The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • ‘Why Apple Might Be Better Off Losing Its Patent Lawsuit’

    Steve Lohr, reporting on a research note from Steve Milunovich argues that Apple *might* be better off losing its patent battle with Samsung:

    >“It could hurt Apple,” he writes, “because the real threat is not a competitor beating Apple at its own game but instead changing the game.”

    Bullshit.

    Are we to believe that Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, et al. stand any chance at “changing the game”? These are entrenched players that, to this day, still show that they lack a fundamental understanding of why, what Apple is doing, is working.

    The companies don’t get it and that is why they are copying instead of innovating. That will not and cannot change if they are forced to make workarounds. You know what will happen: they *will* make crappy workarounds and not give a crap about user experience — as evidenced by the quality of devices (generally) and crappy skins they apply over Android.

    Look, I’m not saying these companies are incapable of coming up with a few features that are better than what Apple offers, but I *am* saying that Samsung stooped so low as to copy the icons that Apple uses.

    *The* icons.

    I don’t know what logic Milunovich was using, but I bet if Apple outright wins its lawsuit it would be far more crippling to Samsung than it ever will be to Apple.

  • FF Chartwell

    A fantastic new font that allows for chart creation that is dead simple. I purchased the font today and have been having a blast playing around with it — I am not yet sure where and when I will use it, but I do know that it beats the hell out of the crafting charts in Illustrator.

    [via DF]

  • It’s Math

    Professor Pi, answers: “Why time appears to speed up with age (idea)” and concludes:
    >Life is half over at age ten, and three quarters over at age thirty. Note the rapid increase at very young ages: in the initial stages of life, life itself makes big strides forward.

    The math quickly got away from me, but I have always believed time sped up the older I got — this is all the “proof” that I need. Simply the most fascinating thing I have read a quite a while.

    This finally explains why my Grandpa is content — no, perfectly happy — to wait for a product he wants to go on sale even though that wait might be a year or more. Whereas I can’t stand the fact that I still haven’t received Kickstarter projects that I backed just this year.

  • The Most Concerning Thing I Have Read for the Future of Twitter

    Lex Friedman writing for *Macworld*:

    >*Macworld* has spoken with several developers behind third-party Twitter apps—or at least, we’ve tried. Some developers are notably hesitant to speak on the record, lest they incur Twitter’s wrath; the fear seems to be that since Twitter is now exerting more control than ever over access to its API—which developers leverage to make their Twitter apps work—that irking Twitter too much might result in a developer’s API access getting revoked.

    >We also contacted Twitter for this article; the company has not responded.

    I think that passage is incredibly telling and worrisome. Developers don’t want to talk because they fear the wrath of the hand that feeds them — sounds like an oppressive government regime, not a user-friendly internet company.

    Say what you will about Apple randomly killing things, I’ve never seen a developer shy away from writing a damning blog post about Apple for fear they would get shut out of developing for Mac or iOS. Hell it took Gizmodo “stealing” from Apple before they were black-balled. The fact then that, presumably, more than one developer feels that way about Twitter should leave a sour taste in the mouth of every Twitter user.

    The fact that Twitter has not responded to requests for comments is also interesting — while Apple does this, Apple also strategically leaks things to the press — often commenting to The Loop. Twitter seems to just be keeping their mouth shut and part of me thinks that this is because they too are confused by where they are headed.

  • Sticky Notifications for Mac OS X

    A new menubar app from Matt Gemmell that does one thing: creates a sticky Mountain Lion (or Growl) notification of your choosing. Far better than using the Stickies app (if anyone still uses it).

    I doubt I will use it much, but I am sure that when things get really busy it would be a great tool to have to create extremely annoying reminders in the upper right corner of my screen.

    One use case that I am sure it will come in handy for: that 30 minutes before you try to leave your house on a road trip when you are busy trying to get your kid packed up — yeah I can see using this so that I don’t forget to do a couple things before I run out the door.

  • Best Buy Should Buy Consumer Electronic Startups

    Victor Wong:
    >When turnaround plans are discussed for traditional retailers like Best Buy, it’s just shocking to me that no one is talking about actually doing something other than cutting some cost or relabeling UPC products so shopper can’t price compare with Amazon. Best Buy needs to be selling amazing products that no one else has if it ever wants to take back marketshare and actually increase profits.

    Very interesting idea from Wong — and I like how he points out that they could use sites like Kickstarter as the barometer for what is “cool.” I do think this is massively over simplified, because this would also require a fundamental change in culture at Best Buy and even if Best Buy could pull this off they still have other issues that could prevent such a plan from working.

    Not the least of which is terrible employee training.

