Basecamp and DHH specifically know how to trigger people and use this all the time to drive awareness without spending a dime. They take stuff that’s happening anyway, like when they had issues with Apple because of Hey, and sometimes they write something edgy out of the blue.

They juggled the names of Basecamp and 37signals, with the latter being the current one, but most people know them as Basecamp, so this is what I’m using here.

Basecamp is known for building very opinionated and slightly old-fashioned products as a remote and bootstrapped company. There are many similar companies out there, but Basecamp is certainly the most recognizable. Why?

There’s a certain community in tech that’s very vocal about their preference toward native apps. I share that sentiment, yet sometimes people take this idea too religiously.

First, what is a native app? It’s an app built using the native frameworks of a platform. For MacOS it could be SwiftUI. Such apps leverage the native platform’s interface, including windows, buttons, text areas, and everything else. They look right and familiar, and they behave this way. And most of the time, they’re smooth and fast. Historically, this has been the way to build applications for any platform.

But the Web has advanced so much from the early pages with hyperlinks that it’s now a platform for applications. Modern JavaScript runtimes, reactive frameworks (e.g. React), and platform APIs allow developers to use web technologies to build apps running on desktop operating systems. And this has largely become the preferred way to create new apps by now. If you use Slack, Notion, Spotify, or Todoist, then you’ve seen it. Their desktop applications are effectively just wrappers, usually built with a technology called Electron (Spotify isn’t though). And people hate Electron.

It seems that we’re finally getting out of this weird period of collective gaslighting where people tried to convince everyone Zoom was the best conference app out there.

I prefer Google Meet. It’s just better. I understand it was terrible pre-COVID as if Googlers never used it themselves. But they’ve caught up in a major way since then. Now it’s a very competent web app that gets out of your way and lets you talk to people. You open the link, and you’re right in the call. Meet doesn’t ask you to update anything.

Look, I’ve been working remotely since 2014. We used to have calls with the US, and most of the time, people would suggest calling their cell (despite the terrible voice quality). Then I started noticing Uber Conference and GoToMeeting, which were a bit clunky but at least used VoIP to provide clear voices.

MacStories ↗

Finalist is a new iPhone and iPad task manager that combines elements of note-taking apps, Kanban boards, and calendar apps in a unique and interesting way. The result is a lightweight app that’s simple and quick to use but unlikely to replace a fully-featured task manager for most users. Finalist is organized into three primary tabs: ‘Today,’ ‘Monthly,’ and ‘Lists.’ From the Today tab, you can add tasks simply by tapping on the screen and starting to type. It’s a lot like creating a checklist in Apple Notes.

I wrote about all the ways people build their own task managers ranging from a single entry in Apple Notes to over-complicated setups in Personal Knowledge Managements tools Roam Research and Obsidian.

Omnivore is an open-source read-later app. And that’s the first thing that differentiates it. Of course, consumers don’t really care when things are open source, but this potentially allows other developers to fork it if the original team abandons the app (which seems to be a running theme in this space).

Omnivore was launched in 2021, and despite this I’ve only seen maybe a few reviews of it, and almost zero mention on top tech blogs. Which is weird, because it’s a good app.

Its design is reminiscent of Pocket, but it’s much friendlier.

Too often, we see two distant sides of the spectrum and nothing in between.

Some people (often with blue checks on Twitter) believe he is the most successful businessman on Earth, and we’re literally months away from using Twitter (sorry, X.com) to run our financial lives. That he will finally build the WeChat of the West.

Others believe he’s a rich trust fund kid who stumbled into founding many successful companies changing their industries. These people tell you that he merely invested in Tesla and not found it (which is true, but Tesla didn’t really have much except a great brand and a complicated captable), that SpaceX engineers are the actual heroes lifting all the weight (which is a useless statement since it can be applied to any organization).

Bear is a Markdown-centered note-taking app for the Apple ecosystem. It was first released back in 2016 during a very different era. Apple Notes were barebones compared to what they’re right now. They still used IMAP to sync your docs, a protocol designer for email with no support for differential changes! That’s why many people jumped from Evernote to Bear. It was slick, fast and kept your content portable.

Just recently, they released the long-promised Bear 2.0. Unfortunately, I think they lost most of their users along the way. See, the question of when the Bear 2.0 would come out became a meme in r/bearapp. Because it took the development team a few years to make this new updated version, while the original one barely changed.

