For work I have a Windows laptop with a touch screen and these were the only times I have wanted to use it:
1. The trackpad on it is so god awful that using any sort of multi finger gesture is a non-starter. In this case the touch screen works significantly better.
2. I wanted to draw in a whiteboarding tool. Drawing with my finger is not ideal so I tried a passive stylus. Drawing with a passive rubber-tipped stylus leaves a lot to be desired. I would much rather use an active stylus or a pen display for artists if I could.
Apple is known for the best trackpads. They have set the bar high and they have consistently met that bar for over a decade. I don't need a touch screen for gestures when their trackpad feels just as good. To my next point, there is no pen support on this screen.
Given this, I feel the touch screen is going to be seen just like the touch bar, a pretty feature that receives some good niche support, but ultimately does not align with how the majority of users use a laptop. I just hope there's an option to turn off the touch screen when they inevitably start shifting this display down to the base model.
"The trackpad on it is so god awful that using any sort of multi finger gesture is a non-starter. In this case the touch screen works significantly better."
probably the only reason -- and this is mitigated with a mouse.
Unfortunately pretty much any surface to contact you will be abused to try to sell you something. It started with phone calls and text messages, but quickly in recent years it's been happening to smart phone notifications.
For example, for DoorDash, I should just receive order status notifications but they ping me every few days to try out a local restaurant. They want to remind me that their app exists on my phone and I can spend money with them.
Ideally I should be able to turn off these kind of marketing notifications separate from functional notifications, but not all apps are this kind.
It makes me realize that email is a much better system for this. You have an entire archive of every email you receive, with the ability to search, filter, forward, and even set up custom rules to delete items containing certain text, for example.
Yes it's a hassle to manage an email inbox, but this kind of flexibility gives users a lot of power that phone, sms, or native notifications lack.
DoorDash is both better & worse (mostly worse with the slimmest silver lining) than you’ve portrayed. Inside the app settings you can turn off all the marketing notifications. They’ll even mostly respect that setting with the following caveats:
1) they will give you a recurring pop up banner when you open the app to turn on all notifications, making it sound like it’s just for delivery notifications, even if you already have those turned on. You have to ignore it.
2) at least once recently, they just toggled them all on, on my behalf, anyway. I found out after receiving a random marketing notification. Then I turned them back off & it hasn’t happened since.
3) there have been occasions where even with granular controls, I don’t receive the delivery notifications if I have the marketing ones turned off. Hasn’t happened in a while, but now I always keep that in mind that it’s a possibility.
> Ideally I should be able to turn off these kind of marketing notifications separate from functional notifications, but not all apps are this kind.
Even if they _do_ offer that sort of granularity, these apps introduce a new 'category' of notification everyday, and the new category is always opt-out, so there will always be a small stream of notifications leaking through.
On my iPhone I use a “focus” that just rejects communication from a set of bad actors. If I order a pizza or something I disable the focus ND RE-enable it when the pizza arrives.
If you send me one spam sms or notification you go immediately on the list.
Works fine except the notification identifier is different for ipad and phone so I have to add those apps twice.
On an Android phone, put corporate apps like food delivery (or supermarket customer cards etc.) that you don't want to think about except when you are actually using them, in a separate user profile. Then they will stay out of sight and out of mind.
Separate user accounts have been a feature in stock Android for years now, and a quick search shows that Samsung supports this same stock Android feature.
I think in the future you’ll just have a local AI model determine if any message is an advert or a genuine communication and it just filters the ads out for you.
I’ve noticed lately that both Walmart _and_ Amazon use push notifications for advertisements right next to order updates. Both allow you to turn off the advertising (I think), but opt everyone in by default.
iOS has gotten reasonably good about tracking packages in wallet outside of any other app, but then again, wallet has sent advertisements about other Apple things.
I got really surprised when Wolt suddenly gave me a notification on iPhone that said "Welcome to Germany! Discover all the places you can order from". How on earth would it know I had crossed the border? I hadn't interacted with the app for several days and the iOS location services setting is explicitly set to "While Using". That must mean Wolt is actively telling iOS it's being "in use" even though it's not. Really really scummy behavior that should be illegal.
