Jacob Online

  1. iOS Apps Should Request Permission for Network Access

    iOS should ask permission for network access similar to how it asks permission to access contacts and photos. Unlike those permissions, however, this one should be optional to the app author. This permission is only important for a certain class of business apps that access potentially sensitive corporate data, but…
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  2. iPad Multitasking

    There's a good chance that side-by-side multitasking is coming to the iPad. There are lots of reasons to suspect this, including credible rumors and Apple's recent focus on pushing the iPad in the enterprise. Perhaps the most compelling evidence, however, is that there is already code in iOS for multitasking.…
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  3. Apple's Embarrassing Apple Pay Infomercial

    Ben Thompson has a great piece on Apple's failure to articulate "Why" when introducing the Apple Watch. On Twitter, someone else pointed out that in the same press conference, they did articulate the "Why" for Apple Pay. He's right, they did. But the problems they demonstrated were exaggerated and silly.…
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  4. What More Do You Want

    You know what would suck? If Flickr just shut down one day, without warning, and suddenly you lost all your photos you had posted. You typed Flickr.com in your browser and what came up was a “Thanks for the good times!” message and an explanation that Flickr was no…
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  5. A better podcast app

    Apple just updated their podcasts app to a state that seems actually usable so I gave it another shot. After messing around with it a bit I ended up abandoning it and going back to Instacast, my podcast app of choice. The reason that I abandoned it wasn’t that…
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  6. Finishing the iPhone

    It’s more accurate to consider the iPhone a computer than a phone. Perhaps even more so for the iPad. Clearly Apple sees this as well, as the evolution of iOS makes clear. From its no apps, iTunes-required beginnings to the 700,000+ apps, no-iTunes-required current state iOS has been…
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  7. Useless

    Many software developers have a pet peeve about customers calling their software “useless” (see here and here). It’s absolutely true that it can be infuriating to have all of your work declared “useless” because you didn’t implement some fringe feature. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that sometimes it’…
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  8. XPC

    Loren Brichter on XPC, one of the new APIs in OS X and iOS: I can’t fathom the extent of the innovation we’ll see, but even simple things that are impossible now like third-party apps sharing bits of themselves with other apps will be possible. I can also…
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  9. "When it disappears"

    Although they want to export the previous content, currently nothing from Digg’s 7-year history is accessible. Manton Reece has a pretty compelling example relating to my post The Web Isn’t Forever.…
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  10. Decisions All the Way Down

    A common complaint about Apple is that they think they know what’s best. Here’s a (poorly titled) example: The general philosophy of [OS X Lion] seems to be “We know better”. A computer company that thinks it knows better than me how I should use my own computer?…
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  11. The Web Isn't Forever

    It’s accepted wisdom that “the web doesn’t forget”. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), it isn’t true. Here’s just one small example. I saw Forrest Gump on TV last night. I often like to read reviews of movies I have seen as a kind of substitute for those…
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  12. The Carriers are Winning

    If Verizon (or any carrier) wants to take this seriously, it’s very simple: let customers add unlimited devices to an existing data bucket for a reasonable monthly fee. $5, for instance. I could even understand $10, perhaps. But $40 for an extra smartphone? Chris Ziegler, The Verge That’s…
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  13. The Mac App Store Needs Loyalty Pricing, not Paid Upgrades

    The Mac App Store doesn’t support paid upgrades. Neither does the iOS App Store. This is a problem. I’d certainly like to see paid upgrades in Apple’s app stores, but it would be even better if Apple took this opportunity to implement a solution that’s smarter…
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  14. What we know about Coda 2 (and we know a lot)

    @katiekitay I'll say, uh, less than three months? And now that I said that, it'll be fourteen years. I really appreciate your enthusiasm! —C— Panic Inc (@panic) April 14, 2012 Coda 2, the next major version of Panic’s fantastic code editor, will be released…
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  15. Goals 2012

    Setting goals has always been something I enjoy. Achieving them is okay, but it’s more the setting. They’re kind of like working out some new way to organize the files on your desktop or some new workflow for handling to-dos. They make you feel like you’re getting…
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  16. If a building has only two floors an...

