The Brooks Review

Month: June 2017

  • Your Smartphone Is Making You Stupid

    Patrick Lucas Austin:

    Participants with phones in another room greatly outperformed those with phones in pockets or on desks in all tasks.

    Wow.

  • Tech Workers Need a Humanities Education

    Tracy Chou :

    It worries me that so many of the builders of technology today are people like me; people haven’t spent anywhere near enough time thinking about these larger questions of what it is that we are building, and what the implications are for the world.

    And maybe just visit an area which isn’t the “Bay Area” every once and a while. I dunno.

  • My New Favorite Computer

    Cory Bohon on the 10.5” iPad Pro:

    Nearly every task I do with the iPad and the attached Smart Keyboard feels magical and natural — this is clearly the future of personal computing.

  • Swiss Army Knife Cadet

    My first pocket knife was a Classic SD Swiss Army Knife, in black. I was five, and I thought this was amazing — MacGyver was my favorite show and now I had his knife. My obsession with pocket knives runs deep, and for most of my life. The oldest pocket knife I have is another Swiss Army Knife, which to the best I can tell is something like a Climber.

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  • Microsoft’s New Surface Pro Tablet Is Stellar Hardware Weighed Down By Windows

    The Surface line has taken off like gangbusters in the past because it was the middle choice — it’s not really a tablet, but it’s not really a laptop. It’s for that very reason the device sucks. As this article points out, Windows is the problem with Surface devices.

    But, Windows is also the only reason Surface devices have been adopted as fast as they have been. It’s why iPads run iOS, and not macOS.

  • The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence

    Kai-Fu Lee:

    So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users.

    Hell of a thought.

  • Laptop Replacement

    Matt Gemmell writing about iPads and the notion of replacing a laptop:

    I’m not sure what they’re afraid of.

    Fantastic post, especially for people who get real mad at the idea that iPads work well for people.

  • Giving the iPad a full-time job (warning, Medium link)

    Justin Searls:

    I’ve found that virtually any painful-to-accomplish task can be automated away to some extent with the excellent (and recently Apple-acquired) Workflow app, so I’ve been pretty aggressive in creating an automated workflow as soon as I recognize a certain action is more awkward than necessary

    Love that description, and I think for most people it’s not so much needing workflow as it is thinking a tad, shall we say, newly? Hmm, need to think of a catchier phrase there.

  • Panobook from Studio Neat

    At the beginning of May, I received a notebook from Studio Neat — they told me the idea was to create a great notebook for use on your desk, along side (or rather in front of) a keyboard. In other words to create something long and short, not tall and narrow.

    I was on board. The biggest issue with most notebooks, like the Baron Fig, is that it cannot easily fit in the gap between your keyboard and the edge of the desk. The Panobook solves this problem, and then some.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 6/26/17

    This week I dive into printing high quality photos from an iPad, and iOS 11’s bad ass new Notes app.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this content.

  • “The Last Mile for the iPad”

    Gabe Weatherhead posted an article about where the iPad fits, how it works, and such. In short, I think his underlying premise is off base. There’s a terrible analogy which keeps being trotted out, stated by Weatherhead too, where the Mac is a truck and the iPad is a car, etc etc etc. It’s a Steve Jobs quote, and thus is attributed far more truth than it really should be.

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  • 10.5” is the Ideal Size for the iPad Pro

    Brian Renshaw:

    The text is larger enough to read easily and the writing window is plenty sufficient. This is a similar feeling I’ve had with the keyboard. Its just big enough, which, at the end of the day, makes a massive difference.

    Apt description of the keyboard size.

  • App Update Sizes

    What you see, is not what you get.

  • The Very Best Things

    I’ve long had a page I labeled as “The Best” where I list items which I’ve come to feel are the best for their categories. I wanted to point out a few of the very best things I have found for those who are not members. These are not full reviews, but rather the core of why I feel these items are the very best.

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  • Uber’s CEO is out because of pressure, not some ethical epiphany from the board

    DHH:

    But let’s not kid ourselves. Kalanick didn’t get the boot because Uber’s board had some ethical epiphany. They presided over his misdeeds for years. Fat, golden years steered by toxic leadership and fueled by depraved acts.

  • Apple goes after clones and spam on the App Store

    It’s great to see Apple going to this length to remove the bullshit.

  • Apple just created, and killed, a generation of AR businesses

    Matthew Panzarino:

    So now here we are, with the ability for just about anyone to spin up an AR window inside their app. I predict that we’re going to see some real crap over the next few weeks and months as people just “put an AR on it.” But aside from that, we’re going to see a plug unstoppered on industries that needed a reliable version of this kind of AR portal in order to execute on a vision.

    I can’t wait.

  • Social Cooling

    John Naughton linked to this in his post, but this site is worth bookmarking. It’s often annoying (on a good day) to try and explain privacy implications to “normals”, instead send them this site and ask them to take a look.

  • Surveillance Capitalism and Google

    John Naughton:

    The idea that being watched on this scale isn’t affecting our behaviour is implausible, to put it mildly. Throughout history, surveillance has invariably had a chilling effect on freedom of thought and expression. It affects, for example, what you search for. After the Snowden revelations, traffic to Wikipedia articles on topics that raise privacy concerns for internet users decreased significantly.

    I love the term “surveillance capitalism” as it is very apt. His post is worth your time if you are among the many who think Google and Facebook tracking your every move isn’t “that big of a deal”.

  • F-Secure FREEDOME VPN

    To answer your question, given my last post, I’ll be using Freedome VPN from here on out. I like Private Internet Access, but Freedome is much faster.