Month: September 2010

The Cult of Busy  →

Fantastic essay by Scott Berkun:

People who are always busy are time poor. They have a time shortage. They have time debt. They are either trying to do too much, or they aren’t doing what they’re doing very well. They are failing to either a) be effective with their time b) don’t know what they’re trying to effect, so they scramble away at trying to optimize for  everything, which leads to optimizing nothing.

On the other hand, people who truly have control over time have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. They have a sense of priorities that drives their use of time and can shift away from the specific ordinary work that’s easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify.

The Cult of Busy

The new Twitter.com  →

The promo video is very cute. It tells more about what Twitter already is than it does about their website’s new UI.

And speaking of the new UI, the unconventional design of Twitter’s new iPad app now makes a bit more sense. But it looks as if there are two significant advantages Twitter’s website has over their iPad app: (a) selected tweets don’t stay ‘pinned’ in your current timeline view; and (b) side-loaded pages are closable.

The new Twitter.com

Speaking of the Value of a Reader’s Attention  →

Seth Godin on “The massive attention surplus”:

It turns out that the almost infinitely long tail of attention varieties is what will kick open the monetization of online attention. Yes, I will give my attention to an ad, but only if it’s anticipated, personal and relevant. We still give permission to marketers that earn it, but so few marketers do.

This is why elite ad networks like Fusion and the Deck are so wildly successful. They’re serving up relevant, anticipated ads on sites of good report with a trusting readership.

Speaking of the Value of a Reader’s Attention

Alarms  →

What an incredibly clever alarm/timer/to-do app. It sits in your Menu Bar and you can drag files, emails, URLs and contacts onto it and schedule a concrete time to hash out a to-do item. It syncs with iCal (and therefore, Things). And you can even use it to set a timer.

Alarms was just released as a public Beta, so it is currently free test. (Via Patrick Rhone.)

Alarms

Content Distribution, Metrics of Impact, and Advertising

Link posts outnumber articles on this site three to one. Some of you may remember about a year ago when I first made a change to the way links were posted within the RSS feed. And then, just a few weeks ago, savvy readers may have noticed things changed again.

Up until a few weeks ago, the <link> element of a link post in the RSS feed would point to this site. Now it points readers away from shawnblanc.net and directly to the linked-to URL.

I made the change as a short-term experiment. I was curious to see how it would affect:

  • those of you who read this site via RSS.
  • pageviews.
  • my approach to posting links.

The feedback I have recieved from readers has been nothing but positive. And the affect on pageviews has not even been noticeable (August was this site’s biggest traffic month to date, and September is close on its heels).

Something I did not expect was just how liberating the new link behavior would be for me. Any prior sense I may have had about “pimping pageviews” has been completely removed simply by default. Posting a link to the RSS feed does not directly send any pageviews to this site since readers within RSS are directed straight to the linked-to URL.

Needless to say, the experiment is over. I am keeping things this way.

For those who are curious, the change was mostly prompted because I now read websites and subscriptions differently than I did a year ago. I now read much less on my Mac using NetNewsWire and Safari, and much more my iPhone and iPad and in Instapaper.

I used to open NNW and comb through my feeds, opening the ones I wanted to read in Safari in the background, and then going and reading all the open tabs. It was nice to have links open the site they were sourced in instead of the final destination, because that way when I got to that link I could remember why I was there and who had sent me to it.

Now I read feeds in shorter, more-frequent chunks. And I send a lot to Instapaper. For the sites I read which do not send links directly to the linked-to URL, that extra tap in my iPad seems more annoying than it used to be.

Trust and attention, or eyeballs

As a publisher it is difficult to abandon pageviews and subscribers as the metrics we compare the success and value of our site against. We all “know” that what is more important than pageviews and subscribers is the actual attention and trust of a few readers. But how often do we act on that knowledge, versus paying it lip service? To act on it means anything I can do to make the reading experience more pleasant and trustworthy is a win — even if it hurts pageviews.

It used to be that pageviews did equate to impact and reader engagement. If people were engaging with your site, they were visiting it. But in today’s Web, engaged readers don’t always visit. Instead they are reading your content via their Tumblr Dashboard, feed reader, or Instapaper account. Not to mention how easy it is to conjure up anonymous pageviews; uninterested, drive-by traffic is getting cheaper by the day.

