Most items I write reviews of are items that I personally buy to use. But, every once in a while, a new gadget shows up that’s just so interesting and enticing that I buy it with the business card for the sole purpose of reviewing it. Such is the case with the Aether Cone.

I got an email at the end of August from Rdio announcing that the Aether Cone was now shipping and that, as an Rdio member, I was eligible for a percentage discount for every month I’d been a subscriber, up to 45-percent off. I was intrigued by the design and the functionality. You don’t need a separate device to stream music to the Cone, it connects to Rdio all on its own and you can talk to it to request a song.

This is the review I was originally planning to publish on launch day with the new Tools & Toys, but I was able to get the E-M10 review out the door in time instead.

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My thanks to Lionheart for sponsoring the site this week and for being one of the sponsoring Launch Partners for the new Tools & Toys. These guys make one of my favorite iOS apps: Pushpin. It’s arguably the best Pinboard client for iOS, and its iOS 8 update is just stellar. And that’s just a sample of the work they do; Lionheart is truly does some top-notch design and development work.

On today’s episode of The Weekly Briefly, I share my first Impressions of the new Retina iMac, as well as my first impressions of the new Kindle Voyage (and how it compares to the Kindle Paperwhite).

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It took a good long time for me to find an iPad case/sleeve that I liked, and the Felt Case Mini is just that (though I suppose if it were made out of leather and printed $100 bills it’d be a bit nicer, but other than that I think it’s pretty great).

Tons of great tips from Austin Mann:

Apple’s sharing all kinds of software updates with us these days, and a few of them are especially exciting for power user iPhone photographers. Here are my thoughts on how the new features affect how we create and share images with our iPhones.

This is like the computer screen’s version of how in the old days our parents had to walk to school in the snow, uphill, both ways.

John Gruber:

Everything Apple is promoting about the Air 2 is true, both in terms of what you can objectively measure, and in terms of how it feels to use it. It’s thinner, lighter, faster, and has a better display and better camera. And, yes, Touch ID is great, especially if you’ve been using it for the last year on your iPhone.

I don’t think I’m going to buy one, though.

Last year after spending three months using both the (then) new iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina, I switched from being a hard-core proponent of full-sized iPads to being a fan of the iPad mini. And I can’t imagine going back.

There is more to it than just that the mini is lighter and easier to hold with one hand. The screen size didn’t impact the way I create or “consume” content at all. Moreover, the smaller footprint of the iPad makes it easier to fit in my bag, or to carry around by itself in a sleeve.

It’s unfortunate that it looks like the iPad mini is now going to be one year behind in hardware innovation, but that’s okay. I mostly use my iPad for reading, writing, research, and basic communication. Though, now that I’m switching to a desktop Mac as my main machine, who knows… perhaps the amount of work I do on my iPad will spike in the upcoming year.

This review has been on our list since the beginning. But we knew major updates of Wunderlist, OmniFocus, and Things were all in the pipe. And, now that they’ve shipped, we’ve spent time with the apps and written up our official pick for what is our favorite productivity and GTD app suite: OmniFocus (of course).

On the outside so many of these apps all seem like the same type of app with the same functionality: projects, tasks, due dates, tags, sync.

But, in working on this review, it struck me just how much different OmniFocus truly is from pretty much every other productivity app out there. OmniFocus goes far beyond the feature set that most other apps have with its use of contexts, defer dates, custom perspectives, forecast view, and review mode.

The most common arguments against OF are price and learning curve.

Regarding price, first off: you get what you pay for. OmniFocus is not overpriced, it’s priced according to its feature set. There are a lot of things OF can do with your tasks and projects that these other apps cannot.

Not to mention, the Omni Group has a decades-long history of making apps for the Mac, and they currently have some of the world’s best Mac and iOS developers working for them in Seattle. If there is a GTD app out there today that has a chance of being here in 2025, OmniFocus is at the top of that list.

And regarding learning curve, it’s true — OmniFocus takes time to discover and figure out. But there are so many resources, tutorials, and guides out there that if you’re willing to take the time and learn the app, you’ll reap the dividends for years to come (literally).

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My thanks to Backblaze for again sponsoring the site this week, and for being one of the sponsoring launch partners for the new Tools & Toys. I’ve personally been a Backblaze customer for several year and continue to be very happy with their service. They are arguably the best off-site backup service out there.

And speaking of setup interviews, over on Tools & Toys we just posted a hyper-nerdy interview with Mike Rohde (of Sketchnote fame) regarding his everyday carry gear.

I really enjoyed reading over this week’s sweet setup interview with Nate Boateng. Nate’s got some personality. And, you’ve gotta hand it to the dude, he’s still rocking Sparrow. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?

On this week’s episode of my podcast, The Weekly Briefly, I give a one-month report of life with iOS 8 and the iPhone 6, share my initial thoughts on yesterday’s Apple event, spill the beans about why I’m still not on Yosemite yet, and the what and why of my next Mac.

Brought to you by:

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

On the new iPads:

I love my iPad mini with Retina Display, which has now apparently been retconned into the iPad mini 2. But what we saw Thursday was indisputable proof that the iPad mini is once again a second-class citizen in the iPad line. Last year, the two models were pretty much the same guts stuck inside bigger and smaller bodies. This year, the iPad Air got a faster processor, a thinner and lighter body, and Touch ID.

The iPad mini 3, on the other hand, got a Touch ID sensor, a gold color option, and a hearty handshake for a job well done.

To me, the most exciting hardware upgrade to the iPad line is the Air 2’s optically bonded screen. It’s the finishing touch which makes a Retina display really pop. It’s too bad the iPad mini didn’t get much of the new (not even an updated Wi-Fi card?). Touch ID is great for sure, but for me it’s certainly not worth upgrading my current iPad mini Retina, and I don’t even think it’s worth paying the extra money for when buying a new iPad mini.

And Jason again, this time on the new Retina iMac:

This iMac really has to make us all question what an iMac is. When the iMac was introduced, it was the new “computer for the rest of us,” a consumer-friendly all-in-one device. This 5K iMac has the power to edit 4K video in Final Cut Pro with room for a timeline and other interface elements. It’s a screen so good, people who have Mac Pros are going to want to replace them with an iMac.

Let’s step through that one again. People will forsake their Mac Pros for this iMac, until there comes a day when a screen like this is available as an external display option for the Mac Pro. For $2500 or less. People who would never have considered buying an iMac will buy this iMac.

Yep.