The App Store is huge. There more apps than an average person can possibly browse. One of the problems I see regularly are abandoned apps — apps that receive no updates or support.

I would appreciate a purifying rain to cleanse the App Store of cruft. If Apple pressed a rest button and removed all apps that have not been updated in the past 12 months I would buy more. I would worry less about abandon-ware but it would also be easier to indentify the cream of the crop apps.

O’Reilly is having an eBook sale for two days. $5 each for a bunch of really good books (mostly pocket guides). O’Reilly is one of the few publishers that really get eBooks. Books are available in multiple formats and at reasonable prices with no DRM. They also did not back SOPA or PIPA.

My favorite notepad is the Rhodia 5×5 flip pad. The new Rhodia Pad Holder ¹ is a practical addition. It’s a durable little notebook that’s also easy to throw in a bag or squeeze in a jacket pocket. My favorite analog note system is the Rhodia pad and a Prismacolor Premier 05 black pen. The Rhodia paper is more dense and less porous than other notebooks I’ve used. I also prefer graph paper most of the time. The Prismacolor pens are astonishing for the price.

That’s it for this week’s installment of stationary pornography.

Here’s a thought I shared with my family over the holiday weekend. I don’t like the expression, “Live today like it was your last day on earth.” Honestly, if we all did that, this would be a pretty awful world.

Instead, I want to live a life I wouldn’t mind repeating forever. If I had to live the same exact life over and over, what would I want it to be like? Luckily, it would be close to what I’ve got.¹

I agree with Mr. Gruber from back in 2011:

The designs in these concept videos are free from real-world constraints — technical, logical, fiscal. Dealing with constraints is what real design is all about. Institutional attention on the present day — on getting innovative industry-leading products out the door and creating consumer demand for them — requires relentless company-wide focus.

The only thing that matters is the shipping product. Cartoons are easy. Sourcing, manufacturing, marketing and distribution are hard.

How amazed would anyone be if the Google Glasses cost $20,000? What if they had a 3 lb colostomy-bag-like battery? That’s what’s great about fantasy, you never need to sweat the details. Lightsabers just project out a meter and stop, the Enterprise can travel 1,909 times the speed of light, a Tardis is bigger on the inside, and Google Glasses will let you pour a scalding cup of coffee while covering your field of vision with ads.

I’ll be impressed when a real device is purchased by a real person and actually does what it was designed to do.¹

When Apple announced the New iPad would have a better camera, my first thought was “yeah, better FaceTime video”. But FaceTime is generally done with the front facing camera. I never really considered what use I would have with a better backside camera. This weekend (24 hours after getting the new device) I found out.

I was sitting and enjoying my morning coffee and reading my Instapaper queue. My adorable three year old daughter was sitting and painting with the most serious and deeply concentrated look I’ve ever observed and I wanted to capture it for the grandparents. Without disturbing the scene, I snapped several perfect photos and emailed them to extremely appreciative grandparents.

Now I understand the value. When I don’t have my phone on me, I’m still likely to have my iPad. Ubiquitous capture, indeed.

David Seah’s site pointed me to this article at Slate¹ about the legendary story of Why the Lucky Stiff and his campaign to teach programming through Ruby. I’ve superficially kept up with the saga and disappearance of Why but this is a good overview.

It’s a compelling look at a supremely passionate person and their chosen art form.

OmniFocus for iPad received a nice update this week. Repeating tasks can now be created on the iPad.

For example, to create my reminder to take the recycling out:

I configure this repeat schedule:

Get it at the OmniGroup Web site.

There are so many things I love about this post by Stephen Wolfram.

First, this is a guy that does what he loves and loves what he does. He’s all about data. He didn’t just come up with a big idea to attract VC money. He is truly passionate about squeezing data until it squeals.

Second, he’s as hardworking as anyone I could find, yet he consistently sits down and has dinner with his family every night. It’s not just an ideal, it’s a fact. His data reveals that the only consistently quiescent time of his past twenty years is when he segregates time for his family dinner. He has given me a new life goal.

Third, he is committed to an ideal. Sure, I’ve tracked my activity. Sure, I’ve done some stats on my computer usage. Steven is the real deal. He meticulously tracked every email, every key stroke and every meeting over the past DECADE. This is someone that finishes what he starts. I admire that.

