Linked List: September 30, 2016

Friday, 30 September 2016

David Wondrich: ‘How Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey Lost Its Way’ ★

David Wondrich:

Scan a menu in a craft cocktail bar and it’s a lead-pipe cinch you’ll find something on it made with rye — straight rye whiskey, that is, made right here in the United States. For drinkers under, say, 35, it’s even a given. But those of us older than that can recall the days when if you asked for a rye Manhattan they would give you something made with Canadian “rye,” which oddly enough can be made with no rye in it at all. Indeed, things got so bad that the whole category almost completely disappeared. The troubles really began at the turn of the century with World War I and Prohibition on the horizon and then they only got worse.

The story of Old Overholt, which I began in my last column, is really the story of the whole Mid-Atlantic rye whiskey industry, and of industrial America. The rise, the fall and the rebirth — it’s a history that to my knowledge has never been fully explored and needs to be for this style of whiskey to be more than a fad. Here is the full unabridged story of how rye whiskey, our first indigenous distilled spirit (it goes back to 1648) almost became a footnote in American history.

Fascinating story. I love rye whiskey (particularly in an Old-Fashioned), but I didn’t know any of this history.

The Omni Group Is Moving to Free Apps With In-App Purchases ★

Ken Case, The Omni Group:

The underlying problem, as noted above, is that downloading the app has a fixed cost. We’ve always set that cost to be the standard price of our app, leaving us no way to charge less. But what if we take a fresh look at this problem, and make our downloads free? You know, like every iPhone app in the Top Grossing List has already done? It’s not that they don’t sell anything — or they wouldn’t be on that list. They just don’t sell the original download. (Which we’ve never done on our own store either.)

With the original download free, we can implement any pricing options we want to offer customers through In-App Purchases. We can offer our standard unlocks of Standard and Pro, of course. But we can also offer a free 2-week trial which unlocks all of the features of Pro and Standard, letting you freely choose between them. We can offer a discounted upgrade to the new Standard. And we can offer free upgrades to the new versions to any customers who recently purchased the old app.

Well, I’m pleased to share that that’s exactly what we’re going to do — starting next month, with the App Store edition of OmniGraffle 7.

This is the future of productivity apps in the App Store.

A nifty side-effect of this change:

As a bonus, this free download of the app now also works as a free document viewer. You don’t have to buy anything to use the app as a document viewer; you can just dismiss the licensing dialog — in which case you’ll only be able to open documents in read-only mode. This means that our customers can send OmniGraffle documents to anyone who has a Mac, knowing that they’ll be able to download the latest OmniGraffle for free and view those documents.

USA Today’s Editorial Board: Trump Is ‘Unfit for the Presidency’ ★

USA Today:

In the 34-year history of USA Today, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

It really speaks volumes that a newspaper that has never endorsed a candidate for president in its history would see fit to speak out so vociferously. In the same way that whitespace can amplify a message in graphic design, USA Today’s decades of political neutrality amplifies their message against Trump. This is not a normal election.

See also: The Arizona Republic:

Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never. This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles.

This year is different.

The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified.

I don’t know how much effect any newspaper endorsement has on election results, but these ought to be more effective than Clinton endorsements from traditionally liberal editorial boards like those of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Yours Truly on Jeff Veen’s ‘Presentable’ Podcast ★

Jeff Veen has a (relatively) new podcast about design called Presentable. He was kind enough to have me as his guest this week. I’ve known Jeff for a long time, and have always considered him one of the most thoughtful people in the business. I really thought that came across in his questions for me, and our discussion.

The Ill-Fated Tale of Phoneys, the Stupid Little Sticker Pack That Went #1 on the App Store ★

Adam Howell:

Wednesday night of this week, John Gruber wrote, “This is very clever, and I can see how it could be damn funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Phoneys gets pulled from the App Store.” Shortly after John’s post — I mean, you can’t buy press better than that, a post from Gruber about $.99 stickers so clever that Apple was sure to pull them? — Phoneys, the stupid little sticker pack I’d launched just a few days before, climbed to #1 Top Paid and #1 Top Grossing in the iMessage app store.

Thursday night, last night, Bill from Apple called me.

Interesting that Apple is giving him a week to change the sticker style. But I really think Apple had no choice. The idea of Phoneys is fun, but I don’t think Apple should allow pranks like this in the App Store.

iPhone 7 Plus Depth Effect Is Legit ★

Stu Maschwitz has a thoughtful, smart, and well-illustrated piece on the iPhone 7 Plus’s Portrait mode:

So don’t ask if Depth Effect is perfect. A better question is if its failures are distracting. And I have certainly taken some test photos where they are. But the funny thing about test photos is that there’s often nothing worth photographing in them, so you just stare at the problems. In my own testing, whenever I’ve pointed Portrait Mode at something I actually care about, the results have been solid.

So back to the question of whether we should care about a fake blur applied in post to a telephone photo. When I tweeted the above shot, someone replied with a reasonable question: wouldn’t I love the photo just as much without the effect? I replied no, and added:

Composition matters, and focus is composition in depth.

Portrait Mode photos aren’t just photos with a blur applied. They have the potential to be photos that are more about what they are photos of. It gets back to one of the oldest, most durable posts on this site: Less is More. We frame our shots carefully, and shallow depth of field allows us to frame our shots in depth as well.

Sometimes that makes the photo prettier. Often, it can make the photo.

Cliff? What Cliff? I Don’t See Any Cliff. ★

Then Co-CEO of BlackBerry-maker RIM, in 2010, responding to Steve Jobs’s claim that the iPhone had passed BlackBerry in sales and he didn’t see them ever catching up:

For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 — 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter.

This is what happens when a technology company is run by executives who don’t understand the underlying technology. Every single thing Balsillie wrote here was either wrong or shortsighted. Everything. Smaller tablets? Apple came out with the iPad Mini in 2012. Apple wasn’t first but they didn’t have to be. Adobe Flash is now dead on all mobile platforms, and it’s dying on the desktop. And worst of all, equating then-current sales strength with a bright future.

From the DF Archive: ‘BlackBerry vs. iPhone’ in 2008 ★

In light of BlackBerry’s decision this week to stop making hardware, it’s worth revisiting what is probably the best long-term prediction I’ve ever made on Daring Fireball:’ calling BlackBerry “doomed” in May 2008. Hindsight is 20-20, but this wasn’t a popular call in early 2008. At the time, the original iPhone was only 10 months old, and we were still a few months away from the iPhone 3G. Based on sales alone, BlackBerry looked very strong in 2008 — BlackBerry would more than triple their 2008 revenue in 2011. But their eventual decline and demise was inevitable.

BlackBerry was good at making computer-like gadgets; the iPhone was a gadget-like computer. If you could see that difference, and had a sense for just how difficult it would be for BlackBerry to gain expertise in computing hardware and software (in particular, creating a platform for apps), you could see just how much trouble they were in even though they had a handful of go-go sales years ahead of them.