Happy Sunday everyone! For the Ginter household, summer officially kicks off after tax season — the girls finish their school years at the end of June, we all take some holidays, we work hard to find a beach a few times a month, and we spend far more time with each other than throughout the rest of the year. It's quickly becoming my favourite time of year.
On Legacy
I'll reflect on learning lessons from this past tax season in the coming weeks or months. Today's reflection is on legacy.
In but 100 years, the homes we live in either won't exist or will exist in an unrecognizable form. Our names will be etched into a stone somewhere nestled by our final resting place. Our great, great, great grandchildren likely won't know our names. Our experiences will be of mythology and legend — trust me, I do remember a time before smartphones and computers!
You can structure things to carry on well after your death, however. You can create foundations, donate endowment funds, or provide charity to your church, all of which can have a lasting impact and ensure your interests and passions will be taken care of for generations to come.
Foundations in particular are interesting — they receive donations, invest the funds, and create funds that pay out earnings according to the directions of the donor or according to the decisions made by a well-intentioned board. Many of these donations will be received upon the passing of the donor, while others are received while the donor is alive. Either way, foundations provide an administrative arm to ensure a person's legacy is provided proper stewardship and their passions are covered for generations to come.
Some of the numbers we're talking about here: the Toronto Foundation administers assets worth approximately $844 million while the Winnipeg Foundation — believe it or not — administers a staggering $1.65 billion. Manitoba is home to the happiest and most charitable people on the planet.
I love the function foundations provide. And their function will only gain in importance in the decades to come. Playing a role on these boards is a great experience and ensures stewardship skills are developed before a person truly experiences their own wealth later in life.
But I want to challenge folks who sit on foundation boards to shine the light on the original donors in a more enhanced way. I read a few local news articles this week and saw a few photos where board members of a foundation stood around a giant cheque which had been donated to a local cause. This is all amazing news, of course! But nowhere was it mentioned who donated the original money or which fund the donations came from.
In short, I want those who sit on a board for a foundation to remember the important responsibility they hold: stewardship. Your job is to ensure stewardship of assets you didn't earn and shine the spotlight on those who donated and those who benefit. I'm always grateful for the decision-making foundations do to keep good causes moving forward for generations to come. I also hope we can always remember that it isn't our generation giving that money away — that legacy was left by someone long ago, who had their own life story, their own experiences, and their own passions. Someone worthy of the spotlight themselves.
My First Impressions Review of the Nintendo Switch 2
My parents purchased our family's first gaming console when I was seven years old. My brother and I unboxed that Super Nintendo and had no idea what it was. It came with Super Tennis and Stunt Race FX, the latter of which became the first video game I ever played.
My brother and I played thousands of hours of Super Nintendo in the years to come. When we got older, our older cousin introduced us to Nintendo 64, which further changed our later childhood and early teenage years. Super Nintendo and N64 were truly formative for my brother and I — we learned to relate to one another through Nintendo video games and we will both hold memories for the rest of our lives involving those original Donkey Kong and Super Mario games.
It's amazing how little has changed from when I was seven years old to now, when my oldest daughter is seven years old.
I brought the Nintendo Switch 2 into the house and connected the dock to our family room TV for the first time. My daughters saw me grab the little Joy-Cons from the side of the device, fire up Mario Kart World, and watched one game as I zoomed around and tried to remember the controls (the controls haven't really changed since Super Mario Kart in 1992).
Half a race in and their eyes lit up. The same light my brother and I had the first time we played Stunt Race FX.
This is a level of delight few products could bring to my household right now. We've had a pile of fun the last two weeks playing against each other (I've even enjoyed a few later evenings with my wife racing around a few times!). These are formative memories that will be remembered for decades to come. And I'm so grateful Nintendo is still leading the charge in providing safe, family fun in a video game world full of blood, gore, and horrific storylines.
I could wax poetic for a long while about the Nintendo Switch 2. I — and more importantly, my family — absolutely love the Switch 2 so far. I'm not sure you'll ever get a good review out of me, though. I have nothing to truly compare it to, as I never played the original Switch. I'm just giddy about its entry into our lives.
