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Tactile Turn and Tactile Knife both make outstanding products. The pens from Tactile Turn always were slightly off for my use. A little oddly slippery horizontally, while finding superior grip vertically. And then there was the bolt, a fun fidget toy, but an inefficient writing mechanism.

I assumed I was not the target market of these pens. However, I kept staring at the images of the Tactile Turn Nitro seasonal release Side Click pen. The color are my colors. It looked so neat, I decided to grab it in the Slim Short variant — this would hold the refills I was looking to use: OHTO’s Flash Dry refills (a left-hander’s dream).

And, what I found is a pen that I have now bought in two more iterations of ‘seasonal’ releases. As it is an outstanding pen from Tactile Turn.

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In a spending happy spree, I stumbled on to Yuruliku pouches, while they are stationary focused — I had visions of them being hidden everyday carry pouch gems. I picked up three different pouches, and while each is very good, I have struggled a bit to put them to good use.

Here are some quick thoughts on these since I’ve had them for a long time now.

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Gisele Navarro for House Fresh, writes what is perhaps one of the most disturbing stories on the state of product reviews I have read. Navarro writes:

These Digital Goliaths shouldn’t be able to use product recommendations as their personal piggy bank, simply flying through Google updates off the back of ‘the right signals,’ an old domain, or the echo of a reputable brand that is no longer.

As a team that has dedicated the last few years to testing and reviewing air purifiers, it’s disheartening to see our independent site be outranked by big-name publications that haven’t even bothered to check if a company is bankrupt before telling millions of readers to buy their products.

This editorial is a must read for anyone who reads product reviews (so everyone). It’s irrelevant whether you care about air purifiers or not. Effectively, Navarro highlights how poorly actual review sites are ranked by Google, and what other sites do to get top rankings in search results. And what those sites do is what you expect: they game the ever loving shit out of the system, all the while supplying negative value to the readers through reviews that are no more thorough than looking at things from the outside of a store (shit that store might not even have a window, just a sign).

The ‘bankrupt’ company Navarro is referencing in the quote is the top ranked air purifier many of these companies recommend, and also is facing a class action lawsuit for how shit the product is. In other words: exactly what you would assume a best list would help you avoid, is what those lists is promoting. And sure, maybe you know better and don’t buy off of obviously affiliate money driven lists — but you’d be an outlier for sure.

It’s wild. This entire editorial, I read it twice, very well done.

Some things I learned, which I had no clue about before, from this article:

1. Google cares a lot about perceived ‘experts’ and ‘tests’ and ‘labs’ being mentioned in reviews. Hence why so many publications make references to these in the article headlines and in the body of the articles. I say mentioned, but Google will claim that it should be actually done by experts in labs — but how do you vet that? You don’t, that’s how.
2. How many conglomerate type companies have bought out once reputable brands to sell utter shit content — I believe the article references milking the brand value for cash now, while they drive it into the ground. Popular Science, and Travel + Leisure are two I was unaware of — like no clue they were hack publications now. All of these sites are pushing similar content to all the brands the company owns, from a rather obvious shared pool of images and source ‘expert’ quotes, all while people think it is still a trusted (read: known and major) publication/brand.
3. Google is very aggressively ranking these sites above truly independent sites, or even sites which actually test shit themselves, because those sites are known brands and get ranked higher. It makes sense from a Google standpoint, as you very clearly want known brand names to show up high on the search results, otherwise your users will think your search is broken. But then with those sites not being what they were, and also gaming the system — it’s a really bad cycle.
4. There seems to be at least one ‘expert’ you can simply pay to include in your articles about a given product. Which — how have I not been contacted to be a backpack expert yet? Regardless, what a wild world that you can just have that be a job of some sort. And then that no one (myself included) seemed to notice this? Baffling.

