Category: Member

I’ve got a lot of random things to go over as it relates to apps today.

## iPhone Home Screen Changes

Talking about your iPhone home screen used to be *a thing*, even on this site, but it’s been quite some time since I’ve talked about it. With the iPhone X I originally set up the device with 3 rows of apps and the dock. Recently though I changed that to 5 rows and the dock, or all but one row. I’d do the full screen of icons, but I really can’t figure out which others ones I would possibly want.

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There’s long been a development tool called “Charles” and in simple terms (as I understand it for you readers, not developers) it’s a way to see what you are sending over the network from software projects you are developing. Think of it as a way to debug where the problem lies in a piece of software (am I sending the wrong data, to the wrong place, or everything from the app is fine). Just a bit ago Charles Proxy came out for iOS, and it’s pretty amazing and terrifying at the same time.

What [Charles for iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/charles-proxy/id1134218562?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d) allows you to do is to create a *local* VPN proxy, which sends all your network traffic on your device through the Charles app — thus allowing it to see everything sent, and record that for you. This data doesn’t leave your device, it’s not some remote server providing the logs, it’s all local. This is kind of like running Little Snitch on your Mac, except it’s a log and not a tool you can use to block stuff.

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Some apps are really starting to get good, and the tools are really shining through, let’s take another moment to talk about why *most* people don’t actually need anything more than an iPad Pro.

After all, *what’s a computer?*

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I’ve long been critical of two things: overly long blog posts, and podcasts. I’ve done both, to be clear, but I’ve come to realize that both of these things suffer from one core problem: a distinct lack of care.

> If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
> – [Someone, depending on who you ask](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)

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A popular [post last week](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/two-months-news-newspapers.html) was from Farhad Manjoo, where he talked about his experience only reading newspapers for two months (or [maybe not](https://brooksreview.net/2018/03/farhad-manjoo-didnt-unplug/)). In the article, Manjoo wonders how he can replicate something similar in a digital landscape — and this is more or less what I’ve been doing on my iPad. So let me detail how I got over my “all-the-news–right-now” addiction and moved to something much more manageable and sane.

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Over the past couple of years I’ve been spending more time thinking about the tools I use at a deeper level of detail. One item I’ve been thinking about is watches — in part because of the Apple Watch and looking at how that distorts watches in general, but also because I’ve been generally unhappy with my current slate of watches to wear.

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It’s been a good break a since the last Productivity Report, but I’m back at this week. Taking a look at org charts, hand written note apps, email forward tip, and lastly an app for planning your road trips.

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Last week, Omni Group launched [OmniOutlier 3 for iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnioutliner-3/id1174101450?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d) — something I have long been waiting for. I was on the public-ish beta of the product so I’ve had plenty of time to use it. I am also a diehard OmniOuliner user, as it was the first Mac app I fell in love with. The problem, though, is that with OmniOutliner 3 for iOS — I struggle to speak positively about it.

I thought about linking to it and letting that be that, no comment “hey new shiny” something of that ilk. I thought about writing a long and terrible post about where it misses the mark and how you probably shouldn’t buy it. Then I thought about writing a post about how it’s not really good, but it’s the best of a really poor app category so that by default makes it the best.

And that’s the thing, OmniOutliner on iOS is the best outlining app you can get — by a huge margin. But that doesn’t mean it’s a wonderful app to use — I mean it tries to ignore that iCloud Drive exists.

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Spring is the time of year when many are expecting new iPads to emerge from Apple — likely new revisions to the iPad Pro lineup. Last year we saw the introduction of a new size: the 10.5” iPad Pro, as well as other nice to have features. The big question this year, though, is what Apple might introduce because no matter what Apple does it has to solve a bigger problem: device orientation.

Is the iPad a portrait, or landscape device? It’s clear with the iPhone: portrait. And with the Mac: landscape.

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I’ve been writing this site for long enough now that I’ve seen a few shifts in the blogging community itself. When I started writing here, people were starting to jump on the band wagon of blogging in force. I read a plethora of sites, all publishing nearly daily (like this one), written by people trying to make *it*. Trying to strike out full time with their writing in some way. And all of these sites had the same model: small advertisement from something like Carbon, The Deck, or Fusion and weekly RSS feed sponsorships. This is the ‘Daring Fireball Model’ of monetizing a blog. Hell, even some of them sold t-shirts every year, same as John Gruber.

I used this model too. I made roughly between $400-600 a month from the small ad (I think $600 was the highest I ever got to on that) and charged from $250-$550 per week for RSS Sponsors (near the end I just started cranking up the price to see what the fuck would happen). It took me at least one full day per week to manage all of this. It took away from my writing and my focus. And then in 2012 it started becoming a race to the bottom, because while my site was still seeing large growth, the advertisers were unwilling to pay more, and in fact wanted to pay me *less* for the same.

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When Triple Aught Design previewed the [Context Organizer](https://tripleaughtdesign.com/shop/context-organizer/) on Instagram, I was sold on the fact that I needed to try it. The Context Organizer is part Admin Organizer (a term for those military inspired, MOLLE laden, pouches you see strapped to bags) and part DOPP Kit. What appealed to me was a few things:

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I’ve read no fewer than a dozen articles in the past two months ([example](https://medium.com/personal-growth/smartphones-harm-your-productivity-more-than-you-think-62e105655992), [another](https://apple.news/A4U-BJJSFTgm_kmPR5KUF3w), [another](https://apple.news/AGKmUWwpxP4OUP4__RHH1og), [another](http://www.lifehack.org/656665/external-content-6), [yep](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/), [another](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/01/antisocial-media-why-decided-cut-back-facebook-instagram), and [another](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-addiction-iphone.html)), all on a very similar topic: smartphones are addicting, they are the new smoking, and this is a serious health problem which needs to be addressed. It’s very hard to decouple a few items which I keep seeing, and keep in mind that I know next to nothing about the science and psychology of all of this — but it doesn’t seem the other writers do either, so yeah.

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Two things of note about my kids’ iPad setups…

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For over a year now my go to iPad stand has been the Yohann stands ([reviewed here](https://brooksreview.net/2016/12/yohann-stand/)). They are beautful, and functional. There’s only one flaw with them: they sit the iPad screen very low. On a daily basis when typing this hasn’t been and issue for me as the screens are high enough that I am in no physical pain using them.

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*The membership for 2018 is shifting a bit, to include posts which are not strictly iPad Productivity Reports. There will still be at least one member post per week, however it won’t always be a specific iPad post.*

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was in the market for a new read later app. I have a real need for something more robust than Safari Reading List as it’s proven to be too basic.

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This is going to be the last “report” of the year and I’ll resume on January 1st, 2018 — I want to thank all of your for being a member and reading these weekly reports. This has been a fun challenge to push for this year.

This week I have a smattering of things for you: new site feature, membership update, a look at my morning paper, some thoughts on OLED, my thoughts on iA’s new typeface for writing. Let’s get to it.

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A quick look into how I manage a wishlist for myself, and a not on read later services.

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Circling back to iPad sizes, and an annoyance with Workflow to watch out for.

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This week I look into iPads in classrooms, as well as my own note taking shifts *away* from the iPad, and give a quick nod to a new writing typeface and a new writing theme I am trying.

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