The Brooks Review

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Leica Sofort 2June 13, 2024
Grand Seiko SBGX261February 23, 2023
Casio Duro MDV-106 Re-ReviewDecember 15, 2022

Recent Articles

  • ‘Stay tuned’

    Paul Reynolds: >Asked today about the possibility of Amazon launching a multipurpose tablet device, the company’s president and CEO Jeff Bezos said to “stay tuned” on the company’s plans. In an interview at Consumer Reports’ offices, Bezos also signaled that any such device, should it come, is more likely to supplement than to supplant the…

    Paul Reynolds:
    >Asked today about the possibility of Amazon launching a multipurpose tablet device, the company’s president and CEO Jeff Bezos said to “stay tuned” on the company’s plans. In an interview at Consumer Reports’ offices, Bezos also signaled that any such device, should it come, is more likely to supplement than to supplant the Kindle, which he calls Amazon’s “purpose-built e-reading device.”

    That sounds about right from all the rumors and speculation that I have seen. I would guess it would be a touch screen device running Android with the Amazon appstore installed. I would further guess that the full Amazon web store would be presented rather nicely on the device.

    Those are pretty easy, the bigger question is price. Will it be higher or lower than the iPad and will there be an ad supported version?

  • The New Yorker iPad App

    John Biggs has a really [nice write up on](http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/12/it-is-finished-the-new-yorker-ipad-app-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-print/) why he is leaving his [New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/) paper subscription in the dust for the iPad only version. Since as long as I can remember my house was always filled with magazines. My parents both got a ton of subscriptions and I would always get to peruse…

    John Biggs has a really [nice write up on](http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/12/it-is-finished-the-new-yorker-ipad-app-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-print/) why he is leaving his [New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/) paper subscription in the dust for the iPad only version. Since as long as I can remember my house was always filled with magazines. My parents both got a ton of subscriptions and I would always get to peruse through my dad’s car magazines when he was done. As I got older and my parents divorced and I started to get my own magazine subscriptions — mostly car magazines — but I loved reading all that information.

    Those magazines subscriptions had Newsweek and Businessweek added to them late on — among others. The one thing I hated about magazines was that they take up far too much room if you want to hang on to them for archives and reference. In 2004 I started using Zinio — an online magazine distributer — who for the same price as the print subscription would give you magazines in a DRM protected, Adobe laden, PDF that you could use their (not so stellar) viewer to read.

    To this day I still use Zinio and while it has gotten better over the years the DRM has always been a problem for the service. To my knowledge all those archives of Zinio magazines I saved are unreadable at this point because they switched to a new viewer that uses Adobe Air — lovely. Their iPad app is ok, but really it is just an extension of the often crappy Adobe Air app that they have for the Mac. I have been pretty reluctant to wanting to switch full on to iPad only subscriptions because the pricing simply was not competitive — $4.99 an issue is just too much if you want to buy every issue.

    Luckily Apple introduced subscription pricing and like all of you I have been watching closely to see how publishers are reacting to it. Our first taste was a sour one that The Daily offered. One app that I have really taken too is Bloomberg’s Businessweek+ app that allows you to subscribe to the weekly periodical for a seemingly low price of $2.99 a month, or $36 bucks a year. It’s not the best pricing, but it’s not the worst either.

    The content of Businessweek has always been hit or miss for me, but it is typically news that I don’t seek out and that I like to know (even if I get to it much later than I could on the web). The fact is that I find the content valuable, you may not. What intrigues me about Businessweek is the app itself, which you can see my thoughts on [here](https://brooksreview.net/2011/04/businessweek-2/) (I like it).

    Outside of Businessweek and the few Zinio magazines that I still subscribe too I haven’t been too enamored with iPad magazine apps. Then the New Yorker wrote something that I really wanted to read — really wanted to read. The end result of which is that I am now a yearly subscriber to The New Yorker in e-format only and I am quite pleased with it.