Obviously, this is very close to my heart, as I review a lot of items. It’s rather maddening to see the state of the industry here, and it’s likely to only get worse. Because the reality is: testing things to review them, is absurdly time consuming and expensive thing to do. And that’s before you start to sort out labs and other criteria for testing, that’s simply just sharing your impressions of an item.

This is why so many sites have you believe that spending a day, or a week doing something is long enough. It’s not because it actually is long enough (it very much is not long enough), it’s because that’s all they can do before they need to move to the next thing, and thus they really need to convince you that it is long enough. But it’s not, never will be. Unless it’s like a really terrible product, then you could know by then. But these sites never write about shitty things, as that doesn’t drive sales of the things.

Anyways…back to the cost.

I once looked at buying certified ping-pong ball like things to fill up backpacks, so I could use them to determine (for myself and reviews) what the actual capacity of the bag was. That seems like a great value add for my readers, and the exact kind of waste of time and money I love. So, I reached out to a bag company CEO I knew at the time who shared the source for the balls that I needed to buy. To buy just those balls and not even what I need for the cylinder to measure how many the bag held (like half the damned problem), it was going to cost me $6,000 for a bunch of ‘to spec’ plastic balls. And that’s just a single test in a series I would need to run to do a lab equivalent type testing. I would also, likely, be buying multiple of the same bag to beat the ever loving shit out of the bag.

Let’s be honest, we all want to see me torture test this gear. I do too. But the cost of all of this is vastly too much money for even someone like myself.

And, I can further tell you: the more infrequent your posts, the lower the readership you have. You need to post a lot. But that’s at odds with how long it takes to test something. A single backpack takes me about 4-6 weeks of use and ownership before I feel comfortable really reviewing it on this site. There are only so many weeks in a year, and while I can test multiple things at a time, it’s not really a case where I can test two backpacks at once. So to test more than a dozen backpacks in a year, is not even feasible for me on my own, in my non-work spare time, after I do all the other things in my life.

So you can start to see why a lot of people will review something after a day, without harming the item, so they can go ahead and return it from where it came and get their money back. They need the money back, it’s expensive, and they need a lot of content to publish on a frequent basis.

So it’s expensive, and hugely time consuming. But what you get in the end, from sites who do take this time and spend the money, is a pretty honest take on what the item is like to live with. What you don’t get is a lab quality test as you need a lot of capital to do that work. I am always impressed with other sites who can afford that. But now I have to wonder: how many sites are left doing this at all? How many are just pretending to do this to keep a high Google search ranking?

I fear there are not many good review sites left, and I suspect I am right.

At least with Kagi Search you can filter out these shit sites and try to find the real reviews.

So all of that to say, be careful what review you trust these days — it’s likely they are full of shit.

For some time now, I have been using paper notebooks for note taking around the office. During meetings in person, on a call, or working through ideas — paper is often the starting point for a lot of stuff I do. Eventually, this expanded to using notebooks at home for various thoughts — though on a much more limited basis than at work. I often plan out my packing list first on paper, by working out my ideal outfit for each day of a trip in pen, and then sorting out how to achieve that in as few clothing items as possible later in Numbers on my iPad Pro.

Anyways, I’ve never stuck with a single notebook or type of notebook for long. They wear out fast, or don’t really have the right vibe and are tossed aside rather quickly. But Travelers Company Notebooks were items I kept seeing, kept wondering about, and finally pulled the trigger on one in each size (Regular and Passport). I’ve been using them both for quite some time now, and they are checking all the boxes for me.

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I’ve now spent far more time than I wanted to, or should have, thinking about these three posts (one, two, three) from Denny Henke on Beardy Guy Musings (I can blame Zsolt Benke’s site for bringing this all to my attention). Henke outlines a weird narrative from a crowd he refers to as “Apple Pundits” where they think the iPad Pro (and generally iPad) is not really a full computer. It is a really odd narrative for this crowd to have, but it’s also not that new.