My more specific anecdotal thoughts so far:
- The Switch 2 is far bigger than I was expecting. I've certainly seen Switch 1 consoles out in the wild and always took them to be relatively small devices. This Switch 2 feels gigantic and I'm not sure I would be randomly throwing this into a messenger bag each and every day.
- The Switch 2 is full of whimsy and delight in every corner. No detail stone has been left unturned. The UX sounds are crisp and fun. The soundtracks in the games are fun and memorable. The UI is easy to understand and utilize and is bright and delightful. The blue and red Joy Con colours add a dash of pizazz to the console. It's just so much fun to hold and use for hours on end.
- Joy-Cons are pure genius. The fact these controllers detach and become their own little mini controllers is outrageously out-of-this-world fantastic. The tiny controllers fit my daughters' hands nicely, too. But then, each Joy Con can convert to a mouse? Seriously?! And then the display can be put onto the table and you can just invite anyone sitting around you to a quick game of Mario Kart or Super Smash? Come on! Joy-Cons are proof their is incredible innovativeness in the world today.
- Virtual game cards can be borrowed to others for 14-day stretches. I'm not used to a video game company being so compatible with how a user-base would use their products. If I had a physical game card that I wasn't using at the moment, I'd quickly borrow it to someone to try. A virtual game card should effectively eliminate this. But Nintendo said "Nope, you can totally borrow that virtual game card to a friend or family member." I can't help but feel like Nintendo is providing a giant warm hug each time I discover a new feature in the Nintendo eShop.
- Game Chat is hilariously fun. On Xbox, you have to have a proper headset connected to your controller to be able to talk to folks you're playing with online. With the Switch 2, you can just... talk to your friends directly. No extra microphones or anything. A few friends and I fired up a Mario Kart race and the ability to fire off some banter midway through the race is some of the most fun I've ever had playing video games.
- Two charging ports is really nice. The ability to charge both on top and on the bottom is just more of Nintendo providing warm hugs to its users.
- Being able to play offline is one of those features I had no idea was so valuable. I have been an Xbox Game Pass subscriber for the last year or so and played a lot of EA Sports Masters Golf 2023, Star Wars Battlefront II, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. I love those games! But if you are a subscriber, you have to be connected to the internet to play. All those connections take time to load and slow down the experience. The Switch 2 just... fires up the game and you can play. It feels like an instant blast of fun each time I pick it up.
- We are spoiled for battery life in the Apple world. There's a ton of horsepower firing inside this Switch 2 and that takes some serious battery power to do it on the go. Three to six hours of battery life isn't great and will require power sources on the fly if we want to travel anywhere with the family. For us, we have power in the truck and we don't tend to travel more than three hours in a day as a family anyway. But I can see how this could be a problem on somewhat longer flights.
All in all, the Nintendo Switch 2 is every bit I was hoping for as a father. The Switch 2 has quickly cemented itself inside those formative memories for my daughters and, somehow, has kept my fascination nearly 30 years after my first experience. Few companies could pull this off with this much delight.
The Second Cup
Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad's Essence
Good get for MacStories.
007 First Light - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch 2
Speaking of formative memories — like every '90s kid, Goldeneye sat alone as the greatest game ever made. No chance First Light lives up to that level, but I'm going to give it a try nonetheless.
Reasonably unreasonable
Though there are a number of nuggets in this short piece, I love the characteristic defined as "Someone who collects skills and resources". "Collecting skills" doesn't need to mean "be a jack-of-all-trades" — there are breadth and depth components to this characteristic.
Kinesis mWave Mechanical Keyboard
Found this one thanks to Clicks 'n Clacks, one of my favourite newsletters. I have long loved the Microsoft Surface Ergonomic keyboard. As it's seemingly discontinued, I have been looking for alternatives. This one from Kinesis is intriguing, especially the idea of jumping to a specific number pad layer. I wonder how this works in practice.
Happy Sunday everyone. I hope you have a great week ahead.