Continuing their tradition of awesome support for released cameras, Fujifilm has added two killer features to the X-E2 via a 2.0 firmware update. Now the X-E2 has selectable focus peaking colors — something I loved about the X-T1, and the ability to toggle face-detection on and off by assigning it to a function button.
Both two big reasons I would upgrade, now taken away by Fujifilm themselves. Great support.
Since I took the time to dive into Unread and really consider the app, and the app category, I came up with a few things that I think are generally missing for some, if not all, RSS apps.
Jared Sinclair, in my Unread review, talked about how most RSS apps seem to be made for what he called ‘triage’ — meaning just getting through the slog of items, but I think all RSS apps should have a triage mode. I should be able to leave my RSS feeds for a week and come back to thousands of items, and get through them all in 30 minutes.
How? I’d propose that an ideal RSS client can perform some of the magic the same as Fever’s hot list does, by telling you what was popular while you were gone. So the app mode would work something like this:
The overarching goal being to use social networks, and the RSS networks in your reader, to tell you what was popular — and to then take that one step further by only showing you the popular post, and effectively burying the commentary posts about that popular post.
For times when you are not triaging you should be able to shift the app between a casual reading mode — something like what Unread is — to a more in-depth reading app. In other words allow me to toggle between something that works like Unread, and something that works more like a (good) digital magazine.
The in-depth mode should show all the full content for the articles along with images and videos, ready to read as individual pages, so instead of looking at a list of articles you just get articles presented as pages that you flip through as you read them.
It’s like your own curated magazine. Meant to be read from cover to cover.
I’d like to be able to mark certain feeds as auto-read-later feeds. I personally know that I like to read everything that Shawn Blanc publishes to his site, so I’d like to flag that feed as one that I never need to see because everything from it just is sent directly to Safari’s reading list.
This would also weight that feed heavier in my above popularity rating scheme.
As I talked about in the triage section, I think RSS apps should give you indication if you are about to ignore a post that is generating any kind of a ‘buzz’. This could be aggregated from within your RSS feeds, to Twitter/Facebook and other sites.
Sometimes I gloss over posts that a lot of other people are talking about just because it has a shitty title — such a feature would aim to make me give that post a second thought. Kind of like a: “woah, woah, that’s an article from John Gruber, not a link.”
Allow me to post a linked-list style blog post from within the app. Quote, author, snarky comment, title, posted.
Yes, please.
I also mentioned this in my Unread review, but I think RSS apps should show you the reading time of each article right in the list view. And further I think you should be able to hide items over/under X reading time so that you can see all items that can be quickly read, and then check out the longer posts at another time when you want.
To me that would be a killer feature for allowing me to check my RSS feeds in different ways, at different times and places, throughout the day.
Last, but not least, RSS feeds should be smart about linked list style posts. If I send that to read later, I don’t always want to send the linked-to article to my read later service. Most of the time I want to send the RSS article — the commentary article — to my read later service.
In fact, the ideal would be a setting to simultaneously send both the source and commentary articles to my read later service of choice. That way I can read the article and see the opinion of someone I care about.
RSS readers are mostly differentiated by design at this point, which is good for casual users, but even the powerful Mr. Reader isn’t enough if you are a major RSS user (like me). This list is just the tip of the iceberg for creating an RSS reader that has a feature set which would take RSS from “email style inbox” to a tool for finding great things to read, and actually reading them.
Marco Arment:
iOS 7 only “set you back months or years” if you haven’t been paying attention to the iOS development cycle and decided to take on far too much unnecessary additional work with the migration to 7, both of which would cause problems in any year, on any app, with any new OS release.
iOSecure on Reddit:
With iOS 7.1.1 Apple now takes multiple scans of each position you place finger at setup instead of a single one and uses algorithms to predict potential errors that could arise in the future. Touch ID was supposed to gradually improve accuracy with every scan but the problem was if you didn’t scan well on setup it would ruin your experience until you re-setup your finger. iOS 7.1.1 not only removes that problem and increases accuracy but also greatly reduces the calculations your iPhone 5S had to make while unlocking the device which means you should get a much faster unlock time.