Anyways, I keep thinking about this as I think the iPad is among the most underrated computers on the market today. Perhaps I am thinking about this so much because Henke has really sparked my interest, or perhaps because he left the job unfinished. But there’s two threads here I keep coming back to.

The first is the use of the term ‘Apple Pundit’; and the second is this notion that the iPhone is a phone not a computer, and the Mac is a real computer, thus this means the iPad is a “baby computer”? So fucking odd, y’all — so odd.

Apple Pundit is a really odd term, because while it is an apt description, it’s not necessarily a good term. AI tells me it can go either way: positive or negative. But AI is mostly full of shit, so I think it’s a negative here. My justification: I don’t think people would willingly list, or refer to themselves, as a ‘pundit’. I, with this blog, fit the pundit definition — and if you must I prefer to be called “Gear Pundit” so that I have more flexibility and range. But, no one really calls themselves a pundit right? It’s like you don’t say your job is to pick up dog shit for money, you say “dog walker”.

You don’t say pundit. You say “political commentator”, or “blogger” in this case. Anyways I think this is important here as the distinction between whether pundit is positive or negative, comes down to expertise. Well actually, I think calling someone a pundit means one of two things:

1. That persons acts as though they have expertise, but in fact they do not.
2. That person does have expertise, but you very much think they are wrong.

So then the question is: are these Apple Pundits lacking expertise, or wrong? Or perhaps, neither…?

Over on Mastodon (which as an aside, X has to be really bad if people are still using the hell which is Mastodon), user Nickler writes:

Calling the iPad a “toy” because it isn’t your preferred platform for getting work done is a disservice to technology commentary. In a time where discourse seems relegated to ‘I’m pro this you’re pro that’ I just hate seeing thoughtful people be so flippant.

I personally agree with this, and think this is really well phrased. Much better than I could have said it, and in fewer words. John Gruber, the most pundit of Apple Pundits (right?) responds:

You’re making excuses for a platform that has baby computer limits. It’s a 14-year-old platform and you still can’t make iPad apps on an iPad.

This is such a great comment from Gruber, because it not only doges (or misses) the entire point of the complaint, but then is also kind of wrong, while additionally tipping the fuck out of his hand. So this is the comment I want to talk about.

In his response Gruber is making three pretty clear statements:

1. The iPad has what he calls “baby computer limits” which seemingly means it cannot be used for ‘real work’.
2. It cannot make iPad apps on the device, and that is the litmus test for ‘real work’.
3. I assume those two things are his refutation of the original comment, that it is not that Gruber doesn’t prefer the platform, but that he cannot use the platform because he needs to make iPad apps.

So in other words: Gruber has no issue with the iPad if it can make iPad apps on it, and that the limit of the iPad is the inability to make iPad apps on the device. Which is blatantly wrong.

Per Apple (also mentioned the responses from Benke):

Swift Playgrounds is the best and easiest way to learn how to code. And with Swift Playgrounds 4, you have the tools to build iPhone and iPad apps right on iPad and submit them directly to App Store Connect, providing a new way for you to easily create apps and share them with the world.

That’s from December of Twenty fucking Twenty-One, by the way.

Now hold on to your Send buttons for just one minute. There’s a couple of things we need to point out here:

1. The iPhone cannot do this, no one complains about it, because why would they — it would be a silly complaint as most people don’t build apps to begin with and certainly wouldn’t want to do so on an iPhone. (Oh weird, basically applies to the iPad too, except it can build apps.)
2. Swift Playgrounds is very much not Xcode, and developers very much do not want to build professional grade apps in Swift Playgrounds. It doesn’t mean they cannot do it — they can and do — but it’s very much not the same (for lack of a better term here) as Xcode.

There’s this really odd mindset that you will see with people who write about Apple products, where they all eventually converge to some realm of ‘developer’. A lot of writers in the Apple world started off as either a developer for Apple platforms, or a script happy OS 9 / OS X tinkerer. Meaning these are very technically savvy people. And those who didn’t start from that angle, seem to eventually converge back to that spot where they start writing more advanced scripts and dabble in app development in some way.

