My top 10 Apple products

Yesterday was Apple’s 40th anniversary. While I’m definitely a fan of the company, some products go beyond just being great and into love territory as I look back:

1. MacBook Air (11-inch, Late 2010)
   I was lucky to be visiting the US when this laptop was released. I just walked into a store and picked the base 64GB one. I loved this laptop: it was fast, great battery, perfect size and extremely well built.
2. Newton MessagePad 2100
   I’ve written about my love for the Newton before, but it deserves repeating. The Newton defined the sort of geek I’m today.
   
3. iPod photo 40GB
   Podcasts, podcasts and more podcasts. I still have this iPod in a drawer and it basically was my home music player for about 5 years.
4. iPhone 3GS
   The original iPhone created the category, but for me the 3Gs was the first one to start delivering on the promise. Probably the iPhone I used the longest.
5. MacOS X 10.4
   The first OSX that was fast, stable, feature complete, and justified the feeling of superiority of regular users over Windows XP.
6. iPhone 4S
   I skipped the iPhone 4, but the 4S retina screen was amazing. And the design felt like what Apple had wanted to release from the beginning.
7. iPad Mini 2
   I had bought the original mini when it came out because it seemed like the closest relative to the Newton in size. When the retina version came out… I couldn’t help myself. It’s on my bag right now, love reading and browsing on it.
8. MacBook (white plastic)
   Previous to the intel switch I’ve had an iBook G3 and G4. Great portables, but always a side computer to a desktop. The Intel Core Duo in the first Macbook made it my first laptop that was also my main machine… and I haven’t gone back to desktops since.
9. Apple Cinema Display LED (27-Inch)
   My Dad completely surprised with one around when I moved back to Venezuela and I used it non-stop until left again. Just used it again on my last trip and it still rocks the colors.
10. Magic Trackpad
    I’ve dreamt of this input device for a long time before it came out. And unlike and lot of other stuff I have dreamt about… it didn’t disappoint.

My current and upcoming backup plan

Today was Backup Day. Every few months a friend¹ calls me asking for help when a laptop dies, or goes missing with all their photos. Trying to recover data from a damaged or lost drive is expensive or imposible.

For a fraction of the cost you can have a pretty bulletproof plan:

Overall backup:

1. Time Machine: 1 TB external drive I keep at work
2. Backblaze: backups everything.

Files specific:

1. Dropbox: All my files live in Dropbox folder + my desktop folder is symlinked.

Photos specific:

1. iCloud Photo library: in my work MacBook Pro and MacBook server at home.
2. Google Photos: sync app running from Macbook at home.

Upcoming updates:

1. Use Arq to upload photos to a third online location (Dropbox since I’m already paying for 1TB plan).
2. A second external drive to alternate with the work drive.

Homescreen 2 folder iconography

My Home Screen 2

How to organize apps and folders is an ongoing experiment of mine. After 6 years, I have more or less a stable solution for the second home screen.

You’ll notice that I use symbols to name folders. For some reason it makes classifying and finding apps easier:

• ⌘ System: Anything that can be filed as utilities or tools.
• ⚑ Location: Parkings apps, OpenTable, etc.
•  Apple: Default apps.
• Baby: You guessed it, Robie related.
• ▶︎ Media: Audio, video, etc.
• ♣︎ Games: Bang, bang.
• ☗ Home: Roku/Apple TV, weather, plane finder.
• ▲ Cooking: The triangle means heat in my head.
• ⦁ Photography: It’s like a camera lens!
• ☁︎ Cloud: Web services.
• ❝ Writing: Please quote me.
• ✈︎ Travel: Getting there is half the apps.
• ‰ Finance: Banks and anything that has my money.
• $ Stores: Everything that wants my money.
• ◍ Web: Browsers and other web apps.
• 🄰🄿 Aeropost: My job.
• ☍ Social: Lets connect.

Any other app left outside is something I’m playing with but hasn’t found a place in the main screen¹ or any of the folders.

On music and playlists (Part 3)

Last year I went overboard with excitement when I tried Apple Music. The music high lasted a month before the technical limitations of the service just became too much.

I experimented for the rest of the year if a subscription service was really needed — and if so, which one:

• Soundcloud: today they are announcing a subscription plan, but even last year if you wanted EDM all the time, this was the best option. The mobile app is good, but too gesture heavy. Among the ad-supported options, it was the least intrusive one. In the end, the lack of a native desktop client and a limited library of normal music didn’t convince me.

• Youtube Red: like almost every Google app on iOS, it’s a great service delivered in a quite-not-native mobile app. If the app was better it would be a serious contender, since the monthly subscription also removes ads in all of Youtube. But again, the lack of a native Mac app turns me off… maybe I’m not millennial enough.

• Vox: a great mobile and desktop app that can access Youtube and your own library. During this experiment I went back to the dark days of side-loading music from the web. Here’s where subscription services semi-infinite libraries and my inability to just enjoy music I already have reappeared. However, if you are already happy with your library, this is a great software alternative.

• Rdio: for a few days, I had a winner. The $3.99 streaming plan with 25 offline songs was a perfect fit. The Mac was great. Recommendations were a little weak, but overall it was a very good package. Sadly, not everyone agreed and the service was bought by Pandora and shutdown.

• Apple Music: out of scientific curiosity I subscribed again at the start of the year. Enough months had passed for the connections spasms and app quirks to be fixed. No dice. While again surprised by the great playlists, the overall service experience still left me unsatisfied.

• Spotify: last and not least for a reason. Spotify is still the clear winner. The Discover Weekly playlist is basically the only thing I’ve listened for the last two months¹. I can switch between iOS and the Mac app with ease, and the backend must use some voodoo magic become it streams even in Venezuela 3G speeds.

