Sean Sperte:
The idea was that we’d create a browser that we would want to use, market to all our internet buddies, hopefully get featured on Daring Fireball or Macworld or MacBreak Weekly or TUAW or some other hugely populated website full of enthusiasts, be spotlighted by Apple as an example of innovation on the iPad (despite competing toe-to-toe with Safari), and make millions. Then we’d keep making apps and stuff. From our yachts.
Our friend, Dr. Drang, gives a high-level look at these two stellar calendar applications for the Mac. I use Fantastical and BusyCal on my Mac. The former is my primary calendar app (since I work for myself from home now my life is not nearly as rigidly full of meetings and appointments as it once used to be). And for the times when I need a different view of my week or month I bust out BusyCal.
So long as we’re on the subject: I use Agenda on my iPhone, and Apple’s native Calendar app on my iPad.
Written almost 300 years ago and still relevant today. (Via Tory Briggs.)
Over the past week a handful of prizes have been added to the giveaway:
The complete list of prizes is here, along with all the info about who’s eligible to win, and how to put your name in the hat for a particular prize if you’d like.
The first edition of The Members Journal went out today and I think it turned out great. It was lighthearted, fun, and had dozens of promo codes to four top-notch iPhone apps.
For members who want to get The Members Journal (you have to sign up because it is an opt-in list) you can do so on the members info page. Your password for that page can be found in the info email you received from me after signing up for your membership.
Last week I introducing a new subscription level that gets you all the same benefits as the $3 membership but for $12/month. This is for those who have offered to or who are glad to pay more for their membership.
There are current members who have “upgraded” their membership to an Executive subscription. If you want to do the same then you can cancel your current subscription and sign up for the new one.
As always, to all the current members: a million thanks for your support. And to the readers who continue to show up day in and day out: thank you for your time.
Jacqui Cheng chronicled her trip to San Francisco last week for Apple’s new iPad event and her liveblogging of it for Ars Technica:
Usually, the words being said on stage go into my ears and out my fingers without any human processing involved, and the only things I “see”—aside from my computer screen, that is—are the pretty colors being filtered through my camera lens.
In an article on GigaOM, Tom Krazit reports that SrcribbleLive (the service The Verge uses) sees a spike of between 50 – 100 times their normal activity during Apple events. And Cover It Live (the service Macworld uses) sees between 50 – 75 times their normal traffic. That’s like getting 2 – 3 months worth of pageviews in around 90 minutes.
Even still, posting live updates of Apple event doesn’t sound enjoyable to me. If (when?) I get invited to an Apple special event I don’t think I would do a live blog for this site. For one: there are other sites which do a far better job of incorporating images and text updates. And secondly, I’d prefer to give my full attention to what was happening on the stage and to enjoy the show — Apple special events aren’t just announcements, they’re carefully-planned presentations.
I mentioned this in my post earlier today on daily schedules, but Michael Lopp’s article is so good and convicting that it deserves a link of its own.
Patrick Rhone:
In my recent emergency trip this past week […], my iPhone 4 became my most used and primary computer for many reasons. This despite the fact I had both my iPad and MacBook Air with me and close at hand. It was the one best fitted to almost every situation I found myself in. Unobtrusive, agile, and the one with a constant and reliable internet connection.
For those who travel, more and more the iPad and the iPhone are proving to be not just worthy companions but valiant work horses as well.
For my trip to Macworld this past January, I took my MacBook Air but didn’t even use it. Nearly all of the reading, writing, linking, emailing, and tweeting I did was via my iPhone, and the rest was on my iPad. And so, with a 4G-equipped new iPad en route, I see no reason not to leave the Air at home on my next trip to San Francisco at WWDC.
(Well actually there is one fear holding me back: what if something were to go terribly wrong with my site while I was away? Something that couldn’t be fixed from the iPad? Of course, the chances of that happening are slim to none, but still… what if?)
You’ve probably seen this a hundred times. I have. And I love it. It’s Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule:
I regularly come back to my own daily schedule to re-evaluate it and see if it is serving me as well as it should be. Because schedules, like finances, make excellent slaves but horrible masters. I should be the one who sets my schedule and budgets my time just like I should be the one budgeting my finances. A schedule, like a budget, is there for the purpose of serving my goals so that the minutes don’t get away from me and I end up squandering my time.
What I like about Ben Franklin’s daily schedule was how open it was. It was a rigid routine but it was very forgiving for all the nuances and variables that each day’s tasks and priorities seem to bring.
He had only six blocks of time scheduled each day:
This is a similar approach that I’ve been trying to take with my scheduling as well. In that, I set a routine for my day of when I get up, what blocks of time are set aside for what types of tasks, when I should stop working, etc. And then, when it comes time to work I begin to go through my inboxes (Instapaper, email, and/or OmniFocus) or else I work on a current project or article that has arrested my attention.
One big myth about creativity is that it cannot be harnessed. It is silly to think a creative person should live without routine, discipline, or accountability.
Sure, inspiration often comes to us when we least expect it, and so by all means, let us allow exceptions to our schedules. But sitting around being idle while in wait for inspiration is a good way to get nothing done. And worse, it is also a way to let the creative juices get stagnant.
Michael Lopp wrote an inspiring article along the lines of scheduling, entitled “A Precious Hour“. He writes:
My deep-rooted fear of becoming irrelevant is based on decades of watching those in the tech industry around me doing just that – sitting there busily doing things they’ve convinced themselves are relevant, but are just Faux-things-to-do wrapped in a distracting sense of busy. One day, they look up from their keyboard and honestly ask, “Right, so, what’s Dropbox?” […]
Starting at the beginning of February, I made a change. Each day I blocked off a precious hour to build something.
