Hey,
It’s Pete Matheson with a new issue of Experiments in Progress.
Almost everything I've been wrong about, I was wrong about for the same reason: I judged it from the spec sheet instead of using it.
So this week: six bits of tech I called stupid, why I changed my mind.
6 Bits of Tech I Thought Were Stupid (Until I Actually Used Them)
So here's my honest list:
🤖 AI: I held off for the longest time
I watched everyone lose their minds over chatbots and thought… this is a party trick.
Then I actually used it for real work.
If you tried AI a couple of years ago, decided it was rubbish and never went back — you're judging it on a version that doesn't exist anymore.
Claude in particular is incredible. It's the one I keep going back to.
Drafting and restructuring: "here's my messy thinking, make it make sense"
Planning: I've used it to map out entire content schedules
Being a second brain: the thing you talk at when you're stuck
✍️ Letting Google write my emails
Gmail's Help me write has got a lot better.
It now pulls context from your other emails and Drive files — flight times, booking codes, that kind of thing — so the draft actually knows what you're talking about.
Worth knowing before you go looking for it:
It's a paid feature: you need Workspace with Gemini or a personal Google AI subscription
Smart Compose and Smart Reply are still free for everyone
Best used as a re-writer, not a ghost-writer
🤖 Android: the switch I swore I'd never make
Lifelong Apple fanboy. And then I switched to Samsung and stayed switched. The bit that genuinely surprised me was the assistant gap. Gemini vs Siri wasn't close.
Although… Siri may be about to catch up.
If Siri was your only reason for eyeing up Android, I'd wait until September before doing anything drastic.
📱 iPhone Air: stupid on paper, brilliant in the hand
One camera. Smaller battery. Mono speaker. On a spec sheet it's a bad phone. And then you pick it up.
The honest trade-offs:
One 48MP camera: no ultrawide, no telephoto, no macro
Battery is fine, not great: light day, no problem. Travel day, you're hunting a plug by late afternoon
The single speaker sits up by the earpiece, which catches people out constantly
Reviewers landed in the same place I did: it's a delight to use, right up until the moment you need it to do a full day away from a charger.
Not a phone I'd recommend to a heavy user. But if you mostly live near a charger and you actually care how a phone feels in your hand? It's the most interesting iPhone Apple's made in years.
🕶️ XR glasses: the one I was most wrong about
The pitch is simple: glasses with a tiny screen projected onto each lens, one magnetic USB-C cable, plugged into basically anything. Laptop, phone, handheld console. They live in my travel bag permanently. Especially on planes.
They're powered by whatever they're plugged into. So your phone battery becomes the film's battery. Bring a power bank.
🎮 PC gaming (from a console guy)
I was a console person. Then I tried Steam, and I'm converted.
Valve's also just launched the Steam Machine — a small SteamOS box for the telly, out since June.
At a grand, that's a lot more than most people hoped for. If you've already got a decent PC, try Steam first before you buy the box.
One gripe: Fortnite still isn't on Steam. If Fortnite is 90% of your gaming, none of this applies to you.
What's the bit of tech you were most wrong about?
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