During this time, one of the clear leaders in the notes space has turned into an oddity, still loved by its core users, but unable to get too much attention. We’ve seen tremendous improvements in Apple Notes and then the rise of the networked-thought like Roam Research and Obsidian, to digital-native document apps like Notion and Craft. And maybe it was largely a fad. But it’s hard not to see how far these apps have progressed.

Building a service business isn’t easy. If we compare it to any software company, the worst part is that you aren’t really compounding. Every client requires dedicated work. You can’t just win and move on to capture new ones.

The good part is all your competitors struggle as well. And ultimately, whether сustomers like you depend on two things: results and execution.

Ideally, both parts should be perfect to extreme. There are areas where you don’t fully control the outcome. But you always have full control over your own execution. The way you talk, write, draft documents, make proposals and do everything else.

Sometimes I have to interact with people in other services businesses. This could be an accounting firm offering their services to us or a local PR agency we might need to support our client. 

Grifters have one specific thing in common. Not all of them, but as soon as I see this, I don’t expect them to be serious people. Instead of showing concrete facts and achievements, they list “tags” in their bio and profiles.

“Serial entrepreneur”. “Mentor”. “Web3/Blockchain/AI”. “Founder”(without the name of the company).

This isn’t helpful information. It’s just status signaling. Anything that can help them perceived more important in a certain social group.

Focus on the facts.

I’ve just watched a funny sketch about Threads from Ryan George (look him up!) and noticed one thing.

He was calling Threads an app by Meta.

When Zuckerberg renamed the company, people laughed at this as an attempt to avoid the negative publicity associated with Facebook, or a corporate reporting stunt similar to Google calling itself Alphabet.

There was one key difference.

The launch of Threads, Meta’s alternative to Twitter, has reinvigorated discussions about privacy and data ownership. A number of smaller Mastodon instances have preemptively defederated Threads, people have concerns about Meta launching yet another social app and getting even more data, etc.

Personally, I believe that we’re in the midst of a moral panic our grandkids will be laughing about.

A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large.

I often see people confusing different privacy-related things and using weaponized language to convince you something is bad. Just look at the terms thrown around. You need to protect your privacy and fight the surveillance as if these people are living under Stasi or trying to fight the statewide network of spies—the words we choose matter. By framing the problem in the right context, you can position yourself as the winner without even making a move.

People often think that PR and communications alone can help them achieve their goals and end up surprised when it doesn’t move the needle as much as they wanted. 

It’s because they think of communications like this. As if it’s something that can single-handedly drive awareness, attract customers, and bring money right away. 

In my experience, it’s a bit more complicated. PR is only a part of the virtuous circle. To secure an article in a good media publication, we need to convince journalists that your business will interest their readers. So we craft a compelling story by using everything at our disposal: from the founders’ journey and unique aspects of the product to the best metrics as validation from your customers and users. 

Modern iPads are marvelous machines. I still use the iPad Pro from 2018 and it’s incredibly powerful. Yes, I can’t run Final Cut on it and Stage Manager is limited (I don’t like it anyway). I don’t feel any necessity to replace it any time soon.

When I bought it, I still had my Intel-based MacBook Pro. One day its keyboard broke and I spent a week working on the iPad Pro instead. It was doable. I could open Google Documents, Slack, email. Create documents, write in them, share them, and communicate with the team. What I really liked was how quick it was. Felt like magic.

But everything around the work was so convoluted. A trivial task like taking a file from one app into another is 10 times harder on MacOS. You must find a way to “share” it using the system menu. Or put it in some location in Files only to open from another app.

People like to say they prefer chronological feeds to algorithmic ones. I’ve seen countless prayers to Meta to re-enable the former option in their apps. And when Twitter made the algorithmic “For You” tab the default one, entire Chrome extensions were built, and petitions started to disable it.

I don’t think a pure reverse-order chronological feed is the best option. The actual problem here is we rarely see *good* algorithms built to help us and not drive engagement. But I’d love to see a social network giving me tools to catch up on the people I care about.

Strictly speaking, chronological feeds are based on an algorithm. A very stupid one. They work well when you only follow a few people, but they can be gamed. By design, they prioritize people who post more. People like professional bloggers and influencers. And if you only have a few minutes to check up on your contacts, you see a small slice of everyone’s recent posts – not necessarily the most important ones.