So I’m back as a Spotify premium subscriber and will add Ana again to the family plan².

A twitter is worth a thousand contact us forms

I buy a lot of apps. I believe good software is worth paying for. If a developer(s) has made your life easier, ze deserves a reward for the effort.

I imagine alcoholics also say bartenders deserve a drink to be ordered from them if a good spirit is featured in the shelf.

Regardless of the justification for my victimless digital addiction, I do have a very a simple rule to indulge in new apps by unknown developers: they must have a twitter account.

Saying that you would love to hear from me and just having a Contact Us form, tells me you really don’t.

I understand that managing a twitter account¹ can be a pain, but it’s exactly the sort of pain that sends the right signal about your app: somebody is standing by it.

On plans and execution

I tend to fall for plans. In product management you can always create beautiful and very detailed projects, with roadmaps, milestones and even use cases. Plans can create such a perfect mirage of the final product that you can believe the project is almost done¹.

If I had PM superpowers then smart people coming up with such plans would be my kryptonite. It’s not that I turn into a yes-man, but I recognize that even my pushback tries to inch the plan to a start.

However, I don’t think this is such a terrible problem. In most cases plans are like ideas: they set an objective and imply the assumptions used.

It’s not until the execution that real feedback can occur. Before it’s pure philosophical supposition — usually with more to do with politics than the actual project.

My recommendation is not to avoid plans, but to create them in such a way that they allow the learnings from the actual development to feed back to it.

And enjoy the FUBAR moments along the way. If you had a suspicion that it could happen — it doesn’t mean your plan was broken — it means that you’ve moved on from planning to executing.

On artificial goodbyes

When many of our grandparents and great-grandparents emigrated from Europe to Venezuela during the 20th century, they left behind parents, siblings, friends, girlfriends — with promises to write and come back to visit soon. Most lost touch and never heard from each other again.

Nowadays we still say goodbye with sadness, but rather than days or months before hearing about each other again, it takes seconds for a followup goodbye message to arrive. This has distorted our perception of time and distances.

The collective trauma a billion people would suffer if air travel and the internet were disrupted on the same week would likely be unrivaled in our history.

Of course there’s no need to panic. But sometimes we should remember that despite all our technologies, nothing beats a heartfelt goodbye with a hug.

On the multifaceted characteristics of cold showers

Cold showers are terrible. Scratch that, cold showers are an abomination. Why did we leave our comfortable urban environment for these infra-human conditions? Experiencing nature my freezing behind.

I may be losing the feeling of my arms, because it’s suddenly not so bad. More like the second drill at the dentist — when the numbness hides the pain and you’re kinda happy it’s closer to the end.

There’s a certain feeling of accomplishment when you go all in. A victory of mind over cold liquid matter. I’ve also managed to conceal my high-pitch noises enough to make them sound like coughs. Victory is mine.

I twist and turn. No more hiding. I’ve embraced my environment and are now free. Let water be water, its temperature has transcended meaning.

I am one with nature. I’ve saved water, electricity and improved my health. This is the way to treat the temple of the body.

But I’m sure as hell not showering tomorrow morning.

On minimalism not being optimal.

After every Apple event, a battle is fought in my head: should I rearrange my setup to embrace whatever new amazing, magical, revolutionary, great, incredible, beautiful device/software/service is introduced?

It always seems that not embracing the new it™, would be like leaving productivity on the table. A suboptimal state that could be improved if I just buy tablet X, and switch to smartphone Y. Of course, it goes without saying that either the laptop will need to be exchanged for a proper desktop or… and this goes on-and-on for many permutations.

To balance all this — in addition to fiscal responsibility — there’s the voice of minimalism. The one that is a bit worried every night when it notices how many of the things you will take to a dessert island need to be charged. The one that reminds you how happy you were 20 years ago when you had equivalent toys with 1/100th of the speed, capacity and connectivity. The one that twitches when it notices the ebook version is more expensive than the same book’s paperback.

I struggle with minimalism because I hide my consumerism behind the banner of optimization. Sometimes I try to remind myself that real minimalism is not about a minimal and elegant process that make things easy. But rather about a well worn set of tools that allow to make things — it’s up to you to make it easy or not.

On the fun of learning

Two hours ago I didn’t want - or knew how - to play backgammon. Now I still don’t know but really want to play again tomorrow.

I half joke that at a certain age you don’t want collect new friends, music or hobbies. That’s just a bad excuse for being lazy.

I’m glad my brother in law nudged me to play. It made me feel the pain of thinking. And the fun of learning.

5 word reviews of today’s Apple event

• CareKit: Boring… if you’re lucky/healthy.
• Apple Watch price-cut: Same slowness for $100 less.
• Apple Watch new bands: Nylon one looks very nice.
• tvOS 9.2: iOSification of the TV continues.
• iOS 9.3: Night Shift really does help.
• iPhone SE: Not “just” small iPhone 6s.
• iPad Pro 9.7-inch: iOS 10 must justify it.

Happy Birthday Twitter

Nine years ago — less than a year after the first tweet — I sent cover letter that I’m still proud off:

Virtub/Buzzword Cover Letter

Not only did it open the door to a summer and fall internship, but I don’t cringe when I reread, unlike so many other things from back then. In the context of Twitter, I feel pretty smug about my prediction:

Everyday I get people to use Backpack, 30boxes, Democracy and Pando. I’m also sure Twitter is going to reach the tipping point soon. But I still understand why some of my favorite tools, such as del.icio.us or flickr, can’t be “sold” in a simple enough way so that the average user gets excited and use it.

