The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Twitter’s API Changes

    *(I am pushing this past the paywall, because I believe this to be one of the bigger news items we will see for a while and thus very important.)*

    The changes Twitter made to their API ([as broken down in this post by Marco Arment](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/16/twitter-api-changes)) are both predictable, significant, and dumb-foundingly stupid.

    Essentially, Twitter is making it so that it is nearly impossible to do anything with their service — including make Twitter apps — that Twitter doesn’t like or approve of. If Marco’s reading is correct, it further takes action against any site that doesn’t want to use the native Twitter embed when quoting a Tweet, which is pathetic.

    I’ve worked all my “I told you sos” out on Twitter — I’d link to them but that would mean using their embed code which includes tracking bullshit that I don’t want to subject my readers to, so you’ll have to take my word for it — so now we need to talk about the future of Twitter.

    The changes Twitter just announced remind me very much that Twitter has some massive problems, both at a service, and at a corporate level.

    1. Twitter has stopped caring about the users that made the service popular, and started only to care about the users that can draw in more users.
    2. Twitter has sold out. They not only don’t care about the original users, but they don’t even seem to care much for the current users — there’s a very real sense that Twitter needs to make money, and they need to make that money yesterday.
    3. The people that really cared have moved on — either to new companies (Square and Medium) or simply moved on to something else.

    We like to make analogies to Apple in tech blogging circles, so here goes: this is the moment in Twitter’s life where they kicked Steve Jobs out of the company and told Sculley to run it.

    Facebook works because Zuckerberg has always been in charge and never pretended to care about user privacy — that allows him to do whatever the hell he wants and users always swallow it. This doesn’t work with Twitter because Twitter’s main features were usually built by its main users, and now Twitter bitch-slapped those users that got the company off the ground.

    Those features:

    – Official Twitter iOS app started as a third-party app. In the same vein of those that Twitter now wants to kill.
    – The now well known @reply that not only is prevalent on Twitter, but the generally accepted across the web, [not invented by Twitter](http://log.maniacalrage.net/post/26935842947/the-real-history-of-the-reply-on-twitter).
    – Oh and those Twitter hashtags that, funny enough, Twitter is now using to monetize Twitter with? [Again, not invented by Twitter](http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/).

    I could go on, but you get the point. Twitter was built as a community with users trying to improve the service the best they could for everyone’s benefit — and that is now gone. Chuck Skoda (on Twitter, so no link, [instead just subscribe to his blog, it’s great](http://chuckskoda.com/)) commented that he can’t remember the last time Twitter innovated — no one can — because the company has only been focused on two things for the last year:

    1. Big media partnerships.
    2. Making money.

    Wait, that actually is just *one* thing.

    When you are focused on just making money you not only end up screwing people over, but you end up gutting your service. Twitter is gutting the soul from itself and that makes me sad.

    I loved Twitter.

    I hope that App.net can replace Twitter, because [I need a place to post stuff like this](https://alpha.app.net/benbrooks/post/77250):

    >All Twitter will be in a few months is Spammers, people following Bieber, and Kardashians. Yuck.

    If you like Twitter just the way it is today, you’re in luck, because that’s likely to be the norm from here on out — assuming that is that you don’t use a non-official Twitter client. If you loved the way Twitter was a year or two ago, you’re in luck, [that’s what App.net is *right now*](https://alpha.app.net/benbrooks).

    Change happens, but the mistake made with Twitter is that we, as users, thought we had a say and thought Twitter had our backs. At least with Apple, we know we don’t have a say.

  • Quote of the Day: John Gruber

    “So Klout, which is utter vainglorious masturbatory nonsense, that’s OK.”

  • Shared Data Is No Bargain

  • Adobe Flash Player Exits Android Google Play Store

  • Sorry, an iPad Mini Without a Bezel Just Doesn’t Fit

  • The Stench

    Jim Dalrymple on the Apple retail cuts:
    >This has the stench of a man looking to make a name for himself, not someone that’s doing what’s best for Apple or more importantly, its customers. To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes an Apple store what it is, just doesn’t make sense.

    I’m not to shocked that Browett tried to make a power play at Apple — there are no doubt holes that need to be filled and greedy bastards that want to fill them at all costs. The two things that I find most intriguing about this, are also most concerning in a more general sense.

    1. First, how did Cook let this happen. Cook, as CEO, should have been in on any such decision — further Cook should have just as much awareness that this was a bad idea, given that he was trained by Jobs and saw first hand how powerful the retail stores are and how they gained such power.
    2. It’s one thing to read that Browett ignored his entire staff, and another thing to think that (if Cook knew about this) Cook ignored the entire retail staff suggestions.