That’s a decently standard progression in this ‘Apple Pundit’ realm. A lot of sports commentators are people who used to play the sport professionally, or at least play the sport recreationally — it leads to better commentary generally speaking. Expertise and all.

But it oddly doesn’t work with the iPad at all. Because the iPad very weirdly doesn’t fit that mold. To understand what I mean here, we need to go back to the original iPad — back in ancient 2010 times.

The iPad was designed with an entirely different set of priorities than Macs or PCs. Someone may well produce a worthy iPad rival in the next year, but it’s not going to be something like HP’s Slate that runs Windows 7, an operating system that epitomizes the traditional set of computer design priorities.

And:

The iPad is meant for anything that can be represented on a 10-inch color touchscreen. Back in January when we were playing the “What’s Apple going to name the tablet?” game, my favorite, by far, was “Canvas”. I’m not saying here that Canvas would have been a better name than iPad, but the word conveys perfectly what the iPad is.

Lastly:

The iPad hardware and OS are profoundly humble — they put all the focus on whatever app it is that is open.

That is me quoting John Gruber of course, from his original iPad review. Those statements were spot on back then, and they are still spot on today. No single other tablet has ever caught up to the iPad, in a way that is actually fucking insane if you stop to think about it. Go shop for a new Android tablet, they are few and far between and (spoiler) they are awful to use. Only Amazon with the Fire Tablet series have come close, and that’s mostly because they are absurdly cheap (and I mean cheap, not inexpensive, but they are also inexpensive).

Now, people in glass houses such as mine, should not throw stones. I wrote about the iPad first back in May of 2010, in which I concluded:

I really am looking forward to the future of the iPad, more so than I am with the iPhone. I think OS 4.0 is going to give quite an amazing boost to the iPad. I think that future hardware updates are only going to make an already fast iPad into an instant iPad.

I normally hate going back and re-reading my own writing, and totally forgot about this post and that conclusion — but yeah suffice to say I stand by that one.

But I also think that post isn’t the one to key in on when it comes to old iPad writing on this site, I think it’s this post where I wrote in 2011:

If you (you as is anyone) continue to think about tablets in comparison to laptops then you will never understand the value that tablets hold. In the same way that someone that compares car travel to airplane travel will never understand the value of the road trip.

I don’t know that I would have selected that same analogy. But the essence here is: both do the same end goal, but they go about it differently to the point where you intentionally choose one over the other. Few people decide to drive across country rather than fly, becuase “eh, it’s about the same”.

The takeaway here is that Gruber now thinks the iPad should be able to do all the things the Mac does. That’s a fine personal criteria for liking the iPad or not. However, it’s not what he say as the vision for the iPad 14 years ago — and it’s not that it would have been that hard to have the same vision now or then — which ever direction you want here.

Now, people change, and needs change. Which brings us all the way back the the initial comment from Nickler above, specifically this:

Calling the iPad a “toy” because it isn’t your preferred platform for getting work done is a disservice to technology commentary.

I agree, and I think the narrative with Apple Pundits that the iPad is somehow not a real computer, or somehow has ‘baby computer limits’ is completely and utterly bullshit, trot out by people disconnected from what the general public loves about the iPad.

Apple Pundits are now (more than ever) convinced the iPad cannot be used as a ‘real’ computer — at the same time the general consumer market is using the iPad as their ‘real computer’ now more than ever also.

I don’t think these Apple Pundits lack expertise, I think they lack perspective. They are bubbled inside a world where they are only talking to nerds about nerd things — and of course nerds are going to struggle with the iPad, they are not the target market. They are going to complain about the lack of professional quality apps and the lack of Xcode. They are going to makes apps for SSH with a yearly subscription. It’s not that any of this is bad, it’s that all of that is why the Mac is still there. (That’s not to shade the Mac, but that is why the Mac is there.)

