The Macalope:
>Still, if you had told us years ago that people would be only too happy to stand on a street corner talking loudly into a Bluetooth headset about their rash, we would have said you were crazy. And, yet, here we are. So maybe people will wear these dorky things.
Even if Mac-y is right, you’ll still look like a douche.
I love this app so much that it’s not only on my home screen, it’s in my dock. I’d write up a review, but [I’m a little busy right now](http://c276381.r81.cf1.rackcdn.com/sloane.jpg).
[Google’s CEO Larry Page released a rather boring letter](http://investor.google.com/corporate/2012/ceo-letter.html), but there are some sentences in this long letter that really make you scratch your head. Actually they make you wonder: a CEO said that?
The following is a list of my favorite lines from Page’s letter.
Page, begging for followers on Google+:
> I strongly encourage all of you to follow me on Google+—I love having this new way to communicate and share with all of you!
Page taking a dig at Twitter and Facebook for not partnering with Google:
>And privacy considerations certainly limit the information that can be shared between platforms—even if the third parties hosting it were willing to work with Google, which hasn’t always been the case.
I am really not sure why he even included this bit when talking about Google Wallet:
>No more claiming you left your credit card at home when your friend asks you to pay for lunch!
Pro tip: don’t accuse *your* user as being the schmuck that is mooching off of his friends.
Page claiming that Chrome is great and basically telling people that his software is never the problem — no your computer is probably the problem:
>I promise it won’t take too long to install, and if it does you probably need a new computer.
Pro tip: just don’t ever say that.
Page on making money off some of the projects coming out of Google:
>People rightly ask how we’ll make money from these big bets.
Ok so that sentence isn’t that funny, but he goes on to explain how much more money they are getting from advertising on mobile — never does he actually answer the question, instead just pointing to Google’s successes and thinking that should be enough evidence that their projects will pay off. Pro tip: when writing a letter don’t ask yourself a question that you don’t have a good answer to.
Page winning the award for best parenthetical in a letter from a CEO of a major corporation:
>That is a mighty big check (actually lots of smaller checks!) and I’m delighted we’ve been able to support our partners with that much resource.
Page showing his math skills:
>One thing I’ve learned is that if you keep doubling things, it really adds up fast!
Page giving an example of a bigger project that failed, but still made Google money:
>The team failed at understanding the Web, mostly, I think, because they were distracted by their work making advertisements amazingly relevant.
Pro tip: if you are a web company, it’s probably not a good idea to say that you “failed at understanding the Web” in a letter to investors.
Mostly this letter taught me that Page really loves a good exclamation point!
This is a pretty good visualization of what [I was talking about](https://brooksreview.net/2012/04/google-ly-eye-ads/).
Justin Luey responding to my suggestion that Paper should have charged $0.99 for the app, as well as doing IAP for additional tools:
>This might “set the expectation”, but it’s still shady to charge extra for essential features, and it makes the whole transaction more complicated than it needs to be. Charge a fair price for a feature complete app, and offer a free lite version to allow users to demo the app.
I’ve been thinking more and more about my suggestion since I posted it and it is really tricky to suss out. I don’t like the idea of ‘lite’ versions of apps — that’s complex for the user. They have to think about which one they want to buy — they don’t know if there is a free version and so perhaps they just see the paid version and buy that. It’s complex and frustrating.
The reason I like the idea of a paid app with IAP of some kind: longevity. I don’t like my apps to become abandonware and without upgrade pricing for developers on the App Store, there are only a couple of good ways to get continued revenue from the app:
1. Attract more users, thus selling more copies.
2. Use IAP to allow the user to buy something extra (including subscriptions).
Beyond that I worry that after a year the developer may move on to greener grass. With IAP the developer can add a new feature and charge all of the users for that feature, instead of just the “new” users.
[John Gruber on the lock screen camera access for iOS 5.1](http://daringfireball.net/2012/04/obviousness):
>To invoke the button, you must slide it upwards rather than simply tap it, for the same reason you must slide the unlock button rather than simply tap it: to avoid inadvertent invocation while the phone is in your pocket or purse. But if you do just tap on it, which is an obvious thing to try, you get a clever hint: the lock screen playfully jumps and bounces, suggesting visually that you can slide it upward.
