Jason Kottke, writing about Ian Bogost’s post on Apple design (which is a shit show of a post):

Who makes all the apps that people want to use on their iPhones to chat/connect/flirt/collaborate with their loved ones? Facebook, Snap, Google, Slack…not Apple, who initially wasn’t even going to provide a way for 3rd parties to build apps for the iPhone. Almost every attempt by Apple to build services to connect people — remember Ping?! — has failed. Even iCloud, which promised to unite all Apple devices into one fluid ecosystem, was plagued for years with reliability problems and still isn’t as good as Dropbox.

I’d argue iMessage is a killer app for the platform, and has a better implementation than any of those listed above. Slack on iOS is a turd — Facebook’s app has been known to spy on you. If the argument that design is the the details (which is what Bogost bangs on and on about), then the detail being overlooked in those other message apps is respect for users — both in privacy and ease and reliability.

iCloud v. Dropbox is an interesting issue — for a long time iCloud Drive was not as good as Dropbox, but I’d argue that in the past 6 months it has surpassed Dropbox. The issue here is everyone has a sour taste in their mouth for iCloud. (I also argue that Dropbox no longer has a sustainable business, but to each his own.) But the truth is that I saved this post to Ulysses from my small iPad, with Ulysses open on my large iPad. Set down the small iPad and selected this post to write my comments. It was there, no sync indicator, just seamless interoperability.