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

  • ‘Unbelievable Turmoil’

    Michael Shear: In record time, the 45th president has set off global outrage with a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, fired his acting attorney general for refusing to defend the ban and watched as federal courts swiftly moved to block the policy, calling it an unconstitutional use of executive power. The president angrily provoked…

    Michael Shear:

    In record time, the 45th president has set off global outrage with a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, fired his acting attorney general for refusing to defend the ban and watched as federal courts swiftly moved to block the policy, calling it an unconstitutional use of executive power.

    The president angrily provoked the cancellation of a summit meeting with the Mexican president, hung up on Australia’s prime minister, authorized a commando raid that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL member, repeatedly lied about the existence of millions of fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election and engaged in Twitter wars with senators, a sports team owner, a Hollywood actor and a major department store chain. His words and actions have generated almost daily protests around the country.

  • Marshmallow Run Game by Design Code Build — Kickstarter

    Support our curriculum and workshops for San Diego Girl Scouts to create an epic platformer game for Scratch, web, iOS & Android! Sounds like a great cause to back. I’ve pledged and am sad to see the general lack of funding for this project.

    Support our curriculum and workshops for San Diego Girl Scouts to create an epic platformer game for Scratch, web, iOS & Android!

    Sounds like a great cause to back. I’ve pledged and am sad to see the general lack of funding for this project.

  • Signal Messaging App Rolls Out Encrypted Video Calling

    Swati Khandelwal: Signal has already been providing fully end-to-end encrypted chat and voice calling features, but the newly added feature will make it even easier for privacy conscious people to convey their information face-to-face through video calling without compromising security. There are a lot of options out there, but Signal is by far the easiest…

    Swati Khandelwal:

    Signal has already been providing fully end-to-end encrypted chat and voice calling features, but the newly added feature will make it even easier for privacy conscious people to convey their information face-to-face through video calling without compromising security.

    There are a lot of options out there, but Signal is by far the easiest and most respected in encrypted communications. But what I still find most shocking is that I can’t passcode protect the app on iOS.

  • The myth of Apple’s great design

    Jason Kottke, writing about Ian Bogost’s post on Apple design (which is a shit show of a post): Who makes all the apps that people want to use on their iPhones to chat/connect/flirt/collaborate with their loved ones? Facebook, Snap, Google, Slack…not Apple, who initially wasn’t even going to provide a way for 3rd parties to…

    Jason Kottke, writing about Ian Bogost’s post on Apple design (which is a shit show of a post):

    Who makes all the apps that people want to use on their iPhones to chat/connect/flirt/collaborate with their loved ones? Facebook, Snap, Google, Slack…not Apple, who initially wasn’t even going to provide a way for 3rd parties to build apps for the iPhone. Almost every attempt by Apple to build services to connect people — remember Ping?! — has failed. Even iCloud, which promised to unite all Apple devices into one fluid ecosystem, was plagued for years with reliability problems and still isn’t as good as Dropbox.

    I’d argue iMessage is a killer app for the platform, and has a better implementation than any of those listed above. Slack on iOS is a turd — Facebook’s app has been known to spy on you. If the argument that design is the the details (which is what Bogost bangs on and on about), then the detail being overlooked in those other message apps is respect for users — both in privacy and ease and reliability.

    iCloud v. Dropbox is an interesting issue — for a long time iCloud Drive was not as good as Dropbox, but I’d argue that in the past 6 months it has surpassed Dropbox. The issue here is everyone has a sour taste in their mouth for iCloud. (I also argue that Dropbox no longer has a sustainable business, but to each his own.) But the truth is that I saved this post to Ulysses from my small iPad, with Ulysses open on my large iPad. Set down the small iPad and selected this post to write my comments. It was there, no sync indicator, just seamless interoperability.

  • iPad Productivity Report — 2/13/17

    It’s sad to see Instapaper die, but my goodness is a Workflow up to some magic.

    I spent some time over the weekend paying out the nose for DEVONThink 2 Go, and getting that setup. This is one of those apps where it seems absolutely pointless until it just clicks. It has not, as of yet, *clicked* for me. I honestly have no clue where the benefit of this app lies, so if you use it please chime in for me. (I a, testing several ideas in it, but odd app.)

