The Brooks Review

Month: February 2011

  • Brett Terpstra’s Filing System

    If you are a fan of tagging your files then I think Mr. Terpstra has the system of all systems. This is impressively nerdy.

  • Responding to Richard Gaywood of TUAW

    Richard Gaywood called me and others out over at TUAW today and asks this of us about Apple’s policy change:

    To the bloggers above and to the many others passionately defending this change, I simply ask: why am I supposed to be happy about this? Or to put it another way: if all those apps disappear from my devices, what’s in it for millions of end users like me?

    The better question is: how has this negatively impacted you, the user, thus far? Sure Readability was rejected, but apps are rejected every day. You can’t be negatively impacted by that rejection unless you work for Readability — meaning you never had that app to begin with so you don’t know if you would have even liked it.

    The entire basis of Gaywood’s frustration (and others) is predicated on the idea of “what might happen” and not on a more clear “what is happening”. The App Store has never been black and white, so to call these new rules “clear” is to show a fundamental lack of comprehension of how the App Store has been run to date. The App Store has been built on a set of gray rules — granted and very dark gray, but gray nonetheless. To assume now that the rules are suddenly black and white is to make a rather bold assumption.

    Again, we all need to take two steps back, a deep breath, and wait to see how this plays out in June — when supposedly it is do or die time for current apps violating these rules.

  • Microsoft, It Is Time to Pull Your Heads out of Your Asses and Start Marketing Windows Phone 7

    Here’s what I think when I see advertising for Windows Phone 7: “lost opportunity”.

    Microsoft, it is high time that you pull your head out of your ass and start properly marketing Windows Phone 7, lest you become further irrelevant in the only technology space that matters right now — mobile. I for one couldn’t care less about seeing your commercials that mock me — you know the ones that portray someone who is constantly looking at their phone. Why are you alienating the very market that you need for the long term success of your platform?

    Here’s a thought: why not show me one compelling reason to use Windows Phone 7 — and you do have some compelling reasons.

    Here, I can help get you started:

    1. Market the fact that your Metro UI is completely different from anything else on the market. Apple built multi-million dollar campaigns around the idea of ‘different’ and it worked out pretty well for them. Certainly you can fire up the copy machines and give it a whirl — you have nothing left to lose.
    2. iTunes as a syncing platform is slow and crappy. Surely Windows Phone 7 being made by the same company that makes the worlds most common OS can better integrate their phone’s syncing than their competitor can? Meaning why not talk about how easy and seamless it is to sync Windows Phone 7 with, uh, Windows? I mean Apple and Google aren’t even advertising ease of sync.
    3. You have a great, well known, partner in Nokia — why not advertise that two fantastic companies are now going to make some fantastic phones. Build some hype here. Or even just show off some of the phones that you have so people know that they don’t look like the old crappy Windows Mobile phones…

    There are three ideas from a die-hard iPhone fan that could finally give Windows Phone 7 the recognition it deserves. Ball is in your court Ballmer.

  • Marco Arment on Subscriptions and the new In-App Purchase requirement

    Marco Arment makes a compelling argument against the new IAP and subscription policy:

    But one argument that Apple should care about: this policy will prevent many potentially great apps, from many large and small publishers, from being created on iOS at all.

    The above quoted bit is key. Is this new policy the deterrent that will push developers to other platforms? I don’t think so, but many others think it is.

  • Gruber on Readability’s iOS App Rejection

    John Gruber taking a very similar stance to mine:

    What they’re pissed about is that Apple has the stronger hand. Readability needs Apple to publish an app in the App Store. Apple doesn’t need Readability.

    Actually you should read all of his comments.

  • Quote of the Day: Matt Mullenweg

    “You think your business is different, that you’re only going to have one shot at press and everything needs to be perfect for when Techcrunch brings the world to your door. But if you only have one shot at getting an audience, you’re doing it wrong.”

  • iPhone Notes App Comparison

    A great run down of the feature differences between four fairly popular iOS note apps. Nicely done.

  • Readability’s App Rejection

    Today we saw the first rejection of a SaaS app and that has lead to a flood of email to me — because I have defended Apple in the past.

    Even Readability agrees with me according to their open letter:

    To be clear, we believe you have every right to push forward such a policy. In our view, it’s your hardware and your channel and you can put forth any policy you like. But to impose this course on any web service or web application that delivers any value outside of iOS will only discourage smaller ventures like ours to invest in iOS apps for our services. As far as Readability is concerned, our response is fairly straight-forward: go the other way… towards the web.

