Most people are decidedly not developers, by the way.
It’s a statement I hear all the time — people either asking me to convince them the iPad Pro is better, because they want to be convinced, or because they want to prove me wrong. Either way, people either want to get it, or they simply cannot fathom how such a setup would actually work.
Sean Sperte on a common sentiment about no longer feeling like a through and through Apple fan:
There may be other reasons I haven’t thought of, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind. And obviously, I do really prefer the user experiences I get with macOS and iOS, despite their many, many… many (gosh, doesn’t it seem like more than ever?) flaws.
When I was talking about the Surface Studio on Twitter, someone responded “have you guys even used Windows lately”. I chuckled, because I have, and it’s shit. Anyone who thinks the Surface Studio makes up for that, is going to be really fucking sad.
My god, that’s a pretty phone. The other bonus of watching this video is that I finally found out how to pronounce “Xaiomi”. Like Microsoft products though, it’s too bad it runs Android.
John Gruber on iMessage and how it locks people into iPhones, yet it insanely useful:
iMessage is an exception. With iMessage you get to connect both with iPhone users in the Google ecosystem and iPhone users in the Apple ecosystem. For a lot of us here in the U.S., that’s just about everyone we know.
He’s right — it’s almost unsettling to me when I see green bubbles (indicating SMS) instead of the blue iMessage bubbles. It’s also a. clusterfuck anytime someone who was previously an iMessage person switches to Android without jumping through all of Apple’s hoops.
But beyond that, iMessage is easily the best messaging platform I have tried. I get to try a lot of different ones all the time, and every time I am just glad when I can go back to iMessage. It’s such a seamless and perfect tool.
This looks like it may be compelling enough to buy just for the camera itself.
Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.
This is really fucked up.
What if the reason Macs are so stale, is because they are about to jump from Intel chips to A-Series chips? For starters, I’d buy one.
I’ve now had the Lanier for some time, and have really put it through its paces, so I thought it was a good moment to stop and talk a little more about this very little bag. In my first post I wrote:
And yet there’s something about a true briefcase like this — a notion that people who carry a bag which is generally more restrictive, have somehow figured something out in their life that most of us have not.
I don’t think I could state it any better than that today. This bag is small, but it is in that smallness where you find a calm with it. It is not just small, but because it only has two handles to carry it with — it demands that what you put in it not weigh too much.
Since I picked up the Outlier Futureworks they have quickly become not only my favorite pants, but my most worn pants. I’ve been yearning to get another pair of Outlier pants, either Slim Dungarees or the OG Classics. But I have been held back for some reason on both. Outlier just launched the Strongworks, which are cut similar to the Futureworks, but in a heavier and more rugged fabric.
I picked them up and have only had them two days, but these are great. I can see wearing these a lot already.
After being in our new house for just over a week, I was getting around to unpacking my office (only the garage left to do) and as I opened box after box, more wires sprung up. I shook my head and kept piling them away in more areas of the new office.
Fast forward to the other morning and I’m reading an article from The Wirecutter posted on The New York Times — a guide to cutting the cord from Cable TV. Another thing I have been working with since moving — for the first time we are going to have two TV areas in the house, should I get two cable boxes? Do I need two cable boxes?
David Chartier on dropping Dropbox:
Others who have made this transition told me there’s a noticeable performance boost to be had by uninstalling Dropbox from a Mac, which I just did yesterday. They weren’t kidding.
Dropbox has gone from an amazing service to a mess of a feature. iCloud Drive is simply a lot better.
The new pricing model is free with an unlock for pro-type features:
In short, even after the trial expires, the app will continue to offer all of its features, except for Sync, Backups and Alert Notifications (i.e. turn into a dumb, but useful to do list). In order to enable those, the user could upgrade to the full version by paying once.
This is a good read which goes over the trade offs of all the models. I loathe the idea of all my apps being monthly subscriptions, but would be all for yearly subscriptions. $1-2 apps have always done well initially and I had always hoped a market could be sustainable with yearly $1-2 subscriptions instead of monthly.
Basically:
So while Trump made money at every turn, the banks that lent him money, the workers and small businesses who delivered for Trump, and the investors in his casino company all got stiffed. And while they paid taxes on whatever income they did manage to collect, Trump enjoyed at least $916 million of tax-free income.
Insanely savvy management of his wealth, but also shows a pure lack of concern for anyone that is not him.
Steven Sinofsky looking at the iPhone 7 and the Depth Effect:
Each of these innovations in tools is creating a new form of imaging. These are not just “features” but we are slowly observing a paradigm shift. When you consider this, the iPhone 7 camera is not just “cool photo blur feature” but the start of a new paradigm where a new type of image is defined. If you think back, there was a time before the “norm” seen in images today. That norm was defined by the constraint of the tool (and physics).
He has some stellar examples of the Bokeh achieved from high end lenses. I had never seen the disc style Bokeh before from a mirror lens, but thought it was on point to show how that was highly popular when it came out, and is now see as a defect.
Yes, the iPhone doesn’t do bokeh, but that’s not the point. The point of the iPhone 7 Plus Depth Effect is not to mimic a high end lens, but rather to give you a “better” portrait. With that in mind, I don’t see how the feature is anything but a success.
Manton Reece:
With the right apps and workflows, it’s a fun computer to work on. I didn’t miss my Mac while traveling last week, and I expect iOS to serve me well on future trips.
Only a matter of time before everyone slowly moves to iOS, and I don’t think it’ll be a conscious decision for most. Just something that happens naturally over time.
Such a great post:
See, our eyes actually have very deep focus, but our brains and our hearts fire at ƒ/0.95.
This post is being shared everywhere, and it deserves it.
John Voorhees:
Nebo’s Ink handwriting recognition system is the standout feature of the app. Its accuracy is truly astounding given that it doesn’t require you to alter your handwriting. In fact, in the example notebook/user guide that comes with the app, most of the handwriting is written in cursive. I don’t write in cursive, but over the years my handwriting has evolved to where certain letter combinations run together. Even when I wrote in a deliberately sloppy way, I had a hard time fooling Nebo.
A while back when I talked about making notes apps smarter, this is the type of app I was talking about. It’s a really impressive app, but the design leaves a lot to be desired as I really don’t care to use the app. Good features, delivered in a poor package.
The Omni Group:
With the original download free, we can implement any pricing options we want to offer customers through In-App Purchases. We can offer our standard unlocks of Standard and Pro, of course. But we can also offer a free 2-week trial which unlocks all of the features of Pro and Standard, letting you freely choose between them. We can offer a discounted upgrade to the new Standard. And we can offer free upgrades to the new versions to any customers who recently purchased the old app.”
Great start to a really tough problem. This seems like the best possible solution for them. Love it.
For its part, Apple’s reservation page has always noted that a 24-month installment loan through Citizens Bank, which finances the iPhone Upgrade Program, is required — this change just cements it. In other countries where the iPhone Upgrade Program does not exist, such as Canada, all customers are able to use Reserve and Pick Up regardless of their payment method of choice.
Good start to unfucking iPhone Upgrade customers.