Nick Fox

iOS | Previously Airbnb, @LiveSafe | Constantly searching for my next cup of coffee | Opinions are my own. he/him

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

“My goal for Swift has always been total world domination” -@clattner_llvm at @realm‘s swift panel

[dax @thdxr]

how many times are you guys gonna build this

[Kun Chen @kunchenguid]

hard to find something more disappointing than:
- having written a perfect prompt of a big task and sent to agent
- thinking "that's probably enough for an hour"
- went to dinner
- came back seeing this

agent: "just one more question before I start..."

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

@claudeai Side-by-side sessions are a great step, but I'd love multi-window support so I can arrange my sessions however I want.

I want to spread sessions across macos desktops so each one can have more screen real estate.

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Mo is quickly becoming my favorite account on this site.

[Mo @atmoio]

AI is making CEOs delusional

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

I couldn’t agree with this more.

Taste still matters, and now that the barrier to shipping has been reduced it’s becoming even more important that you pick the “right” things to ship.

[dax @thdxr]

sent this to the team today

everything great comes from being able to delay gratification for as long as possible

and it feels like we're collectively losing our ability to do that

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

You've gotta appreciate the hubris to rebrand AI as Apple Intelligence.

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

SwiftUI has _greatly_ increased the team’s velocity when building new UI. Really excited to see us sharing our experience with others.

[Bryn Bodayle @brynbodayle]

Really excited to share the work that @EricHoracek and me and countless others have been doing at Airbnb to adopt SwiftUI.
https://t.co/bdt93MREAq

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Really sad to see this. Anchor was iconic and one of my favorite spots to hang out in the city.

The longer I’m off on #nomadSummer the less likely it seems we’ll end up back in SF. Tech jobs exist elsewhere and whatever the city is doing just isn’t working.

[KQED News @KQEDnews]

San Francisco's Anchor Brewing Company is shutting down.

The company announced this morning that it will cease operations and liquidate its business.

📸 Stephanie Lister/KQED

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

@mulligan #1 but de-emphasize features from previous plans so it’s easier to focus on what’s new. Less confusing to show all features in one spot, but very clear what the value prop of a specific tier is.

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

I really wish that Apple would make TagValueTraitKey public so we could use .tag to identify children in our custom Variadic Views instead of having to roll our own version. #SwiftUI

[Sterling Crispin 🕊️ @sterlingcrispin]

I spent 10% of my life contributing to the development of the #VisionPro while I worked at Apple as a Neurotechnology Prototyping Researcher in the Technology Development Group. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked on a single effort. I’m proud and relieved that it’s finally announced. I’ve been working on AR and VR for ten years, and in many ways, this is a culmination of the whole industry into a single product. I’m thankful I helped make it real, and I’m open to consulting and taking calls if you’re looking to enter the space or refine your strategy.

The work I did supported the foundational development of Vision Pro, the mindfulness experiences, ▇▇▇▇▇▇ products, and also more ambitious moonshot research with neurotechnology. Like, predicting you’ll click on something before you do, basically mind reading. I was there for 3.5 years and left at the end of 2021, so I’m excited to experience how the last two years brought everything together. I’m really curious what made the cut and what will be released later on.

Specifically, I’m proud of contributing to the initial vision, strategy and direction of the ▇▇▇▇▇▇ program for Vision Pro. The work I did on a small team helped green light that product category, and I think it could have significant global impact one day.

The large majority of work I did at Apple is under NDA, and was spread across a wide range of topics and approaches. But a few things have become public through patents which I can cite and paraphrase below.

Generally as a whole, a lot of the work I did involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences.

So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if you are feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.

There were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, which the handful of patents I’m named on go into detail about. One of the coolest results involved predicting a user was going to click on something before they actually did. That was a ton of work and something I’m proud of. Your pupil reacts before you click in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user's brain by monitoring their eye behavior, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response. It’s a crude brain computer interface via the eyes, but very cool. And I’d take that over invasive brain surgery any day.

Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.

Another patent goes into details about using machine learning and signals from the body and brain to predict how focused, or relaxed you are, or how well you are learning. And then updating virtual environments to enhance those states. So, imagine an adaptive immersive environment that helps you learn, or work, or relax by changing what you’re seeing and hearing in the background.

All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything. There was a ton of other stuff I was involved with, and hopefully more of it will see the light of day eventually.

A lot of people have waited a long time for this product. But it’s still one step forward on the road to VR. And it’s going to take until the end of this decade for the industry to fully catch up to the grand vision for this tech.

Again, I’m open to consulting work and taking calls if your business is looking to enter the space or refine your strategy. Mostly, I’m proud and relieved this has finally been announced. It’s been over five years since I started working on this, and I spent a significant portion of my life on it, as did an army of other designers and engineers. I hope the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and Vision Pro blows your mind.

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Testing push notifications has _always_ been painful. This looks like it'll help with some of that pain. #WWDC23

https://t.co/n8J60ur0xC

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

@eyeintim @edusseau @livesafe Hey, at least it proves that all the work we did was worth doing. Apple sherlocking a feature is a badge of honor!

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Whelp, looks like SafeWalk, which was probably the coolest thing I built at @livesafe just got sherlocked. #WWDC2023

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

@edusseau @livesafe Yup it’s in the Messages part of the keynote and they’re calling it “Check in”. Not as map-centric as SafeWalk, but looks really great.

[roon @trueroon]

I am become death, the destroyer of pseudo apps ☠️

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

...and as always, we're hiring!

https://t.co/E3PIrEEFRv

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Check out how we've been able to meet increased demand for mobile engineers at Airbnb! It's been a blast mentoring folks as they learn Swift and iOS development!

https://t.co/CtHNe5Caku

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Curious how we build UI at Airbnb? Meet Epoxy.

Get it while it’s still got that fresh, newly open-sourced smell!

[Eric Horacek @EricHoracek]

I'm excited to share that we're open sourcing Epoxy for iOS today, our framework for building UIKit apps declaratively in Swift. Airbnb uses Epoxy to build thousands of screens in apps that ship to millions of users—we hope you'll find it useful too! https://t.co/mPKuFrelr3

[Nick Fox @NickFFox]

Congrats to the LiveSafe team! It’s so exciting to see you reach the startup finish line!

[LiveSafe by Lightspeed Systems @livesafe]

We are excited to join forces with @VectorPerform to provide our clients with access to a holistic risk intelligence solution set and to enable organizations to not only increase safety and mitigate risk, but also to perform at their highest level.