not the essence of engineering; it’s thinking problems through. Getting assistance by intelligence and LLMs might just be the best thing that could have happened. There’ll always be someone in charge of technology. That engineer will always have to exist. So for now, no worries about AI.