Category: Links

Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.

This is really fucked up.

What if the reason Macs are so stale, is because they are about to jump from Intel chips to A-Series chips? For starters, I’d buy one.

Since I picked up the Outlier Futureworks they have quickly become not only my favorite pants, but my most worn pants. I’ve been yearning to get another pair of Outlier pants, either Slim Dungarees or the OG Classics. But I have been held back for some reason on both. Outlier just launched the Strongworks, which are cut similar to the Futureworks, but in a heavier and more rugged fabric.

I picked them up and have only had them two days, but these are great. I can see wearing these a lot already.

David Chartier on dropping Dropbox:

Others who have made this transition told me there’s a noticeable performance boost to be had by uninstalling Dropbox from a Mac, which I just did yesterday. They weren’t kidding.

Dropbox has gone from an amazing service to a mess of a feature. iCloud Drive is simply a lot better.

The new pricing model is free with an unlock for pro-type features:

In short, even after the trial expires, the app will continue to offer all of its features, except for Sync, Backups and Alert Notifications (i.e. turn into a dumb, but useful to do list). In order to enable those, the user could upgrade to the full version by paying once.

This is a good read which goes over the trade offs of all the models. I loathe the idea of all my apps being monthly subscriptions, but would be all for yearly subscriptions. $1-2 apps have always done well initially and I had always hoped a market could be sustainable with yearly $1-2 subscriptions instead of monthly.

Basically:

So while Trump made money at every turn, the banks that lent him money, the workers and small businesses who delivered for Trump, and the investors in his casino company all got stiffed. And while they paid taxes on whatever income they did manage to collect, Trump enjoyed at least $916 million of tax-free income.

Insanely savvy management of his wealth, but also shows a pure lack of concern for anyone that is not him.

Steven Sinofsky looking at the iPhone 7 and the Depth Effect:

Each of these innovations in tools is creating a new form of imaging. These are not just “features” but we are slowly observing a paradigm shift. When you consider this, the iPhone 7 camera is not just “cool photo blur feature” but the start of a new paradigm where a new type of image is defined. If you think back, there was a time before the “norm” seen in images today. That norm was defined by the constraint of the tool (and physics).

He has some stellar examples of the Bokeh achieved from high end lenses. I had never seen the disc style Bokeh before from a mirror lens, but thought it was on point to show how that was highly popular when it came out, and is now see as a defect.

Yes, the iPhone doesn’t do bokeh, but that’s not the point. The point of the iPhone 7 Plus Depth Effect is not to mimic a high end lens, but rather to give you a “better” portrait. With that in mind, I don’t see how the feature is anything but a success.

Manton Reece:

With the right apps and workflows, it’s a fun computer to work on. I didn’t miss my Mac while traveling last week, and I expect iOS to serve me well on future trips.

Only a matter of time before everyone slowly moves to iOS, and I don’t think it’ll be a conscious decision for most. Just something that happens naturally over time.

Such a great post:

See, our eyes actually have very deep focus, but our brains and our hearts fire at ƒ/0.95.

This post is being shared everywhere, and it deserves it.

John Voorhees:

Nebo’s Ink handwriting recognition system is the standout feature of the app. Its accuracy is truly astounding given that it doesn’t require you to alter your handwriting. In fact, in the example notebook/user guide that comes with the app, most of the handwriting is written in cursive. I don’t write in cursive, but over the years my handwriting has evolved to where certain letter combinations run together. Even when I wrote in a deliberately sloppy way, I had a hard time fooling Nebo.

A while back when I talked about making notes apps smarter, this is the type of app I was talking about. It’s a really impressive app, but the design leaves a lot to be desired as I really don’t care to use the app. Good features, delivered in a poor package.

The Omni Group:

With the original download free, we can implement any pricing options we want to offer customers through In-App Purchases. We can offer our standard unlocks of Standard and Pro, of course. But we can also offer a free 2-week trial which unlocks all of the features of Pro and Standard, letting you freely choose between them. We can offer a discounted upgrade to the new Standard. And we can offer free upgrades to the new versions to any customers who recently purchased the old app.”

Great start to a really tough problem. This seems like the best possible solution for them. Love it.

For its part, Apple’s reservation page has always noted that a 24-month installment loan through Citizens Bank, which finances the iPhone Upgrade Program, is required — this change just cements it. In other countries where the iPhone Upgrade Program does not exist, such as Canada, all customers are able to use Reserve and Pick Up regardless of their payment method of choice.

Good start to unfucking iPhone Upgrade customers.

Tom Bihn personally showed me this creation before it hit production (I’ve been moving so I haven’t had a chance to get a review sample) and I was thoroughly impressed. They have solved one of the biggest problems for one bag travelers: needing a smaller bag on a plane or at the destination. In this case it zips right off and can be a shoulder, hip, or backpack. The design of this feature is outstanding.

I really can’t wait to put one of these bags through the test.

This is a nice video review of the Tom Bihn Maker’s Bag by Fraser Speirs. I really loved the part showing how he uses the Freudian Slip to hold his iPad Pro. So clever.

This looks like it could be a really neat little Briefcase. Can’t wait to try one out.

I have no clue why anyone would want to own a Samsung phone at this point.

Adblock Plus, one of the web’s most popular ad-blocking services, will soon begin selling its own ads—and taking a little bit of the cut as well.

The plus means less ads, but with more special ads.

Christina Warren:

The process is proving to be a shitshow both for those who bought the device through carriers, and for those who purchased directly from Samsung.

And:

The situation isn’t any better for customers at other carriers. T-Mobile and AT&T don’t have fresh inventory from Samsung either, which means customers can either wait around with a phone that might spontaneously explode or get something else.

The news coverage of this has been abysmal, but it’s a big deal. I’d never want to buy Samsung phone, not only because it might explode, but the company doesn’t seem to care much about making it right with their customers.

Duncan Davidson on the nefarious shit Dropbox is pulling:

After all, every time you ask permission, you not only annoy the user, you’re making them consider saying no, which is bad for numbers in a company driven by the almighty gods of daily, weekly, and monthly active usage.

I bitched about this on twitter and Dropbox responded with an overly dense statement. It’s not about whether they need this access, it’s how they go about getting it.