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New for Billings Pro on iPhone

Whip up estimates and invoices from scratch right from the Home Screen. Start building an invoice with one tap when you launch the app.

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Bon Appetit:

You intentionally grab a café table next to the window on overcast days and you’re a pro at tinkering with your eggy photos on VSCO, but have you ever gone on a professional photoshoot with just your iPhone?

Imagine the surprise the photographers we worked with on our March Culture Issue experienced when they got the call saying they’d have to ditch their DSLRs and tethers for the hippest pocket camera around. We spoke with the photographers who made the issue happen and found out what they think of a print magazine going full-on Instagram for an issue.

How freaked out were the photographers when they heard about this? Imagine your boss telling you that you had to use “inferior” tools to get your job done. It’s an interesting experiment.

A fantastic feature. Definitely worth knowing about.

Robin Raszka:

All the books in my library are carefully handpicked from what I stumbled upon online in comments on design related websites by highly respected people in the design industry and on Twitter. I simply just don’t go to iBooks store and pick something from the top charts.

Here’s my personal library in no particular order (majority of the books I have already read or at least started a couple of chapters).

Some of my favorite books are on this list, including the highly recommended Creativity, Inc., by Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull.

Alexandra Mintsopoulos, writing for Medium:

I’ve been watching the story about Apple’s “declining software quality” unfold over the past year with amusement but never felt the need to write anything contesting this narrative until John Siracusa (on episode 155 of Accidental Tech Podcast) came to the conclusion that the problem must be real because the story keeps coming back up. To John’s credit, he allowed for the possibility that this is a perception problem but ultimately concluded otherwise because “no one else seems to be disagreeing”. I disagree.

And:

Apple’s installed base of users has grown massively over the past few years. Even if you dismiss this as a lagging indicator what you cannot dismiss is that customer satisfaction remains at an all-time high. More importantly, actual usage of Apple’s products and services continues unabated, something you would not expect if Apple’s software quality were truly declining.

Apple’s software has certainly gotten much larger and more complex. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to equate Apple’s scorching hot product sales with any measure of software quality.

Look at Windows. No matter the reputation for poor interface design or bugginess, Windows long reigned as the defacto standard, a hallmark of software sales.

Apple products sell because they are beautifully designed, true, but they also sell because that is what we are used to using. Switching lanes is hard and becoming harder.

I’ve been using Apple software since the beginning. In my experience, bugs in the OS were few and far between. Now, I can’t go a day without encountering some sort of gremlin. But I don’t blame quality, I blame complexity.

Apple’s operating systems and products have far more edge cases than they used to. There are orders of magnitude more things to test for. It’s almost impossible to build a set of tests that mirror all possible configurations. What works when you are a niche player does not work when you are one of the biggest companies in the world. In short, Apple is the victim of its own success.

Jessie Char tweeted:

Early adopters have lost the wide-eyed excitement of trying something new and understanding a product’s potential.

I completely agree. I love my Apple Watch. It performs spectacularly well for rev 1 hardware. My Mac does an incredible array of things and, for the most part, it does them in workhorse fashion, performing again and again with only occasional hiccups.

Are there problems? Yes, no doubt. Some bugs become widely known and persist for years. But complexity means long lists of fixes for no-doubt weary and overworked software teams at Apple. But ask yourself this: Would you rather be using Windows? Or an Android phone? To me, it’s not even close.

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

The iPad Pro’s last frontier is adding a trackpad to the Smart Keyboard.

The article itself is an interesting read, but this core idea struck me as one of the defining differences between an iPad and a MacBook.

Remember this post about adding a mechanical keyboard to your iPad? Somewhat in jest, I wondered about adding a mouse to the setup. And that’s the difference. The difference of a persistent cursor.

The iPad is built around touch and, more specifically multi-touch. With a mouse and trackpad, you need a cursor that stays on the screen to mark your current location. That persistent marker gives you an instant focus to get back to where you were working.

With iOS, there is no persistent cursor, no marker that holds your place on the screen. As soon as you raise your finger from the glass, the memory of your interaction is wiped. Your next touch starts from scratch.

