Best in Class, Built to Last

With some exceptions, Apple has announced just one major update to the iPhone and the iPad per year. Some say this one-per-year pace is too slow for such a competitive industry where consumers want to buy only what’s new, newer, and newest. But for anyone who is already an Apple customer, once a year can sure come around quickly.

When I’m able, and when it makes sense, I prefer to spend more on an item and get something high quality. The tools and toys I use the most should be as close to perfect as possible. I want something built with care and quality, that is enjoyable to use, and will last me a long time.

Apple, its products, its surrounding ecosystem all sit in this market.

There is an aura of craftsmanship and attention to detail that presides over most of Apple’s hardware and software. And this same care for product development attracts 3rd-party developers and engineers who have the same ideals and commitment to excellence. The Apple ecosystem is home to the best hardware and software in the world.

One of the reasons I spend my money on Apple products is because they’re innovative, cool, capable, and delightful. But also, they hold their value and their usefulness for a very long time.

Best in Class, Built to Last

Sell Your By-products  →

Jason Fried:

When you make something you make something else. Just like they say you can not not communicate, you can not not make something else. Everything has a by-product. Observant and creative entrepreneurs spot these by-products and see opportunities.

This is exactly how Delight is in the Details came to be. It started as a topic for several episodes of my members-only podcast, and then I picked it up and turned it into something so much more.

Sell Your By-products

Sponsor: Tonx Coffee  →

Tonx is a small team of coffee experts who believe it’s easy to make a better cup in your kitchen than you’ll get at the best cafes – and for a fraction of the cost. By sourcing the finest coffees in the world and roasting them 24-hours before shipping, you’ll have the freshest coffee delivered straight to your door. And for a limited time, get a free trial to taste for yourself.

Also, Tonx is pleased to introduce The Frequency, an email newsletter packed with coffee secrets, brew tips, and special limited offers, exclusively for Tonx members.

* * *

My thanks to Tonx for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: Tonx Coffee

The Rough Elements of a Successful Creative Business

creative business chart

What is a successful creative business? I think there are two elements: Creative freedom and financial stability.

I’m defining success as having the ability to do creative work we’re proud of and to keep doing that work.

There is no exact recipe for this stuff. It’s a little bit different for each person and changes with all sorts of factors like skills, passion, and even geographic location.

But this chart is a pretty good starting point to give a grid for what, more or less, makes up a successful creative business.

Let me explain the chart.

  • 75-Percent of a successful creative business should be spent on the art itself — the “content”. This is the hard and frightful work of actually making stuff. If you’re not spending the majority of your time actually making something, you’re doing it wrong.

  • Next, the 75-percent “Content” section of the chart is divided into three equal parts: Consistency, Talent, and Obsession. A huge part of making art online and growing an audience is centered around how often you show up, how good you are at what you do, and how narrow your focus is and how “weirdly obsessed” you are about it.

  • The remaining 25-precent is split between “brand” and “hustle”.

  • By brand I mean having a professional-looking website, having a cool iPhone theme, having an awesome user-experience for your eCommerce thingamajig, etc.

  • By hustle I mean (a) getting out there and promoting your work to others, and (b) contributing to the conversations happening in the circles you run in.

Here are some common excuses for why people assume they will fail:

“I don’t know how to promote my own work.”

“I can’t start putting my work out there until my website’s theme is just right.”

“My skills as a writer / podcaster / photographer / illustrator are pathetic.”

Good news, if you can at least show up every day and focus on a topic your obsessive about, then you’re already half-way there.

P.S. There’s additional good news: the more often you show up and do the work then the better your skills will get. And the better you get the more people will begin to promote your work for you.

The Rough Elements of a Successful Creative Business

Core Values  →

Great life-advice-that-you-can-never-hear-too-much-of post from Gus Mueller. It takes guts to admit when you’ve been wrong and to confess publicly that you want to do better and be stronger next time.

Even with the autonomy of the Internet it can be scary to stand up for our personal values. There will always be the dorks who freak out because you stood up for your values and they happen to disagree with you, but most people will either follow your example (if they have the same values) or they will grow in respect for you (because you’ve been honest and sincere).

My grandfather lived to be 100 years old. If the Blanc blood running through my veins holds up like my grandfather’s did, then I’ve still got 68 years to go. Do I really want to spend one ounce of energy trying to make random people on the internet like me? Will that matter at all in six decades from now? I’d rather spend that energy strengthening my own core values, dating my wife, building life-long relationships with my sons, serving my friends, and doing the best creative work I can possibly do.

Core Values

Tapbots, Tweetbot, and iOS 7  →

Mark Jardine:

Seven months ago, we started working on a big update for Calcbot. We were hoping to release it sometime in the summer. Two months in, Apple announced iOS7 at WWDC. We knew this was a huge change. It would make every single one of our apps look dated so we had to make sure our flagship app was ready for it. All of the design work that went into the Calcbot update was rendered obsolete in one keynote and so we focused our energy on updating Tweetbot for iPhone. Playing with the beta of iOS7 over the next few weeks brought us to the realization that this would not just be a “re-skin”. We really had to just start over with the new foundation and concepts of iOS7.

