😸 Apple quietly improves its hardware for AI

gm legends. It’s Sunday Funday.

In this edition, we talk about the new iPad Pro, look at how much momentum you actually have post-launch, explain how getting fired could be your big break, reintroduce you to a Product Hunt launch of yore, and share the most popular new products this week.

Ready? Let’s do this. 

P.S. Launching soon? We’d love to hear about it → editorial@producthunt.co 🫶

On Wednesday, Apple announced three new products that look very much like three existing products: the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro. The big difference is what’s inside: the company’s new M5 chip.

There’s lots of fancy hardware talk — ”third-generation 3-nanometer technology,” “next-generation 10-core GPU architecture” — but the upshot (according to Apple) is that, in addition to better graphics, the chip will drastically improve the computing power for AI applications. As in 350% better than the M4’s AI performance. So now, instead of just watching movies on a plane, your iPad Pro can become a serious productivity device. 

It’s a similar story for the MacBook Pro, which ups its graphics game 60% and adds more memory bandwidth. And if you’re into headsets, the Vision Pro takes a big jump from the M2 version — 25% more battery life, 50% faster AI features, and 20% better refresh rates.

We’re curious: Do you see the need to rush out and buy the improved hardware?

If you’re curious to know how well your Product Hunt product hub page is converting, fmerian has been running the numbers. He was “positively surprised” to find those pages converting to product signups over 20% of the time. He also found that a new launch gave products about 30 days of momentum before signup and click volume dropped off.

By Jamie Smith

I left the UK in August to go traveling with my partner. By the time I got back, I was single and unemployed. 

I wasn’t in a good place. To cope with the traveling blues and the breakup, I turned to bedrotting. I was lying there, scrolling Instagram and TikTok, jumping from news app to news app, opening dozens of loops but never closing any of them. I was looking for distraction and some sort of comfort, but I couldn’t get it on a screen. My phone habits were making me feel worse. 

So I set out to better manage my relationship with my device.

And…it didn’t work. The existing screentime apps like Opal, Brick, and Jomo are very all-or-nothing. There's no middle ground where I felt I could stay informed without getting sucked back in by social media algorithms.

I still wanted to go on YouTube to see what news channels were saying about international politics, but I didn’t want to get distracted by all the other recommendations that happened to be there. I still wanted to see what my friends were up to on Instagram, but I didn't want to be enticed by the reels asking me to watch just one more video. I still wanted to check my emails, but I didn’t want to lose half an hour to meaningless messages. Software’s stickiness made it nearly impossible for me to stay disciplined.

So I set out with a new mission: to make something for myself that would allow me to stay updated without becoming easily distracted.

What I envisioned was a hub that put things in an environment where I had control — letting me stay on my home turf instead of cruising through internet neighborhoods filled with booby traps. That way, I could avoid the endless stream of information, the notifications, and the slot machine-like UX.

I’ve started building that. Siftly is part wellness tool, part productivity tool. It’s completely customizable and designed to put people back in control of their digital experience. Ironically, my relationship to screens has improved since I started creating the app because I'm coming at it from a creator mindset instead of a consumer mindset. But if Siftly doesn’t work out, even if I go on the dole, I’ll be doing it without the scroll.

Imagine browsing the web in olden times, a downpour of information hitting you with each new tab. To manage the deluge and keep track of what matters, you needed a solid bookmarks manager. So when this product rolled out version 5 on October 15, 2020, it hit #1 on Product Hunt for the week. Better yet, the one-man company is still rolling.