Year: 2014

Shawn Blanc pointed out after I posted my review that I didn’t include enough images of the camera itself. I’m posting now to rectify that oversight.

Back of camera, illustrating that dial I am not a fan of.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

With the 27mm f/2.8 pancake (silver variant) attached.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

With the 27mm f/2.8 pancake (silver variant) attached.

With the 35mm f/1.4 lens attached.

Disclaimer: This is a review camera sent to me from Fujifilm America for the explicit purpose of a review. No money changed hands, nor was there any restriction on what I may or may not write.

While older, and therefore far less exciting than some of the newer cameras coming out (e.g. X-E2, and X-T1) the X-M1 is a very interesting model. Some would look at it as an ‘entry’ level camera, but in this case that isn’t being very accurate.

The X-M1 is smaller than the other X-series camera and lacks many of the manual controls that makes the line popular, but that doesn’t mean it is a dumbed down camera. What’s interesting about Fujifilm is that they don’t really hold back features for the sake of up-selling customers. So the X-M1 has the more traditional ‘Mode’ dial instead of the shutter speed, but otherwise it functions similarly to the X-E2, just in a smaller package.

Most notably the camera still has the X-Trans sensor (though the older version 1 sensor, not the X-Trans II) and it still has WiFi and yet adds on a tillable LCD.

Featureless this camera is not.

I’ve been keen to try this camera ever since I realized two things:

1. The X100s is about the same size as my X-E2 and thus seems silly to buy.
2. I really want to leave a good digital camera with my wife, while still also having one for me to carry, but I don’t want more lenses.

The latter is what pushed me to looking at the X-M1, so it was by happy coincidence that Fujifilm offered to send me one.

Handling

The X-M1 is not only a more compact offering (with the same APS-C sized sensor), but it is also a less expensive offering. Due to that last fact, the build of the camera is much different from the other Fujifilm cameras I reviewed — it’s made of plastic. Still the camera feels solid to hold and use, but there are a few aspects that I have yet to get used to.

The rear dial control is the first of those. On the X-E2 and X-T1 this is a horizontally placed dial. You can push in, or jog it left or right. It makes sense. On the X-M1 this is still horizontal, but positioned so that the dial spins on an axis parallel to the ground — or positioned vertically like it would be if it were on the top of the camera. It’s not bad, but it really is in an awkward spot for my thumb to reach.

I think because of that, I found myself wishing the exposure compensation dial (which is unmarked, and has no stops at either end allowing it to spin all the way around) was a dial that you could reassign. This would be near perfect for the camera, however, you cannot reprogram that button — and I do find the X-M1 to have one less programmable button than what I really need.

My complaints stop there though. As the body is very compact for the size of sensor, and quality of lenses, but still boasts niceties like a tilting LCD display.

I’m not even sure I shot with that display flush to the camera the entire time I used it — the tilting display is really nice to have after you go without one for a while.

Outside of the dial issue, I find little complain about on the X-M1’s handling. It doesn’t handle like the X-E2 and X-T1, instead opting for a more traditional configuration (like what you would find on most dSLRs, or micro four thirds offerings) and feels a lot like my old Panasonic GX1 to me.

Image Quality

I was surprised by just how good the older X-Trans sensor is, in fact the only noticeable difference I could detect is better noise handling in the X-Trans II sensor at ISO 6400. Beyond that it looks and feels like my ‘other’ Fuji X-Trans files.

To me this is the best I could have hoped for and I am very impressed. This is a smaller and cheaper camera, but is only a slight notch under the newer camera in image quality.

Overall Thoughts

The majority of my usage of the X-M1 was with the 27mm pancake lens attached. This combination is perfect, as it is sharp, fast-ish, and yet very compact with a useful focal length. I do wish that the pancake wasn’t only an f/2.8 lens — a stop faster would do wonders for indoor photography.

In all I am torn about this little camera. I love that it is smaller, but I do miss the view finder. More than anything though is that I miss the shutter speed dial (instead the X-M1 has the more common ‘mode’ dial and isn’t nearly as fun to use).

This is a solid family camera, and can be had for really great prices now. I’m thinking about adding one just so that I have a camera which can kick around the house, and car, but can still accept my other lenses if I need a backup camera for something. I can’t wait to see how the camera is updated, as I suspect it will become only more tempting.

It’s not a replacement, or even competitor, to the X-E2 and above X-system cameras, but it is a very good and increasingly inexpensive camera. I’d be more than happy with it as my full-time camera and I think you would be mistaken to think this is an entry level camera.

