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  • The End of Apple Man

    Katie Notopoulos on watchOS 3: The second feature is the emergency alert system. To me, this seemed so clearly designed for women – a safety alert system for walks home at night or through a deserted parking lot. Safety was one of the features women liked about the Apple Watch to begin with – like…

    Katie Notopoulos on watchOS 3:

    The second feature is the emergency alert system. To me, this seemed so clearly designed for women – a safety alert system for walks home at night or through a deserted parking lot. Safety was one of the features women liked about the Apple Watch to begin with – like being able to call an Uber without taking their phone out of their purse.

  • Traveling Light: Packing It All Up

    Variety is the weight in travel.

    The point of these posts has been simple: take only what you need to use. Pick smart items that handle travel well and keep honing your system.

    I hone my system after every trip when I unpack. If there was something which I unpack and never touched during my trip, then I know that I likely don’t need to pack that item again. Make a mental note, keep paring your gear down with each trip you take. This also helps you ease into it. You might feel uncomfortable if you try to travel with just one set of clothes, so instead start with traveling with just one pair of pants. Once you are used to that, pare back somewhere else. There’s no need to do it all at once.

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  • Traveling Light: Everything Else

    The potpourri post of the series.

    Everything we’ve covered thus far has been tailored towards my needs and my tastes. This is the post about all the other stuff I have come across which might interest other people. And tips I have for buying travel oriented gear.

    While I have covered the basics, the basics might not be enough for you. That’s fine, just remember, that for the most part, those items are a nice to have and not a necessity.

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  • The Great Content Blocker Showdown

    Yeah, 1Blocker, basically.

    There’s somewhere between 80 and 80,000 content blockers on the App Store. I own many of them. I’ve done quite a few posts on them — comparing their data savings and their speed increases. Purify, kept the lead for the most part.

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  • 1Blocker for Mac

    Really great app, now on the Mac. What I like best: you get a lot of control over it, and it syncs your settings from iOS. Whitelist a site on iOS, it is whitelisted on your Mac. Love that.

    Really great app, now on the Mac. What I like best: you get a lot of control over it, and it syncs your settings from iOS. Whitelist a site on iOS, it is whitelisted on your Mac. Love that.

  • Aer Travel Pack on Kickstarter

    Aer has launched a new travel backpack/carryon today on Kickstarter. I have a review sample of the pack and will have something to share soon on it. In the mean time, it’s a really well made bag. Here’s a few comparison photos you might find interesting: Aer Travel Pack next to SLICKSAer Travel Pack next…

    Aer has launched a new travel backpack/carryon today on Kickstarter. I have a review sample of the pack and will have something to share soon on it. In the mean time, it’s a really well made bag.

    Here’s a few comparison photos you might find interesting:

    Aer Travel Pack next to SLICKS
    Aer Travel Pack next to GORUCK GR2
    Aer Travel Pack next to GORUCK GR1
    Aer Travel Pack next to Standard Luggage Carryon Backpack
  • iOS 10 Security Wishlist

    Hopes and dreams of an even more secure iOS.

    Editors note: this is a guest post from Guillaume Ross.

    With iOS 10 coming up this fall, and WWDC announcements about it right around the corner, the web is now assaulted by tons of wishlist, requests and predictions articles.

    As I like to be a part of every problem, I figured why not throw in some of my iOS 10 wishlist items, but only those that relate to security.

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  • Traveling Light: Shoes

    The key is to just not put any shoes in your bag.

    The key: pack one pair of shoes. In fact, most people who travel long enough slim down to one pair of shoes, and a pair of sandals for a full year of travel. I don’t do sandals, but I fully agree with one pair of shoes being all you really need.

    Shoes are not only bulky, but they are heavy. There’s two things which will push you to having to carry a larger, and often heavier bag: shoes and jackets. I’ve talked about picking the right jackets — they need to be compressible. Most people really only need one pair of shoes when they are traveling — and honestly the only reason you would need more than one pair is again: variety.

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  • Heading to the Coffee Shop

    I’ve seen people bring a 65L hiking backpack so they can work for 45 minutes at Starbucks.

    There’s a monotony that comes with working at home. Same room, same desk, every day. No one in the house ever puts things in my office without me knowing. There’s no coworkers who ever stop by to torpedo my day. I can listen to whatever I want. I can do whatever I want.

