Use Apple Watch to Unlock Your Mac … or Don’t

The Mac has a really useful feature where it will automatically unlock from an Apple Watch. So it's super easy to just walk up, sit down, and securely start using your Mac.

I walked up to my Mac today and realized that the feature wasn't working. I had to Touch ID into my Mac. And I realized I've been doing this for weeks. So I wen’t digging into the system settings and sure enough, the feature for both my Apple Watches had been disabled. Maybe it was a Mac OS update, or the result of a system crash, gremlins, or something else. But the upshot is that a feature defaulted off for no reason at all, and I had to go digging into System Settings to fix it.

At this point, this is no surprise. Apple seems to have lost interest in meaningful quality assurance of existing features. This is nothing new. It's getting worse. And it is all Tim Cook's fault.

Notes from Hacking Growth

This is a guide to growth based on running and executing multi-disciplinary quick hits projects, rapid development of new ideas, and relying heavily on metrics and user research.

There’s a significant focus on getting customers to their “aha moment” as quickly and efficiently as possible. That’s what keeps them from churning out in the early days. The authors focus on a new user experience (NUX) as separate from the product itself. It needs to be developed and growth-hacked independently to really focus on what the new user need to achieve that “aha moment”.

Argued that growth hacking of existing customers is too often overlooked. Too many customers focus on new customers and forget the upsells.

One cautionary note is that it’s vital not to outsource the core responsibility for growth at this or any stage. The fact is, growth is too important to delegate.

The authors really stressed, with lots of examples, how measuring every change really matters. Small changes can unexpectedly swing revenue one way or the other in a very surprising way.

Hello World

I know blogging, especially on your own site, is supposed to be dead. But I’m not a big fan of contributing content to publishing models that ruthlessly monetize readers. And I do have content (some truly useful, and some hopelessly trivial) that I want to float out there in a publicly available way.

I’m using Square Space for this site. Previously I’ve used WordPress, but that always involved some sort of hosting, plus upgrade and plug-in madness. Authoring on Square Space seems a little odd. I may post about my experiences with it in the future.