These are two very different models. An iPad with a mouse would require very different operating system mechanics. iOS 9 built a tiny bridge back to OS X with trackpad mode, where you force touch on a keyboard to get a floating cursor that you can drag around the screen, a floating cursor that disappears as soon as you raise your finger.

Will Apple ever complete that bridge, build a full-time cursor into iOS? In my mind, that, and the addition of trackpad support, would be a major step towards making my iPad more of a replacement for my MacBook.

That said, I really like my iPad as is. This particular thing ain’t broke.

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, on stage at the Grammies last night:

“When you stream a song, all the people that created that music receive a fraction of a penny,” Portnow said on stage after a performance by 12-year-old pianist Joey Alexander. “Isn’t a song worth more than a penny?

“Listen, we all love the convenience, and we support technologies like streaming, which connect us to that music. But we also have to make sure that artists grow up in a world where music is a viable career.”

Joining Portnow on stage, rapper Common added:

“So tonight, my comrades of the recording academy would like to thank our fans who support our work by going to a concert, subscribing to a music service, collecting vinyl, or speaking out for artists’ rights,” Common said.

Notably, last year Portnow also spoke out from the Grammy stage:

It marks the second time Portnow has highlighted the issue of free music streaming at the Grammys. Last year he was joined on stage by Jennifer Hudson, where he said: “What if we’re all watching the Grammys a few years from now and there’s no Best New Artist award because there aren’t enough talented artists and songwriters who are actually able to make a living from their craft?”

Boredpanda:

I wanted to take a coast-to-coast journey across Canada in a way that had never been seen before. To give a fresh perspective to the journey I decided to take the train. It’s not just any train, but rather the legendary 1959 passenger train that was first to be called “The Canadian.”

When I saw the post title, I thought, “Wait – there’s no vintage train you can take across Canada…” Then I saw the pictures and realized what he was talking about. Very clever.

A great new album from a couple of my friends, Dave Wiskus and Joe Cieplinski. They also happen to be developers and podcasters in the Mac and iOS world. I’m listening to the album right now and it’s really good. Congrats guys!

I remember this issue like it was yesterday. Nice walk down memory lane.

By the way, if you’ve never spent time on the site, Archive.org is worth a visit. You can find tons of old content, preserved for eternity (or until the links break).

For example, click here for the complete Macworld collection, click here for Compute! magazine, and here for back issues of Byte.

[H/T Jeff LaMarche]

The Telegraph:

In what is being billed as the most far-reaching organisational overhaul in the BBC’s 93-year history, Lord Hall will give a speech before Easter in which he will unveil proposals to axe the corporation’s existing channel-based structures, fundamentally reshaping the organisation into content and audience-led divisions.

While the broadcaster is committed to the keeping its television channels and radio stations on the airwaves for the foreseeable future, Lord Hall is said to believe that the quickening pace of technological change means that the boundaries between media such as television, radio and online are blurring.

And:

While the new arrangements are still under discussion, they are likely to include new divisions such as BBC Entertain – which would take in Radio 2 and the corporation’s televised entertainment programming, and BBC Inform – which would include news services, and radio stations such as Five Live.

Each overarching division would have subsidiary divisions such as BBC Youth, a mooted subdivision of BBC Entertain, which would include the online channel BBC Three, and pop music station Radio 1.

Really grabbing the bull by the horns. A remarkable shakeup.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple is making its first original television show. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the technology giant is backing a top-secret scripted series starring one of its own executives, Beats co-founder and rap legend Dr. Dre.

Multiple sources say the 50-year-old mogul is starring in and executive producing his own six-episode vehicle, dubbed Vital Signs, and the production is being bankrolled by Apple. The series likely will be distributed via Apple Music, the company’s subscription streaming site, but it’s not clear if Apple TV, the iTunes store or other Apple platforms (or even a traditional television distributor) will be involved. Apple and a rep for Dre declined to comment.

