Category: Free

Cerebral Gardens has released Rudoku which is a crazy number game. I’ve been lucky enough to have been playing it, and it is equal parts frustrating and amazing. Frustrating in that you think you are about to win and then — nope.

I love the game and it is well worth your time to check out. It’s fast to learn and anything but mind numbing. It’s one of the few games I keep on my iPhone.

Another great title from a co-worker. Go get it.

Samantha Bielefeld:

The issue isn’t that Marco is successful, there are many app developers who would love to be in the same position. He has earned his time in the spotlight, and it’s only natural for him to take advantage of it. Though to state that anyone can simply do the same thing and be successful, is just plain wrong.

Some great points in here, something about Overcast’s new pricing model has felt off with me since I read about it. I think a lot of it is encapsulated in Bielefeld’s post.

Launching apps, even if you have a name, is incredibly hard. What helps Arment is not so much that he can get the press coverage, but that his core audience is larger than most people’s. And it is that core audience which will spend money on whatever you do.

(BTW, if you aren’t reading Bielefeld’s blog, there’s no better time to start.)

UPDATE 11-25-15: While I think this linked post still makes very solid points, I can no longer in good conscience recommend reading the original source content’s author.

For posterity the original link point to: http://samanthabielefeld.com/journal/the-elephant-in-the-room

I used to keep a page on this site to sell this stuff, but I really wanted a better storefront for it. So, of course I had to get a new domain. I am super proud of the domain.

A few items on there now, more to be added later this week.

Mitchel Broussard:

The takeaway from Morrison and Evans’ videos today seems to be that while intense cases like synthetic Geekbench tests designed to push devices to their limits revealed as high as a 22% difference in battery life between devices using the two chips, real-world impacts may be much smaller depending on the mix of activities. In these specific usage patterns shown above, battery life differences between the two processors ranged from 6% to 11%.

Still glad I have the TSMC chip. Wonder if this is the nail in the coffin for Samsung making AX series chips for Apple.

Really misleading title, as the difference appears to mostly be about battery life. Now Engadget is claiming huge differences of up to 2 hours better performance with the TSMC chip phones, but speed differences are unknown. Interesting stuff.

Update: I didn’t realize at the time of posting that this was a user submitted post. Most of the data here is from Reddit. While not the best source, there does seem to be some anecdotal evidence to support the claim. This is going to be interesting as people test it more.

Adamant has come out for Safari 9 (this might be El Capitan only, not sure). It works just like its iOS counterpart: set it and forget it. No clutter in the toolbar like you get with Ghostery. Very cool.

Updated my content blocker test with Adblock Plus (slow) and Blockr 1.0.1 (much improved). Also updated the data savings post.

John Gruber, commenting on a New York Times post about content blocking:

If you want to block all advertising, I don’t understand you, but I won’t argue with you either. No one’s going to stop you. But most people just want to block garbage — privacy-invasive trackers, JavaScript that slows our devices and drains our batteries, obtrusive ads that cover the content we’re trying to read.

Gruber has been very clear that he thinks it is wrong and almost illogical to block ads from The Deck. All I have to say is that Gruber’s site is very fast, loading on average in about 2.3 seconds or faster for me on iOS 9.

However, with content blocking turned on his site will load almost a full second faster, with three content blockers loading it that full second faster. So yes, Deck ads are nice, but even a very fast site can be much faster.

Note: I just completed speed testing all content blockers available for iOS to determine which is the best. *Daring Fireball was among my test sites. The article about my testing may, or may not, be behind the paywall when you see this post.*

Now that Peace is gone, Adamant should be the go to option for you.

Glenn Greenwald:

But perhaps the worst of all harms is how endless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it. You can’t have a government that has spent decades waging various forms of war against predominantly Muslim countries — bombing seven of them in the last six years alone — and then act surprised when a Muslim 14-year-old triggers vindictive fear and persecution because he makes a clock for school. That’s no more surprising than watching carrots sprout after you plant carrot seeds in fertile ground and then carefully water them. It’s natural and inevitable, not surprising or at all difficult to understand.

Good list, I will also add that the traffic notifications during navigation is awesome. I also get push notifications if traffic is bad when I have travel time based reminders turned on for Calendar entries. Neat stuff.

David Sparks:

Here are some words I thought I’d never write: One of the stars of the new iOS is the Notes app. I’d written the Notes app off entirely years ago. (Remember Marker Felt?) The new version is really impressive.

Love the new Notes app, all I use these days.

I’ve been testing Adamant and you notice the speed gain from running a content blocker right away — it’s awesome. But more amazing is how fast you get spoiled by a content blocker.

I can’t wait for Adamant to come out so I can put it on every device in my family.

I buy every new version of Acorn, because it is awesome.

After quitting Instagram when Facebook purchased the service, I have now rejoined with a new account. I have two thoughts to share today:

1. A large motivation is to support my wife and view her work on the service.
2. I think Instagram is likely a better network than Twitter. Meaning it is of more value to me.

I'll write more about this later, but hey: go follow me.

Jonathan Poritsky:

I understand Marco’s dilemma. He’s opinionated and loves blogging. But he sometimes acts oblivious to his standing in the tech community. His success has bred him an audience; his words hold more weight because of his status. I have trouble believing he didn’t know there would be an “Influential iOS developer Marco Arment says…” narrative thread others would pick up on from his post.

I love this entire post, really well said. Same thoughts I have been having lately.

Karol Muñoz:

Just as always, we value tangible objects more than files in a computer. There is a disconnect between our most precious objects and the images, songs, videos and stories that make those objects so special. Our favorite story from the research came from a woman who had lost her father a year before. Her husband wanted a way to gift her father’s last voicemail but couldn’t find a beautiful way to do this. Luma Legacy could have helped him put this file in a beautiful object to be experienced in a manner that honors it’s sentiment.

There are very few, a select few, people that put up with me. One of them is Stephen Hackett — and truthfully he is a great guy. He’s decided to go full time with his site and Relay FM.

He’s started a T-Shirt drive because THAT IS WHAT YOU DO. Anyways, go buy a bunch and support the most authoritative source on the web for old Mac support. ((Sorry Brand, you win for Newtons though.))

A neat little app was just release from Cosmic Owl called Nox. This app can send you a notification for sunrise and sunset. I loved using it while we were at Disney to know when the sun would set — typically I had the app remind me 15 minutes before sunset.

It gave me a good sense of when I would be slightly less sweaty.

Handy.