Finley, I am.

Work Can Wait

We believe Work Can Wait is an important notion. 9pm on Friday night is not work time. 6am on Wednesday morning is not work time. It may be for you, but it’s not for me. And I don’t want it to be work time for my employees either.

Every user on Basecamp 3 starts with a default work time from 8am to 6pm in their own time zone. People are free to change it, of course, but we think it’s important to encourage Work Can Wait rather than default everyone’s notifications on 24/7/365.

We hope more products offer similar abilities to shut themselves off when work is over. “You can get ahold of me about work whenever” will eventually lead to “I don’t want to work here anymore”.

Here’s to early mornings, evenings, and weekends being free from work. Work Can Wait.

Jason Fried

Good Lord. This has been one of my biggest greivances with our culture over the last decade. From my second job chewing me out for not bringing a laptop and an Internet connect with me to a Christmas party while on vacation, to a young gal at my job at a start-up chewing me out for not receiving email over the weekend about a meeting at 7am on a Monday being cancelled. I don’t set up company email on my phone or iPad. If I’m not working, I’m not available.

Unfortunately, software has encouraged this practice of always being on. Over the weekend I had to silence Slack notifications because I was receiving notifications on a Saturday while preparing for one of my best friend’s weddings. While I am working, I want these notifications, but not when I’m with friends and family. Now Basecamp is going to support this. Let’s hope this becomes a trend.

The fact that employees are now always reachable eliminates what was once a natural barrier of sorts, the idea that work was something that happened during office hours or at the physical office. With no limits, work becomes like a football game where the whistle is never blown.

New Yorker

Hours for iPhone

Go download Hours for iPhone and Apple Watch for free! I’ve always been bad at tracking time, something few people enjoy. Hours has, within a matter of a few days of use, worked it’s way into my flow and allowed me to keep track of my time on my new job at HLK.

Adobe Has Been Paying Attention to Sketch

Looks like Adobe has been paying attention. Artboards, simplified tools and editing, and much more. I’m interested to see where this goes, though apps like Macaw seem much more friendly to the modern, responsive web.

Sunrise Launches Meet

If I had more meetings, this would be fantastic. But I don’t. I love cool, sexy things that I cannot find a use case for. Read more about the new Meet keyboard.

Redesigning Overcast’s Apple Watch App

I originally designed the Apple Watch app for my podcast player, Overcast, with a scaled-down version of the iPhone app’s structure.

This seemed like a sensible adaptation of my iOS app to the Apple Watch. In practice, it sucked.

Marco.org

One of the reasons that I haven’t started building Apple Watch apps yet is because of my lack of an Apple Watch to feel them on. Marco writes on how once he had the device, he understood how he went about things wrongly. This isn’t about technical limitations of the platform, but how people use it. What the expections are. Designing in a simulator is never designing on the device.

Huge Update for Chrome for iOS

In an update released today, Google has added a widget and new gestures to Chrome for iOS, making it easy to open links from other apps and manage tabs on the iPhone.

MacStories

I’m a Chrome guy. Mac + iOS. I’ve found it to suit my needs a lot more. In apps that I build, I include Chrome support because of the custom back button functionality.

Well, today they have added one of my biggest wish list items: 1Password support. But that’s not all! Their new Today widget allows you to quickly open copied links in Chrome. No more tapping a link in Messages and it opening Safari. Copy the link, swipe down, and open Chrome. Beautiful.

Filters

Filters offers traditional image adjustments like brightness, contrast, exposure, saturation, color temperature and more, but also introduces three brand new adjustments: Shine, Luna, Intimidate, Color Boost and Smart Fade. These custom multi-effects intelligently assess image color data and let you add drama, vibrancy or the perfect retro look to your photograph.

Beautiful new app from Mike Rundle. Cannot wait to put this to use. Would have been great when we were out at Starved Rock over the weekend.

Image by Mohsen Kamalzadeh.

Fantastical 2

Today the new Fantastical 2 is out for Mac. Instead of being just a menu bar app— saying “just” is an understatement, as it was a powerful, featured menu bar app— this update brings a full-on Calendar replacement to match the power and feature set of the iOS apps.

I have long used Fantastical on my phone, though I never bought it for my iPad or Mac. $6.99 isn’t a bad price for iPad, but I just don’t use a calendar enough to justify it. For the Mac, the cost is $39.99. If you use your calendar every day, this is certainly the app you need. Beautiful, powerful, and just a great app. I’ll be using the trial until it expires.

Cleaning Up

164.

That’s how many apps I had this morning as I flipped through the homescreens on my phone this morning. Half of them have been deleted or relocated to my iPad now. Games I played a few times, social apps I tried for a day, lots of photography apps, crappy keyboards, and stuff that had been filed away into folders to never be touched in months.

75.

That’s a lot better now. Not great, but a lot better. I could get rid of 10 more if I remove those I use once a month. Another 17 if I remove those used less than that. But for now, 75 is better.

NeuBible

Years ago, I had one of the first 500 apps on the iPad, named Holiwrit. My goal was simple: create a beautiful and easy-to-use Bible for iPad. I was frustrated that no one in the space was making such a thing. Now, yes, Holiwrit was skeuomorphic, but all apps at the time were. Wood and paper matched with a columned layout and easy navigation. Beyond that, no features. Just reading.

The problem I found is one that I’m sure many have in trying to enter that space. The most popular translations had licensing that is above anything the independent developer could afford. For me to make any money at all from my endevour, I’d be forced to sell it for a high price or use free, “open-source” translations. The app didn’t go far, unfortunately because of this.

That pursuit of “beautiful utility,” as designers like to say, stands in contrast to their less design-minded competitors. Papyrus scrolls, blazing crosses, clouds lit by divine beams of light—the App Store is chock-full of Bible apps with enough skeuomorphic, Christian-kitsch to give Jony Ive permanent nightmares. Even worse, many are riddled with design flaws, from feature-overload to poor navigation. But NeuBible stands apart, with a pared-down structure that puts the text front and center. The font choices are modern—no Italicized cursive, here—and the left-side navigation disappears from view while reading. Apart from verse numbers and chapter headings, the content is unadorned.

FastCompany

Today, a new Bible app was released that gives me hope once more. Focused 100% on usability and the text before features, NeuBible built an absolutely beautiful app. Download it on the App Store for $1.99 today!

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