Apple blew me away with what they are doing for personal communication. Everything else felt like a refinement or new product trial balloon. But what Apple is d

Apple blew me away with what they are doing for personal communication. Everything else felt like a refinement or new product trial balloon. But what Apple is doing to make mini-creators out of people here is jaw dropping. I'd go so far to half-jest VisionPro launch was pushed up to smokescreen how big the iMessage changes are, what ecosystem dominance Apple is getting with iOS/MacOS. Apple is never going to participate with anyone else ever, after this. Apple is off executing incredible big advancements. Users create a little avatar that shows up across products, with some solid flare & artistic effect gratis. Great first impression building, lots of enduring personality. But the day to day is wow. Being able to positionally drag drop emoji into group chat is huge flair from the start. Drop in locations easily, nice, useful. Creating custom emoji really really impressed me, really let's folks develop repetoir & humor in their interactions with each other over time. ActivityPub/Mastadon impl MissKey has a very barebones custom emoji that I like, but the authorship tools here look really really friendly & helpful to really DIY, to go beyond being a meme bank. Other communications tech touches were everywhere. Live Voicemail live transcribing is dead simple & sensible, albeit receive only. Shared CarPlay Sessions is tech Google has in Cast/Android but which no one uses (including YouTube Music): hugely prosocial connected computing. Journaling is incredibly compelling as a synthesis tool, a way to pull together a variety of computing bits & encourage user content generation, to make a shared computing space around the user. Apple also situated into the home far better than Google. Android's widgets have been stagnant for years & crude, and Apple has gone from having nothing to relentlessly driving forward with microexperiences atop shared computing spaces. These ideas, of shared computing spaces, and shared interpersonal spaces, are massively on display here in a way no one else is computing is showing off, and it's incredibly compelling to me. And scary, as it's so purely Apple's space; the world needs some principled loyal opposition to the Cupertino Way, that keeps the path of computing available for open innovation.