#29 Why Did These 3 Products Become My Favorites in 2024?
It’s almost the end of first month in 2025 and I have read many self-reflections of 2024 over last month.
While I love self-reflection/retrospective aspect, I wanted to share top 3 products that have created the best experience for me in 2024.
Products we use shape our experiences and those experiences shape our mind and growth.
And that’s why I thought of writing this post to share with you.
Finding the right tools/products is highly important for different purposes and reasons depending on your need.
For example,
if you are an avid writer, finding “Notion” could be your best moment
If you a programmer, finding Cursor.ai or Github Copilot might be your best day.
Such products can either save you hours or teach you new things or even take you to the next phase/level of your personal growth and thoughts.
Here are my top 3 products I believe has took a major role in my 2024:
3️⃣ Perplexity
If you are not using Perplexity and only stuck with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — you are missing out a whole new world.
Perplexity is helping me in:
The speed that I consume information or learn about anything has 🚀
It’s not just the Yes or No questions but in terms of multiple dimensions
Examples of where and for what I am using Perplexity:
Learn new things — consume information in a structured manner including breaking down things or explaining with examples that I am comfortable in
Plan anything — Example: on Dec 31st, I want to visit San Francisco (SF) fireworks but there is a huge parking problem I am concerned about:
So, on that day, I started asking Perplexity to plan and it gave out several view points such as city view, elevated viewpoints etc..,
and even gave parking spot buildings and location including the walking distance with SpotHero app details to book the spot online.
And the execution went as per plan and no surprises
Co-pilot — I created co-pilot characters such as Paul Graham, Sam Altman etc.., in ‘Perplexity’s spaces’ and brainstorm with them about my ideas and thoughts.
It has been useful in many places but the key learning that I have always felt interesting and watched out is:
In the era of Google, you are the one who is taking decision of which source of information to trust
But with the Perplexity — there is an LLM who is collecting source and taking first decision of how to structure and aggregate information it has collected - this either makes it more biased or completely unbiased because:
with Google’s style of search hyperlinks, you might have already had a decision or thought of what you want to read or trust but with this — you might get fresh perspectives.
2️⃣ Tesla Car
I bought my first car and it’s a Tesla — never thought I can and yet it happened and I would be forever grateful to many people and the opportunities that came along.
There are multiple debates and conversations around EV vs Gas vs Hybrid and my thought of going with Tesla is 100% because of it’s technology.
In my opinion, it’s the world’s advanced car with FSD (Full Self-Driving) — and recently I started building admiration for Waymo (which I wish to experience in SF soon).
Yes, to be even more specific about it’s tech — I am talking about the self-driving experience
It’s definitely a strange feeling when I experienced it first time and even now I don’t want to trust it completely but it’s near perfect.
The fact that blew my mind is how they are able to converge the software and hardware to create such a seamless experience to users.
And it’s truly an iPhone among cars
If I had any complaint on the overall aspects of car, it’s only the build quality which I felt could be way better but the company’s mission is sustainable energy with affordable car
So, I felt the affordability mission is compromising the build quality when it’s compared to other vehicles
Other than this, it’s perfect in every aspect including voice recognition, charging, superchargers availability across USA (particularly on west side 🔋⬆️)
If you want to discuss more about Tesla car, happy to connect with you.
1️⃣ Arc Browser
I have been using Google Chrome for almost 10+ years and one day of using “Arc Browser” has made me switch to “Arc Browser”.
That’s it — the one line can speak about how much I have been using Arc browser and even when I screen sharing and able to pull some link or doc in a second, people ask me what is this tool and how you are able to do it so fast
And then I introduce this tool to them.
I think fundamentally, it’s more about how I started feeling when I am using “Arc Browser” vs “Google Chrome”
I strongly believe, the best products invoke feelings in you.
Such products are rare like iPhone, Macbook, and some kids toys - as they are creative in their own ways
These products could be different from person to person but there is some product that you might have felt - yes I like this when you first started using it as it is helping you in some way
I never thought one day there comes a browser tool that would made me shift to it from Google Chrome.
How Arc Browser re-shaped my experience of browsing in 2024?
Spaces - just like we have focus modes in an iPhone, you can setup spaces in Arc Browser and can switch among them
No horizontal tabs fatigue — hence no distraction of tabs, trust me this has increased my productivity and focus by 5x because all I read/focus is on center of screen and nothing else to distract me
Have you tried Arc Browser?
Conclusion
There are many products that every year gets released, some of them changes the tech path forward (like Open AI’s ChatGPT) and some of them change the way we search information (like Perplexity) or some of them fly in air like a bird-shaped drones.
But very few can only change your experience of how you feel about before and after that product in your hands.
What are your top 3 products in 2024? — Reply to this email or share with me on LinkedIn