This is exactly what Shawn and I were talking about on [the latest B&B podcast](http://5by5.tv/bb/55). We were trying to figure out how apps like Paper and Clear can teach the users how to use those very apps, given their general lack of “normal” UI controls (like buttons).
I never even thought about how clever that little jump that iOS does is, but reading this post showed me one step that developers can take to reduce confusion.
I imagine, for instance, on an app like paper: when a user pauses after drawing the tips of the brushes would ever so slightly slide up from the bottom. This of course would only occur on the first dozen or so launches of the app — thus training the user where the tools are and then eventually the tips disappearing from the app and this getting out of the users way.
I personally don’t think tutorial splash screens, or even tutorials as a function of the app like with Clear, are the way forward. They are simply too cumbersome and too easily forgotten — they are inelegant solutions to a very real, and common, problem.
Not everything can work in an obvious way when you are trying to rid the UI of buttons, but many things can easily be learned. Looking through my favorite apps on the iPad, it’s clear to me that they are also the apps with the least amount of buttons.
For all the trouble that gesture based interaction causes with learning curves, [this statement from Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/2012/04/obviousness) seems off the mark to me:
>That’s why I like the analogy that gestures are to iOS what keyboard shortcuts are to Mac OS — an alternative way to do something as a convenience for advanced users. The default, true way to do things should be visual.
I very much believe that gestures are the ‘true’ way to do things on iOS. Buttons are just the step ladder, the transitional tool, that is being used to get users familiar with the common gestures. Gestures, however, are still not perfect and present a very real problem — but a problem no more complex than the mouse and pointer presented when first being adopted.
It was no easy task to teach users to point and click on things — let alone right click — and as Gruber states single and double clicks are still an issue for many Windows users. We did, as a society, overcome the non-obvious nature of ‘click-able’ UI elements and so to shall we overcome the non-obvious nature of touch-based gestures. It just takes some time, we’ve only given it a year and even then only now are these UI-less apps really starting to appear.
Shawn and I talk about Shawn’s annoying new DAS keyboard, Google’s Project Glass, and UI-less UI in iOS apps (such as Clear and Paper). It’s a short one this week.
Gretchen Reynolds:
>But exercise paired with otherwise unalloyed sitting should be avoided, Dr. Dunstan says. “It is important the general public become more conscious about what they do in their nonexercise time,” he says. Almost everybody, he says, “should look for opportunities to reduce their daily sitting time and move more, more often, throughout the day.”
And this is why I stand at work.
Federico Viticci:
>[…] I think Paper made us realize even more that old interface schemes from the PC era belong to another age, and that all the metaphors we were accustomed to will have to be re-imagined.
Exactly.
Be sure to check your Mac to make sure it is not infected, because it sounds [like a lot of people are](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/flashback-trojan-reportedly-controls-half-a-million-macs-and-counting.ars).
[Gabe over at Macdrifter wrote up a review](http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/04/paper-app-review-2/) of [Paper by FiftyThree](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8) and I think this sums up his thoughts quite well:
>I haven’t deleted it, but I will revisit it after updates to see if it gets any better.
I found that odd because I personally think that Paper is quite good. I actually love it.
### UI / UX
Paper has one of the most cleverly intuitive and simple interfaces I have seen. If we take the app’s goal at face value — being a piece of paper — then I think it is hard to say that they have done anything but succeed. Because when you get right down to it, Paper is nothing but a sheet of blank paper. There is no UI chrome, [as John Gruber said about such design](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/29/paper):
>The tension is between simplicity and obviousness. Eliminating on-screen chrome is simpler, more elegant and beautiful.
This is the reason why I think Gabe is struggling with the app:
>However, Paper’s concerted effort to remove all chrome has created an app that makes users dumb. The drawing tools are only revealed after swiping from the bottom of the screen. This is not obvious. If a user misses the instructions at the beginning or forgets the gesture, they are left with an app that can only draw black lines.
I think though, that while confusing, there is a good argument to be made that this is exactly how such an app should work. Look, I am no fan of skeuomorphic design — and Paper is the epitome of such design — but I think it is fair to say that in this case the design is spot on with the function of the app. That isÚ Paper, works exactly like a sheet of paper, because last I checked there were no buttons for pen type, color, new page, or undo on an *actual* sheet of paper.
