Amazon:
>With Prime, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.
Prime is one of those things that you never regret buying. What a great addition and for a change this feels like a move to incentivize people to buy a Kindle device, instead of to buy just content.
Jim Dalrymple has the quote, nice of them to acknowledge this.
Moments later [Federico Viticci noted](http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-releases-ios-5-0-1-beta/) that Apple pushed iOS 5.0.1 beta to developers — here’s hoping it is a better fix than changing the bar size.
Many will say: native. That’s not really true.
Loren Brichter on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/atebits/status/131771192003674112):
>The Gmail app is a fucking web view. Even the list of messages. Why?
I downloaded it and signed in with my company Google Apps account, which surprisingly worked, only to find a convoluted mess.
For now all you need to know is that you would be wasting your time to even download the app — it’s shit.
Range Govindan writing an article titled *How to Live without a Cell Phone or Tablet* advises under how to live without a tablet, that since the iPad forces you to buy apps you should:
>Non-iOS Tablets: While it’s true that the iPad is one of the best tablets around, the closed nature of the device makes it somewhat problematic for some users. Instead of using an iPad, which you’ll most probably want to update the following year, try a non-iOS device.
My guess is that this advice will accurately curb your desire to own and use a tablet.
Interesting story of how a guy went from developing on a MacBook Pro to using just and iPad and Linode server. I personally think that this is a pretty stupid move, if only because it imposes far too many constraints for an incredibly small payoff. However, I do think it is pretty neat that it can be done and that this guy seems to like it.
I have tried, and can, work all day on just my iPad. I have all the apps and tools that I need, but no matter how hard I try I find that I am much slower using the iPad than I am on my Mac. Whether it is the lack of true multitasking, keyboard shortcuts, mouse, or just a large screen — I can’t say, all I know is that it is a last resort as an “only” machine.
One of my biggest annoyances with iOS and Apple TV is that I often know exactly what I want, just not where it is. Take for instance the Apple TV.
At $99 it is a fantastic product and with an added subscription to Netflix it is a wonder how I lived before. What happens though if you want to watch a movie, say *Apocalypse Now*?
Well if you are a Netflix subscriber that would be the first place you start, so you go into Netflix and search (with your Apple TV remote of course) through the database. For the sake of this example let’s say Netflix doesn’t have the movie, you must then back out to the main menu and search the iTunes Movie listings, again entering things with your remote, jogging about the virtual keyboard.
Wouldn’t it just be far more convenient if there was a global search, that when used, returned a result that said: *Apocalypse Now* is available on both iTunes and your Netflix account, there are also 43 results on YouTube. Perhaps it even states whether buying from iTunes would be a higher resolution or not, but let’s not get greedy here.
Wouldn’t that be a far better user experience, and potentially more lucrative for Apple?
“Sorry, Netflix doesn’t have it — iTunes does.”
### Newsstand
I have a similar issue with Newsstand and the implementation of separate but equal with periodicals on the iPad/iPhone. I subscribe to about 5 periodicals in Newsstand and I often find that I have read an article I want to reference, I remember what it is about, but can’t remember where or when I read it. I just know it was on my iPad in a “magazine”.
As of right now I would need to go in and search each magazine “app” (if it has search) and hope to find it. Maddening.
Why can’t I just perform a search at the Newsstand level and see what results I get, regardless of what “magazine” the article was published in? Why must I pinch, zoom, tap, pluck, swipe, and poke my way around until I find the article I need?
Instapaper and Safari all allow me to quickly do this, why not these native ‘buckets’ that Apple has created and forced my content into?
We need more search and less touch, especially when I am paying for so much of this content.
Jacqui Cheng investigating Siri data usage:
>We performed six tasks that would be considered to be local tasks. These queries included things like, “Set an alarm for 3 hours from now,” “Make an appointment for 2pm on Friday” (and then telling Siri to cancel the task), “Remind me to file expense reports when I get home,” and “What is the contact info for Ars Technica?”
>These tasks added up to a total of 220KB of data usage, or an average of 36.7KB per query. The actual numbers ranged from 60KB down to 18KB, and we believe this is correlated to the complexity of the specific query and language we used to perform it.
In other words if you are a heavy Siri user (using it 10-15 times a day for such a task) you are looking at adding 30MB of data a month. That’s a lot less data that I expected it to be, well done on Apple’s part.
John Gruber:
>I’m not arguing that making concept videos directly leads to a lack of traction in the current market. I’m arguing that making concept videos is a sign of a company that has a lack of institutional focus on the present and near-present.
