Category: Links

Good read, but this last bit from Kerri Hicks is what worries me the most:

Will men be comfortable including me anymore?

Yes.

Bradley Chambers:

All of this is aimed at helping free up RAM in my brain to focus on what I want to focus on and eliminate various amounts of negativity. Like I said, I am not jumping off the Twitter train, but only engaging there in a window of time each day/week. I’ve also realized that I can get 90% as much enjoyment/benefit from social media with about 20% of the effort I was previously giving it.

My most productive days are the ones where I don’t check Twitter. I’ve set it up so the fastest thing I can do on Twitter is tweet — I try to avoid the rest of it as much as I can.

Federico Viticci:

Fortunately, great things do happen in the third-party iOS ecosystem. Today’s update to Workflow (version 1.4.2) adds, among more actions, a brand new WordPress action to publish posts and pages to configured WordPress blogs (both wordpress.com and self-hosted ones) and which can be combined with any other existing action or workflow for deeper automaton. After using a beta of this action for the past few weeks, I can say that it’s, by far, the best automated publishing workflow I’ve ever had, and I don’t want to go back to anything else.

Holy shit, this is awesome.

A great post about using the iPad Pro in a university setting. I really wish I had an iPad Pro when I was at university — it would have been so much better. I love seeing posts like this.

Jason Snell:

Unfortunately, the hardware has outpaced the maturity of the operating system and app ecosystem. This is a product that can be used to get real work done, but if Apple had spent more time adding iPad features to iOS, the argument in its favor would be a whole lot easier to make.

Spot on.

Myke Hurley:

As a 1.0 product, I am astounded by just how well the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro work together. After only having used it for a few days, I am now at the point where I wouldn't want to go back. Being able to take quick notes or doodles whilst recording podcasts, having quick access to some sketching tools to mark up a document or screenshot, and having a new way to interact with iOS more precisely, has made the Pencil a must-have item in my toolkit.

Great review.

No excuse for this kind of behavior from an executive at any company. It's toxic and should not be tolerated.

Really great look at 1Writer from Viticci. I've personally been using the app with my iPad Pro and it has been great. I tried to use Byword for a bit, but what an odd app — I just can't get into it. 1Writer is really neat and is a nice fill in while we all wait for the Ulysses iPad Pro update. ((Yes, they are working on it. That's really all I know.))

What a great list from Brent Simmons, I subscribed to them all.

Manton Reece:

I remain very optimistic about the iPad Pro, especially when the Apple Pencil is actually available. From a business standpoint, it also seems like a better investment in time than either the Apple Watch or Apple TV. There are so many platforms and distractions now. If I can’t focus on a single platform, I want to at least be proactive in saving some attention for the iPad.

Speaking of Thomas, you can find his game here.

A nice article on building an tvOS game for the first time.

Stephen Hackett:

However, with the iPad Pro — and to a lesser extent, the new Apple TV — Apple's launched a new hardware product without a great first-party example of what people should do with it.

I would argue that Apple didn't launch a great first-party app because they no longer need to launch these with iOS devices. And there is no need to define the iPad Pro, because the people who wanted one, already got it. If you don't get the iPad Pro, then there is no great app which is going to help you get it.

Good article, but as I read it I couldn’t help but think: it’s amazing how little control Google is willing to assert over partners. It’s not even that they can’t assert that control — they could. It’s that they don’t want to. What other option do cellphone makers have outside of Android?

Not much.

Yet Google bends to them when they really shouldn’t. Especially on things like timely updates.

Great new book from the crew at The Sweet Setup. I’ve had a chance to read through most of it, and it is really well done. Day One is an enigma to me: I love the app, but can’t get into a routine with it. I’m thinking this book is going to help with that.

This is a great new site. I’d say it is one which you must add to your RSS subscriptions, but Medium doesn’t have fucking RSS feeds.

I honestly have no clue how you are to accurately follow publications on Medium. Yes, you can follow them, but there’s no easy way… Forget it.

This is a new thing from Justin Blanton, which means it is worth the follow — whatever the fuck that means on Medium.

UPDATE: Turns out there is a hidden RSS feed: https://medium.com/feed/@jblanton Apparently one of you knew. Thanks!

Ben Evans:

You can put the old ecosystem on the new form factor. You'll probably sell some of them. But is that the future, or is it a new Chevy Camaro or Mustang – a product that your existing fanbase loves but that ignores the Teslas and self-driving cars on the way?

Speaking of Tom Bihn bags, look at the pains they go through testing back panel fabrics:

In an effort to better understand what we were experiencing, Tom’s longtime friend Robert Swarner (sculptor, helicopter pilot, product designer, big wall climber and machinist) came up with a device that’d allow us to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of Dri-Lex® Aero-Spacer® mesh. Tom and Robert modified a Synapse and equipped it with Robert’s mobile heat sensors and data recording device, which we named The Swarner 5000 Datalogger. The Synapse had a back panel split down the center vertically: one half was spacer mesh and the other half was 1050 Ballistic (both sides were padded with closed-cell foam). Over the course of the last year, we’ve used this special Synapse on day hikes long and short, on hot summer days and cooler winter ones, and usually on hikes with big elevation gains.

Great read on what goes into making a tvOS game.

The Economist:

On Oct. 31, 2015, one of economist.com’s vendors, PageFair, was hacked. If you visited economist.com at any time between Oct. 31, 23:52 GMT and 01:15 GMT, Nov. 1, using Windows OS and you do not have trusted anti-virus software installed, it is possible that malware, disguised as an Adobe update, was downloaded onto your PC.

According to Twitter, PageFair is an anti-adblocker. Those fuckers.