Recent Articles

Ben Thompson:

“Evolving” is a word that has never really applied to Twitter. Consider the Oscars: according to Twitter’s statement of strategy the ideal outcome for Twitter apparently would be live-streaming the Oscars, much as the service live-streamed a few NFL games and the Presidential debates, making the service the “first-screen” instead of the second. In other words, Twitter wants to make a better banner ad (that, as noted above, will in reality actually be worse). What makes this so frustrating is that Twitter’s goal of owning “live” could mean so much more: how might the product evolve if Twitter had the sort of product mindset found at company’s like Amazon, Netflix, or Airbnb?

Brutal.

I’m a big fan of the third method listed. Super fast and stays put the best.

Jason Snell for Macworld:

One shape I entirely failed to mention in my article about iOS’s future last week is the laptop itself. If Apple remains committed to keeping iOS and macOS apart, it would seem logical that at some point Apple will make an iOS device with a keyboard physically attached to a screen.

I keep telling myself to breath, that surely he doesn’t mean this, but I can’t get those words out of my head. Oh my…

Matt Gemmell:

GoodNotes does a hell of a lot more than the stuff I’ve listed above, but those are the features that grab me most, and make me most grateful for the app. It’s magic notebook tech, and turns the iPad into the big Moleskine that trees couldn’t provide.

I personally am not a fan of GoodNotes, but this is one of the better write ups on the app. Also, that zoom feature is in a few other apps including: Notability, and my personal favorite Noteshelf.

I’ve been testing small EDC pens and thus been using paper of late — all I can say is how much better notes with an Apple Pencil and iPad truly are.

A man who doesn’t own a cell phone (and apparently never has):

Even though we have two hands, I’m convinced that you can’t hold a cellphone and someone else’s hand at the same time.

Some really interesting points — I wonder how we combat this in the future, he says as he stares a two iPads and an iPhone.

Annalee Newitz:

Despite Facebook’s commitment to globalism, here we learn that the default norms for what you view will be set not by your global interests but by “whatever the majority of people in your region selected.” Yes, you can update your settings, but if you’ve ever tried to mess with your privacy settings on Facebook you know that won’t be easy. The vast majority of people will never escape the filter bubbles of their local regions.

This sounds like a terrible idea, people already have enough trouble getting out of their own bubbles. This seems like a way of amplifying just that.

This is a tragic and sickening post about the treatment Susan J. Fowler faced at Uber (along with the other women who work/ed there). I think this also warrants a reminder that this is far from the first allegation of a nefarious nature to surface about Uber. They have a track record of being sleazy.

Uber’s CEO did respond to these claims, saying:

I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations.

Well, bullshit, but let’s say it was the first time he heard this: you don’t task your Chief Human Resources Officer with investigating. you out right fire that person and everyone in senior positions within HR. I mean, that is, if you truly believe the behavior is “abhorrent”. If you don’t feel that way, you start a bullshit investigation and pass some quotes to the press.

So, Lyft then? Yeah…

Great post from Viticci going over the power aspects of DEVONthink — aligns well with how I am using the tool thus far. I’ll dive into my thoughts on it more later after I get a better handle on things.

Also, I should note, Viticci is now going to be doing weekly-ish posts on his iPad usage — so that should combine nicely with the weekly posts I do for members here on iPads — if you are looking for more iPad content.

And really, who isn’t looking for more iPad content?

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.

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.

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.

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.