Consider it in terms of coffee shops. The trendy coffee shop on the corner of First and Main may get a lot of regular foot traffic. But it’s mostly tourists. However, the hole-in-the-wall roastarie which is situated down a few blocks and brews the best Americano in town, is the one serving all the locals. That’s the coffee shop you’ll be told to visit if you ask any local. And that’s where you’ll be sure to come back to next time you’re in town.

Leaving the coffee analogy, another metric of reader engagement is RSS subscribers. This is currently a more valid number than pageviews to measure how many engaged readers you have, but I think subscribers are the new pageviews. Which means subscribers as a metric is already on its way out (though slowly). And so I don’t know if there are any reliable quantitative metrics for impact left.

To put it simply: you can no longer measure value by pageviews, impressions, or subscribers. And so it’s folly to build a site that uses those numbers to measure its success.

As publishers, we should be building our websites and distributing our content with the goal of earning trust, not numbers. If we hope to grow our reach — and make even a modicum of income from our content — we won’t be able to lean on pageviews and subscribers alone. Trust and attention that are our most valuable commodities. Eyeballs can be bought and pageviews can be forced. But attention and trust is something that can only be earned over time.

Content Distribution, Metrics of Impact, and Advertising

The Death Of The RSS Reader  →

Google Reader was seeing upwards of 267 percent year-over-year growth in traffic to now a 27 percent year-over-year decline. Perhaps RSS readers are on the decline, but it’s because syndicated content is becoming more popular, and is therefore available through many means beyond just a feed reader. Such as email, Twitter, Facebook, the Tumblr Dashboard, etc.

(Via Khoi.)

Update: Google Says Google Reader Is Doing Just Fine.

The Death Of The RSS Reader

Talking Tools Interview With Marco Arment  →

Marco Arment, in his interview with Brett Kelly:

The only way to deal with large amounts of email is to devise standards for deciding quickly whether to respond to something. And not whether you think you should respond, but whether you think that you realistically will. You have to be honest with yourself and brutal to the senders who don’t make the cut.

This is how most people work anyway, but they’re in denial about it, so they’ll let their inboxes collect thousands of messages and then “declare bankruptcy” after a while and start the cycle again.

In case you missed it earlier, Brett’s Talking Tools interview with me is here. And there are several others as well.

Talking Tools Interview With Marco Arment

Daring Fireball-Style Linked List Plugin for WordPress  →

I get a lot of email asking how I do links in my RSS feed and on my website. For the past year I’ve been using this plugin by Jonathan Penn, and it has been the foundation of getting the proper behavior for links in my RSS feed (though I have written a bit of additional code to get better functionality out of it).

This new plugin, written by YJ Soon, seems to add similar custom functionality right out of the box:

(i) the item’s RSS permalink becomes the link destination; (ii) the actual permalink to your post is inserted as a star glyph at the end of your post; and (iii) a star glyph is added in front of your non-linked-list post titles.

Moreover, you can customize much of the behavior as desired.

I have not yet switched to this plugin, but if you post links (or are thinking about posting links) to your WordPress website this plugin looks like the ticket.

And so long as we’re on the subject, clever readers may have already noticed I changed the default behavior for links in the shawnblanc.net RSS feed about a week ago. Formerly the linked-to URL pointed to this site’s permalilnk first, thus causing two taps or clicks before landing on the linked-to URL. Now a link in the RSS feed goes directly to the linked-to URL. This change in RSS behavior has proven to be a fantastic decision, and I highly recommend all link-bloggers do the same. But more on that another day.

Daring Fireball-Style Linked List Plugin for WordPress

Justin Blanton’s Sweet Mac Setup

Justin is a patent attorney in Silicon Valley, but don’t let his job title fool you, his life isn’t all fun and games. When he’s not working on law-related stuff, he’s turning down requests to do stand-up comedy, and eating, or thinking about eating. He likes to eat.

He feels it’s his lot in life to stay abreast of the latest in tech and science, and has run a moderately popular, tech-centric site since 2002. He’s neurotic, obsessive, sarcastic to a fault and obviously great looking. He gifts the world a constant stream of wit and satire on Twitter (@jblanton), and recently started answering questions on Formspring. He’s also very serious about his photography.

What is your current setup?

