Recent Articles

John Brownlee on Quasar by Pedro Franceschi:
>I’ve been saying since last year that this is a killer feature Apple should try to lift in iOS 6, but up until now, all we’ve seen are jailbreak hacks sloppily emulate the functionality. No longer. A hack has finally come along that does it right.

Brownlee has clearly lost it, take what [Craig Grannell has to say for instance](http://reverttosaved.com/2012/04/30/quasar-windowed-app-system-for-ipad-misses-the-point-of-focussed-computing/):

>I admire the technical skills of the author, but am dumbfounded at the commenters on the Verge piece and elsewhere clamouring for such functionality to be built into iOS. First, the Quasar system is pretty ugly, with chunky ‘Close’, ‘Full Screen’ and ‘Rotate’ buttons.

This is an ugly hack, but more than just that (as Grannell talks about) it is counter to everything that the iPad stands for. Like the [Brydge](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/552506690/brydge-ipad-do-more) Kickstarter campaign this is [another instance](http://5by5.tv/bb/58) of people wanting to make their iPad into a Mac.

The iPad is not a Mac and no matter how much crap you attach to the outside of it, or how many hacks you apply to the software, you will be sorely disappointed if you want to make an iPad into a Mac.

This hack is sloppy and it *is* a hack, add to that the fact that it adds a feature that the iPad doesn’t need. Meaning: you just put one of those Honda Civic, weed wacker sounding, exhaust systems on your Ferrari.

Urban Dictionary:
>A unit of time ranging in value from one realtime minute to several hours.

Dr. Drang on why he switched back to Google from DuckDuckGo:
>The main reason I’ve switched back is that I prefer Google’s results. DuckDuckGo doesn’t give that mix of regular links, links to news stories, and links to images that a typical Google search gives.

That’s a really good point because it can be really off putting to some that the results are just regular links — they are categorized at all on DuckDuckGo. I know it takes a lot of getting used to because of how much and for how long we all have been using Google.

Google is a good search engine, the problem is: I don’t trust them. I trust their results, just not the company behind the results.

*(And yes, Doctor, the results are much slower and I choose to be OK with that.)*

Stephen Hackett on my ‘[Gamification is for Dicks](https://brooksreview.net/2012/04/gamification-dicks/)’ post:
>Ben’s choice of words aside, I don’t think the addition of “secret” UI themes in Clear is a bad thing. The app itself — its gestures, etc. — are playful and light. The “gamification” doesn’t get in the way of using the app, and the “awards” don’t add any functionality. It simply adds new free themes.
>What’s so wrong with that?

This is the main complaint about my argument ((Aside from the very small minority that didn’t like my wording.)) : that Clear was/is a poor example because it is just themes. Stephen does point out that the app, to him, is “playful and light”.

I disagree with that notion.

Firstly, just because an app is gesture driven doesn’t mean that it is “playful and light”, it just means it is gesture driven. I think it is wrong to classify gesture driven apps as being playful, because gestures themselves aren’t anymore playful than using a mouse.

It seems to me that Stephen wants to dismiss the gamification of Clear by trying to make Clear sound like it is already a game-like app — and I don’t think that is true at all. Clear is a productivity tool, with game mechanics to unlock themes.

Secondly, themes in Clear are a very integral part of the app — in Clear themes are a feature and not an accessory. The themes are how you prioritize items in the list — using the color of the theme to show priority. In most cases themes would just be a nice add-on, but in Clear I would argue that themes are a central part of the user experience.

And that’s why the gamification of unlocking themes in Clear presents a really bad user experience.

David Kravets:
>In short, the measure seeks to undo privacy laws that generally forbid ISPs from disclosing customer communications with anybody else unless with a court order.

*Fantastic*.

Tim Moynihan about Camera Awesome:
>Another useful option for capturing short videos of laughing babies and/or game-winning-hit scenarios at baseball games, Camera Awesome’s video options include a “Precord Video” setting that automatically buffers and saves 5 seconds of video *before* you press the record button.

That actually is a pretty neat trick — though I wonder what kind of havoc that wreaks on your battery life.

By now you probably heard that former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz did his best to kill Oracle’s case in the spat with Google, but Florian Mueller does a good job in this post showing that Schwartz himself see problems with the way Google fails to license things.

It all makes Schwartz come out looking pretty petty.

No, really. Also: what [he said](http://verynicewebsite.net/2012/04/t-mobile-iphone-bounty/).

John Paul Titlow:
>The iPad and its chief competitors in the tablet space are not poised to replace laptops and desktops just yet, a fact confirmed in IDG’s survey. Only 6% of respondents said their tablet has “completely replaced” their PC and 16% said the iPad had ousted their laptop from their lives. Instead, the tablet is serving as more of a supplementary device.

This would make it seem to most (including Titlow) that the iPad is a supplementary device. But I think this survey actually shows just how fast the iPad is taking over, in just two years 16% of iPad users have replaced their laptops. That’s incredible to me. ((Yes I know the survey was for “tablets”, but come on — we all know it’s iPads.))