I know it’s been available for a few months as part of the iOS beta, but I’m not one to try betas on my main device. My test device is an iPhone 12 mini from 2020, which doesn’t support Apple Intelligence whereas my main device, an iPhone 16 Pro Max does.

It’s a significant upgrade. Apple has finally binned the old intent-based Siri and started over with a modern agentic system that uses LLMs. Over the past year or so, with the exception of Siri, I’ve only found myself having to use an old intent-based chatbot a handful of times - and boy have they aged badly! I say that as someone who used to spend a lot of time building and testing the things. It was clear to me as far back as 2022 that these intent-based chatbots were eventually going to be replaced by LLMs. ‘Agentic’ wasn’t really a thing yet, although if you take the core concept of an agent, a loop that runs until the LLM determines that the request has been fulfilled, then this was certainly something that existed in rudimentary form even back then. It’s surprising therefore that it took Apple this long to ditch the old Siri.

On iOS (and iPadOS - they are the same OS really), the new Siri AI is very impressive.

Take this example: A friend sent me a name, phone number and email address of a guy who fitted their air conditioning over WhatsApp. I wanted to email him for a quote, but it was 8pm on a Friday and I was having dinner. I asked Siri to extract the details on screen and remind me to send the email on tomorrow. It did so perfectly.

Another example: my local council has decided to change the days our bins are collected - recycling, food, garden and general waste are on various days, some every week, some every 2 weeks. I was able to pull up the Basingstoke Council web page with the information on it, and ask Siri to spot the pattern, create recurring calendar events to remind me to put the bins out, and importantly, schedule events for 8PM on the evening before. It’s no good being reminded on the day when they are typically collected before 7:30 in the morning!

Later that day I was planning a family outing to a local farm so my 2 year old could see the animals. I had the web page open with the address on it. I asked Siri to add it to the calendar tomorrow for 1pm, and to make sure the address was set in the calendar appointment. It did it just as I asked. So when I get in the car and plug my phone into CarPlay, I can just tap the appointment and my directions are already set. Little things like this that would have involved frustratingly trying to copy and paste an address from a web page are now just a lot easier.

I have noticed some regressions in speech recognition. Mostly it’s improved, but it keeps confusing my wife’s name Mandi for one of the several people in my address book called Andy. I’ve accidentally sent a message to at least one of these Andy’s so far. Not great. I may have to rename them all to ‘Andrew’ if this continues.

My only criticism would be Siri on the Apple Watch. I’m not sure why, but it’s very slow and far less reliable. I know on phones and iPads Apple does as much processing locally as it can. They say for privacy reasons, but it also saves on their cloud compute costs too. I doubt the Apple Watch can do much AI locally, and so I wonder if it’s either trying and failing, or it’s using the phone, and it’s just unreliable. The state of Siri on the Apple Watch is the only time I’ve regretted upgrading and wished for the old intent-based Siri back.

I also have a couple of HomePods around the house. These do not support the new Siri AI. This is a big shame and I wish Apple could have figured out a cloud based solution to get it working on them, or if not, let me just connect another LLM rather then be forced to use the limited version they came with. The old Siri never really lived up to the promise Apple repeatedly showed off in its adverts and keynotes, and so it’s pretty poor form that they don’t seem to be getting access to the new Siri. Even a much simpler version of Siri that is less ‘agentic’ but can understand things better would be a start.

Overall Siri AI is an interesting step towards the future where LLM powered Agents can do useful things your phone, with all the guardrails that you don’t get with other more ‘homebrew’ solutions. It’s perhaps the best reason to upgrade to iOS / watchOS 27, if you can live with the watch version being a bit buggy.

“Google is your friend” is a phrase that any older millennial like me will recognise. When Google was the cool new thing that it felt like only you knew about, it was a common refrain when a topic came up in the pub that descended into a debate, or if someone at work asked a question whose answer would surely be found at the top of a simple search query. (Yes, back then we used to talk about random things and even casually debate them in person – a great way to decide what you think about something or have your mind changed – a far cry from today’s online-first world).

Google is no longer my friend. I’ve had 3 Google accounts since Gmail first launched in April 2004. The first one in 2004, and then for some reason, 23-year-old me decided to ditch this one in 2008 because I wanted a different email address and create my second Google account. It was this that would be my primary email account for many years afterwards, although I later switched to Fastmail.

Despite not really using it, I still kept the 2008 account, and although I didn’t log into it for years on end, I did manage to remember my password and log into it earlier this year, even connecting Apple Mail to it on my Mac to more easily search my email archive and setting up a new secure password and a passkey.

So I was surprised when I tried to log in a couple of weeks back and was told that the account had been suspended. The reasons listed ranged from downright trivial (Google’s policies – OK, whatever) to extremely serious – hacking and child abuse.

There was an option to submit an appeal, and so I did. I explained that I had no idea what the problem was and I just wanted to find an old email. The appeal was rejected within a few hours, but it did tell me that the reason for the appeal being rejected was “Our review found that your account was created or used with multiple other accounts to violate Google’s policies. It appears the account might have been created by a computer program or bot.”

I was almost certain Google were not paying human beings to do these reviews, and so at this point I’ve likely found myself in the position of having to try and prove I’m not an AI bot to an AI bot itself. This is ridiculous! The account is 18 years old, and at one point, during my days as an Android user, it would have had a credit card associated with it for buying apps from Google Play.

I decided to submit another appeal. This time, rather than a few lines, I wrote a more detailed 174-word appeal and again made sure not to use any AI assistance at all. I provided my phone number, my website, and told them they could do a Whois on my domain and see it’s been active for 24 years. I pointed out that the Google account in question was 18 years old. Why only now are they suggesting it was created by a bot? Within a few hours, this appeal was again denied.

Google explicitly allows multiple accounts. I have never (knowingly) violated any Google policies. The bottom line is Google can’t tell if you are human or not. A slight silver lining is that I can export my data using Google Takeout, but honestly, the fact that Google are so poor at this would make me think twice about relying on Google for anything serious.

So it turns out Google never was my friend, and probably isn’t yours either.

For the cost of less than a coffee, NxTrain, an app for iPhone and Apple Watch, allows you to configure your commute and then have the next train, time, and platform displayed on your Apple Watch or iPhone’s Lock or Home Screen as a widget. All you have to do is install the app, set up your home and work stations, and the times you typically leave and return. It will then automatically switch to showing your outbound or return train times. It even lets you open the app to see a full schedule of trains.

Now, as I pull in on the Northern Line at Waterloo, where there is no signal (there is everywhere else on the Tube it seems), I glance down at my watch and can already see where and when my next fastest train home will be. If it’s less than 6 minutes, I can usually leg it up the stairs and make it. In the mornings, before I set off on my bike to the station, I will quickly check the schedule to see if my usual train is delayed. No point rushing if it is. The app even pings a notification if there are lots of delays on your line, in case you need to reevaluate whether train travel is worth it today.

Hopefully you find this as useful as I do.

In short: In 1.7 it looks much better now. The previous version was functional, this version not only looks like something you’d actually want to have on your watch face or Home Screen, it’s also much more useful as a result.

However, important things first. I have a new icon, and I’m probably most excited about this. Especially its dark mode rendering. Yes, the train’s headlights come on at night:

(Drag the slider to compare)

Apple Watch App

In the watch app, the complications now visualise how long there is to go until the next train arrives. When building this the question arose, but when did your start waiting? When should the countdown ‘start’ from? Initially I assume a 60 minute countdown so it fit naturally with the circular complication and visualising the number of minutes at a glance. That didn’t feel quite right though, so I changed it start from when the previous train left. If there are multiple trains scheduled then I take an average wait time between trains. So it’s a visualisation of how long you would have had to wait at most. I’m not 100% confident on this, so keen to hear feedback on how useful people find it. For me, I just wanted something that looked a bit nicer if I’m going to have it on my watch face all day. Complication designs for ‘off days’ (when no commute is scheduled) are also improved. If, for some reason iOS (or watchOS) hasn’t updated the widget for a while, it will show a tilde (~) next to the time, to indicate the data is not fresh. You can tap to open the app to get the latest data. This is more likely to occur if you use low power mode on your phone or watch.

iPhone App

iPhone widgets get a major improve, again with some design applied to them. I should add there is a known bug where the wrong time can be shown if your next train to arrive at your destination isn’t the earliest departure time – I found this about 5 days after I’d submitted to the App Store. Fix incoming.

The app itself has been updated too. The main screen that lists your different commutes now makes it clearer they are different commutes using colours (these colours are also used in widgets and watch complications) and showing the from and to destinations rather than just the destination. This was a result of feedback that the old screen could be confused for a list of journeys within the same commute, especially at the end of a long day when you’re tired just wanted to get home! In the next update you’ll be able to give each configured commute a colour – for now they are set automatically. That update will be coming very soon.

Along with all this there are many general reliability updates.

Also the big news (I’ve buried the lede) - I’ve set the app to be FREE until the end of August. In return, please do me a favour and add a review on the App Store if you find it useful.

Apple devices are now used by roughly 1 in 5 humans on the planet. That’s roughly 1.4 to 1.7 billion people, depending on how you account for people who own more than one Apple device. The company says there are more than 2.5 billion active Apple devices in use, against a world population of about 8.3 billion.^[1][2] Around one in four active smartphones globally is an iPhone.^[3]

Which makes me wonder whether the yearly feature rollout process should be a bit more, say, democratic? But that’s a thought to explore another day…

What I’m interested in is what Apple plans to do with AI. As I see it, there are three pillars to any AI strategy Apple might have.

The first is consumer-facing features: making my phone better at understanding me and doing useful things automatically. While there are features that attempt this at the moment, they are often unreliable or inconsistent. In 2026, nobody should have to copy and paste text from a WhatsApp message into their Calendar app, manually create an appointment, and invite everyone. AI is more than capable of automating this.

2023 was the year of using LLMs to improve spelling and grammar^[4], and Apple was late to that. 2025 was the year of using them to actually perform tasks, and Apple is again late to this. I use the Reminders app to collaborate with my wife on a shared shopping list throughout the week. One of us then logs into a supermarket website and adds everything from the reminders list to the grocery basket, most of which we bought the week before (we tend to buy a lot of the same things every week but not always). As I go down the list, I’m mainly checking that prices haven’t become unreasonably high and looking out for the occasional special offer. What if Siri could notice that I’m doing this and offer to take control of my browser and do it for me? Again, the technology is capable of this, as anyone who has used the Claude browser plugin will tell you. This could be genuinely useful: a reminders app that actually executes your tasks rather than just bothering you about them! For a limited subset of life admin: things like booking car services, weekly grocery shopping, and holiday planning, I can see this being possible.

The second category is developer facing APIs. Here I think the ask is relativly simple. Allow developers to access AI models both on-device and in the cloud, automatically taking on user preferences, context and memory. I coudl go on here, but what I’m really interested in is the 3rd pillar.

The third pillar is vibe coding. The name is somewhat dismissive, but it represents the biggest change in the software industry since the World Wide Web went mainstream in the mid-1990s. It is now possible to create useful utility apps without writing any code by hand. Google has leaned into this with the latest version of Android, and Apple needs to do the same to avoid falling behind.

It should be possible to prompt my phone to make an app that shows me a map of every run I’ve ever logged, with the routes marked using a colour gradient based on the temperature on the day of each run. Or any other unique, random idea I might have. Apple needs to embrace the original vision of the Mac as a bicycle for the mind, only now it’s a motorbike for the mind. A consumer-facing vibe coding app, in the vein of Swift Playgrounds, could enable anyone to create small apps without ever needing to look at the underlying code. Those apps could then be saved to a private gallery and made available across all of their devices. The future is bespoke software, created by a prompt – that anyone can build regardless of how technical they are. I don’t think these small ‘applets’ will replace enterprise SaaS solutions, but for simple needs they will surfice. I’d like to see Apple embracing this in appleOS 27.

The specific problem I wanted to solve is this: when I’m on the Underground arriving at Waterloo station, I often have only a couple of minutes to find out when the next fastest train to Basingstoke is. Most existing apps assume you want to plan a complex journey or buy tickets. nxTrain assumes you already know where you are going, and just need to know which platform to run to. It will always show the next train based on its arrival time, not the departure time. So you don’t have to worry about inadvertently taking the slow stopping train. Background updating means there is also a good chance the platform information will already be there on your lock screen or watch face and you won’t have to struggle to find out on the underground with limited signal or at the station where signal can be saturated.

The app also lets you configure the times of day you usually leave for work and return home. This means widgets and complications can automatically show the next train in the appropriate direction based on the time of day. For hybrid workers, you can also configure the days you commute - so it won’t update on days when you don’t need it to, saving both battery life and bandwidth.

The app only supports direct train journeys, but for commutes with multiple legs it’s possible to set up multiple journeys, and even have a different widget setup for each. This can actually end up being more efficient than dedicated journey planner apps, which tend to assume people need longer to move between platforms than is often the case, especially if you do it regularly.

nxTrain is available in the App Store for less then at the price of a coffee.

In the late 90s, the term “RAD” was everywhere in software development. This had nothing to do with being stoner movies or being totally radical however. RAD stood for “Rapid Application Development”. It described an approach centred on speed and accessibility, where tools such as Delphi from Borland and Visual Basic from Microsoft made it possible to build working applications quickly, often with far less overhead and knowledge. This stood in contrast to more traditional methods of Windows development, which typically involved working directly with the C/C++ APIs and Win32 libraries, a process that was considerably more complex and time-consuming.

Visual Basic even came packaged as a “Leaning Edition” aimed at hobbyists looking to learn to code. The name Visual Studio was called this because it was “visual” - you could design your software by using a mouse and keyboard and by laying out elements on the screen. On the web development side, software like Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver also had this goal.

This idea that the layperson could do anything they want with their computer, not just what some somewhere software company somewhere allow them to do seemed to get lost somewhere in the mid-2000s. Software development got more and more complex and harder to pickup from scratch.

But now thanks to LLMs we are entering this era again. Right now, LLMs are unfathomably good at writing code. Good code. At present, to get the most out of tools like Open AI’s Codex or Claude Code, you need to have some prior experience of software development. This requirement is only going to lessen. In the near future it’s likely anyone will be able to type in an idea for an iPhone app and have something of decent quality generated within a few hours, if not minutes. I’ve recently “written” a bespoke iPhone app that fills a niche in my life. It’s production quality. It supports all the little things you’d expect on iOS, including widgets and an Apple Watch companion app. I didn’t write a single line of code. Instead, I used my experience as a developer to direct Codex and architect an application that is of sufficient quality that I’ve decided to release it to the App Store, in case anyone else finds it useful (more on this soon).

