Phew. I was starting to feel bad that I didn’t have one.

Writing for Macworld, Ian Paul shows you how to opt out of letting anyone on Google+ email you, which could happen thanks to their new settings. This is, of course, assuming you don’t want that to happen. Not sure why you wouldn’t, though. Sounds so awesome.

Back in December I posted a mini-review of Castro, a nicely iOS 7-ified podcasting app. Since then I’ve been introduced to Network, which is another really nice iPhone app. Network takes a different, more visually minimalist approach than Castro but one that’s still very iOS 7-y (I am a professional writer) and quite appealing.

If you don’t like transparency, you’ll probably like Network, because there isn’t any. The main list of podcasts is a simple icon grid with a plus icon for adding more.

Network has nice transitions — bouncy-bouncy, slidey-widey — and making note of them is key. Tapping on a show slides in the episodes from the right, which means you swipe right to go back to the list of shows. Tapping on an episode slides the player up from the bottom, which means you swipe down to go back to the list of episodes. You can swipe left in the player to see the episode summary as the two little page dots at the bottom of the screen indicate. Once you start an episode, a little player icon will stay on the bottom of the screen along with the show name, so you can always get back to what’s playing.

In the episode view, swipe left to delete an episode and I hope you mean that because it won’t ask you if you do. Once the dot clears, it’ll get deleted if you release.

Throughout the app, Network’s interface is clean, pleasant and consistent. I’m sure some people won’t like the blue text on a blue background that Network uses for titles, but I’m not one of them, even though my reading eyesight isn’t what it used to be.

One missing feature I found: I wasn’t able to add a podcast with a URL. Other than that, it did everything I wanted.

Network is $2.99 on the App Store and I think it’s another really nice entrant into this category that’s exploding with the red-hot fury of a million $2.99 suns.

Once again, disclosure: I got my copy for free and, again, they feature an episode of The Talk Show I was on in their screen shots on the App Store. Although, it’s shown being deleted so I’m not sure that really counts.

I bought my son a 3DS XL for his birthday to replace his banged-up 3DS and he’s been pretty happy with it. I wouldn’t say it was as big a hit with him as the iPod touch he got last year, but still a success.

One thing probably would make it a knockout for him: Minecraft. If it had Minecraft, forget about it. We’d never see him or it again. Just a cloud of dust and a “KWAAAAAPING!” sound.

Nintendo clearly still faces some huge challenges, but the DS platform still has some legs, at least for a little while.

(Via Federico Viticci)

The article actually says “Samsung” not “Apple” but I assume that’s just a typo since only Apple has labor issues.

Ted Landau, via Ben Thompson:

It’s 2014 and I’m happily using a 5-year old Mac Pro with SSD. Not sure if I should be impressed or depressed by what this says.

Thompson notes this is another factor killing PC sales. Why buy a new machine when you can just upgrade the hard drive and have what feels like a new machine?

I put a hybrid drive in my 2007 iMac over the weekend and think I’ll get at least another year out of it. I only use it as an iTunes server for the house, but that’s pretty astounding. That machine will be 7 this summer. This effect is one of the reasons I think Apple’s making it harder or impossible to upgrade your machines.

(Edited this post because I originally said it was the reason which I don’t think is true.)

ADDED: I had thought that the RAM and disk drive in the 2012-2013 iMacs were non-upgradeable but it turns out it’s technically possible, just a lot harder. Let’s just say that I still think it’s a happy coincidence that Apple’s design choices are making their devices less user-upgradeable. Happy for Apple, not necessarily its customers. At least I’m not dropping $2500 on a Power Mac every time like I used to.

Charles Arthur looks at the latest U.S. market share numbers versus installed base and concludes:

No discernible drama at all – just a couple of lines remaining roughly parallel going up [Android and iOS], and two lines at the bottom on a collision course [BlackBerry and Windows Phone].

Market share numbers are easy to report and make for great SEO-churning headlines because Apple, but they’re less important than most tech watchers like to think. They certainly don’t need to be shouted about every quarter.

Podcasting. What is it? How does it work? Can you eat a podcast as some people claim? I certainly don’t know. But I’m happy to announce that I’ll be on a new podcast with Lex Friedman and Jon Armstrong in which we discuss fatherhood.

(Disclaimer: any and all advice offered on this podcast is given “as-is”. NO REFUNDS.)

For the record, now that the book on 2013 is closed, Windows Phone did not overtake Android in market share as Pyramid Research analyst Stela Bokun predicted it would.

Repeat: did not.

Interesting thoughts by Ben Thompson on why he likes his Chromebook Pixel and thinks the platform has legs.

To take an extreme example, look at the iPhone: iPhone OS 1 was much less capable – no copy-and-paste, no multi-tasking, no app store – but it was also much simpler than any version that followed. And, as this example highlights, sometimes more complexity is a trade-off worth making.

I watched some of the football playoffs but missed that Microsoft ran one of their Scroogled ads during a game. What an embarrassment.

“It doesn’t have Windows, or Office”

That’s not the cudgel it used to be, Redmond.