Fascinating.
Peace Out →
Marco is pulling his very successful ad blocker "Peace" from the App Store:
Ad-blocking is a kind of war — a first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides. I see war in the Tao Te Ching sense: it should be avoided when possible; when that isn’t possible, war should be entered solemnly, not celebrated.
Even though I’m “winning”, I’ve enjoyed none of it. That’s why I’m withdrawing from the market.
I'm surprised he pulled his app instead of selling it (jokes).
But it seems like Marco should have had thought through all of this before he released his app. I wonder what happened. Was it just more successful than anticipated? It's going to be interesting hearing him talk through his reasoning a bit on ATP.
The Zipf Mystery →
Next time somebody brings up the Pareto Principle in your place of work make sure to derail the conversation by making them watch this video.
And wow, Quizzaciously sure did get popular fast.
Peace →
A pleasantly surprising announcement from Marco Arment today:
Today, I’m launching my own iOS 9 content blocker, called Peace, to bring peace, quiet, privacy, and — as a nice side benefit — ludicrous speed to iOS web browsing.
There are a lot of content blockers being released today, but Peace strikes the best balance I’ve seen of effectiveness, compatibility, simplicity, and speed, powered by what I’ve found to be the best database in the business after months of testing. And it’s just $2.99.
For the time being, this is my iOS 9 content blocker of choice. Marco is good people, and I've been using Ghostery (which this blocker uses for its database of shit to block) on Chrome for a few weeks now with good results.
As a side note, I wonder how much extra traffic The Verge is getting today just from people testing out their new iOS 9 content blockers.
The Verge's iOS 9 Review →
If you only have time to consume one iOS 9 review, I recommend this one.
Techdown #49: We'll Get to That Bullet Point →
Aaron really brought his A-game this episode. He also brought a stack of notes an inch thick containing nothing but his thoughts on Metal Gear V. That man is nothing if not organized.
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic →
Mmm. Blizzard cinematics.
Starcraft II was officially announced in 2007, the first installment of the trilogy didn't drop until 2010, and now the final expansion is coming this November, in 2015. Hard to believe it's been that long already.
The Jungle Book - Teaser Trailer →
Looks really promising, and the cast is fantastic. I can't wait until my son is old enough to watch movies like this with his mom and me.
Vancouver Never Plays Itself →
Another great episode of Every Frame a Painting. I had no idea that Vancouver was such a popular filming location.
Plex is Coming to Apple TV →
Swapnil Bhartiya of IT World comfirms it:
I reached out to Plex via email and Scott Olechowski, the co-founder of Plex replied, saying, 'We are very excited to have a crack at bringing our users Apple TV. It’s been a long requested platform and we’re excited to work on it. We want it, our users want it…and we’re anxiously awaiting the tvOS developer beta info, so we can finally dig in.'
I further inquired if Olechowski believed that tvOS will allow Plex developers to offer the app to the platform or if there could still be any hurdles. He replied, 'There is no question we will be able to offer Plex on the platform. There are multiple ways to go about it, based on the tvOS SDK we now have access to. We are now evaluating the best path for Plex and will begin work in earnest once we have evaluated the options.'
Everybody could see this coming a mile away as soon as an Apple TV SDK was announced. I'm still curious though, about what Siri features announced this week we'll be able to use when watching video that isn't from iTunes.
Ideally, things like "Skip forward 5 minutes" to go to an exact time stamp, and "What did they just say?" to play the last 15 seconds of a video with closed captions will be built into the video playing framework. And commands like "Open the Plex app" should work since that's at the OS level.
But more advanced features like "Play that episode of Modern Family with Edward Norton" and including Plex results in searches such as "Show me James Bond films" will almost certainly not work. I wonder what else we'll be missing out on with a Plex Apple TV app, and if it'll be enough to make me want to start buying more content through iTunes.