In my role as a product manager, I make extensive use of Jira. Nobody likes Jira. It is typical enterprise software that does everything for everyone, yet pleases nobody! While it’s possible to bend it to any process, but impossible to do so easily and elegantly without a million “hacks” or spending hours learning how to use its confusing UI. So I asked Claude Code to write an app that connects to the Jira API and presents a user interface that actually makes sense for the way we plan work. It took about 90 minutes in total and turned out to be very helpful.

What this means for SaaS companies is unknown. The way I see it, these “vibe coded” apps have a lot in common with the Visual Basic or Microsoft Access apps that would have been spun up by “power users” in the late 90s. They are able to fill gaps in software that SaaS companies struggle to justify the time to address, yet unless they happen to have an ex-developer building them, they will likely have all the pitfalls of RAD in the 90s. No backups. No upgrade path. Minimal testing. Little thought given to edge cases, compliance or security.

Maybe LLMs will be able to cover all that too. It is quite possible. But unless the human in charge knows to check for these things, then who knows? In the meantime, I can see SaaS companies that are able to bring the best of both worlds thriving by filling those bespoke gaps rapidly using LLMs to speed up development, while also providing SLAs and quality guarantees.

This also changes what users will expect from a computer. An iPad that can’t run Claude Code and do anything I can imagine, in minutes, is now orders of magnitude less useful than a full laptop that can.

AI is making it easier than ever to build your own software – and this is fantastic for users – but doing it well still takes care and attention.

The Apple Watch has been out for over a decade now, and yet its health and fitness insights have only improved marginally. GPS brought maps of your running routes, while more accurate accelerometers and gyroscopes enabled more in-depth running analysis. Better heart rate sensors allow for ongoing heart monitoring, and the addition of a thermometer helps with sleep and menstrual cycle tracking. There have been other improvements, admittedly, but the Health app itself has mostly just accumulated more charts.

Bevel aims to augment Apple’s base offering with its own app that analyses and interprets data from an Apple Watch, or any fitness tracker that writes to Apple Health, and provides actual recommendations, commentary, and more actionable insights. At least, that is the pitch.

The key tenets of the app are the scores it provides for “Strain”, “Recovery”, “Sleep”, and “Stress”. The app is often compared to the Whoop fitness tracker, as both provide similar functionality^[1]. Strain is a measure of how much you have put your body through on any given day. Unlike Apple’s Activity metric, it does not just look at movement and heart rate. It also factors in the toll your overall stress level takes on your body, as well as your ability to cope with that stress based on how well you recovered from the previous day, hence the Recovery and Sleep scores. Sleep takes into account how much time you spend in each sleep stage, not just total time asleep, along with wake-ups and bedtime consistency. Recovery looks at how quickly your nervous system calms down after stress and exercise. Stress uses resting heart rate and heart rate variability to estimate how stressed you are.

Overall, I have found the scores to be pretty helpful. It is important to take them in context. Sleep tracking using a device on your wrist is far from perfect, so if I wake up feeling great but Bevel says I had a bad night, I am not going to lose any sleep over it. Where it does help is in showing the impact of lifestyle choices on things like sleep and stress. Having a single pint of 4% IPA at lunchtime led to my HRV spiking for the next 24 hours and reduced the amount of deep sleep I got that night. Training too hard by pushing myself on runs too close together also spikes my stress levels. I more or less knew this already, but seeing the data as evidence, and seeing when positive changes make a difference, is genuinely useful. The stress metric is also much simpler than trying to work what your HRV means. As someone who has a tendency to over train and over work while not paying attention to my what my body is telling me, having a large stress score a tap away is good way to know when to skip that run or log off early.

And of course, it would not be 2026 if the app did not include a conversational interface courtesy of an LLM. The chat feature is actually very good. As someone who has worked in AI for the past decade, I cannot imagine that even three years ago we would have had a chatbot capable of making such accurate and useful insights about my own health. I can ask whether I should attempt a 10-mile run tomorrow or hold off for another day, and it will look at my scores, workout history, and other data to make a data-driven recommendation. It is not perfect. Like many LLM-based systems, it keeps a memory of things you say that it considers significant. This data is then fed into subsequent prompts, allowing an otherwise stateless model to learn about you over time. This can lead to amusing results when it overplays the importance or timing of something it has stored, such as when it assumed a beer I had at lunchtime on a Saturday was consumed at 6am on Sunday morning before a 10-mile run. Still, while many tech companies and LinkedIn influencers talk up so-called “agentic” software, Bevel is actually doing it, and it is providing real value. The LLM is cloud-based, probably OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Claude Sonnet, and Bevel state that they do not bulk-share your health data. Instead, they appear to send limited snippets as part of the prompt.

Bevel also supports logging food and drink, allowing you to correlate this with your scores and see how they are affected. For example, log a cup of tea at 5pm and you will probably see your sleep score drop noticeably. I have not really used this feature properly. For me, life is too short to estimate food intake precisely enough to be genuinely useful, although I can see how this would be worthwhile for some people.

Finally, there is the cost. It is £50 a year for the features mentioned above. Compared to the competition, namely Whoop or possibly the Oura Ring, that is very good value, assuming you already own an Apple Watch. The fact that you also get a capable smartwatch that does many other things, rather than a commodity fitness tracker or a very limited ring, makes this feel like a much better deal. It is also widely expected that Apple will introduce its own AI-based offering at some point in the near future.

Overall, I am very pleased with it and will be subscribing for a year.

Anthropic, whose advanced chatbots are used by millions of people, discovered its Claude Opus 4 tool was averse to carrying out harmful tasks for its human masters, such as providing sexual content involving minors or information to enable large-scale violence or terrorism. The San Francisco-based firm, recently valued at $170bn, has now given Claude Opus 4 (and the Claude Opus 4.1 update) – a large language model (LLM) that can understand, generate and manipulate human language – the power to “end or exit potentially distressing interactions”. It said it was “highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs, now or in the future” but it was taking the issue seriously and is “working to identify and implement low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible”.

They are “highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs” –this sounds like great marketing from Anthropic. Fundamentally, LLMs are vast sequences of numerical operations on arrays of numbers, most prominently matrix multiplications. If these computations are suspected of having feelings, then by the same logic the calculations that render Super Mario racing around the track in Mario Kart would too. Maybe Nintendo’s next marketing campaign should be about how they have a study in place to make sure Mario and his chums’ welfare is looked after as they are forced to race endlessly around the same track day in day out.

Microsoft originally encouraged its employees to work from home amid the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. This new flexible working arrangement then became an official “hybrid workplace” policy several months after the pandemic began, allowing managers to approve permanent remote work. Now that the pandemic has settled into endemicity, Microsoft wants employees to return to the office. And if some quit in response, well, that’s probably exactly what Microsoft is expecting. … Microsoft is preparing to announce a mandatory return to office of three days a week. The policy will apply to those who live within 50 miles of Microsoft’s Redmond campus, and some teams at Microsoft may even return for four or five days.

Interesting that this goes agaisnt a recent opinion peice in The Times headlined The war on WFH isn’t over. London’s return to the office has flatlined (Apple News link) .

My thoughts on working from home are that it’s a bit like your diet. The most appealing food isn’t necessarily the most nutritious. It might be tempting to avoid the office, and yes, the commute isn’t always the best use of time, but then doughnuts also taste better than kale.

We’ve come a long way from 2022, when a group of Apple employees attempted a Steve Jobs pastiche^[1] by writing an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Office-Bound Work”, a reference to Jobs’s famous “Thoughts on Flash” open letter published in 2010. However, this article was not only poorly written and poorly argued, it also tried to frame some of the most privileged people in America (Silicon Valley tech workers) as somehow marginalised because Apple wanted them to turn up at the office a few days a week. The fact that you need to be wealthy enough to live in a house with a dedicated working space, that working from home isn’t even an option for many of the lowest-paid jobs, and that it therefore requires a certain amount of privilege, seemed to be completely lost on them.

I am fortunate enough to work from home 3 days of the week, but I also know that meeting colleagues in person is very important when it comes to building trust and camaraderie. It’s also vital for mentoring junior colleagues. I know several people early in their careers who have switched jobs to find companies where being in the office is the norm rather than the exception.

Hybrid is the way forward. A great employer understands that allowing workers to fit work around their life, whether that’s picking up children, attending appointments, or other commitments, leads to the best performance.

At the same time, it’s up to employees to take a mature view and acknowledge that it’s not just about them. Maybe other people they work with will need human contact. Maybe they do too, but don’t realise it. It’s no surprise that Microsoft reports higher employee wellbeing among those who come into the office.

So I’m hoping we can see a nuanced, balanced approach that respects workers’ rights, allows for flexibility, but also acknowledges that meeting people in person is valuable and not something to be avoided completely.

If we assume these emails are stored in the cloud, and not on someone’s laptop (as was more often the case 10–15 years ago), then there might be something in this — but it’s tenuous, to say the least.

Yes, water is used to remove heat from data centres, but storing data does not, in and of itself, generate heat. Heat comes from computation, a deep property of the physical universe, though our current technology is still far from the theoretical limits where this becomes unavoidable.

Presumably, the thinking is that less data means fewer spinning hard disks or SSDs will be needed, and there will be less data to back up. So less heat. But this overlooks the minuscule amount of space an email actually takes up.

Processing email content creates heat (for example, to update search indexes or power AI tools) — but there’s a chance that deleting emails will cause these processes to run again anyway.

So I’m very confused by this. I’m pretty sure that having slighly less coffee in your mug would have a much greater impact than deleting some old emails.

This must surely be the best way to tell if a product is rubbish, rather than relying on the (probably also fake) reviews.

I haven’t quite dared to try any of them in person yet, but from what I’ve observed this year’s operating system releases are generally positive.

The new Liquid Glass UI theme is a welcome change, recalling the early days of Aqua when Apple crafted inventive, whimsical interfaces. Those were certainly fun times, but it’s important to remember it was a different era and Apple had far fewer customers. Early versions of Mac OS X also ran painfully slowly in part because of their fancy user interface. I’m hoping Liquid Glass won’t suffer the same performance issues, especially on older devices. I’m also aware of the legibility issues some beta testers are reporting, but I’m confident these will be ironed out before it rolls out in September.

The AI improvements are minor and there seems to be less focus on Apple Intelligence as a brand. I’m not sure why AI needed its own brand name really. It struck me that the likley reason for this seperation was because it was built by a different team within Apple, rather than it making sense from a user’s perepctive. Some of the new AI features do look interesting however: being able to call Apple’s models from within Shortcuts, and 3rd parties being able to utlise local LLMs (thus not requriing an internet connection) is huge. The problem is that the only devices to support this are relativly recent ones: 2023’s iPhone Pro line and 2025’s iPhone lineup. Even the base iPad which you can buy brand new from Apple today does not support local AI models. This means most apps will either have to make their AI powered features optional, ensure there is a server-side backup in place, or restrict their market to those on the latest devices. Since many apps are cross platform anyway, I think most developers will go with option 1 or 2.

The iPad has received the most substantial update, with full windowing support now available. I have no complaints about this, and can’t wait to try it out. I was particularly pleased to see that it will work even on the iPad mini and the 2020 iPad Air. While many people will now finally be able to harness the device’s powerful hardware, I still think the iPad’s biggest drawback is that it can only run software from the App Store. There are so many great apps like Visual Studio Code and Chrome that are not there for commercial or Apple’s policy reasons.

The fact that windowing is not available on the iPhone is also curious. When Apple split iOS and iPadOS into separate brands a few years ago, the reaction was mostly positive; finally, the iPad was getting the attention it deserved. But thinking about it now, I have to wonder if the reason was to reduce any expectation that features added to the iPad would also appear on the iPhone. At this point, with Apple Silicon, Apple is essentially selling its customers the same computer three or four times with only minor differences. They have different-sized screens, some have a keyboard attached and others rely on a touchscreen. Some have a better camera, and built in cellular. The core of the devices, even the operating system, near enough identical. if you own a recent iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch – you’ve bought the same computer multiple times. The iPhone’s Apple A18 chip has a similar level of performance to the Mac’s M1 chip, which is still a ridiulasly fast chip. There is no reason why an iPhone could not become a laptop or full desktop simply by plugging it into the a keyboard and monitor. In decades past, mobile phones lagged far behind desktop PCs in terms of performance, but today most people could use their phone as a desktop PC or laptop: the chip is powerful enough and there is ample memory. What’s holding this back is not the “free market” or a lack of demand, but, I suspect, Apple’s preference to continue selling us multiple devices. In this respect, the distinction between device classes is more a marketing one than a technical one.

Overall, I think the ’26 releases should be exciting, even if I wish Apple would embrace change product category perspective a bit more. Would today’s Apple of 2025 have released the iPhone in 2007 when the iPod was still king? I’m not so sure.

New estimates regarding the recently-exploited Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities now evaluate that as many as 400 organizations may have been targeted.

The figure is a sharp increase from the original count of around 100, with Microsoft pointing the finger at Chinese threat actors for the hacks, namely Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603.

The victims are primarily US based, and amongst these are some high value targets, including the National Nuclear Security Administration - the US agency responsible for maintaining and designing nuclear weapons, Bloomberg reports.

Microsoft makes it clear this is an issue with on-prem instances of SharePoint, not the cloud based Office 365 solution.

One might question why an organisation would choose to run these services on premises in 2025. In my experience, banks and other security-focused institutions often believe their own teams can outperform Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or AWS. Yet time and time again, we see on-prem is actually less secure than the cloud. Unless your service is complelty air-locked from the Internet, I see very few reasons to be relying on on-premisis software, especially Microsoft products, in 2025.

Hopefully, running on-premises commercial services like this in the name of security will soon be consigned to the trash can of computing history, along with other security theatre measures often imposed by IT administrators, such as enforced password expiration.

When you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, airports, your online data is not secure. Someone on the same network can gain access to your information, passwords, bank logins, credit card information, and other things that you don’t want in someone else’s hands.

