“Doesn’t someone here still use this?”

The Slack message linked to an article on The Verge. Facebook was announcing it would kill its app Paper at the end of July.¹

It wasn’t much of a surprise, even for a Paper bitter-ender like me. The Facebook division that made Paper disbanded long ago, and Paper hadn’t been updated in months. The app’s news aggregator / reader functions have become less of a priority for Facebook.

Mourning an app that so clearly failed in the marketplace might seem pointless. But Paper was quite simply the best designed app available for... More

I work many mornings from a coffee shop near my apartment before heading into the office.

When people come in for coffee, being Americans, they politely form a rigidly hierarchical queue. And being Americans in 2016, they almost immediately pull out their phone and start fiddling with it.

We’re less than a decade into the smartphone era, and the device has become so ingrained in our lives that spending a few minutes with our own thoughts is less compelling than what’s on our magic internet-connected pocket computer.

I mention this not to judge my fellow humans (for a... More

I remember the first time I saw someone using a giant phone. One of those really oversized Samsung phones.

It looked silly, as if the person was holding an iPad Mini against their head to make a call. Who wants to look silly?

Not me. I had my iPhone.

When the iPhone debuted in 2007, it was the thinnest, smallest smartphone available. In typical Apple fashion, they had designed a phone years ahead of others in capability and then made it impossibly small. ¹

Some of bulkiness of their competitors was due to limitations of the era.... More

The Apple Watch is very nice.

It’s nice to use. It feels nice on your arm. It looks nice, too, and is quite nicely built. It’s surprisingly nice to make phone calls from, and it’s a nice way to get notifications on the go.

The haptic feedback buzz feels nice when a new push alert pops in. The alert sounds are nice, and the digital crown has a nice smooth, precision feel when rotated. The inductive charger that effortlessly drops into place is very nice compared with the fiddly plug on a cell phone.

Even the packaging is nice. All... More

Marco Arment drew ire – and admiration – for his blog post arguing that Apple software had lost “the functional high ground.”

Arment isn’t a typical user – as a developer his view is somewhat more like a mechanic with a car up on a lift – not the person who drives it every day. His view may not be that of a typical user. In addition, he wrote later that he “looked back at what I wrote with regret, guilt, and embarrassment.” But further statements suggest he stands by his central idea that Apple software has not... More