Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 3

Dependable web browser built into macOS. (I can’t speak to the iOS version since I don’t use an iPhone or iPad.) Not much in the way of bells and whistles, but it does offer the usual bookmarks, autofill, reading mode, private windows, etc. And it’ll install PWAs on a desktop (until the App Store side of the company convinces them not to again).

Safari is built in-house by Apple, and Apple is the main contributor to WebKit, so it integrates extremely well with the macOS desktop.

Apple talks a lot about privacy, but aside from blocking (some) trackers and offering the suspiciously-named “private click measurement”, it’s not clear how far that privacy really goes.

Compatibility note: WebKit and Blink have diverged a bit over the years, but “I only test in Chrome” sites are more likely to break in Gecko browsers in my experience.

Extensions and Syncing

It doesn’t support extensions built for Firefox or Chromium. It does have its own set of extensions available through the App Store (at least on macOS), where I was able to find extensions for Pocket, Wallabag, BitWarden, Consent-O-Matic and so on.

Notably missing: Floccus bookmarks sync, KeePassXC, and Privacy Badger, though Floccus does have an iOS app.

BitWarden’s extension works just like it does in other browsers. As for KeePassXC, Safari does work with the password manager’s auto-type feature, at least!

Sync seems to be primarily bookmarks and the reading list, and only over iCloud.

Bottom Line

You could do a lot worse than Safari, but Orion has more features (and can use most Chrome/Firefox extensions too) if you want to stick with similar tech under the hood.

Primarily a bakery, but they do coffee and tea as well. I usually end up getting one of their cream cheese and fruit filled croissants (blueberry or pineapple) or a danish, and my son likes their cookies. The one time I was here at a time to grab breakfast, I got one of their breakfast sandwiches, and it was really good too! Somehow I’ve never gotten around to trying their lunch menu. And one of these days I should just buy a loaf of bread or something.

There’s a decent amount of seating indoors and a couple of tables outside. Friendly service every time I’ve been. It shares a parking lot with Vons, so parking is easy. They don’t have WiFi anymore, and it’s not really set up for working on a laptop anyway, but sometimes when I need to be in the area on a workday I’ll still set up on one of their outside tables with a hotspot for an hour or so.

Notes

Gorgeous views from the trailhead, and I even saw a hawk just perched in a tree the second time I tried to hike here, but the trail downstream is closed and I couldn’t find the trail upstream on either visit.

Getting There

There’s a sign off of Montemalaga Drive across the street from a church. The upstream trail should be right by the sign, but it was too overgrown for me to find. It’s not clear whether you’re allowed to park in the church lot for hiking or not, but there’s plenty of street parking.

The trail itself isn’t on the PVPLC main map, just the reserve boundary. The website links to the Portuguese Bend PDF instead. It’s not on AllTrails as far as I can tell.

PVPLC does link to the trailhead on Google Maps, which shows another connecting trail on the far side of the church. Apparently the downstream end of the trail connects to Via Campesina and the upstream end connects to the Mossbank Trail, which conncets Basswood Ave and Mossbank Drive.

These days when I look for a specific eBook I’ll often check the author’s and publisher’s websites first, and see if it’s available from them directly. Or if they have a preferred source.

Here are some places I’ve bought, borrowed, or otherwise legally acquired e-books from:

Free (as in Gratis)

Standard eBooks focuses on making well-formatted books (review) from public domain sources, mostly from Project Gutenberg, and publishing them in major eBook formats like ePub.

Project Gutenberg makes bare-bones documents (review) of public domain material, but produces them in lots of formats including ePub, HTML, and even plain text.

Library Access

Libby and Hoopla both connect to your local library account, and you can check out eBooks and other media. Their mobile apps works well even on my eink tablet. Hoopla also has graphic novels and individual comics, and you can check movies out to watch on something like a Roku.

DRM-Free: Publishers

Dragonmount sells most of Tor’s publications, and Tor provides most (or possibly all?) of their books without DRM on (almost?) all digital bookstores. Yes, even the big ones. Ironically, while I have bought some books from them, I bought the Wheel of Time series somewhere else.

Argyll Productions is a small publisher. I’ve bought some of T. Kingfisher’s books from there, both in ePub and print format.

Apress and its sibling publishers offer science, nature and technical books with watermarking instead of DRM. I bought a C++ book from them a while back, but they’ve since been bought by Springer Nature, and the website is focused on research institutions and inconvenient for individual use.

Smashing eBooks focuses on web design/industry topics, and while I could swear I’ve bought from them before, I can’t find anything with a cursory search. It’s possible I’m just thinking of articles I’ve bookmarked, or books published elsewhere by authors who write for Smashing Magazine.

No-Starch Press publishes computer/tech books. I bought a Humble Bundle of their stuff a while back, but haven’t bought from them directly that I can recall.

Angry Robot and Subterranean Press are a couple more that I think I’ve bought from before, but nothing rings a bell.

A Book Apart used to publsh “books for people who design, write and code” in the tech and web industry, but they shut down in 2024 and returned the publishing rights to the authors.