> Apple knew this was bad 20 years ago. They just don't bother to read their own documentation
This isn't really a case of someone overlooking previous guidance, but a symptom of an org where platform consistency is being prioritized over tradition. This means changes now cater to the lowest common denominator (iOS). Lots of recent updates this, like the new app icons, the macOS 26 implementation of liquid glass, etc. The priority is making macOS easier to adopt for people who's first devices were iPads.
It's unfortunate. Although what I find strange are some of the very obtuse patterns they refuse to change. It took them forever to add window snapping to macOS and Finder still doesn't have a cut command.
Sometimes I use the wayback machine to visit marketing pages before the advent of AI, so I can get a better understanding of what they actually do instead of just a bunch of AI jargon.
Figma does allow any agent to connect to their desktop MCP though, they just limit the desktop MCP to read only access. Not sure how that fits into his argument.
Dev seats always felt like a ripoff IMO. They are just nickel and diming enterprise orgs for features that should just be free. Especially now when AI makes Figma's own code generation useless.
I couldn't believe it when file annotations are only visible to users with design and dev seats. Like my PMs will never be able to read the annotations. I stopped using that feature entirely after that, and just stuck to pasting in FigJam sticky notes instead.
For context: Figma has two MCPs. The local "dev" MCP that works through the Desktop app, and the remote MCP that requires a connection to Figma. Companies need to be whitelisted to use the remote MCP, which is the only one that allows agents edit access to Figma documents.
I only found out about Figma's limitation when I was trying to add the remote MCP server to GitHub Copilot Desktop and kept running into errors. Turns out they whitelisted GitHub Copilot CLI but not the Desktop app and had put a pause on enabling any more vendors. Eventually someone (not sure which side) got it working.
Kind of strange to limit edit access only to the Remote MCP when their competitors like Pen[1] and Paper[2] allow any local agent to edit.
To speak more broadly, Figma is in a really tough spot right now. I see more and more designers in my circle saying they are skipping design tools entirely to prototype in code or ship directly in their product's code base. Honestly I find myself doing the same.
Figma's main value used to be in providing designers a canvas to iterate and explore ideas since the majority of designers did not code, but AI has completely changed that.
I fear Figma's reluctance to integrate with all the popular AI tools might actually accelerate their decline. AI provides so much value, that I would rather base my software purchasing decisions around what is compatible with my AI of choice rather than pick an AI that is compatible with Figma.
I've had good success in my org with Paper. Non-technical people can just jam and explore ideas without worrying about Figma or whatever tools UI/UX tools. Vibes all the way down.
yeah it's 100% the wrong move for them to make, I think there is probably a lot of value in AI driving Figma, and if I can't do that, Figma will fall out of the ecosystem.
I think it's really interesting how these areas are merging, and I'm not sure who goes. Designers or "coders". Probably both depending on the context. The expectations though from every field seems to be that they'll be the last man standing. My best guess is, management has the worst cards.
I am 100% in agreement that companies that try to shut down access to agents will be replaced. It's just the future for a lot of work and workflows. In a way it's an opportunity for someone.
> I think it's really interesting how these areas are merging, and I'm not sure who goes. Designers or "coders".
Neither of them, not yet. What will go away is the products currently used by these groups.
It's happening in software development, too. In the past 3 months, I used an IDE for maybe few hours total. 99% of my technical work is now easier and better done through agentic chat interface.
I struggled with this myself, the reality is that AI can automate the work of everyone in the traditional product team trio (pm, design, dev).
The way I have made peace with it in my mind is at the end of the day, I am the expert in UI/UX. There are many product teams I've joined that have operated without a designer and you can tell (bless their souls). Component libraries, templates, articles, video courses, and etc. have all existed throughout this time so it's not like they've been operating completely blind to design and UX. I don't think AI would be different. Sure it may raise the floor a little, but in the end someone needs to evaluate the output and hold responsibility for the UI/UX.
It was an uncomfortable idea to come to terms with though, I like many other designers spent a decade getting good at Figma. Figma and design almost felt intertwined for a moment, but designers have a long history of having their craft disrupted by new technology. Decades ago designers were cutting and pasting paper, then moved to digital publishing; and in product design we've gone through software such as Photoshop, Fireworks, Sketch, and Figma, just to name a few. Design has survived all this and will continue to survive in the future.
