In honor of last night’s “Lazy Sunday 2”, I thought I’d bring back the original. If you’ve not seen either, you really should watch both now. I appreciate the references in the second to the first, fantastic rhymes and awesome historical references. In Lazy Sunday there’s a reference to Aaron Burr’s duel with Alexander Hamilton:
At Practically Efficient, J. Eddie Smith answers a reader’s question:
What is it that makes you look at OmniFocus? After all, what good is any system if you don’t want to look at it? What makes it enjoyable?
He hits some great points. I think it’s a common tendency to not want to look at any system which, in its entirety, is a list of your obligations (even if accomplishing them makes you feel productive). Maybe this will help encourage more people to use a fantastic app which I don’t know if I could live without at this point.
Not only it generates a piece of modern art in an IR dump, but also has a statement so beautifully useless it should be preserved for future generations: (ternary (false) (integer 15) (integer 15)). For those unaware of s-expressions and Lisp, not only does this conditional always execute the same branch, but its result also wouldn’t be different even if other one would be taken.
Business is no longer just a suit-wearing, cubicle-sitting, card-carrying kind of pursuit. These days being ‘in business’ means you’re the kind of person who takes action and makes things happen.
What action has RIM taken to counter the massive changes in the smartphone world that have happened around it over the past five years?
You don’t just think different… you do different.
“Clever” play on Apple’s iconic campaign, but again, what’s RIM done?
Being in business is not for everyone, but unfortunately… there is no middle ground. You’re either in business or you’re not.
For how much longer will RIM be in business? I think they set out to make their “Think Different” ad and this is what they came up with.
God this is awesome. It’s second nature for us nerds to hear something like this and assume the person reporting the issue is an idiot, but sometimes computers can run in very strange ways.
Michal Grothaus at TUAW lists 15 suggestions for iOS6. My take:
Expand Siri’s capabilities and open up the Siri API - I’ve still not seen Siri work well enough anecdotally for it to even be pulled from beta. An API would likely make that aspect of things worse.
Multiple users (on iPad) - Great idea, but difficult to pull off. I’d even like a guest account which prevented access to specific apps / actions of my choosing.
Facebook integration - Wouldn’t surprise me, but I would never use it, either. I’m sure lots of users would.
Auto-hide an empty Newsstand - We still can’t hide Stocks.app, so I won’t hold my breath for this.
Multitasking gestures for iPhone - I don’t think the gestures would work on a screen that small.
Improved Notification Center - Widgets would be nice. I’d just like a small ! icon to the right of the time when I have a notification. That would be enough for me to consider this a huge improvement.
Weather, Stocks, and Clock for iPad - No thanks.
AirDrop for iOS - With what files could you do this? Photos and contacts? Is there anything else? I suppose it still might be useful in some instances, but as a huge feature for the OS? Unlikely.
Quick access to toggle Bluetooth, WiFi, and 3G on and off - I’d pay money for a small row of toggles in Notification Center to allow you to do these three things. What a godsend this would be.
Universal passcode locks for apps - Might be useful, but I don’t think it’s worth putting it on every app, or allowing it to be put on every app… Though it would theoretically allow you to lock down apps like phone, messages, mail, etc. However, if you had anything in notification center, would that still show? I feel like this implementation would be far too confusing for most people to be able to productively use it.
Multiple signatures in Mail - I’ve always wondered why this was never done in the first place. Can’t be that hard, right Apple?
Safari Top Sites - Adding sites to your bookmarks and closing all tabs kind of does this already. I don’t like that behavior, and I’m not sure I’d like each new tab to have a few thumbnails in it, either.
Ability to select default mail, calendar, and Twitter clients - Acknowledged as a long shot, and I’d have to agree.
Styled Text APIs - Seems like such a fringe case. We’re getting along just fine without, no?
Improved cursor navigation - Would be nice, but again, I’m not holding my breath.
I’ve loved last.fm for a while now but I just found something pretty awesome: this page has a list of new releases by artists in your library. It’s also got an RSS feed just for you. This is infinitely better than being on a bunch of bands’ mailing lists. Fantastic.
PNC bank does this really well. The instructions are clear. The limits are stated.
Type your username.
Type your password.
Tap the “Deposit” tab on the bottom bar.
Type the check amount.
