Linked List: April 5, 2016

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

Macminicolo Merges With MacStadium 

Big news from Brian Stucki, founder of Macminicolo:

In short, I’ve decided to sell ownership of Macminicolo and merge it with another company. I will stay on as President of Macminicolo and also serve as a Vice President of the parent company, MacStadium.

Now, I could just announce this with no explanation and be done with it . I could also write one of those generic acquisition posts focused on sunsets and brands and blah. Instead, I’ll be forthright and real like I’ve always tried to be with customers.

Macminicolo is one of my favorite companies. Yes, they’re a longtime sponsor, but I’ve used their services personally and recommend them wholeheartedly. And Brian is the guy behind Fireballed.org, which attempts to cache all sites linked from DF.

The Loop Magazine App Is Dead 

Jim Dalrymple:

It is with tremendous sadness that I write this post today. I have tried to figure out a way for The Loop Magazine app to work on the App Store, for the last few months. It turns out, it just won’t. This morning, I removed the app from the App Store.

Wasn’t meant to be.

TJ Luoma on TextExpander 6’s Subscription Pricing 

TJ Luoma, on Smile shipping the newest version of TextExpander as a $45/year subscription service:

To be clear, I’m not saying that the Smile folks are bad, evil, mean, money-grubbers or anything like that. What I am saying is this: as an experienced power-user of your software, I do not have the slightest clue why you decided to make this service mandatory when it seems to offer very little for individual users, and I have no idea why I should pay a monthly fee for something that has worked fine before. What problem does TextExpander 6 solve for me?

I can’t answer that question.

And if I can’t answer that question, Smile has a big problem.

Subscription pricing makes sense, but I do think $45/year is a bit high.

Update: Joe Cieplinski has a good take, too.

WhatsApp Enables End-to-End Encryption 

WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton:

From now on when you and your contacts use the latest version of the app, every call you make, and every message, photo, video, file, and voice message you send, is end-to-end encrypted by default, including group chats.

The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one can see inside that message. Not cybercriminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us. End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private — sort of like a face-to-face conversation.

If you’re interested in learning more about how end-to-end encryption works, you can read about it here. But all you need to know is that end-to-end encrypted messages can only be read by the recipients you intend. And if you’re using the latest version of WhatsApp, you don’t have to do a thing to encrypt your messages: end-to-end encryption is on by default and all the time.

Wired has a good story on this, but with a headline that makes it sound like they were trying to hit their quota of Apple-related stories: “Forget Apple vs. the FBI: WhatsApp Just Switched on Encryption for a Billion People”. WhatsApp’s use of end-to-end encryption doesn’t have anything to do with Apple — and the last thing anyone who cares about encryption and private communication should do is “forget” about Apple and the FBI. So strange.