To appreciate how difficult it’s to still be relevant — or alive— after 10 years, we just need to check up the other services I mentioned:

• Backpack: Frozen in time. Basecamp is alive and well, but I was sure its little brother was going to make it.
• 30boxes: Zombie. Site is there, but service was beaten by Google Calendar.
• Democracy (Miro): My naiveness at play. Bitorrent didn’t decentralize video sharing as much as I expected.
• Pando: Dead. I didn’t fully understand how Dropbox would change the model.
• Del.icio.us: I see dead apps. It’s dead, it just doesn’t know it yet.
• Flickr: Dead man walking.

So there. I manage to congratule Twitter by talking about myself… which is basically how I use Twitter.

On Selfish Empathy

My mom is having a hard time in Venezuela. She broke down and cried a little today during breakfast. It’s happening a lot lately.

It used to be canine matters that set her off: a street dog too close to cars, an abandoned thin puppy, even a lost dog poster. We would laugh at/with her about her craziness. She’s known to stop on highways to pickup a stray dogs, and her car smells like a drunk sailors cabin because she carries dog food in case she sees a hungry dog¹.

But now it’s being set off just by her telling me about the previous day.

Things are pretty bad in Venezuela. The country is probably going through its biggest economic crisis in the last 80 years. My dad closed down most of the family business two years ago, so they’re suffering the crisis as consumers — and with the erosion of savings — but there’s no business to bankrupt anymore.

In comparison with the rest of the country my parents are very well off. My mom has to deal with lines here and there, but since they’re empty nesters, they are fine with what they find and usually bring supplies on their trips to visit us.

Still, my mom can’t help to absorb and own the worsening misery she sees everyday. She keeps blowing her budget helping not only dog foundations, but buying medicine for a nice old lady she met pharmacy line, or buying books for a gardener kids.

Don’t be confused, my mom is no saint. She gulps down a (few) bottle of wine every so often with her neighbors, and she can be intense when she decided X is what you should be doing. But seeing her so affected is new for me. I could blame it on age — which is what she does — but that’s not it.

She’s just being exposed to a worsening misery in her day-to-day and has lost the ability to filter it. After listening to her, it was obvious that she wasn’t really sad about anything that was happening to her. She’s just sad that it’s happening, and the injustice of it happening in a country without any real excuse for it to happen.

So it breaks my heart to have to tell my mother to worry less about everyone else. That it’s ok to fingir demencia (feign insanity) and forget about other people’s troubles more often.

Because it’s a lesson I don’t think I would want Robie to learn.

My Setup: Media Boxes

I’ve been a cord-cutter for about 10 years. While my current setup has its quirks — it’s a dream compared that first Mac Mini with Front Row.

Roku 2

When we moved to Miami two years ago, I opted for a Roku 2 — to the surprise of many. The main reason is that I use Put.io to sideload some content, and there’s a very simple streaming App for it. I also had Plex installed on my 2008 MacBook media center, which is great for content you want to look pretty and organized.

One small issue I had with the Roku was that it couldn’t control just my soundbar volume. Or to put it more accurately: I couldn’t figure out how to tell my Samsung TV to ignore the volume control, even though I had the audio disabled.

Enter the [Logitech Harmony 350](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J7KM5X4/?tag=rmateu-20. Which worked pretty well, although the lag was very annoying at times. This was also a bummer, because the Roku remote is so well designed. I really love the size and weight, and the headphone jack is brilliant.

Apple TV 4

With the new Apple TV, the missing App’s were no longer an issue. Plex was in the store, and I was sure someone would do an App for Put.io.

To my surprise, [Fetch], an App I had originally bought just to manage Put.io files one the iPad, introduced a tvOS version. Very quickly it has become the killer app in my Apple TV.

The easiest way to explain [Fetch] is to imagine a Plex version that runs in an external server. However, I have to say that the recognition engine seems to work even better than Plex. Which means it’s very good¹.

One thing that’s not good at all is the Siri Remote. It did manage to configure itself perfectly to only control the soundbar. Hurray for Apple elegance. But, unless you are a certified hipster™ and watch TV on the floor — where the remote has nowhere to hide — then it’s an elegant slab of slippery invisibility.

The makes matters worse, there’s the Touch surface of the remote. I can imagine the same hipster Apple engineer sitting on the white room and smoothly scrolling back and forward his favorite movie… but never turning off the lights and watching the whole damn thing without letting go of the remote.

All the innovation in scrolling the remote brings — and its by far the best — is lost by all the times you move in your couch and the video pauses because the remote thinks your butt wants to skip ahead.

We mostly watch the Apple TV now, but I do arrive home sometimes to the TV source changed to the Roku. Which means the average user in my home sometimes prefers the 2 year old Roku, which is about 1/3 of the price.

This isn’t exactly a clear win for Apple’s future of television.

108 minutes

Some may remember the hatch in Lost where Desmond had to push a code every 108 minutes. Otherwise — some catastrophic event would happen.

I can’t help but be reminded of this button every time I see Ana in action with Robie during the day. Since we¹ are mostly breast-feeding, our bundle of joy eats about every two hours — which includes the 10 to 20 minutes he takes to eat. Which leaves Ana about 100 minutes to do everything she has pending before the cycle starts again.

The level of commitment needed for this is only something I can imagine. I haven’t been paid enough ever to worry about a task every two hours, of every day, for a least half a year.

And that’s the rub: I couldn’t compensate Ana all the hours, even at the minimum wage in the US.