    In my mind Tim Cook needs to be taken to task over this. He’s damned if he knew and damned if he didn’t. Cook shouldn’t be fired (far from it), Browett should be ((He should be fired not because of one bad decision, but for showing a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes Apple retail so great. Also for completely ignoring a team of people that built the best retail operation on the planet.)) , but Cook needs to insert himself in every facet of the business. This is something that Jobs did and I worry that this is something that Cook isn’t used to doing. There’s people to be trusted, like Ive, but even with Ive, Cook should be reviewing designs with him — after all Cook is CEO.

  • ‘Penny Arcade Sells Out’

    As you probably heard, Penny Arcade started a KickStarter to help fund the site by bringing back and adding new features while removing ads, but what you probably don’t know is that I seriously considered this route (for this site) before I launched the paywall. I was essentially going to start a campaign to fund this site, ad free with perks, for an entire year of my full time writing.

    However, two things held me back:

    1. I believed such a campaign to be against the ToS for a KickStarter campaign — Penny Arcade proves me wrong there.
    2. I didn’t think it would be successful given the size of this site — and seeing how Penny Arcade struggled to get to $500k, I think I was right (I would have needed over $100k).
    3. Future revenue.

    What’s interesting to me is just how many people were willing to pay Penny Arcade to essentially do, well, nothing.

    [As Marco Arment notes](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/15/penny-arcade-kickstarter-ends):

    >Most of the original-content goals were not reached, and they’ll have ads on other pages on the site, just not the front page.

    I really feel like this type of a KickStarter should not have been allowed. This is a “fund my life” type of campaign and if you don’t think that, at the very least you have to agree that it is very much a “start a new business campaign” — both not in compliance with KickStarter, but again they let it through so oh well.

    (What’s funny is that almost every KickStarter campaign is a “start a new business” campaign even though that is prohibited.)

    Honestly I don’t think this should have been allowed because backers get next to nothing for their money — I am strongly in the camp that it should have been all or nothing: remove all ads, or none. This “remove ads on the homepage” is deceptive, and I bet a lot of backers didn’t know it was only for the homepage.

    Beyond all that, though, what the hell happens next year?

    That’s the third reason I held back from KickStarting this site — what happens when the money is gone and I need to find someway to make money again? Penny Arcade will have to either run another campaign in a year, or they will have to put the ads back. If I was a backer that would piss me off. Which is exactly why I avoided such a scenario on this site. I had planned to say that with every ~$100k above the funding goal, I would write the site full-time for another year.

    However, if you consider that I had roughly 8,300 RSS subscribers at the time, to fund the site for two years would have meant that every subscriber would have needed to back the site at a price of at least $25 — that’s without getting any extra perks. That’s highly unlikely to happen for a site like mine — this isn’t a complaint, but I share this data as an eye opener of what things really cost.

    The Penny Arcade campaign feels to me like a bad solution to a tough problem. I have no doubt that Penny Arcade has the best intentions, but I also have no doubt that there are going to be a lot of disappointed backers — now and a year from now.

  • United Airlines Lost My Friend’s 10 Year Old Daughter and Didn’t Care

  • ‘Welcome to the New Internet’

    John Herman commenting on new content platforms like Svbtle, Branch, Medium, and App.net thinks that these service are out to *fix* the Internet. Herman:
    >So this is one, if not the, vision for the future of the internet, and a lot of people are dedicated to making it catch on. It’s an internet where every blog is Daring Fireball, where every post looks like Instapaper, where every discussion is led by its rightful leaders, and where ads are considered no better than spam. It’s barren but design-forward, and, at least at the moment, kind of elitist. It’s not clear how it’ll make money. Maybe it won’t! Maybe that’s part of the idea.

    I like every word I hear in that passage. I also think it is pretty damn clear how these sites will make money, by being user supported. It seems to me that Herman has pointed out the most powerful trend on the web right now: ads are evil.

    This is more than just being about blogging too — ads are easy to strip out of blogs and newspaper websites. Step back and think about what such an anti-ad movement means to, oh let’s say, Google. That’s not only a direct threat to ads on Google.com properties, but it’s a direct threat to Android’s developers — many of whom rely heavily on ads. It’s a direct threat to iOS apps too.

    In all the sites mentioned above I see a few common themes, themes that give me great hope for change:

    1. Content is being created by users, not “curated” or some other bullshit.
    2. Ads are seen as not only in poor taste, but seem morally evil to many of the services.
    3. Each are being championed and pushed forward by some of the “tech elite.”