This is absolute nonsense. Yes, it’s true that if the WiFi network doesn’t require a password to connect to, then your data will be sent in the clear and could theoretically be accessed by anyone, as made famous by the app Firesheep. This was in 2010 however. In fifteen years since then, and the twelve years since the Snowden leaks, the vast, vast majority of websites have adopted their own encryption to protect data in transit. Even before then, any reputable site handling sensitive information (such as online banking or payment processing) was already using TLS (Transport Layer Security). In 2025 (and really for the past decade), you do not need a VPN when on public WiFi.

Regardless of whether the WiFi network is encrypted, there are inherent risks in connecting to a network you can’t necessarily trust. Most devices have built in firewalls to mitigate this. As long as that’s switched on, you’re probably going to be OK.

So why would anyone use a VPN? As far as I can tell there are only three reasons why anyone would use a VPN:

• To access protected network resources — it’s common for companies to require employees to be on a VPN before they can access sensitive resources as an additional security layer.
• To fake your location — Netflix and many other streaming platforms often offer better content in different regions, or perhaps you simply want to access BBC iPlayer while you’re abroad.
• To conceal your IP address — for instance, if you’re involved in illegal activity or working as a journalist needing anonymity.

I would not hesitate to use online banking over Starbucks WiFi. In fact, I’d be more worried about someone peering over my shoulder than any threat from the network itself.

So don’t be taken in by the scaremongering ads. The chances are, you don’t need a VPN.

But if you’ve got another reason for using one, let me know in the comments below.

Microsoft, in its ongoing quest to make Windows 11 feel increasingly clumsy and tone-deaf, has now decided to add a new “AI Tools” menu to Windows Explorer. One can almost picture the product management meeting, where some directive from on high decreed: “We must be seen to be using AI in everything, everywhere and all at once.”

While they may have a tendency to over-explain the obvious (as shown by this 1,000+ word blog post just to say they’re replacing passwords with PassKeys – something that could be summarised in a single paragraph), the decision to lump a collection of seemingly unrelated features into one menu simply because they involve “AI” suggests either a complete absence of user centric thinking or a rather desperate attempt to appear as an AI leader.

The screenshot shows four menu items. The first, “Visual Search with Bing” (one can only imagine how many bureaucrats had to approve that name), allows you to search the web using something similar to Google’s reverse image search or Apple’s Visual Lookup. The other three are image editing tools: one for adding a background blur (which uses AI to detect the main subject in an image and blur everything else), one for erasing objects (where AI estimates what would be behind the removed element and fills it in), and one for removing the background entirely (essentially the same as the blur tool, but deleting the background pixels instead of blurring them). There’s also another totally separate “Ask Copilot” menu, which presumably also uses AI, but I’m guessing this was built by another team which would explain why it’s in a totally different place in the context menu.

All of these features are genuinely useful, and it’s great to see them included in Windows (presumably using on-device processing rather than relying on the cloud). However, grouping them under an “AI Tools” menu doesn’t make much sense. “AI” in this context means machine learning-based processing and is becoming as commonplace as traditional processing tasks. Designing a user interface around the underlying technology rather than the user experience is a fundamental mistake. That’s not to say a UI shouldn’t ever mention “AI” – it is important to let users know when AI (especially generative AI) is going to be used or was used, as it provides a useful prompt to scrutinise the output more carefully and helps set expectations. But Microsoft’s overuse of it just makes them seem a little desperate to be seen as jumping on the AI bandwagon and risks users switching off every time they see yet another “AI” feature.

This surge was partly driven by a widespread misconception that embedding-based similarity search was the only viable method for retrieving context for LLMs. The resulting “vector database gold rush” saw massive investment and attention directed toward vector search infrastructure, even though traditional information retrieval techniques remained equally valuable for many RAG applications. … However, the landscape has evolved rapidly. What started as pure vector search engines now expand their capabilities to match traditional search functionality. Vector database providers have recognized that real-world applications often require more than just similarity search.

I’ve never quite understood the hype around using similarity search to retrieve content for a RAG system. Yes, cosine similarity can be useful in certain situations, but in many cases, there are better ways to find the right content. This is especially true when the user’s question has little semantic resemblance to the answer. Not to mention when you have potentially multiple versions of the same documents that may or may not be relevant depending on the context of the question. Now every major database supports vector search, is there even a need for a dedicated product? I’d recommend giving the latest episode of the Latent Space podcast a listen where they explore these issues, and alternatives, in more depth.

Image source: BBC News

Graham Fraser reporting for BBC News about Apple’s new notification summarisation feature:

A major journalism body has urged Apple to scrap its new generative AI feature after it created a misleading headline about a high-profile killing in the United States.
The BBC made a complaint to the US tech giant after Apple Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications, falsely created a headline about murder suspect Luigi Mangione.

The AI-powered summary falsely made it appear that BBC News had published an article claiming Mangione, the man accused of the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.

I’ve worked on implementing AI into software products for the past seven years, and the first rule is always to start with a narrow domain, carefully assess how effective it is, and, if your approach is working, gradually expand your domain coverage. When it comes to notification summaries, I can’t help but wonder why Apple didn’t adopt this approach. Instead, they’ve delivered something that feels more like a hasty student project than the polished innovation we’ve come to expect.

Specifically, I would have started by limiting the product to summarising notifications where summaries are genuinely most useful. Of course, not being a product manager at Apple, I haven’t done the research, but let’s assume messaging apps would top the list. A “TL;DR” summary for lengthy WhatsApp group chats, for instance, could be genuinely valuable. On the other hand, attempting to summarise product promotions or delivery notifications from Amazon, breaking news, or even the alerts I get when my wife logs a feed on our baby-tracking app feels far less useful. Most of the complaints I’ve seen online seem to involve apps like BBC News, Amazon, or other non-communication apps. Apple would be better off avoiding attempts to summarise these types of notifications and instead focusing on apps where summarisation truly adds value: messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Slack.

That’s not to say the current implementation is flawless when it comes to messaging apps either. In an example shared by WSJ technology journalist Joanna Stern, the iPhone mistakenly assumed her wife was referring to a non-existent husband. The issue likely arose because Stern has her wife saved as “Wife” in her address book. The smaller language model onboard the iPhone, relying on statistical assumptions, concluded that someone called “Wife” must be referring to a husband when mentioning another unnamed person. It’s exactly the sort of edge case1 that could have been caught more easily during testing if the first version had maintained a laser-like focus on summarising messaging app content.

By starting small and focusing on where summarisation adds the most value, Apple could have delivered a more refined and impactful feature, avoiding many of the issues we’ve seen reported .

Enter trntxt.uk. It’s a simple website that lets you enter your starting station and destination, generating a unique URL you can bookmark or add to your phone’s home screen. You can instantly see the next train, its duration (helpful for avoiding the slow ones), its ETA, and the platform. It’s perfect for commuters — and it’s free.

A swing-and-a-miss from MKBHD. Criticism of the app is on two separate levels, but they’re being conflated. Level 1: the app is not good. Level 2: a paid wallpaper app? — LOL, wallpapers are free on Reddit. That second form of criticism — that there shouldn’t even exist a paid wallpaper app — is annoying and depressing, and speaks to how many people do not view original art as being worth paying for. But it also speaks to the breadth of Brownlee’s audience, which I think is more tech-focused than design-focused.

What’s even more annoying and depressing is the inability to separate the appreciation of art from the act of commerce. Perhaps people didn’t expect someone reportedly already making millions to charge so much for so little. The app description mentions “teaming up with top-tier digital artists,” so it’s not as if it’s even showcasing lesser-known artists who might benefit from the app’s exposure and thus warrant some philanthropy. Gruber is wrong here. You can appreciate good design while also thinking £12/month is a rip-off.

On Monday, software developer Michael Sayman launched a new AI-populated social network app called SocialAI that feels like it’s bringing that conspiracy theory to life, allowing users to interact solely with AI chatbots instead of other humans. It’s available on the iPhone app store, but so far, it’s picking up pointed criticism.

A social networking app where you are the centre of the universe, surrounded by bots constantly providing you with positive reinforcement and worshipping your every word. Elon Musk must be kicking himself – he could have saved $44 billion.

I was recently trying to compile a .NET project as a self-contained binary for linux-arm to run on my Raspberry Pi. When trying to run the binary, I kept getting the following error:

/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6: version GLIBCXX_3.4.26' not found (required by ./[executable])

It turned out the issue was caused by using .NET 9. Downgrading the project to .NET 8 resolved it. I’m unsure whether Microsoft or Raspbian needs to address compatibility with .NET 9, but as it didn’t impact my code, it wasn’t a problem for me.

Image credit: Apple (https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vision-pro/)

Three and a half months after the release of Apple Vision Pro, and I am finding it difficult to get on board with Apple’s vision for the future of computing. While admittedly I haven’t tried the Vision Pro due to it not being available in the UK, and I’m sure I would be momentarily wowed by the experience, I just can’t get excited about what I see as a deeply dystopian vision of the future.

Let’s start with the vision itself. We spend too much time on screens as it is. Endless doomscrolling and the inability to switch off are widely believed to be behind rising anxiety and depression. Apple, to their credit, has attempted to remedy this with features like Screen Time which allow limits to be put in place. The very concept of the Vision Pro goes against this progress. It’s a screen strapped to your face. Right now, the discomfort of a hot and heavy device acts as a deterrent against using it too much. My worry is that as technology progresses and much like the smartphone, the Apple Vision Pro will get lighter and more comfortable — more addictive. If the headset follows the path of the smartphone, then it will eventually be something we want to wear as much as possible. We live in a world of filter bubbles. If you use Twitter (sorry, X), then your view of reality can be vastly different from your next-door neighbour who also uses Twitter, due to the fact that you both like and follow totally different posts and sets of people. Smaller social networks don’t need an algorithm to do this as they will typically only attract people of a certain political leaning in the first place. The end result is the same. Filter bubbles are an obvious problem for social cohesion, and while they are not limited to social networks (hello Fox News), I can’t help thinking that when literally everything is viewed through a screen — yes, your entire reality — the problem will only get worse. If you’ve seen Black Mirror, then I don’t need to explain why, but let me anyway. Imagine an app for a future revision of Vision Pro (or its rivals) that can be worn all day. The app allows users to employ Twitter-style blocking, so the faces of people they would rather not see are blurred out. Could someone with right-wing views use an app to blur out TV screens showing CNN or the front page of the New York Times, allowing them to walk down the high street and not be bothered by reality, or what they consider dissenting opinions? In 2020, as California was struck by awful wildfires, people noticed something strange. Their smartphones were automatically adjusting the apocalyptical red-tinted sky to look more “normal.” The image of humans using VR goggles to deny climate change or insert virtual green spaces into an otherwise industrial wasteland is just terrifying. In short, I am deeply worried about a future in which our entire reality is seen through the filter of a screen. The Apple Vision Pro can’t do any of this right now, and I doubt Apple would ever allow it to. Yet as the Twitter/Musk debacle shows us, the people who run companies can change, and their policies with it. Not to mention that if the Apple Vision Pro were to be a success, then there would naturally be rival products released which may not be as restrictive.

All of what I’ve said so far is admittedly far-fetched, and perhaps assumes the worst of humanity. So let me focus on the Apple Vision Pro as the product it is today. Apart from being deeply antisocial, the main problem I see is that it is an iPad strapped to your face but priced as if it were a fully-featured MacBook strapped to your face. The iPad and tablets, in general, are great content consumption devices, but the limitations inherent in mobile operating systems make them poor substitutes for a laptop. Samsung and Apple have taken steps to address this, including making the iPad more like a laptop with the addition of support for trackpads, mice, and keyboards. Yet the apps themselves are more often than not baby versions of the same applications available for desktop operating systems, if an app is available at all. There are exceptions — Logic and Final Cut Pro. Overall, it seems a combination of iOS (sorry iPadOS) limitations, Apple’s greedy business practices, and the poor ergonomics of tablet devices has contributed to the iPad not taking off in a productivity context, outside some niche verticals. By designing the Apple Vision Pro’s software stack in the image of the iPad, the device is unfortunately severely limited. Had the device been based on macOS, with the ability to run Mac software, then it would be a completely different story. I understand that technical limitations likely prohibit this: the accuracy of Vision Pro’s gesture recognition simply isn’t good enough to allow Mac apps designed for use with a mouse to be comfortably driven. Which brings me to my final criticism. One of the most touted features of the Vision Pro is the ability to VNC into a desktop Mac and control it remotely. The fact that this was pushed as a feature is the most damning indictment of the Vision Pro’s capabilities as a computing device. A proper computing device worth its $3,500+ price tag wouldn’t need the ability to remotely connect into your other $2,000+ laptop — it would be as capable itself. On various forums I’ve seen happy Vision Pro customers tout the ability to work on a plane for hours on end with both their MacBook and Apple Vision Pro. Here we go again with the dystopian future: can someone not take a flight for a few hours without needing to be productive? For goodness’ sake, read a book, listen to a podcast, or just look out of the window!

So, while the nerd in me is ready to be wowed by the Apple Vision Pro, I find myself despairing as I think about a potential future where we are always plugged in, online, and unable to escape work. I can’t help but think this isn’t what technology was supposed to be about. I have to ask myself, would the figure from Apple’s famous 1984 commercial who throws a sledgehammer at the big screen be wearing an Apple Vision Pro, does the screen itself represent Apple latest Vision?

Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica has written a nearly 3,000 word article explaining how to remove advertisements and other annoyances from Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge. Microsoft are not alone in degrading the quality of their software in order to sell more services, Apple has been doing this as lot recently too. With Microsoft though it feels increasingly desperate. Its Copilot feature acts like a thin wrapper around the OpenAI API, no doubt created in order so that Microsoft can be seen as fully riding the LLM bandwagon. Of course the resulting stock price bump from this perception was probably factor here as well. Its garish icon is placed on the taskbar by default, yet has no intuitive way to be removed. You’d think would be able to simply right-click and unpin it like any other icon, right? Of course not. Instead, you have to dig around in the system settings app. Either their UX designers are bad at their jobs, or more likely a manager stepped in and said “Actually, let’s enhance the friction in removing the icon; my forthcoming bonus hinges on maximising user engagements with it. (evil laugh)”

The same is true in Microsoft Edge. Any setting that Microsoft would rather you didn’t change is unbelievably difficult to find. Want to remove the side bar, or change the default search engine from Bing? One might think, perhaps naively, that altering something as basic as the default search engine shouldn’t require a degree in computer science. Yet, here I am, resorting to the wisdom of Google search to uncover the elusive setting (I did try asking Microsoft Copilot, but alas, it came back with something completely unrelated). Edge is also desperate for me to make it the default browser. Instead of cutting to the chase, it dances around like a slick sales rep, coyly offering me the choice of “Microsoft’s Recommended Settings” as if I’m choosing to enhance my computer security, when really it’s more about padding Microsoft’s bottom line.