Tap continue, and take photos of the front and back of the check.
I think the difference, moreso than the technology in the app, is the bank policies. PNC makes my money available the next day but does still ask you to hold onto the physical check for a few days. Also, I’ve never had any issues where the check wasn’t deposited, and since they ask you to endorse the check and write For Mobile Deposit Only on its back, forgetting that you already tried is nearly impossible.
I use this feature any time I get a check (admittedly not too often) and it’s never failed. The next time I have to try to submit one, I’ll write the steps down exactly as I do them.
If you steep green tea for too long or at too high a temperature, it’s absolutely gross.
Sweat every single detail. Do work so good out of the gate that the biggest remaining problems are minuscule or matters of opinion.
I’d be dirt poor if Nintendo released nothing but Zelda and Metroid Prime games.
Markdown may have been the most important thing to happen to me at age 23.
Some people will never get Phish: their loss, but they aren’t for everyone.2.
Don’t ever have potentially important conversations via text message.
Buy high-quality products once and treat those things with great care.
Teaching someone is an incredibly rewarding way to learn the finer points of it yourself.
Be generous with physical gifts and especially those of time which are far more important.
Though it’s said that you “get what you pay for,” there are lots of fantastic and free web sites for learning all sorts of things.
No matter how excited you are about something, do not refer to it as the Dream Team.
Swordfish, Chilean Sea Bass and Lobster Tail are absolutely delicious. Thanks, Ocean!
There is nothing wrong with doing nothing at all on a Saturday.
If you want to give me a great Birthday gift, read and ruminate on Give it five minutes. It’s awesome.
I lead a very happy, privileged life (and I always have) for which I should be much more grateful than I am usually able to show.
It’s likely easier to do something for someone else than it is to complain about it and resist.
Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to take a step back. I didn’t always think this was true, but I do now.
Your birthday is just like any other day to a lot of the people you run into that day. The people who make sure you know about it are the people who truly love you.
I’ve actually stopped making them at this point. ↩
Ridiculous a cappella cover of Gotye’s amazing Somebody That I Used to Know by Pentatonix. If you like it, check out an equally ridiculous performance of Florence + The Machine’s Dog Days Are Over.
Last night, Dan Porter, CEO1 of OMGPOP, the new Zynga acquition, posted two tweets:
The one omgpop employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one on the whole team. Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance! (30 Mar 12 via web)
and
What’s so interesting about success is the number of failures who try try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is just one of many… (30 Mar 12 via web)
These are a reply to Shay Pierce, the lone OMGPOP developer who did not complete the transition to Zynga, who told his story on Gamasutra last week.
I became aware of this in my twitter feed and then read through hundreds of @replies bashing him, saying he’s a perfect fit for Zynga and even people talking about how they bought Connectrode, the app Shay Pierce mentions in his post, as a result.
Since then, Dan Porter has deleted both tweets, and posted two new ones:
What I meant to say was… I want to celebrate the people who worked on the game. Who have stuck together. They are everything. Thank you. (1 Apr 12 via Twitter for iPhone)
and
I’m sorry for what I said on Twitter last night. No excuses. (1 Apr 12 via web)
I don’t think that’s enough, though. It still shows that what everyone feared when OMGPOP was bought by Zynga is a very real possibility: the game may or may not change, but the culture likely has. Maybe Dan Porter wouldn’t have said that before he made tens of millions of dollars for cloning pictionary, but I think it’s unlikely. What I’ve done is fairly simple:
I’m deleting Draw Something immediately and permanently from my iPad, the only device on which it’s installed.
I’ll link this post on twitter and mention the people with whom I’m playing.
I’ve bought Connectrode on principle, though it does look interesting.
I’ll update this post if I hear back from Apple either way.
Update: I got an email this afternoon from iTunes Store Customer Support which included the following message:
Alexander, I have reversed the charge for the purchase. In 5-7 business days, a credit of $1.06 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.
Instructions on how to request a refund:
Open the iTunes app, and navigate to the iTunes Store.
Click your email address in the upper right hand corner of the Store. This takes you to your account page.
Click “See All >” under the Purchase History section.
In the bottom section, click the arrow to the left of the Order which includes Draw Something
Click the “Report a Problem” button to the left of the “Done” button
Click the “Report a Problem” link in the row containing Draw Something.