Fascinating. I have noticed that with every update Touch ID gets better and better.
Matt Gemmell:
For the vast bulk of stuff that most people will want to do on a computer, though, most of the time you don’t need a desktop monster. I don’t think you even need a 15” screen, which is essentially a portable desktop. You just have to use a small screen productively.
I’ve never used an 11″ Air for work, or anything, but I did have a 13″ Air for quite some time and currently use a 15″ MacBook Pro. What Matt is saying is true for me 95% of the time. I got rid of my 24″ monster screen because I simply didn’t need all of that.
There is, though, one specific instance where I am still cramped working on a 15″ display: working on a large spreadsheet while flipping back to reference information.
Just today I was inputting data into a property tax analysis spreadsheet from Assessor websites and it was a pain. Would have been faster for those two tools to be side by side, but that creates its own problems on small screens.
But, then, ask yourself how much you do that work — likely it’s less than you think. For just about everything else I have found the smaller screens to be better.
Speaking of Jared Sinclair he has a blog post up today about the wasted year iOS 7 brought on developers:
Fast-forwarding a year, the effect that iOS 7 has had on third party development is disheartening — which sounds like a fatuous thing to say, since there have been so many well-liked redesigns over the past year. But that’s the rub: the vast majority of third-party developers’ time has been spent redesigning and reimplementing apps to dress the part for iOS 7.
The one thing iOS 7 seems to have done, though, is to bring easy money to many developers who hit a wall with improving their app(s). That is: redesign for iOS 7 and sell the app as new. That was a pretty common, if contentious, theme for this past year.
That said, while I agree iOS 7 redesigns were a set back, I have less empathy for this complaint. iOS 6 looked old, iOS 7, or a redesign in general was needed if the platform was to continue to be successful. So on the one hand you can look at this as a setback, or a reboot. On the other you can look at it like the shift from PowerPC to Intel on Macs — annoying but necessary for long term health of the platform. (Or if you prefer the shift to the taller iPhone format. Or retina displays. Or…)
Unread was first released back in February, and while I wasn’t ‘in the office’ during that time, I couldn’t use the app given the lack of support for Fever. Recently the app updated to version 1.2 and I was able to give it a go as it added support for a lot more RSS services (including Fever, obviously). Without a doubt the design philosophy behind Unread, and the way that I use RSS, seem to be polar opposites.
Unread is the type of app designed for people to spend a long time in the app. It’s not an app made for popping in and out of. It’s not an app made to get through RSS quickly.
It’s an app made to read your RSS articles, in the RSS apps.
While most RSS apps try to make it efficient for the user to send stuff to read later, Unread is designed for you to read the goods now and is very blunt about telling you that. (Though there is copious ‘read later’ support.)
I was concerned about this philosophy since I subscribe to 748 RSS feeds. Hmm.
What I found in Unread was not only a beautiful app, but a highly functional app — even when asked to do something it does not feel it is explicitly designed to do.
I sent over a few questions to the developer of Unread, Jared Sinclair, to quiz him about some decisions made in his app. Specifically, I wanted to know more about this ‘philosophy’ he is pushing in the app. I wondered, that if Unread is designed to be enjoyed slowly with an iced cold Pepsi (or hot Coffee… I guess), then why truncate the posts in the main list view instead of just showing everything right there ready to read? ((Note: All of the responses from Sinclair are shown in their entirety and un-edited by me. I’ve re-phrased my questions to fit the flow of this article.))
Sinclair: The word I use when describing how most other RSS apps are used is triage. I don’t mean this as a pejorative term. Some users have a lot of feeds and use RSS as a staging area for articles they’ll read later with something like Instapaper. I think this is a totally valid use for RSS, but it’s not the way I want to use it.
Even though Unread is a destination and not a staging area, readers still need to be able to pick and choose what to read next. A good example is a blog that mixes linked-list posts with original articles. I may not have time to read an 8,000 word post on iOS 8 predictions, but I might have time to read a few short link commentaries.
