Year: 2016

Casey Newton on Medium’s bullshit release notes:

Over the past year, the duo have tried to rein themselves in. “The most common blowback we get is from people who want to know what’s in the release,” Fisher says. “They hate these because they have no idea.”

So, by their own admission, their release notes don’t even do the fundamental job of release notes, which is to let users know what is in the release. I… It’s… Fuck.

Riccardo Mori:

You can’t make everybody happy, but with Control Centre as it is today, Apple has made sure that every iOS user can find a certain degree of usefulness. Not an easy balance to achieve.

I use the piss out of control center — and I have to say it works nicely for me. Perhaps it would be cool to be allowed to customize it, but I also think that might be overkill. It’s a dead simple feature with access to things that most people need access to.

Good post from Watts Martin, responding to my post about the compelling features of iOS. He does have one part I disagree with:

I confess this strikes me as akin to those “As Seen on TV!” commercials trying to convince you how much time you’re wasting by not using their in-shell egg scrambler or electric rutabaga dicer or what have you. I don’t disagree with Brooks’s contention that the iOS approach is easier, but are there truly that many Mac or Windows users who spend hours dragging windows back and forth in anger and frustration?

Moom, Divvy, Keyboard Maestro, Spaces, Expose, SizeUp, Cinch, BetterSnapTool — that’s eight apps off the top of my head which are either dedicated, or can be used to, manage application windows on Mac OS X. Eight. So while I concede that it sounds a bit ‘As Seen on TV’ of me to bring up that point — it is very much a real problem with an ecosystem in place for profiting from trying to solve the issue.

Martin also points out the poor ergonomics. In truth this is a mixed bag. It’s no worse than using a laptop, and likely easier on your wrists as the keyboard (the Smart Keyboard Cover) is nearly flush to the desk. However it is the neck angle that is terrible. Beyond terrible.

There’s just no solving this right now — I do hope there is something I can figure out to alleviate that, but in practice I have not had many ill effects because I end up moving my computer around more. With a laptop it was on the desk.

With my iPad I pick it up to read in portrait, move about the house on calls, and yes, use it on the desk. Time will tell — I know Martin is right that the ergonomics are worse, but I don’t think it is wholly worse. For one: I leave my desk a lot more.

Immensely proud of my wife for being one of the 41 photographers Apple has included in the latest gallery and campaign. (I wonder what my daughter will think when she grows up, knowing Apple promoted an image of her.)

The images in the gallery are great. There’s some great articles out there about the campaign too.

Mashable has an article on the new gallery, which is a great look at a lot of the photos.

This quote from Time’s article:

One of the photographers featured, Erin Brooks, was included in the campaign after she posted a portrait of her three-year-old daughter shot on the iPhone 6s Plus on Instagram. “I honestly couldn’t believe that they contacted me,” she tells TIME in an email.

You should probably take this time to follow Erin on Instagram/Twitter.

Here’s the shots Erin has in the gallery.

 Michael Rockwell:

All that cruft is gone.

Joshua Roberts on iMessage security:

Not only that if Apple’s servers detect a slow or sporadic connection it sends all messages in plain text, meaning it doesn’t use encryption if you have a bad connection.

This reads as more than just the send as an SMS option — and is contrary to my understanding of how the system works.

Justin Blanton on an iPhone only future:

In fact, the disparity is only going to get greater. Most of our entertainment and communication is sourced, if not experienced, via our phones, and it won’t be big computers that come back from the dead to change that (though it will be something).

Side note: it’s so great he is back to writing.

A fascinating look at smartphone usage. Particularly the lengths they go through to save data.

Jaimee Newberry:

It’s about the intention you set with “try” versus “do”. I believe, whether you intend it or not, “try” gives you a subconscious escape from the amount of effort you will exert in your attempt. “Try” implies it’s OK to not succeed. “Try” is passive. Even though DOING may still result in failure, and failure is acceptable, when you say, “I am going to DO this,” your intention is fully committed.

In a post from Chris Bowler responding to my posts about email newsletters, he captures a very interesting argument in favor of them. An argument I think is best summarized by emotion. He feels email newsletters are better and that’s basically that.

His post is really worth a read if this topic is interesting to you — I think he encapsulates “the other side” well in his article. I did chuckle at this bit though:

Much of our email is junk, but I greatly enjoy some of the newsletters I’m subscribed to. This is likely the point that makes all the difference for our opinions: if someone dislikes receiving email newsletters, they’re not likely to find value in creating one.

Only some of the newsletters? Made me smile.

Jordan Merrick created a way to generate a static blog on your iOS device using Workflow:

After running the workflow, a ZIP file is generated containing all of the HTML files and can be opened in an app like Transmit, the extracted contents of which can be uploaded to your web server.

This isn’t anything I want or need, but this is still fucking awesome. iOS is just beginning to see its potential as a replacement to OS X and I can’t wait to see what more comes.

J.R. Hennessy:

This is the final frontier for privacy. It is no longer a matter of our control over exactly how much of our personal life we deign to share with the public — it is a matter of precisely how much of our internal existence is taken from us. If someone can manipulate our thought and emotion based on a stratum of data we willingly and unwillingly contributed to, then there is no real sense of public and private any longer — only an escalating series of intrusions.

Very interesting post.