Justin Blanton's Setup

Justin Blanton's Setup

These days my only machine (apart from an iPad and an iPhone 4) is the latest (mid-2010) 15″ 2.66GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (and the new, “hi-res,” 1680×1050 display). Internally, it’s rocking a 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 solid-state drive. The whole thing is stupid fast. I love it.

My precious usually is plugged into a 24″ Apple LED Cinema Display, and resting comfortably in Twelve South’s BookArc (which I love). (Relatedly, if the MBP is closed, you can bet there’s a RadTech ScreenSavr wedged between the screen and the keyboard.)

I sit in an all-black Herman Miller Embody (which last year replaced a Human Scale Liberty). It’s the best chair I’ve ever owned, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, especially for sitting.

Coincidentally (or not!), my desk also is from Herman Miller. I picked it up late last year after struggling for a very long time to find exactly what I wanted; this came real close, so I decided to pull the trigger. (If money was no object, I’d probably buy BALMUDA designs’ Aero desk.)

Earlier this year, a pair of B&W MM-1s replaced my beloved, if large, Audioengine A5s. I absolutely adore the B&W’s, and feel fairly comfortable saying that they probably are the best built-for-the-desktop speakers on the market today. They’ve their own DAC, which eats up one of the two USB ports on my MacBook Pro (the other is used by the external Apple display, which has its own USB ports and thus acts as a hub).

At one point I claimed that the Griffin Powermate (the round, metal thing to the left of the iPhone in the above pictures) was my favorite computer peripheral of all time, and I still stand by that. I use it 1000x a day to globally pause, play and go to the next track in iTunes, and to control system volume. I love its design, its not insubstantial weight and the satisfying thud you hear when you “bop” it. All computer peripherals should be built with such care.

I tend to use mice that aren’t built for a particular handedness because I generally prefer them to be symmetrical. My daily driver, and the one mouse I truly love, is the Razer Diamondback 3G (I have three of them!), which runs around on a Razer Destructor pad. Despite the fact that I turn the tracking speed up so high that typically I don’t need a lot of wrist-motion space, I quite like the large surface area of the Destructor. Speaking of tracking, the Diamondback 3G has some of the best I’ve seen on the Mac. (Every time Apple comes out with a new mouse I give it a shot, but I’ve yet to come across one I enjoy using. The tracking speed is never fast enough (even with third-party software) and I feel like right mouse-clicks always require a conscious effort.)

For typing, I make a racket with the Matias Tactile Pro 3, which I very recently switched to from a Das Keyboard Ultimate. If I need to type in secret I use an Apple Bluetooth keyboard.

Other doodads on the desk include a Unite SmartBase (which I discuss here; the iPhone 4 fits it relatively well, but I’m looking for a new solution), a carbon fiber drink coaster (is there any other material?) and an IO Gear multi-card reader/USB hub (it’s nothing special, but it’s the heaviest, least ugly one I could find).

Under the desk you’ll find a Webble. No, really, it’s called a Webble — look at the site! At $150, this one may be a tough sell to some, but to a constantly-moving spazz like me, it’s an automatic buy. It’s incredibly well made, and with materials I’d have chosen myself had I designed it.

For backup, I use a pair of 640GB Seagate FreeAgent Go drives, each of which sits in its own stand located behind the external display. One is sync’d to my MacBook Pro’s internal disk using SuperDuper (every day at 3AM), and the other is sync’d to the same internal disk using Apple’s Time Machine software (every day at 4AM, thanks to TimeMachineEditor). Super-critical stuff is double-encrypted and backed up daily to one of the network-based backup services currently available. (I’ll eventually get a Drobo. I’ve been saying that for years. But I will get one.)

I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, which I rarely use without BlackRapid’s R-Strap or Canon’s E1 hand strap. I just sold my Canon S90 because the camera in the iPhone 4 is so competent.

Why are you using this setup?

Did you not understand everything I just said? Why am I using this setup?! Because I’m crippled by an unyielding desire to experience excellence.

Seriously though, I’m happily and forever wedded to Mac OS X and so my options are limited with respect to the hardware I can (legally) use. Lucky for me, Apple’s MacBook Pros are incredible machines, and for the past few years have come strapped with more than enough power for my needs. (Also, have you handled/cradled/slept with one of these unibodies? They’re freakin’ brilliant.)