So while the controls may be non-obvious without instructions, they are also not hard to remember once you figure it out. Swiping up from the bottom to get pens really is not complicated or unique for an iPad user to remember. Nor is swiping for a new page, or pinching to go back.
In fact the only gesture I find cumbersome is the undo/redo action, but then again this is something that actual paper never comes with — it’s a `pro` level feature and is treated as such.
So yes, Paper is overly simplistic in the UI design, but that is actually the point of the app — it’s meant to be a sheet of paper residing in a Moleskin notebook. They succeeded at that.
### In-App Purchase
I was actually really off-put by the fact that the app was free, but to get any of the useful tools you needed to buy them via an in-app purchase. It does seem shady to me, but at the same time I doubt Paper would have seen any success at $7.99 for the app.
So for all the shadiness that IAP brings, I also think it adds a nice upgrade path for users. You get to try out a hot app for free and add on to it $0.99 $1.99 at a time at your convenience.
It’s a tricky situation and while I don’t think Paper handled it perfectly, I do commend them for having a business model. I personally wish they just made the app $0.99 with IAP for additional tools — this would have set the expectation for the user that the app is not free.
### Paper
Paper isn’t the best thing ever to happen to the iPad, but it is my favorite sketching app on the iPad. So much so that it actually gave me reason to finally order a [Cosmonaut](http://www.studioneat.com/products/cosmonaut).
I know not all of you are baseball fans ((Though I don’t know why.)) , but I wanted to share a few of my favorite baseball blogs:
1. [FanGraphs](http://www.fangraphs.com/): these guys cover all of baseball and they do a hell of a job at it. If I could only subscribe to one baseball site, this would be that site.
2. [MLB Trade Rumors](http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/): One of the best parts about baseball is speculating on trades. These guys are usually first with the news.
### Mariners ###
Smart readers are likely to be interested in Mariners news, here are my two favorite Mariners sites:
1. [U.S.S. Mariner](http://www.ussmariner.com/): it’s like FanGraphs, but just for Mariners fans and that makes it a winner in my book.
2. [Prospect Insider](http://prospectinsider.com): Jason A. Churchill and company do a great job at taking a more scouting centric look at the Mariners (as opposed to the saber-metric approach usually seen in USS Mariner). I have been a long time reader of this site and I still love all the information they give about up and coming prospects.
Lastly: thank God it’s baseball season.
Nick Bilton on Google’s new glasses:
>A video released by Google on Wednesday, which can be seen below, showed potential uses for Project Glass. A man wanders around the streets of New York City, communicating with friends, seeing maps and information, and snapping pictures. It concludes with him video-chatting with a girlfriend as the sun sets over the city. All of this is seen through the augmented-reality glasses.
I think they are missing a few ‘features’, so let me fix that (my additions in italics):
A video released by Google on Wednesday, which can be seen below, showed potential uses for Project Glass. A man wanders around the streets of New York City *seeing ads for condoms*, communicating with friends *while seeing ads for escorts*, seeing maps and information *like nearby deals, sponsored by American Express*, and snapping pictures *while being delivered ads for the products in the pictures*. It concludes with him video-chatting with a girlfriend as the sun sets over the city *and an ad for Dawn dish washing soap scrolls across his girlfriends face*. All of this is seen through the augmented-reality glasses.
Sounds fantastic, right?
>One person who had used the glasses said: “They let technology get out of your way.
Yeah, now it just — literally — sits between your eye and everything else you see. Totally out of the way.
>If I want to take a picture I don’t have to reach into my pocket and take out my phone; I just press a button at the top of the glasses and that’s it.”
Because it’s *way* too obvious when I want to snap a picture of a person’s mullet and I have to pull out my phone to do so.
Google: thinking everyone wants to wear a Star Trek visor that serves you ads all day long.
Another iPad app, this time a calendar app. I just saw this last night in the top paid list in the App Store. I downloaded it and played with it.
Before I go any further I need to stop and talk about the icon. It’s not hideous, but I have to wonder what in the hell they are trying to do with it. It resembles a moleskin, but the app is a calendar app — no matter how much they try to sell it as a “planning” app. Maybe I am missing something.