    The New Yorker really raises the price at $59.99 a year — something most iPad users are going to need to think about. I have never had a subscription to The New Yorker, but I have read articles from it on occasion. As far as the content is concerned: it is top notch and that is almost not debatable.

    The app itself is what intrigues me the most.

    The app seems to take the idea of adding eye candy and throw it out the window. This is not an app designed for Apple freaks, or iPad users — this is an app that has been very intentionally designed for readers.

    *I love that.*

    The font is crisp, clear and readable. You don’t get fancy carousels that don’t work, or multimedia enriched everything — you get quality writing displayed in a quality reading manner. The navigation is straight forward and an expanded view shows you where you are in everything, lest you get lost. Everything in the app is smooth like butter, everything just works. Sure the text isn’t zoomable, or selectable, or shareable — but it is highly readable and in the end that’s what I bought it to do.

    It’s safe to say that I have tried a lot of magazine apps and that, of all of them, I hope more publishers model their apps after what The New Yorker has done — they have won me over.

  • iMac Game Performance (mid 2011 models)

    Interesting results from Bare Feats on the newest iMac models and how they stack up against the Mac Pro. They conclude that the iMac makes for a great “best buy” gaming Mac. I think it is more than all but the most serious gamers will need.

    Interesting results from Bare Feats on the newest iMac models and how they stack up against the Mac Pro. They conclude that the iMac makes for a great “best buy” gaming Mac. I think it is more than all but the most serious gamers will need.

  • Thomas Hawk on Why He Will Likely Switch Back to an iPhone

    Thomas Hawk: >Updating the operating system on your Android phone is a huge pain in the ass. In order to update my Samsung Galaxy Vibrant from the Eclair operating system to the Froyo operating system (keep in mind that Google’s working on honeycomb now apparently, which is two operating updates ahead of what I just…

    Thomas Hawk:
    >Updating the operating system on your Android phone is a huge pain in the ass. In order to update my Samsung Galaxy Vibrant from the Eclair operating system to the Froyo operating system (keep in mind that Google’s working on honeycomb now apparently, which is two operating updates ahead of what I just updated to), I had to go through hell to get it done. No OTA for Samsung. No iTunes for Samsung. No, I had to manually find the file somewhere on the web on a confusing website, download it to a Windows machine (yes Windows only), and update my phone through a long confusing process.

    Not to mention that Google has no naming convention that would tell you “Éclair” is older than “Froyo” — that alone would drive me nuts.

    UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for pointing out that Android releases are done alphabetically, which is dumb. Why is it dumb? Industry standard is numbers because numbers make sense. What happens if you want to release an minor update, you get things like ‘Alpha Name + 2.2’ — because that is consumer friendly.

  • Something New

    Khoi Vinh: >None of these are perfect, but they’re all imaginative and incredibly creative, and what’s more, they are fearless in acknowledging that this platform is something new, that it requires an entirely different approach to software, that in order to succeed, they have to create products that truly embrace the strengths and the weaknesses…

    Khoi Vinh:
    >None of these are perfect, but they’re all imaginative and incredibly creative, and what’s more, they are fearless in acknowledging that this platform is something new, that it requires an entirely different approach to software, that in order to succeed, they have to create products that truly embrace the strengths and the weaknesses of the iPad.

    So what is he talking about? Three new apps to interact with Photoshop. Made by Adobe. Say what you will about Adobe and its Creative Suite, they have really taken to the iPad at reasonable pricing — it all feels like the calm before the storm.

  • OmniOutliner for iPad Is Now Available

    It’s $19.99 because it is a damned impressive offering. They use the Solarized themes in some of the documents and really have made a robust offering. I am still playing with it, but I can already tell it’s going to get used a bunch. Also, no export to Dropbox but if you use DropDAV then…

    It’s $19.99 because it is a damned impressive offering. They use the Solarized themes in some of the documents and really have made a robust offering. I am still playing with it, but I can already tell it’s going to get used a bunch. Also, no export to Dropbox but if you use DropDAV then you can export to Dropbox.

