Recent Articles

[Jenna Wortham and Nick Bilton reporting on the ToS changes at Instagram](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/what-instagrams-new-terms-of-service-mean-for-you/):

>This means that photographs uploaded to Instagram could end up in an advertisement on the service or on Facebook. In addition, someone who doesn’t use Instagram could end up in an advertisement if they have their photograph snapped and shared on the service by a friend.

That’s the same sketchy crap that Facebook pulls (and no wonder since Instagram is owned by Facebook). You may be perfectly fine with your privacy being invaded — perhaps not even seeing it as an invasion — but will you be fine if a picture of your kid holding a Coke can becomes the next Coke ad plastered all over Instagram and Facebook?

The problem with this rule is that you, and those you photograph, become implied endorsers and spokespeople for these “brands” ((I am now only capable of saying the word “brands” with the [Marco Arment](http://www.marco.org) emphasis.)) and that’s bullshit.

If you want an alternative [Flickr looks to be the place to go right now](http://shawnblanc.net/2012/12/the-new-flickr/). Their new mobile app is solid and people have been joining, or re-finding, Flickr in droves lately. Best of all, you can pay a measly `$29` for a year long Pro account that will remove the need for Flickr to create bullshit terms of service.

If you want a more stuck up version, [500px is fantastic](https://brooksreview.net/2012/04/500px-2/).

**Updated (December 18, 2012):** [Instagram has responded to the negative reactions with a statement that talks down to users a lot](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/12/18/instagram-no-we-arent-going-to-sell-your-photos/). However this is one great clear part in the response:

>The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.

Good. Now if only the rest of the statement had less bullshit I could actually make heads or tails of what they really are saying — which to me sounds like: “calm down, dude.”

One bit I did chuckle at:

>From the start, Instagram was created to become a business.

Ways I read that:

– We always wanted Instagram to be a business, never knew how.
– Yippee! We are *becoming* a business.
– Our business was to get a lot of users and sell for a crap-ton of money. We succeeded.

Anyways — good on Instagram for pledging to remove that sections, now we just need to make sure they don’t forget.

[John Gruber is on a bit of an “Dropbox is an essential feature” kick](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/12/17/dropbox-linchpin):

>The scary part though, is that one recurrent theme I see in nearly every single “how I write on the iPad” story is Dropbox. It’s the linchpin in the workflow.

[And in a follow-up post](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/12/17/apple-dropbox):

>Jobs may well have been right that Dropbox is a feature, not a product, but it’s a hell of a good feature, and one that iCloud does not provide.

As you can probably guess, I *slightly* disagree with this mindset. I think that a year ago Gruber would have been dead on, but I think iCloud is actually changing the importance of Dropbox for many users.

Right now it’s hard to write on an iPad and not use Dropbox, but it’s been getting easier every day. I actually don’t store a single draft or even archive in Dropbox any longer. Everything is in the iA Writer iCloud storage — where the hell that lives I have no clue, but it also doesn’t matter either.

Dropbox is a power user tool/service/feature — a damned good one — just not something the average user is going to leverage in the way that others do. iCloud is a consumer level feature. It’s good enough for power users if they are willing to relinquish control and trust Apple, but mostly it’s a drop-dead simple solution for *everyone*.

It may be simple to show someone how to use Dropbox, but it’s even *easier* to show someone how to use iCloud. That’s the killer feature of iCloud: integration.

(The argument in my mind is that Dropbox requires you save to a folder, and recall from a folder. Whether all files just live in the master Dropbox folder, or subfolders, is irrelevant — the user still has to think about a non-default folder. Doubly hard on iOS when the user must pick *which* of their Dropbox folders to use with the app. Compare that to iCloud where you can just tell someone: save it to iCloud. Both iOS apps and Mac OS X just show iCloud as iCloud [and it is quite cumbersome to actually create folders within iCloud].)

When it comes down to it, iCloud and Dropbox perform the same actions, just interfacing with the user in a very different way. iCloud hides the file system and ties documents to applications, whereas Dropbox is *just* a syncing file system not tied to any app. The difference is subtle, but important.

In that light I truly believe that Dropbox is the past and not the future of cloud based file storage. Managing files is just not something that a user should need to do any longer. ((I suspect too that iCloud is more of the model Microsoft *will* take with SkyDrive, with the added feature being that it will work like Dropbox on non-Windows systems.))

With that said, iCloud scales very poorly. This is the core problem with iCloud right now — just try and find one Writer file amongst hundreds, or thousands even — you’ll likely end with your heading banging on the desk.

Here’s the thing though: iCloud’s problem is a UX/UI issue (i.e., easily fixed). Dropbox could easily shift into iCloud, but that’s not the service that they sell and they won’t get that kind of OS level integration from Apple or Microsoft — both have competing services — and therefore a technically easy shift becomes nearly impossible because of the competitive landscape.

It should be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next few years.

**Updates (December 18, 2012)**: [Chris Gonzales adds his thoughts on this matter and makes a fantastic point](http://unretrofied.com/blog/2012/12/17/on-dropbox-and-icloud):

>iA Writer, an example used by Ben as a fully self-contained solution, could go out of business someday. What happens to that data? Does Apple allow you to export it for use in other apps?