Overall the app isn’t anything really special in this category, but it has a couple of things I found noteworthy:
1. The app is slow to open, but once open your data is all there and there quickly. If you flip through the month view there is no pause to load in new calendar data or jittery scrolling.
2. This is also a weather app, kind of. There is a nice current time indicator and weather symbol in the upper right corner. It just shows the current weather condition (cloudy, sunny) and the time and date. Since this app hides the status bar, these are welcomed additions in that location and I thought it clever to add a little weather status in the app.
Overall I might actually use this app if they changed the icon and removed the branding and quotes from the top left. I find it minimal looking and clean, not too bad.
I had not seen this free Weather app before. It’s not bad, it is free and shows a banner ad along the bottom (also no retina graphics). The reason I am linking to it though, is because I think it makes decent use of the space provided by the iPad. It’s not the best use, but it doesn’t feel like the app is trying to cram information in because there is room to cram information in.
That said the banner ad is a deal breaker — not to mention the app is pretty sluggish.
(Be sure to pinch on the forecast data to move between views — nice touch.)
Again I don’t think this is a great app, but I do think it is one of the better ones — especially for a free app.
Shawn Blanc:
>Sara Lacy of PandoDaily asks him how Instagram plans to make money. Based on his answer it sounds like: (a) their current user-base of 30 million-ish people is not yet big enough to start monetizing the service; and (b) their plan is to build a tool that advertisers can use so they don’t have to go through the “terrible experience” of using their iPhone to post an image to Instagram.
*Pathetic.*
Shawn and I have talked about this stuff a lot on our podcast, but the bottom line is this: charge for your app. If you follow that advice you may grow slower, but you will grow with a business model that won’t leave you scrambling later.
I know that I linked to the Surefire 6PX-Pro not to long ago, but I just found this model when I needed a second Surefire — and man is it great. It’s a dual stage LED that outputs 15 lumens on the low end and 500 lumens on the high end (the aforementioned 6PX-Pro tops out at 200 lumens).
It’s really bright — like amazingly so.
It is just a touch bigger than the 6PX and yet it is over twice as much the output. Really amazing.
I can’t be the only one that thinks the 18th picture down (sorry I can’t link to just that spot) would make for a great Apple print ad — just put a little Apple logo in the bottom right and crop out the cameraman.
UPDATE: [Marcelo took the liberty of creating the ad](http://behindcompanies.com/2012/04/don-draper-think-different/). I think it would make for a great full page ad in, say, The New York Times.
Chris Foresman:
>Ultimately, iCloud security is a matter of trust between individual users and Apple. As confirmed by industry experts, Apple takes a number of precautions to prevent unauthorized access to user data by third parties, but those precautions don’t secure your data from Apple itself. If you require—or simply want—greater assurance than that, turn off whatever iCloud features you don’t need.
I am really paranoid about privacy issues, but I think the above from Foresman is really an astute observation. No matter the security in place, I simply do not trust Google. The same is not true of Apple, for now.
Eric Slivka:
>Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today issued a report on his firm’s latest semi-annual survey of U.S. teenagers, the 23rd such survey in the firm’s history. The results of the extensive survey of 5,600 U.S. high school students show that 34% of surveyed students now own an iPhone, an all-time high in the survey and double the percentage seen just a year ago. Furthermore, 40% of surveyed students indicated that they intend to purchase an iPhone within the next six months.
I’m surprised it’s that low, [but I do recall this statement from Martin Fichter, the acting president of HTC America, on September 12, 2011](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/htc-boss-windows-phone-7-patents-iphones-cool-anymore/):
>I brought my daughter back to college — she’s down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacture’s devices. If you look at a college campus, Mac Book Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.
So, either:
– The remaining 66% are using these other smartphones;
– Or a major shift happens where kids dump their iPhones when they get to college;
– Or Fichter was pulling data out of his ass.
Also of note, the iPad ownership:
>On the tablet front, an identical 34% of students report owning some sort of tablet device, with 70% of those indicating that they have an iPad.
So of those kids that have a tablet, 70% have an iPad. That’s insane.