    You can disagree with whether or not these services will succeed — they have an uphill battle — but I think it is pretty hard to argue that they don’t encompass the wishes and ideas of many of the top content providers on the web today.

    And I think that gives all of those services a fighting chance.

  • App.net Usernames

  • An iPad Air

  • Thinking This iPad Mini Thing Even Througher

  • Quote of the Day: Chris Sauve

    “So, my challenge to others would be to stop, think, and make something for the future.”

  • Kickstarter’s Spam Problem

  • Dark Sky Version 2.0

  • Retina Font Choices

    [A really interesting article, and quasi-review, of the retina MacBook Pro from John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/2012/08/pixel_perfect). In it he dives into why (to his eye and mine) text looks so much better on the retina MacBook Pro than it does on the retina iOS screens — especially given the fact that the retina MacBook Pro has a lower PPI count than its iOS counterparts.

    Gruber also brings up an interesting point about font choices, saying:

    >Regarding font choices, you not only need not choose a font optimized for rendering on screen, but should not. Fonts optimized for screen rendering look cheap on the retina MacBook Pro — sometimes downright cheesy — in the same way they do when printed in a glossy magazine.

    The font I use on this site is FF Meta Web, it has been designed to be used on the web, which means it has been optimized for screen rendering. I personally don’t think it looks “cheap,” but I agree that many fonts (like Lucida Grande) do look rather cheap on such a display.

    More interesting is that during a font change on this site a couple weeks ago, I was toying with a lighter font weight to better accommodate retina displays. What [I found in my testing](http://dev.brooksreview.net/blog/2012/07/the-review-of-the-font-choices/) was that the lighter font weight looked perfect on the iPad (3), difficult to read on the iPhone 4S, nice on non-retina screens, and decent but not highly-comfortable on the retina MacBook Pro.

    It was because of this testing that I only use the lighter weights in navigation menus and block quotes. It is also because of the retina MacBook Pro, that for the first time since switching to FF Meta Web, I am thinking about moving to a new font.

    The problem though: *what font?*

    I need a font that simultaneously looks great on non-retina screens, on retina iOS screens, and on retina Mac screens — and I really don’t think such a font exists. So, for as much as I am against “mobile versions” of sites, I am beginning to wonder if each device should have a font specifically targeted for that device. Right now I don’t think retina displays are prevalent enough to worry about this, but I doubt that will be true come 2013.

  • Amazon Item of the Week: Sunglasses by American Optics

    Even though I live in the rainy Pacific Northwest I still need to wear sunglasses fairly often. As such I am very sensitive to finding a good pair. The last few sunglasses I have owned have all been Rayban sunglasses and before that Persol.

    While I highly recommend the [Persols](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A1036592%2Cn%3A%211036682%2Cn%3A1040658%2Cp_4%3APersol%2Cn%3A2474937011&bbn=1040658&ie=UTF8&qid=1344970174) — they were simply out of my budget this go around. So I went with some from American Optics, which claim they make the “[original](http://www.aoeyewear.com/index.html)” government issued fighter pilot sunglasses. Let’s face it, Top Gun influences boys that grew up around the time I did.

    I went with the 57mm and the Silver model, and I really like these sunglasses.

    What I like most about them is that they are solidly made — I truly feel like they might even survive being sat on (if left on the car seat). [Be sure to check out AO’s handy guide for choosing the right size for your face](http://www.aoeyewear.com/documents/templeslenses.html), and then [go get a pair](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000XXV7Q0/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20) if they are your style. They are inexpensive and well made.

  • My $4 Worth: The Brooks Review

  • ‘Access All Your iCloud Files From the Finder Sidebar’

    [Since I posted this tip](https://brooksreview.net/2012/08/icloud/), and it has worked its way through the paywall, I have been getting a lot of tips from readers about how to go about adding this folder to the Finder sidebar. The tip I am linking to is one tip I only heard about yesterday, but the tip didn’t work for me.

    Besides it not working for me, the tip really is a messy hack.

    More readers emailed in with a slightly less complicated solution: create an alias to the Mobile Documents folder and add that alias to the sidebar in Finder. That’s pretty good, but I can do you one better.

    Reader Matt H. wrote in with a screenshot of his computer showing the most dumb-foundingly easy solution. Here’s what you do:

    1. [Navigate to the Mobile Documents folder](https://brooksreview.net/2012/08/icloud/) (aka iCloud).
    2. Go to the `File` menu and select the command `Add to Sidebar`.

    You are done. I don’t know why this works and dragging in the folder doesn’t, but I am sure glad it works. Thanks Matt H.

  • Think App.net Is Just a Twitter Clone? Then You’Re Missing the Point