I suppose we should be grateful for Microsoft at least offering settings for these options - there’s no reason they have to. Microsoft’s strategy seems to be a delicate balancing act between making it difficult for the masses and maintaining some appeal for the more tech-savvy who would switch to another vendor if they didn’t have these options at all.

Anyway, it’s a desperate look. Please Microsoft, show some class!

Let’s briefly recap on how it works. Focus Modes are an extension of “Do Not Disturb” which has been with iOS since version 2011 (if my memory is correct) and allow precise control of notifications for different scenarios. Apple allows users to create various focus modes for different activities. For each focus mode, you can control who and which apps are allowed to send notifications. Apple ships iOS with several default modes such as “Sleep”, “Work”, and “Reading”. For example, I might turn off Slack notifications in the “Personal” Focus Mode, and then schedule that to activate in the evenings.

Focus filters on the other hand control which data is available inside apps and are linked to a particular Focus Mode. For example, for to-do list app that allow you to create different lists, you could use Focus Filters to hide your shopping list when the “Work” Focus Mode is activated, and then hide your work tasks while your “Personal” Focus Mode is activated.

The problem with Apple’s implementation is that it always requires a particular Focus Mode to be activated. There is no way to apply Focus Filters or control notifications when no Focus Mode is activated. Additionally, Focus Modes and Focus Filters are literally filters. This means they can only reduce content that is already enabled. In my use case, I want to turn off my work email and calendars by default but have then enabled during work hours. I want to disable Slack Notifications all the time, except during work hours. This is simply not possible with iOS and represents a fundamental flaw in the design. I can of course disable Slack Notifications fully, but then I can’t enable them for a particular Focus Mode. I could also painstakingly configure focus modes to consume contiguous time blocks throughout the day, but this is error prone and there are times when a focus mode gets switched off for some reason and I’m inundated with notifications I don’t want. The Apple Watch is also unaware of Focus Filters and will happily show calendar appointments despite the same appointments being filtered out on my Phone.

I’m not quite sure how Apple missed the obvious on this one. Perhaps they are stuck dealing with technical debt and the current system is a compromise based on what is technically achievable. Perhaps they genuinely think the current system is adequate. Perhaps I’m the outlier. Either way, I hope they address this issue. Currently, iOS still makes it far too difficult to separate work and personal content.

From Apple’s support pages:

With watchOS 10, this feature is available on Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Series 6 and later, and Apple Watch Ultra and later. Optimized Charge Limit learns from your daily usage to determine when to charge to an optimized limit and when to allow a full charge. Optimized Charge Limit is on by default when you set up your Apple Watch.

Apple support documentation

The feature builds on the existing optimised charging feature found on the Apple Watch and most other Apple devices. Now though, if the watch notices that you typically only use, say 30% of the battery capacity on a daily basis, but still charge it every night, then instead of charging it to 100% it might stop short at say, 70% instead. Lithium iron batteries don’t like to be charged above 80% or below 20%. Doing so frequently will shorten the lifespan of batteries, making a dreaded replacement necessary.

Hopefully the algorithm employed by Apple is smart enough to work out your routine, and so if it notices you usually go for a long run on a Tuesday morning then it will give you a full charge the night before.

This is a much needed new feature as the tiny batteries in Apple Watches are more prone to the effects of aging than larger devices. Their small capacity means a slight decrease in capacity will have a notable effect, and also mean users are likely complete a greater number of charge cycles over a shorter time than on say an iPhone or MacBook.

That said, the feature is it is perhaps not visible enough. Various technical support forms and subreddits have been flooded with people who think their watch is malfunctioning. As is often the case with Apple, you are probably best off simply not looking at the battery meter and just using the watch. If you do notice the battery is not fully charged but think you might need it to be, the support document details how to temporarily disable the feature (note, you need follow the instructions while the watch is connected to power).

Another year and another update to the venerable operating system that runs on millions of watches is here. This time though, it’s a mixed bag. It’s easy for us technology enthusiasts become complacent about the fact we get new features released each year for ‘free’. There is though unwritten contract between Apple and its user base that these free updates won’t regress the product that was originally purchased. Unfortunately that’s not the case with watchOS 10. While there are some fantastic new features, the overall quality appears to have dropped significantly.

Let’s start with the good. The new design is a welcome change. Having dropped the original 42/38mm watches, Apple have been able to stretch their design muscle and rethink many of the core apps. Stalwarts like Activity (which incidentally has not been renamed to Fitness like its iOS sibling - a plus in my view) now look much more modern, though there is still no way to see a map of a run or cycle on the watch itself - surprising considering the Apple Watch has shipped with a maps app since day one. The Fitness app remains the same, but now asks for confirmation when ending a workout. After eight years of not requiring one and having recorded workouts nearly every day of those eight years, this will definitely take some getting used to. The Weather app looks great, taking inspiration from its iOS counterpart. Overall, Apple have done a fantastic job with the new design.

My favourite new feature is widgets. It’s now possible to scroll the digital crown or swipe up from the main watch face and see a list of customisable widgets. The nicely solves the problem of watch faces being severely limited with space and the fact that many of the nicest looking watch faces don’t have many complication slots. It’s essentially the Siri watch face available all of the time with a simple gesture. In fact, I’m surprised the Siri face is still available as it seems unnecessary now. The downside is it requires two hands to operate, and so it’s not as convenient as a standard complication would be.

At long last we have some decent new watch faces. For the past few years the new offerings have been hit and miss. It’s as if Apple sends all its junior designers on day one to the watch face division. Well those junior designers have finally graduated. The new Solar Analogue and Palette faces are beautiful, and sit well along alongside some of the original classics such as Solar and Astronomy.

Another useful new feature is that when recording a cycling workout, your phone can be used to display metrics from the workout. File this under “totally obvious” because in hindsight, it is. In hindsight, of course. This is Apple at its best. Trying to look at a watch when cycling isn’t easy, and can often be downright unsafe! Now, thanks to the seamless integration between watchOS and iOS, an Apple Watch Series 4 purchased in 2018 can now be a full on cycle computer at no extra cost.

But I said it wasn’t all good. The biggest problem has been battery life. With watchOS 9 on my Series 8, I would typically end the day at 50% on those days when I did short workout (30mins), but with watchOS 10 it’s been down to 20%. “That’s OK” I hear you say “As long as you get through the day, that’s all that matters right?”. Wrong. It’s not acceptable for an update to regress the original capabilities of the hardware. If it was possible to get two full days from the watch, then it should be with the new update (battery aging and expected reduction in capacity notwithstanding). When I cycled around the Isle Of Wight earlier this year, I took for granted the watch could deal with a day of cycling. I often run for multiple hours at a time. I want to know the watch can cope with what I paid for it to do in the first place. With watchOS 10, I’m not so confident any more. I’m sure it’s a bug, and it will be fixed in due time, but the fact Apple didn’t spot and fix it before the release is extremely disappointing. I’ve been able to mitigate the issue somewhat by removing features such as the Weather complication and disabling background refresh for all apps. Still, I wonder if the QA department have been focusing too much on Vision Pro lately instead of the watch!

Playing media now seems unnecessarily complicated. Before it was clear whether you were playing a song or podcast on the watch or from your phone. Now when I navigate to the “Dowloaded” section and choose a podcast, it plays on my phone! I hope it’s a bug and will be fixed. I’m not sure in what world Apple thought someone would want to play audio from their phone via the watch by default. The only way to stop it doing this was to walk out of bluetooth range of my phone and then try to play the podcast again. A common scenario for me is selecting a podcast before a run. Now a task that took a couple of taps is going to take a lot of fiddling with Bluetooth settings. This is another example of poor quality and lack of testing. (If it is indeed a bug, if not then it is an astonishingly poor reading on how customers actually use their devices)

If Apple could fix the rough parts, I would recommend upgrading to watchOS 10. Right now, I wish I’d held off. I suspect after a couple of months have passed, Apple will iron out the rough bits and fix the bugs. So if you’ve not yet upgraded, I’d recommend waiting. If you have an Apple Watch Ultra but rarely use it for ultra marathons, then you might be OK with the reduced battery life. This time last year, watchOS was still the newest of Apple’s computing platforms. Now though there’s a new kid on the block: visionOS. It will be interesting to see how much attention the Apple Watch gets going forward. I’m not particularly enthused about the prospect of wearing an M1 Mac on my face, and at the current price, I won’t be trying Vision Pro for many years. The Apple Watch is still the computer that is with you all of the time and the only computer that directly senses your body. For me at least, it’s still the most exciting of Apple’s platforms.

There is so much hyperbole about Large Language Models (LLMs) in the media right now that I’m finding it can be overwhelming, and I am someone who works in the field of AI! From claims that AI will put people out of jobs to claims that it will takeover and enslave the human race, it’s difficult to know where to start. Some say AI should be regulated now, others are happy to let the "free market"1 take its course. It’s not easy to navigate, especially when many of the people with strong opinions have their own agendas. This post is really an attempt to briefly answer many of the questions I’ve asked myself over the past few weeks.

What’s Changed and Why Now?

What’s changed is that recent years the neural networks that power many of the previous generation speech to text and language classification models have gotten a lot better. Not because they evolved by themselves, but because engineers and mathematicians made them better. In the case of text generation, this means GPT-3.5 and 4 are uncannily good at predicting the next set of words for a given prompt. Text to image models like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are now able to predict a set of pixels that can resemble a photo-realistic image from a text prompt. In the case of Open AI and ChatGPT, there has been some genuinely mind-blowing innovation. I’m more sceptical of Microsoft, who after decades of being seen as a laggard behind Google and Apple in every industry they enter, seem a little too keen to plug Open AI into all of their products. Still, there is a big PR push from both companies, and Microsoft is a big investor in Open AI. What’s new therefore is a breakthrough in the mathematical models which link training samples to prediction. Given the amount of money invested, it’s now time to monetise, secure more investment and/or research funding.

Will It Turn Against Humans and Take Over the World?

A common refrain among many skeptics of AI is to make the analogy between humans and other animals on Earth. We have used our intelligence to dominate all other species and decimate the planet. Wouldn’t a more intelligent being do the same to humans? It’s a convincing argument but I’m not sure that the likes of Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT or their successors should worry us. In fact, I think the way in which we see these statistical models today will be akin to how some people in the 1950s saw the “electronic brains” that we now call computers. Mysterious and magical. Frightening. There are two reasons I am not worried. Firstly, I cannot see how the ability to predict the next word in a sentence or the pixels that make a convincing image equate to intelligence in the human sense, or anything beyond human intelligence. Even if we assume that the breakthroughs in language prediction will also be possible in other areas of life (politics, art, engineering) it’s still simply providing predictions from a given input. What I can see, and think we’ve already seen to a certain extent already is how AI might disrupt our society. The way in which the algorithms that run social media have damaged our democracy by convincing vast swathes of the population on both the left and the right to believe in nonsense science and conspiracy theories is an obvious example of this. But there is no drive, agency or consciousness behind the AI. The second reason is history and our even current political climate tells us that intelligence is not something we should necessarily fear. Take a few examples of individuals who’ve caused damage to humankind in in the past. Trump, Putin, Hitler, Pinochet. I could go on. None of them are known for their raw intelligence. Charisma and ruthlessness perhaps. They manage to co-opt other intelligent people on to work their behalf. The most intelligent human beings from Einstein, Galileo and Lovelace to Lennon and McCartney are not the ones we need to worry about. I’m far more concerned about humans who have average intelligence and Napoleon complex, and have access to nuclear weapons than I am super intelligent AI.

Will We All Be Out of Jobs?

Unfortunately I am not as optimistic on this one. I can easily see jobs like copywriting and graphic design being disrupted at the junior level. We’ve already seen an NYT Bestseller using AI generating artwork on its cover. We’re all told not to judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it, we all do. In this case the AI generated image was listed in a stock image library alongside other human generated images, so I doubt the choice was conscious. It was also heavily modified by a human. You have to ask if the author cared so little about the cover of their book that they were happy for a stock image to be used, rather than commission an artist themselves, is there really any loss? They didn’t want to pay much for the images in the first place. But somewhere, someone would have been paid something to make that image, and it hasn’t happened this time. That junior designer would need to work on small jobs like this in order to get the experience and skills to go on to move up in their profession. How will they do that now? The problem I see is that with AI taking the low-end, basic work away from these professions, how does a human work their way up? On the other hand, the pocket calculator allowed mathematicians, accountants and engineers to focus on bigger problems and have the gruntwork done for them. Anyone gifted at maths can still find a well paid job, despite the fact we’ve had powerful calculators in our pockets for 50 years. Perhaps the same will be true of writing and graphic artistry. The bottom line is, these large models can only generate was is akin to a statistical average of what is already on the Internet. If it was perceived wisdom that the word was flat, GPT-4 would reliably tell us that the world was flat. GPT-4 has no mechanism to generate anything else and nor will its successors.

What about other jobs? Programming is often cited as being at risk from GPT, because it can generate code. Yet, I have yet to have it generate anything I couldn’t have found by searching on Google and finding the first result on StackOverflow. When I asked it to write an application to covert files from one format to another, it told me it didn’t know enough about their implementation, despite them being both public documented on the Internet. Impressive that it “knew” what it didn’t “know” (I wish more developers were like that!). The jury is out, but I am not as worried about software developers all loosing their jobs because I know just how difficult software development can be, even for humans with 30+ years of experience. Implementing a variation on a well known algorithm in the abstract is one thing, but integrating it into existing business domains, data structures, user interfaces and architectures is something else entirely.