    They are doing exactly what I argued for — either agreeing to Apple’s terms or moving on. They are choosing to move on, given Apple’s policies — who knows what that means for their business, but they made a choice. Everything I have seen posted about this so far is whiny — again — this is no different from a change in the law and as a company you need to figure out how to move past it, not complain about it. Readability is moving past it and kudos to them for that.

    MG Siegler writes:

    At 30 percent, most of these simply could not afford to stay in business. It’s ridiculous. And Apple needs to either wave the fee or cut it down to some low single digit percentage in circumstances beyond traditional media publishers.

    (in Siegler’s defense he does agree that Apple has every right to charge this fee.)

    This is the view that most people are taking and rightfully so, but don’t think for one second that I agree with it. Apple needs to do nothing for you. If you want Apple to start listening to users there is only one way to do it: speak with your wallet. If you want Apple to change its App Store policies tell it so by ceasing to buy anything from the App Store.

    But Apple isn’t the greediest are they — developers want 100% of this and 90% of that — yet they didn’t create the iPhone, the iPad, or iOS. They aren’t bringing 100 million credit cards to the table. That may seem mean and certainly not all developers feel this way — but if you are going to do business in the U.S. you need to pay Uncle Sam his cut — it sucks but that’s the way it is. If you want to do business in the App Store then you need to pay Apple its cut.

    Or:

    If you want to jump on Tommy’s trampoline then you are going to have to be friends with Tommy and that means going to his stupid birthday parties and playing by his rules — but its a freaking trampoline so its worth it.

  • Breakup Notifier

    Because the only reason you are using Facebook is to track who is sleeping with whom.

  • Quick Takes on Five Apps

    Welcome to the first installment of quick takes where I look at five apps that I have been playing with, sharing quick raw thoughts on them.

    NBA Jam (iPhone)

    This is a classic game that I spent many hours as a kid playing — now it’s out for the iPhone. I was worried about how well this would stack up to the original, but after playing it for a few days I can say it doesn’t disappoint. The gameplay and overall fun factor is very high. It fits perfectly on the iPhone as another one of those games you can pick up and put down very quickly without having to spend time getting back into the game. Great stuff and highly recommended.

    Pennant (iPad)

    Baseball season is about to start up and I couldn’t be happier. Pennant is a neat little iPad app that tells you all sorts of stats from the 1950s to 2010 on a team by team basis. You can even watch a beautiful “replay” of the games. This app is for baseball geeks, information geeks and app design geeks. The animation is a bit rough on my iPad, but I don’t know if that is due to my running iOS beta versions or not. My only question: do we get stat updates as the season progresses? That would be amazing.

    Dayboard (iPad)

    A cross between Nightstand HD’s flip style clock (personal favorite) and an old school airport flight status board. Dayboard gives you the current time, date, weather and Twitter trending topics. It is an interesting app that I think presents the data beautifully, but I can’t see the value of it long term. The app doesn’t respect my 24-hour time format and only works in portrait orientation. I like the idea, but I need some more options. For example: does the date really need to take up the same amount of space as the weather and Twitter feeds? I think not.

    Pouch (iOS universal)

    Pouch is a great little Backpack (37signals) app that the developer was kind enough to send me a promo code for. My main complaints about the app are actually complaints about what 3rd party developers are allowed to access through the Backpack API. For starters you can’t see comments, because that is not available. You also can’t see files which may limit the value of the app to many. Whether this app is of value to you depends on how you use Backpack — if it is a reference manager this may be quite handy. This app is nice looking and works really well, it really is the best Backpack app for iOS right now — having said that I still prefer to interface with the website directly.

    Google Chrome 10 beta (Mac OS X)

    I still hate everything about the way Chrome looks and that it has Flash bundled with it — but the version 10 beta is stupidly fast. In fact it is so fast that I may have to switch over to it for a while. There are a lot of extensions that I will need to find to make Chrome on equal footing the Safari, but those tradeoffs are worth it for the speed I am seeing out of Chrome. This is an impressive build.

    Thanks for checking out the first installment of Quick Five, be sure to come back next week for another installment. If you have any apps you would like to see me write about be sure to get in touch.

  • Instapaper & VZ iPhone Buyers

    Marco Arment after analyzing the sales data for Instapaper:

    I’ve been assuming that the Verizon iPhone launch was going to be a massive boom, and it looks like it’s been fairly average so far. But now I have a different theory: that the Verizon iPhone demand is from more casual buyers, by definition, and will therefore be spread gradually over the next 18 months.

    An interesting analysis of the sales data for Instapaper.

  • Apple’s iPhone and the Curious World of Android Enthusiasts

    What a great way to break down the arguments.

  • Quote of Day: Bruce Lee

    “If I want to punch — I’m gonna do it man, and I’m gonna do it.”