By way of BoingBoing

Instant buy from Glenn Fleishman and Take Control books. Seriously, $5 is a crazy good deal.

Found my new email font.

Transmit is my FTP client of choice. Just one small example for Transmit’s greatness, is that I can remotely edit a file in place with any application on my Mac. For example, I can edit a PNG file with Acorn. Changes are saved back to the server without having to do anything other than hit ⌘-S. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

I was flattered to be involved with the excellent 2X4 interview series over at Lifehack.

The series focuses on Creativity and Productivity and has included many of my favorite creators on the web. If you care what a charlatan like me thinks about those two topics, you can find it here. However, I recommend starting at the archive and read all the others.

Warning: This post is egotistical and self involved. I’m a “blogger.” What’d you expect?

A couple of very generous people on Twitter suggested I take sponsorships for Macdrifter.com.

@macdrifter Seconded. RT @potatowireRegarding item number one, you should set up a sponsorship program. I like to pay for good writing.

— The Mindful Bit (@themindfulbit) February 23, 2012

That’s pretty awesome, right? So I got to thinking about it. I’ve said before that this site is a hobby. It does cost me some money to run, but spread over 12 months, it’s not much. I’ve occasionally included affiliate links, but honestly, that’s a pain. Since my Simplenote blog posting system came online, I post a lot from my iPad and iPhone. It’s tough to lookup links on the go.

I also don’t do real advertising right now.¹ Marked is an awesome application. I want it to do well, so Brett makes it more awesome. I try to spread the word in my little corner of the inter-tubes.

So what should I do? Well, I decided to include a donations page. The page serves two purposes.

First, it’s a little perpetual soapbox for me to push my moral agendas. I’ve included several charities to donate to. I don’t look at outbound clicks and I don’t track the charity donations. I think donations should be private. I did go to a good amount of work to research the charities.² I’ve provided links to their ratings where possible. I endorse all links on the page. They are not random or sponsored.

Second, the page provides a way for readers to directly support Macdrifter.com. I do this with other sites I like. I’m a Shawn Blanc member and I make anonymous donations to many other sites. It makes me feel good.³ You don’t need to donate to Macdrifter.com. This site is self sufficient. I’m an incredibly fortunate person. If it makes you feel good, then I greatly appreciate the kindness.

If you do support the site directly, you might get me to spruce things up a bit more around here. I’ve put off hiring a real designer (i.e. someone with taste) and engineer (i.e. someone that actually knows something about programming) to change things around here. What you see now is hand-crafted by a one-eyed color-blind chimp (i.e. me).

Mostly I want to say thanks for the awesome people that come through here. Macdrifter.com has given me access to brilliant strangers and Internet heroes. It’s totally worth the price.

This morning I read through a nice little article by Neven Mrgan about working in a machine shop. Maybe the article resonated with me but the next article I read during my morning coffee fit together as a theme with Neven’s article.

GitHub: hosting the Internet’s collaborative projects, making money, and being awfully nice about it (BoingBoing)

Circumstances in my life enabled me to work at all types of jobs. I’ve worked in a machine shop, changed tires on big-rigs, bussed tables, washed dishes, even retail. You name it and I’ve likely done something related.¹ Neven Mrgan’s experience is not unique. Many were crappy jobs and I was treated poorly. However, enough were good jobs to teach me a valuable lesson. I learned something about business from these experiences. A business rarely cares more about their customers than they do about their employees. Any business that cheats and mistreats its employees will just as quickly cheat and mistreat its customers (see Zynga).

GitHub (and many others) are examples of the other side of the coin. Empathetic businesses care about their work. They make better products. They have better customer service. They care about employees.

Before I get too much “well actually” emails, I realize there are exceptions. Amazon has amazing service but appears to treat their warehouse workers badly. My local pizza place treats its employees great but serves a side of disdain with every pie. From my experience these are outliers. It’s why so many hipsters were up-in-arms over Apple’s factories. Because Apple treats it’s customers so well, there’s a sense of expectation that their kindness runs through all aspects of their business. We want to like them. But few people directed outrage at Microsoft or Sony for the same indiscretions. We assume crappy companies treat their employees crappy.