Fill out the short form that presents itself. You’ll get an email immediately if it was received by Apple.
ex CEO? His company was bought. What is he now, other than rich and a tactless asshole? ↩
to the best of my knowledge, I bought Draw Something for $.99, and that’s the only money I’ve ever given Zynga or OMGPOP. They’re now one in the same. I’d have thought long and hard before purchasing if Zynga had made Draw Something in the first place. ↩
Apple’s own Photo Stream is perhaps the easiest way to get photos from your iOS device to your computer, but there’s another way, if you use the wonderful Dropbox application.
When you open Dropbox, tap the “Uploads” tab along the bottom in the tab bar: like in the screenshot above, it will turn blue. Then tap the + button in the upper right hand corner.
Now simply tap the photos you wish to upload. You can see they get a small red checkmark on them. The folder listed at the bottom of the screen is the folder in your Dropbox folder to which these photos will be uploaded. Tap the blue Upload button in the upper right hand corner to start the upload.
At this point, you can leave the application, and the next time you check your Dropbox folder, your images will be there in the folder to which you uploaded them in step 2 above. Nifty, hmm?
It’s a constant surprise when people who use one and sometimes two iOS devices don’t know simple tricks about how to use their devices. The built in software is actually pretty good in most cases (even if it is a little too skeuomorphic at times). Still, Apple hid some simple tricks and shortcuts in plain sight that many users don’t find.
I won’t devote too much time to it, but I will be posting some articles here with the intent of helping my relatives and friends get their way around their devices. If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like me to cover, let me know. Until then, I’ll just be making guides whenever family members get confused and ask for help.
Recently, when Marco Arment posted about releasing about Instapaper 4.1, I wrote about how Marco is a great guy and makes a great app. Forget about Twilight Sepia. Forget about the new distraction-free mode and the gesture to get back to the list of articles. Forget about the gorgeous new fonts1. I was focusing on Marco, the person.
In February 2011, Marco announces that he’s excited to be working with Readability. My favorite quotes are:
Trust me, these guys really know their stuff, and their heads are in the right place: there are no sinister motives or shady practices.
and
I’m honored to be a part of it, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
In November 2011, Marco made a bit more of the backstory known to the public. Initially, Arc90 wanted to pay publishers with Readability and Marco wanted Instapaper to be the best app it could be. Marco linked to and promoted Readability2 but Readability never launched the App Marco spent his time on, so from what I understand, Marco never saw a dime from the joint venture. He ends the article with:
This is a very big and increasingly crowded market, and there’s no reason why we can’t respectfully share it.
Once the free Readability app was released to glowing reviews3 Marco explained on Build & Analyze #67 just how badly he got shafted. He sounded disappointed, not only at the fact that he got duped, but it almost sounded to me like he was saying “I wish I could have spent that time improving my product for my customers.” Marco’s passion is his product; it’s on running his business the right way—honorably—and making his customers smile when they open his app. Marco talked about working with a customer to allow his father to read the news for the first time in years, and how much of an honor it was.
Days later, on March 8th Marco acknowledged that he dropped the ball. He said:
I experimented with custom fonts in Instapaper last year, but my efforts fizzled out. […] When Readability launched their competing app last week, their custom fonts received high praise and Instapaper’s looked pretty tired by comparison. […] I missed an important opportunity that’s necessary for the long-term competitiveness of my product.
And he got to work to make things right, to put out the best product he could.
Late last night, a partner at Arc90, Timothy Meaney (oh, the irony), tweeted
@marcoarment congrats Marco, great idea out of nowhere to up your game re: typography. Out of nowhere!!
This was said regardless of the 8 March blog post in which he acknowledged how Readability did a great job and provided a real reason for some of his customers to defect. And of course, it was unnecessary, pompous and a textbook “dick move.” Now since then, Chris Dary, CTO of Readability, tweeted
@marcoarment Marco, I hate to get into this, but @timothymeaney doesn’t speak for me or the @readability team. Nothing but respect here.
but I cannot get over how big a difference this is. Instapaper’s killer feature is Marco Arment. The pride he has in his work is clear. He goes out of his way to make things clear when he was never doing anything wrong in the first place4. And this shouldn’t be a talking point, but since this isn’t a given anymore, he’s not a dick. If you don’t have Instapaper at this point, just go get it.
