06APR2027: Actual Master Thieves

Happy Sunday everyone!

The big fun news of the week was of course the formal reveal of all the details about the Nintendo Switch 2. I, for one, am super excited and can't wait to pre-order it… whenever we actually get to… you know, because of the whole bad thing.

On a brighter note, I'm curious about what the folks at Craft are building with their Chaps app(s?), appreciating Stephen for sharing CheatSheet for MacOS with me, playing around with Matt's new utility hub, Quick Stuff, thoroughly enjoying The Studio on AppleTV+, and marveling at this camera made of 20k+ coffee stirrers and a Raspberry Pi.

On to the good stuff!

• 🤖 Niimbot Labelmaker* - I'm finally starting to mail out commemorative Photo Challenge stickers to all who participated, so I needed to grab a label maker to help me with addressing all the envelopes. I stumbled across the Niimbot and have been really pleased with it. It is a high resolution label printer, capable of printing to various label sizes, and is controlled via Bluetooth with an iOS/Android app that lets you use preset templates or design your own with tons of fonts, icons, and more. You can even use your own photos/images.

• 📚 A Burglar's Guide to the City (Amazon* | Bookshop.org*)  - I really enjoyed this look at architecture and city planning through the eyes of cat burglars and bank robbers, with lots of interviews with actual master thieves and the FBI agents tasked with catching them. It also features a fun detour into the world of lock picking as guided by the always entertaining Deviant Ollam. You won't look at cities and buildings the same again after reading it. *Affiliate link to support the newsletter.

• 👟 Avelo Running - I hinted about this stealth running wearable tech a few months back when they first launched their teaser. This week, Avelo took the wraps off with an awesome reveal video and website launch. In short, Avelo is a smart running shoe built by a bunch of senior Nike and Garmin alumni. The shoe and associated smartphone app analyzes your strides and footstrikes to coach you before, during, and after your runs on how you can improve, recover, and avoid injury. As someone who actually really enjoys running but has basically given it up due to repeated injuries, I'm really eager to give it a try. They're going live soon with pre-orders.

• 📷 Leica LUX for iOS - When I first saw that Leica was launching its own iOS camera app, it felt a bit like they were making a cash grab with a gimmick, and then I went happily back to using Halide (my iOS camera app of choice). That said, I decided to give the app a shot on a whim this week and have been really impressed by it. Beyond giving you manual shooting controls and the option to shoot in ProRAW, the app has an "Aperture Priority" mode where you can choose from several classic Leica lenses, pick the aperture you want to shoot at, and it outputs photos with simulated bokeh / lens blur effects characteristic of each of the lenses. The effect is much better than I expected, even capturing the swirly bokeh effect of some vintage Leica lenses. The app is pricey at $70(!)/year, but they have a free trial that lets you shoot up to 38 photos at no cost if you just want to give it a spin.

• 🔍 Text Lens for MacOS - The always excellent indie developer, Sindre Sorhus, released a new app thisweek designed to let you copy otherwise unselectable text from webpages, photos, and more. The little applet sits in your menu bar and when invoked lets you click and drag a box over any text on your screen, which then gets OCR'd and added to your clipboard for easy pasting wherever you'd like. A no brainer pick-up for me.

That's it for this week! Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes.