The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Why I Moved Back to Ulysses III

    When iA’s Writer Pro came out I promptly switched over to it (having previously being a huge Writer fan) and I was largely happy using it over Ulysses III. The difference is splitting hairs in the simplicity realm of writing, but I’ve come to find out that single hair makes a very large difference to me.

    Both Ulysses III and Writer Pro are exceptionally simple. Writer Pro is a no-nonsense ‘here is what I am, and that is all there is’, type of app. Ulysses III is more of a ‘this is your writing space and it is as simple as you want it to be’, type of app.

    Both are simple, just in very different ways.

    To me the complexity inherent in Writer Pro is evident in two areas:

    • The modes are the first stage. Where you actively have to think about what part of the writing process you are in. That’s a great tool overall, but one cannot argue that on some level it adds psychological overhead to the process of writing. “Wait, I want to write, but I am in edit mode.”
    • The file storage is the biggest area of concern for me in Writer. Writer Pro relies on simple text files, yes, but those files can be stored anywhere, or in varying folders within iCloud. Each must then be opened by themselves in new windows and thus managing your files becomes more complex than in an app that manages files for you. In other words you have to think about organizing those files.

    Ulysses suffers from different levels of complexity:

    • It is meant to house all of your writings. Which is great because they are all there, but also they are all there. You see everything when you have more than just the editor window open — and that’s just distracting. Though to be fair, CMD+1 removes all that visual clutter.
    • Unlike Writer Pro, Ulysses has options — and those options can lead to a more complex tool. The way they are presented keeps things on the simpler side, but options adds complexity.

    In my opinion, Writer Pro is actually the more complicated app to use.

    Everything you do in Writer Pro, outside of writing and editing, must be done somewhere else — not in the app. So while Writer Pro is more simple, it adds more complexity to my overall workflow as I need more and more tools to do something — anything — with that text I just labored over.

    In a nutshell that’s the top reason I am back with Ulysses after a stint with Writer Pro: Ulysses affords me the ability to interact with my texts after I am done writing them and keeps them all in one depository. I can do more with one app in Ulysses than I can in Writer Pro.

    Of course there are a few other reasons why I came back, and in no particular order here those are:

    • I think the overall design of Ulysses is better than Writer. And if I don’t like the design, I can just change the colors and fonts. The flexibility is there, but not a distraction as can be in so many other apps.
    • Variable typewriter scrolling is amazing. I like the line I am writing on to be static in position, but I don’t like that position to be the middle of my screen, or maybe I do. With variable typewriter scrolling I can decide on the fly where I want that line to be. It’s fantastic.
    • It’s nice to use, nice to work with, and constantly being improved.
    • Feels like a notebook with endless pages and a notebook always feels like endless possibilities for new ideas and thoughts. Writer feels like an endless stack of sheets of paper, where they will get lost and are limiting in usefulness. You don’t go into the most important meeting you’ll have this year with a stack of loose paper — you choose a fine notebook.
    • I like the document states in Writer Pro, but I’ve been able to replicate them (and more) with tagging in Ulysses.
    • Color and fonts: I can choose them. I can tweak them, and Ulysses remembers that I like my light theme in window mode and my dark theme in fullscreen mode.
    • Daedalus is better on iPhone than Writer Pro. But, you likely disagree with me. It’s an odd duck, but I really like it. (And you can install your own fonts to it to match your Mac!)

    Of course there are somethings that are still not so great:

    • I really don’t like the process for adding links. If you paste a markdown formatted link, then the app doesn’t recognize it properly. So you have to start the process and paste in the link when the popup appears. If I hadn’t figured out how to automate this with Keyboard Maestro this would have been a deal breaker.
    • Markdown is not copied by default. Instead you have to use a different keyboard shortcut — maybe. Actually the secondary copy shortcut can be one of many formats and which one is based off of the format you used last. Which is not only annoying, it’s inconsistent with logic of any kind. Just let me set what type of text ‘copy’ copies.
    • Lack of publishing support to weblogs. It’s been promised, but it’s not here yet. This is something that any writing app should have at this point in time.

    Overall though, still one of the best writing apps I have ever used, and the best I have found for OS X.

  • GM Has Recalled More Cars Than It Sold In Five Years

    Patrick George:

    If you add up GM’s total U.S. sales from 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, it equals about 12.18 million cars, according to their own sales data and news reports. And in 2014 alone so far in the U.S., they’ve recalled more than 13 million cars, with possibly more on the way. P

    This entire situation is crazy, and I am surprised it is not bigger news. John Oliver has a really good take if you are an HBO subscriber.

  • Being Cool

    Rance Crain:

    What Samsung is basically saying, Sir John argues, is that “the other guy isn’t cool. Because I’ve basically taken what they’ve done and I’ve made it a different shape and a slightly different size and I’ve brought it out in different colors. That’s not cool. So I think they could find themselves in a short-lived space.”
    The bottom line for Apple is to continue improving the product, by all means, but most important: Don’t react, because that’s not cool.

    Really great article as long as you stop at the last line above.

  • The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call in the Bahamas

    Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras:

    Legal or not, the NSA’s covert surveillance of an entire nation suggests that it will take more than the president’s tepid “limits” to rein in the ambitions of the intelligence community. “It’s almost like they have this mentality – if we can, we will,” says German. “There’s no analysis of the long-term risks of doing it, no analysis of whether it’s actually worth the effort, no analysis of whether we couldn’t take those resources and actually put them on real threats and do more good.”

  • Mod Notebook Review

    Patrick Rhone:

    In fact, I would likely be all in on the idea if they offered just the service/app part for any notebook you already owned or preferred to use. Say, for instance, if for that price you could print off a pre-paid shipping label, send them any notebook up to a certain size, they scanned it and made it available in their app, and then sent it back to you. That, I might buy.

    Now I feel bad for pointing this notebook out to him.

  • Updates From the Past

    When I first started computing, updates were a rare thing. Sure they happened, but not often and not always for free. The updates had to be shipped to you, on some sort of physical media which was not only annoying, but slow as well.

    Then the internet and software downloads came along and changed all that. Programs could be rapidly updated to take into account other changes to operating systems and time in general. Things became easier and faster. Good all around.

    Then Apple’s App Stores came along. With the App Store updates and downloads and buying is easier and better than ever. Well, except that the App Store has thrown us back in time with app updates. Unless a developer requests the limited emergency update protocol, the nuclear option, it can take a week (or more, or less) to get an update to users.

    Which really isn’t acceptable to anyone. Not developers, not users. Well, except maybe Apple, they seem happy to leave things as they are.

    If something breaks in an app you rely on because Apple updated OS X, and you purchased that app from the App Store, well now you get to wait.

    And wait.

    Work?

    What work?

    Oh, there’s the update. Thanks Apple.

  • Everyone Should Know Just How Much the Government Lied to Defend the Nsa

    I’m quoting his conclusion, but this entire piece is a must read. Trevor Timm:

    Intelligence director James Clapper’s infamous lie to Congress – in which he claimed just months before Snowden’s leaks that the NSA was not collecting data on millions of Americans – will certainly follow him for the rest of his career even if it never leads to his prosecution. But while Clapper almost certainly broke the law, the senate committee members in front of whom he spoke knew the truth regardless.
    The Justice Department, on the other hand, convinced the supreme court to dismiss a case that could have dramatically curtailed the NSA’s most egregious abuses of power based on false statements. And now all of us are forced to live with the consequences of that.

    Those motherfuckers.

  • High-Speed Data Transfers between Macs with Thunderbolt

    Jordan Merrick:

    Similar to Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode, the speeds are incredibly fast and, with a little overhead, my tests showed transfer speeds hit 700MB/sec.

    Noted.

  • It’s All About Dew Point

    Dennis Mersereau:

    If you're getting a respectable weather report, they'll also include something called the “dew point” immediately after the temperature. The dew point tells you to what temperature the air would have to cool to reach full saturation, or reach 100% relative humidity. Looking at the dew point is the best way to determine how much moisture is present.

    Must read in my book. I had no idea.

  • Who Has Your Back 2014

    LOL, Snapchat.

  • Social Has Won

    Zachary Seward:

    Pull media has quickly been replaced by push media, as the Times report makes clear in so many words. Information—status updates, photos of your friends, videos of Solange, and sometimes even news articles—come at you; they find you. And media that don’t are hardly found at all.

  • How to Get the Best Out of Photo Apps on Your Smartphone

    Quite a few apps I didn’t know about.

  • LG Electronics UM95 34UM95

    This just sky rocketed to the top of my “want” list.

  • Here’s Why Net Neutrality Matters

    Jamie Hoyle:

    In any other industry, we’d call this racketeering. For cable companies, it’s a business practice.

  • Ulysses III 1.2.1

    We had tons of requests, and we gave it a lot of thought, and we finally decided to switch from reference links to inline links when copying/exporting to Markdown.

    Finally.

  • Even a 3-Second Distraction Can Screw You Up

    Melissa Dahl:

    This means that “it’s not just a phone call that counts as an interruption — just the ringing counts … even if all you want to do is find your phone and shut it off,” the study’s lead author, Michigan State University psychologist Erik Altmann, said in an email.

  • The One Camera Recommendation

    Conor McClure on the Fujifilm X100s:

    If I had to recommend one camera to anyone, it would be the X100S. Everything is built to top-notch quality, and what it cannot do means that what it can do is that much better. And it can do everything you need it to.

    Agreed. It’s a fantastic camera and I emailed Ginter just today to recommend that to him as well. I love my X-E2, but the X100s is a camera I will buy for sure.

  • FCC Proves Yet Again That It’s Out to Kill Net Neutrality

    Art Brodsky on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler:

    He is refusing to recognize reality.