The two big companies producing ‘Future Concept Videos’ right now are Microsoft and RIM — both companies have failed to create new innovative products in the last few years and are, arguably, suffering because of it.
Microsoft is too big, unfocused, and lacking in leadership to put on a new pair of pants. RIM has seemingly just stuck their heads in the sand and are hoping for the best — at least at the `C` level positions.
I personally have no problem with these types of concept videos, because I see them very much in the same light as I see concept cars. The idea is that you push forward some radical things to get people talking about it and then you use these ideas as guidance moving forward. That works well for companies that execute on these plans, like Aston Martin or BMW. Both having pushed out radical concept cars that then ended up seeing the light of day a couple of years later with only minor changes. ((The Aston Martin Rapide for example.))
Here, with Microsoft and RIM, they are fully admitting this is fantasy, instead of admitting this is a direction they are pursuing. That’s the problem I have with these videos: fantasy.
Fantasy is fine in the movies, but for a company you need to have goals. What goal does Microsoft have for the Kinect?
Oops. Not surprising to anyone who has been using the beta versions of it though. My guess is that it will ship pretty soon.
Eliot Van Buskirk writes that the app called ‘gMusic’ (allowing you to play Amazon cloud stored music on the iPhone) was pulled from iTunes. The reason cited was: “legal issues with the music industry.”
I am not sure if Buskirk intentionally is trying to say that competition is partly to blame for the app getting pulled, or not, but it certainly sounds like that is what he is implying.
>However, separating music clouds from their mega-sized motherships turns them into commodities. If you can use all three of these music clouds with the same phone just by tapping a different app, you’re unlikely to develop an exclusive reliance on one or the other, which is what each of these companies hopes will happen […]
The assumption being that Apple wants everyone using iTunes Match and not Google or Amazon for cloud storage.
If that was the case I doubt Apple would have even approved these apps. My guess is that there really were legal issues — one reason it took Apple so long to get in the music stored in the cloud business, and still won’t offer streaming, is the inane restrictions labels impose.
Adam Grossman and Jack Turner:
>We’ve made the best fucking weather animation you’ve ever seen.
It’s on Kickstarter and it’s not just *another* weather app — that’s good.
Backed.
Jad Mouawad:
>One airline did figure out a way to sharply cut boarding time. Spirit Airlines found that passengers got to their seats much more rapidly once it started charging $20 to $40 per carry-on bag. More passengers checked their bags. Celebrating one year of “stress-free boarding” this summer, Spirit said its policy cut boarding time by six minutes on average.
That’s a good policy. It’s not just the boarding times that drive me nuts, but the deplaning times are horrendous. Too many people futzing around trying to carry on and off bags that should have been checked.
My idea: enforce the size limits for carry-ons strictly.
Federico Viticci commenting on the [WhatsApp numbers](https://brooksreview.net/2011/10/whatsapp/):
>Free, native and integrated beats “free and third-party” any time for the majority of users when it comes to iOS-to-iOS communication. And it’s not like iOS-to-iOS messaging is a rare scenario nowadays, with over 250 million iOS devices out there and quite possibly a large percentage of them being iOS 5-enabled (iOS 5 runs on the older iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation). iMessage works on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. It’s free and supports text and media.
You also have to remember that iOS users (on average) download a lot more apps than other users on other platforms — meaning I would guess the majority of Whatsapp users are iOS users.
Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director, on the winner of the “Tablet World Series”:
>With strong features like a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, support for enterprise-level security software / encryption, and an optional active stylus, the ThinkPad Tablet simply dominated the game this weekend. Users were undoubtedly also attracted by the ThinkPad Tablet’s productivity-centric software, including its note-taking app and file manager. Full-size USB ports and SD card slots also helped the ThinkPad tablet’s case.
The iPad 2 didn’t make it through the first round, likely due to that all important lack of an optional stylus. This makes me wonder just how damned good that note-taking app is that the Lenovo is sporting — must be amazing.
Drew Olanoff:
>According to a blog post from Messaging app WhatsApp, the company is now getting over one billion messages sent using its platform a day.
That’s a lot. My wife uses this app to communicate with her cousin while she is studying abroad and said that she likes it for the purpose it serves.
I have to think though, despite the cross platform nature of the app, that iMessage will essentially dominate this market. I can’t imagine that a year from now, text message replacement apps, will have substantial enough use.