  • SSDs Are a Bit Trickier to Erase

    Two students (Laura Grupp & Michael Wei) for the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory at UCSD found this:

    Our results show that naïvely applying techniques designed for sanitizing hard drives on SSDs, such as overwriting and using built-in secure erase commands is unreliable and sometimes results in all the data remaining intact. Furthermore, our results also show that sanitizing single files on an SSD is much more difficult than on a traditional hard drive.

    That is not good, you can read the full paper on the subject here — this link takes you to the much more digestible synopsis. From what I can gather this is not widespread and is a result of defects on the manufacturing side — meaning this may or may not effect your SSD.

  • WordPress Syntax mode for Panic Coda

    A great tool for Coda users that also develop for WordPress.

  • Ulysses AppDate 60% off

    A huge 60% off sale on one of my favorite pure writing apps. It is no TextMate, but if you are writing a book/report or just anything over 5,000 words I would highly recommend it. You can get it for $11.99 which is a steal. A STEAL.

    Why are you still here?

  • A New Bag of Mine

    Early one morning I was going through OmniFocus to see what I needed to change into a project and what I needed to delete from my life. I was brain dumping a bunch of stuff for my upcoming adventure to SXSi and I realized that the kit I wanted to carry around with me, while in attendance, doesn’t fit in my current bag. Crap.

    At the very least I determined that I needed to carry my iPad, MiFi, and Canon G9 with me (iPhone in my pocket). I have two bags and even the biggest one is too small to carry the bulky Canon G9. I was stuck trying to decide if I should get a new camera or a new bag to carry this stuff. Common sense won out and I decided that if I get anything it should be a new bag…

    This thought killed me — just sold five bags, two of which would have worked. My desire to own less stuff came back to bite.

    It’s late for me, 9:00pm or so and my wife is intent on watching a TV show that I prefer not to watch — I am looking at bags. I decide that no matter what, I better pull the trigger — I need a bag that can hold extra stuff for all the travel I hope and plan to do this year. I buy a bag from a local Seattle company…

    It will be at my door soon.

    Arrival

    For whatever reason UPS in my neighborhood doesn’t deliver goods until 7:30pm or so — a major bone of contention I hold as an official stock holder in the company.

    A knock at the door, with some scuffle. The bag is here.

    Day One

    I decide that I should try out the bag so that I can write about it and return it if needed. The bag is both bigger than I expect and, yet, somehow smaller than I thought. I fret that it won’t hold what I need it to.

    I unpack my ‘old’ bag and surprise myself that there is only a few items that need to be stowed elsewhere. I carefully plan how I want to organize the new bag — it’s a zen moment for bag lovers.

    I carefully load the bag.

    I notice that unlike my old bag there is less compartments and it has more of an open feel. Things could fall out if not stored in a proper location — or if you decide to stupidly flip the bag upside down with the lid closed (it happens).

    I load the bag with the following:

    • 13” MacBook Air
    • iPad w/ Apple Case (get over the fact that I like the Apple case)
    • Micro USB to USB cable (6”)
    • Dock connector cable
    • Two credit cards
    • Office key
    • MiFi
    • Apple microfiber cloth for cleaning everything
    • 5 USB thumb drives (emergency back up and data off loading tools)
    • Business cards
    • Bose In-Ear headphones
    • One of those slim floppy Moleskins
    • Pilot G2, Blue
    • Monte Blanc rollerball
    • iPad camera connection kit
    • Glif

    Everything fits beautifully, but then I knew that it would.

    The real test is when I go to put in the last item: the Canon G9.

    I carefully take stock of where everything is and decide that I should put the G9 into the main compartment — seems like a good spot right with my iPad. It slides in, barely, and after looking at it I pull it back out.

    Hmm.

    I then slide it in the front compartment where my pens and MiFi is held in place. Ohh it fits right there rather nicely. The bag snaps shut and everything looks ready to rock and roll. (I am already late for work.)

    I go to put the bag on and notice a strap at the back of the bag. It has one of those straps that can go around your waist if you decide that petrol based transportation is not for you. ((You ride a bicycle.)) This helps to keep the bag securely on your body, but I doubt I will need it for walking up and down a few flights of stairs — it also won’t help when I bank onto the freeway at 70 MPH. Luckily, unlike with most bags, you can quickly remove this strap with what is a rather ingenious buckle system.

    I head down the five flights of stairs and notice immediately that this bag is far more comfortable on my shoulder than my current Booq Taipan Slim ((I have actually started using the Booq as a briefcase with no should strap.)) and I rather like the way it feels. The bag feels like it is rolled to conform with my body, but it is too early to tell.