In Summary

I find it hard to get excited about the likes of GPT and Midjourney because I find them emblematic of a tech industry that has lost its way. If someone were to have suggested 20 years ago that we should build a mathematical model that can crawled web pages as an input, and then autocomplete text and images as an output, and that it could likely spread misinformation and put journalism and other important professions at risk, we would have collectively responded with a resounding “Nope.” While I am intrigued that we may have stumbled across a deeper mathematical theory of language, if only by chance, I am not yet excited by the potential utility of such models. Beyond that, I am disappointed that in a world where many people still struggle feed themselves, that is heading for a climate disaster, and where many populist leaders are coming to power, technology - something that was always a cause for optimism when I was growing up in the 90s/2000s - looks likely to make it worse, not better.

Notes

1. The free market of course, doesn’t exist, and is generally a euphemism for ‘what I want the rules to be in order to suit me’.

Having been around since January 2001, in many places it really shows. When compared to more modern applications that come bundled with macOS, such as the nine-year old Photos app, and unlike Apple Music for iOS Apple Music for Mac retains many of it’s power user features and can be used to manage a local music library effectively, if that’s something you still want to do.

Apple Music retains most of the features from the heyday of iTunes

Yes, it does have many annoying bugs and could certainly do with some investment in the QA department. But thankfully it still has many ‘power user’ features that I admire, and I’m grateful for this. Apple Music is able to still, believe it on not, rip CDs to MP3 or AAC and will still fetch CD metadata from the venerable Gracenote CDDB service. This may sound arcane, but some music is only available on CD. (As a more general point, if you’re limiting your music discovery to what’s available on streaming services, you should definitely expand your horizons. Even the old iTunes Store has a much wider range, and streaming - especially Spotify, is notoriously bad for artists.) Once ‘ripped’, the songs are uploaded into iTunes Match and are available on all of my devices, including my Apple Watch. Apple Music also allows me manually select which albums I want to keep locally, unlike the Photos app. I can also see the status of both uploads and downloads, again unlike Photos. Best of all, I can manually remove local copy of songs stored in the cloud in order to free up space on my Mac. Yet again, such a basic function is not provided by Photos. In addition, I can easily backup my music collection using the Finder, and the data will travel across different filesystems (no special, Mac-only bundle files). Best of all, Apple Music is able to mostly, seamlessly meld my offline library, tracks synchronised via iTunes Match, and songs added from Apple’s music subscription service into one seamless library. It even allows me to create a “Smart Playlist” which can catalog songs based on whether they are rented through Apple Music, or fully owned, as well as countless other criteria such as Genre, Artist, Play Count (which incidentally, includes plays from all of my other devices), File Size, File Type, Date Added, Last Played, Composer, Year Released, and even how many times I’ve skipped a song. Yes, I could create a playlist of my most skipped songs. How’s that for a desert island disc?

So while it’s not perfect, I’m glad Apple haven’t released some half-arsed rewrite of Apple Music focused on flogging their subscription. iTunes lives on for now, if not in name, then in spirit.

It’s a common refrain in tech circles when discussing Twitter to talk about “The Algorithm”. Take this Lifewire article: “How to Turn off the Twitter Timeline Algorithm”, or this one by TechCrunch: “Twitter makes algorithmic timeline default on iOS”.

In the beginning the Twitter timeline was a simple list of posts by people you follow sorted by date descending. In 2013 Twitter introduced a new timeline that wasn’t so transparent. It was seemingly designed to optimise for engagement. All of a sudden, people were seeing posts from people they didn’t follow, or that were posted days ago and for some reason had been boosted by the algorithm.

The point is, both the classic timeline and the “algorithmic” timeline are both in fact algorithmic. In fact, the first algorithm taught in computer science is often the Bubble Sort algorithm. It’s still an algorithm! In the case of Twitter, or its upcoming rival Mastodon, sorting by date may be a preferable, but there are possibly downsides too. Prioritising something because it happens to have been posted recently is a form of Recency bias after all. The key seems to be transparency.

So enjoy your favourite algorithm, and remember, they’re not all bad.

My M1 Mac mini has been sleeping dreadfully recently. Perhaps it’s the thought of one day having macOS Ventura installed on it, or the knowledge that its younger M2 brethren beats it in both performance and power efficiency. Or perhaps, it was something else altogether.

I could tell it wasn’t sleeping due to the fact the attached USB storage would endlessly spin up and back down during the day; the Mac min sits under my desk while I work all day on my laptop. One time while it was supposedly asleep and idle, I went to plug a device into it, and could feel the fan blowing out hot air from the back. It wasn’t sleeping at all.

Thanks to an app called Sleep Aid, I was able to verify that my Mac was indeed struggling to get to sleep. Even when I put it to sleep manually, it would quickly wake up and not go back to sleep again. Sleep Aid helpfully lists the processes that were active during time awake. In my case, the most active process was something called “com.apple.FileProvider.cache-delete.push”.

Armed with this information, I did what any self proclaimed nerd would do; I Googled it. To my surprise, there were barely any hits. Some posts relating to Android, one on the Apple Developer forum about a bug with the File Provider API, but it didn’t seem related. I was stumped. Sam Rowlands, the developer behind Sleep Aid reached out to me on Twitter and offered to check that Sleep Aid itself wasn’t misreporting what I was seeing. It was not.

Eventually I stumbled across a WWDC video on the File Provider API, and decided to watch it. It dawned on me that this is the API Apple makes for services such as Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive to use. For years, Dropbox and OneDrive have been using various unofficial hacks in order to integrate with the Finder. In 2019, Apple released the File Provider API and gradually the third party cloud sync providers have been moving to it ever since.

Apart from Apple’s own iCloud Drive, I only had Microsoft OneDrive installed. I promptly deleted the OneDrive app and since then, my Mac has not had any bouts of insomnia due to com.apple.FileProvider.cache-delete.push. Problem solved.

My guess is that because I had OneDrive set not to run on system startup, and I had the OneDrive sync directory on an external hard drive, somehow the push notifications that Apple sends to indicate a file has changed were getting stuck. Perhaps OneDrive is supposed to say “I’ve got the file, you can go back to sleep” but wasn’t able to do so.

My Mac still spends a lot of the time it is supposed to be sleeping awake, but this seems to be common in M1 Macs. Thankfully now it does go to sleep for around 40% of the time instead of 0%, helping avoid needlessly wasting energy.

So if you’ve got a Mac that won’t sleep, I recommend grabbing a copy of Sleep Aid to help find the culprit.

Title image generated by Stable Diffusion using the prompt “a man sitting at a laptop falling asleep in a dark room at night, Cinematic” (with some edits).

The vast majority of Worldwide Digital’s losses were tied to Amazon’s Alexa and other devices, a person familiar with the division told Insider. The loss was by far the largest among all of Amazon’s business units and slightly double the losses from its still nascent physical stores and grocery business.

I recall back in the summer of 2017 meeting with some senior marketing executives who worked for a multinational fashion and beauty company. We were there to talk about AI. Voice was central to the discussion. In a few years, it seemed inevitable to most people in the room that voice would be an important “touch point” for consumers wanting to interact with their brands. I felt slightly more cautious, though was easy to get wrapped up in the hype. I always imagine a simple task of ordering a meal in a restaurant. It’s far easier to peruse a menu with your eyes, than to have the waiter read you a list of what they have available to order while you try and remember and make a decision in a reasonable amount of time. In general I subscribe to the view that AI is an accelerator for human-like skills and interactions. It can speed up and automate tasks that humans do, but if those tasks don’t already make for a great experience, then AI by itself won’t make it better, unless speed and accuracy are the cause of the poor experience.

Alexa suffers from this “restaurant problem”. While modern Natural Language Understanding capabilities are very good, they haven’t progressed at the rate it seemed they would back in 2017. This makes Alexa great for simple commands like setting timers and playing music, but useless for anything for more substantial. A common misconception with systems such as Alexa and Apple’s Siri is that they generate the answers using AI. They don’t. Generative AI systems do except (See GPT3 and ChatGPT), but they cannot be trusted to provide accurate answers and because they are trained based on crawling the internet, they are unable to generate answers that require knowledge or recent or future events. ChatGPT won’t be able to tell you the weather tomorrow, and it won’t be able to tell you what time your local supermarket opens. Instead, systems like Alexa and Apple Siri use a form of text classification. After the sound waves from your voice are converted into symbols (letters and numbers) and those symbols are then converted into words, they take this sentence you uttered and classify it into one or more intents. The intent that scores the highest probability from the machine learning model is the one Alexa will presume was your actual intent. That’s why when I recently asked Alexa “At what temperature should I hang washing outside?” it thought I was was asking for a weather forecast. Someone at amazon has to have created that intent and fed the ML model with example utterances for it to be able to detect it. These systems cannot understand intents they haven’t been trained on. Once the assistant knows your intent, the next task is to extract any parameters from your utterance. Examples would be the date and location in the phrase “_Will it rain in Newport next wee_k?”. Once your voice assistant knows your intent and any parameters, it will then perform some kind of logic based on that intent. This is where the AI and machine learning typically stops. If the intent was asking the weather, then the next step would be to query a weather API. If it was to send a message to someone, then it would be to to start whichever process it used to send messages on your device. Of course the weather API itself may use AI or machine learning to predict the weather, but that is totally separate and no different to a weather presenter telling you the same forecast on the TV. This approach is extraordinarily useful for many things: most chatbots and voice assistants work like this. For people who can’t see, or find it difficult to use a touchscreen or mouse, they provide invaluable ways to interact with computing devices.

I use Siri all the time to set reminders, timers and to control my lights. What Alexa and Siri are not so good at is deep and meaningful conversation. This is where it seems Amazon’s hope that Alexa might one day be a shopping destination falls short. When you have a device that is centred around a conversational user experience, it will hit a wall due to current technical limitations and the fact that for many people, speaking is less efficient that using a smartphone when they need to both receive and provide information to complete the task. The fact that Amazon seemingly has no way to monetise Alexa means the experience has been gradually getting worse. Now when I ask it the weather, it responds with the forecast - great - but then immediately starts telling me I can order groceries from it as well. Ads like this are infuriating and a sign of desperation from Amazon.

So were we foolish to think the future of human computer interaction will be voice? No. I think in the long term, when devices are advanced enough to provide human level, meaningful conversation then there is no doubt in my mind that voice will be the one of primary user interfaces we use for some tasks at least. When I ask ask Alexa to order the precise groceries I want and have the confidence to know it will work, and that the device will be capability to ask me for confirm anything its unsure about then maybe I can see it working. But I still can’t help thinking that humans like to see as well as hear things, especially when it comes to making choices. Voice is great for issuing commands and receiving quick updates, but your voice assistant starts talking for more than about 20 seconds, then it’s usually quicker to glance down at a screen and see a text or graphical representation.

I think the future is bright for voice assistants like Siri because they complement alternative user interfaces and are part of a deep ecosystem, and so can integrate with health, home automation, contacts and other information users have provided. Voice based AI is also making large strides in call centres. Unless Amazon changes tact, the Amazon Echo however with its limited ecosystem will remain glorified clock radios for a while longer.

£91 a year for a watch?

Update December 2025: It started working 3 years later!

I’ve been using an Apple Watch for over 7 years now, and throughout this time I’ve owned the original Series 0, the Series 2, and Series 4. Recently I decided it was time to upgrade to the latest and greatest Series 8. Each time I’ve upgraded I’ve given the previous model to a family member and so my girlfriend has been wearing my old Series 2 for the past 4 years. Having been originally purchased in 2016, 6 years of daily use was most definitely taking its toll on the Series 2’s battery. My partner likes to cycle and workout, which hammers the battery even more than typical use. She was therefore keen to take on my old Series 4 which still has decent battery life. That left us with her otherwise fully functional 6 year old Apple Watch Series 2, that apart from the knackered battery, still worked absolutely fine and even paired with the latest version of iOS, version 16. I really wanted to give this to someone else in our family, and so decided to pay Apple £85 for a battery replacement.

Before booking the appointment with the Apple Store, I unpaired the watch from my girlfriend’s phone and paired it with my iPhone 12 mini running watchOS 16. This was so the watch would show up in my account under the Apple support web page. With my appointment at the Apple Store booked, I walked into the Apple store with both my Series 8 and the Series 2 paired to my phone to get the battery replaced. It was lucky I did pair the Series 2 to my phone, as the guy at the Genius Bar needed to run some diagnostics on the watch the verify that the battery was indeed knackered, and I guess to rule out any other faults or damage that they might get blamed for if the device were to come back faulty. With the diagnostic check passed, and my battery confirmed to be a dud, he sent it off for a replacement. Just over a week later, I received an email telling me my device was ready to be collected.

In actual fact, my device had been replaced. The box contained a factory fresh (or possibly refurbished) Apple Watch Series 2. Fair enough I thought. I can imagine how replacing the battery in such a tiny device that also has to remain waterproof might not be worth the hassle for Apple. I paid my £85 and drove home. Before handing the shiny new but also old watch to the next relative, I wanted to try and pair it with my phone again just to check everything was working as expected. This is where it all started to go down hill. I would instigate the pairing process, but get to the point where the Watch would insist on being updated, only to tell me it could not connect to the update server and to check my internet connection. I suspected this to be a case of lazy error handling on the part of the Apple developer who wrote this code, as my internet connection was fully functioning. Still, I tried on 4G just to make sure, and to my complete lack of surprise, it made no difference.

After some time Googling the error message, I figured out what the issue was. The replacement watch came loaded with an old version of watchOS which is not compatible with iOS 15 or iOS 16. What I needed to do was find an old iPhone running an older OS (my guess: iOS 14), upgrade the Watch to watchOS 6 (the last version supported on the S2) and then it would pair successfully with my iOS 16 device, as it had done only a week earlier. I tried on an iOS 15 device, just in case, but it made no difference. I didn’t have any older phones, at least none that were so old that they weren’t applicable for iOS 15, and nor did anybody I know. No worries I thought: I’ll go back to the Apple Store. Surely they have some kind of Mac app that can simulate any iPhone and load any watchOS version on the a device as deemed appropriate by a qualified expert?

My hopes were dashed when the geniuses in the Apple Store were equally as confused as I had been at first. They didn’t have any older iPhones and so the only hope would be to send the Watch back to the repair depot. They did have sympathy for the fact I’d paid for a new battery and now the device couldn’t be used, and so suggested I upgrade the S2 to the brand new Apple Watch SE, offering me a generous 50% discount off the price of a new one. I hadn’t planned on treating this other family member that much – but even after factoring in the £85 spent on a new battery, it seemed like such a good deal. I took them up on the offer, but the gentleman who served me said I could always pop back in on a weekday with the Series 2 and they’d still be able to send it back off to be upgraded, so it wouldn’t go to waste. I walked away with a new SE, and an obsolete S2 and got on with my life, and our family member was extremely chuffed with the early Christmas present.