  • Design Away

    Nate Barham on the silly notion of an action based iOS launcher:

    I agree that this situation is frustrating, but what Mitchell assumes here, and throughout his article is that users want an action-based interface. The brilliance of the iPhone interface was—and is—in the simple genius of “Tap to open an app, home button to close.”

    And:

    In a truly action-based interface, the Text action could possibly take me to any of these as well as Notes, Reminders, and countless others. What used to take me one tap in a familiar app now takes at least two taps, one of which includes a leap of faith that the action I’ve chosen corresponds to the secondary actions that might follow.

    Good post, read it.

  • Roles of iPad

    A lot of keyboards have been strained over the furious typing surrounding the future of the iPad recently. All of these posts seem to be all over the place. Some calling for doom, some (most?) confused, and others saying ‘pshaw, all is good’. I think it would be helpful to look at what the iPad is actually good at doing — but do note that by using the word ‘good’ I don’t necessarily mean ‘better’ — what’s it’s not so good at, and then see if we can suss out this confusion.

    Best Uses

    Here’s what I find to be the best use cases for the iPad, as it currently functions:

    • Web browsing. Sorry, even with limited access to some sites you just won’t find a better way to browse the web.
    • Gaming. Yes console games are great, PC games are epic, and iPhone games are handy. To me the iPad strikes a great balance and I always find myself fully immersed in a game when I play it on my iPad.
    • Hand written notes. Paper is better, but Paper is pretty sweet. That, and apps like Notability make things a lot easier than taking notes on any other device.
    • Short bursts of computing. If I have to watch my kids I’m not bringing in my laptop out while they are playing. It’s too many interruptions for my laptop to hold up well, but the iPad lives for this type of usage. Grab it for 5 minutes, or 10 seconds, or 10 hours — doesn’t matter — you can easily pick it up and put it down and do what you need, or want, to do.
    • Reading. Your Kindle is great and all, and you can read on the Mac or iPhone, but the iPad is very good for reading too. It’s certainly better than your laptop, possibly your phone depending on where you are.
    • Outlining. I find outlining on a computer to feel silly, after all it doesn’t take much more to write it out since I am already on the computer. But the iPad is well suited for outlining as it’s onscreen keyboard helps to keep outlines short and to the point.
    • Media. You may think the iPad is too heavy to hold to watch a movie, but have you tried holding a laptop or TV to watch a movie? And your iPhone is super light, but also tiny.

    With the exception of maybe two of the above ((Outlining and web browsing.)) , people have historically bought specially made tools to do just one of the things on the lists above. The iPad packages them all up, and cumulatively at a cheaper price. It’s no slouch.

    I’m reminded of this from Ricardo Mori:

    That what the iPad does better is exactly the fact that it can do many things well. The iPad, for me, shines exactly because of the staggering amount of things it does well — there is no other tablet capable of doing something like this. You may say that this or that other tablet are better than the iPad at performing certain tasks, but they lack the iPad’s overall versatility.

    Worst Uses

    Now, it’s not all good. There are a great many things that iPad does not (yet) do very well:

    • Spreadsheets. I don’t even bother. It’s fine to view them, but shit to make a high quality spreadsheet on the iPad.
    • Writing is unless you attach a real keyboard. I love the onscreen keyboard, but even I don’t love to write long form on it.
    • Page layout. lol
    • Coding. LOL
    • Sharing files. I loathe having to send something to someone from my iPad. “Send me that PDF.” Trying 5 apps later I found it and sent it, what a pain.
    • Working with reference material is too big a chore on a single app display device.

    There are a lot more options you can add to either list, but those are the rudimentary things which people like to note about the iPad.

    So is it a failure?

    The truth is no one knows yet, but moreover you must define failure. Failure to make money for Apple? Surely not. Failure to rid the world of PCs? Absolutely. Failure to cure world hunger? Miserable failure.

    I counter such notions of the iPad being a failure with a series of questions:

    • Does a Camry fail because it is not a Ferrari?
    • Does a Ferrari fail because it is not a Jeep?
    • Does a MacBook Air fail because it is not a Mac Pro?

    Of course not.

    The only people truly disappointed with the iPad right now is Wall Street, because Wall Street is stupid. Wall Street lives and breathes on bullet points and future potential. How well is the iPad fighting the bullet point war? Not well, but only because Apple doesn’t care to fight that war.

    And because the iPad doesn’t fair well when compared on bullet points alone — and doesn’t care to fair well — Wall Street just doesn’t get iPads. And when you think you are the smartest people in the room (the room being Wall Street and the people being ‘analysts’) and you come across something you don’t understand, you naturally believe it is because there is nothing to understand — and therefore it will soon die. ((Also there’s the very plausible argument that iPad upgrade cycles are far longer than that of iPhones. Which, come to think of it, is all I should have written for this post.))