Paul Thorrott responding to Microsoft’s concept video of what Kinect for Windows *could* be:
>This is cute and everything, but unrealistic: People will not being playing “air violin” or performing “air surgery” with Kinect, sorry.
Agreed, most of the things that are shown in the video are pretty uninspiring. They would have been far better off just showing clips from *Minority Report*.
Ryan Gallagher and Rajeev Syal reporting on a covert cell phone surveillance system in use in England and (reportedly) by the U.S. Secret Service :
>The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.
That sounds a bit invasive and over-reaching, until you read this line:
>The company’s systems, showcased at the DSEi arms fair in east London last month, allow authorities to intercept SMS messages and phone calls by secretly duping mobile phones within range into operating on a false network, where they can be subjected to “intelligent denial of service”. This function is designed to cut off a phone used as a trigger for an explosive device.
That’s downright useful. It’s one of those technologies that could be used to save a lot of lives, and could also be used to be very invasive and potentially ruin the lives of many people — not to mention the legal rights that we hold here in the States. What it comes down to is keeping the technology in the “right” hands — the question then becomes, whose hands are the “right” hands?
This is only the beginning of these types of technology and these questions that surround them.
I am a huge fan of having a “Trusted System” where you store anything and everything that is actionable. For quite a long time that has been OmniFocus for me. To the point where I don’t even bother to look at other reminder apps when they come out — I have no interest.
Then Apple added the Reminders app to iOS, with the ability to remind you of tasks as you leave or arrive at certain locations. I thought: OK that is too cool and too handy not to give a go. And it is, incredibly handy and creates a somewhat ideal situation for a task management app — for people that don’t care about due dates.
OmniFocus, being the smart ones that they are, quickly added this functionality to OmniFocus on iOS and just when I thought that I now could let go of Reminders, Apple upped the ante and brought us Siri.
With Siri I can create a reminder that is location aware without ever hitting a key on my iPhone — that’s pretty powerful for a guy that drives ~90 minutes round trip every day. ((A side note: You can use Siri to create tasks in OmniFocus via email, but that is an inelegant hack that I have no interest in.))
So do I use both apps, effectively destroying my trusted system, or do I forgo the added benefits of one or the other?
I chose the former, but I found out it doesn’t destroy anything.
What I have found (and am not alone in finding) is that you can have a pretty elegant solution by using both the Reminders app and OmniFocus. For any task that I create on my Mac, I use OmniFocus as the sole repository. It is still the best option and easiest to use when my fingers are already on the keyboard.
However, OmniFocus has two big limiting factors:
1. It does not natively integrate with Siri.
2. Location aware reminders are based on the context that you add to the task, not the individual task as with the Reminders app. (More on this in a bit.)
You could also add a third downfall, which is in my testing Reminders seems to remind you when you really are at the location, whereas OmniFocus seems to remind you when I get within 0.5 miles of the location — that’s a bit annoying.
### Location Reminders with OmniFocus
As I noted above OmniFocus uses contexts to provide the location data to each task, whereas Reminders uses input on a per task basis. This is both good and bad. To get around the inevitable need for a reminder when leaving instead of when arriving, in OmniFocus you need to create two contexts, such as:
1. Office – arriving
2. Office – leaving
Then setup your tasks accordingly. This is a pretty good solution, especially when applied on your Mac — but certainly not as elegant as Reminders.
The problem with OmniFocus, though, is that the reminders are not pushed to the phone — you must manually pull them down by opening the app.
Often I find that I set a reminder on my Mac for when I get home, only to arrive home never having seen that reminder. The problem is that I didn’t open OmniFocus on my iPhone prior to getting home. Bummer.
My work around is Siri and the Reminders app and truthfully this is more of a solution than a work around.
### Siri + Reminders
What I have found is that those one-off reminders that belong to no project and therefore are simple “reminders” fit pretty well in the Reminders app. ((Go figure.)) So instead of looking at Reminders as a competitor to OmniFocus, instead I look at it as a completely different app that complements OmniFocus.
Siri is essentially my personal nagger. In that I always ask people (mainly my Wife): remind me next time we go to X to do Y. As any couple knows, asking your significant other to remind you of something is rather hit and miss — not so with Siri.
So instead of using Reminders to store tasks I use it to store, well, reminders. OmniFocus stores my tasks, projects, and goals — everything else I just ask Siri to remind me of, because typically these are just simple things that truly are reminders.
This doesn’t break my trusted system, instead it cleans it out for me. The reminders I input typically aren’t actionable things that I need to do, as much as things I just need to remember.
This all works surprisingly well.
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