  • Quote of the Day: Felix Hernandez

    “I don’t try to strike out people, but sometimes they swing and miss.” — King Felix

    “I don’t try to strike out people, but sometimes they swing and miss.”

  • Enough Episode 33

    Patrick and Myke were kind *enough* to have me on as a guest. We talk about what I would install on a stripped down MacBook Air 11″. We also discuss throwing fish, so you should at least be interested in that.

    Patrick and Myke were kind *enough* to have me on as a guest. We talk about what I would install on a stripped down MacBook Air 11″. We also discuss throwing fish, so you should at least be interested in that.

  • After approving NBC buyout, FCC Commish becomes Comcast lobbyist

    Nate Anderson: >Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Baker will take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity, according to reports. This shows a complete disregard for all Americans.

    Nate Anderson:
    >Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Baker will take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity, according to reports.

    This shows a complete disregard for all Americans.

  • WikiTrust

    Kevin Poulsen on the agreement WikiLeaks makes its employees sign: >The confidentiality agreement (.pdf), revealed by the New Statesman, imposes a penalty of 12 million British pounds– nearly $20 million — on anyone responsible for a significant leak of the organization’s unpublished material. The figure is based on a “typical open-market valuation” of WikiLeaks’ collection,…

    Kevin Poulsen on the agreement WikiLeaks makes its employees sign:
    >The confidentiality agreement (.pdf), revealed by the New Statesman, imposes a penalty of 12 million British pounds– nearly $20 million — on anyone responsible for a significant leak of the organization’s unpublished material. The figure is based on a “typical open-market valuation” of WikiLeaks’ collection, the agreement claims.

    Trust, I hear, is hard to come by among thieves. ((Don’t bother emailing me about this. Stealing private information with the hopes of profiting off of it is, right or wrong, stealing. ))

  • Top Grossest Apps

    Neven Mrgan: >Then Apple added in-app purchases, and decided to include those when calculating apps’ earnings for the Top Grossing list. The result? The list is completely dominated by fake-money compulsion engines. The very fact that these are the top grossing apps signals just good they are at vacuuming money out of pockets. This change really…

    Neven Mrgan:
    >Then Apple added in-app purchases, and decided to include those when calculating apps’ earnings for the Top Grossing list. The result? The list is completely dominated by fake-money compulsion engines. The very fact that these are the top grossing apps signals just good they are at vacuuming money out of pockets.

    This change really irks me since Top Grossing used to be where one could easily find excellent apps. Now it is just an extension of the Top 25 Free apps category.

  • Googlers and Windows Machines

    MG Siegler: >Since the end goal of Chrome OS is clearly to end Windows dominance both in the workplace and the world in general, someone asked what percentage of Google employees still use Windows machines at work? Answer (according to Sergey Brin): 20%. That’s staggeringly low.

    MG Siegler:
    >Since the end goal of Chrome OS is clearly to end Windows dominance both in the workplace and the world in general, someone asked what percentage of Google employees still use Windows machines at work?

    Answer (according to Sergey Brin): 20%. That’s staggeringly low.

  • Sprint’s Offensive Ad Pulled

    Ina Fried: >The ad, which ran on a number of political Web sites and in various newspapers on Tuesday, depicts a man in a dress similar to that worn by the spokeswoman for T-Mobile. The ad featured the tag line “It makes sense if you don’t think about it”–also a play on T-Mobile’s advertisements. The…

    Ina Fried:
    >The ad, which ran on a number of political Web sites and in various newspapers on Tuesday, depicts a man in a dress similar to that worn by the spokeswoman for T-Mobile. The ad featured the tag line “It makes sense if you don’t think about it”–also a play on T-Mobile’s advertisements. The ads were funded by Sprint and created on behalf of a number of groups opposing the proposed $39 billion deal.

