seanmonstar

Absoutely beautiful application for Windows. Finally, using git on Windows doesn’t have to suck. Love the Metro theme, also.

Ben Brooks wrote this regarding what is gained by improving iCloud:

Platform lock-in. If all your data lives in iCloud and not Microsoft or Google, well you are far less likely to undertake such a large data migration.

That’s certainly great for Apple, but no one else. Lock-in is the enemy of competition. It’s why social networks don’t really have to compete over the best experience. And it’s why so many people prefer keeping their notes in plain .txt files, because it’s easily tranferable.

Lock-in is never good for users.

Application design and Portal? Yup.

Asa Dotzler:

On ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won’t give to other browsers so there’s no way another browser can possibly compete with IE in terms of features or performance.

This is huge. It’s not that it’s difficult to make a Metro-style app. It’s that some core underlying APIs that users take for granted aren’t available. An easy one to notice: Firefox on ARM won’t be able to dynamically load and execute generated code; commonly known as JIT compilation. JIT compilation of JavaScript is how all modern browsers are able to make JavaScript run so quickly. Users will certainly notice that Firefox seems slow, and think it’s all Mozilla’s fault.

Then, John Gruber points this out:

In other words, Microsoft is setting policies for Windows for ARM that are a lot like Apple’s policies for iOS. These policies and restrictions make just as much sense for Microsoft as they do for Apple.

I can never understand people who have the mind of “that’s fine, it’s better for the parent company.” It’s also worse for the user. The policy that Apple has for the iOS store is just as bonkers.

The service that backs Simplenote; they spent the time figuring out the hard problem of synchronizing data. Now, you can use it yourself, and focus on other difficult problems.

I think both Android and iOS are decent operating systems, and that they serve different kinds of people. One thing that always irks me is when people say againt Android “iOS is just better put together.” This video shows a couple examples where Android is far more cohesive than iOS is.

I’m sure Apple fans would flock and come up with examples where Android is less consistent or nice. It seems obvious to me, then, that we just leave it as each appeals to different people, and shut up about it.

As Ben Brooks points out, many mediums are free, and show ads instead. He suggests mediums (specifically, writing) should ditch ads and ask viewers to pay directly. My feeling on the matter is that the best option is a mixed one.

Mediums should provide their content, free of charge, but showing tasteful ads. Mediums should probably also offer a way for users to directly pay for the content they enjoy. If they pay, it’s imperative that the ads be removed. Paying and having to view ads is just dirty¹.

This article by Marco Arment made me think about what things I’ve created that would last. The software I write likely won’t be used in 10 years, but I sure hope some of the articles I’ve written could be. I looked through my archive, and found a small number of articles that meet that description. I thought it’d be fun to share them again, here.

• Good Things Come to Those Who Ask
• Enthusiam Starts at the Top
• A Less-Random Generator
• Tablets Will Replace Everything

There’s a few more articles that I’m rather proud of, but I’m not as sure they would be useful to someone in the 2020’s.

Angus Croll, on trying to improve EcmaScript 6:

There are some in the JavaScript development community who have severe misgivings over this approach, while others are generally happy but have the knowledge and experience to offer improvements. Unfortunately members of both groups are having a hard time being heard.

There are tons of (conflicting) opinions out there on where JavaScript should go, and I hope this doesn’t give naysayers too high of a pedestal, but overall the idea seems sound. JSFixed is trying to provide a familiar place for JavaScript developers to add their input on the proposed changes to their language.

Myke Hurley has an interesting take at why people don’t buy Android apps:

If apps are generally crappy looking or functioning, should users be more accustomed to paying little to nothing?

There certainly are an abundance of crappy apps. That doesn’t stop me from buying good apps.

Many people point to this blog post about Papermill, which is a nicely designed Android app for Instapaper. It says that since it didn’t sell well, Android users don’t want to pay for good apps. That’s not why I didn’t buy it. I didn’t because it didn’t strike me as a good app. It looks nicely designed, but it’s lacking many features from Instapaper. Instead, I spent my money on ReadItLater, back when it was a paid app. It does more, and looked good to boot.

I’d say the reason is a bit of a catch-22. Users don’t buy apps on Android, because developers don’t make good, featured apps. In turn, the apps aren’t developed because users don’t apps. Android users will spend their money on excellent apps.