I thought their nod to what they sell was extremely subtle. And I also don't think they'd seriously propose iA Writer as THE office solution for governments. That would be delusional.
Yes, subtle because one app is not the solution but using plaintext (likely with a light markup), splitting form and content is the way to go. And when we say that plain text is the way forward, this means that not one app is the solution but you're independent in your use of apps.
iA Writer is very well one very solid and proven solution for certain use cases. In fact, I would argue that, independent of what app you use, plaintext plus markup (with the right set of templates) is, methodically, economically and logically, a much more efficient solution than Word. And I'd even argue that it is more efficient in most government, school, NGO and corporate cases.
You may find that delusional. I'm certainly not delusional about the real challenge here. It is not what app you use, but the network of format and formatting expectations, and to make people change habits. After 15 years of trying to convince people to focus on content rather than form, we know very well just how incredibly hard it is to convince people and make them stay in what they enjoy more against everybody else.
Oh, I totally agree with this, and it's awesome to see you interact here. iA Writer is one of the favorite apps I have and I think your approach to building software is incredibly beautiful and more companies should do it this way.
I was responding specifically to a commenter who pretended as though the article was super promotional, which it isn't. I agree your proposition is the right way to transitioning away from MS Office.
Was just saying you're actually NOT proposing to get administrations on iA Writer as their default writing tool, as a prev. commenter was insinuating.
I'm wondering if this will actually be happening at scale. It's great that it's possible and I think this kind of extremely specific software is great.
I myself have built an app to help me do 2 hours of deep work on a personal (non-job) project. It's extremely opinionated to help ME specifically (can't add more than 3 active projects, minimal interface etc.)
But I wonder how many people will truly do this kind of thing. I feel like this will be done by people who previously maintained spreadsheets or copious notes for their projects, which has always been a minority.
But that is a tiny fraction of people. We can also theoretically make any dish at home from scratch (and be opinionated about ingredients), but people still go to restaurants for things they could whip up in 20 minutes.
Yes, totally true. This is dangerous though when those circumstances change and basically invalidate the whole category.
I can think of NFT infrastructure here:
Various product categories were created with market leaders that owned them.
But the NFT hype didn’t hold and we effectively realized the use cases didn’t manifest beyond ZIRP-driven speculation and a small collector-artist scene.
So that can negate the whole category or crown a different winner when a technology changes.
Imagine if we used NFTs to verify if an AI or human made a piece of media.
Suddenly “marketplace” becomes a much less interesting category than scalable, fast APIs to create NFTs
Being this capital heavy also "justifies" their valuations. New shares issued in each funding round are typically around 10% of total shares, so to get to a valuation of $30B you have to raise something around $3B
Of course you could also just spend your money wisely and not do another funding round, but then how are people supposed to know how much you are worth? And how are investors supposed to know they made a great investment?
My take having grown up in Germany: Germany has risen to one of the world's top economies with products known for precision manufacturing, exacting standards and a general assumption that "We do things the right way".
So Germans became convinced they know the exactly correct way to do things because that's how they became the top of the world. So now that things are getting worse (economy, housing etc.), many Germans are convinced they just need a bit more of the exactly correct way to do things.
The same perfectionist mindset that lets you manufacture some of the world's best physical products is the mindset that makes it impossible for the government to use the internet.
I really have great admirations for the German(ic?) people. They have much the same mindset as neighbours such as the Nordics. Perfectionists, quality standards in all they do, doing things "the right way" as you mentioned. Maybe an "autistic" mindset when it comes to work.
The difference from the Nordics is that Germans have had the determination to go all the way with things, which means that for almost any great invention in the world there's always a German behind it.
But when it comes to the social cohesion, I always thought that the Germans had to fake it like the Nordics do, or like people in the Soviet Union did. But more and more I start to realize it's not the case. Germans actually support their government and support the European Union (in Nordic countries you can't find 1 in 1000 people who supports the EU), and support the official ideologies in their country. Is this the case, or am I encountering Germans online in isolated spaces?
> The difference from the Nordics is that Germans have had the determination to go all the way with things, which means that for almost any great invention in the world there's always a German behind it.
That difference is also one of 80m+ people vs. a few million for the Nordics.
> But when it comes to the social cohesion, I always thought that the Germans had to fake it like the Nordics do, or like people in the Soviet Union did. But more and more I start to realize it's not the case. Germans actually support their government and support the European Union (in Nordic countries you can't find 1 in 1000 people who supports the EU), and support the official ideologies in their country. Is this the case, or am I encountering Germans online in isolated spaces?
Germans are indeed an incredibly obedient people. Even Vladimir Lenin once said "You couldn't start the revolution in Germany because there's a sign on front of the palace that says you can't step on the lawn."
I think Germany has extreme risk aversion as a result of two world wars and being extremely invested in a status quo that put them on top. Now Germany believes they can "just one more law" themselves back to the top.
Re: EU—Germany is a massive driver and biggest contributor to the EU. A lot of the EU's bureaucracy is a German-driven mindset which assumes everything will be good if you just pass one more law.
Big country and many options and all that, but at least with regards to EU support I would say yes, the majority of Germans supports the EU. I would say some regions more than others.
I think it is understood that the EU could be better and is a child of many compromises, but if you want to make it better you have to say what and crucially how.
Until then, why not be happy with what you have, for once.
The question is to what degree that matters - if this power applies anywhere you can access ChatGPT (which is anything with a web browser), do you actually need to control the hardware?
I thought this was an interesting article that gets a few things wrong. Obviously, shipping AI-coded stuff to prod will introduce security risks.
But I also think it's important to define what level of security is actually needed for some of these apps. Obviously if you're shipping a product to thousands of enterprise customers, security needs to be tight.
But I would equate it similar to food safety: Many common practices in home kitchens would get you fired immediately in a restaurant.
But home kitchens serve very few people, store less food and store it for less time. They also have fewer people working on them.
I think the same is true for websites and apps.
There's something to be said for the security your type of project needs vs. perfect security.
When I worked at IBM as a mainframe programmer in the 90's, the first lesson we were taught is, "There is no such thing as computer security, only the appearance of computer security. Usually, that is enough."
This true at the processor level because any "security" relies on the outcome of a single branch instruction in machine code. If all your security passed, we branch to the "let me in" code. If not, not. No matter how complicated your security is, it will all come down to a single branch instruction and a programmer who can affect the outcome of that branch will bypass any restrictions you put in place.
This is a fundamental truism of computer science, and the software we worked on at IBM did things like run ATMs. When was the last time you heard of someone hacking one of those to spit out bills? Usually, the appearance of computer security is enough.
That's true. Plus the question of how much security you actually need. I've interacted with many, many websites and apps that were horribly insecure (e.g. a hotel checkin tool that stored passport scans in a public firebase bucket...).
In the vast majority of cases, this doesn't actually matter (the passport thing of course is pretty bad). If someone found a vulnerability in a vibe-coded event calendar and hacked into it to change the timing of trivia at your local sports bar... who cares?
It's like home security. If you're not rich, famous or extremely unpopular, you should definitely lock your doors, but you probably don't need armed guards.