    My recent Best Buy experience, attempting to buy an AirPrint enable printer that also has a scanner, went like so:

    – Wander aimlessly looking for the model numbers shown on HP’s website that are compatible with AirPrint. The models which I research before coming to the store, knew which I wanted and which I would settle for. (This was for one of my employees, not me.)
    – 10 minutes into my search (actually a record on slowness for being pestered by a Best Buy employee) I am approached.
    – I am asked if I need help, I say yes and tell the employee that I want a printer with AirPrint — and to show me those ones. He points to every printer by HP and says that they all have ePrint.
    – I tell him I don’t care about ePrint, I want AirPrint.
    – He asks what that is.
    – I tell him it allows me to print directly from my iPad.
    – He goes on to say: “That’s what ePrint does, you want any of these. You can even test it if you want.”
    – I give up on educating him, say ok, and he leaves.
    – I continue to wander around looking at model numbers when I hear another employee tell a couple looking for the same thing that the two printers on the end of the aisle are AirPrint enabled.
    – I don’t know the difference between the two on the end — the model numbers don’t match anything on HP’s website and the specification cards are horrible, I am frustrated, and annoyed. I grab the cheaper one, pay, and leave.

    I was prepared to spend more money on a better printer, but Best Buy’s helpers had no clue how to actually listen to what I was saying, and then ask other employees for help when they clearly didn’t understand what I was saying. I left the store never wanting to come back again.

    Now, my experience isn’t that dramatic, and likely hardly the worst experience. But if you are a couple of cool guys making a product for Kickstarter, would you even seriously consider selling out to Best Buy if this was going to be the experience your customers would have buying the product?

    I think not.

  • NextDraft – The Day’s Most Fascinating News

    I’ve been a huge fan of the NextDraft newsletter every since I subscribed. It is a constant source of fascinating news and funny reads — you can almost rely on it to keep you fully up to date on all things interesting.

    Now you can get the NextDraft as an iPhone app and it looks great — very unique. I only have two complaints:

    1. Adding items to Instapaper actually just sends the entire newsletter instead of the link I want — I wish that wasn’t so. Correction: just need to open the link first in the app.
    2. It’s iPhone only and not iPad compatible.

    Great app and a fantastic newsletter, [go get it](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nextdraft-days-most-fascinating/id549358690).

  • Predicting Where You Will Be

    Fascinating research and analysis that allows a prediction — accurate to within 20 meters — of where you will be in 24 hours. This is done by using tracking data on your smartphone and on your contacts smartphones.

    Oddly enough, this doesn’t worry me, as much as it excites me. I really want my phone to know when I will be somewhere, but more than that I want to be able to assign rules to tell it to do things differently when I am somewhere.

    `If at movies, mute all sounds.`

    Doing that by calendar events isn’t practical, but having the phone being able to know where you are is. Taking it one step further:

    `If headed to movies, remind me to call back Derek first.`

    That’s where the power of prediction comes in. My phone knows I am about to do something that would preclude me from doing something else that I have already told my phone is really important for me to do — when such a conflict arises my phone tells me so.

    “Ben, you’ll be at the movies in ten minutes and you really need to call Derek back before then.”

    That would be a killer feature.

  • ‘Google’s Motorola Files New Case Against Apple. Not Clear if It’s Filed Under “Hypocrisy”.’

    MG Siegler calling Google out on their bullshit:
    >Google never uses their patents for offensive purposes. Except when they do.

    >This is the problem with these self-righteous stands. Time ends all promises, eventually. And the result is extreme hypocrisy even though you’re just doing what your rivals are doing.

    It’s not that Google shouldn’t be allowed to file patent suits, it’s that they have vocally been against doing so for anything other than defensive measures — of which this lawsuit is not.

    More interesting to me is what happens if Google successfully gets an import ban on Apple goods — doesn’t that open the door for anti-competitive practices and potentially sour Google in the eyes of every iOS user?

    What if in September Apple takes the stage, announces a new iPhone and iPad — says it is available today — just so long as you aren’t in the U.S., because in the U.S. Google has stopped Apple from being able to sell these devices to you. I can’t see that being a winning scenario for Google at all.

    It’s not likely to happen, but I always wonder with these lawsuits what would happen if people just called each others bluffs. Samsung tells Apple that they drop the suit, or Samsung stops selling Apple anything — how long would it take Apple to replace the parts that Samsung supplies?

    It’s that side of the story that interests me the most.

  • Free Doesn’t Pay the Bills

    This is a sad tale of two developers that released a decent game, after two years of work, for free with in app purchase. They had the game download over 200,000 times and have barely made money.

    This is a good cautionary tale, well the real story, not the story Penny Arcade tries to spin. Every developer should read the story because it teaches one thing: testing is important.

    The two developers had a really noble goal of not creating a greedy IAP, but they seemingly didn’t test the IAP function. Because even people that wanted to unlock the full game with it, couldn’t figure out how (since changed).

    The real tale here should read:

    1. Don’t expect free to pay the bills, even with IAP.
    2. Test out the app and get feedback.
    3. It’s not the amount of downloads or time spent that matters, it’s the amount of paying customers that matter.