Finding the right balance between usability and aesthetics was a challenge. Unread’s article summaries are short enough to allow an overview of what articles are available to read, but long enough that they don’t look like email inbox items. Here’s a link to a visual history of my Photoshop sketches for the article summaries: http://jaredsinclair.com/unread/article-list-history.html
I’ve never been one to read a blog directly on the web, always through RSS, but I can see the reasoning for allowing the user to decide if they have time for something right now. To that end, adding in reading time estimates would go a long way for helping with that decision.
One thing that has really surprised me about Unread is that even though I subscribe to more than 400 active RSS feeds (748 total if you include those listed as “Sparks” in Fever), I am still perfectly able to use this app that seems very much not designed for a ‘triager’ like me.
I asked Sinclair if this was intentional on his part.
Sinclair: I have strong opinions about what I think is the most satisfying way to use Unread, but it would be foolish of me to think that my opinions are a good fit for everybody. Unread needs to strike a balance between novelty and utility, if only so that it can appeal to enough customers that I can stay in business. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well-received Unread’s opinionated choices have been, things like the long article summaries or the lack of buttons and toolbars. Perhaps I had underestimated how many people felt like me and wanted a more relaxed reading experience.
In other words, sage advice: don’t cut your customer base to a dozen people if simple choices mean you can have a customer base of hundreds of thousands of people.
Since many have talked about Unread before, I thought I would just point out somethings which I noticed:
Sinclair: Thanks for mentioning that. It’s one of my favorite parts of Unread, too. Unread’s home screen is inspired by tables of contents from literary magazines like the New Yorker. Those kinds of magazines often place a big masthead and publication date above the table of contents. Putting the UNREAD word mark and today’s date on the home screen sets the tone for the rest of the app: this is for reading, not for rushing.
Sinclair: Good question. Early on I tried using just an underline, but it created problems. I stumbled upon an observation that now seems obvious: links are two things at once. They’re text but they’re also buttons. The usual typography guidelines don’t entirely apply. Links need to look tappable and be easy to spot. The best solution for Unread is a combination of a different color and an underline. Here’s my rationale:
The combination of both color and an underline is usable by the greatest number of people, and for a wide variety of content, but without resorting to non-typographic elements like roundrect borders or a solid color background.
At the end of the day, Unread has won me over, as it is just too pretty to not use. Watch your back Reeder.
Unread is currently $4.99 on the App Store, and worth every damned penny.
(Confusing version numbers, I know.)
The best writing app for the Mac has been updated today and adds some very neat stuff. This isn’t a full review of the app, as I have one here, this is what’s new (and great) about the latest version — also what’s still missing.
A lot of writers set goals — where they want to write X words each day. Or perhaps you know you can only write something so long before you get in trouble. If that’s you, then you can rest easy as Ulysses will now easily track that in the sidebar of the app. Better still, it is out of view when you type, so as not to get annoying, but right there when you aren’t writing.
It’s not something I’d ever use, but I can see the value for many people. I tested it out since I received an early copy of the app to test, and it’s implemented really well.
People love tags, now you can love them more. Again, another thing I don’t use right now, but something that is clearly becoming more and more popular with Mac users since the addition of file level tagging in Mavericks.
Right now I organize with the groups in Ulysses, but I could really see this being handy as you can effective have the same sheet in multiple groups. I am still trying to plan out how to best utilize this, but I suspect that I will have it down in a few days.
It’s likely this will be excellent. ((Alas it was not open for me to check out.)) I love the stock themes in Ulysses.
I always love seeing what designer types can pull off with themes of their own.
The Soulmen also have a theme exchange for the export themes. Perhaps you don’t use these much, but they are an highly effective tool for getting your text properly formatted and off to someone else. I’ve taken to using them almost entirely for my personal document creation instead of Pages.
They’ve also made it easier to create your own writing color themes, but as far as I know there is not an exchange for these yet.
Huge update to one of my favorite Mac apps (and one of my most used Mac apps) and I would highly recommend this app to anyone who writes anything.