A few weeks later, after seeing this stainless steel Apple Watch that originally cost £549 back in 2016 staring at me from the shelf every day I though maybe I should get Apple to fix it. It was still within its 90 day repair warranty, and the guy at the Apple Store had suggested It could be done. I have plenty of relatives with iPhones who would love a free Apple Watch. At £549, lasting almost exactly 6 years, it cost £91/year to own. That’s actually quite a lot for a watch. I can’t imagine being satisfied with any other Watch or piece of jewellery that cost that much only lasting 6 years. So I dropped it back into the Apple Store, and a week later it was replaced yet again. I went to collect it, and this time tried to run the pairing process in store. This time, the pairing process failed with exactly the same error message as before. The problem hadn’t been resolved, despite the service notes explicitly stating “customer wants to pair this with his iOS 16 device”. I didn’t push the issue with the staff – after all, they did look after me by offering the discounted SE. This was their “solution” to the problem in fact.

This brand new Series 2 was destined to sit on a shelf for ever more. What a waste.

The point of this post is not to complain about Apple or the staff in the Apple Store. The store staff did a good job turning around a bad situation. The point is to raise awareness about how utterly disposable Apple Watches are. I can understand that there must be a limit to how long companies like Apple provide updates to devices for, but a phone without updates will still work for a few years. The Apple Watch however won’t even pair to a modern phone, or even the the original phone I had when I bought the Series 2 (an iPhone SE, which if kept up to date would be on iOS 15).

So if you’re thinking of buying one of the more expensive, premium watches with premium materials, maybe think again.

Update: 30/12/2025

Three years, a wedding and a baby later, I was clearing out some old drawers after Christmas and found my old Series 2, which I had diligently left at 50% charge, as per Apple’s recommendation when storing a lithium iron battery long term. I thought I would take it to the Apple Store to be recycled. Before doing so, I decided to give it one more try with my current iPhone running iOS 26.

After a few hours on the charger (the battery was dead), to my absolute surprise, the phone detected that the watch needed to be updated and offered to update it to the most recent version of watchOS supported by the Series 2, watchOS 6.3. The watch then proceeded to pair with my iPhone 16 Pro max and actually works! Someone at Apple has clearly taken the time to fix the issues outlined in the original post. Great work! Although I am unable to synchronise podcasts or music from the Watch app on my phone. I also can’t configure certain complications such as Weather from the Watch app either (although I’m able to do so from the watch itself) – workouts still work as you’d expect, as do Maps and Messages.  At this point the watch is 9 years old, so this is not surprising.

I am not sure if I will have much use for a Series 2 now in 2025, but as a nerd, I find it interesting to go back to older devices and see how the UI has evolved over time.

Updating an Apple Watch Series 2 from iOS 26

Every year we marvel at the latest product releases from tech companies, with Apple often leading the way. What is often not said however is that that shiny new device with even more battery life than the previous model will quite likely be a shadow of its former self in little over 2 - 3 years. This is not a conspiracy, and there is nothing evil going on. Batteries, like brake pads on car, are consumable devices that we should expect to have to replace.

Unlike brakes on a car, the cost of replacing a battery can be quite the expense relative to the original price of the device. In many cases, the price of the original (or equivalent) device may have gone down by the time the battery needs replacing further reducing the gap. Why is this bad? The closer the gap between replacing a battery and the cost of a new device makes it more likely for someone to say, “My battery sucks, I’ll just buy a new one”. This is great if you’re in the market for selling new devices, but it’s not so great for the environment.

The chart above shows the price of a new device compared to the cost of replacing the battery, as quoted by Apple on their UK web site on the 15th of September 2022. Where there are upgrade options available (such as storage or RAM), I took the price of the base model. For AirPods, Apple quotes a price per AirPod. I was generous and only multiplied this by 2, my intuition being that customers are less likely to replace the battery in their AirPods case but will need to replace the batteries in the buds themselves.

As you can see, the percentage ranges from 10% for a MacBook Air M2 to a whopping 61% for the AirPods 3rd generation. For some reason it’s cheaper to replace the battery in a set of AirPods Pro than it is with the cheaper AirPods. One might argue that this is simply the price we pay for having cheaper products in the first place. Obviously, the relative cost of a battery for a £2,000 maxed out MacBook Pro will be a lot less than for a £259 Apple Watch. The problem is that the higher the cost of a replacement battery relative to simply replacing the product, the more likely consumers opt for the latter. Don’t get me wrong, there are many other reasons consumers upgrade their devices, but poor battery life surely contributes greatly to that feeling that the device is old and needs replacing.

Perhaps Apple could do more to nudge consumers into making fewer unnecessary purchases by reducing the cost of replacement batteries?

Chart Data

Device

Device Cost

Battery Cost

%

iPhone 14 Pro

£1,099

£105

10%

iPhone 14

£849

£105

12%

iPhone SE 2

£449

£49

11%

IPad Pro 11”

£749

£99

13%

IPad Air

£569

£99

17%

iPad

£319

£99

31%

Apple Watch Ultra

£849

£105

12%

Apple Watch 8

£419

£85

20%

Apple Watch SE

£259

£85

33%

AirPods Pro*

£249

£90

36%

AirPods*

£179

£110

61%

MacBook Air M2

£1,249

£129

10%

MacBook Air M1

£999

£129

13%

MacBook Pro 14

£1,899

£199

10%

All Preferences

Classic

This one went away in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard.

ColorSync

Since replaced with an app

Date & Time

Date and Time > Network Time

Date & Time > Time Zone

Date & Time

Desktop

Not technically a System Preference pane, but it quickly became one in 10.1 so I’ve included it here :)

Displays

Dock

Energy Saver (some options missing due to being in a VM)

Energy Saver on a Portable

Energy Saver on a Portable (if anyone knows how to configure UTM to make Mac OS X 10.0 think it’s running on a laptop, let me know and I’ll add a comparison for that too)

General

Language & Region > Time

Internet

Keyboard

Login

Login

Mouse

Network

Quicktime

Screen Saver

Screen Saver > Hot Corners

Sharing

Software Update

Sound

Speech

Startup Disk

Users

In sum

So, after 21 years it’s fair to say that while System Preferences has evolved and become more complex, a lot has also stayed the same. Teleport someone from 2001 to 2022 and while you might need to explain the concepts of the cloud storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Touch ID, they would probably do just fine working out the basics of macOS. (With the major exception of those who require the use of accessibility options, which wouldn’t be introduced until 10.1 “Puma”.) Since 2001, many more preference panes have been added. On a clean macOS Monterey installation, I counted 30 preferences panes. This increases to 32 if Family Sharing and iCloud are signed into. That’s an increase of about half a preference pane every year. I can therefore see why Apple might want to move to a more scalable system. That said, part of me will miss the familiarity of using System Preferences, the same application I have used since 2001 at the dawn of the OS X era.

Recently announced iOS 16 will feature a new look Lock Screen. One of the striking features is how notifications are now far less prominent than they have been ever since their arrival in iPhone OS 3.0 back in 2009.

The change is a signal that many users want to control what they see and when, rather than have application developers decide for them. In 2009 it was quiet novel to know instantly when someone liked your Facebook post. After 13 years the novelty has worn off. In fact, many notifications are just superfluous noise that don’t enrich our lives at all.

While there will always be a need for some kinds of notification, my sense is that there will be a shift towards being “off by default” in future iOS releases - much in the same way the Windows system tray ended up being filled with every possible kind of icon and Microsoft ended up just hiding them all by default.

A keyboard! A mouse! But still so many unfulfilled dreams…

As is often the case, Matt Birchler has written something that I agree wholeheartedly with in his post Just Buy a Mac:

Even if Apple goes all the way and lets us resize windows and drag them anywhere we want on screen, I don’t think this suddenly turns the iPad into a Mac. After all, macOS, Windows, and Linux all have resizable windows that work 95% the same, but no one is out there saying that these are all basically the same operating system.

(As an aside, I’d love to know how the word ‘god’ made it into the URL slug - now I really want to know what the original title was!)

What he hits on here is the crux of why the iPad has been a disappointment to me. The first point is that rather than advance tablet computing, Apple seems to have given up and instead opted to imitate the established laptop paradigm. They’re going backwards instead of forwards. If we leave that to one side and accept that the tablet has reached its limits and in order to evolve it must act more like a traditional PC laptop, then the iPad still has the problem that its software is just too limited. The first step to remedy this would be to allow software from sources other than the App Store. There is a vast swathe of open source software and developer tools are are just waiting to be ported to the iPad, but current App Store policies forbid it.

The beauty of podcasts is that like the web, they use (mostly) open standards. HTTP, RSS, XML and MP3. Like the web, they also disappear sometimes. In the case of the web, clicking links on pages written 10 years ago will inevitability result in frequent dead links, where a site’s owner has decided to move on. Go back another 10 years the the ratio of working links to 404 errors increases even more. Thankfully Archive.org can be used to recover many dead links on the web.

Like blogging before it, which was similarity open in spirit, economic realities will one day set in for podcasts too. Already there are shows I remember whose feeds no longer exists. The episodes are gone forever.

That’s why I’ve written Podcast Archive. A simple Command-line utility written in .NET that downloads an entire podcast feed in a tidy Year > Month > Date folder structure. It’s smart enough not to download files that have already been downloaded, so it’s safe to run over and over again without wasting bandwidth. Files downloaded will have their creation date set to the original publish date, so once downloaded you can easily use tools like Spotlight to search by date.

At the moment you’ll need to compile the app using .NET 6, but I plan to add pre-compiled versions for Windows, Linux and Mac very soon.

This is bananas. All third party developers get control over the secure enclave and the software that controls it? Would be good to give them such control over the camera, microphone, and location data, too.

The text of the legislation says the following (original emphasis):

A gatekeeper that is a manufacturer of a device can restrict access to some of the functionalities in that device, such as near-field-communication technology secure elements and processors, authentication mechanisms and the software used to operate those technologies, which can be required for the effective provision of a service provided together with, or in support of, the core platform service by the gatekeeper as well as by any potential third party undertaking providing such service.
….

If dual roles are used in a manner that prevents alternative service and hardware providers from having access under equal conditions to the same operating system, hardware or software features that are available or used by the gatekeeper in the provision of its own complementary or supporting services or hardware, this could significantly undermine innovation by such alternative providers, as well as choice for end users.

The gatekeepers should, therefore, be required to ensure, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features that are available or used in the provision of its own complementary and supporting services and hardware. Such access can equally be required by software applications related to the relevant services provided together with or in support of the core platform service in order to effectively develop and provide functionalities interoperable with those provided by gatekeepers.

My admittedly layperson’s interpretation of the legislation is that all Apple would need to do is provide API access that would allow competitors to provide equivalent services to those that Apple provide. Just as no modern operating system gives application software direct access to the CPU and memory, Apple won’t need to give anyone direct access to the Secure Enclave if they’ve designed it well**.** The text explitcly says “A gatekeeper that is a manufacturer of a device can restrict access to some of the functionalities in that device”. In the same way anyone can write an application that creates Instagram-like photo filters, the EU is saying that anyone should be able to create a rival to any service Apple also offers, such as a digital wallet application or App Store. But then again I am no legal scholar and could be reading this wrong.

Gruber then goes on to write:

This is profoundly anti-consumer. Consumers aren’t asking for any of this shit. Actual people love their phones more than their computers — whether Macs or PCs — not despite the fact that their phones are tightly controlled consoles, but because they are tightly controlled consoles. These regulators don’t see it that way, because they’re idiots. They think they can legislate their way to a world where the iPhone (and Android, which is also console-like) remains far safer and more reliable than PCs while mandating that all the protections that have made them far safer and more reliable than PCs be removed. It’s absurd.

I would have loved to see a citation when he says “consumers aren’t asking for any of this shit”, as I presume he is referring to a survey that was carried at some point. And no, the iPhone and iPad are not consoles. I’ve covered this before.

Unfortunately, Gruber then makes a 90º turn and drives his argument straight into a brick wall, calling the EU “idiots”. Instead of trying to understand the EU position and offer some valuable insights and perhaps an alternative solution, he resorts to petty name-calling.

He then goes on:

Worth noting: “Europe” accounts for nearly 25 percent of Apple’s revenue. That includes 23 countries that aren’t in the E.U. — most notably, of course, the U.K. — but the E.U. is too big for Apple to just tell them to pound sand. I would imagine though, if this comes to fruition, E.U. citizens are going to wind up buying iPhones that operate very differently from those sold everywhere else in the world, and they will suffer for it.

I think this is an overly pessimistic take on the proposals. If Apple were to constructively engage with the EU, then opening up iOS could give the ecosystem a boost and offer some much needed novelty and excitement that has been missing for at least half a decade. I can’t remember the last time I installed a new app on my iPhone or iPad that excited me in some way. Between 2010 and 2013 it seemed like every week there was something new and exciting my devices could do with a new app. Now it seems that all we get is more and more refined text editors and to-do list apps. Instead, I fear that Apple will belligerently fight the EU, resulting in poor outcomes for everyone.

I’m not saying I agree with every word of the EU legislation, far from it. The EU has a poor track record when it comes to legislating tech companies. Just look at the Microsoft browser-ballot which was far too late to be effective, and mandatory cookie banners which haven’t solved any of the concerns around privacy yet have made browsing the web far more annoying. I just feel that a more constructive discourse that goes beyond “they’re idiots” is needed. I don’t want to live in a world where my Sony TV only lets me watch movies from Sony Pictures, or a Telsa Car that only allows me drive to some future Elon Musk-owned restaurant chain, yet that’s essentially how the iPhone and iPad operate today when it comes to certain vertical markets.

It is possible to be a fan of Apple while resisting the paternal instinct to defend everything it does. Surely a company that can make a UNIX-based wrist-computers and competition-thrashing CPUs can figure out a way to allow 3rd parties take payments, or run App Stores without compromising security?

Without innovation in software, all we’re doing with these new powerful machines is essentially the same we were doing 20 years ago on PowerPC G4 and G5 computers, but faster and more conveniently. Granted, it is progress, especially in those fields involving CPU- and GPU-intensive tasks and greatly benefitting by having lots and lots of calculations made in the shortest possible time.

