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The Hopefully-Better Edition Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Apple Offering Discounts On HomePod To Apple Music Subscribers As Holiday Promotion, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple is currently sending out emails to Apple Music subscribers with promo codes to buy a brand new HomePod with a significant discount. So far, UK customers are receiving codes worth £50, bringing the price of a HomePod down to £269 direct from Apple.

Make The iPad More Like The Mac, by Radu Dutzan, Medium

And though not all of these changes would necessarily work, the need for radical advances in the interaction model of professional touch devices is latent. The “old world” might be a good place to look for inspiration. Traditional “PCs” carry long baggages that touch-based devices might not need, but most of the Mac features I mentioned were introduced in Lion (10.7), which came out in 2011, the same year as iOS 5 and the iPad 2, and were clearly inspired by the fluidity of iOS. They could work on a touch-based device, and in fact, they kinda already do, even in the currently crummy state of the macPad “prototype.”

We should be thinking of the iPad Pro as a truly new, hyper-flexible computing category that combines the best of what we’ve learned on the iPhone and the Mac into something new, and hopefully better. Only then can it fulfill its promise of being a “real” computer for professionals, and do some justice to its lovely hardware.

Stuff

Nike Run Club For Apple Watch Series 4 Gains New Infograph Modular Complication With Run Summary And Guided Runs, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Now Infograph Modular has a Nike Run Club complication on the middle slot which can present more data than other slots on the watch face. Nike Run Club uses this complication to show summaries of recent runs including pace, distance, and duration, or featured guided runs in the NRC watch app (although there doesn’t appear to be an option to control what NRC presents).

Luminar 3 For Mac Review: Serious Competition For Adobe Lightroom Has Arrived, by Bryan M Wolfe, iMore

At the heart of Luminar 3 is the new Library panel which adds the ability to organize and edit multiple images simultaneously. In other words, it's the software's digital asset management system. Highly customizable, the Luminar 3 library works with existing folders that reside on your hard drive, connected devices, and synced cloud storage. The panels, which look a lot like Lightroom's preview and catalog features, are easy to use, and perhaps more importantly, quick to learn.

Google Lens Launches On iOS To Power Visual Searches Within The Google App, by Shelby Brown, CNET

Google Lens can recognize text in images, look up words, save email addresses or call people. Lens is also designed to help shopping searches.

Giphy Launched A Keyboard Extension And Sticker Maker For iOS 12 Users, by Shannon Liao, The Verge

Users with iPhone X or newer devices will be able to record their own animated Giphy stickers to send to others through Apple’s TrueDepth camera technology.

End Of An Era: The ‘Infinity Blade’ Trilogy Is No Longer Available For Purchase On The App Store, by Touch Arcade

If you already own them, you can re-download them, but all the IAP has been disabled and the games should be accessible for the “foreseeable future." The reason for their removal, according to Epic is, “it has become increasingly difficult for our team to support the Infinity Blade series at a level that meets our standards."

Develop

CEO Interview Series: Michael Seibel On Leadership Attributes In Successful Startup Leaders, by Cameron Yarbrough, Torch

I think a lot of people think that being a CEO means playing the CEO card a lot. I like to imagine that you have an extremely limited number of CEO cards and you should use them sparingly because it costs you credibility when you use them.

Level Two thinking is about creating an environment and empowering people such that they do produce great outcomes without you having to tell them. If they can get into a mental model of what’s good for the company, and if they can be motivated and feel empowered, then they start doing great things. You don’t have to direct them. You can keep the CEO cards in your pocket and wait for the really important times to play them. The more sparing you are with your CEO cards, the more impactful you are.

Checking In? No Thanks. I’m Just Here To Use The Wi-Fi., by Talya Minsberg, New York Times

So what does this mean for the future of hotels? For freelancers and digital nomads, it may mean larger, trendier selection of free co-working spaces. For travelers, it may mean that instead of coming back to a quiet hotel room to finish the day’s work, you may find yourself in a vibrant lobby filled with locals and business travelers alike.

Notes

Why So Many Recommendation Sites Promise To Help You Find The Best Stuff, by Eliza Brooke, Vox

Say you want to buy a travel mug. You could go to Target, but staring at the display isn’t going to tell you which one is difficult to clean and which is likely to spill coffee down your sweater during your morning commute. So you Google “best travel mugs.” A new problem arises: Multiple product recommendation sites have published articles perfectly tailored to your query. How do you proceed? Do you cross-reference them all and pick the brand that appears most frequently, your brain quietly short-circuiting when you discover that some reviewers support the Contigo “Byron Vacuum-Insulated” mug while others swear by the Contigo “Autoseal West Loop”? Target is starting to seem like a good idea.

Consumer Reports has been subjecting everyday products to rigorous testing since 1936, but the past decade has seen a flurry of growth in the product review space, with the launch of publications like Wirecutter (2011), Best Products (2015), New York magazine’s the Strategist (2016), BuzzFeed Reviews (2018), and the Inventory (2018). Apart from the standalone sites, plenty of properties like The Verge (which, like Vox.com, is owned by Vox Media) have robust reviews programs. That’s not to mention the many, many individuals who review products on blogs and YouTube. As ever more authorities enter the fray, the question is this: When everyone claims to have identified the “best” product in a category, who do you trust?

Bottom of the Page

Why macOS (and Windows, too) should have attention detection, just like on iOS: So that if I am reading something on my current window, new windows should be launched behind the current window, and not take up my attention. Otherwise, go nuts.

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Thanks for reading.