    In the mean time, let’s talk about my Read Later service struggles and highlight some other apps I do know how to use.

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  • Building a Bug Out Bag

    This is something only paranoid people have, this is something everyone should have.

    I posted a link to an article which pokes a little fun at the bug out bag mentality, in doing so I knew I was going to get some questions — specifically whether or not I have a bug out bag. So, yes, of course I have a bug out bag — I’ve had one since 2012. Allow me to explain why I have one, why you should have one, and how to build one without having to read posts by people trying to survive a nuclear zombie apocalypse where everything is also flooded and people are generally trying to kill each other.

    A tall order.

    (more…)

  • iBooks Author — What Could Have Been

    Artificially slowing the iPad’s pace.

    Daniel Steinberg on passion behind teams at Apple:

    iBooks Author could have been a trojan horse into the personal publishing business. It would have been classic Apple. Instead of small authors going to Amazon’s platform, they would have started with iBooks Author. Apple should have made it easy for them to push to Amazon as well. Why? Because these people wanted to publish on Amazon but they weren’t considering publishing with Apple. Thousands of authors would have come to Apple to create content and stayed with Apple after publishing content there.

    (more…)

  • Todoist

    Yes, I switched to Todoist and I think it is really good but not earth shattering.

    The first time I tried Todoist, I was enamored by one feature: the daily emails. I love those, as they are a great way to make sure I see my list for the day, at the top of the day when I can really do something about it. I quickly brushed Todoist aside for 2Do, as I didn’t trust the sync system and the unencrypted nature of Todoist.

    Truthfully, in many ways 2Do is the better app. But when I found out Todoist was now encrypting sync data properly, I felt it warranted a full look. I switched everything over and found an app with less power, but which is actually more powerful for me.

    (more…)

  • Owning Your Content Matters

    Manton Reece: Owning your content by having a microblog at your own domain is empowering. Maybe you’re writing about what you had for lunch. Maybe you’re photo-blogging an important trip. Maybe you’re posting from your iPhone at a protest outside the White House. It’s certainly a step better than the arbitrary Twitter “verification” bullshit.

    Manton Reece:

    Owning your content by having a microblog at your own domain is empowering. Maybe you’re writing about what you had for lunch. Maybe you’re photo-blogging an important trip. Maybe you’re posting from your iPhone at a protest outside the White House.

    It’s certainly a step better than the arbitrary Twitter “verification” bullshit.

  • Secret Service Unlocking Phones

    Aliya Sternstein: Typically, a device takes anywhere from a day to a month to break into, depending on whether Secret Service computer engineers need to disassemble the device and software to figure out how it was programmed. Interesting article.

    Aliya Sternstein:

    Typically, a device takes anywhere from a day to a month to break into, depending on whether Secret Service computer engineers need to disassemble the device and software to figure out how it was programmed.

    Interesting article.

  • World’s Saddest 45 Rally Draws Just 8 Supporters

    There appeared to be eight people at the rally.

    There appeared to be eight people at the rally.

  • 45 and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles

    Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, in the second paragraph of the article: Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty…

    Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, in the second paragraph of the article:

    Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

    You read that paragraph and you think, wow that’s insane, and then you read the rest of the article and you think: I wish it was just the second paragraph — that seemed better.

  • iPad Productivity Report — 02/05/17

    The iPad needs continued third party developer love, and it has a little perception problem.

    When I posted that old iPads don’t work well, I received a slew of feedback with people telling me how many people they know using an iPad 3 era device. I truly feel sorry for these people, even when that device was launched it was underpowered. My oldest daughter still uses that, and it’s a pile shit — you stand no chance of convincing me otherwise.

    ## Reliance on Third Parties

    One of the most overlooked advantages of the macOS platform is the lessened reliance on third party software. That’s not to say you don’t need third party software on macOS, but that you can do *a lot* of stuff in something as basic as Terminal. A Mac, straight out of the box has a lot more ability than *any* iOS device straight out of the box. Where the playing field starts to level is when you add in third party apps on iOS (and macOS for that matter).

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  • Remote Work Emergency

    Good lord, this is a perfect article.

    Good lord, this is a perfect article.