I used to go the Mac Pro + MacBook Air/Pro + sync route, but it became something of a chore and certain things always seemed to break, and so I currently am a notebook-only operation (and don’t see that changing any time soon).

Overall, this setup (the room, desk, chair, peripherals, etc.) just feels very natural to me; everything has its place, and nothing is superfluous.

What software do you use on a daily basis and for what do you use it?

  • LaunchBar — I hate using the mouse if I don’t absolutely have to. (I know, I know, I ended a sentence with a preposition. It’s OK as long as you acknowledge it, right?) Surely this is a holdover from my early Linux days when I literally lived in a terminal, and kind of loved it. With LaunchBar there’s very little I can’t accomplish via the keyboard alone. (I used to use Quicksilver, but eventually was turned off by instability and lack of development; it just hasn’t been the same for years.)

  • OmniFocus and Things — I’ve gone back and forth with these task management apps so many times that the only tasks in each of them are, “Try Things again, you insatiable masochist” and “Try OmniFocus again, freak!” As far as I’m concerned, The Hit List was the perfect to-do app (and I really liked its design), but then its developer fell. off. the. face. of. the. earth. I gave up looking for him and grudgingly started cycling between OmniFocus and Things again. Currently I’m using OmnifocusThingsOmniFocus and for the most part I’m content. Functionally, it’s second to none, but its look definitely could stand to be updated (that said, I’m constantly theming it, so it’s not so bad). Also, its iPhone counterpart is wonderful. (If you haven’t already, now might be a good time to read Shawn’s review of Things. Well, not right now; finish reading this first.)

  • TextMate (together with MultiMarkDown (an extension to the ubiquitous Markdown) and the IR_Black theme) — Quite honestly, if I’m typing anything other than an email or a blog post on my Mac, I very likely am typing it into this app. (Actually, I hacked up a way to use it for blogging at one point too, and, truth be told, I sometimes find myself using that method because it just feels good.)

  • MarsEdit — 99% of the words found on my site were sent there using MarsEdit. (The developer of MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut, also makes FastScripts, which I use for this and this, among other things.)

  • Lightroom — Lightroom may be my favorite application ever, on any platform. It’s just a pleasure to use. It’s a great photo organizer, and an increasingly competent post-processor. I find myself going into Photoshop much less frequently these days.

  • Default Folder X — I’m not quite sure how to even describe this software, but I can say that I never again want to be without it. I especially like that it allows me to set a default “working” folder for each application, and that it remembers recently-used folders when I go to save something, etc. Basically, it saves me time that I didn’t even realize could be saved. (Full disclosure: the developer gave me a free copy of the software.)

  • Evernote — I recently migrated to Evernote, from Yojimbo. Again. I definitely have some niggles with it, but it syncs across everything and is fairly stable.

  • LittleSnapper — I use this any time I need a screenshot or want to save an entire webpage (usually because I see in it some potential inspiration). I go back and forth between this and Skitch when I need to quickly (and usually roughly) annotate an image.

  • Mint — Is there anything better for web stats? Even if there is, I probably wouldn’t use it because I’ve long had a kind of geek-crush on Mint’s developer, Shaun Inman.

  • Soulver — Allow me to quote Jonas Wisser: “As far as I can tell, Soulver is the only real advance in calculator technology since calculators were invented. It’s a fundamentally different—and cleverer—way of doing math.” I tried to come up with a better description, but failed. As another indicator of my love for this app, it also owns a spot on my iPhone’s first and 20.

  • 1Password — Um, just buy it. You have no excuse.

  • iStat Menus — I couldn’t function without having information regarding network speed, memory usage, processor utilization and various internal temperatures available at a glance. I’ve been looking at this kind of information every day for 15 years, and at this point I have a kind of sixth sense about my system’s internal operations. What I’m trying to say is that I keep iStat Menus around just to double-check my gut.

  • Instapaper — Where to begin? I never shut up about Instapaper on Twitter, and I know real-life friends are sick of hearing about it, but it really has changed my life and I’d be remiss to not mention it here. I definitely owe Marco a few beers. (If he’d give me control over .htaccess files on Tumblr accounts, I’d probably give him a baby, at the very least.)

  • Dropbox — Blah blah blah. Who doesn’t use this?

  • Path Finder — I almost left this out because it’s become such a natural part of my workflow. I really dislike the Finder. Always have. Path Finder fills in the gaps, and then some.