But normal people, they love the iPad just as it is. It’s like a little portable TV they can take everywhere. Almost like, say, a blank canvas which morphs into whatever app is on the screen at that moment — one could say.

You don’t have to wander far to see this, head outside your home, and you encounter many people using the iPad for just about anything. It’s their computer. Maybe it’s their mobile computer so they don’t tote a laptop. Maybe they take notes in meetings on it. Present from it. Maybe the do email and Teams/Slack — they are very much using it as a real computer without really any limitations. Old or young, I’ve seen no distinct pattern here. If one has an iPad (especially if they have a keyboard cover setup for it) they are using the fuck out of it when they are moving around. And they are absolutely using the shit out of it to watch videos of many kinds, and scrolling around dozens of websites aimlessly — as most people do on all computing devices.

What’s being missed in all this commentary is instead of the iPad replacing items (i.e. ‘Computers’), the iPad has become a device people use to get away from the overly small iPhone screen. And also being the device used to get away from the overwhelming MacOS/Windows machines.

The iPad, in a way, is one of the top luxury computing devices out there — largely seen as unnecessary by even those who love it, and yet something most people would love to own if they have the means to do so. And those who do have the means, they own an iPad, and likely use it — if for nothing else than as a really portable large screen for doing whatever the hell they want to do.

People like me who actively use it as their only computer don’t matter. Because there’s actually a large number of people out there unconsciously choosing the iPad as their primary personal ‘bigger screen’ computing platform, without even realizing that’s a choice they are making. And that’s because, for most people, ‘real computing’ is sending emails, having video calls, and editing Office files, and using a web browser — all of which the iPad makes pretty fucking easy. And in 2024, it’s easier than ever to do those things on an iPad — it was a royal pain in the ass back in 2010.

So yeah, after analyzing all of that, I think Apple Pundit is correctly applied in this case, because while they have expertise, they are dead wrong.

I am still picking up discontinued Filson bags, and a while back I picked up two different Filson Ranger Backpacks. These bags are not that old, but they didn’t sell all that well before going on clearance and, eventually, disappearing. I had never seen one in person before, and picked up a like new version with the Bridle Leather closure straps/buckle system.

I liked it so much, I jumped at a chance to buy a dead stock variant of the Ranger, which has a canvas strap g-hook closure, and an error with the Filson leather tag being sewn on upside down. These backpacks are really simple, but surprisingly amazing.

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Charleston, South Carolina Summer of 2022. I told my wife “let’s stop into the Rolex AD, I’ll buy a GMT Rolex if they have it, otherwise we should be pretty safe.” I walked out with a Grand Seiko, the SBGM221 — a watch we both spent the rest of the trip admiring. In the coming year I was lucky enough to add two more Grand Seiko’s to my collection, the SBGE285 ‘Mistflake’, and the SBGX261. I still have all three, and they are my favorite watches I own.

A lot of watch reviews focus on what it has been like to wear a watch for a month, maybe two at the most. Many reviewers are anxious to get the content out there, or to review the watch before it looks worn, such that they can maximize the resale value and get their next watch to review. The watches I buy are ones that I intend on keeping for life at the time I buy them. Though it may not work out that way in the long run, that’s the mindset I take when buying a watch.

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Note: this light was sent to me at no cost for the purpose of review. This review was not sent to Prometheus before publishing.

I’ve had a Beta QRv2 around my house for — well it’s been through four moves with me, so it’s been a fair bit. It’s always been a very solid, to really good light, and it was one of the first I got with a significantly better LED than you find in non-enthusiast lights. I was pretty excited when the QRv3 was announced and came out — it seemed likely something I would instantly buy. But the images didn’t look quite right to me and I held off, so when they asked if I would like a review sample, I jumped at the chance.

And while I still think the images make the light look visually out of scale, I can tell you that this is better in every way than the QRv2, and it’s been getting a tremendous amount of pocket time.

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