I wanted so very much to like morgen for its calendar helper services like automatic travel time, prep time, flexible meetings, etc. But then it throws this alert window with no explanation whatsoever for why on Earth it would need to access my microphone and nope, no way, hard pass.

The Beatles wanted to do a LotR movie, starring:

McCartney as Frodo, Starr as Sam, Lennon as Gollum and Harrison as Gandalf. The Beatles' choice of director? Stanley Kubrick, fresh from making 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But Tolkien didn’t like the idea of a pop group being associated with his books. I am not sure about that cast either, but just imagine Kubrick’s Lord of the Rings. In the style of Barry Lyndon, perhaps? (ᔥMarginal Revolution)

Some of the books I’ve added to the pile since January:

• The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Writing to Learn by William Zinsser
• Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
• Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes

And more! How many days in a year again?

📚 Finished reading: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt while trying to avoid confirmation bias since we are of the same mind on phones in schools and I was very much on his side during on of the most interesting and least civil Conversations with Tyler (Cowen).

The last third of the book — calls to action — was too much of a laundry list for my taste, but I was pleasantly surprised by Haidt’s take on spirituality with which he concluded the middle section.

Apparently, this book was supposed to be only the first chapter of Haidt’s next one, about the influence of smartphones and social media on everyone’s lives. I suspect that here, too, we will agree, though I had only written about the destruction wrought upon the older generations (present company included) in Serbian.

Steven Johnson is one of the rare writers whose Substack newsletters I follow, and his most recent post will give you a good idea why. It is nominally about “The Infernal Machine”, his new book out today, but it is also about how he writes, and why, and has room for a story and a poem which both pack a punch. Recommended.

🏀 The craziest end to a half-time in a long long time happened last night in Minnesota and even if you are not a basketball fan I am sure you will appreciate the cinematic quality of the scene starting at 1:17. But do watch the whole thing, it is only 90 seconds long.

It was a packed coast-to-coast flight a few days ago and I was flying economy. But even then, the social anxiety of being “that guy” ultimately stopped me from putting on the goggles. The series of events before that decision was this: I had opened a book as soon as I got into my seat, then the plan took off, then drinks and snacks were served and before I knew it we were an hour and a half into a five-hour flight. Fiddling with AVP’s battery and jamming the charger in between the seats felt like too much.

Still, there were a few emails in my inbox that needed long, thoughtful responses that referenced a few different files so as soon as the flight attendant cleaned out the drinks I got my laptop out, set it on the tray and started typing. Not a minute later, the person in front of me — about 6' 8", can’t say I blame them — reclined their seat all the way down.

I had never dug into my backpack so quickly, and it turns out that setting up AVP doesn’t take all that long, considering.

A few minutes later I was in Joshua Tree National Park, my Mac’s large virtual display in front of me, typing away on the MacBook Air’s keyboard that was just barely visible from the screen that was being pushed by the reclining seat. A seat that I didn’t see and wasn’t bothered by one bit.

My friends, it was glorious. I spent the next three hours Doing Important Things, messaging apps on one side, documents on the other, and I could easily have spent three more but before I knew it the pilot announced that the trays should go up so I packed all the electronics — again, quite quickly, considering — and went back to my book.

The flight back was not nearly as full — I had the row for myself — which made the experience even better: with all three trays to myself I could position the apps all around me from the middle seat. Better yet, I was ready for landing, flipping the tray up and setting the laptop back into my backpack but continuing to work with AVP on and Apple’s tiniest keyboard in my lap. I liked this set up so much that I was wondering whether Screens has a VisionOS version (it does), and whether I could ditch the MacBook altogether and stream my Mac Mini — or, in the future, a Mac Studio — for the heavier work.

So that was good.

But of course AVP is still very much an 0.1 product. It couldn’t remember app position or different setups: of all of Apple’s platforms, VisionOS needs Stage Manager the most. It often couldn’t decide whether to use the virtual or hardware keyboard. Using on-flight WiFi made things laggy at times — which is why the Screens setup probably wouldn’t work — and I had a feeling that some of the legginess was from unoptimized software more than anything else, particularly from the iPad apps. But if people don’t use it, what is the developers' motivation to improve their apps?

Which ties to what will most likely kill AVP, if something does kill it: Apple’s inexplicable inertia. Environments that were “Coming Soon” on launch still haven’t arrived. All but one immersive show are still in the Season 1 Episode 1 stage. There haven’t been any new Apple apps since launch even though the iPad event would have been a pretty good time to highlight them.

This is important: unless you use AVP as a personal TV — which I don’t, movie and TV watching should be a communal experience — or travel almost daily, your only incentive to put it on frequently is to see what’s new. And not using AVP frequently brings it into the empty battery — wait to recharge — wait to start up — wait to update death loop that has been the bane of many household gadgets, most of them, admittedly, costing much less than $3,500 plus tax.

Bud I digress; I do travel often enough for AVP to see frequent-enough use, and for the scenario I described at the beginning it is well worth the price. Conditional, of course, on what you actually do with the freedom it grants you.

Two long-ish articles for the weekend before I board the plane back home:

• NYT: Cass Elliot’s Death Spawned a Horrible Myth. She Deserves Better.
• FT: Jürgen Klopp and the leading of Liverpool

Both are gift links! And if the one about Cass Elliot has whet your appetite, make sure to see this SNL skit featuring one of the best performances by a guest host ever from Emma Stone.