I think the same applies to the other disciplines. Sure I could have AI spin up a backend, but I don't really have the expertise to understand whether what it is doing is good or full of security vulnerabilities.
I don't know in the future if we will create a new path for product builders, individuals who are knowledgeable in all aspects of product management, software engineering, and product design. I also don't know if teams will have as much need for individuals with the efficiency gains from AI.
I always thought it was weird that Figma didnt close the gap of taking a design and implementing it in code, that seems like what AI could enable too...
Figma exists as an abstraction of code, which has always made it kind of difficult for them to implement code. For example, they have css snippets in dev mode when you have a frame selected, but those aren't really that useful since it doesn't know anything about your existing code base or frameworks.
Code connect was supposed to bridge this gap, allowing users to define how Figma components should generate relevant code snippets, but it only worked with React and they had some janky string based templating language for everything else. And of course, it meant someone would have to go through the effort of creating mappings for every component in your system. It's like writing a component twice, the same pitfall we were trying to avoid in the first place.
Now people will just ask their AI to pull the frames from Figma through the remote MCP and have the AI implement it that way. But to that end, why not just have designers make a branch in the codebase and have them implement the UI? This is the question many of us have been asking ourselves lately.
They continue to iterate though. They've introduced Code Layers so real codebases can render on the canvas, but in infamous Figma fashion it only works with a limited set of React codebases. Figma Make (their Lovable, Bolt.new, Claude Design like product) can also pull in existing codebases, but again it is very limited in the types of code bases it can work on.
These limitations are all so exhuasting. It's just so much easier to use Claude Code or Codex to do what I need. At this point Figma is more of a secondary tool for when I need to document a prototype or want a canvas for exploration purposes.
The smartest thing they could have done is a platform play which is to try make their own React that was Figma native. A hard thing to do, but certainly doable if you consider where React is now...
The AI companies focused most their effort on writing software and continue to do so. Software, SaaS, and software engineers are the first to be disrupted.
> but AI has completely changed that.
Exactly. However, it is because AI is focused on solving writing software first which is the step to solving everything else.
From what I can see, it's everyone else who is in trouble. Software engineers have years of skills of corralling complexity, navigating requirements, etc., and all of these things matter more and more in the age of LLM tooling. It seems to me that software engineers will be taking others' roles, because if you know how to wrangle LLMs, which is something software engineers do know how to do, then you can all of the sudden take over other domains.
This is closer to the reality I'm seeing. Software engineers are well positioned to understand and deploy LLMs to solve problems, even in adjacent domains. One of the engineers I work with gave a short presentation yesterday. It was quite simple. He'd just taken a series of screenshots from our product and put it into a Claude desktop session with some pretty significant prompt explaining how the screenshots related to a particular user flow and what the desired changes we were thinking about making were.
Took about 45 minutes and produced a working mock that we could then play with and see if the UX felt right. It was surprisingly high fidelity, and while the code was entirely throw away, it helped a room full of people make decisions about how we wanted the tool to feel within the first couple of hours of thinking about the project. Designers bring a wealth of UX thinking to that discussion, but the process of creating the mock was done entirely by engineering.
They're realizing what most product companies aren't yet (at least not openly): AI subsumes products.
Most companies seem to still be in denial about it, and hope that if they add some more AI into their product, or do it just right, it will make sense. But it won't. AI is destined to sit on the outside, and products to be reduced into a bag of tools for AI to call.
Taking away write access from AI tools outside their contractual control is an expected knee-jerk reaction, but it'll probably just hasten the product's slide into irrelevancy by ceding ground to competition (that will ultimately share the same fate, too, but is still in denial about it).
This is the crux of the issue. I think for infrequent use cases (question/answer) an MCP with tool-calls to some product makes sense.
But for frequent use cases - something you do daily or weekly perhaps - then a native interface still has merit. i.e. I don't think AI subsumes the product in this case.
But it does. Even for daily use, you probably need only a fraction of the interface - but even if you need it all, the tool is usually only part of your work.
