Recent Articles

James Shelley:

Writers, remember: the more we play the algorithmic game, the more the algorithmic game plays us.

Steven Levy on TED:

Like Obama in his last term, TED seems to have run out of fucks to give. It’s doubling down on its TED-ness.

🙄

Om Malik on Instagram ads:

Great ads are actually great fun. I mean, the best parts of the Super Bowl are the ads and talking about them on Twitter and Facebook. But bad ads are just bad. They distract and they disappoint. And a lot of advertising on the internet is dumb and boring and punishes us for using services.

He’s spot on. My negative feelings about advertising on the web is with the tracking associated with it. Most good ads don’t need that tracking to be effective. All of the tracking and analytics just make for lazier ads.

Joshua Taylor presents an interesting case for designers learning business. I was talking about this the other day with a friend, about how it is a shame that every college, or high school, student isn’t required to learn basic accounting and business principles. It’s the foundation of most societies and helps everyone at any level. Accounting helps you with your personal finances, and general business will help you make money in life — no matter what path you take to making money.

However, in this instance, I’m not sure it is about designers understanding business as much as it is about them understanding what they are trying to do. Design isn’t just visuals, it’s broader problem solving. You can give a beautiful answer without understanding the problem, but only give a great answer when you fully understand the problem.

I recently wrote about how I’ve slimmed down to just three apps for my news consumption. However Quartz News came out with a new app yesterday and it is fascinating. It’s news delivered via a chat like interface.

Basically it gives you a headline (you can click to read) or prompt for more information or to move to the next story. I found the entire interface (which is next to nothing) to be simple and well done. I really enjoyed it.

Of course the key here is going to be the alert notifications. Can they get them right? I don’t know. Time will tell there.

For now, if you are a news junkie, this is an app you really need to check out.

Casey Newton on Medium’s bullshit release notes:

Over the past year, the duo have tried to rein themselves in. “The most common blowback we get is from people who want to know what’s in the release,” Fisher says. “They hate these because they have no idea.”

So, by their own admission, their release notes don’t even do the fundamental job of release notes, which is to let users know what is in the release. I… It’s… Fuck.

Riccardo Mori:

You can’t make everybody happy, but with Control Centre as it is today, Apple has made sure that every iOS user can find a certain degree of usefulness. Not an easy balance to achieve.

I use the piss out of control center — and I have to say it works nicely for me. Perhaps it would be cool to be allowed to customize it, but I also think that might be overkill. It’s a dead simple feature with access to things that most people need access to.

Good post from Watts Martin, responding to my post about the compelling features of iOS. He does have one part I disagree with:

I confess this strikes me as akin to those “As Seen on TV!” commercials trying to convince you how much time you’re wasting by not using their in-shell egg scrambler or electric rutabaga dicer or what have you. I don’t disagree with Brooks’s contention that the iOS approach is easier, but are there truly that many Mac or Windows users who spend hours dragging windows back and forth in anger and frustration?

Moom, Divvy, Keyboard Maestro, Spaces, Expose, SizeUp, Cinch, BetterSnapTool — that’s eight apps off the top of my head which are either dedicated, or can be used to, manage application windows on Mac OS X. Eight. So while I concede that it sounds a bit ‘As Seen on TV’ of me to bring up that point — it is very much a real problem with an ecosystem in place for profiting from trying to solve the issue.

Martin also points out the poor ergonomics. In truth this is a mixed bag. It’s no worse than using a laptop, and likely easier on your wrists as the keyboard (the Smart Keyboard Cover) is nearly flush to the desk. However it is the neck angle that is terrible. Beyond terrible.

There’s just no solving this right now — I do hope there is something I can figure out to alleviate that, but in practice I have not had many ill effects because I end up moving my computer around more. With a laptop it was on the desk.

With my iPad I pick it up to read in portrait, move about the house on calls, and yes, use it on the desk. Time will tell — I know Martin is right that the ergonomics are worse, but I don’t think it is wholly worse. For one: I leave my desk a lot more.

Immensely proud of my wife for being one of the 41 photographers Apple has included in the latest gallery and campaign. (I wonder what my daughter will think when she grows up, knowing Apple promoted an image of her.)

The images in the gallery are great. There’s some great articles out there about the campaign too.

Mashable has an article on the new gallery, which is a great look at a lot of the photos.

This quote from Time’s article:

One of the photographers featured, Erin Brooks, was included in the campaign after she posted a portrait of her three-year-old daughter shot on the iPhone 6s Plus on Instagram. “I honestly couldn’t believe that they contacted me,” she tells TIME in an email.

You should probably take this time to follow Erin on Instagram/Twitter.

Here’s the shots Erin has in the gallery.

 Michael Rockwell:

All that cruft is gone.

Joshua Roberts on iMessage security:

Not only that if Apple’s servers detect a slow or sporadic connection it sends all messages in plain text, meaning it doesn’t use encryption if you have a bad connection.

This reads as more than just the send as an SMS option — and is contrary to my understanding of how the system works.

Justin Blanton on an iPhone only future:

In fact, the disparity is only going to get greater. Most of our entertainment and communication is sourced, if not experienced, via our phones, and it won’t be big computers that come back from the dead to change that (though it will be something).

Side note: it’s so great he is back to writing.

A fascinating look at smartphone usage. Particularly the lengths they go through to save data.