I tried to use Wave to collaborate on a blog post with friends, rather than emailing each other critiques.

They thought it seemed to complicated and stuck with email.

I’m haphazarding a guess that maybe Google didn’t stick with it because, if I recall, most if not all of their services were free and this one probably cost a lot to run without a clear monetization strategy. If it didn’t increase the size of a captive audience, and they weren’t willing to show ads in the product itself, and they weren’t going to get better data from users to inform their ad services elsewhere…why run it?

Of course that’s all speculation.

I thought it was used as a vehicle to have users agree to a much more “we can do whatever we want with your data” tos. From that standpoint i guess it was successful, everyone signed up.

The “just tell me what to build, I don’t need to understand why” trope exists for a reason.

I’ve worked with a range of engineers in terms of their curiosity. In my experience, the ones who cared enough to ask or push back on decisions were exceptions, not the rule.

This doesn’t mean they weren’t curious people. It just means they weren’t curious about The BusinessTM or The MarketTM.

> “just tell me what to build, I don’t need to understand why”

I suspect that insofar as this exists, it's because when junior engineers question the utility of the requirements or user stories, they are told specifically to stfu because nerds don't understand business. Over time, the message get received?

That said, I've very rarely seen an engineer like this. In fact, I frequently encounter the opposite: the sterotypical asperger's who doesn't know when they're being rude with their probing.

A tale as told as time.

Non-fungible ones

Surely you’re not a US resident, because “covered by insurance” is definitely not a good enough reason on its own to not consider this here. 30 days of CGM device coverage from our insurance costs more than this.

That said, one actually legitimate reason a T1D may be better off with their prescribed device is if Dexcom doesn’t readily replace the OTC versions the way they do for prescriptions.

This happens way more often than I imagine most who are unfamiliar would think. Anecdotal from an internet stranger, but just last night, we had a third G7 in a row fail well before the 10 day timeline. And speaking of insurance..they wouldn’t cover the early refill we tried to get a week ago when we hadn’t yet received replacements from Dexcom.

Each insurance is different, of course, and it depends on the patient. It also varies if you’re type 1 or 2, and if you’re prescribed insulin. I’m not either, so I don’t know for sure. The American healthcare system (which I am part of) is pretty opaque.

That said, I’ve heard people quote an insurance price of about $100/mo for a g7 (which is the same as this), and Medicare should cover it outright. I’ve seen companies sells the G7 for ~$200/mo if you don’t have insurance, but without a prescription I’ve never actually gone and bought one so I don’t know if I’m missing something.

The opaqueness is exactly why

> If you have T1d, you've been able to get the prescription-variant of this product for years with insurance, so there really is no reason to get this unless you're un-insured.

is dishonest at face value.

The OOP cost can wildly vary per insurer. As important is whether or not the insurance company covers it when you need it.

Typically insurance only covers 30 days at a time. That means on day 29, insurance will refuse to cover the cost at the pharmacy.

Real world schedules, flukey tech and devices, fluctuating pharmacy inventory, and occasionally needing an endo to confirm that you still aren’t the first person in human history to reverse Type 1 diabetes, etc. make “this was covered by prescription insurance” a flimsy-at-best argument against T1Ds considering this.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where can I sell it."

I think this Jobs' quote is more applicable now than ever. Not to mention Apple's acquisition of Siri in 2010 was spearheaded by Jobs himself. He'd likely have plenty of opinions about today's AI advancements and user-friendly ways to integrate it.

> "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where can I sell it."

You always end up somewhere in the middle.

Otherwise, you'll be selling flying cars that don't actually fly.

VPN active, by chance?

There isn't supposed to be, but you have reminded me that I'm noticing signs of the iCloud Private Relay running even though that's supposed to be a paid feature and I'm on a free account.

I think this is great news.

Social media gets a lot of deserved blame for worsening our ability to connect meaningfully across interests and differences in beliefs.

But I have to imagine dating apps have been nearly as bad in terms of their impact on emotional development alongside another person.

They commoditized relationships, whether intentionally or not. They squarely fit the bill of “too much of a good thing”. Relationships are hard, and dating apps removed the incentive (i.e. avoiding the effort of having to find someone new) to work through the hard shit.

I’m sure there’s been a net positive effect for some demos or cohorts. My bet though is a significant number of people are facing an increasingly harder time finding meaningful, long-lasting relationships, either because they or their partner have too high of expectations for how “easy” they should be, and they know they only need a few swipes in an app to reset and try again.

I think these apps do have a meaningful function and can potentially fill a gap - e.g. as a meeting place or at least initiation of intent.

For example, folks rarely go out of their weekly habits. We tend to go out to the same places which means there are probably people out there we'd enjoy spending time with but we never get a chance to meet. The neighbour you never meet can potentially be a good match.

So there is definitely a need for a way to "put oneself on the map". I don't think apps need to take on the ambition to "find my next spouse" which is a big undertaking and unlikely to happen while swiping left or right.

This was me this past weekend. Wife was craving Subway for some reason. I didn’t object until I saw that a foot long was $12. I genuinely couldn’t believe it.

I got my food elsewhere.

To your own point, the reports serve little value aside from a fabricated narrative that some companies like to build feel-goods around.

Discuss the complexities and needs. Break the work into small chunks. Define what progress means. Set expectations for making progress. Regularly and honestly review why you/the team are or aren’t meeting expectations. Rinse and repeat.

Perhaps this is over simplifying it, but these are the tried-and-true high notes in my experience. If at any point one of those steps isn’t feasible, then it’s a larger issue that implementation process likely isn’t going to solve, so the “to measure velocity or not” point seems moot.