The apps in a life should talk to each other
Ten apps each hold a piece of a life and none of them know about the others. The interesting software is the part where they meet.
Count the apps that hold a piece of your life. A to-do list, a grocery list, a budget, a notes app full of places you want to visit, a watchlist, a saved folder of recipes you will cook one day. Each is good at its job. None of them know the others exist.
What would a life OS actually do?
It would notice the moments where two parts of your life meet.
The budget has room this month, and a place you saved last year is a few hours away. A long weekend there is already worked out, and all that is left is to go. A dish you saved from a video becomes Sunday’s cooking, and the two things you do not have are already on the grocery list.
None of that needs a new kind of app. It needs the existing kinds to share what they know, with something in the middle that can see across them and suggest, quietly, when a good moment comes along.
Why hasn’t anyone built it?
Because it is hard to build for everybody at once. A general app that fits everyone a little ends up as another list. The depth comes from knowing one person’s life well.
So I started with my own, and I am building it as Orbis. When I described it to friends, every one of them wanted it, and most said it would make them lazy. I take that as the right kind of warning. The point is to give back the time spent keeping ten lists in step, and to leave every decision about how to spend it with the person.
What has it taught me so far?
That the value lives in the connections between features, far more than in the features themselves. A travel list is ordinary. A travel list that knows your budget is something people describe to their friends.