  • TextExpander — I’m a whore for efficiency, and TextExpander just makes me feel good every time I use it. It’s like I’m doing myself a little favor 1000x a day.

  • Cinch — I use this to quickly maximize a window or to cause the window to take up exactly half the screen. It’s great.

  • Tweetie — Despite the fact that it’s still lacking native retweet functionality, it’s the best Mac Twitter client available. Every time a new client is announced I try it out, but it’s usually just a few minutes before I’ve switched back to Tweetie.

  • Pester — This is a fairly recent addition to my day-to-day workflow (thanks to Wolf Rentzsch, but I’ve a feeling it will forever be a staple. For more immediate reminders that I know I won’t/can’t snooze, I continue to use my LaunchBar timer script, but for everything else I now use Pester.

  • Safari/WebKit nightlies — Once Flash became relatively stable on Google Chrome’s developer channel (and there were extensions to block it) I gave up on Safari; Chrome was just too fast (and, well, new and different, so I had to use it). However, I’ve found the recent release of Safari 5 to be mind-bogglingly stable for me, super fast and I’ve been impressed with the extension community that immediately grew up around the new framework.

  • Little Snitch — This Provides me with added peace of mind.

  • iTerm — The best terminal program I’ve found for the Mac. I spend a lot of time in this app.

  • Notational Velocity — I find myself using this application more and more; in fact, I used it to draft these very words. It couldn’t be more minimal (e.g., there is no notion of “saving,” search/create are kind of the same thing, etc.), which really attracts me to it. My only real wish is that it would let me define background and foreground colors; it’s rare for me that black on white is an optimal color scheme for writing.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

It doesn’t. My best work is done while grocery shopping. I’m just kidding, I don’t shop for groceries.

I think the biggest piece of the creativity puzzle for me (apart from being comfortable with, and having confidence in the tools I use; e.g., Mac OS X, etc.) is simply having my own space — the “bitcave” is my room. (See what I did there? Instead of “bat,” I used the word “bit,” because I’ve an affinity for computers, and zero qualities of a bat.) It’s important for me to have a familiar, comfortable place that’s mine alone, where I can blast tragic, melancholic music and just brood. Or, I guess, work.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Is this thing on?! I just spent 2200+ words explaining why my setup was the best thing since sliced bread, and now you want me to describe something better? Impossible.

OK, fine, I’ll bite.

In a perfect world I’d like everything that’s currently in my MacBook Pro squeezed into the body of a MacBook Air. Also, I wouldn’t mind putting the external display on a floating arm so that I could move it more freely, and hell, I’ll probably swap my 24″ Apple LED display for the just-announced 27″ model. Finally, I’d kill for a minimalist desk (not unlike the one I have now) that could raise and lower itself under its own power, so that I could stand for half the day. (Yes, these exist now, but I’ve yet to see one I really like that isn’t unreasonably expensive.)

More Sweet Setups

Justin’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Justin Blanton’s Sweet Mac Setup

BaseApp  →

A lightweight, easy-to-use utility for keeping getting notifications from your Basecamp projects. If you are in and out of Basecamp all day, BaseApp is a swell utility — it runs in the Menubar and only costs 9 bucks.

BaseApp

An iPad Buyer’s Guide and Other FAQs

On Saturday, April 3rd at 7:30 in the morning I was standing in line for an iPad.

I bought the 16GB Wi-Fi only model, and for the past five months I’ve been mostly answering the same questions:

  1. What do you like about your iPad?
  2. Does it replace your laptop?
  3. What model should I buy?
  4. What are some cool apps?

Here are my answers to these questions.

What do I like about my iPad?

The greatest value the iPad has added to my life is that I read much, much more. In all the passing conversations I’ve had answering this questions about how I like it I often reply that I will never buy a physical book again (probably). Having all my reading material on one device is bliss.

I also love the undistracted writing environment that the iPad provides. When you’re writing in full-screen mode in Simplenote, that is literally all you see. To switch to another app I have to click the home button, look for the other app’s icon, and tap it. Not exactly an arduous process, but also not as easy as a quick press of Command+Tab with my thumb and ring finger.

If the iPad were for reading and for writing only it would still be worth it. These hallmark features make it a great companion regardless of the setting: meetings or living rooms, offices or hammocks.

