You aren't as important as you think you are. No one can usefully deal with 500 emails per day. Not even you, Mr. Super Important Whoever-you-are. You can hate email with a white-hot fury and stress yourself to an early grave, or you can get over yourself.

You are not that important.

Those 500 emails you get every day don't all need or even deserve a personal, thoughtful response. You do not have that much going on in your life. You are not in charge of that many things. You are not that important.

Are you getting it yet?

Learn to hit the archive¹ button very quickly. You should know within 5 seconds whether an email actually deserves action on your part. 500 emails per day times 5 seconds each means you should be able to burn through your inbox in 41 minutes at most. 5 seconds per email isn't enough, you say? You're doing it wrong. Skim faster.

Forty-one minutes per day for the most hardcore of email users. You, even you, Mr. Super Important Person, can spare forty-one measly minutes.

If you spend literally ² 3 or 4 hours per day handling email, you're doing it absolutely wrong. You have some sort of inflated sense of how important you are. Getting over that is the key to handling email in a reasonable amount of time.

But I'm different

No you're not.

My first post about the iPad mini was generally positive, but ended with "thanks, but I'll wait." My wife, another iPad fan, agreed. Then we went to the Apple Store.

I want it!

These were my wife's words as soon as she saw the iPad mini in person. She repeated the phrase as soon as she picked it up. Naturally, the Apple store was sold out, so we had to call around to a few places. We ended up finding a black 32GB WiFi model at a semi-local Target.

Over the next week, she alternated between using her iPad 3 and the iPad mini. Back and forth, back and forth. When she was using the iPad 3, I jumped at the chance to use the shiny new toy. I even set up a folder with a few of my most-used apps — Instapaper, OmniFocus, and Reeder.

Fast forward about two weeks.

My wife has fallen out of love with the iPad mini. She loves the size and weight, but can't get over the screen. The Retina display prompted her upgrade from the original iPad to the iPad 3. She decided that she couldn't go back.

Me, on the other hand... I was shocked. Pixel snob, Retina snob that I am... I wanted an iPad mini of my own. I didn't want one after the keynote. I didn't want one after seeing it in the Apple store. I only wanted one after weeks of using one.

Lack of Retina Display

It matters, and you know it. You're only kidding yourself if you say otherwise. Switching from the glorious iPad 3 display to an iPhone 3GS-esque display is jarring. It's painful. It might even make you rub your eyes for a moment.

I never stopped noticing the lack of a Retina display. I likely never will. But the size and ridiculously light weight of this device make me OK with it. I can see the pixels, and that's OK. I'm getting a half-weight iPad, and that is worth more to me today than a Retina display.

So, my wife is returning her iPad mini. I've asked Santa for a white 16GB WiFi model. I don't know if he'll deliver, but I sure hope so.

I buy and use Apple products because they make the very best products available at a reasonable price.

Apple makes the very best desktop computer in the world. That's why there's an iMac on my desk.

Apple makes the very best notebook computers in the world. I do not have a notebook computer at this time, but if I did, it would be a tough choice between a MacBook Air and a Retina MacBook Pro.

Apple makes the very best tablet computer, and it's not even close. My iPad (3) is usually nearby, and serves as my mobile computer.

Apple makes the very best smartphone in the world. My white iPhone 5 is always with me. It's easily the best phone you can buy for any amount of money. ¹

When I can afford the best of something that I need, i buy it. That's why I don't drive a Ferrari², but I do use a Mac, iPad, and iPhone. They offer best-in-class experiences without an absurd price tag. If an iPhone cost $1500, I would make do with the Galaxy S III Rage MAXX HD PLUS 4G LTE+++. Fortunately, an iPhone doesn't cost $1500, and I don't have to use such an incredibly well-named phone.

Rene Ritchie from iMore on the upcoming 1Password for iOS:

1Password 4 for iOS is a brand new app. It will require a purchase. There will be a special price available at launch time. The existing 1Password iOS apps will no longer be sold. They will continue to be supported, will sync with 1Password 4 and be available for download in the "Purchased" section of iTunes.

This is not only ballsy, it's awesome. Software like 1Password is immensely valuable. It's also a one-time purchase. That means that the company gets paid once when you buy the software, and that's it. They keep putting out updates and new versions, but don't get paid anymore.

Charging for all-new versions is something we've had on the desktop for years. iOS developers seem to be more afraid of doing this. I'm glad AgileBits has the balls to charge for the update. I'll pay it gladly, knowing how much I use and trust 1Password.

The iPad mini is thin. Apple made a big fuss about it. Every review makes a big fuss about it. And they're all right - it's amazingly thin. Just how thin, though?

Well, Apple has only ever made one iOS device that's thinner than the iPad mini. Not surprisingly, that's the paper-thin iPod touch (5th generation.) The last generation iPod touch matches the 7.2mm thickness of the iPad mini, and nothing else is as thin.