FF Tisa and Meta are my favorite serif and sans-serif fonts of the bunch. ↩
I know I signed up for Readability in February 2011 when the first article linked here was posted on marco.org, and cancelled in November when the second article linked here was posted. ↩
Marco talked to his followers on twitter for a few hours during the whole iOS address books fiasco. Aside from this post, he made sure his text was clean, getting his followers’ opinions about things just to be sure. ↩
So this has been in my Instapaper queue since the fall, and I’m just getting around to it now. I was missing out. Bret Victor:
Do you see what everyone is interacting with? The central component of this Interactive Future? It’s there in every photo!
That’s right! — HANDS
And that’s great! I think hands are fantastic!
Hands do two things. They are two utterly amazing things, and you rely on them every moment of the day, and most Future Interaction Concepts completely ignore both of them.
Marco Arment’s 3rd footnote in his post announcing Instapaper 4.1
Ever see how big [the text] goes on iPad? That was tweaked with the help of one customer’s father with very low vision so he could read the news for the first time in years. It was a great honor to be able to have such an effect on someone’s life.
What a kick ass guy, and a kick ass app. Go get it!
I had been planning on waiting until this summer to get the new iPad, since I don’t use the one I have as often as I’d like (for a number of reasons I’ll explore in another post) but will be moving this summer and may have a commute on which I could use it for a good 40-60 minutes daily. A few things affected my decision:
A nice tax return
An upcoming birthday
An upcoming 10-day trip to Italy for which I won’t have my laptop
So I decided to get one now. The things I do most on my original iPad (in no particular order):
Nothing too intensive. I preordered the first iPad before its launch and so I had no idea what I’d use it for, or how it’d work into my life. At the time, I did not have an Apple Laptop. I was using an iMac and an HP Laptop running Windows 7, and so I bought the 32GB version. The thought was that it would be my portable mac in lieu of a MacBook Pro2, and don’t think I ever used that much storage on it, even just because I could. Yesterday, I was using about 15 GB of storage on it, and today I’ve gotten that number down to 6.7 GB simply by unsyncing the music, podcasts3 and movies from the device. What’s using the most space?
Keynote: 414 MB
Numbers: 402 MB
Pages: 364 MB
Carcassonne 179 MB
#sworcery: 170 MB
Instapaper: 141 MB
Terminology: 138 MB
Fruit Ninja HD: 135 MB
PvZ HD: 96.3 MB
I’ve got 23.9 GB free. When I purchased the new iPad, I also accessorized4:
I ended up purchasing almost $250 (including 7% NJ sales tax) of other things, too. And I never used 32GB worth of space. I went with the 16 GB model for $499. I flirted with the idea of getting a 4G model, but don’t go out often enough to make it cost effective: my place of business has WiFi as does my apartment and my parents’ house, which is where I spend most of my time. I’m not one to sit in the park and wish I could use my tablet5. So I figured the WiFi only model was fine. The storage I second guessed myself on…
Immediately after ordering, of course, I realized that the Retina graphics are going to likely put more of a strain on that storage than the way I use it. I’m as good a photographer as my iPhone 4S, a not-so-steady hand and Instagram filters allow me to be, so I don’t think the storage will be used up by photos (but I could be wrong: I do plan to get iPhoto today), but perhaps these huge new textures for games and icons / assets for apps will cause problems. I’ll have a better idea over the next few weeks.
stunning. It’s incredible. I’m not being hyperbolic or exaggerative when I say it is easily the most beautiful computer display I have ever looked at.
and it’s thinner and lighter than the model I’ve got right now. I’m going from no cameras to two, from a floppy rubber, pointy-edged case to Apple’s premium smart cover, and from 10 hours of battery life to… 10 hours of battery life. I look forward to a visit from the FedEx man at work today.
The Mac version comes in a close second to the iPad version as the overall best version of OmniFocus. If I could only use one version, it’d be the iPad version. ↩
I bought a MacBook Pro about 2 weeks later. And then could afford nothing for the next six months. Good times. ↩
iPhone + Jambox = perfect for all the 5by5 shows. ↩
Do things right the first time; it’s worth the extra time / money. ↩