Buy It

• X-M1 at B&H Photo, or at Amazon
• 27mm at B&H Photo, or at Amazon

Photos

Update: I’ve posted additional images of the camera, here.

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/4000s 35mm @ f1/.4 ISO 200

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/550s 27mm @ f/4.5 ISO 400

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/900s 27mm @ f/6.4 ISO 400

Fujifilm X-M1, 1/2000s 27mm @ f/2.8 ISO 400

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.

Speed Mode

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:

1. Enable popularity rankings. Let’s say that is on a simple five point scale, you then tell the app you want to see only articles 3 points or up — and to mark everything else as read.
2. Now you have a significantly trimmed the list, but you still have to look through all the items. From there I would hope the app can craft a conversation view of posts centering around the same article. That way you can see the main, say, New York Times article, and a listing of the blogs/articles that commented on, and linked to, that main article. This way I can judge if it really was that important based on who is commenting on it.
3. You should then quickly be able to toss articles to your read later service of choice.

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.

Two Reading Modes

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.

Auto Read Later

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.

Important?

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.”

Link Blog

Allow me to post a linked-list style blog post from within the app. Quote, author, snarky comment, title, posted.

Yes, please.

Reading Time

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.

Handling Linked List Posts

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.

Wrap

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.

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:

• The app is what I call quasi-fullscreen as it does not forgo a status bar at the top, but otherwise acts like many apps that are fullscreen by not showing navigation buttons. I really wish that status bar was gone, and I am not sure the reasoning on keeping the status bar in the app. It adds very little value, and seems to keep you one set away from full immersion into the app.
• Along the bottom of the screen is what I will call a section header. So when you tap on your RSS account it will display the account type (for a Fever account, the bottom is labeled ‘Fever’). What’s odd is that when you move into your unread items list, the title says ‘unread’. Which is logical, and helpful, but when your app is also called Unread, well, you can see where the confusion is. Is that a label for where I am in the app, or a reminder of the app I am using? This drives me nuts.
• The main screen of the app is really odd. It looks like a promo/tutorial/setup type of screen, yet it is to be the top level screen for the entire app. I just don’t get it, nor do I like it. Sinclair said it is based off of table of contents.
• That said, one really great touch is the inclusion of today’s date on the screen. I have no clue why I like that so much, but I really love it. I asked Sinclair about the decision to include the date on this screen.

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.

• The app has some great themes, but does not automatically switch from light to dark based on the lighting conditions around you. This is a pet peeve of mine as I believe all apps should do this now, but to be fair, Unread is setup to allow a user to quickly and easily change the theme without losing their place in the stream. The actions for doing this (pulling the screen from right to left) is something I think more apps should employe as it is a lovely experience.
• On the topic of themes, I feel the dark/night theme is very hard to read when there are a lot of links in a post as the links are red and underlined. Many things I’ve read lately talk about how highlighting links makes for a very distracted reading environment. So, once again, I asked Sinclair what his thoughts were on the link coloring and underlining in Unread.

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:

• If they were only underlined, then they wouldn’t be distinguishable from underlined text that isn’t a link. The same would be true of making them boldface. 
• If they only differed from normal text by their color, then they wouldn’t be easy to spot by users with color blindness. 
• If they didn’t use color, then they would be hard to spot in complex areas of text. Think of a bulleted list where each item contains a mix of typographic styles (boldface, monospace runs of code, italics). This kind of thing has a lot of visual activity and is not uncommon on technical blogs. Color helps cut through that noise.

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.

• Even though it isn’t in-line with the philosophy behind the app, it drives me nuts that it requires so many taps and holds to send an article to a read later service. To me this is an action that should always be able to be performed quickly.
• My last complaint is very minor, but seems like the most unfinished part of the app: the release notes. It is great that the release notes are in the app, but why just shoot out to a web view instead of loading in the release notes and styling them to fit the app? Again, seems like an oversight in an otherwise well polished app.

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.

Goals

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.

Multiple Tags

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.

Theme Exchange

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.

Writing Themes

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.

Missing

• Per Group Themes: I wish I could set a display theme for each group, so that as I moved from group to group there was a visual change to the text. That distinction would be really nice.
• It’s still not obvious how you make your own theme. You can edit certain things in the preference dialog, but to really tweak the background you are going to have to right click the theme and click ‘edit’. I am not sure why it is setup this way, it seems very backwards to me.
• Publishing to WordPress: please?

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.