Of course, all of this purely philosophical since Ana can’t even stand a few hours away from Robie. But the economics of it are real: we couldn’t afford to buy motherly love.

Very convenient that Gmail’s Inbox brings Smart Reply to the web the same day Boxy 1.1 ships.

I still can’t use Inbox only on the desktop, but Boxy is the best of the quasi-app’s.

The useful (but slow) website Letterboxd has an App. I have abandoned so many movie apps that none are likely to survive. But I do like the lists on thus one.

Testing yet another Safari extension to bookmark the current page in Pinboard. I like the simplicity of this one — but the search continues.

This isn’t a drill — as if my OCDness wasn’t bad enough — this blog will now¹ use smart quotes.

Overcast 2.5 was released with two patron-only features: dark theme and file uploads. I feel smug and validated.

I didn’t know Firefox for iOS was totally open-source and written in mostly Swift. It kinda gives it a new car smell.

Looking forward to Scanner Pro 7 on Thursday. I’m using Scanbot 5 and really like it — but I love comparing great apps even more.

Sorry for the repeated articles in the feed

Had an issue with Dropbox synching which duplicated the post files.

Working Titles:

• Apps I’m looking forward to.
• Categorize your Read Later articles, and find out what you’re into.
• Homepage and Battery usage Apps consistency.

All draft posts I tried to develop today. But lots of family time got in the way, and I couldn’t be happier.

Basically Free Data

The price of gasoline is the most common example of price distortions in Venezuela, but mobile plans are not less fascinating:

• Movistar 3GB, 4G¹ plan: BsF 1.820,00 about $1.5
• Digitel 1250 MB: BsF 300,00 which about 25 cents.

As always in economics, something has to give. Trying to find a SIM is not easy, since all networks are over-capacity, they try to restrict new users.

Also, notice how limited the data-plans are — in both cases its the highest allowance offered. Some people have told me the have two SIMs with separate contracts to get through the month.

MIA ✈︎ CCS

Flying home to Caracas. Haven’t traveled there in 15 months -which I think is the longest I’ve been without visiting.

Sadly it has become more common each year for this to be a bittersweet trip. We’re going mainly for both my goddaughter/ahijada and Roberto Andrés baptism. We’ll see friends and family, many of them will meet Robie for the first time - including his two dog sisters. He’ll get to say he went to Venezuela as soon as he was born, which is a ridiculous statement but important somehow for emigrant guilt.

On the other hand, you’d think we were going to the Australian outback from our bags: medicines, baby good, more medicines. Without a doubt the economic crisis in Venezuela has hit a new low. We don’t say bottom anymore since every six month the standard is redifined.

It’s irrational to go as a family to a place you currently don’t recommend to visit. But nationalities are almost never about being rational.

Trello has a new Chrome extension. You can search from the Omnibar, and it’s much easier to add cards than the bookmarklet.

Still, wish they had a native app™.

Updated Wikimedia iOS app looks good: Nearby and offline articles could be useful.

Linkclump extension for Chrome. For reasons you really don’t wish to know, I’ve been extracting links within pages. Best one I found, and it may stay installed given all the customization it has.

Ulysses for iPhone is out. This is my current long form writing app in Mac, iPad and now iPhone. As such, it’s basically by current repository of drafts…

Intro price may seem steep at $19.99 (later $24.99), but you get both iPad and iPhone app.

This NYTimes article convinced me to start a 5:2 Diet experiment for the next month. I already played around with skipping lunch last year, and it did help maintain my weight.

If you subscribe to the principle that weight is a function of calorie inputs minus calorie output, there’s really no magic to any of these. You just need to find the setup that works best.

Next month will be tough since I’ll be traveling for vacation and work. But better now than later.

#→ SelfControl

SelfControl is a free and open-source application for Mac OS X that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click “Start.” Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites–even if you restart your computer or delete the application.

This app has been installed in my Mac’s since forever. On some weeks/projects it’s really hard to fight the impulse to hit ⌘ + tab and do anything but what you need to do.

SelfControl is tough medicine for this¹.

On Relevant News (or Being News Relevant)

As I browsed around the web to collect some links to continue on the 3 day streak of linkblogging — the question of why? broke through the back of my mind.

While I enjoy my own witty commentary on news, I woke up today thinking:

1. is the blog the best place for this?, and
2. why do news at all?.

There’s a simple reason for the why?: I’m imitating my favorite blogging sites. Links to cool stuff and posting longer articles in between.

But usual tech news that I easily regurgitate is not cool stuff.

When I picture somebody reading the blog, I wish that ze trusts that every link is interesting enough to warrant a visit.

Links with some commentary to news items kinda breaks this. Because I can’t guarantee the reader that there’s going to be a consistent posting of news to give context of why some made it and others didn’t.

This week’s experiment

I enjoyed being able to post smaller commentary without an specific topic. So I will likely continue explore it this week by posting anything that’s longer than a tweet on the blog.

On the “Link posts” front, I’m going to try to post only links to things I haven’t seen elsewhere. Restraining myself from simply reposting easy links, and trying to curate some of the tools I already wasteinvest time looking at each week.

There probably is an email somehow related to all personal and profesional milestones in my life since 1995. Thank you Ray Tomlinson.

If you installed Transmission BitTorrent client this past week, you should check the How to Protect Yourself in this post.

A $30k Tesla Model 3 on Marth 31st is something I look forward to with less philosofical interest than the Model X.

All is not well in Bitcoin land. But it looks like it’s going to continue to get worse.

A billion is not what it used to be. Still, a chart about how long 12 apps with a billion active users took to get there is fascinating.

Tried Google Maps pit stops today. It’s where have you been all my life? kinda good.