Here's a chart showing the thickness of every iOS device ever made. Besides the thinness of the iPad mini / iPod touch (5), the one thing that really stands out to me is how thick the first three iPhones were. The iPhone 3G / 3GS twins were nearly as thick as the original iPad. Wow.

October the 27th marked the end of James Harden's Thunder career, and the beginning of his time with the Houston Rockets. Some thoughts:

• The Thunder cheaped out by offering "only" $54 million over four years. Harden was eligible to receive a max of $60 million over the same time frame.¹

• Harden was really shortsighted for not biting the bullet and signing the $54 million contract. He would've made "just" $13.5 million per year instead of $15 million per year. On second thought, I don't know how he would feed his family on that tiny amount.²

• Harden was right to hold out for the max. He is a max player with enormous upside. OKC found the money to pay Durant, Westbrook, Perkins, and Ibaka, so why not Harden?

Harden and OKC blew up something really special by not agreeing to a new contract. Trading your third best player after a Finals appearance doesn't make any sense to me. But sometimes the NBA doesn't make any sense. Besides, as a Lakers fan, I approve of this trade.

The Internet has her panties in a bunch today over the iTunes 11 delay. The app that most of us rarely use will be a month late. It doesn't matter.

I, for one, almost never use iTunes on my iMac. When I want to play music, I use Alfred. Alfred uses iTunes, but I don't have to. iCloud has removed the need to sync with iTunes.¹ iTunes just isn't the all-important digital hub that it once was.

Plus there's this — presumably Apple isn't happy with iTunes 11 as it sits, so they're waiting until they get it right. This is not a mission-critical app. Sure, the current version of iTunes sucks in a lot of ways. But it's sucked for a long time. There's no need to rush the replacement.

I missed the live stream of latest Apple event ¹, but caught up later in the day. So, iPad mini.

Tech sites have been exploding with iPad mini rumors for as long as I can remember. I never paid much attention because I didn't really care. The iPad was the perfect size for me. If anything, I'd buy a larger iPad rather than a smaller one.

Still, the mini is interesting. It still seems large enough to be useful, while being much lighter than the iPad (3) I currently enjoy.

I've been contemplating hinting for a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas. The combination of small size, light weight, a backlit screen², reasonable price, and singular focus intrigues me.

The iPad mini complicates this, if only slightly.

It has a smaller size, it weighs less than the normal iPad³, and of course still has a backlit screen. It doesn't have the singular focus of a Kindle, and it costs $200 more. On the other hand, I can use OmniFocus on it. And Instapaper. And Reeder.

So.

Will I buy one? I don't know. Probably not, at least not yet. It's priced a little higher than I would like⁴. It also doesn't have the lovely Retina display that is my favorite iPad (3) feature. Incidentally, this is the one thing that made my wife take pause. She was all set to get one until she heard about the screen. Now she's all set to wait.

No one expected a Retina display in the iPad mini. I don't think Apple made a mistake by not including it. The thinness and lightness are the biggest selling features here.

IFTTT is one of those fascinating web services that I really want to use. It lets you automatic all sorts of stuff online, from watching specific RSS feeds for specific items and then emailing you, to watching your Twitter stream stream for updates and sending them to Google Plus¹.

Well, that second part isn't exactly true anymore. This is from a recent email from IFTTT:

In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter's data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.

So basically, you can still send things to Twitter, just not pull them out. That's not surprising coming from the New Twitter, but it's unfortunate. There have been quite a few methods of automagically archiving tweets using IFTTT in recent weeks/ months. Those methods are now officially dead.

Free stinks.

Relying on free tools to do anything important just plain stinks. At any time, the free service could shut down due to lack of funds. At any time, the free service could change the rules, like Twitter did. What are you going to do, request a refund?

When you build workflows around free services, you're setting yourself up to fail. You're trading present convenience for future hassle. At some point in the future, things are likely to change, and you'll have to change with them. You may get advance notice, or you may not.

Things like IFTTT, Twitter, and Gmail are great in many ways. But, with the exception of Gmail², you can't give any of these services money. No, seriously. Try to pay Twitter. They won't take your money. They have no real reason to care what you think, other than they would prefer you not leave for That Other Place. They know you probably won't, though, so I doubt they lose sleep over you.

For anything that matters to you, look for a paid solution. That's not a guarantee of anything. But it is a step in the right direction.

Ben Brooks on why things really are black and white:

That’s when it dawned on me — when I finally figured out why I write in the black and white, the extremes — it’s not me being disingenuous about my feelings, it’s about discerning the most important part and analyzing that part. So while the paper towel stand truly is average, it also sucks at one primary function that effects me the most: allowing me to tear a single paper towel from it with one hand. For me, that’s the factor that matters most and the factor on which I will judge this item, only taking into consideration other factors if I am ambivalent on the things ability to perform the factor.

This is a very simple example, but a fantastic one, and one that most people can probably relate to. Everyone has some sort of everyday object that he uses every day that just sucks. Not 7/10 stars, or even 5/10 stars. 0/10. Sucks.

If something sucks, man up and say so. Don't say that it's good for some people when what you really want to say is that it sucks.