I agree. Where is the modern software to take advantage of the extraordinary amount of power that computers, especially Macs have these days? Just look at this chart:

The MacBook Air multicore performance over time (source Geekbench)

Take a brand new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro out of the box in 2022 and despite it having more than double the raw compute power compared to 5 years ago, the included software is basically the same.

• iMovie is designed for an age when people shared home movies imported from their camcorder. Where is the video creation software that is designed creating modern YouTube oriented productions, but without the steep learning curve of Final Cut Pro? Something as “simple” as blurring out someone’s face or making text move with an object on the screen is extraordinarily time consuming in iMovie.
• There is an app for listening to podcasts, but not one for creating them. Apple makes GarageBand, FaceTime and runs the iTunes Podcast directory. It should also make a product that leverages these technologies to make it even easier to record either remote (via FaceTime) or in-person podcasts, edit them, add chapter-art and show-notes and easily distribute them to the Apple Podcast directory. Spotify will get there first otherwise.
• Bring back iWeb! The web is full of siloed platforms and while it’s never been easier to create a blog or get your thoughts out there - usually via the likes of Wordpress or other hosted platforms, these often hit limits unless you start stump up a lot of cash or invest time in learning the technical skills required. The barrier to entry for creating a custom web site is innumerably higher than it was in the early days of the web. I would love to see Mac that came with software for visually creating high quality, standards compliant web sites that can be hosted anywhere (even on the Mac itself) but don’t require knowledge of HTML, CSS, databases, Node or PHP etc.

There are doubtless plenty of other examples, let’s not even start on how stagnated Windows has become over the last decade.

* Yes, the title of this post is a play on one of my favourite albums by Grandaddy.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Meta, more commonly known as Facebook, plans to take a steep 47.5% commission for digital asset purchases made inside the so-called “metaverse.”

This reminds me of how in the early 2000s Apple was able to make a deal with the record labels to sell all of their music while taking a healthy cut of their own. Since then they have been an unstoppable force in the digital music industry. The same deal never happened with TV and films. To this day, there is still no single streaming service that lets you watch any TV show and film you can think of, like there is for music. Not wanting to be beholden to Apple, the TV and movie industry learnt from the record companies’ past mistakes. I think the lack of any significant new platforms since the smartphone could be a similar reaction from software developers. Why would anyone want to build software for a world run by Facebook, where they take a 50% cut? Short of groundbreaking hardware (unlikely), what does Facebook have to offer developers other than its now dated, millennial oriented, social graph?

What do BBC News, Instagram, Twitter, Slack, Pokémon GO, eBay and Uber have in common? They all had watchOS apps that have since been discontinued. This week Uber became the latest big name to switch off their Apple Watch app. There are still many useful apps from big and small developers in the watchOS App Store: YouTube Music, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Maps are still present (the latter making a comeback recently after being discontinued in 2017). There does however seem to be a trend towards big companies abandoning their ambitions for our wrists, the the remaining apps being far less ambitious.

In the early days of the Apple Watch, Apple would routinely demonstrate it being used to make phone calls, get directions, order food, open garage doors (with a live camera feed) and measure long hikes across the countryside without the need for a phone. The wrist was an existing new frontier for application developers to explore.

I remember in early 2015 - before I had the chance to own an Apple Watch - seeing someone pay for a coffee in Starbucks using their watch. This was before the release of Apple Pay in the UK, and so I concluded this individual must have been using the Starbucks app to make the payment. I thought this was extremely cool, and when I eventually managed to buy my own Apple Watch I installed as many apps as I could on it. Task list managers, calendars, train timetables, news apps, takeaway food services, Reddit clients and even a game of Pong. I even used the aforementioned Uber app during a trip to San Francisco, though remember it being somewhat limited when compared to the iPhone app. This excitement culminated with me upgrading to a cellular model of Apple Watch. I had hopes for this UNIX computer on my wrist to replace my phone in many situations. I could improve my mental health too, by carrying a phone less, and therefore spend less time looking at a screen.

It didn’t happen of course. Despite my cellular Apple Watch Series 4 being plenty fast enough to run 3rd party apps (something that could not be said for the original model) I found most of the applications built for it were either too limited, too buggy, or didn’t exist. The lack of an official WhatsApp client and inability to initiate a conversation from the Watch for example really hampers its usefulness. It was also too easy to run the battery down over the course of a few hours by visiting a location with poor 4G signal. A few times, when simultaneously using the watch’s features by having cellular data, GPS, workout tracking, music the screen flash as a light - all at the same time - the watch simply powered itself down under the stress of it all. I’ve never known an iPhone to do this.

These days, the Apple Watch fills a less ambitious role in my life. I still use the same Series 4 model from 2018. I no longer pay for a dedicated cellular plan - it just doesn’t seem worth the £5 - £7 a month the mobile operators charge. My usage boils down to just a few tasks now. Telling the time, tracking runs, listening to podcasts, using Siri to control HomeKit lights, and of course, notifications. The only 3rd party app I have installed now is an Authenticator app, which I’m not even sure I need as I seem to be able to confirm logins from the notification and never need to launch the app itself.

The Apple Watch in this respect is a bit of a disappointment. I can say the same for the iPad, which once promised to usher in an era of multitouch computing but ended up moving in the direction of a convertible laptop with much of the software looking and behaving like desktop software that came before. The Apple Watch once promised us a dream of wrist-based ambient computing that would fit so seamlessly into our lives that we would barely notice it, but it would be there when we need it. It has ended up being mostly a fitness tracker and notification device.

What can Apple do to turn this around? It’s difficult to say. Allowing the Apple Watch work without the need for an iPhone would probably be the biggest thing. This would mean the need for a better battery when on cellular. It might also encourage developers to build capable apps for the platform, as it would no longer be a given that the user also has a smartphone in their pocket. This might also mean Apple is more incentivised to support more capable APIs for the watch because suddenly the need is there. As it stands, the Apple Watch always has its older sibling, the iPhone standing over its shoulder as it attempts to make its mark on the world. It needs to be able to stand and compete on its own merits. Would today’s Apple do let this happen? While Apple in 2007 was happy to compete against its own iPod with release of the iPhone, today it seems less bold. The iPad is held back and after 11 years is still not as capable as a Mac despite having very similar hardware. While I would like to see an Apple Watch that truly ushers in a post-smartphone world, sadly I think if it happens it will likely come from another company rather than Apple.

My original iPod (left), alongside the iPod 5.5 and the Apple Watch, in many ways its successor.

It’s been 10 years since I wrote about it being 10 years since the iPod. That means of course that it’s now been 20 years since Steve Jobs first graced our 1024x768 screens announcing the iPod. I won’t rehash what I wrote 10 years ago, instead I thought it would be interesting delve into what the technology scene was like 20 years ago.

In 2001, I was 16 years old. I had left school in May and started college on September 10th 2001. I will always remember starting college the day before the 9/11 attacks. We had started on the Monday, and our tutor gave us the Tuesday off, telling us to come back on Wednesday. Nobody quite expected the world to have changed so much in the space of little over 24 hours. The gap between leaving school and the attacks was only a few short months. I mention this only to say that no matter the topic, it’s impossible to consider the world in 2001 without remembering that day.

My computer in 2001 was a G3 iMac of the Snow variety. I had bought this in the summer with some money my grandparents had given me. Back then, and still now, buying a new computer was not something I did often. The difference now is that I have many devices that could be considered a computer: a phone, tablet, laptop and even my Apple Watch. At the turn of the century a computer was something you kept on or under a desk.  Macs were not particularly cool, especially within tech circles. The arrival of Mac OS X, with its UNIX underpinnings gave it some street cred amongst geeks like me. I could justify buying one promising I’d be able to learn the Unix command line, while also running user friendly GUI software such as Microsoft Word, and connecting to printers and scanners - a task that was not easy on Linux at the time.

I bought the iMac from John Lewis (there was no Apple Store in the UK at the time) and still vividly remember the excitement of going to collect it, and how unexpectedly heavy the box was (it had a full CRT screen of course).  Initially Mac OS X was far too slow to actually use, and so my dreams of using the iMac to learn the Unix had to be put on hold. Around this time, my phone would have been a Motorola T191. A basic phone that had only one thing going for: it looked cool. To really satisfy my inner geek, I had managed to save up to buy a Palm m100. In 2001, if you wanted a PDA, you wanted a Palm.  For a cool one-hundred pounds, or £170 in today’s money, I had a device that could store phone numbers, take notes and play two-play pong over infrared. It supported email, but only when synchronised over from the Mac. There was no web browser to be seen, and certainly no music. The only audio the Palm m100 was capable of was a Casio watch style “beep”. Instead, my portable music needs were taken care of thanks to a £50 Panasonic portable CD player. It was capable of playing not only audio CDs, but also MP3 CDs. These were CDs stuffed with MP3 files. This meant you could fit more than the usual 10 or so songs that would fit onto a CD. It was portable, but with caveats. It’s bulk meant unless I was wearing a hoodie or fleece with large pockets, it had nowhere to go. It was also difficult to control the music while walking. Still, for 2001 it was great.

Then the iPod happened. I watched the Steve Jobs keynote on my iMac after reading about it in the news.  There was something about it being Mac exclusive ,and me being a Mac user that made it stand out to me. I was lucky enough to get one for Christmas that year. £300 Christmas presents were certainly not a regular thing for me - I don’t know what my parents were thinking!  Initially, my friends laughed at the white earbuds, it would take years for them to be normalised by Apple’s marketing campaigns. The original iPod was extremely easy to scratch, and so I sought a case to protect it. Unlike today where they are a myriad of case options available for every device under the sun, at the time of the iPod’s first release there was no such thing. I ended up buying a case from a specialist photography shop - it was designed to hold a camera flash.  From then on, my experience of music, along with millions others was that of buying the CD, feeding it into my computer, and then synchronise it with my iPod. The CD then went back on the shelf. A new generation of music lovers was born. To this day, when I think about playing a song I start with the artist, locate the album, and press play. One time, I was browsing CDs in HMV and frustrated at the thought of having to wait until I got home before I could listen to my new CD, I had the killer idea - what if the HMV (a bricks and mortar music retailer for anyone who doesn’t know) had some kind of machine that would let you scan the barcode of the CD and plug in your iPod so you could listen to your purchase there and then? Of course this became somewhat of a reality 6 years later when the Apple introduced iPod touch and the iTunes music store. Now of course we have steaming services and music is easier to access than ever. We can now ask Siri (other assistants are available) to play virtually any song on demand. Where next for recorded music consumption? I have no idea, but I certainly look back fondly on the days of the iPod.

Both Microsoft Teams and Apple’s iMessage offer the ability to ‘react’ or ‘tap back’ on a message - for those who don’t know, this allows you to mark a message with a quick emoji response instead of sending a full message back.

I’m a heavy user of both apps: Teams while I’m working, and iMessage for keeping in touch with friends and family.

Despite Teams being targeted at business - I find the iMessage implementation so much more well through-through and appropriate.

While they both have a thumbs up - check 👍 - the heart in Teams feels a bit too much like a ‘romantic heart’ and unless Microsoft are condoning workplace romances - probably best avoided lest you end up in trouble with HR - I can’t see what they were thinking here. On the other hand, iMessage manages to remain neutral - a small platonic heart that doesn’t throb is much more appropriate for work.

Teams also lacks a simple thumbs down, a way to convey the word ‘no’. Unbelievably, it instead opts for crying emoji, or even worse - a red-faced anger emoji. There aren’t many times I feel like crying in response to a co-worker’s message, or get so angry I turn red - but often I could use a simple thumbs down. The biggest omission from Team however is the humble question mark. Being able to simply question what someone said - that is ask them to expand on what they meant and clarify - is something that often needs to be communicated with colleagues.

All of this is to say that really spending the time to think through little details like this can make all the difference in how useful the feature is. Apple clearly thought more about it in my view. On this feature at least, Teams gets a big 😢 from me.

Footnote: None of these animated icons are technically emoji - but you know what I mean.

While new the new ‘do everything’ sidebar in Safari might sound great on paper, it just doesn’t old up in real world usage. Since the release of iOS 15, I’ve found myself using the iPad far less because of this. Tasks that should be highly optimised are frustratingly slow to complete. Take opening a bookmark and then closing the sidebar in order to browse using the entire width of the screen. It takes up to 6 steps:

1. Open the sidebar
2. Optionally press back if the side bar was in another list (History or Reading List)
3. Select Bookmarks
4. Navigate to the bookmark and click it
5. Navigate back up to the root of the sidebar
6. Close the sidebar

Contrast this with the original version of Safari:

1. Tap the bookmarks toolbar button
2. Navigate to the bookmark and click it

That is 3, maybe 4 additional steps - for something which I imagine is a pretty common action.

While I’m not suggesting we all revert to a version of Safari that came out 10 years ago, I think the spirit of the original design: simplicity and usability are still worthwhile goals in 2021. Even with advanced features such as tab groups and browser extensions, there has to be a better way. A simple fix would be to add a bookmarks button back to the toolbar, and remove tab groups from the sidebar entirely (that functionality can also be accessed from the tab overview screen).

Importantly, Apple need to learn how to think like their users again, and not build products simply for themselves. While I can’t claim to represent all Apple users, I’m certainly not the only one who finds the new design messy and confusing.

Like every other Apple-focused technology enthusiast with spare time on their hands, I’ve been trying out Glass, a new app for sharing photos. Its biggest selling point according to the creators, is that they are in fact selling it. Unlike rivals Instagram and Flickr, Glass is not for “selfies, stories, quick snaps, or influencers” and there is no free tier. Instead, Glass costs £4.49 per month or £25.99 for the year as an introductory offer, going up to around £48.00 per annum after the introductory period is over.

As someone who loves photography, but dislikes the way in which Instagram has turned into a late 90s glossy lifestyle magazine with its over-reliance on filters and airbrushing, Glass seemed like a breath of fresh air. In addition to selling this app instead of selling out their users, Glass also does away with traditional social media metrics: like counts and follower counts. While these seemed innocent and innovative in 2010, it has become apparent that such metrics though meaningless in themselves can be terrible for our mental health, and certainly do no correspond with any real sense of worth or value. The business model of selling the app instead of customer data means that in theory it doesn’t matter how long someone spends in Glass, because they are not optimising to maximise eyeballs on ads. This allows Glass to forego the algorithmic timeline that every other social media platform uses and instead offer a simple chronological timeline and feels more like Twitter circa 2009.