    My office is mine, and mine alone.

    This is good. This is great.

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  • Crafting My Home Office

    Be selfish.

    A small standing desk, that’s really all I need.

    So up went that small desk in the corner of our bedroom, and there I worked for a good 6 months. It wasn’t big enough though, and I often found myself working on the bed or the floor. I needed a bigger desk.

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  • Top Gear Is Officially Dead From Gear Patrol

    Absolutely brutal take on the new Top Gear hosts. I have yet to see the new show, but I did watch the 90 second preview on iTunes. Here’s the thing, that 90 second preview used to be amazingly entertaining to watch and make me want to buy the show. I left the preview with the…

    Absolutely brutal take on the new Top Gear hosts. I have yet to see the new show, but I did watch the 90 second preview on iTunes. Here’s the thing, that 90 second preview used to be amazingly entertaining to watch and make me want to buy the show. I left the preview with the new cast scratching my head.

    Luckily, the old cast is back on Amazon this fall.

  • A FujiFilm X-Pro2 Review

    Jonathan Rhyne: The camera practically disappears and allows you to immerse yourself in capturing the perfect moment in time. The above statement is the highest compliment you can pay to any camera.

    Jonathan Rhyne:

    The camera practically disappears and allows you to immerse yourself in capturing the perfect moment in time.

    The above statement is the highest compliment you can pay to any camera.

  • Traveling Light: Pants

    There are a ton of great options for pants out there…

    I really hate packing pants, because they are bulky and they always seem to get wrinkled — the only worse thing to pack is a cotton dress shirt. What makes pants doubly annoying is that you typically only need one pair — the pair you wear when you leave. However, then there’s the fear of a spill, or a rip, or of them not being flexible enough to cover the range of activities and situations you have planned. Can they go on that short hike and still to the five star restaurant for dinner? To the business meeting, but also everything else in between?

    When I started down the path of looking at travel friendly pants I knew there were two things I really wanted to avoid: cargo pants and pants that look more like hiking pants than “regular” pants. If they have “zip-off” anything, no thanks. If they focus more on hidden pockets and insect repellent, no thanks.

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  • Last Reminder: Membership Drive & Giveaway

    One last reminder that the membership drive ends today at 5pm PST. There’s also one other thing: the quarterly membership plan ($7/quarter) is currently way cheaper than all other plans. After today that plan will be gone for good. If you are on that plan now, you get to keep it until you cancel it.…

    One last reminder that the membership drive ends today at 5pm PST. There’s also one other thing: the quarterly membership plan ($7/quarter) is currently way cheaper than all other plans. After today that plan will be gone for good. If you are on that plan now, you get to keep it until you cancel it.

    After today though, that will no longer be an option. Thanks to everyone who has been signing up, I can’t wait to do the giveaway.

  • Traveling Light: Electronics

    Take only your iPhone and one other device if you need it.

    You need far fewer electronic devices than you think. All I carry is my iPhone and my iPad Pro. Done. My rule here is very simple: take a phone and one other device. Unless you have a major reason why you need three devices, take only two. For me the second device is my iPad Pro, and before that it was my MacBook. If you need a Mac, take a Mac and use your phone for anything else. But decide if you even need that second device — I take mine strictly because if I can squeeze in writing time, it is worth having the iPad Pro. But I could do it all with my iPhone if I wanted.

    There’s lots of ways to talk yourself into taking one more device, but I’ve always found that when I travel with three devices, one will always go unused. There’s nothing more frustrating than lugging something around you don’t use.

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  • Avoiding BlackBerry’s Fate

    Marco Arment on, I guess, a potential demise of Apple: ((Perhaps this is more of a warning, or a complaint about iCloud services?)) Today, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are placing large bets on advanced AI, ubiquitous assistants, and voice interfaces, hoping that these will become the next thing that our devices are for. If they’re…

    Marco Arment on, I guess, a potential demise of Apple: ((Perhaps this is more of a warning, or a complaint about iCloud services?))

    Today, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are placing large bets on advanced AI, ubiquitous assistants, and voice interfaces, hoping that these will become the next thing that our devices are for.