I do wonder what, if anything, will happen to my data if one of these apps does go under.

[A very interesting interview with Daniel Danker, “the BBC’s head of iPlayer, apps and all that stuff,” questioning why their Android client lags behind the iOS client](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20754182):

>It will never be as easy to develop for Android as Apple because of the variety of devices, but we’re not upset about that – it’s where the audience is. Apple may punch above its weight in users accessing video and so on, but much of the Android audience are just the kind of people we want to reach, people who’ve never used their phones before in this way.

The last phrase is fascinating: “people who’ve never used their phones before in this way.”

You can read this two ways: new smartphone users are coming to Android first, and thus they aren’t used to using their phones to stream video; OR Android users simply aren’t used to streaming video. I think the broad evidence supports the latter, which is also my interpretation, given how much *more* data the smaller iOS user base uses than the Android user base.

There’s a ton of other fascinating problems the BBC has run into:

– The BBC spends more time and energy on Android, yet the iOS app is leaps and bounds better right now.
– The top request is from people using a Samsung Galaxy S2 — which Danker notes can’t handle “advanced video”.
– This is a great comparison between iOS and Android development: “Background audio, for example. When you leave the app you want the Today programme to keep on running. That worked out of the box on Apple, but not on Android, and we’re just getting there now.”

Reading through this interview it doesn’t read like a slam on Android, but a post highlighting some of the very real issues that Apple bloggers have been noting about Android for a while now, mainly: fragmentation, and the vast array of devices make it hard to develop for *every* Android device.

[Jim Dalrymple tried out Google Maps and is deciding to stick with Apple Maps](http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/12/13/im-sticking-with-apple-maps/):

>On the way, I ignored some directions to see how it would handle being re-routed.

>It did okay, but there was a long lag as it figured out where to take me next and instead of finding the best route from where I was, it kept trying to take me back to the original route.

That’s the best part about Apple Maps, in my use — both in the U.S. and Canada — Apple Maps almost instantly rerouted me, whereas most turn-by-turn mapping systems have a notable lag that can be the difference between a two minute or fifteen minute mistake.

I’m also (unsurprisingly) sticking with Apple Maps, but for different reasons:

1. The Google icon is hideous. It’d be great if it weren’t for the huge cutoff `G` and you know that cartoonish looking maps background.
2. The maps look like cartoons. Look at Apple Maps and then Google, the difference to me is striking. Apple maps look like professional maps, whereas Google’s look like un-styled computer generations. I-5 in Washington is an eight lane freeway, which Google shows as one yellow stripe and Apple shows as two roads split directionally.
3. The Google UI is not an iOS UI — that’s crappy because this is an app to be used on iOS, Google should have stuck with iOS standards.

Having street view back is nice, I guess, but I never really missed it. Instead this is what matters to me: how the app looks. As you can see from the screenshots at the side, the Apple Maps just look better. That matters to me, moreover the non-standard iOS UI isn’t something I want to deal with when I use an app that I will likely be using when I need to get things done quickly (at a stop light perhaps).

*(This post is a part of a series on Keyboard Maestro, [see more here](https://brooksreview.net/tag/KM-SERIES/).)*

One of the things that I have always loved doing is saving quotes. The problem for me has aways been where to save those quotes. As it turns out, I don’t often go back and read the quotes — they are more like things that I use as future references. I have some quotes in dedicated apps — never to be seen again — others in Yojimbo and Pinboard and none of these solutions work well for me.

All I want is a bunch of quotes strung together, so I decided to craft a way to save quotes with Keyboard Maestro and a hot key trigger.

Doing this is actually pretty simple: all the quotes end up in the same text file and the end result looks pretty decent for viewing.

Here’s what my macro grabs:

– The quoted text.
– The current date.
– The URL of the quoted text.

All of that info is dumped into one file as an append action. The process is actually very simple.

## The Macro

As you can see this macro is exceedingly simple, but it assumes you have already selected the text you want to quote.

1. The first thing the macro does is copy the selected text using `CMD+C`.
2. Next the macro saves that copied text to a named clipboard called `Quoted Text`. (Hint: to create named clipboards just select the `Save Clipboard to Named Clipboard` action and in the chooser for the named clipboard, select `New`. You can also edit these in the preferences for Keyboard Maestro.)
3. I then simulate the keystroke `CMD+L`, which highlights the current URL in Safari and Chrome.
4. Again, just copying that URL and setting it to another named clipboard — this time called `URL`.
5. The last part is to append this text to our file. So I have set the following to append to the file:

{OPT+Return}
---
{OPT+Return}
"%NamedClipboard%Quoted Text%" | saved %ShortDate% %ShortTime%
{OPT+Return}(%NamedClipboard%URL%)

I couldn’t get the command `%Return%` play nice in TextMate 2, so I added carriage returns by using `OPT+RETURN` when entering the text.

That’s it, now every time you invoke the command your text, URL, and dated added is appended to one text file. I personally find this much more useable than a dedicated app because I store it in Dropbox and can get to it from anywhere.