Recent Articles

Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai:

In other words, 1Password really wants you to stop using its local storage version, though Hicks also added that the company is not planning to “remove support for local/Dropbox/iCloud vaults from the software,” at least for now.

It’s a bit confusing what the fuck is going on with 1Password, but it seems as though sooner or later you are going to be forced to 1Password.com. At which point, they will no longer be the app I use.

Shoot me your suggestions.

David Vo:

Then, travelers saw the light. The textile gods extolled the virtues of merino wool. Could a natural fiber beat laboratory-born inventions like nylon and polyester? And at a price point of some $60 just for a t-shirt, is it worth paying this high price of admission to enter Merino Club? Let’s get stuck into the details.

The only reason you’re not wearing merino all day, is because you haven’t tried it yet.

Om Malik on downsizing his device:

Over past few months, I have been experiencing increasing pain in my left wrist and thumb. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. I thought it was a broken bone or something like that. I mean it was painful and it forced me to visit my doctor According to my doctor is because of overusing my left thumb on the phone.

I love the argument he makes for buying a phone which fits your hands. I know exactly the pain he speaks of, because I had that with my iPhone 3GS. Those smaller phones always forced me to use just one hand, and my thumb felt like it was broke more than a few times.

Since switching to the larger plus model iPhones, I tend to use both hands on the device far more often — and I think that has alleviated this pain. I’ve only felt it once or twice in the past few years.

I do wonder what the long term solution here is.

Shawn Blanc:

My biggest quibble with Ulysses right now is the way it handles images. If the image is inline with a note, you see an IMG markdown tag. Or, an image can be attached to a note, but otherwise not shown inline. It’d be great to be able to have images displayed inline.

I see this complaint a lot. I don’t disagree with it, but I also don’t agree with it. When I am focused on writing — not having to scroll by a bunch of images makes editing much easier. However, when I am editing, sometimes I like to see the images to make sure they flow properly.

You can do this with previewing the page, which is nice, but then you can’t easily edit the text (especially not on iOS). I’d propose something like Slack’s collapse command, where you can toggle showing images inline with a keyboard shortcut. That would be killer.

M.G. Siegler:

In a weird way, I almost feel like the 10.5″ iPad seems more like a smaller 12.9″ iPad versus a larger 9.7″ one.

Patrick Lucas Austin:

Participants with phones in another room greatly outperformed those with phones in pockets or on desks in all tasks.

Wow.

Tracy Chou :

It worries me that so many of the builders of technology today are people like me; people haven’t spent anywhere near enough time thinking about these larger questions of what it is that we are building, and what the implications are for the world.

And maybe just visit an area which isn’t the “Bay Area” every once and a while. I dunno.

Cory Bohon on the 10.5” iPad Pro:

Nearly every task I do with the iPad and the attached Smart Keyboard feels magical and natural — this is clearly the future of personal computing.

The Surface line has taken off like gangbusters in the past because it was the middle choice — it’s not really a tablet, but it’s not really a laptop. It’s for that very reason the device sucks. As this article points out, Windows is the problem with Surface devices.

But, Windows is also the only reason Surface devices have been adopted as fast as they have been. It’s why iPads run iOS, and not macOS.

Kai-Fu Lee:

So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users.

Hell of a thought.

Matt Gemmell writing about iPads and the notion of replacing a laptop:

I’m not sure what they’re afraid of.

Fantastic post, especially for people who get real mad at the idea that iPads work well for people.

Justin Searls:

I’ve found that virtually any painful-to-accomplish task can be automated away to some extent with the excellent (and recently Apple-acquired) Workflow app, so I’ve been pretty aggressive in creating an automated workflow as soon as I recognize a certain action is more awkward than necessary

Love that description, and I think for most people it’s not so much needing workflow as it is thinking a tad, shall we say, newly? Hmm, need to think of a catchier phrase there.