Recent Articles

Justin Blanton:

Much of what makes this possible is that I can delegate in one way or another most of what I think of, and can get away with being extremely terse in my emails. At this stage of my career my day-to-day job requires minimal work-product; if I was coding all day, designing websites, or researching, I probably wouldn’t be able to leverage my pocket computer the way I do, but I wouldn’t want to either.

The more people you manage, in general, the less computing power you need. That’s not to say the iPhone 7 isn’t powerful — it is — but to point out that you don’t need all the niche tools on Macs in order to run entire parts of companies, hell to run entire companies even.

As a follow-up to my member’s post this week, here’s an article where Jason Snell better articulates what he still needs a Mac for:

It’s all gotten a lot better, and for maybe 90 percent of what I need to do, my iPad Pro can do it–in many cases as good or better than my Mac. But when I ran into something in the other 10 percent, this week I was happy that a Mac was nearby.

He didn’t layout anything which is impossible to do on iOS, but I get why those things are easier on the Mac — because they still are easier on the Mac. However, even as a power user of computing tools, he could still be iPad only if he wanted to.

Snell does bring up one thought which sits badly with me:

And when the iPad can match the functionality of the Mac, sometimes it comes only via a bunch of weird third-party apps, workflows, and workarounds.

Really? Most Mac apps are from weird third-party developers, with odd workflows, and workarounds. I wish he’d edited out this thought, because it’s absurd. Perhaps he’s never heard of some of the people making the current power iOS apps, but that’s only because they haven’t yet been around as long as Mac developers. And the terminal/Automator stuff he talks fondly of are far more cumbersome and weird than something like Workflow on iOS.

(hat tip to: Mark Crump)

Piotr Gorecki Jr:

Most people agree that iPad software is not ready for its prime in terms of desk usage (with keyboard). There are still many glitches, bugs and inconveniences — like support for landscape mode, oversimplified clipboard or between-app communication. But it’s just software. That’s not a hardware limitation. Nor kernel/runtime limitation. I can’t see a problem with the iPad Pro that can’t be solved by OS or app update.

This is an older post, but absolutely spot on.

Bradley Chambers:

Apple’s model of renting me $5 movies or selling $2 TV shows seems archaic compared to Netflix, Hulu, or Sling TV.

I actually really love the Apple TV — it’s the primary way I watch all TV. However, I agree so much with the above statement. I hate constantly having to rent new release movies for $5 a pop. Just let me pay a monthly fee and be done with it. Same with the TV Shows Apple “sells”. So annoying.

Fantastic post from Sarah Perez:

The social media network has become an outsize player in crafting our understanding of the events that take place around us. We’ve known for some time that its echo chamber could be an issue in terms of exposing us to differing viewpoints. But only today are some realizing how powerful its influence has become.

Read the whole thing.

Strongbody Apparel reached out to tell me about their new Gastown Jacket which is already fully funded on Kickstarter. I personally think it looks like a great jacket — especially for the more casual wardrobes.

As a way for me to get to know the brand, Strongbody sent me over their essential workout tank, which is more like a sleeveless t-shirt than a traditional tank. Given the short amount of time I’ve had with the shirt, what I can say is:

• This is a very comfortable shirt. It has a vented mesh channel down the back of it and overall I found the shirt to breathe very well and retain comfort all day long.
• After a full day wearing the shirt as an undershirt and doing yard work in it, it didn’t stink. I smelled it myself and nothing, smelled clean. I was a bit amazed by that.

If the quality of this shirt is any indication, then I really look forward to seeing the Gastown jacket in person.

Finding one good jacket which will cover 90% of the travel I do, and still stuff down small is something I am still struggling with. Glad to see more and more jackets like this coming out.

I find it terrifying when one of my favorite and most used apps goes Freemium — so I mean it when I say that I really hope this works out for 2Do. What a great app.

Andy Baio on blogging in general:

Here, I control my words. Nobody can shut this site down, run annoying ads on it, or sell it to a phone company. Nobody can tell me what I can or can’t say, and I have complete control over the way it’s displayed. Nobody except me can change the URL structure, breaking 14 years of links to content on the web.

While I may cross-post some content to Apple News, Medium, and other services as they spring up — I won’t cross post everything and I certainly don’t trust those sites to ever be more than a passing fad. Having my own site gives me complete control to do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. I don’t understand why people ever want it any other way.

My god, that’s a pretty PC. Like with Xiaomi products and Android, it’s too bad it runs Windows.

Some good other thoughts on it: here, here, and here.

My god, that’s a pretty phone. The other bonus of watching this video is that I finally found out how to pronounce “Xaiomi”. Like Microsoft products though, it’s too bad it runs Android.

John Gruber on iMessage and how it locks people into iPhones, yet it insanely useful:

iMessage is an exception. With iMessage you get to connect both with iPhone users in the Google ecosystem and iPhone users in the Apple ecosystem. For a lot of us here in the U.S., that’s just about everyone we know.

He’s right — it’s almost unsettling to me when I see green bubbles (indicating SMS) instead of the blue iMessage bubbles. It’s also a. clusterfuck anytime someone who was previously an iMessage person switches to Android without jumping through all of Apple’s hoops.

But beyond that, iMessage is easily the best messaging platform I have tried. I get to try a lot of different ones all the time, and every time I am just glad when I can go back to iMessage. It’s such a seamless and perfect tool.

This looks like it may be compelling enough to buy just for the camera itself.

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.