The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Fred Wilson’s New Nexus 7″

    Fred Wilson posted some early thoughts about the Nexus 7 tablet on his blog this morning ((Including a picture of his foot.)) and the thoughts are really interesting to me. Coming from a diehard iPad lover, this type of a post really amuses me. While Wilson seems to really like the Nexus 7, a lot of the things he talks about seem like a joke that they are just now available.

    He states:

    >There is also something very comforting about getting a clean build of the most recent version of Android on a device.

    Think about that for a moment. Wilson is all about Android and just now, in July of 2012, is he getting an Android tablet with a “clean build”. Amazing. What does this remind you of? Perhaps Windows and all the preload crap that used to come with it from HP, Dell, Sony, et al…

    Two other things I want to point out.

    1. Wilson said he put some of his favorite apps on the home screen. What strikes me about this is that there aren’t that many apps on his home screen and a couple of his most favorite aren’t even available on this device. That’s one area where Apple is just destroying Android: all apps available on all devices with the only distinction being between iPhone and iPad. That’s phenomenally powerful and easy for iOS users. What is also striking to me is that the apps he chose are honestly pretty ugly UIs from what I have seen of them — of course I will know more when I get my Nexus 7.
    2. Wilson states that he really likes the Nexus 7, that his primary use case is reading in the Kindle app. Before he said all that though, he talks about how much better the Kindle app is on the Kindle Fire. I get that the Fire is a pretty shitty tablet, but if you really are primarily using it for reading, I have to believe it would be better than the Nexus 7 based solely on what Wilson is saying about the Kindle app on the Nexus.

    Again, take this with a grain of salt since I haven’t used a Nexus 7, but it’s kind of like when Apple made the transition from PowerPC to Intel and boasted how Macs are *so* much faster now and all the Windows geeks laughed at Apple nerds — because they had that speed all along. Kind of like that, except that Android isn’t even close to on par with iOS on tablets yet.

  • Ultimate Fireworks Fails

    Happy fourth, good luck not making this video next year.

  • Uber Plans a Cheaper Service

    I’ve only used Uber once, in San Francisco, but it was a great experience. What made it great however was not the car, what makes Uber great (to me) is two things:

    1. Hailing a cab to you, via an app before you step outside.
    2. Never having to open your wallet to pay for the ride: get in, get out.

    Those two points are what make your standard cab more of a hassle. So I am all for a cheaper option. I don’t know if Seattle has the hybrids yet, but I did get an email saying that the SUVs are available. I sincerely hope that Uber forces cab companies to be less of a pain in the ass.

  • Thinking Backwards

    Christopher Mims talking about the flaws of tablets, ends with this wish(?) for the future:
    >We’re going to get something vivid and dynamic and flexible and light enough to be a credible replacement for print, and at the same time it might also supplant even more of the tasks we currently perform on both our PCs and our smartphones.

    Mims is missing the point when he says: “credible replacement for print”. That exact line of thinking is why magazines are *not* thriving on the iPad. So let me lay this out as clearly as I can:

    We do not need, and should not want, to replace print with digital.

    We need, and should want, to find a way to make print irrelevant.

    This goes for more than magazines, because PDFs have long been the de facto standard of paper replacement on the computer — and frankly PDFs suck. It’s a very bad idea to get pigeonholed into thinking that we need to replace X with X and that we can do so on a one-to-one basis. We need to rethink these mediums. We need to get out of the box and realize that it is not just that we need to replace print, but that we need to rethink the very concept of a magazine.

    What would you rather have: a digital replica of a magazine — perfect replica — or would you rather have a completely new concept of what a magazine is. For me my magazine is Instapaper — and it’s the best one I have ever had.

  • Sunstroke – a Fever Reader for iPhone

    Over the weekend the developer behind Sunstroke reached out and shared this app with me — I hadn’t heard of it before. I promptly purchased the app ((New TBR rule: I don’t accept promo codes any longer.)) and have been using Sunstroke as my RSS reader on my iPhone since then. Fast forward to today and Sunstroke is still being used over Reeder.

    I am 100% on Fever° as my RSS reading engine, and while Reeder supports Fever° — well it supports Fever° in a very Reeder like way. Meaning you aren’t really supposed to know what engine you are using when you use Reeder — which is fine.

    Sunstroke though is very much a Fever° client and I like that. Two things really stand out to me about Sunstroke:

    1. The hot list implementation is really great.
    2. The client marks items as read as you scroll past them — something that I would have to do with a gesture in Reeder. This feature alone makes it worth it.

