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The Recipe

From time to time I wonder if I could get by without any 3rd party software installed on my Mac. What would I have to do to adopt to not using the software I’ve become accustomed to? In no particular order, as of this moment I’ve got:

I also have a few apps for work:

Why would I want to do this? The idea of opening up any Mac and being able to get right to work without any setup is appealing, but honestly, how often do I move to a new Mac? Not very. And the apps that I do use are pretty easy to set up.

Some apps, like MindNode or OmniGraffle are almost impossible to replicate. And others, like Day One, offer so much more than built in apps that I wouldn’t want to move away from them. It’s possible that any third-party app might go out of business or be abandoned, but if I’m careful about what I choose I think I can be reasonably safe in trusting them.

Both the 3rd party apps and the built in apps are playing in a fairly level playing field. They use the same APIs (although the Apple apps get to use some private APIs), the same underpinnings, the same frameworks. The 3rd party apps are, for the most part, simply better done. Like Bear vs Notes for example. Bear is absolutely the better application. Beautiful, well thought out, and has useful features that Notes misses. And, Notes insists on using that ridiculous faux-paper background, and makes it difficult to change the font or font-size of the text. Bear is better, but Notes is built in. But Bear is just a quick trip to the App Store away, but sync costs $15 per year. But at least it’s a good business model that should keep them around. If not, Bear exports my notes easily, so I think it’s safe.

I think the unique mix of applications that are installed on each persons Mac or iOS device is interesting. It’s like a recipe for a good soup, some ingredients have more flavor than others. Some are fresh, some may have grown a bit stale. Some you can grow yourself. Everyone has their own recipe that works best for them, and by sharing we can learn from each other. Using only the built-in apps is like buying pre-made soup off the shelf from WalMart. You can live off it, but the good stuff is found elsewhere.

Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

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Today we’re making Instapaper Premium available to all Instapaper users, free of charge. Instapaper Premium is the best way to experience all that Instapaper has to offer, and we’re excited to open it up to everyone.

I’ve been an Instapaper user for as long as I’ve known about the service, and a premium subscriber for as long as it’s been available. I was worried when Marco sold Instapaper to Betaworks, but Betaworks did some good work on the service. I started to hope that Instapaper had found a stable home and that my Saturday afternoons were safe for catching up on interesting reading.

When Pinterest bought Instapaper, and acquired a majority share in Betaworks, I started to wonder about the long-term viability of the service again. Would Pinterest keep it around? Would Instapaper line up with Pinterest’s future goals? We’ve all seen popular services be acquired by larger companies just to be unceremoniously scrapped. Thinking through the goals of the two services however, I believe that Pinterest is more interested in watching user behavior than making Instapaper a profitable stand-alone service.

In that light, yesterday’s announcement that they were doing away with Instapaper’s revenue model of selling premium subscriptions makes sense. It’s in Pinterest’s best interest to get as many subscribers frequently using the service as possible, presumably to leverage machine learning on the back end to be able to serve up better targeted advertising in their main Pinterest service. So, I think the service will be fine, at least for the time being. While I’m often adverse to such intrusive monitoring of my online activity, with Instapaper I’m completely fine with it. My Instapaper queue comprises who I wish to be, my ideal self is interested in reading everything in the queue. My actual self sometimes selects all and deletes.

Sometimes, not all the time. When that lovely Saturday afternoon comes and I’ve decided to read, Instapaper is waiting for me. Sometimes on a Sunday morning, early in the day before the kids get up, I’ve made my coffee and found my seat on the couch. The house is quiet, Oliver settles at my feet, and Instapaper opens up the world to me.

Ten Billion Reasons Why

What could an organization comprised of some of the smartest, most driven people on the planet do with ten billion dollars in a year? Apple increasing their R&D budget five-fold over the past decade is interesting, but the numbers they are talking about are not uncommon in the rest of the tech industry. What I find noteworthy is the comparison with NASA.

Apple R&D budget: $10 billion
NASA science budget: $5 billion

One explored Pluto, the other made a new keyboard.

wsj.com/articles/what-…
— Geert Barentsen (@GeertHub) Oct 28 2016 11:29 AM

It reminds me of the meager resources NASA had when they sent a man to the moon for the first time. We can accomplish amazing things when we put our collective minds to it. And what are Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft doing with their collective billions and billions of dollars in research and development? Building ever more immersive ways for us to share funny cat videos.

