Liquid glass didn't require any relearning at all, the iOS interface changed aesthetics, not functionality. The OS has worked largely the same for the past 10 years since the iPhone X.

But I fail to see how an AI generated interface would be any better. What if after several back and forth with the AI, it still can't get the design right for you just so? It's not deterministic, you might get a different result every time you open your phone. Expecting third party services to leave their APIs open just so OpenAI phones can consume them is awfully optimistic as the moment such a device becomes an existential threat to third parties, APIs will start getting locked down.

By all means, OpenAI should try, not saying they shouldn't, but I'm not optimistic it'll be a success. The smartphone is already basically peak form factor. No one is going to want to carry around a second device, which is why every other AI device/pin is DOA. It has to come out of the gate ready to fully replace someone's smartphone and the surrounding ecosystem of it or it also is DOA. Good camera? Support spotify/apple music? messaging, video calls, airdrop/nearbyshare, works with smartwatches and fitness trackers, etc. If it doesn't, it will fail.

If an "AI Phone" looks to be an existential threat to third party app devs and services, except everyone to do everything they can kill said AI Phone to protect their own products.

RIM essentially invented MDM which is what allowed it to take off in the enterprise, via BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Android and iOS didn't fully unseat them in the enterprise until third party MDMs were up to par and lock down the consumer devices just as effectively.

So whatever new phone/OS that wants to take a stab at the enterprise, out of the gate, must support MDM profiles from all the major ones at least (InTune, ManageEngine, MaaS360, etc.). Then, as you said, all the MFA apps, at least should have Slack/Teams, office apps, etc.

Not that it can't be done, but the cost of entry is much higher today if anyone wants to overcome the switching costs.

Granted, a hat will not trick "person" detection, you'll still get picked up in the box, but any camera that records with motion will still detect you in the adversarial pattern too as a person, even if it doesn't pick up your face to ID you.

If I were up to anything nefarious, I'd rather blend in with other humans as much as possible, not stand out like a sore thumb.

Or in the case of X, how about just let me browse without creating an account? Likewise with meta/FB, IG, etc. The reality is businesses and other services post here, share status updates, etc. often before their main pages. I'd like to read those, and yet I have no desire to actually post or interact with any of the content, just read it. I should not need an account for that.

I like to think of religions as psychological technology. One doesn’t have to believe the stories are real for them to still have power. One can engage with the fantastic map of the mind that Buddhism provides without literally believing a being achieved “enlightenment” under a tree. Likewise, in the Christian tradition, the desert fathers through Hesychasm realized much of the same stuff as Buddha, and one does not need to accept the dogma as true to make use of the technology.

Humans are myth-makers, and our brains have a neat ability to use myth to enact real change. Ricoeur dubbed something similar as the second naïveté, re-engaging with faiths after a period of rigorous critical doubt, seeing them for what they actually are, stories that provide a technology for the inner working of the human mind.

But when it comes to software, we all just kind of accept that shitty software is the norm and totally fine? Let's start calling it what it is, its defective.

Everyone complained, loudly, and they caved in and launched the app store.

That describes silicon valley tech culture to a tee.

For me, I can't. With the Apple example, I don't see (or imagine) anything. I know I am thinking of an Apple, and my thinking is also entirely verbal/monologue based so it's like a thought of "I am thinking of an Apple" there's no accompanying visualization, etc. When I'm really deep in thought I have subvocalizations too, slight movements of my mouth and tongue as if speaking the words of my internal monologue. To me the absence of language seems impossible to my mind.

This would do a lot on its own. Remove parking minimums and pull out the parking lots. This is why transit is important, and single occupancy vehicles as the primary means of human transport in urban areas is just not sustainable nor is it efficient.

We waste so much space to parking that does absolutely nothing but act as property storage.

We've stayed in touch with eachother's social groups via various means of communication since antiquity without social media algorithms.

We need to re-normalize not knowing what is going on in someone else's life 24/7, and re-normalize not having 24/7 instant access to another person. It's not healthy.

Also, text messages don't need an instant response, nor should the other party expect an instant response. It's asynchronous communication for a reason!

There was also one I found from back in 1984 where patients in a hospital that had a view of trees having a shorter stay vs. the group with the view of a brick wall, although not entirely sure that one was robust enough to draw any real conclusions on if view matters.

Just going outside in daylight in general should get you most of the benefits (in the right season, depending on where you live. Where I am in the PNW, midday light in the winter isn't even strong enough to trigger a lot of the benefits), so if your only option is to go for a walk outside on the sidewalk then do so, but there are even more positive benefits to be gained by being in nature, outside of an urban environment.

Freezing the SFH neighborhood also doesn't protect the community long term, as NIMBYs believe. When supply gets restricted, prices go up. It prices out the local teachers, service workers, aging family, and even the NIMBY's own children get priced out, until now it's just a neighborhood of million dollar+ SFHs with no young families, no local workforce. It's economic segregation.

Continuing to allow local vetoes and restrictive zoning just pushes us out further and further into unsustainable suburban sprawl, without the transit to match, and boosting emissions.

Not popular in individualistic America, but when we have the housing crisis we do, the needs of the many are going to have to take priority over the needs of the few NIMBYs.

Phase change thermal pads help with this, extending that timeline out beyond 5+ years but still will eventually degrade.

There's all kinds of other hardware things we don't usually think about that can start having an actual performance impact after ~3-5 years too. Battery, obviously, as it degrades can limit your peak wattage, the power delivery capacitors lose capacitance over the years and develop more resistance impacting maximum clock states, fan bearings wear out, you get vacuum leaks in copper heat pipes, and micro-fissures in soldering.

Granted, most of it is going to be software but its easy to forget that hardware degrades, and degrades relatively quickly especially in higher power systems.

This is why repairability and user serviceability is so important. If you can't open up and swap parts in your machine easily, a $10 consumable turns it into $2,000+ ewaste.

I can't speak for others, but my preference for macOS basically boils down to "it's a *nix system that can run the commercial software I need, with a lot of nice little attention to detail features" I'm trading friction in some areas, for the removal of friction elsewhere.

Plus macOS has little niceties like readline key bindings in every text field OOTB, pleasant font rendering (on retina quality displays), and all the "ecosystem" features. I use universal control between my mac and iPad daily, AirDrop, universal clipboard, and airpods auto device switching, etc.

I don't pretend it's a perfect OS, it's far from it, but I willingly accept the tradeoffs and find ways to work around them to get the other features I want.