  • Federal workers turn to encryption to thwart Trump

    Andrew Restuccia, Marianne Levine, Nahal Toosi: Fearing for their jobs, the employees began communicating incognito using the app Signal shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Signal, like WhatsApp and other mobile phone software, encrypts all communications, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to them. Hard to blame them. I should note here that of…

    Andrew Restuccia, Marianne Levine, Nahal Toosi:

    Fearing for their jobs, the employees began communicating incognito using the app Signal shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Signal, like WhatsApp and other mobile phone software, encrypts all communications, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to them.

    Hard to blame them. I should note here that of WhatsApp/Signal/iMessage — Signal is the one to trust.

  • Ulysses Does it Too

    I should have known.

    In my quick review of Textastic I noted that I snagged it for the feature where you can grab an external file, edit it, and “save” it back to the external location without editing (I really need a better term for this). Turns out Ulysses can do that too, I mean of course it can, it’s amazing.

    If you back all the way out of your library and tap the manage view you will find an option to “Enable External Files” (maybe that’s a better name?). Once you do that there is a Library Source called External Files and within that you can grab files from iCloud Drive, OS X Server machines, and any other app which allows this kind of access (Transmit, Documents, Sync, etc). This all works incredibly well if what you are editing is raw text and not code, for my uses this will likely be better than Textastic.

    Thanks to all those who dropped me a note about this.

  • This Here iPad Sales Thing

    Looking into iPad sales numbers and trying not to bore myself.

    Look, I don’t know why iPad sales are trending down, you don’t know why they are, and actually no one knows why they are. You know how I know that? Because even Apple doesn’t know why, and they have the biggest motivation of anyone to figure out why.

    Let’s play a simple game:

    • What’s the best tablet you can buy? iPad.
    • What’s the computer best suited for the average American? iPad.

    Those two questions are so easy to answer that even the most staunch Mac believer will agree: most people probably are best off with a tablet and the iPad is easily the best tablet. That’s not me making an argument for the iPad, or against the Mac — it’s just that most Americans want something to buy things and look at Facebook while at home and, hey, it turns out the iPad is pretty fucking good at that.

    (more…)

  • Introducing Linea

    Anyone who’s worked at a whiteboard knows that it’s a great place to experiment with ideas. Being able to quickly get rid of mistakes is just as important as capturing a thought. You know your fingers will be dirty at the end of a good session. You can snag Linea here. It’s a really well…

    Anyone who’s worked at a whiteboard knows that it’s a great place to experiment with ideas. Being able to quickly get rid of mistakes is just as important as capturing a thought. You know your fingers will be dirty at the end of a good session.

    You can snag Linea here. It’s a really well done app with great UI controls. I think the whiteboard analogy is apt. It won’t replace apps like Procreate for many, but it is probably the first drawing app any iPad Pro user should buy.

  • Check If Your Netgear Router is also Vulnerable to this Password Bypass Flaw

    Swati Khandelwal: This is the second time in around two months when researchers have discovered flaws in Netgear routers. Just last month, the US-CERT advised users to stop using Netgear’s R7000 and R6400 routers due to a serious bug that permitted command injection. I love the new Netgear routers, but I wouldn’t use one at…

    Swati Khandelwal:

    This is the second time in around two months when researchers have discovered flaws in Netgear routers. Just last month, the US-CERT advised users to stop using Netgear’s R7000 and R6400 routers due to a serious bug that permitted command injection.

    I love the new Netgear routers, but I wouldn’t use one at this point.

  • Democrats boycott hearings of two cabinet nominees, demand the truth

    Laurel Raymond reporting on the reaction to Democrats delaying nominations: “We did not inflict this kind of obstructionism on President Obama,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the other two senators in the room. Toomey labeled the Democrats’ boycott “a completely unprecedented level of obstruction. This is not what the American people expect of…

    Laurel Raymond reporting on the reaction to Democrats delaying nominations:

    “We did not inflict this kind of obstructionism on President Obama,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the other two senators in the room. Toomey labeled the Democrats’ boycott “a completely unprecedented level of obstruction. This is not what the American people expect of the United States Senate.”

    Is that true?

    Senate Republicans refused to hold a vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, for nearly 11 months.”

    Oh, that’s right. Glad to see Democrats realizing that the rules of the game have changed. Now, can they keep up?