    Be sure to click through to take a look at the ad, great stuff.

  • Facebook Apps May Have Leaked Millions of Users’ Personal Data

    Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Jessica Guynn: >Among the information that could have been accessed is data from user profiles, pictures and Facebooks chats between users. >”Fortunately, these third parties may not have realized their ability to access this information,” said Nishant Doshi, a Symantec spokesman in a company blog post. “We have reported this issue to…

    Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Jessica Guynn:
    >Among the information that could have been accessed is data from user profiles, pictures and Facebooks chats between users.
    >”Fortunately, these third parties may not have realized their ability to access this information,” said Nishant Doshi, a Symantec spokesman in a company blog post. “We have reported this issue to Facebook, who has taken corrective action to help eliminate this issue.”

    Well, at least they didn’t know until they posted about it in the Los Angeles Times.

  • Chris Bowler’s Twitter Limits

    Chris Bowler: >I recently found that someone I had been connecting with on Twitter for over two years had at some point stop following me. I admit, it stings a little. But I let it go.

    Chris Bowler:
    >I recently found that someone I had been connecting with on Twitter for over two years had at some point stop following me. I admit, it stings a little. But I let it go.

  • No iAds for Kids

    Federico Viticci: >Mike Zornek, developer of the free Dex app for iPhone and iPod touch (a Pokèmon browser application), relays an email from the iAd Network Support team in which an Apple employee explains how iAds may not be displayed anymore in apps targeted to “young children” because of the advertisers’ preference to not show…

    Federico Viticci:
    >Mike Zornek, developer of the free Dex app for iPhone and iPod touch (a Pokèmon browser application), relays an email from the iAd Network Support team in which an Apple employee explains how iAds may not be displayed anymore in apps targeted to “young children” because of the advertisers’ preference to not show ads to this particular audience.

    This is a good change in policy for everyone but the developers. Apple benefits because they won’t have to worry about children being targeted with advertising — something lawmakers always have problems with. Advertisers benefit for the same reasons too. Parents and children benefit from seeing less ads.

    The unfortunate part is that lesser advertising systems might begin to be used in place of iAds, which could get ugly for consumers.

  • “Screwed” vs An Evolving Market

    [iFlow Reader Staff](https://www.iflowreader.com/Closing.aspx): >We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us. This happened even though we went to great lengths to clear our plans with Apple because we did not want to make this substantial investment of time and money blindly. Apple’s response to our detailed inquiries was to tell us that our…

    [iFlow Reader Staff](https://www.iflowreader.com/Closing.aspx):
    >We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us. This happened even though we went to great lengths to clear our plans with Apple because we did not want to make this substantial investment of time and money blindly. Apple’s response to our detailed inquiries was to tell us that our plans did not infringe their rules in any way, which was true at the time, but there is one little catch. Apple can change the rules at any time and they did. Sadly they must have known full well that they were going to do this.   Apple’s iBooks was already in development when we talked to them and they certainly must have known that their future plans would doom us to failure no matter how good our product was. We never really had a chance.

    First things first: Apple didn’t “screw” iFlow, and they certainly didn’t *screw* iFlow. If anything screwed iFlow it was the very thing that drew them to iOS to begin with: the platform success and an evolving business model.

    Every good business person knows that in order to be successful in the long term you need to have a flexible business. You need to be able to respond to changing laws and changing environments. So iFlow, Apple didn’t screw you — you screwed yourselves. Linking your success to being able to sell one app in one market screwed you and it can and will happen to others.

    To say that Apple screwed iFlow is to also say that Apple directly came after iFlow and said “time to end these guys”. Instead Apple changed a rule that effects everyone in the app store, especially Amazon — not just iFlow. It’s also not fair to say that you cleared it with Apple and that Apple knew they were going to screw you — they likely didn’t know that, at least not the people you talked with. With 50,000 plus employees do you (iFlow) really (naively) believe that all of Apple’s employees were privy to the development of iBooks?