Recommended ✓

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

Finally finished listening to Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull this week.

Took me longer than expected because I kept abandoning it every few days. I’d heard going things about the book, but it wasn’t until Nav recommend that I pushed it up the queue.

I think the book is a bit slow because of how sincere it is. Unlike many other Business/Leadership books which always have some sort of recipe for being as successful as X — Ed Catmull is upfront about how hard having a continuously creative company is.

Sometimes the book felt bittersweet in how removed the problems are from my daily work experience but YMMV. But these cases were more than compensated by relatable and detailed accounts of issues encountered by Pixar and how they addressed them. In some cases even unsuccessfully.

Finally there’s the whole Steve Jobs angle. Listening how Jobs intersected the Pixar story from the point of view of a colleague and (later) a friend, was interesting for the fanboi in me.

I have no problem recommending this book. My only asterisk would be that: it is not a book to find out what you need to do. Rather, it gives the proper mindset to figure out what you should do.

Seems some inside Microsoft did see the rise of Slack.

Got to respect wanting to invest that in Skype though.

Enjoyed Manton Reece’s post on The evolution of linkblogging — noting the following recommendation:

If you’re a blog author and you’re adding any significant commentary, the RSS feed should point back to your site.

Food for thougth. I was ready to start linkblogging Daring Fireball style yesterday, but I might give am giving Manton’s commentary style a chance.

I started using the Fleksy keyboard again recently, and the addition of Word Prediction this week has been particularly useful.

With its extra features, you can sometimes get lost versus the plain default keyboard. But speed-wise it’s a considerable increase for me.

New lower prices on Pebble Time($149.99) and Pebble Time Round($199.99) this week have me considering a trial purchase of the Pebble Time.

Sanity and fiscal responsibility have prevailed — but this is how disillusioned I am with the Apple Watch.

Markdown Textshot Bookmarklet

I love using Linky for Twitter textshots¹, however, it is only available for iOS and sometimes I read an interesting article on my Mac. On such cases I either take a screenshot of the browser or actually open the article on the iPhone to just to use Linky:

https://twitter.com/rmateu/status/705440887921381376

Of course, the OCD in me struggles with the lack of consistency around both. Hence this quick and hackie ² bookmarklet that lets me copy the text in Markdown format so I can grab the screenshot of the preview for the textshot.

ScreenShot of resulting Mou preview

I tried to replicate as much as possible the Linky/Instapaper/Medium textshot, so the domain removes the www and gets capitalized. I haven’t tested in enough sites to see if it breaks — buy you can’t get too obsessive, right? RIGHT?.

How to use

1. Drag and drop the Bookmarklet to your browser bar: ✁ M Textshot
2. Select the article text you want to quote.
3. Copy text in prompt.
4. Paste in your Markdown Editor of choice³.
5. Take screenshot of preview.

On Criticizing Without Creation

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault. ― Cicero

This one of my favorite quotes.

I apply it to my everyday work life. Since I don’t have a Steve Jobsian personality to just declare something as shit, I need a way to provide feedback and not struggle with how I’m going to say it.

Feedback with examples may take more effort on your part, but it pushes the process towards the goal. It is also an efficient way to say no. This is true in all directions of the organization chart (peers, bosses and reports), because it leads to a more informed next step. Not necessarily a faster step — which is probably what Jobs was going for — but I’d argue that in a non-tyranical environment the overall process is less traumatic.

That said, sometimes if you’re enough removed from something, it’s just easier to throw a snarky remark and continue on your way:

https://twitter.com/rmateu/status/705036125698715648

I’m sure a lot of really smart and talented people work at Skype. Actually — just like the old Opera logo way back when — I’m willing to bet there a number of people that have a more detailed list of improvements they want to make to the app.

I’m also pretty sure that if we manage to convince the powers to be at work and switch to Slack, soon enough I’ll lot of things to miss in Skype¹.

But from a really high level, you sometimes just know that a Software time has come. Even with its native app, huge installed base, etc, Skype just feels 2000’s.

I hope that by expanding my whinny tweet, I feel less bad about throwing an App I’ve used for so many years under the bus.

Quick Review: Roost Laptop Stand

With the arrival of our bundle of joy, our home office experienced a metamorphosis to baby room. As such, a Monoprice 27in IPS-Glass Panel Pro LED Monitor with 2560x1440 resolution on a LX Desk Mount LCD Monitor Arm didn’t fit the theme — not that I’m bitter.

My old Griffin iCurve took too much space both in the temp work desk (dinning table), and in the basement (under bed) when not in use. I’d heard about the original Roost Stand Kickstarter and set to look for something similar.

Luckily, the same team behind the original Roost successfully funded the 2.0 version last year and they were taking open orders for delivery in Feb/March. At an intro price of $59, it seemed like a good price given the features.

Artsy Roost Stand

I’ve used my Roost stand for about 2 weeks now, and I’m very happy with it.

Design

The design itself is extremely functional, but it clearly fails at the discoverability principle: When you look at it, it’s not easy to discover what it does — or even how to open it.

I had to look at gif on site a few times –and even calmly replay the instructions video– to feel comfortable with setting the 13in MacBook Pro Retina on it.

But once you get the hang of it, I appreciated the usability compromise in favor of its compact size and weight. It fits perfectly on my briefcase, since it exactly as wide as the MacBook.

Use

Three things set apart the Roost from other stands I’ve tried in the past:

1. Height: I’ve only really used the highest of the 3 levels, but it very high. Which is exactly what ergonomically.

2. Footprint: the depth of the stand is surprisingly small given how tall the laptop sits. But for the precarious standing desks I keep setting up, it helps since it allows for more keyboard and mouse space.