    Unpacking

    Arriving at my office brought about the next crucial task for this new bag: unpacking. I have had bags where getting my goods back out of them becomes a real chore and that is never fun. This bag unpacked quite nicely and in fact I had no problems at all. Everything was in place where I put it, which honestly surprises me since nothing really fits snuggly in any of the compartments.

    When I pulled the MacBook Air out of the only padded sleeve on the device I noticed that unlike my other bags the compartment is actually only a soft material on one side (the side that would touching the top of the laptop if you stowed the laptop with the bottom of the laptop facing your body). I found this odd and slightly concerning — I don’t expect anything in the bag to give scratches to my Air, but a plush velvety compartment is always welcomed..

    With everything out of the bag I tossed it into the corner where it will sit until it’s time to head home — I noticed something else when I did this. Most of the bags I have used are fairly rigid in construction — when they are empty you would be hard pressed to see the difference between when they are full. That is not the case with this bag, it is only semi-rigid and will not fold in half when it is leaned against a wall, but it also looks empty when it is, in fact, empty.

    Re-Packing

    After a long day standing at my desk it is finally time to head home. Interestingly I have only pulled two things out of my bag all day, the MacBook Air and my iPad. In the past I would have to make sure that I put the iPad in the bag first, then the MacBook Air — otherwise it was too tight of a fit to easily get the iPad into my bag. I put the new bag on my desk and load in the Air, toss in the iPad and latch the flap.

    Then I notice that because I have a lot of extra room in the bag, the strap at the front can and should be tightened up a bit. I doubt this flap will ever be snug enough for me not to worry about a thumb drive that is kicking around not falling out, but it doesn’t hurt to tighten the strap.

    Home

    The last test of the day is the carry from my car, up five flights of stairs, and into my place. I typically move up the stairs as quickly as possible to get the blood pumping, today was no exception. In the past when I have worn a bag using a shoulder strap I would notice that it would bounce around and sway from side to side as I climb the stairs — not this time though.

    Given the vertical orientation of the bag (versus the horizontal orientation that most messenger bags take) I found that the bag actually seemed to hug my back and stay in pace more readily. There was still some movement, but not enough to be annoying by any degree. When I wore a bag over my shoulder there would usually be some part of the stair climb where my bag would inadvertently bump into the railing — not with this bag though and that is a huge relief.

    Final Thoughts

    I was a tad nervous ordering from Tom Bihn since I had never seen one of their products in person. To call their bags beautiful would be a stretch — these are utilitarian bags, beautiful to a select few and just another bag to everyone else. The materials, fit and finish of the bag is very good and I think these bags are a great value for the cost (this one was $120). There is very little metal on the bag, preferring plastic for the connectors and shoulder strap — there are drawbacks to both metal and plastic:

    • Plastic tends to break easily.
    • Metal tends to bend and at times squeak.

    I think the connectors on this bag will hold up just fine — they are made from incredibly thick chunks of plastic. After using the bag for a few days I think the only thing I wish the bag had was a fully padded bottom. As it is the only padded area is the compartment for your computer — the rest is just one layer of nylon. The benefit of doing it this way is a slim and light bag — the cost is that items like your iPad and Camera are susceptible to dropping the bag. Really, if you think about it, most of us are prone to setting our bags down to quickly on tables — an action that could damage your gear inside without a fully padded bag.

    I highly recommend this bag and I suspect I will get a lot of use out of it in the coming year, oh yeah — the bag I bought was a Tom Bihn Ristretto for 13” MacBook/Air.

  • An Apple eReader

    Brad McCarty for The Next Web:

    Our speculation is that Apple is going to introduce a mid-sized device that is specifically targeted at reading. Sure, it would still run iOS and you could use all of the iPod Touch apps on it (they’d likely even look better than they do on the iPad, due to lowered upscaling) but the main purpose of the device would be as a reader.

    I hope he doesn’t seriously believe this, but I fear that he does. There would be no compelling reason to launch such a dedicated device that would cannibalize iPad sales. I doubt we see smaller screens in iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads — why do people insist upon squinting?

  • Quote of the Day: Jim Dalrymple

    “RIM should just be ignored until it proves it can do more than announce vaporware.”

  • A traitor’s review of the Verizon iPhone 4

    Technology Viewer on why he switched from Android to the iPhone:

    But overall, it was a roll of the dice every time I wanted to use the Droid cam.   Most of the time after a fresh boot of Android the camera would work great, once, even twice.   But close the camera app, and try to use it again later, and it was a 50/50 chance, at best, that the program would crash upon starting.   Even if it did start and you took a pic, occasionally the photo wouldn’t save properly.

    By all accounts this guy was not only a fan of Android, but competent at hacking about in Android — yet he present some very compelling reasons for iOS over Android. A great read and it is more of a story than a ‘review’.