It bothers me in a way that so much money is spent on such frivolous things when there are real challenges in the world that our smartest people could be putting their minds to. Could a portion of those billions of dollars be spent figuring out how to get clean water to every person in the world? Or how to overcome drought by filtering seawater?

There are pursuits that are worthwhile and pursuits that are noble, and they are so often not the same thing. Every now and then though, they are. I think what Tesla is doing is both worthwhile from a financial perspective and noble in that by creating technology that relies on clean power they are benefiting everyone. It’s possible that a good sum of Apple’s ten billion is also going towards electric, self-driving cars, but we haven’t seen the fruit of that research yet. Meanwhile, NASA landed a probe on a comet.

Images of New MacBook Pro With Magic Toolbar Leaked in macOS

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macOS Sierra 10.12.1, released yesterday, includes hidden Apple Pay images that depict the brand new MacBook Pro with an OLED touch panel that’s set to be announced by Apple on Thursday, October 27.

The “magic toolbar” looks like it will replace the function keys, along with the escape key necessary for using Vim. I’ve seen questions asking what Vim users are going to do. For a moment I started to worry myself, although I’m not using MacVim on my Mac anymore, I still need to use it regularly on servers, and on servers I’ll have no .vimrc customizations for remapping keys.

However, since the point of the touchscreen is to be able to dynamically assign keys as needed, I bet when the Terminal is open, the escape key will be right where it needs to be.

IBM confirms that Macs are less expensive than PCs

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But isn’t it expensive, and doesn’t it overload IT? No. IBM found that not only do PCs drive twice the amount of support calls, they’re also three times more expensive. That’s right, depending on the model, IBM is saving anywhere from $273 - $543 per Mac compared to a PC, over a four-year lifespan. “And this reflects the best pricing we’ve ever gotten from Microsoft,” Previn said. Multiply that number by the 100,000+ Macs IBM expects to have deployed by the end of the year, and we’re talking some serious savings.

There’s a few guys at a place I used to work who really need to read this article.

Previn ended the session with a fact worth noting. “Every Mac we buy is in fact continuing to make and save IBM money.”

(Via DF, of course.)

More Phish

This is fantastic, pure Phish. I’m so glad that they’ve just been getting better over the years.

Vibrating with love and light, pulsating with love and light, in a world gone mad, a world gone mad, there must be something more than this!

Perfect.

The Dancer

We humans are complicated creatures. I run for miles at a time, even though I’ve got nowhere to go, and nothing is chasing me, nothing but time and old age. Some people collect stamps, others watch birds; there’s no end to the ways that we occupy our time. Some people write stories, or draw, or paint, or make pottery out of clay. Some people write poetry. My daughter, my oldest, spends her time practicing the ancient art of dance.

Over the years that I’ve been taking her to dance practice and recitals, I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering the significance of dance. Why do we do it? What sort of purpose does it serve? I’m reminded of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society on why we read and write poetry.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love… and dance.

Dance, a physical expression of emotion, the rhythmic movement of the human body. The endless, impossible pursuit of perfection.

To dance takes dedication and courage. It takes practicing before the sun comes up and finishing after everyone else has long gone to bed. It takes a willingness to incur injury in pursuit of your art. It takes being able to forget all that and have fun. To lose yourself in the moment, to revel in your ability, gliding from one motion to the next, emotions coming to form like firecrackers on the stage. Body and mind working together in unity.

As I’ve watched my daughter grow up over the years and explore her chosen pastime, I’ve thought deeply on the purpose of dance, and how easy it is for those of us with highly analytical and logical minds to discard or ignore the pure joy of artistic expression. I’ve seen reference to a debate over whether dance is an art or a sport. The question is wrongheaded, dance is both, of course. My daughter has grown to show poise and grace while on the lighted stage, performing before crowds that would freeze lesser individuals with stage fright. After every single performance I’ve seen I come away feeling more proud of her than ever.

This is her senior year of high school, which, one, means I’m officially old now, and two, in a few months she’s going to set out on her own big adventure. I know that with the dedication, courage, and ability she’s developed over the years she is going to be fantastic. While it will be bittersweet to see her leave home, I can’t wait to watch her start to fly. There will be hard times to come, as in anyone’s life, but through it all I hope she never stops dancing.

“Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

David Ogilvy 10 Tips on Writing

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The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

Reminds me of a saying I heard first from 37 Signals:

If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill your position, always hire the better writer. I don’t care if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, whatever. Assuming your candidates are fairly equally skilled and qualified overall, always hire the better writer.