3. Grip: given how light the stand is, it feels amazingly solid. You need a pretty strong bump to throw your laptop flying.

In the end, I recommend you consider the Roost if you’re looking for a stand in general. At $74.95, it falls a bit on the expensive side. But if you need a travel stand, I haven’t seen a better option.

The Setup: Mac at Work Apps

This was a pretty intense work week, so it seems like a good time to make a snapshot of the most used apps. I could do one of these every few weeks… since I tend to waste (invest?) a lot of time upfront on new projects modifying my workflow for efficiency.

This time waste/investment is always a result of procrastination, but it has allowed me to learn things more often than not.

With the above disclaimer, here are the top apps of the week:

1. SublimeText 3: A workhorse, a notepad, and everything in between. It’s always open somewhere in my screen, or on its own screen in combination with the Origami package for splitting multiple panes in one window.
2. LaunchBar: Multiple clipboards, snippets, quick reminders, App switcher and launcher.
3. Chrome: Not crazy about it, but can’t really live without the extensions¹. Copytables has been a lifesaver this last two weeks.
4. Choosy: I use Safari for all personal browsing, so it’s perfect to create rules like sending all links from Tweetbot to it or any work Google Drive link to Chrome.
5. Shush: Fast microphone on all Apps. Skype, GoToMeeting, Hangouts… doesn’t matter. Just press fn key (configurable) to speak. Or press twice and default changes to press for mute.
6. Moom: For the Window Management OCD sufferer that can’t start a task without all Apps being on their correct corner. The ability to save layouts seem like a wasted effort at first — see the overarching theme? — but totally pay out. If you want something simpler, I also sometimes use Magnet.
7. Fantastical 2: I’ve always used it as my calendar, but started using the reminders on my most recent productivity tool bankruptcy. Short version: Tasks take time to complete, time that is shared with calendar events. Hence, tasks should appear on the calendar. Fantastical allows this.
8. Spotify: Back after testing all services. Longer post due.
9. Next Meeting: What and how far away is the next meeting.
10. Airmail: While it hasn’t stopped me from loading Gmail in the browser, I’ve been doing it less. Closest successor to Sparrow yet, and also using the iPhone version.

Have a great weekend.

Two Month Review: Late 2015 Person Mini

My Person Mini arrived on December 11. Given that the original delivery estimate was the 14th, I was pleasantly surprised despite being repeatably told this could happen. Still, you’re never fully prepared.

Although many websites advertise home delivery, my wife and I choose to pick up in the store. As most things nowadays, the home delivery would have been a lot cheaper. But we were concerned about the warranty, since we’ve heard some horror stories and wanted to avoid any complications.

We had also been told that we would be getting the male version of the product. This was useful to know beforehand to match some of the accessories. But I must confess I did check to make sure the additional feature of this version was present.

Initial Setup

Like with any new device, you name it to more easily identify on a network or park. Sadly my usual naming convention based on whatever book I’m reading at the time — which has produced such great names as Shadow, Shaftoe, and Dieter — was not accepted by my wife¹.

In the end we went with Roberto Andrés, which similarity to mine will hopefully make it easier with sharing cloud services and social networks².

A note for first time users like myself: while a huge knowledge base exist online, the Person Mini comes with literally no documentation. I will expand on this below, but for such a complex device I was expecting a bit more.

Hardware Design

Given that the overall design is a few hundred thousand years old, I’m not surprised of how functional the hardware is. You can see how much effort was put into miniaturization, and the components have a delicate luxury look.

That said, the design isn’t for everyone. I haven’t seen actual data, but from my anecdotal experience the Person Mini design gets very different responses on a few key market segments:

Customization

One of the biggest selling points of the Person Mini is that each one is custom-made based on the parents. But for the first month, I was a little concerned that none of the specifications from my account was used on the hardware of our model. My wife claimed she didn’t notice at all; but my mother-in-law was clearly fascinated by this setup.

Strangely, my mother kept saying that our model seemed like a clone of my account. By the second month things have improved in my favor, but I’m now more concerned with the software than the hardware.

User Interface

I’m going to go ahead and say it: the UI is terrible. Even when only a few days old, and the only features configured were input, output and stand-by, I couldn’t make heads or tails on how to interact with it.

After two months the AI Interface has improved considerably. But it still hit or miss. Repeating the same actions hardly ever gives the same results, and in some cases, the oposite of what you were expecting happens. I don’t have the time or energy to try to explain how sometimes three taps on the back result in a comforting burping sound — while on others a high pitch noise is emitted and some sort of defensive mechanism deploys a white rancid substance with laser target accuracy.

Long time owners of similar devices have told me the learning curve of the AI is steep but rewarding. We can only hope. Over the past week my wife seemed to have discovered an easter egg that makes the unit smile. However, even when she tries to repeat the steps (which involves a using nonsensical sentences in a high-pitch voice) it doesn’t always work. Never mind that the same process has never worked from me — yet I still get the easter egg randomly.

In what is becoming a theme with the device, even the elusive smile is rewarding enough to justify it. No other device in the market today has provided the same level of engagement.

A Note on Puberty

Virtually all owners of older units have advised that the interface only gets better with time, but I was surprised to find that most with models from the year 2000 and earlier express that their units developed a fatal interface bug that lasts a few years. It seems that at some point communications break down because of a failed software upgrade. The devices continue to operate, and consume a considerable amount of food and clothing.

Notification System

While I may not be a fan of the sound design, I have the give credit for an effective system. You won’t miss any messages from the device — you might not be able to read them, but you know something is up.

