Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller was a great one for me. Surface level it’s a book about a great but immensely flawed scientist. Under the surface it’s about identity and purpose. Binged it in like 2 nights.
Some coffee shops/cafes make it central to the overall experience and I love it. You can order directly from the QR code and the code is tied to your table so they bring the food and coffee directly to you. Split the bill directly in the app when you close out to pay.
If a restaurant isn’t going to really invest in an experience like that then they absolutely should go back to paper menus.
Don't know about countries, but in Sweden it's never been a problem to split the bill when you're paying. The waiter will just input whatever's needed into the PoS they bring to the table.
Why the hell would I need to download and install the restaurant's app for that and trust it with my payment details? All while I'm trying to just have a meal
So much this! I want to enjoy a meal with my friends and/or family. I don’t want to play tech games. I’ve been to a few restaurants that have an iPad at the table where you can order additional items, refills, dessert, and pay. Those were fine (so long as you turn them around when eating because they have distracting animations on them). But having to download someone else’s code to my phone. Fuck that.
> Why the hell would I need to download and install the restaurant's app for that and trust it with my payment details?
This is why Apple’s “App Clips” functionality is so great. You get a small app-like piece of functionality that you’re not installing or keeping, it works while you’re at the restaurant, then you check out with Apple Pay (or equivalent) so you don’t have to input payment details and don’t have to worry about usable payment details being stored by a potentially-insecure website.
I've never been somewhere that won't let you fall back to some kind of manual method if something is wrong with the internet. But as long as it's up, it's nice to just pay on your own rather than flag down a server.
This is especially the case if you have kids. You don't have total control over when a meltdown is going to happen, so it's nice to be able to pay quick and bail. If you're just a couple adults, the extra time isn't as big a deal.
It helps because you don’t have to wait on another person who may or may not be busy doing something else. I can scan the code while my wife grabs the kid, and I can double tap to pay while walking out the door.
Probably some of my favorites this year have been the Greek mythology audiobooks written and narrated by Stephen Fry. I could listen to Stephen read the phone book, but he also does an incredible job giving you a narrative primer of all the Greek myths and makes both historical and contemporary observations of how these myths influenced and were influenced.
Last year I read Strong Towns by Chuck Marohn and that’s put me in solid YIMBY territory, as well as completely changed my perspective on our car-centric urban planning in the US.
I bought one hoping to try it with the expectation I could return it using their 100-day guarantee. Ultimately decided the experience was too painful for my usual workflows in terms of reading and annotating my PDFs for grad school and work.
Their return process was the most PAINFUL return experience I've ever had to go through. You have to specify exactly what you're returning from their online menus and they use a delivery service that takes weeks to make deliveries. If you selected the wrong options (maybe you picked "tablet + pen" instead of "tablet + pen + extra pen nibs") they will send it all the way back to you and instruct you to attempt another return. They finally accepted it after 4 attempts, including one attempt where I did everything correctly and they still sent it back.
All this is to say, if you're looking to try the device with the expectation that you can use the return policy then be ready for a painful experience if you don't like it.
I had the same calculus, I bought it expecting to see if it would improve workflows, determined it didn't, and did the return. Didn't have this problem, remember the process being particularly easy honestly. Perhaps they revamped it since you or I did it? I returned mine in September of this year (before they announced the Connect changes, go figure).
