Cerebral Gardens has released Rudoku which is a crazy number game. I’ve been lucky enough to have been playing it, and it is equal parts frustrating and amazing. Frustrating in that you think you are about to win and then — nope.
I love the game and it is well worth your time to check out. It’s fast to learn and anything but mind numbing. It’s one of the few games I keep on my iPhone.
Another great title from a co-worker. Go get it.
Samantha Bielefeld:
The issue isn’t that Marco is successful, there are many app developers who would love to be in the same position. He has earned his time in the spotlight, and it’s only natural for him to take advantage of it. Though to state that anyone can simply do the same thing and be successful, is just plain wrong.
Some great points in here, something about Overcast’s new pricing model has felt off with me since I read about it. I think a lot of it is encapsulated in Bielefeld’s post.
Launching apps, even if you have a name, is incredibly hard. What helps Arment is not so much that he can get the press coverage, but that his core audience is larger than most people’s. And it is that core audience which will spend money on whatever you do.
(BTW, if you aren’t reading Bielefeld’s blog, there’s no better time to start.)
UPDATE 11-25-15: While I think this linked post still makes very solid points, I can no longer in good conscience recommend reading the original source content’s author.
For posterity the original link point to: http://samanthabielefeld.com/journal/the-elephant-in-the-room
I used to keep a page on this site to sell this stuff, but I really wanted a better storefront for it. So, of course I had to get a new domain. I am super proud of the domain.
A few items on there now, more to be added later this week.
Oh, this is going to be fun to watch play out.
I wonder if this is the signal that moving forward, Apple will be all TSMC chips.
A common refrain when people try to encourage others to buy mobile apps is to say things like: look your Starbucks “latte” cost you $4 and you will finish it inside of 30 minutes (one hopes), but this app is $1.99 and you will use it for months — if not years. Clearly the better value is the app, not the Starbucks.
That’s the common argument.
I’ve already shown you how I have used a Nock to carry cables, and another small snippet about the GORUCK Wire Dopp. The truth is that I have been really struggling to find a good way to hold my cables since I started carrying a computer regularly — that’s about 2000 or so.
Everything option out there is just odd. It’s like a clear glass desk — as I have written before — they look fabulous, but they suck in practice. Likewise, every case is too big, too small, or too poorly designed, but most look cool.
I also use a small bag most of the time, but need to scale up to larger sized bags when I travel. I am a mess. I am all over the place. And because of this I have amassed a large collection of cable carrying things.
I figured why not take a look at all of them.
Mitchel Broussard:
The takeaway from Morrison and Evans’ videos today seems to be that while intense cases like synthetic Geekbench tests designed to push devices to their limits revealed as high as a 22% difference in battery life between devices using the two chips, real-world impacts may be much smaller depending on the mix of activities. In these specific usage patterns shown above, battery life differences between the two processors ranged from 6% to 11%.
Still glad I have the TSMC chip. Wonder if this is the nail in the coffin for Samsung making AX series chips for Apple.
Stephen Hackett on the best pocket computer on the market:
The 5.5 inch, 401 ppi display isn’t just beautiful, but I find the additional space (and increased battery capacity) useful as this is the most-used device I own. Thankfully, every year, my pocket computer gets better, right on schedule.
He gets it.
Stephen Hackett:
It’s a different approach then what Apple’s doing with OS X and iOS, and Google with Chrome OS and Android, but I think it can be successful, if the company can prove investing in their platform is worthwhile for developers.
Could not agree more.
Shawn Blanc:
In short, for me, the 6s Plus is equal parts wonderful and terrible. There are some people who find the size to be just right, and so they have no sense of trade-offs with the device. But it is just too large for me to comfortably use as a hand-held phone.
Yeah, the iPhone 6s Plus is actually a terrible phone. But it is the world’s best pocket computer. And the best camera that can fit in my jeans pocket. And a fantastic wifi hotspot. And a great video communicator.
But as just a phone, it sucks.
I’m poking fun at Shawn here, but I truly mean this: don’t think of the 6s Plus as a phone, think of it as a computer. Once you do that, you realize how amazing it is.
Really misleading title, as the difference appears to mostly be about battery life. Now Engadget is claiming huge differences of up to 2 hours better performance with the TSMC chip phones, but speed differences are unknown. Interesting stuff.
Update: I didn’t realize at the time of posting that this was a user submitted post. Most of the data here is from Reddit. While not the best source, there does seem to be some anecdotal evidence to support the claim. This is going to be interesting as people test it more.
Peter Bright:
The Surface Book should offer another feature found in laptops: better performance. The keyboard unit can include a discrete NVIDIA GPU. That’s only usable when the tablet is docked, of course. The keyboard also includes an extra battery; the system as a whole can manage a 12 hour battery life, Microsoft says, but that’s only when using both batteries. The tablet itself has much less battery life.
Yikes, that keyboard attachment is hideous looking. Despite all that — the Surface remains a compelling product whose success is hampered by the lack of good touch-first applications.
Nice article from Wired, going over the how of the new water resistance in iPhones.
One new feature in El Capitan is the ability to auto-hide the menubar. Like with the Dock auto-hiding, the menubar only appears when you move your mouse to where the menubar should be. When I found the option during the beta period, I immediately turned it on and have not looked back. It’s one of the best new features of OS X.
Why would you want this?
Well for starters: on a small screen it gives you some extra height to the display. It also makes your desktop look really clean — for example when I don’t have an app window open, all I see is the wallpaper.
I signed up to BespokePost a while back to get the Dispatch box, which contains a shoulder bag from Line of Trade. From what I gather this bag can only be had in this box, but the box is $45 so it makes the entire thing seem like quite the bargain. And that’s free shipping too, it was begging me to buy it.
(If you aren’t a Bespoke member, use this link to sign up and I get a kickback.)
Looks like we had a stellar 8 day streak in April…
Adamant has come out for Safari 9 (this might be El Capitan only, not sure). It works just like its iOS counterpart: set it and forget it. No clutter in the toolbar like you get with Ghostery. Very cool.
Good infographic.
Horace Dediu:
Looking at new features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, and better cameras, one can observe how easily acceptable and desirable they are to those who first see them. As were Siri, FaceTime, Touch ID and iCloud, making something meaningfully better is a sign of sustaining innovation which does not over-serve.
Paradoxically, the improvements are not usually things that users ask for. Surveys always show that consumers want “better battery life” or a “bigger screen” but delivering something else entirely which nevertheless leads to mass adoption shows an uncanny insight into what really matters.
I love this passage from Dediu. Coincidentally, the Evening Standard had an interview with Apple SVP Eddy Cue, in which he said something very similar:
Can customer feedback be something of a minefield? “There are things people can tell us and there are things they can’t,” he continues. “Both are really important but one of the dangers is to only do things people tell you to do. You would never do [new iPhone features] Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond. We used to say that we get paid to look around corners.”
It reminds me of a story I heard in college about cars in the 1950s. (You know, the cars with the big fins on the back.) The parable told was that the big car companies asked people what they wanted in a car, and cars kept getting more and more boring. Then they started asking people what their neighbors would want in a car, and people said things like: “Oh he’d want something crazy with wings, and bubbles, something like a jet.” And thus they made cars with tail fins, and people loved them.
It’s an adaptation of this Henry Ford quote:
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
We are often the worst judges at what we truly want. We would all love better battery life, but very few us would be compelled to go spend another $400 for better battery life.