Those who have seen descriptions of the Dr. Dre show say it is billed as semi-autobiographical, with each episode focusing on a different emotion and how Dre’s character deals with it. Sources say that Sam Rockwell and Mo McCrae (Murder in the First) are among the additional cast.

So far, so good. But then the article goes on to say:

While technically a half-hour, the show is not a comedy. Instead, it is described as a dark drama with no shortage of violence and sex. In fact, an episode filming Monday and Tuesday this week featured an extended orgy scene. Sources tell THR that naked extras simulated sex in a mansion in the Bird Streets neighborhood of Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills.

Does this sound like something Apple would feature as their first foray into exclusive content?

Apple:

A limited number of Apple USB-C charge cables that were included with MacBook computers through June 2015 may fail due to a design issue. As a result, your MacBook may not charge or only charge intermittently when it’s connected to a power adapter with an affected cable.

Apple will provide a new, redesigned USB-C charge cable, free of charge, to all eligible customers. This program also covers Apple USB-C charge cables that were sold as a standalone accessory.

Got a MacBook? Click here and see if your cable is eligible for replacement.

Kanye West sent out this tweet yesterday:

Please for all music lovers. Please subscribe to tidal!!! I decided not to sell my album for another week. Please subscribe to tidal.

Kanye is part owner of Tidal and plans to stream his latest album exclusively on Tidal, at least for the first week, in order to drive up subscriptions.

The strategy appears to have worked, at least in terms of getting people to download the Tidal app:

Man thank you so so so much everyone for signing up to Tidal. Tidal is now the number one app in the world!!!

Indeed, the Tidal app quickly became the number one free download in the iOS App Store. The obvious question is, will these free app downloads translate into paid subscriptions? And if this strategy succeeds, will other high-demand artists continue the strategy of using demand for their music to steer fans to boutique music services?

As of this post, Tidal continues to sit atop the free app download chart.

Based on the book by Stephen King and starring James Franco, 11.22.63 is an eight part series about time travel and the assassination of John F Kennedy.

Part 1 dropped this morning, available for streaming exclusively on Hulu. I’ve been looking forward to this one.

Woz is the face of the new Comic-Con and the driving force behind this new Comic-Con hub:

When Woz and Stan [Lee] did meet, they bonded. “The two of us hit it off so well we wanted to work together on something, anything, anytime we could be together,” Woz told me. “We just hit it off like the best friends ever.”

The something that came out of the historic meeting was Silicon Valley Comic Con, which will take place from March 18-20 at the San Jose Convention Center. As you’d expect, it includes panels and a show floor devoted to celebrating fantasy as expressed in comics, movies, and TV. But it has another major ingredient that reflects Woz’s influence and the event’s location: science and technology. “I don’t like to do the same thing as everyone else, I always like to be first at something, do something different on a different track,” Woz says.

“This will be the first comic con with a technology link.” The show’s guests include Astro Teller, head of Alphabet’s X group (formerly known as Google X); Bobak Ferdowsi, the famously mohawked NASA engineer, and Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux, cofounder of Escape Dynamics, a space technology company. Google is participating with a VR zone, and an App Alley section will give developers the opportunity to show off their wares for free.

Feels like a return to its roots.

Slashfilm:

Have you never experienced the wonders of seeing Humphrey Bogart on the big screen? Have you never watched a John Huston film in a movie theater either? Well, now you can do both, because Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies are teaming up for anniversary screenings of The Maltese Falcon.

Frequently considered the first – and finest – example of film noir filmmaking in Hollywood, 1941’s classic The Maltese Falcon will cast its mysterious shadows on the silver screen once again on Feb. 21 and Feb. 24 as part of the Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) TCM Big Screen Classics series.

But moviegoers should take note that the opportunity to see “the stuff that dreams are made of” in theaters will be fleeting: The Maltese Falcon will play four times only, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (local time) each day.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like this is screening near me but if you can get tickets, I strongly encourage you to go see this absolute classic movie and one of my top ten favorites of all time. “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble” is a line I’ve used a million times in my life.

NPR:

Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled.

Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them.

