By far and away, this week’s setup interview is one of my all-time favorites. For one, I’m a long-time fan of Jago’s illustrations (he’s the artist behind the Jesus Storybook Bible, which we love), so it’s awesome to see his setup on the site. But his interview is just fantastic — several great photos of his workspace and a lot of nerdy detail about the tools he uses and how he uses them.

But it’s not your typical use-case. Here’s just one example:

I couldn’t do without Dropbox. Through a combination of cunning and trickery, I currently have a 463Gb account, and I make good use of it.

As you know, Editorially (which was awesome), shut its doors recently. Over at The Sweet Setup, we used Editorially every single day — it was our ideal collaborative writing tool.

Jeff Abbott wrote an overview of what made Editorially so great and what some of the alternatives are. As he states, after trying just about every other alternative we could find, we’ve moved to Google Docs for our collaborative writing work.

This week, on my podcast, The Weekly Briefly, I talk about the connection between staying creative and building a delightful product. Both have the same “guiding principles”, in that they are expressions of serving others.

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Awesome breakdown by Brian Lovin on all the little details and interactions in Path.

Path is such a well-designed app. I used for a while back, and very much enjoyed how it works as an app, but as another social network it never stuck for me. I also had considered using it as my personal journal of sorts, but Day One is just so much better suited to that.

There are a lot of things that make Path, as an app, truly great. But how long will they be around? In all seriousness, assuming Path gets acquired and shut down one day, or just flat out shuts down, what will become of its inspirational design and engineering?

(Via Marcelo Somers.)

Certainly the best-looking smartwatch out there. I’m still a bit blown away by the fact it’s a round display. But: Price? Battery life? How does it charge? How many people will be using (and still enjoying) their Moto 360 in a year from now?

Sean Madden, writing for Wired on the fine line between “magic” and frustration:

The average smartphone user interacts with his or her mobile device over 100 times per day, and the majority of those interactions fall into just a few categories: opening an app, selecting from a list, bringing up a keyboard, and so on. If each of them is imbued with too much visual whiz-bang, using your phone becomes the digital equivalent of eating birthday cake for every meal.

It’s a great article, and what Sean talks about is exactly what Ben and I hit on in last week’s episode of The Weekly Briefly.

In short: whizbang features are cool and they look especially delightful in a press release. But the hallmark features of our gadgets are nowhere close to the most used features. How fast do apps launch, how easy is it to navigate the device, how smooth is the scrolling? These “boring” features are the ones we interact with a hundred times per day. And that’s why you’ve got to get the fundamental stuff right, because that is what ultimately defines the user’s experience as delightful or not.

And so, if you get the fundamentals wrong — by being poorly engineered or over-designed — then it’s like gluing a piece of gravel inside your customer’s $650 running shoes.

P.S. I literally wrote a book on this subject. It’s called Delight is in the Details and as we speak I’m up to my ears in a big update. If you want to follow along with the new work I’m adding to the book, you can learn more here.

Jim Dalrymple:

The ABC channel will feature live, multi-streaming video and on-demand content, entertainment news, live hourly updates, original programming and video highlights.

PBS Kids is only available in the US and will feature full-length episodes and clips of popular shows including Curious George, Dinosaur Train, Peg + Cat, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Arthur, Wild Kratts and Sesame Street.

Nice! Maybe the PBS Kids channel can help me reclaim my Netfilx recommendations.

Also on the update, is a new Flickr app that has just about all the same functionality of the iOS (er, iPhone) app.

This week’s Sweet Setup interview is with Joe Caiati. I like his story about why, when upgrading, he chose to go with the 5c.

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A huge thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I’ve been using them as my off-site backup service for years. You should definitely have an off-site backup of your data, and I think Backblaze is the best option.

This week I’m joined by my pal, Ben Brooks, to talk about the Amazon Fire phone and Amazon compared to Apple as two different manifestations of companies that have “obsessive attention to detail”.

Sponsored by:

• Jet Pens: Unique Writing Instruments and Desk Toys from Around the World. Use this link to get a free Signo 0.38 pen for all orders over $25.

• The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.

Ben Thompson has an excellent article regarding the Amazon Fire phone:

What we expected from Amazon was along the lines of Jeff Bezos’s promise for the Fire tablet line: “Premium products at non-premium prices.”

Instead the Fire Phone is right up there with an iPhone 5S when it comes to price, and it’s sold with the exact same contract you would get with that iPhone. There is no margin compression, no subsidized data. There’s nothing different at all. Unlike the Fire tablets, which most assume are sold at near cost in order to drive usage of Amazon’s services — especially Prime video and Kindle books — the Fire phone seems unlikely to attract any new customers to the Amazon ecosystem. And perhaps, that is what makes it so different: the Fire Phone seems to be not only a different strategy for Amazon, but a new kind of smartphone strategy full-stop.

Stephen Hackett regarding the Amazon Fire phone:

Since the Fire Phone isn’t going to burn down (sorry) any existing market leaders, it’s only fair to assume that Amazon’s main push here is to make it easier to buy things.

Yes. I’d say absolutely Amazon’s main push with this phone is to make it easier to buy things. You have to look no further than the dedicated hardware button that if you hold down for a second will launch Firefly. But why not? Why not make a device that’s targeted at your most loyal customers?

My question is if Firefly will make its way to other smartphones via an update to the Amazon app, or perhaps a new Amazon Firefly app altogether? Because what about folks like me who use Prime all the time but who won’t be buying a Fire phone?

The Verge’s short hands-on video from the Amazon Fire Phone event