Battery Life

Given that similarly sized devices like tablets and notebooks regularly have a 10 hour battery life, I was a bit disappointed that Roberto Andrés averages about 3 hours between charges. I guess battery life would be a bit better if it would enter stand-by mode more easily. However, half the time - specially during the day - it will stay powered on even when his mom is clearly trying to get him to sleep.

A note on third-party charging cables

The debate between using the custom charging conector my wife already has or buying a third party cables with replaceable battery packs should be well known to anyone looking at a Person Mini. It’s for each owner to decide what’s better for their device. In our case, we are mostly using the Ana’s equipment and supplementing with third-party one from Amazon.

My suggestion here is to figure out what works for both mom and device. One thing not mentioned much is that once mom’s equipment is paired with the Person Mini, its functionality changes enough that it might not be as entertaining as before. Just be aware that you’ll be loaning them to the device of a while.

Final Thoughts:

Either as a planned purchase or ordered by accident, the Person Mini is life changing device. It’s the most fascinating, expensive, beautiful, complicated, irreplaceable, exhausting and just plain cool device I ever had³.

Looking at Ana interact with Roberto Andrés, I’m equally curious and dreading the next 30 years. I want to see what he will become, but also freeze time and enjoy the bundle of joy he really is.

It’s a really hard device to recommend. Because nothing prepares you. It’s without a doubt something to experience. Because the more you focus on your Person Mini, the easier it is to miss the biggest feature s/he brings: a sort of personal software upgrade no lifehack book, podcast or Ted Talk has ever taught me.

Migrating from Ghost to Blot

This week I migrated my perpetually semiabandoned blog from Ghost¹ to Blot.

Any suggestion that my lack of writing is in any way related to any type of software should be swiftly dealt with by closing a MacBook lid on my hands. The truth is that I like Ghost. It’s very easy to use, fairly simple to maintain, and has one of the best markdown implementations. I was an original backer of the project, and think it has a lot of potential ahead.

If I have to deal with a server, I would choose it over Wordpress any day of the week. The thing is… I don’t want to deal with servers right now. The relatively low cost and time needed to maintain the Ghost –or anything else– installation is not something I’m inclined to afford with a newborn at home.

I barely have time to write something and save a text file to the desktop. Which is were Blot comes in.

Since first hearing about Blot last year, I’ve been intrigued. But the lack of a demo, and tangential similarity to scriptogr.am² — small project by 1 developer — kept me on the sidelines. On Monday I went ahead and subscribed and immediately liked why I saw. And the feeling has been getting stronger as the week went by.

With Blot I feel a lot of the usual design decisions have been taken by someone for me ³ — someone with sense of pragmatic design I trust. But it’s not only design, but also functionality: posts are files in you Dropbox folder, you can preview how drafts will look (also works in iOS), great markdown support, it’s hosted at a very affordable $20/year and, it has search.

A small design detail the OCD in me appreciates: there’s no Powered by Blot™ or anything similar anywhere on the blog side. Probably no one will notices, but it does make me feel cooler than I am.

In the end, Blot feels to me like the lazy man Jekyll⁴:

1. You can have your posts in your filesystem — and it’s very forgiving of how you organize within folders.
2. Blog loads crazy fast in my tests.

But no SSH needed.

Moving post from Ghost to Blot

One thing that Blot doesn’t include is an import feature — which I can understand why: maintaining import compatibility with new and legacy blog systems is not what I wish the 1 developer of this project to spend his time on.

However, I would suggest to David that some level of format compatibility with Jekyll could be useful. This way Blot could piggyback on the extensive importers Jekyll has.

Update: As soon as I posted this, David mentioned he has some tools for this. So it was just a matter of asking next time.

https://twitter.com/lllIIlIlIl/status/698308318545051648

That said, the post formats are similar enough that with some hacking, existing export tools for Ghost can be modified.

In my case, I went ahead and butchered some export scripts and forked into a barely working version. You can check ghost-export-for-blot.im if you’re crazy enough.

When installed, running the command below should, maybe, kinda, work:

$ ghost-export --t /path/to/ghost/app /path/to/output

Hope this it’s useful to someone.

On Here I Write

I think a thought, and type it out. I read it up, and backspace it down. I crumple the page, and trash it all. Site/server/blog, they are all zeroed out.

I fume and curse. I procrastinate with a stare and frown. I give up and back down. I abandon and move on. Convince myself it’s for the best and decide to never turn around.

But then I’m back. I disappoint the thought, but get something out. Not even 100 words. But all in all, better than none.

This blog is back :)

Microsoft brings Skype to businesses’ iOS and Android apps | TechCrunch techcrunch.com

Avoiding BlackBerry’s fate — Marco.org marco.org

2

The Call from +58

A message on the #venezuela slack channel today started with:

The call I was always afraid of. This morning my mother was murdered.

The message is from a friend. A great person with a beautiful family. They live in the US. He’s a geek, a bit intense — and annoyingly smart.

Why would he be afraid of such a horrible call? Likely because all cold minded Venezuelans living abroad are. We all experience the same leap second of panic every time an incoming phone call from home appears in our smartphones.

Four months ago my next door neighbor received one. For him, it was his Dad.

This post has no real point or ending. Just the need to share the incredible sadness of having to once again utter: I’m so sorry for your loss — and seeing the words fall light years short of the comfort you wish to get across.

I feel useless not being able to help with his pain in this horrible time. But I’m also terrified of understanding how he feels.

Collaboration is process. Not a feature.

