This podcast touches on AI.
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podcast → touch → AI
My fiancé works at Anthropic.
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fiancé → work → Anthropic
When I talked to Eugenia Kuyda for the Platformer podcast, she predicted that the long tail of subscription apps on your phone would soon disappear.
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tail → talk → phone
There will no longer be a need for paid apps for meditation, nutrition tracking, or fitness, she argued, because anyone can now build one for themself.
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anyone → pay → themself
Kuyda is applying that hypothesis to Wabi, a smartphone app for making smartphone apps.
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Kuyda → apply → apps
But for the second episode of our miniseries on AI and productivity, I wanted to test her prediction on the platform where I spend the most time: my Mac desktop.
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I → want → time
And I can’t think of a better person to test it with than Thomas Paul Mann.
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I → think → Mann
Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of Raycast, the launcher that has replaced Spotlight for hundreds of thousands of daily users, myself included.
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myself → replace → users
(And yes, he is a German man named Thomas Mann — and like the 20th-century novelist of the same name, he has chosen a life of writing.
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he → name → writing
Thomas Paul Mann spent more than a decade as a software engineer at a German research institute called the Fraunhofer Society before taking roles at Audi and Facebook.
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Mann → spend → Audi
It was at Facebook that he met his co-founder, Petr Nikolaev.
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he → meet → founder
The duo were part of Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch, and they built Raycast together in about three months.
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they → build → months
They’ve since raised more than $47 million from investors including Accel, Coatue, and Atomico.
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They → raise → Accel
On July 1, Raycast unveiled its second act, Glaze, to everybody.
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Raycast → unveil → everybody
Describe the software you want in plain English, and Glaze builds you a real Mac app.
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Glaze → describe → app
It lives in your dock, works offline, and can be shared to a public app store or privately with your team.
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It → live → team
(I reviewed it in Platformer earlier this month.)
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I → review → Platformer
So far with Glaze, I’ve built a searchable archive of every column I've written, an app for managing my contacts, and a to-do app that generates an image of the superhero Nightwing completing each of my tasks.
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superhero → build → tasks
The archive app has quickly become a tool I use every week; the to-do list app is both totally unnecessary and lots of fun.
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app → become → fun
This is now the third time Thomas has handed people tools to make their own tools.
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Thomas → hand → tools
At Facebook he worked on Spark AR, the company's augmented reality platform; at Raycast, he built a platform that now includes more than 3,000 open-source extensions.
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that → work → extensions
"As soon as you give people a tool to create their own tools, it changes the equation," he told me.
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he → give → me
What I appreciated most in our conversation was Thomas' clear-eyed critique of commercial software.
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appreciated → appreciate → software
In his telling, most software is a compromise: companies chasing growth pile features onto their products until they begin to suck.
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they → chase → products
"What started as a little tool suddenly becomes this glorious massive app that wants to do everything," he said
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he → start → everything
and "sometimes those apps get more in the way than they actually help."
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they → get → way
Glaze represents an effort to give people hyper-personalized software: apps built for a market of exactly one person, then remixed and shared from there.
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Glaze → represent → person
He predicts that within three years, 30 to 50 percent of the software on your Mac could be software you made yourself.
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you → predict → Mac
"Everybody is a creator now," he said.
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he → say → ?
Thomas also made some news on the show: within the next few weeks, he said, Glaze Pro subscribers will be able to tap language models and image generation directly through their subscriptions.
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subscribers → make → subscriptions
(Good news for people like me, who have been plugging in their own API keys to bring intelligence to their creations.)
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who → plug → creations
And when I asked my standing question about how I will affect jobs, he had a perspective I hadn’t heard yet.
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I → ask → perspective
The engineers who benefit most from AI, he argues, are the most junior and the most senior, while the person in the middle is in "a bit of a weird spot."
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person → benefit → spot
In the meantime, if you’re feeling competitive, Glaze just announced a $10,000 contest for the best app built on the platform.
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Glaze → feel → platform
(I’m a volunteer judge … and I plan to be merciless.)
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I → ’m → ?
A long excerpt of our conversation is below, edited for clarity and length.
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excerpt → edit → clarity
Listen to the entire conversation wherever you get your podcasts — just search for Platformer — or watch it on YouTube at youtube.com/caseynewton.
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you → listen → youtube.com/caseynewton
And let us know what you think — we welcome your feedback at casey@platformer.news.
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we → let → casey@platformer.news
A question that journalists will often ask about a product like Glaze is: what is the weirdest thing you've seen someone build with it?
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someone → ask → it
But in this case, I wanted to be the person who built the weirdest thing with Glaze.
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who → want → Glaze
…and 306 more, not listed.
The Aporia