Hating on media paywalls is very common. Whenever you see a paywalled article shared on Twitter, you can see people asking what’s inside and if there’s a way to access it.

One solution many people propose is micropayments. This implies being able to pay a relatively small fixed amount to access a single news story without subscribing. This is what Elon wants to implement at Twitter.

Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click.

This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article.…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2023

Since Flickr made many terrible product decisions to alienate its customer base and Instagram decided they’re on to copy TikTok now, many photographers have been struggling to find a good place to post their photos online. You can find numerous Reddit posts with people wondering the same question.

The common thread you can see there is that there’s definitely not a single option the majority prefers.

Flickr was that option. The go-to photography website where everyone kept their own portfolio and caught up on the best photos posted in the community. They got too greedy. Or, they failed to deliver on mobile and correctly estimated the falling popularity of professional photography.

VSCO emerged as a more premium alternative as Instagram created the “VSCO Girl” phenomenon and is now trying to reinvent itself. 500px was popular for a minute and still seems to have a lively community, but it isn’t really mentioned in photographers’ conversations too often.

I’ve spent over a year living in different countries and apartments that weren’t that great for video calls. And I primarily work remotely, so these calls are essential for me. One thing that saved me was virtual backgrounds.

I know, they have a bit of a cringe reputation. But hear me out, they can actually be a great tool if used correctly. They have a bad rep because people often mishandle them or use stock images in Zoom.

Now, let’s set some ground rules. These tips are for regular people, not someone willing to buy a $3000 camera setup or redecorate their entire living space to put this beautiful bookshelf behind them. It’s not practical.

Twitter, YouTube, and many other services have built-in bookmarks and playlists encouraging you to save content for later. I encourage you to try using a third-party service instead of them. Raindrop is a great alternative.

Platforms want to lock you down, and it’s easy to save everything right there, but you will likely end up with an endless stream of saved notes you will never revisit.

The main problem with Twitter bookmarks is that they are not very user-friendly. It is difficult to find the tweets you have bookmarked, as they are not organized in any manner. There is no way to search for bookmarked tweets, making it even more difficult to quickly find the tweets you have marked for future use. And most importantly, if the author deletes the original tweet, you will be left with nothing.

YouTube playlists have similar problems. Yes, YouTube provides you with folders, and you can use playlists as intended, although I wonder how important that functionality is. But if the video is deleted, you won’t even be able to figure out what it was, as there’s no title. And you can’t search through your playlists.

Media publications and individual authors have largely moved to email newsletters, the only semi-direct which is accessible to regular users and doesn’t leave them at the mercy of Facebook or Twitter. Yet email apps haven’t really caught up to this (with a few notable exceptions, such as Hey and Big Mail). They force you to read long written pieces in the same interface as that cold intro from Chad.

You might be too busy for a few weeks, and then you end up with hundreds of emails, causing fatigue as you feel overwhelmed by their sheer number. Or you might be getting too many of them every day. Also, not every issue might necessarily be interesting for you. And ultimately, hunting for this small grey Unsubscribe link isn’t fun at all.

Thankfully, there are better alternatives. You just need to use another app.

***

Here is a few things I believe that a lot of people seemingly find controversial.

1. Targeted advertising is good because it enables free and abundant services available for everyone with internet access. Written about this at length before.
2. To follow this, subscriptions aren’t the ultimate answer for everything and don’t solve problems automatically. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in subscriptions – I’m paying for so many apps, services, media publications, and newsletters.
3. Algorithmic feeds can be good. Following over 150-200 people makes catching up on everything they posted impossible. You just miss things differently. I want my social apps to show me the most important things. Yet I agree that algorithms are often demonized for mixing content from people you don’t follow.
4. Digests are a superior way to consume content compared to infinitely scrolling feeds, and they would solve many problems people associate with social platforms. Yet nobody uses them in the fight for engagement (although BeReal tried something close to this).
5. Certain people from tech and media circles like to speak for all of their peers and fuel a sort of war. Radicals are never right. I’ve seen enough bad actors at both ends. Better to evaluate individuals and companies alone.
6. Remote work is as productive or even better in that regard compared to onsite work. But you must build the right kind of company to leverage it and ensure everything goes smoothly. I’ve written about working remotely and running a remote team.
7. Properly cooked medium-well steaks are the best. Works for most (but not all) cuts of meat. Sorry.

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