Instagram is doing too much

When Snap launched, there were infinite way to share images, but Snap asked a bunch of weird questions that no-one had really asked before. Why do you have to press the camera button - why doesn’t the app open in the camera? Why are you saving your messages - isn’t that like saving all your phone calls? Fundamentally, Snap asked ‘why, exactly, are ... See more

Snap: A text messaging app that adds expression, emotion, and nuance to each message through a background photo. Adding a photo allowed the same text to have a variety of meanings with a change to the background photo. This is a source material that took a normal boring text to a whole new level. Meanwhile, ephemerality was a constraint that unlock... See more

To me, the clearest example is Dropbox. I’ve used Dropbox since the earliest days, and I love it. Nothing has ever come close to providing the speed, reliability, and cross-platform compatibility for file synching of Dropbox. Even though I technically get iCloud File Storage “for free” as part of some broader package, I still pay for Dropbox with a... See more