Recent Articles

So happy about this update. This is hands down the best email client out there — Mac or iOS. I'm linking to the Beautiful Pixels write up because they have updated screenshots and the official site doesn't (at time of writing) If you don't have it, go buy it.

Ken Rockwell on Amazon's rather controversial new patent related to photography:

Amazon was just granted US patent 8,676,045 for a very clever and particular way to arrange a raised Plexiglas platform, lights and backdrop to give instant in-camera images with a 100% white background and a slight reflection below the subject, all with no postprocessing (like Photoshop) needed to make the platform blend into the background.

Clever, and it's funny to see how many other sites reported this wrong.

Fantastic new iOS photo editor which can correct for distortions. Must have for photos of things with straight lines where you care about keep those lines straight.

Dylan Matthews pulls no punches here:

It's worth remembering that the inconvenience and injustice of the TSA's activities exists for literally no reason. If the agency's privacy violations and annoying carry-on regulations were merely the price we paid for reducing the incidence of terrorist attacks, that'd be one thing. But, as security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, there's no evidence that the TSA has ever prevented a terrorist attack, and there's some research suggesting it could serve to increase non-airborne terrorist attacks. Airline security is, so far as we can tell, totally useless.

Matthew Ingram on why big companies are dangerous:

Google, Facebook and Amazon have shown us again this week why the combination of a quasi-monopoly, vested interests and an inscrutable algorithm can be a dangerous thing for internet users, since it allows them to influence what we see, know and buy

Good post.

Derek Thompson, refuting the aforelinked New Yorker article:

There is little evidence that America, as a country, is working more. Many of us—perhaps most of us—enjoy downtime that would look luxurious to a mid-century time-traveler.

Elizabeth Kolbert:

A second theory that Schulte considers is that “the overwhelm” is a function not so much of how many things Americans have to do but of how much time they spend thinking about how many things they have to do. A doctor who’s running through the list of groceries she needs to pick up on the way home is not actually any busier than one who’s concentrating on the task at hand, but she may feel more beleaguered. Conversely, a lawyer playing with his kids is technically at leisure, but if all the while he’s checking his phone for texts from the office he may feel that he hasn’t had any time off. Schulte terms this the “mental tape-loop phenomenon,” and she argues that it’s sapping our precious energies, so that we can’t even “decide what to think about, worrying about home stuff at work and work stuff at home.”

Jason Kotkke on Amazon’s latest bullshit:

No question about it: this sucks on Amazon’s part and demonstrates the degree to which the company’s top priority isn’t customer service. Better customer service in this case would be to offer these books for sale.

David Sparks on what I think is the most powerful, and underutilized feature of OmniFocus:

Conversely, I rarely use due dates on tasks unless they truly are something with a deadline. Arbitrarily assigning due dates to tasks means that you’re going to be getting lots of alarms for missing due dates on tasks that really aren’t overdue. Eventually you’ll start ignoring the alarms entirely and then you’ll miss a deadline on something that is important. Use your due dates sparingly and make them count.

Start dates, or defer dates as they are now called, are so powerful. Get yourself into the habit of thinking about time spans instead of due dates. Yes, paying your pills needs to be done by the 5th, but it could also be done anytime between the 1st and the 5th. So defer it to the 1st, and make it due the 5th. Then you can see it and maybe act on the action before it becomes urgent.

I am forever grateful to Mr. Sparks for showing me the light on that one.

From Mark Wilson’s interview with Mark Kawano, former Apple designer, has this nugget:

You see companies that have poached Apple designers, and they come up with sexy interfaces or something interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily move the needle for their business or their product. That’s because all the designer did was work on an interface piece, but to have a really well-designed product in the way Steve would say, this ‘holistic’ thing, is everything. It’s not just the interface piece. It’s designing the right business model into it. Designing the right marketing and the copy, and the way to distribute it. All of those pieces are critical.

It’s all too often overlooked that design is more than just the way something looks. Designing a good product is to design a product that is well thought out and consistent through all parts of the product. The business model, the name, the looks, the colors, the target market, etc — every piece matters.

Neat use of Keyboard Maestro, alas I cannot try it as it requires you to use the OmniSync Server (if I am reading it right) — and I am far too paranoid to do that.

Nice set.

Tim Bajarin:

Now, I realize this statement is pure marketing hype and the reality of the Surface Pro 3 replacing all the demand for laptops is absurd. But the message overall that the Surface Pro 3 could replace laptops is going to resonate with many in the enterprise. If Microsoft pushes this message too hard even consumers may start to think this new form factor is a laptop instead of what it really is — a tablet with a keyboard.

I can't get this same thought out of my head. employees may want this and not know it won't (likely) be a good laptop replacement and IT managers will see it as a way to save on costs (laptop + iPad).

Federico Viticci:

The new design modernizes the app, but I feel like usability and legibility have been sacrificed for good looks in some areas of the interface. I'm skeptical about the decision to separate action titles from the checkcircles, and long lists of actions can be difficult to scan quickly. This appears to be a problem in common with many other designs inspired by iOS 7, and I would like The Omni Group to tweak some of their decisions and offer user-configurable settings.

Agreed.