Ben Bajarin on the iPad:
As I have reflected on this point, it has led me to think the iPad may be cursed. It may be too good of a general purpose device in that it lacks a preferred or specific use case. What I mean is the iPad lacks a function its owner prefers or can only do on the device. One that can not be done on any other device they own.
Kim Zetter:
In a study spanning two years, Erven and his team found drug infusion pumps–for delivering morphine drips, chemotherapy and antibiotics–that can be remotely manipulated to change the dosage doled out to patients; Bluetooth-enabled defibrillators that can be manipulated to deliver random shocks to a patient’s heart or prevent a medically needed shock from occurring; X-rays that can be accessed by outsiders lurking on a hospital’s network; temperature settings on refrigerators storing blood and drugs that can be reset, causing spoilage; and digital medical records that can be altered to cause physicians to misdiagnose, prescribe the wrong drugs or administer unwarranted care.
Comforting.
Frank Chimero:
What’s interesting about digital tools for information work is how frequently they are born from a specific ideology: someone thought work should be done in a certain manner, they found no tools to support that method, so they set off to build their own tool that presumes their ideology is true and best. Thus, we get another to-do app, Twitter client, or project management app.
Ben Thompson:
Apple, though, does deserve some of the blame for the slower development of these new opportunities. Their reticence in enabling sustainable businesses on the app store makes building a business on apps, particularly new-to-the-world concepts, a risky proposition. This is unfortunate; after all, it was a 3rd party – Adobe – that truly drove desktop publishing. Unfortunately, the way Adobe treated Apple in the late 90s likely contributes to Apple’s current attitude towards developers, but it’s to Apple’s own long-term detriment.
Thousands of words have been spilled this past week dooming the iPad, or holding it up. Of all those, the above passage strikes me as most imperative. I've talked to a lot of iOS developers and they seem to be struggling a lot. After all, when's the last time you heard some kid making millions on a new app? Only big studios are making that money now, because the App Store is simply broken. Search, charts, upgrades, trials, you name it — it's broken.
The iPad will never reach its full potential if developers are not properly incentivized to develop for it, to look at it as a way to do what they love.
Federico Viticci on the biggest need for iOS:
I could discuss ideas for inter-app communication on iOS for hours, but I’d like Apple to start from the basics and iterate from there. Look at how apps can open a Mail compose window now, or how you can create a Calendar event from email messages.5 Those are essentially app features made available to other apps with no manual switching required: imagine if, again, a user could configure actions available in Safari, Mail, or other apps through this system. Combined with a UI for picking files from apps, iOS could be better suited for productivity tasks and general sharing actions than it is now.
I'd put the need for this on par with the need for copy and paste back when then iPhone launched. Apple simply cannot ignore this any longer. Something must be done.
Nikil Saval on the creation of the cubicle:
And it was too late to fix the problem. He had trapped people in giant fabric-wrapped walls, when he had meant, like Propst, to free them.
It turned out that companies had no interest in creating autonomous environments for their “human performers.” Instead, they wanted to stuff as many people in as small a space for as cheaply as possible as quickly as possible.
We have cubicles in our office and they are terrible, but I think “open plans” are probably just as bad (but prettier). The plan for the original “action office”, complete with standing workstations, sounds truly great. We should bring those back.
There were many idiosyncratic touches. Because Propst had convinced himself that work out of sight was work out of mind, there were no large desk drawers. Instead, there was a movable display surface, from which items could be retrieved and replaced at ease. A standing rolltop desk not only kept workers on their feet but also allowed them to leave work out overnight, securely closed.
Modern update would be needed, but sounds really neat. I might try to devise a way to have my “office” space defined like this.
Justin Williams isn't so hopeful about Flickr:
I want Flickr to succeed, but I worry that the Flickr I want to succeed isn’t the Flickr that Marissa Mayer is building.
Shawn has a nice overview of the new Flickr iPhone app, well worth the read. I'm really excited to see where Flickr is heading these days and I would wager they stand a good chance to be my go to service in the not to distant future.
This is excellent.
Step 2.
This is step one.