You need other programs to do other parts of the same work - design in Figma, code in VS Code, collaboration in Google/Microsoft office suite, shitposting (er, well-being and psychological hygiene at work) in Slack, etc. AI sitting on the outside is able to operate all of them, combining their capabilities for you, to do what you want and how you want it. AI sitting inside a single product is limited only to the surface of that product, and is limited to capabilities the vendor wants.
That's a very good point. I wonder if AI within a product sometimes is substantially better than AI outside the product for a particular task. Because AI in the product is configured thoughtfully to do a great job at that task. So if quality is a requirement then AI in the product may still have merit?
That variant of "AI in the product" can still be viewed as a tool call for the general AI on the outside, and my point still stands. That AI / tool can be very much a commercial offering you pay for, but that's much less business than product vendors are used to today.
While Figma could probably survive that way for some time, most software products can't, because they don't have anything special in them.
--
Fundamentally, a product is our industry's "unit of billable good/service". It's composed of a number of "operations" that are more or less closely related to each other, that someone grouped together into a larger whole with a User Interface, and slapped a brand on, so it can be sold.
From user's POV, that UI is something standing in between the user and the problem they want solved. Sometimes it's what they need, other times - not quite. From vendor's POV, UI is the mechanism of control over what users can and cannot do, and a prime sales/marketing channel, because the audience is captive.
Now, the AI sitting on the outside, operating on the functionality under UI, and composing it with functionality of other applications, gives users a superior meta-application, solving their own problem (and AI is not restricted to chat UI - there just hasn't been that much work done yet on ad-hoc, problem/user-specific UIs).
For users, that's a win - the AI may not be perfect mode of interaction (can get close with custom UIs), but it does not obstruct them. For vendors, that's a disaster, because it destroys coherence of a product, reducing it to a bag of tool calls, with zero branding and no control/upsell surface.
That's what I mean by AI subsuming products, and it being a mortal threat to most of the software companies today.
Exactly my experience. Yet, I believe app will not only provide data but also some custom, short lived UI widgets in places where a more specific and consistent UX makes sense. But apps will definitively lose control over the navigation and even lose track of the user (they will identify and authorize only one : the harness; who sits behind will remain a mystery)
I've written about this "UI to AI" pivot for my own Saas (cloudywithachanceoflatency.net). I believe it's a big win/win for every party.
> they will identify and authorize only one : the harness; who sits behind will remain a mystery
This doesn’t sound right to me. To connect to the MCP server the user must authenticate. It’s not like all Claude users connect to Figma using the same account, the user connects using their Figma account. So the app still has a direct customer connection even if they lose the ability to control the UI. Unless you’re imagining some other way this would work that I’m not seeing.
I don't believe actual users will login. The LLM through their harness will, using an identity and password found in some shared vault. The app will still do authentication but no user management. Behind an access token there might be zero, one or several humans. Dystopian version: The allow-list for the oauth redir will become the new gatekeeper in a world without local compte, and the redir client the billed entity.
Makes sense what you say. Sounds like you've thought a lot about this. If you write a post somewhere I bet others on HN and beyond would fancy a discussion as it's very much a topical issue now.
I don't see that. I would want a special tool for something that does not display well as text, like a 3D scene.
I imagine I also want a specialized tool for, say, reviewing 3D models before printing them. And they would definitely like addresses to be shown in a navigable map.
But that type of interface already exist (and has been #killedbygoogle) - its Google Wave.
Today, LLMs can vibe you that interface on the fly.
"I need an interface like ${this specific product} for my 3D scenes, but I also need to review each 3D model, which I normally do in ${that specialized tool}, and I'd love to have the two in one UI, well integrated, so I can ${description of your process}. Make it so."
Put that in Antigravity/Claude Code/Codex/whatever harness backed by a decent model, and good chances are, you'll have exactly what you wanted in less than half an hour.
"Most companies seem to still be in denial about it, and hope that if they add some more AI into their product, or do it just right, it will make sense. But it won't. AI is destined to sit on the outside, and products to be reduced into a bag of tools for AI to call."
Missing a lot of nuance.
It can both be true that a newcomer figures out an experience in which the tooling sits behind the scenes and has figured out various competitive advantages that may even result in monopoly.
Your posts carry an arrogant tint - check yourself.
