Shawn Blanc

Federico Viticci wrote an extensive and glowing review of Pocket, the app and service formerly known as Read it Later. The new app sounds really great.

Quite a few improvements and additions to my application launcher of choice. Particularly:

When entering a web search, Command-Return can now be used to create the URL that represents the query rather than actually performing the search.

and:

Enhanced browsing functionality: Shift-Left can be used to show the contents of the selected item’s parent folder. This is especially useful while browsing an application’s recent documents.

Pro tip: You can subscribe to the LaunchBar nightly builds via the app’s preferences under Update → Show pre-release versions.

A new app by Owen Voorhees, a 14-year old iOS developer living in Chicago:

LogMyRun is for runners who want a simple way to keep a log of their runs.

Read more about Owen on this Inc.com profile done nearly 3 years ago when he made his first iPhone app (at the age of 11) — “Nothing’s impossible if you don’t know it’s impossible”.

Manton Reece on what iCloud is, and isn’t, good for:

For iOS backups and iTunes Match, iCloud is fantastic. For private, app-specific data that doesn’t make any sense away from a single developer’s native Mac and iOS apps, it’s also excellent. There’s no question that using Macs, iPhones, and iPads today is a significantly better experience thanks to iCloud.

But there are two fundamental limitations in iCloud that make it inappropriate for a bunch of syncing uses:

• No way to access it from other platforms or web apps.
• No way to share data between apps from different developers.

Agreed. And a prime example is iOS/Mac text editors. I’ve actually found that using iCloud to sync my document in Byword (though it’s cool) is not my preference. I use Dropbox because: (a) the workflow which OS X requires an app to go through to save a document to iCloud is a bit tedious; (b) iCloud documents don’t show up in LaunchBar’s recent documents list; and, most importantly, (c) documents synced via iCloud are only available in Byword.

Speaking of cloud-centric computing, Technology Review has a great interview with Dropbox CEO, Drew Houston:

What we’re really trying to build is the Internet’s file system.

A very articulate and interesting article by Matt Legend Gemmell on what he constitutes as an “enticing interface”:

The interface and UX style I most enjoy, particularly on iPad, is something I think of as augmented paper. […]

For me, software experiences that feel like Augmented Paper are those that second-guess our (developers’) natural tendency to put functionality first, or to think of our apps as software. Apps are only incidentally software; software is an implementation detail. Instead, apps are experiences.

Eight months ago Elliot Jay Stocks switched from a single-powerhouse-laptop setup to an iMac-plus-MacBook Air setup. Here he shares the pros, cons, and tips for keeping two machines in sync.

His previous setup was similar to what mine currently is: A MacBook Pro as the only computer and then a big Cinema Display to connect it to when at the desk. Ever since I realized that, for me, having a Mac Pro and MacBook Pro was superfluous, this has been my setup for several years (though last summer I replaced the MBP with an Air).

However, in a way, I once again have the same setup as Elliot. But for me it’s on a different scale.

My MacBook Air is now my “desktop” and my iPad is now my “laptop”. I’ve spent the past month using and testing different apps so that my iPad can function as a work device when I’m away from my desk. This is, primarily, so that I can travel without the MacBook Air. As light and thin as the Air is, it still doesn’t match the iPad.

It’s fun to look back at how the trend of computer setups over the past decade has ebbed and flowed as the costs of computers have gone down, the performance of laptops has gone up, and the ease of cloud-centric computing has increased, and as new devices have stepped onto the playing field.

Federico Viticci compiled a list of the App Stores’ noteworthy milestones reached by developers over the past few years. And here’s a table cataloging the growth of the app store in terms of number of apps available and total apps downloaded.

Apple just released a Java update to remove the Flashback Malware.

This turned out to be a great episode of The B&B Podcast. Ben’s a new dad and so we talked shop about diapers, etc. for a while, and then we discussed the Pebble smart watch, and Facebook’s purchase of Instagram and some of Ben’s general dislike for Facebook.