People editing a document in parallel is the gold standard demo of collaboration as a feature. It looks great, and even today is an amazing coding achievement. But it’s a Pepsi Challenge sip test.

Doing anything on a common canvas simultaneously is only viable on two ends of the groups spectrum: extremely experienced and in-sync teams, and kindergarteners finger-painting.

For the rest of us, any sort of collaboration requires a sequential approach. Even with a clear objective there’s friction on creation. The back and forward interaction that happens while collaborating polishes ideas in the best of teams — and compromises viewpoints in most of rest.

Real time collaboration is a buzzword, not a 80/20 use case. Digital collaboration works best when it focuses on universal availability. A link should be all that’s needed for sharing the canvas: in mobile, web, desktop, online, offline.

The next paradigm shift in collaboration will be about sharing what’s on our mind, and not on the screen. In the meantime, there’s still many complex problems that need to solved for making digital collaboration as easy as a whiteboard on a meeting room.

Overcast 2 and the Burden of Patronage

Overcast 2 is out and it’s free.

In my opinion Smart Speed is reason enough to choose Overcast over all other iOS podcast apps. It also has a clean UI and good (now improved) directory with social recommendations.

But… Marco Arment’s crazy new business model is based on patronage, and I’m somehow bothered by this.

Let’s get out of the way that I believe Marco is a really smart guy who’s making a well intentioned decision based on what is better for his product and users.

This is actually less about Overcast 2 being contribution supported and more a personal dialogue about why it feels uncomfortable.

The Burden of Patronage

Is it that I don’t want to support the other 80% of users with my contribution? Yes, that’s part of it.

I don’t mind paying more than my fare share, since it’s likely I appreciate some features enough to be willing to pay for them. But I need some self-justification for transaction. I need to know that _I’m getting my money’s worth. _I’m ok with my Porsche driving friend looking at me funny when he hears I pay for a twitter app. My geekness enjoys the idea that not everyone appreciates a better app experience for $5 — just like I don’t a better driving one for many times that amount.

With a patronage model I look at the other people in the bandwagon and get pissed with the idea that they’re not worried if this is going to work or not.

Suddenly Overcast is Firefly and Arrested Development all over again. It’s up to “_us” _to keep it alive. I have to contribute out of concern rather than a clear feature cost/benefit.

Why is Marco making this complicated? what does he has to appeal to a social cost/benefit? I have a kid on the way dammit! For the first time in years I considered not upgrading my iPhone!

After I take a deep breath, I realise how much it appears like I’m projecting my 2016 election issues into a free app. And it worries me to think I can be so progressive on social issues in Venezuela, but I’m suddenly from Vermont on App Store pricing.

The In Crowd

More than anything, this is about being one the cool kids. There’s a slight head nod when listening to a podcast and knowing that John Gruber, John Siracusa and Guy English would think I’m cool because subscribed to Instapaper Premium — even if I didn’t ever used article search.

If Marco opens a Slack channel or insider newsletter for patrons, then suddenly it’s all ok. That’s the feature. That’s the value the other 80% doesn’t get.

But the challenge of appreciating value in a vacuum worries me. In a time when the balance between user-base size and app pricing seemed to have grouped most veteran developers in the fair price camp– this move is gutsy and scary.

However, all this self-imposed drama is a good problem. I believe many will chime-in and that means we still care about good software being valuable. We want good software to continue to exist around us, and the business model behind it to be viable.

This post originally appeared on Medium.

Quick Logging Input/Output Daily

Few days back Christian Oliver shared in our slack channel this photo with his new motto (translated):

Output / Input

The idea is to create, to add value. Actions affect reality more than knowledge.

While I don’t completly agree with the last part — a constant in our friendship — I really liked the simplification of the concept.

For the part few days I’ve been playing with it in my daily Day One journals. Recently I hit what feels to me as a stable nomenclature:

i7/o4

As you can probably guess, yesterday was not a productive day. Of course, without context this can be misleading: if I spent the whole afternoon finally reading about regex, I would argue the input was high, but it was valuable input. Sadly, this was not the case and by glancing at the journal entry you would be able to see it.

I think the main reason the little end of document tag is working for me — it makes me want to add context to the values, without having to make a sentence out of the it.

A productive day can have many shapes and forms, and I sometimes struggle to log this in a short manner — by simply skipping writing about it.

The Formula

In my mind both attributes are in a scale of 10, and a perfect day would be i10/o10. In reality input and output have an inverse relation — since both consume the same resource of time — and the challenge is to balance them while also pushing both up.

Whatever your mental model and nomenclature, I strongly recommend evaluating your consumption/production everyday. Before long you may start to notice some patterns, or even better: you will start to competing with yourself and work towards not breaking the productivity chain.

Thanks to Christian Oliver, Juan Andres Muñoz and @Mauricio for the help on the drafts of this post.

On music and playlists (Part 2)

A month ago I wrote a glowing review of Apple Music and its curation feature.

After this time I have come to terms with the fact that all the joy provided by the amazing music recommendations, is completely overshadowed by a very poorly executed app.

Even more so, I’m worried. What makes Apple Music great has little — actually nothing — to do with the app itself. Give me all of Apple’s curated playlists in Spotify, and I’ll switch back in a second. As it is, I’m struggling not to reopen my Spotify Premium account ¹.

Unless Apple’s exclusive content is going to make Spotify library incomplete, then I’m sure it’s fairly easy to migrate this value.

Minimal touch targets, slow song start time and awful playlist management. These are the things making me struggle with the app.

And on the desktop? Well, I gave up on iTunes a week ago. Spotify’s ads are acceptable compared to the horrible chimera that Apple Music + iTunes is.