    I think they screwed up offering a free game, but not because free with IAP is bad — because free with IAP and no sense of greed is bad. IAP only works if you nag or tell each user about it by locking them out of what they want. Otherwise people will make what they get for free work for them.

    I’m not shocked these guys aren’t making money, but I am shocked that they are surprised by that.

  • DON’T PANIC (WHEREBY I MEAN DON’T STOP BUYING OUR APP)

    Interesting post, well linked to, from Tapbots which makes one of the most nerd-loved Twitter apps: Tweetbot. The post essentially says that every current user of their products will be fine with the Twitter API changes and that they shouldn’t hit a user cap for new users for a few years.

    To me the post is a a whole lot of fluff to try and convince users to not stop buying their apps. And they should post something like that, I would if I was them, but it’s also a bit of bullshit.

    Here’s why: even if they can sustain user growth for three years, the product will effectively become nothing but an expense at that point. Which means Tapbots will either need to close down the app, or find a new way to make money — since they can no longer sell new copies to new users.

    So either the app dies a slow death, or current users get pinched into paying more money.

    If you’re a Tweetbot user, you have to think that those future changes aren’t going to be good. I’m not saying you should stop buying the app, but you’d be foolish to think Tapbots is immune to these changes and you need to keep that in mind.

    Also, the notion that Twitter won’t enforce this against a popular client like Tweetbot is plain naive — Twitter only cares about Twitter.

  • “Balance”

    A Bloomberg news report on AdAge has this quote from NBC Sports Chairman on why airing the Olympics live sucks balls (I assume those are his words):
    >”It’s undeniable we hurt our ratings by doing that,” Mr. Lazarus said in a phone interview. “We have to balance what we’re trying to do for viewers across the country and our business model.”

    Holy crap. What exactly are you *trying* to do for your users? Milk them for more ad views and money? *Crickets*

    The sick thing about cable television is that not only do users have to:

    1. Pay for the service.
    2. Put up with crappy cable companies.
    3. Buy expensive TV hardware.

    But in addition to putting out all those expenses, users also have to watch ads. And if you get around the ads, you must then put up with ridiculously obvious product placement (ever seen a TV show character make a stupid comment about how awesome some lame Toyota is, makes me want to punch something). How is any of this doing anything for users — the entire cable TV industry is user hostile.

    Here’s an idea: let me buy the TV shows a la carte on my Apple TV — the same day the show airs. I pay you for what I want, you get a clear indication of what TV shows are crap, no one pays Comcast.

    Together we rid the world of the Kardashians, commercials, and product placement. Hell we may even make Comcast into a company that realizes their users *are* important ((Yeah, right.)) .

  • 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.

  • ‘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.

  • 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.

  • ‘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.

  • Today Calendar App

    Interesting new calendar app that was inspired by thoughts that have been circling around the web relating to how crappy most calendar apps are. I really like the underlying idea of the app, but I question the execution.

    Mostly the design of the app is just bad, skeuomorphic, and I loathe the font choice. That’s all I have to complain about though, because the rest of the app is pretty nice.

    I won’t pretend I like the design, but I think that it takes the right approach with how it shows calendar data and that might be more important in the end. Regardless of my thoughts on the design I have moved the app to my home screen to give it a real shot at replacing Agenda.

  • IT HASN’T SHIPPED BUT I KNOW IT TO BE GREAT

    Anil Dash, writing for Wired about Microsoft’s Surface tablet and the company in general:
    >If anyone questioned whether Microsoft could get back in the fight once the cuffs finally came off, Surface should put those doubts to rest. The gorgeous PC/tablet hybrid is the only example in recent memory of a company clearly and emphatically going toe to toe with Apple on the industrial design front. The iPad will have to improve. Android tablets will have to improve. Surface isn’t another me-too device—it moves the entire category forward.

    Of course, Dash, you mean: the “only example in recent memory” of a device that has yet to actually *ship*. I’ll give Microsoft credit for announcing the Surface, but Dash is talking like the Surface is a real shipping product that is currently competing with the iPad and yet it’s not.

    Further: “the iPad will have to improve.” Improve what? You can’t just toss a statement like that out there and not explain what the Surface does better — you especially can’t do that when no consumer has even seen a Surface in real life, because, you know, they aren’t shipping.

    It’s important to remember the scrutiny Microsoft has been under, but it’s a massive overstatement to label the Surface as a game changer — long before Microsoft actually ships the Surface and the general consumer gets to touch it.

  • ‘Banking With Simple’

    James Duncan Davidson’s thoughts on Simple jive with mine. I received my account a month ago and while I won’t be switching from USAA right now, I could see that happening in the next year. The UI for the website and iOS app, the card, and the ethos that surrounds the company really appeal to me.

    It’s a bank, so there isn’t much to say, other than this one important thing: it’s a bank that you won’t hate and that in return, doesn’t hate you for being a customer.

    That’s about the most different a new bank can really be at this point and Simple has achieved that thus far.