Recent Articles

Dan Provost:

This has the advantage of essentially having two full height iPad apps, side by side.

Now, imagine Apple doing the exact same thing, but with the iPad mini.”

It’s perfectly normal to have three iPads, right?

Kevin Kortum reached out on Twitter and solved the mystery of MiniVan keyboard programming in just three tweets. I just got done reprogramming the keyboard and it worked like a charm. Big thanks to him. (Now I just have to deal with the fact that I not only need a Mac for this, but that I am going to be messing around with this quite a lot.)

It’s never as cut and dry as you assume it is.

Manton Reece on his new project:

I’m writing a book about independent microblogging, and launching a publishing platform called Micro.blog.

I’ve had a lot of chats with Manton, not only about this project, but our general philosophical agreements about many things privacy and “owning your own stuff” related. I backed this project, and in fact (as of this writing) it has nearly doubled its funding goal. Even so, I think you should back it if you can.

This is not another App.net fiasco. His service and the ideas behind it are 1000% better (well that’s not really possible, but it is better, a lot better). It’s the service I use to cross post from here to here.

Sam Gerstenzang:

Apple is quietly getting very good at shipping very small computers that charge very rapidly, and thus can be unanchored ––unlike Google Home or Amazon Echo. Over time, as power and size requirements decrease, a direct internet connection might add value. But for now, Bluetooth allows a connection to your phone (which is still quite obviously and self-consciously a computer) and that’s enough.”

The rapid charging is, to me, the most amazing parts about both the Pencil and the AirPods. How can they last that long, but charge that fast?

A bit of cleverness, not new technology:

“Now when people in Egypt or the United Arab Emirates send a Signal message, it’ll look identical to something like a Google search,” Marlinspike says. “The idea is that using Signal will look like using Google; if you want to block Signal you’ll have to block Google.”

This is so fucking clever. Love it.

John Voorhees:

After a week of heavy use, the Canopy has found a permanent place in my writing kit. I won’t use it every day – many days, the Smart Keyboard will be enough – but when I’m doing a lot of writing, I’m going to carry the Canopy.

This really is a lovely product. I prodded the Studio Neat guys on Twitter to make a version to house the Pok3r keyboard. because if they did that I would be in heaven.

Even without that, I still am really considering buying this because I think it would make a killer travel setup if I can’t figure out a good way to travel with a mechanical keyboard.

Khoi Vinh:

I also discovered something interesting about Google’s much vaunted strength in services: sometimes it’s no better than Apple’s.

I love this comment so much because I think it so succinctly shines a light on something that drives me nuts: often the people complaining about Apple stuff has no real basis for comparison. Sure they read reviews and hear anecdotes, but very rarely do these people try to live on the other non-Apple things.

Like the group bullshitting that they are going to switch to the Surface Studio — without even realizing that that means Windows 10, and that means moving to a mobile processor. No, they just saw something shiny and were pissed Apple didn’t do that.

So Vinh’s post serves as a nice reminder to maybe check out the competition before you threaten to move to the competition.

This is an overall solid guide from The Wirecutter crew. I too think the CODE is one of the best mechanical keyboards you can get, especially for Mac users. I personally hate the Mathis keyboards.

In a rare miss, I think they do a disservice to the Pok3r keyboard, as I find everything they say about it to be incorrect. The build quality is excellent, and I suspect they are seeing a difference in the WASD model it sounds like they tested. Further the high pitch whine is insane, but a firmware update fixes it right away.

When the Snowden leaks started, I spent countless hours setting up PGP (GPG on Mac) email systems so that I could email with privacy. Since then services like Protonmail have sought to make it trivial. But nothing is easier than Signal or iMessage for that matter.

In fact I spend a lot of time lecturing family on sending me private things (like passwords, for some reason they send me passwords a lot) not in email, but in iMessage. I think to many that email feels far more private, but in reality it is the messaging platforms which are actually more private.

A great (and very long) wrap up from Viticci on his use of the iPad Pro over the last year. I don’t think there is a single part of this I disagree with. (Well I guess you could criticize his thinking that Scrivener is needed over Ulysses, but that seems obvious to readers of this site.) I posted my year long wrap up for members, here.