I imagine every CEO breaks out in night sweats thinking of the Chegg stock chart. I don't envy them, these are hard waters to navigate and many of us are still blind as to where we are going. Seems like the new moat is just the data each company holds, I guess they're holding onto it for dear life
I found figma’s remote MCP to be a poor fit for iOS development (it sets tokens on fire and gives Claude the details as React+Tailwind) and got much better results by having Claude build a set of “lens” tools around their REST API (“give me all of the fonts”, “give me the layout dimensions”, “give me the colors”, etc).
The key to making it token efficient was allowing Claude to invent its own plaintext markup format for the lens output.
I wasn't aware of this and went to look it up to see if it's true. Then I read that the MCP is only free for a limited time and in the future they're going to start charging based on usage [1]. That's crazy
The problem is everyone has a different list of deal breakers that they need in a "dumb" device. It starts off simple, such as calls and texts, but some people want to play music, or get directions from maps, or maybe contact relatives with Whatsapp... Eventually you just end up with a smart phone.
Ideally everyone would just have the discipline to just keep what they need on their phone without trying to fix their problem with an overpriced gimmick that they will give up on after a few months.
Those people don’t actually want a dumb phone. They just don’t want to be spied on. That’s not actually that complicated it just makes other people less rich.
Yes!
Also be in control of my phone, not having to "deactivate" bloat and garbage brought to me with every update and preinstalled trash I can only "deactivate" not uninstall.
I do want a smartphone - just not one that is in full control of corporations considering me not really a customer, but an asset for their main business - advertisement. Or well the alternative, a company that thinks I am too stupid to be in charge of my phone (and also introduces more and more advertisement).
That seems excessive. In many parts of the world, WhatsApp is the default app for texting people (ie the one you use to contact a plumber or a restaurant) and not having it means the phone fails at its most basic requirements.
People tell me this all the time. Yet I've never had a WhatsApp account and I do just fine.
The only problems I've had were a single barber that accepts reservations over WhatsApp exclusively - so I go to the barber two shops over and don't need a reservation. And some women from dating apps refuse to talk on the phone before talking over WhatsApp. That's fine, there are plenty of fish in that sea.
Yes grouping is the important part. The next important part is labeling.
For example, I have a variety of USB C to USB C cables but they each have their own capabilities. Some support high transfer speeds, so I keep them around for connecting SSDs, while others are just USB 2 speeds so they are strictly for charging.
Another case is I have a very specific USB C to USB C cable that looks incredibly generic, but it is for connecting a screen tablet to a laptop because the manufacturer decided to make the port recessed, so only their cable fits. If this cable wasn't labeled as for a specific device, I would have donated it years ago.
It is some effort, for those who don't like to tinker with tech I can understand why they just shove them all into a box in the back of their closet. But I find that culling my cables at least makes me aware of what I have and don't have.
One other suggestion I have is just buying a longer cable than you think you need because eventually you'll have the need for it anyway. I have so many 3.5mm aux cables because I kept changing my desk set up and needing to buy longer and longer cables. If I had just bought the longest cable I could have at the time I would have saved myself some headache.
Another tip is adapters. Sometimes it's easier to just have cables of one type and a bunch of adapters for when you need them rather than having a ton of different cables for each possible scenario. I used to have a mix of RCA and 3.5mm cables but never had the right combination of what I needed at the time. Eventually I caved in and just bought a ton of adapters so I could standardize all the cables and use adapters as needed. Same with USB C cables.
1. The trackpad on it is so god awful that using any sort of multi finger gesture is a non-starter. In this case the touch screen works significantly better.
2. I wanted to draw in a whiteboarding tool. Drawing with my finger is not ideal so I tried a passive stylus. Drawing with a passive rubber-tipped stylus leaves a lot to be desired. I would much rather use an active stylus or a pen display for artists if I could.
Apple is known for the best trackpads. They have set the bar high and they have consistently met that bar for over a decade. I don't need a touch screen for gestures when their trackpad feels just as good. To my next point, there is no pen support on this screen.
Given this, I feel the touch screen is going to be seen just like the touch bar, a pretty feature that receives some good niche support, but ultimately does not align with how the majority of users use a laptop. I just hope there's an option to turn off the touch screen when they inevitably start shifting this display down to the base model.
reply