The Brooks Review

Month: December 2015

  • Content Blocker Update (December 2015)

    Here we go again, another round of iOS content blocker testing. Before I get into the testing, I want to point out why certain apps were tested while others were not tested. I can assure you I downloaded/purchased/unlocked every content blocker I could find on the App Store. I lost count how many there were after they were all installed, but I was starting to worry I may never stop downloading them.

    I was not looking forward to testing these, it takes 10 minutes on average to test each content blocker — and well you can do the math when I had more than 30 installed. That’s a lot of time. So I needed to pare the list down in a way which made sense without testing them first.

    (more…)

  • That Syncing Feeling

    Gabe Weatherhead:

    Data syncing may be the most critical aspect of modern computing and we’ve settled too easily for the most convenient solution.

  • Leaving the Mac App Store

    Sketch Blog writes about their decision to leave the Mac App Store. This is a real shame as Sketch is amazing and having all your apps purchased from the Mac App Store is a way better experience for users setting up new Macs.

    There’s been thousands of words spilled on this topic already, but I want to spill some different ones. Words directed at Sketch and not Apple.

    Sketch,

    Hi, big fan here. You’ve long said you won’t be coming to the iPad because you can’t be convinced it will be profitable. That’s very reasonable, but your life just got a lot harder moving outside the Mac App Store.

    Now you can certainly make it, but you won’t have that sweet — sweet — free banner marketing from Apple. So that’s going to be a little more expensive for you.

    So meet the iPad Pro.

    It’s a hell of a device and maybe if you made a small thing to perhaps even just view Sketch files on the iPad (not the Mirror app) — perhaps that would give you an idea of interest. And then maybe give us some basic tools. See where things go, you don’t need to marry the device, but at least take it on some real dates.

    The iOS App Store is better, not great, but better. I would love to have you on it.

    Love usually,

    Ben

  • The Many, Um, Misstatements of Donald Trump

    S.V. Dáte:

    All of this is read­ily known to even a school­child with a cas­u­al in­terest in air­planes—which raises the ques­tion: Where and why would Trump get the idea his plane was big­ger?

    Great read. But why not call these lies?

  • The Apple Pencil Enhances Note-Taking on the iPad Pro

    Thomas Wong:

    One of the coolest multitasking benefits of the iPad Pro is that there’s enough space to read source material and take handwritten notes, simultaneously. I write with my right hand (even though I’m normally left-handed), so I usually keep my note app in Split View along the right hand side.

    I feel like an idiot, but it never even occurred to me to do this. Man is this going to be a great tool for students and meetings.