Apple's PS5 competitor

Happy Hump Day! In today's Leaderboard: an AI tool that makes meetings just a bit more bearable, Apple's small but mighty Mac, and a tool to control your smart home from your Apple Vision Pro. Let's dive in.

Magic Notepad by TimeOS: Intelligently adds context to your meeting notes

Since I’m stubbornly committed to my Firefox browser, I probably didn’t get the optimal TimeOS experience. The app works best with Chrome, where it integrates as an extension that can brief you for meetings, intelligently add context to your notes, and jot down summaries of its own. Still, I was fairly impressed with the pared-down version I tried on a recent team call. My AI assistant (which appeared as a member of the call, a feature you can opt out of in Chrome) took fairly accurate and helpful notes on a meandering conversation with colleagues. The final result still required enough clean-up on my end that it wasn't a huge time saver, but I could see an integration like this becoming part of my regular meeting workflow once it becomes smarter.

The new Mac Mini: Apple’s heavily upgraded micro computer.

The Mac Mini taking the internet’s attention during Apple’s week of Mac launches was not on my bingo card. But after seeing it, I can see why. It’s tiny but it packs a punch with the new M4 chip all while having less than half the footprint as the previous model (really, it's tiny) and starting at only $500. So much so that Apple is touting it as a potential PS5 competitor (if devs ever build games for Mac). One quirk is the power button placement, located on the underside of the machine. A bunch of people have questioned this and even compared it to the Apple mouse charging situation — but honestly, when is the last time you turned off your Mac? I can see this easily being a main machine, but also could be a fantastic home server option for makers. 

Loma Home: Control your smart devices with your Apple Vision Pro. 

We've been able to control smart home devices for a while with our phone and voice commands but the SciFi dream of gesture controls and AR visuals hasn't quite come true...but that's starting to change. And sure while Meta's Orion glasses might not hit the market anytime soon, it's not stopping makers to build apps and tools like Loma Home to control your smart home devices using an AR interface and gestures. I think Loma is a glimpse into what will soon become standard with smart glasses and the adoption of the Matter standard.