    If they’re right — and that’s a big “if” — I’m worried for Apple.”

    What if they’re wrong though?

    If Google is wrong, and computing continues to be defined by a tightly controlled grid of siloed apps that you poke a thousand times a day on a smooth rectangle of manufacturing excellence, Apple is fine. They’re doing a great job of what computing is today, and what it will probably continue to be for a long time.”

    Not quite.

    Actually, this is not accurate. Not all of these companies can “win”, some have to fail. So essentially Google, Amazon, and Facebook are fighting for their futures. If they are wrong, some or all likely meet Blackberry’s fate. If they are right, they could still lose and meet Blackberry’s fate because their competitors do it better, or something like that. Blackberry wasn’t wrong — they saw the mobile phone becoming an essential tool for everyone — Blackberry just didn’t win.

    Now, back to Apple. Let’s assume that Marco is right and Apple isn’t even fucking trying big data or AI. (I personally feel there is little chance this is a correct assumption, but whatever. It actually doesn’t matter.) Let’s say, for shits and giggles, that Facebook wins at AI and Google wins at big data and Amazon does something else we don’t care about for this post. Does Apple become irrelevant?

    If you assume that they do, then essentially you think the iPhone paved the way. You think that the iPod was the first MP3 player, you think OS X was state of the art — and on and on. Apple rarely does it first. None of those things did it first. It’s not a zero-sum game.

    Apple succeeds right now because they do it better. Will it be hard to catch up? Maybe, but so far it’s not been hard for Apple at all. Not under Steve Jobs, and not under Tim Cook.

    Let’s also not forget Maps. When the iPhone came out, I don’t think Apple was prepared for just how crucial mapping would be. They just relied on Google to get it right. And then, Apple Maps. Is it better? That’s subjective. But it is most certainly good enough. The Apple Watch wasn’t even close to being the first. Is it amazing? Depends. But is it better than any other smart watch? Yes.

    So, even if Facebook, Google, and Amazon beat Apple to something, they would all very much want their something on the iPhone. Because: iPhone.

    As long as iPhone still trumps all — iPhone still trumps all. Even if Apple has to start 3 years in the hole — we’ve seen them do it successfully with Apple Maps and many other things — it doesn’t hurt them, it just doesn’t help them.

    The iPhone trumps, and cash is King. Apple has both — massive amounts of both if we are talking about cash.

    Apple can wait and take their time. They can be cautious, they are in a position where they don’t need to skate to where every puck will be, they just need to be ready to drop everything to get to the puck once they think they know where it is about to land. This is a strategy that works for only a hand full of companies because it takes a dominant market position, and cash. This is exactly how Internet Explorer won over Netscape Navigator, by the way.

  • A Path to Better Upgrade Pricing

    Over at MartianCraft we launched new versions of TouchPad and NumPad. Among the new things is how we tackled upgrade pricing. I’m very proud of the model we used, so take a look at the article explaining it.

    Over at MartianCraft we launched new versions of TouchPad and NumPad. Among the new things is how we tackled upgrade pricing. I’m very proud of the model we used, so take a look at the article explaining it.

  • Readdle Updates PDF Expert With Apple Pencil Support and WiFi File Transfers

    Nice overview from MacStories on the latest PDF Expert update. Personally, I am very happy they support the Apple Pencil now. Great app.

    Nice overview from MacStories on the latest PDF Expert update. Personally, I am very happy they support the Apple Pencil now. Great app.

  • Traveling Light: Dress Shirts

    I love all three of these shirts so much, I wear them daily.

    Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

    Wrinkles and stains. For me those are the two largest concerns I have when I know I need a dress shirt, or “button down” shirt on a trip. (This is also the standard shirt I wear, so I can’t recall any time when I didn’t pack one or more.) Will it wrinkle? Will it clean easily if I spill my Tex-Mex all over it? Will it still look good after a couple days in a plane or a suitcase?

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  • The Verge’s Overview of the Google I/O 2016 Keynote

    This is easily the most concerning thing I have seen about the future of Apple. I’m not yet sold on voice, but I have no doubt it is a large part of the future of computing.

    This is easily the most concerning thing I have seen about the future of Apple. I’m not yet sold on voice, but I have no doubt it is a large part of the future of computing.