Lopp’s aim brings to mind this convicting quote from Ray Bradbury at the intro of Martian Chronicles:
I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eyes.
If you don’t make time to shut off the outside world and think and build and create on your own then you’ll only ever emulate and imitate.
Ryan Block on why the new iPad’s Retina display is a big deal:
The core experience of the iPad, and every tablet for that matter, is the screen. It’s so fundamental that it’s almost completely forgettable. Post-PC devices have absolutely nothing to hide behind. Specs, form-factors, all that stuff melts away in favor of something else that’s much more intangible. When the software provides the metaphor for the device, every tablet lives and dies by the display and what’s on that display.
I haven’t even seen the new iPad yet, but I have no doubt Ryan is exactly right. Think about it this way: one of the key engineering feats of iOS is its responsiveness to touch input — it’s as if you are actually moving the pixels underneath your finger as opposed to pinching or swiping and then waiting. Inasmuch as that matters, so too does the quality and realism of the screen itself matter.
Those who care about software should make their own hardware.
Pretty sure that makes it one of the largest mobile-only social networks in the world. Impressive for being iOS-only (so far). And but so, at what point does Instagram plan to start trying to make a buck? 50 million users? 100?
Today’s episode of The B&B Podcast is our first one on the world-class 5by5 network. It’s an honor to join the ranks of my favorite nerds.
In this episode Ben and I talk more about the new iPads, retina Macs, big batteries, and more.
A note to all those who are already subscribed to the show via Instacast, iTunes, or something else: you don’t have to do anything. All the feed settings have stayed the same. Thanks for listening.
And a huge thanks to Dan Benjamin for inviting us onto the network and helping make the migration look easy and painless.
Here I thought I was pretty savvy with LaunchBar, and yet I just learned several new tricks. Including the fact that if you press and hold Command+Space LaunchBar will “grab” the selected text or Finder item! Where have you been all my life?
From Apple.com, when you go to buy a new iPad and you click the link to AT&T’s coverage viewer, here’s the map you get:
On this map, AT&T makes no differentiation between their HSPA+ network and their LTE network. Both are simply classified as “4G”. Which means someone looking to buy a new iPad with 4G LTE connectivity, who clicks on the link from the Apple website, is taken to this map where they see that AT&T has 4G coverage all over the place. There is no reason for someone to assume that the 4G connectivity Apple is referring to on their website is different from the 4G coverage that AT&T is displaying on their map.
For example: the two cities that I want 4G LTE coverage in are Kansas City and Denver. I know that there is 4G LTE in Kansas City because I see the AT&T billboards around town and I get the junk mail delivered to my house. And, when looking at this map on AT&T’s website I can see that not only does AT&T have 4G in Kansas City but they also have it in Denver.
Based on the information in this map, I bought an AT&T iPad on Wednesday.
I chose AT&T because the pricing of their plans is better and for the times that 4G LTE is not available and the iPad falls back to their HSPA+ network, it is a faster data connection than Verizon’s 3G.
On the map’s legend is a link for “4G”, which takes you to a popup page describing terms used in the legend. The definition for 4G is as follows:
4G: The areas shown in darkest blue represent AT&T owned HSPA+ network with enhanced backhaul. AT&T’s HSPA+ network is capable of delivering 4G speeds when combined with enhanced backhaul. Learn more about 4G.
Clicking to learn more takes you to AT&T’s 4G LTE info page. (If this is starting to sound confusing that’s because it is.) On this info page there is another coverage map (click the “coverage” tab at the bottom) which lists the actual cities that have 4G LTE. Ugh.
As you can see, a 4G LTE city is denoted by an orange dot. There are far fewer 4G LTE cities than there are “4G” areas. And so, according to this map, Denver does not have AT&T 4G LTE service.
It wasn’t until Thursday that I discovered this (thanks to Ben). I felt tricked and taken for a fool. I cancelled my AT&T iPad and ordered a new one that connects to Verizon. Because Verizon does have LTE service in both Kansas City and in Denver.
We already know that AT&T will not be changing their “4G” moniker for HSPA+. It is bad enough that Apple has given in to AT&T at some measure by now displaying “4G” as the connection type for AT&T iPhones running iOS 5.1.
But at the very least Apple should be linking to AT&T’s coverage map which shows AT&T’s actual 4G LTE cities. The currently-linked-to map is deceptive and misleading given the context. How many people buying a new iPad will purchase an AT&T model based on the assumption that there is AT&T 4G LTE coverage in their city when it’s actually just HSPA+?
Between Twitter and my RSS feeds I come across a lot of things I want to bookmark for future reference. Some are articles to read for later but some are actionable items (like check out such and such app). And so I’ve established this habit where I “favorite” or “like” something as my way of bookmarking it. I also “like” most articles in Instapaper if they’re something I want to link to later.
Favs (pronounced fayves, I presume) is a nifty little Mac app that collects all your “favorites” and “likes” and into one place. It’s interface is not unlike an RSS reader, and it pulls your favorites from nearly 20 different services.
The app was in public beta for a while and so I’ve been kicking the tires on it for the past several weeks and like it quite a bit. It hit the Mac App Store just a few days ago — it’s polished and useful and definitely worth 5 bucks.
For a more in-depth review, check out Federico Viticci’s article.