I love these origin stories – as a kid, I was a big fan of Roman and Greek mythology. Our present version of Valentine’s Day, regardless of your feelings about the day, is certainly better than its origin story.

The Verge:

Amazingly, the new Deadpool movie does work. That has a great deal to do with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s screenplay, but so much of what keeps the film from flying out of control is the editing. Julian Clarke had to do the heavy lifting in Adobe Premiere to strike a balance between the character’s love of gore and gleeful absurdity, making a movie that’s accessible to both fans and neophytes. It’s not easy, since Deadpool seems made for situations that fly out of control. I spoke with Clarke about the film, the challenges he faced making it, and why the sequel might be harder to pull off than anyone expects.

Interesting interview with the editor of the film and the particular challenges he had in keeping the level and tone just right. I haven’t seen the movie but I’ve heard good and bad things about it. But, from the trailers, it feels like one of those movies you’re either going to immediately form an opinion about one way or the other. Personally, I loved what I saw in the trailers and during the marketing campaign leading up to this weekend’s release.

Hodinkee:

Having worn an Apple Watch almost exclusively for the last month, I feel absolutely confident that mechanical watches aren’t going anywhere for now. But the Apple Watch isn’t either.

It’s almost improbably well done, and it shows a willingness to think creatively that ought to be heeded by the luxury watch industry – and it also suggests to me that underestimating its impact, and Apple, is dangerous.

This is a long and well detailed review of the Apple Watch from the point of view of a person who loves and lives for mechanical watches. This is a guy who reviews $95,000 mechanical watches on a regular basis so his opinions regarding the Apple Watch are very interesting.

Petapixel:

Here’s a major warning to those of you who use Adobe Creative Cloud on a Mac: the latest version of Creative Cloud has a bug that deletes unrelated data from your root directory without warning.

The bug in Adobe Creative Cloud version 3.5.0.206 was discovered by the cloud backup service Backblaze, whose customers were having their data deleted by Adobe’s app.

This is yet another in a long line of issues with apps in Adobe’s Creative Cloud and it may be the most destructive one yet. I was forced to use CC but I don’t do any of the updates as they pop up. I know Adobe screws this stuff up on a regular basis so I keep myself one update behind.

Fstoppers:

When I heard the iPhone 6s was coming out on September 25, I decided now was the best time to create a new video to prove once and for all that quality photography can be taken with any budget.

Instead of using a fancy studio (which was actually just my garage in the last video) I decided to do the shoot around my house and then outside at the beach. Instead of seamless paper I decided to use backgrounds that anyone could easily find. Most importantly, I limited my lighting budget to about $40 maximum per shot.

I love this post because it shows you don’t need a ton of gear to get great shots. With your iPhone, some stuff you can buy at Home Depot and a little ingenuity, you can create your very own fashion shoot. Thanks to iheartapple2 for the link.

Vox:

“The bottom line here with the industrial tomatoes is that tomatoes have been bred for yield, production, disease resistance,” Klee told me. “The growers are not paid for flavor — they are paid for yield. So the breeders have given them this stuff that produces a lot of fruit but that doesn’t have any flavor.”

“We are raising a whole generation of people who don’t know what a tomato is supposed to taste like.” That’s why you see gigantic strawberries and fist-size apples on the store shelves. Since Americans like their produce big, and big fruit is more efficient to grow, growers do everything they can to supersize their fruit, even at the expense of flavor.

Anyone else noticed this? I did especially when I was in Italy. In particular, the tomatoes tasted amazing and completely different from the blandness of what we get in supermarkets here in North America.

The Daily Dot:

To shoot the video, the band hopped aboard a special fixed-wing airplane, lovingly dubbed the “vomit comet” by astronauts in training thanks to its ability to induce, well, vomiting. The plane, provided and operated by the company S7, climbs higher than a commercial jet and then the pilot begins to take it on a parabolic flight pattern. In other words, the plane goes up at a steep angle, then back down again, creating 25 seconds of weightlessness for the cargo (i.e. OK Go and crew).

Dave posted this morning about the video. Here are some details about how they accomplished it.