The opposite side of “free” is another business model I strongly encourage for certain types of consumer software:

I understand those who say “I would have preferred it to be universal”. Sure, sounds reasonable. I would have preferred my iPhone 4S to come for free in the mail, too, but it didn’t. Stuff isn’t free in this world (even when they give you the illusion of free, you’re the one being sold). What I can’t accept is people getting angry and offensive at third-party developers that decide, you know, to make people pay three bucks for an app that’s been in the works for months. Unfortunately, the App Store doesn’t allow for paid upgrades, so if these people’s rhetoric is that it’s not about the price, it’s about the convenience of a universal binary, well, there isn’t much developers can do about it. Ask Apple.

Maybe the term “free” is clouding our discussion. But I think the...

As I have come to learn in the past few months, things in life aren’t simply black and white. Our achievements are measured in how successful we are at understanding and cherishing the various shades of gray.

Free online services fall under such gray area. There is a shared sentiment among independent writers and developers that “free” is inarguably bad as a business model. I have noticed a disturbing trend in the past months – many aren’t even trying (I’m not saying becoming regular users, I’m saying trying) new services because they start out as free, and free is bad. These people are short-sighted.

As writers, when did we stop giving software makers the benefit of the doubt?

Maybe I’m too optimistic. I like to look at innovations positively, and, unfortunately, I have also noticed that writing blog posts with accusatory theories can drive more traffic than someone who hopes for a...

This post by Shawn Blanc echoes my same thoughts about the iPad as “a computer”:

My MacBook Air is now my “desktop” and my iPad is now my “laptop”. I’ve spent the past month using and testing different apps so that my iPad can function as a work device when I’m away from my desk. This is, primarily, so that I can travel without the MacBook Air. As light and thin as the Air is, it still doesn’t match the iPad.

For the past months, I have been taking a look at several iPad apps, user workflows, and limitations to a) get more done on the device and b) assemble a “ iPad in Real Life” series for MacStories. Hopefully the first installments will be ready soon, and I look forward to it as I have dedicated a lot of time to better understanding the platform and talking with people and developers.

Meanwhile, here’s my Post-PC Retrospective from February.

You can argue on ethics and taste, but you can’t say 2Pac’s posthumous performance at Coachella as hologram isn’t technically impressive.

NSFW language of course, but worth watching for the technical achievement alone (2Pac on stage at around the 32:00 minute mark, shorter version here).

The Verge has some details on the system used at Coachella and some of its (visible) limitations:

Executing the Carey illusion relied on both modern day techniques and an old magician’s trick dating back to the 19th Century. First, a video was composed by New York SFX company MPC using a mixture of live footage, wire-framing, and CGI. This was then fed into Musion’s holographic technology, which projects the image onto a special foil. The foil is based on principles set out in the old magician’s illusion Pepper’s Ghost, which trick audiences into thinking they’re viewing a person or object rather...

Apple’s Cards app has been updated today. The 1.1 version brings:

• Beautiful letterpress cards for Mother’s Day
• New Get Well card designs
• Additional cards for birthdays, thank you and more
• Improves accuracy of envelope address verification
• Simplifies and improves the checkout process

I have never used the app, but it looks like a nice update. Our original review from October here.

Manton Reece posted a good follow-up to my article about the first six months of iCloud:

If you’re a developer considering iCloud support, just make sure your data fits there. Ask yourself if your data is all about your app, or if it’s bigger than your app. Developers who are willing to take a risk on building an open API instead of iCloud could see new opportunities: web-based views of their data, compatibility with other apps, and syncing on the Mac outside of the App Store.

The key is interoperability. I know of several developers who tried to implement a single iCloud storage for some of their apps, and got rejected, as Apple doesn’t like the idea of different apps from the same developer sharing iCloud documents. At least for now.

If your app spans multiple devices and platforms, choose the Web.

Update: The developer documentation says apps from a single developer account can...

Matt Alexander runs a great weblog. He recently had a very valid idea: to launch a new series of interviews focused on the impact technology has on Real Life.

I ask you to regard the Real Life series as an ongoing discussion between friends. A conversation built upon the tenets of introspection, reflection, and thoughtful consideration of the past, present, and future. Herein, my goal is that you might hopefully come to abandon any lingering feelings of negativity, and embrace a youthful feeling of hope and awe for the innovative world in which we live.

I am honored to kick off this new series with some thoughts about the future of technology.

I think that technology changed us, and there’s no going back.

Check it out here.

From the Readability blog:

Once the content type is determined, there’s still the complex task of knowing precisely what to tease out of a web resource. Even web articles—Readability’s wheelhouse—are comprised of much more than just a headline and body text. With Iris, Readability gains the ability to glean a whole new level of insight into what facets of a web resource matters to readers and developers: titles and headlines. Subheadlines. Lead images. Videos. Excerpts. Authors. Languages. Captions. Beyond just a great end-user experience, Iris represents a powerful bridge to the new ways content is being consumed beyond the browser.

Obviously, web content isn’t just about text anymore, and it sounds like Readability has been optimizing its engine to better “understand” article layouts and media types.

I’ll be giving this a try in the next few days and report back.

It’s basically an Angry Birds rip-off with Reddit rage faces and various memes replacing the birds and pigs.

I don’t think any other name could have been more appropriate.

Speaking of Google, the folks at mass:werk put together a fully functional BBS interface with a bunch of CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, and Google’s REST API.

Make sure to turn up the volume. [via Hacker News]