hi bud buds,
as a product manager, what ai tool do you use most?
for me, it’s willow — a desktop app that provides accurate voice-to-text dictation to any text field on your mac. i use it for nearly every email and slack i send, occasionally applying finishing touches with chatgpt. this workflow probably saves me one hour every work day.
becoming a power user of willow, and seeing it explode in popularity (per semrush, willow’s organic traffic has grown ~40x quarter-over-quarter), has validated a thesis i’ve held for a while: that voice will eventually become the primary way we interact with ai. dictation is not only much faster than typing, it also provides richer context that helps ai better understand what you’re looking for. said another way, talking with ai yields both faster and better results.
willow’s business thesis is similar to mine: that voice will become our primary interface with the digital world, and they want to own that interface.
i’ve actually always thought apple was best positioned to win voice, as opposed to a startup like willow. they already own all the hardware we carry on a daily basis: our phones, laptops and in-ear devices. today, it feels like willow is simply filling a void that siri has left open by being an absolute dog crap product. but it’s easy to imagine apple catching up quickly by swapping their awful dictation models for llm-based models like whisper.
i emailed the ceo of willow, allan guo, to ask how he thinks about his company’s roadmap versus apple’s. his answer: personalization. “willow will better understand your writing style, so you won’t have to go back and edit what you dictated. instead, it’ll nail it the first time.”
candidly, i feel that apple is also well-positioned to win on personalization — they already see our every message, call, geolocation, and keystroke. but i’m still rooting for willow. it’s an incredible product that saves me hours every day, and i wholeheartedly recommend it to all my pm friends (like you!)
have a great week, y’all. i love you.
- dj
p.s. i have no formal / financial relationship at all with willow; i’m just an absolute simp stan for awesome software products
last week’s biggest product releases
big news! huge!
apple launched public betas for ios 26, including their big “liquid glass” redesign, ai live translation, polls in messages, and improved image search. tbh, actually not loving liquid glass so far; feels juvenile and visually distracting
tesla is testing robotaxi service in san francisco, after beginning an austin pilot last month 🎉
spotify releases a golf game within the spotify app, its first major experiment with gaming. really interesting product bet, excited to see if they continue investing here
my favorites :)
uber released women preferences in the u.s., letting women drivers choose female-only passengers — a feature first introduced ~6 years ago in saudi arabia and now live in 40+ countries
lyft is planning to offer driverless 9-seater shuttles starting 2026 in partnership with u.s. cities and airports
telegram launched its in-app crypto wallet in the united states (previously international-only); i’m not a telegram or crypto guy, but this feels like a fantastic fit for their privacy-obsessed icp
threads added enhanced analytics for creators, providing data insights into post performance, engagement, and follower growth
consumer ai releases
the browser company launched a skill gallery for their ai browser (dia), letting users save and easily reuse ai prompts
youtube shorts released image-to-video ai tools, letting users convert images into 6-second videos
google photos added ai editing features, including turning photos into videos, and “remixing” photo styles (anime, comics, sketches)
google is experimenting with web guide for search, grouping results together into related sections. feels like a good primitive for google to serve a lot more contextually relevant ads 👀🤑
google released ai virtual try-on, letting users try on clothes virtually via photo uploads
protecting our youths 🤝
snapchat is launching home safe, a feature that alerts friends when users arrive home safely
instagram is increasing child protection features for kid-focused accounts, with stricter dm controls and comment filters
apple is expanding their app store age ratings by requiring devs to answer more questions about app content, and giving parents clearer info about apps their kids want to download
hmmm 🤔
x is testing using community notes to highlight popular posts from users with opposing views. nice idea in theory, but imo most people don’t use social media for nuance. feels good for society, but bad for product engagement
proton released lumo, a privacy-first ai assistant with e2e encryption, no logs, and incognito mode. not a big privacy guy, so i’m not the target user here, but i wonder if they’ll find it difficult to improve their product as fast as competitors without user feedback data to train on
google chrome released easier account switching on their ios app, letting users easily switch between personal and work accounts without signing out. feels like this should have just existed ages ago… #teamarc
other product news
apple launched applecare one, a $20/mo bundle plan covering three devices. previously, each apple device needed a separate applecare plan
amazon released a cheaper color-display kindle, priced at $250
paypal announced paypal world, a platform making it easier for people worldwide to pay each other using different local wallets from their respective countries
model news
alibaba released qwen3-coder, a powerful open-source coding model
google deepmind announced that gemini with deep think solved 5 of 6 problems at the international mathematical olympiad
that’s it for this week; thanks for reading. if you enjoyed this issue, please consider sharing it with a friend so i can get filthy rich and leave behind all my childhood friends.
love, dj