Tapbots, Tweetbot, and iOS 7

Weather Line

Weather Line is a cool new weather app from Ryan Jones. Ryan sent me a copy of the app earlier this month and I’ve been using it for a bit.

When I launched Weather Line for the first time my initial impression was that it’s not a general purpose weather app. I assumed it was more niche, with a focus on forecast data rather than current conditions.

But that’s not the case at all.

As you can see from the screenshot, the primary element of the app is its line graph (the “weather line”) which shows the temperature forecast.

Weather Line

When you launch Weather Line, or navigate between the Hourly, Daily, and Monthly tabs, the left-most temperature animates itself with a sort of balloon effect. This instantly grabs the attention of your focus and draws your eye to the current temperature.

So, Weather Line is, in fact, a nice general purpose weather app. And, as I’ve been using it, I have come to enjoy the quick view I get of the current conditions right now and how they will change in the next 8 hours.

However, I do have two quibbles with the app:

  • All the navigation is up top. To navigate between locations you swipe on the location name; to navigate between Hourly, Daily, and Monthly forecasts you tap on those respective tabs. But on an iPhone 5/5s these tap targets are just out of reach for my thumb and it makes the app a little bit difficult to fully navigate one handed.

  • No radar view. Though Weather Line does use the Dark Sky API to give the 60-minute precipitation forecast, it does not have an actual radar view. Ryan, the man behind the app, said the reason there’s no radar view is because he can’t find one that is beautiful enough for him.

In an email, he said to me, “Our app takes ugly boring data and uses beauty to make it easily understood, we want the radar that does the same thing.”

I appreciate Ryan’s commitment to excellence, but for me, a weather app without radar is an incomplete weather app. My two favorite weather apps — Perfect Weather and Check the Weather — both have the standard radar views and I’ve never thought them to be ugly.

So, is Weather Line the best new general purpose weather app you can buy? I don’t think so (because of its lack of radar). But it is a fantastic app nonetheless.

Weather Line is simple, delightful, and very responsive. It feels right at home on iOS 7. And the icon is fantastic — it’s one of the best weather app icons on my iPhone. Just $3 bucks in the App Store.

Weather Line

iPhone 5S Camera Review: Patagonia  →

Austin Mann took an iPhone 5 and 5s to Patagonia to compare the cameras:

All the fancy new features like fingerprint scan are nice and nifty but as a travel photographer, all I really care about is what this camera can do.

We climbed mountains, hiked to glaciers, slept in the wilderness… all the while documenting it with these two awesome little camera phones…

Several of the side-by-side comparison shots are amazing. Especially when comparing the dynamic range of the two cameras.

iPhone 5S Camera Review: Patagonia

Nick Heer’s Predictions for Apple’s October Event  →

From my armchair, I say Nick is probably pretty close to the money here. We know Apple likes patterns, and chances are pretty good that everything they’ll announce on Tuesday will be something that is — more or less — “expected”. And by “expected” I mean “better versions of existing products”. The question is, which products will be upgraded and how much?

Will the iPad and iPad mini be upgraded. Of course, but with what? Touch ID on the former and Retina display on the latter? Hopefully. And what about the Thunderbolt Displays? Will they get an upgrade? Gosh, I sure hope so.

Nick Heer’s Predictions for Apple’s October Event

Media Temple is Acquired by GoDaddy  →

Oh my. I’ve been a very happy customer with Media Temple for 6 years now, and I’ve happily and heartily recommended their services to anyone who’s asked. I even have a Media Temple banner on my site’s sidebar.

And so today’s acquisition by GoDaddy is a bit disheartening for a few reasons.

First of all, it’s always scary when a company you rely on heavily gets bought by another company. Suddenly the future is uncertain. Naturally, Media Temple says that nothing will change, but we all know that that’s what they all say. And so I take their statements with a grain of salt.

Secondly, the acquisition is disheartening because I have virtually zero respect for the GoDaddy brand.

However, I’m not going to make any hosting changes at the moment. There are several very fine hosting options out there — WP Engine, Digital Ocean, and MacMiniColo all come to mind — but I have 9 websites hosted across 3 different Media Temple servers right now (one of which is a new project in active development). Stopping everything to migrate servers and databases is neither important nor appealing to me at the moment.1

Secondly, if you read the links below from Media Temple’s FAQ and Virb’s announcement, they both talk about a “new GoDaddy” that has a desire to transform their brand into something fresh and different.

Brad Smith wrote in his announcement to the Virb customer base:

Throughout my conversations with the teams at GoDaddy, it’s wildly apparent they are on a mission to transform the company with fresh thinking, new advertising, and an inspiring new strategy. It truly is a “new” GoDaddy. I cannot wait to watch (mt) and GoDaddy shine brightly together.

If you’re a Media Temple customer here are a few more links of note regarding the acquisition:

  1. Well, it will never be appealing to migrate servers, but it might become important. ↵
Media Temple is Acquired by GoDaddy