And, of course, the never-ending battery must be mentioned. I charge it once or twice a week, and it has never died while I was using it.

Does it replace my laptop?

No. But that’s because my laptop is my only other computer. For those with a laptop and a desktop, it’s quite possible that an iPad could be their new portable.

More often than not I need my laptop for work. Usually because I’m laying out a report in InDesign, working on a major budget spreadsheet, or, most likely, I want to work in front of my 23-inch Cinema Display.

There are the days, however, when I do just use my iPad. It works great for reading books, answering email, reading news, taking meeting notes, and more. And with the bluetooth keyboard I can type out long notes and articles, or hammer through lots of emails. And it’s not like these tasks are just bearable on the iPad. It’s quite the opposite actually; they’re enjoyable.

For music and video I usually stream them over Pandora and Netflix. When traveling I’d rather be writing or reading that watching a movie. I’ve never needed or wanted to have my entire media library with me at all times. If I did, I could more than do so with the 64GB model. In iTunes on my laptop I have a grand total of 39GB of media: 25GB of music, 12GB of video, and 2GB of podcasts.

My 16GB iPad actually has only 14GB of usable storage yet I still have not hit that ceiling. In fact, I currently have 2GB of free space.

iPad Storage Media Breakdown

If I were to buy a higher-model iPad, I would rather spend the money on a 3G version instead of one with more storage. Using the Wi-Fi only model has been fine, and only once have I been in a spot where there was poor wireless and I would have made use of 3G data.

So when it comes to working the iPad does make a light-weight, portable, middle man at times, but it cannot fully replace my laptop. Or, as Brett Kelly defines his iPad, it’s a short-term understudy for his MacBook Pro.

What model should you buy?

There’s no point in going big just because you can afford it. But if you have a lot of media you want to access on you iPad you certainly don’t want to play the juggling act either. Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you consider how much storage capacity you may need, and if you want to pay extra for the 3G model:

While Considering Storage Capacity:

  • Do you have a lot of iTunes music that you need with you at all times?
  • Do you have an iPhone or iPod that can hold your music and podcasts instead?
  • Do you have a thousands of photos you need with you?
  • Do you download every app you encounter or are you particular?
  • Do you watch a lot of movies and/or TV shows that can’t be streamed?
  • Do you subscribe to a lot of video podcasts without ever watching them?

While Considering the 3G Model:

  • Do you have wireless internet at your home, work, and other places you will be using your iPad?
  • Do you travel a lot and need internet reliability?
  • Do you have good AT&T coverage in your home city and/or the cities you travel to regularly?
  • Do you already own a cellular Wi-Fi hotspot or can your mobile phone create one?
  • Are you willing to pay an extra monthly fee when necessary to get 3G internet?

Aside about reselling and upgrading

Year over year I’ve been able to sell my previous iPhone for the same cost as upgrading to the new model. But this is mostly made possible by the subsidized price I get by being a valued AT&T customer. A non-AT&T customer on Craigslist or eBay is willing to pay $300 or more for a used iPhone because it is still hundreds less than a new non-subsidized one.

Not so with the iPad because it is not subsidized. So though it seems like a giant iPhone, it’s not. And so far as resale goes, it should be treated like Apple’s laptops, desktops, or iPods. You either buy one and plan to keep it until you have to upgrade (like I do with my laptops), or else you sell it the day before the new models comes out and hope to get close to what you paid for it.1 (Currently, you can find dozens of used, good-condition 16GB Wi-Fi iPads on ebay selling for for right around the $499 price point — the same price as a brand new one on the Apple store.)

Something worth noting, which may influence your purchase, is that iPad models with larger storage and 3G will retain a higher resale value than lower-end models. Many people care less about how old the hardware is and more about how well it stacks up against what is currently available in the Apple Store. Remember when Apple discontinue the 4GB iPhone? As soon as the smallest iPhone available was the 8GB, used 4GB iPhones became significantly more “out of date” than the used 8GB models.

What are some cool apps?

Here is a shot of my current iPad homescreen. My favorite, and/or most-used apps include: Instapaper, Simplenote, iBooks, Reeder, Twitterrific, and OmniFocus.

My iPad Homescreen

  1. For more on how to sell your used Mac — especially for creating that “factory fresh feeling” — check out Dan Benjamin’s sage advice. ↵
An iPad Buyer’s Guide and Other FAQs