    If a building has only two floors, an elevator only ever has one travel option (to the floor opposite the current one), so why even bring the numbers “1” and “2” into it? Not to mention that the “Close” button never responds, “Open” is pointless – ARGH! In Alice’s world,…
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  17. What is vid.io?

    http://twitter.com/#!/vidio/status/131350274378964992 Joshua Topolsky and the others that fled Engadget launched their new site today, The Verge. I found one of the groups Topolsky thanked in his announcement post particularly interesting: vid.io The product that powers our video. These guys are about to change the…
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  18. iOS File Browser

    Steve Jobs said that iCloud was the end of the road for document storage on iOS at WWDC in June. I don’t believe it. There are too many loose ends remaining. What about uploading files through the browser? What about attaching files to an email? What about organizing my…
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  19. Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Deep Dive: Versions and Auto Save

    The new, complementary functionality of auto save and versions is an interesting beast. It’s the type of feature that a few years from now you’ll be amazed you ever lived without, but right now feels kind of weird. In some ways it feels like a step backward until…
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  20. Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Deep Dive: Mail

    Mail has received perhaps the biggest update of any of the pre-installed applications in Lion, with a column-based layout, new search methods, improved conversation threads, updated icons, and better support for Exchange and Gmail. Column-based Layout Moving to a columnar layout has a surprising number of implications. You might not…
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  21. Back to the Mac

    My wife will tell you that I love interfaces. (She’ll roll her eyes while she says it, but she’ll say it). Given that it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve been devouring media about OS X Lion since the beta release. I’m talking frequent Google searches…
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  22. Things Only Twitter Can Do

    Dave Winer proposes (as he has before) that Twitter should focus around being a news service. I tend to agree, although I don’t know if “news” fully captures what the platform is capable of. Twitter is able to provide answers to questions that no other service can answer and…
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  23. Indisputable Proof that MobileMe Changes are Coming

    Behold! I have indisputable proof that the web interface for MobileMe is going to change. Account options UI for the Contacts, Gallery, and iDisk sections Account options UI for the Mail, Calendar, and Find My iPhone sections Why are they different? Because Apple has updated Mail, Calendar, and Find My…
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  24. On Gawker and Hashbangs

    Gawker recently finished a transition of all their websites to a new design, and some of the technical decisions they made have upset web standardistas, the most prominent missive being this one by Mike Isolani, a Yahoo employee (all quotes in this post come from his essay). The complaints center…
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  25. Twitter Conversations Follow-Up

    In a previous post I argued that Twitter clients should provide an easy way to see all the @ responses to a tweet, not just the ones that directly replied. I’ve since discovered at least one Twitter client that does what I want, and have realized that many Twitter clients…
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  26. Putting the Phone Call in its Place

    The iPhone, as is evident from its name, started life as a phone. Despite Steve Jobs clever reveal of the iPhone as three separate but equal products in one package (an iPod, an “internet communication device”, and a phone), most consumers saw it as an evolution of the mobile phone.…
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  27. Microsoft Continues to be Dishonest about Bing Copying Debacle

    There’s been quite a brouhaha over Google’s accusation that Bing is copying their search results. Personally I think Google is overreacting, but regardless of my stance I really wish Bing would be clear about what’s happening. Even after two posts on the Bing blog it’s not…
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  28. The Identity Opportunity

    Think about this: you can’t build ANY service that needs identity if the service usefulness is smaller than the cost (mind and time) of the login process. – Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali answering “What’s wrong with OpenID?” on Quora What a perfect way to phrase it. Apple’s various app…
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  29. A New Twitter Feature to Facilitate Conversations

    Despite the constant of addition of functionality to most of the Twitter clients out there, none of the ones I’ve looked at have a simple function that I find myself interested in time and again – the ability to quickly see all the tweets directed (via @) at someone besides me.…
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  30. Interview with a Netflix Movie that I Had for 17 Months Before Finally Watching It

    Interviewer: So your run is coming to an end. How does it feel to retire on top? The Other Side of Heaven: It’s been a roller coster, that’s for sure. But you know, it’s not over yet. Interviewer: What do you mean? TOSOH: Well, right now the…
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