DRM-Free: General

Humble Bundle always has at least one bundle of books available, using a pay-what-you-want model with the remainder going to a specific charity (or group of charities) per bundle. They’re not always DRM-free, unfortunately. Sometimes they’re codes to redeem at Kobo or some other bookshop. (Even more ironically, the Ursula K. Le Guin bundle last fall was one of these, including The Dispossessed.)

DriveThruFiction publishes a lot of indie comics, RPG guides, and small-press books. I’ve bought a few graphic novels through them, in PDF form, and most of those were Kickstarters that offered the finished products through DriveThru.

Smashwords also sells mainly small press. I think I’ve only bought one book from there, and it was a while ago.

See Also:

• Libreture’s Ultimate List of DRM-free Bookshops

General EBook Stores

Places that sell both DRM-encumbered and DRM-free books. Most of them sell ePubs, and most of them have their own mobile apps for accessing your purchases (including the DRM’ed books). Most of the apps work fine on my phone and Android-based Boox Poke3 eink tablet which is my preferred reading device, except where noted.

eBooks.com focuses on business ethics (review) and has a good selection. Books with DRM are readable on their website or on their app. The app is kind of bare bones compared to Kobo or Kindle: it stays out of the way and just lets me read instead of trying to sell me more books first!

Bookshop.org supports indie bookstores (review). You can designate a local shop of your choice to get part of your print or digital purchase. At first they only sold print books, but they finally added eBooks in January 2025. The selection’s comparable to eBooks.com, but their app just doesn’t work right on the Poke3. At least not yet.

Kobo is a solid alternative to Kindle (review), from the eBook selection through apps and hardware. The app works well on my eink tablet without too much tweaking, though it still wants to sell me more books before I can open the one I want to read.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook ecosystem is like Kindle, but I’ve only ever bought a couple of books on there to see how the app works on the Poke3 (it’s fine). By the time I started looking for a non-Kindle system, Kobo was partnered with IndieBound and Nook was just another silo.

I haven’t used Google Books in ages, or Apple Books much at all, so I can’t really say much about them except if you’re looking for alternatives to Amazon, you’re probably also looking for alternatives to Google and Apple.

Kindle, of course, is owned by Amazon, which has been the subject of so much criticism over the years that the Wikipedia article is 32 pages long when exported to a PDF, plus another 38 pages of reference citations. I won’t go into detail, because if you’re ok with Amazon in general or Kindle specifically, you probably aren’t reading this page anyway (or stopped early on). But most recently, the item that prompted me writing this list, they’re holding a giant discount sale during Independent Bookstore day.

A conicidence, I’m sure. 🙄

See Also:

• Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon
• Ethical Consumer: List of Ethical Bookshops

Shopping for Books

★★★★★ The Bookshop.org website is great for buying print books online and still supporting indie bookstores. When you buy books, they contribute part of your purchase to a local bookshop of your choice.

I’ve been using them for pre-orders for several years now. The prices can be slightly higher than Amazon, but the selection’s good, and I like being able to credit a local (or previously local) bookstore even when I don’t actually get out to shop in person.

EBooks

★★★★☆ They just launched eBook sales this year, providing another alternative to Kindle. The books are in ePub format, making them a lot more portable than Amazon’s, especially the ones from publishers that don’t insist on locking access with DRM. You can just download from the website and put them on whatever reader you want. Off the top of my head, Tor publishes most of their books DRM-Free, and Bookshop has a deal to include Standard Ebooks’ catalog of free public-domain books.

For books that do have DRM, you can read them on the website, or with Adobe Digital Editions, or using Bookshop.org’s mobile app. Similar to Kobo or eBooks.com, really.

Reader App

★★★☆☆ Unfortunately I haven’t been impressed by Bookshop’s mobile app, which I’ve been using on the Boox Poke3 and occasionally my Android tablet.

1. The biggest problem is that it really wants you to be online when you open it. I’ve had to connect to wi-fi, open the app, and then disconnect in order to read books I’d already downloaded. I’m hoping this will clear up as they improve the app.

2. The second-biggest is that touch responsiveness is slower than usual, which makes turning pages on an e-ink display difficult and unreliable. I’ve also had problems with inconsistent font sizes, but only on the Poke3.

Once I got it set up on my regular tablet, page turning and font sizes were fine! But it’s just enough bigger that books work better in landscape. The Bookshop app’s home screen is portrait-only, and it takes a while to find the controls to set the page view for two columns.

Like Kobo, the app tries to sell you more books. But this one directs you to their website for making purchases. (Apple and Google take 30% of all in-app purchases on their platforms.) It does, however, let you add a book to your wishlist, so it’ll be there the next time you open the website.

Bottom Line

I’m happily to keep buying new physical books from here! (Though I try to check Better World Books first on anything that’s been out for a while.)

But I’m less certain about their eBooks. At least the ones with DRM. The eBooks.com app is more reliable on my preferred device, so I’ll probably go back to buying from them for now. With any luck either the app will improve, or it already works on newer e-ink hardware.