I wasted two years building a complicated funnel, only to realize that the simple test funnel I used early on worked better. In hindsight, the best approach would have been to keep things simple and direct—maximize touchpoints, and maintain just a light email funnel to reduce dependence on social media. It was a huge waste of time, but I see it as tuition for the future. This lesson will guide me in app development going forward. Complex funnels can work in some cases, but more often, simplicity wins. Strike while the iron is hot.
My backup bone-conduction earphones broke (the band snapped), so I started looking for new earphones that don’t go into the ear. Since I mainly use them for audiobooks, I don’t care about sound quality.
So, I bought a super-cheap ear-cuff style earphones for about $7 (¥999). It’s actually not bad. The sound quality is, well, about what you’d expect from a cheap product, but it meets my requirement of not going into the ear, and for audiobooks the quality is more than enough.
What’s surprisingly good is the voice input. It even claims to have noise-cancelling voice input (a bit suspicious…), but in practice, it seems more accurate than the bone-conduction earphones I used before that cost just under $70 (¥10,000).
This is especially useful when I’m doing voice input on my MacBook Air. I usually use it with an external monitor in a desktop-like setup, so the computer sits a bit far away. If I speak loudly it’s fine, but when I don’t want to—or can’t—raise my voice, it was inconvenient. With these earphones connected, I can dictate comfortably without problems.
When I want better sound quality or strong noise cancelling, I still have my AirPods Pro. But earphones that go inside my ears tend to make them itchy if I use them for a long time, so I try to avoid them unless I really need to.
For audiobooks, casual videos where sound quality doesn’t matter, and voice input, these seem to be good enough. I had considered more expensive earphones, but I was surprised to find that even a cheap one works fine. Of course, since it’s cheap, I don’t expect much durability. Still, at this price, even if I need to replace them often, it’s no big deal. I’ll just keep using them without high expectations.
I like when GPT-5 Auto "thinks" only a few seconds before answering. It’s better than instant mode and still fast enough. Auto is clearly getting better at triggering thinking mode and adjusting thinking time.