    It sucks that iFlow can’t figure out an alternative, but it’s not Apple’s job to help iFlow run their business. The people they should really be pissed at is the publishers not allowing a flexible pricing model for changing distribution methods — but that probably wouldn’t get them on the Hacker News front page.

  • Follow Me, Follow You on Twitter

    Do I follow you? Do you follow me? What if I follow you and you don’t reciprocate? What if you follow me and *I* don’t reciprocate? Does it matter? If your favorite Twitterer start following you tomorrow, how would that change you? Will you change the way you tweet — the contents of your tweets?…

    Do I follow you? Do you follow me? What if I follow you and you don’t reciprocate? What if you follow me and *I* don’t reciprocate? Does it matter? If your favorite Twitterer start following you tomorrow, how would that change you? Will you change the way you tweet — the contents of your tweets?

    If you follow me and I don’t follow people that you expect me to follow, does that change your opinion of who I am? If you follow me and I unfollow someone for a stupid reason — will that change your perception of me?

    That’s a lot of questions, but they have all been bouncing around my head since 5/4/11 — the day I unfollowed quite a few people — that I consider friends — when I was fed up of hearing lame Star Wars jokes. I received a lot of commentary from people about why I should keep following and how it isn’t “cool” that I am unfollowing people for this reason.

    Many suggested that I get a Twitter app to filter the tweets.

    I do have a filter in Twitter for Mac and it is called following/unfollowing. I don’t want to hear only what I want to hear from people I follow — I want to hear everything they say, whether I like it or not, if that starts to become annoying then I find myself asking the tough question:

    >Why am I still following this person?

    While writing this post I stopped and did the tedious task of pruning my list of people that I follow, I went from 276 to 199 (probably even less by the time you read this). If I unfollowed you, I am sorry, but it shouldn’t matter to you. This has nothing to do with whether I like you, or deem you “worthy” — it has everything to do with what interests me. I like people that tweet certain things, you just may not fit that group.

    Who follows you, how many people follow, and who people you follow are following shouldn’t matter — because no matter what, when you click follow you see that persons tweets — regardless of what opinion they have of you. ((Of course this does not account for protected feeds.)) If I unfollow you, don’t fret because you can still follow me. The reverse is also true.

    Twitter is **not** Facebook. We are not friends because we both pushed a button confirming so — we just are interested in what other people say. Think of Twitter more like RSS feed subscriptions and less like a network of friends and you won’t get so worked up over all this follower nonsense.

  • Your Photos are *Your* Photos

    Jeff Cormier: >Twitpic’s recently amended terms coincide with the announcement of a new deal which sees the service partnering with news agency WENN to sell on the media photos posted by celebrities on Twitter. The new licensing deal ensures that users retain the copyright but by uploading photos service, the company is able to exploit the…

    Jeff Cormier:
    >Twitpic’s recently amended terms coincide with the announcement of a new deal which sees the service partnering with news agency WENN to sell on the media photos posted by celebrities on Twitter. The new licensing deal ensures that users retain the copyright but by uploading photos service, the company is able to exploit the photos for commercial gain.

    and:

    >The only real way to ensure you remain in control of your uploads is to upload images to a private server or use a service such as Mobypicture which says it will not try to profit off the back of your work. But if you’re a user of any of the above apps, or any app for that matter, read the ToS, and if you have any questions, which no doubt many will (including yours truly) contact the creator of application.

  • Quote of the Day: Chuck Skoda

    “One of the reasons I’m happy Android is around — it’s helping keep malware off my iPhone.” — Chuck Skoda Responding to [this](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/05/10/400-percent-increase-in-android-malware-mobile-security-threats-at-record-high/) report.

    “One of the reasons I’m happy Android is around — it’s helping keep malware off my iPhone.”

    Responding to [this](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/05/10/400-percent-increase-in-android-malware-mobile-security-threats-at-record-high/) report.