    Of course not everything is roses. Sunstroke is not nearly as pretty as Reeder. The single item view is rough looking. Most of the mechanics are shared with Reeder: such as swiping left or right to perform a sharing action. Sunstroke is also much faster at syncing with Fever° for me — no really fast in comparison.

    Gun to my head, I don’t think I would recommend this over Reeder to many people right now, but I truly believe it is a solid offering and with a little design help it could be a better Fever° client than Reeder.

    #### Further Reading

    See also: [Viticci’s review](http://www.macstories.net/reviews/sunstroke-a-solid-fever-client-for-iphone/).

  • Replying to App Store Reviews

    An exceedingly smart piece from Matt Gemmell on why publicly replying to app reviews is probably not the best idea for developers. I’m not a developer, so I can’t comment directly on this, but the comments for The B&B Podcast are not only massively inaccurate, but down right rude at times.

    Now, I love the reviews that are rude because they crack me up, but they mostly don’t bug me because that podcast is *not* my livelihood. If it was — I’d be pissed that I couldn’t defend myself.

  • RIM’s Treatment Programs

    The Macalope on possible treatments for RIM:
    >It’s quite possible their condition is terminal.

    RIM really does align well with a person who knew they could get ill if they just stood still, possibly terminally ill, but decided to ignore that fact until it got to the point when they could no longer ignore it — because they are now terminally ill. I still think you can feel bad when it happens to someone, but it’s a different kind of feeling bad.

    RIM didn’t get to where it is today because the market shifted — no RIM is where they are today because they ignored the fact that the market shifted. Big difference.

  • Reeder for Mac Update with Retina Graphics

    Something tells me that this is going to be my favorite item in app change logs for the next few months.

  • ‘What’s Next for RIM?’

    Jean-Louis Gassée lays out some options that RIM has left, but it seems to me like every option they have falls into one of two categories:

    1. Futile.
    2. Already shot down by their CEO.

    I think we are likely to seen an acquisition from a larger company, one that hopes to get a foothold in the all too “important” enterprise business. The real question is whether or not RIM has a commanding share of that market anymore.

    I have no doubt that RIM still has a commanding share based on usage, but what about mindshare? How many corporate C-level executives are clamoring to get the latest RIM devices? Now compare that to how many are forcing their companies to support iOS. Not even close.

    A year ago is when RIM should have been acquired, but a year ago is also when RIM was still vastly delusional about their future. Reality is setting in, and the truth of the matter is that it may be too late for RIM to do anything with the company. A slow, quiet, death maybe the best RIM can hope for.

    By the time BB10 launches it won’t matter. Forget about BB10 competing with iOS or Android — it will first have to compete with Windows Phone 8, which will be making a major play for corporate love — backed by Microsoft money, Windows, and Exchange.

    Even at that Microsoft may be too late and they are far closer than BB10.

  • ‘The Camera You Have with You’

    Marco Arment:

    >Because as fun as it is to share iPhone photos conveniently on Instagram, that can’t be my only photography: I also need some photos that won’t look like shit when I look back on them in the future.

    That’s another reason I bought the [GX1](https://brooksreview.net/2012/03/gx1/), and those photos look great on the retina screens. My wife and I both reach for the GX1 so much that we need another one — because I always want to take it with me.

    The days I do end up taking the GX1 with me are the days when we are stuck with mostly unuseable images of our daughter. Retina screens aren’t the only reason, part of it is just the fact the iPhone pictures are always too grainy for my taste.

  • The Doxie Go

    I want to thank Apparent for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote the new and improved Doxie Go. I love the Doxie Go and after seeing what they announced, Doxie sent over one of the new cases for the Doxie Go for me to check out.

    Here’s what it looks like:


    It’s a pretty damned nice case if I do say so myself.

    The Doxie Go really does make the perfect little scanner to have kicking around your desk for those times when someone prints something out to hand to you.

  • Amazon Item of the Week: SanDisk ImageMate All-in-One USB 3.0 Reader/Writer

    I’m busy updating all my gear to USB 3.0 where I can — surprisingly, or not — some of the USB 3 gear isn’t great. I found this card reader though and there’s a few things I like about it:

    1. It’s by Sandisk and I’ve had this model (though non-USB 3) before and it still works great.
    2. It’s compact.
    3. It’s white and that means it comes with a white USB 3 cable, which I have yet to find sold by themselves.

    Nice buy.

  • How to Ensure Failure

    Just follow RIM’s lead:

    – Delay your next OS and next-gen devices — the only hope you have at competing and thus making money.
    – Announce massive drops in revenue and profit.
    – Lay off the 5,000 people that you will need in order to not let the next- gen device and OS slip even further into the future.

    I am beginning to wonder if RIM has just given up…

  • The B&B Podcast #67: Sweaty & Uncomposed

    A great show this week for you while Shawn is on vacation I had John Moltz fill in for him. John and I discuss all things Google and Microsoft — talking about tablets, phones, and corporate adoption. We both share our secret hope that this is a turning point for Microsoft.

  • ‘8 Reasons Why Mimi Would Dump Steve Ballmer’

    Keith Fitz-Gerald’s reason number 5:
    >Microsoft spent $26 billion on research over the last three years. Meanwhile, Apple spent $5.54 billion and managed to crank out products light years better than anything Microsoft has come up with. No question which group of shareholders is getting the most bang for the buck.

    Great list of reasons. I am a bit more rosy in my Microsoft outlook right now, but I still think Ballmer should have been gone more than 2 years ago.

  • ‘Google-Ocracy’

    The Macdrifter doesn’t (wholly) agree with my assessment that Google’s selling of tablets for cost is a bone headed move, saying:

    >Build a logical model of how you make decisions and sell ads to leverage that model. It’s simple and lucrative.

    Except that it is short-sighted. Because showing someone an ad doesn’t make the ad effective — what makes the ad effective is showing someone an ad for something they are preparing to buy at just that moment. That’s why ads on Google Search work really well, and the AdSense ads on the sides of crappy blogs make the site owners no money.

  • Today in TSA Failings

    It must be my lucky day, because man does the TSA want to be made fun of today. First let’s start with this gem out of JFK, [from the NY Post](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/unplugged_tsa_airhead_triggers_jfk_kKxMANCPErCWn6KLfDbbVI):

    >The TSA’s bungling reached a new low yesterday when a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector had been unplugged, sources told The Post.

    Yep, TSA forgot to plug in the machine, which is pretty bad. BUT, this story gets better:

    >Amazingly, he failed to realize that alert lights never flashed once as streams of passengers filed through the dead detector, the sources said.

    >Majed was so clueless that he couldn’t even tell police how long the machine had been shut off or how it happened, the sources said.

    I guess if you mess up that bad, there’s no point in even trying to pretend that you did you job. Now, one would think, that the TSA would fire this person and apologize to the, umm, world. Nope, not the case with the TSA who stated:

    >The TSA would not confirm or deny that its detector had been unplugged, releasing a statement saying only that a metal detector suffered a “malfunction.”

    Would have been better if they had said the screener suffered the malfunction.

    Though, not to be out done, Newark wants you to know that even when their equipment is plugged in — well they [aren’t paying attention to it](http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/8_newark_airport_screeners_fir.html):

    >The TSA said investigators are also looking into photographs of screening supervisors who appear to be sleeping in front of monitors used for detecting bombs and other threats in checked bags about to be loaded onto planes.

    The TSA has already fired 8 screeners for sleeping on the job in Newark, so at least the TSA has fired some screeners — which is news to me.

  • AnandTech Looks at the Nexus 7

    Looks like solid hardware when compared to the Kindle Fire, I ordered one last night to check it out. This will be the third 7″ Android tablet I have used, and I am not going to lie when I say that the addition of an Android Instapaper app is probably going to be the biggest improvement — something Google didn’t have a hand in.

  • NetSpot: WiFi Survey & Wireless Scanner

    New-to-me free little Mac utility will map the WiFi coverage in your home/office. It’s pretty neat too and easy to use: you just walk from place to place in your home, with your laptop, stopping to tap where you are on the map. From there the software scans all wireless networks available and notes the connection strength. You can then visualize that data on a network by network basis.

    Perfect for deciding if you should add in one of those hot new Airport Express stations, or if you just should move your Time Capsule out of that cabinet you keep it in. ((I really need to move it out of that cabinet…))

  • ‘What Happened to the Android Update Alliance?’

    Andrew Cunningham:
    >While it looks to be a solid update to last year’s Ice Cream Sandwich, there’s a big question that always looms large over the announcement of any new Android version: these features look nice and all, but will my device ever be upgraded?

    Here I am — [practically begging Apple to stop updating old crappy hardware](https://brooksreview.net/2012/06/legacy/). Man, I’m a dick.