That said, upon signing opening Glass for the first time, I was surprised that there is no functionality available unless you sign up for a subscription. Not even ability to even view photos from other people without posting, which I would have expected. The first 2 weeks of the subscription are free however, and so I gave it a go.

First impressions were good: the app is mostly well designed. There are some odd quirks, the back button is in the bottom left of the screen, instead of the top left as it is in nearly every other iOS app, which even after 2 weeks still throws me. The portrait orientation of the iPhone doesn’t work well with photos that are taken in landscape. Glass attempts to remedy this by zooming in and allowing you to pan the image, but I would have preferred to be able to rotate my phone and browse in landscape instead.

Upon first launch I was invited to follow a selection of accounts. I’ve no idea whether this was a random list, or whether they have an algorithm that attempts to show you “interesting” people based on how many other people follow them or some other metric. After a day or two I’d built up list of about 15 people I was following. After that I uploaded some old photos that I was particularly proud of. It turned out this is exactly what everyone else did too. Nearly all of the photos the app displayed to me had dates on them from months and years before the app had launched. The chronological timeline seemed somewhat broken with photos from all seasons seemingly thrown in. This quirk will perhaps become less pronounced as the influx of new users cedes, but for now think of Glass as a place where people post their “best of” photos, rather than a window into what is happening in the world.

After a few days, boredom started to settle in. There were some nice photographs alright. Plenty in fact. But the web is not short of great photography. I found it difficult to discover anything interesting or above average. I particularly like landscape photography, but I couldn’t find a way to search for it, nor did Glass seem to know this and show me more of it. There are places I frequent and photograph a lot, and I wanted to see other people’s take on them. However there is no way to search by location either.  Instead, it’s up to me to follow the right people. It left me longing for an algorithm. Yes, an evil algorithm! The thing is, algorithms are not evil. It’s how they are used that determines whether they are good or bad. If an algorithm is used to optimise for “engagement” for the purposes of selling more advertisements, then this is bad. In the case of Glass, I’d quite like to see something pop up in my feed that is popular or of potential interest, but alas this did not happen.

Another thing I noticed, at least based on the list of people I see in the “follow people” tab, Glass seemed to be somewhat of a monoculture. This makes sense: everyone in the app is rich enough to own an iPhone, probably also owns an expensive dedicated camera, a laptop (probably a MacBook) capable of editing them, and has enough discretionary income to pay a monthly subscription to a social media platform. This is boring. While I’m no fan of Instagram, it does at least seem to attract people from all parts of society. Perhaps this will come with time, if Glass decide to expand beyond its initial user base of photography enthusiasts. For now, where Instagram is the economy section on a plane, Glass aspires to be the first class area with none of the undesirables. This may not be a conscious decision, but it’s a direct consequence of being iOS only and charging a monthly fee.

So is Glass for me? While I really wanted to like Glass, and I have genuinely found some great photographs on it, the staleness and sameness of the content leaves me wanting more for my £4.49/month. I’ll be checking back in a few months, hopefully by then this glass will be brimming.

In one example, after finding out my new router supports connecting my entire network to a VPN, I searched Google for the model name and the word 'VPN". The second result was an article that was quick point out that my router doesn’t support Express VPN, but I should probably just use it anyway. There was of course a big fat button linking to Express VPN. Using the excellent wheregoes.com I was quickly able to verify that yes, this was a referral link. This article exists for no other reason than to make money from confused users.

Minutes later I searched for how to synchronise to Macs without using iCloud. The 2nd result was this page by MacPaw.

The article has runs through some rudimentary waffle about how cloud synchronisation works, and then about halfway down the pages suddenly breaks into an advert for their product “CleanMyMac X”. An app that is completely unrelated to file synchronisation.

While I’ve nothing against so called “inbound marketing” articles, they can often have genuine value (Digital Ocean’s vast array of tutorials for configuring Linux servers are some of the best on the web), it’s clear that Google has a big problem on its hand in distinguishing the cruft from the genuinely useful content.

Thankfully, there is an option hidden away in the iOS Settings app called “Restrict Stories in Today”. Turning it on will cause News to limit articles to those from publishers you actively follow.

I definitely recommend following a wide variety of outlets to avoid a filter bubble, but I’ve found this option to be a great quality filter so far.

Rumours are abundant, and so it must be true that in the coming months Apple will release updated versions its high-end computers. But for the majority of users, even us “professionals”, the current crop of M1 Macs will probably do just fine.

I’ve been using an M1 MacBook Pro as my own personal laptop now for 3 and a half months and I have to admit, the hype is real. It’s a beast. Day to day it’s exceedingly fast at nearly everything I throw at it. Anything you could possibly consider “day to day” use doesn’t even warrant a mention - it’s blindingly fast. It breezed through more advanced photo editing, compiling apps using Xcode, editing video in the Photos app, and pretty much every other task I’ve thrown at it. Contrary to many reports however is the fan. It does get extremely loud when performing intense tasks. In my case, when transcoding video that wasn’t natively supported by the M1’s instruction set.

In comparison to my other laptop, a work-provided 15" Dell XPS 9500 running Intel’s 2020 i7 which has a bigger screen and costs £400 more but is far is hotter, slower and less reliable (frequently overheating while charging to a point it shuts itself off, and unable to stay in sleep mode without draining the battery completely over night) the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are no-brainers for anyone who doesn’t need Windows to do their job.

Unless you are playing (or making) AAA games, working with video at a professional level, or training large machine learning models, the current crop of M1 Macs will likely far exceed your needs. Even Marco Arment can get by with the latest MacBook Air for software development. As with any processor transition, it’s not all plain sailing - I struggled to get an older version of TensorFlow working on the M1 Mac because Apple have forked the project for M1 at a later version - but these kind of teething issues will resolve themselves over time. As with anything like this, if you have specific software needs, check compatibility first.

So while the latest, shiniest, fastest laptop might seem temping, the mid-range is where the value is right now.

Lots and lots of goodies in Apple’s 2021 keynote. Some quick thoughts:

• FaceTime on the web - I guess just as I was last pondering this May, someone at Apple was also wondering why Zoom took off and not FaceTime. Thankfully they reached the same conclusion.
• Digital ID - The ability to add ID to our digital wallets will finally end the need for a physical wallet. I wrote about this at the end of 2019 and so was pleased when the presenter almost quoted the title of my post The card missing from our digital wallets. At the moment it’s US only, but at least it’s a start.
• The Mail app will now proxy images to protect privacy. Has Hey.com just been Sherlocked? All along I’ve said this kind of functionality should be something a mail client offers, not the email service itself.
• On-device speech to text will dramatically help Siri’s performance. The current cloud-based STT is often so slow I manually deduct 30 seconds from the time I actually want to set a timer for. I didn’t notice any mention of intent recognition, and so I assume it is still likely cloud-based, which means an Internet connection will still be required for many Siri tasks.
• Apple will allow developers to A/B test App Store listings. While I understand this kind of testing can be effective, I’m coming round to the view that perhaps asking users is more polite than bypassing their consciousness.
• Being able to edit dictated text on the Apple Watch is fantastic and solves a major problem: most ML based STT systems still struggle with unexpected, out of context words. It looks like Apple are moving watchOS towards where early iPhone models were when it comes to content creation with the ability to share photos as well.
• Built in VPN for iCloud+ users. Did I understand this right, that anyone paying for storage currently will now be an ‘iCloud+’ user? Surly that can’t be right? Apple don’t give features like this away for free!
• iPad multitasking - Looks good. We now have the Shelf, a nice reference to NeXTSTEP which of course had its very own shelf that would become the Dock in macOS.
• On the presentation itself, I find myself missing the days of one or two presenters simply levelling with an audience to explain what’s new. For the past for years, and even pre-pandemic, there have been dozens of presenters, high-production videos, and special effects that seem more at home in a Hollywood blockbuster than a developer talk. It makes one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world seem even less relatable.
• Quick Note. Great name, but where have I heard it before? Hmm…
• A menu bar on the iPad, which was pretty much the conclusion of my recent post The Tablet Dilemm__a.

Having set up a new phone recently, I started receiving “Breaking News” alerts from the BBC. I must have accidentally granted permission when installing the app. I left them turned on, thinking perhaps this time I might find it useful, especially given the precarious worldwide situation right now. Within hours though, I remembered why I’d turned them off years ago - not just from the BBC - from all news apps.

In my mind, I had “breaking news” as meaning “important news worthy of interrupting your day”. The would obviously include kind of thing the BBC may have traditionally interrupted television programming for; the death of a monarch, war breaking out, or the announcement of a lockdown due to a global pandemic. Of course an alert on your phone isn’t the same cancelling the nation’s favourite weekly medical drama, and so I expected alerts with slightly less gravity but still serious and impactful all the same.

This is not what “breaking news” means. In the news business, breaking news is news that is “new news”. This is why we get alerts about a press conference that is due to start on time, as scheduled. While I have no direct knowledge of the media business, it seems to me that there is a race between various news broadcasters to be the first to “break” news. I’m sure that by adding “breaking news” to a story it feeds the audience’s desire to read the latest gossip, and this generates clicks, which looks good for the reporter in question. It’s similar how in the early days of the pandemic when we had daily briefings, rather than insightful questions from health or science correspondents, we had political correspondents trying to outdo each other in trying to ask the most original and intricate question, hoping to trip up the politician at the podium.

While there is no doubt an audience of avid news junkies who enjoy receiving notifications about mundane events as they happen, I think there’s a larger need for alerts about serious and important events only. Please, news broadcasters, give us the choice!

The iPad and Mac having comparable specifications is nothing new. For many years it has been apparent that Apple’s top end tablets could outperform even some of the higher end laptops on single core tasks. Now, with both products using the same chip, and with Apple giving the iPad Pro the same M1 processor they’ve used in Macs, many people are starting to wonder why the iPad is still so limited by its operating system. Harry McCracken, a longtime proponent of using iPads as a primary computing device wrote “[The iPad Pro just got way more pro. Now it needs pro software](http://The iPad Pro just got way more pro. Now it needs pro software)”.  Over at The Verge, Monica Chin wrote “Put macOS on the iPad, you cowards”, a headline that seems sure to fire up camaraderie on Twitter.  Jason Snell, one of my favourite writers about all things Mac, wrote “The iPad Pro is a killer machine but its software is killing me”. It seems there is a consensus.

For a long time this has been my view too. I’ve written many times before that what holds back the iPad is its software not its hardware. The touch screen revolution didn’t quite happen as planned. 11 years after the iPad was first introduced, most people still turn to a desktop or laptop with a mouse and keyboard when they really want to get work done. But with tablet hardware so powerful, and with the software that feels ‘almost there’ it’s reasonable to ask why can’t we do more with our expensive iPads. The solution however, is not simple. Allowing users to reboot their iPad into macOS as Chin seems to suggest would be one answer, but it would require either macOS to be redesigned to accommodate touch input, or that Apple require users connect a trackpad and keypad to their iPad when using it in “Mac Mode”. This doesn’t seem very elegant to me - though technically probably not difficult, and Apple is all about elegance. Adding touch to macOS would beg the question of why Mac laptops don’t have touch screens and risk destroying what makes macOS such a great operating system. (Windows 8 anyone?) In 2019 the ability to run iPad apps on the Mac was added to macOS, but with a mouse and keyboard of course. Requiring a mouse and keyboard on the iPad would be more preferable approach and would keep the line between  ‘desktop’ and ‘mobile’, but it just doesn’t seem like something the Apple we all know would ever do. It’s too clunky having two versions of the same app.

Another option is to build upon iPad OS and address all the little things that make it difficult to use a full-time computing device. It has come a long way in the past 5 years since I wrote my original article, and many of the features I said were needed are now present in iPad OS. The difficulty now is that many of the things that make PC operating systems so powerful run counter to what makes the iPad so secure and simple to use. As we’ve seen from the iPad’s horrendous attempt to support multitasking, adding complexity to something that wasn’t originally designed for it is also difficult to pull off. Not forgetting, iPad OS also needs to run on the cheapest £329 iPad which has far less compute power than the iPad Air or iPad Pro. Anything that add adds more power for Pro users risks alienating the majority of casual users who just want a large smartphone for watching video browsing social media.

What really leaves a sour taste in the mouth is the fact that Apple now is now seemly selling the same computer in many different form-factors but is artificially limiting which software can run on them based on imaginary product categories.  There is no law of nature that says what a ‘tablet’ is any more than there one that defines a number of grains of sand required before they can be called a mound. Yet it is in Apple’s best interests to make sure customers have a reason to buy a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone. For a company that likes to boast how good it is by making sure we all know how much they support good causes, have they not thought of the environmental impact of millions of people deciding to buy both an iPad and a Mac when there is no reason other than Apple’s business model requiring they do so?

But Apple must have known that by naming the iPad’s processor ‘M1’ parallels would be drawn with the Mac, and questions would be asked. They could quite easily have called the CPU A14X, or A15, it’s just a marketing name after all. The fact they choose to draw a direct parallel with the Mac makes me think that Apple do have something up their sleeves to further bridge the gap between the iPad and Mac, and ensuring all that power does not go go waste. I don’t think the iPad will ever run macOS, but I can see a situation similar to how the Mac can currently run iPad apps, but in reverse. Imagine if when a keyboard and pointing device are plugged into the iPad, iPad apps that have been updated to support the Mac are able to run in full ‘Mac Mode’ on the iPad. Apps would be scaled down to simulate a higher resolution allowing more content to be shown with the assumption that a pointer, not a finger will be used for input. A menu bar would show across the top of the screen. It wouldn’t be “macOS” (it’s not the menu bar), but it would provide a way for Mac-optimised apps to run in in a desktop-like mode. Additionally, if iPad OS could also provide a “Developer Mode” similar to how Macs let users turn off secure boot that allowed software be side-loaded (bypassing the App Store restrictions) and a way to use developer centric tools such as the Terminal and Homebrew, the iPad would suddenly become substantially more powerful. It still wouldn’t be able to run the full version of Photoshop as many have asked for, but it would be a compromise that would offer a more powerful user experience while also seeking to encourage the likes of Adobe to port their ancient applications to Apple’s more modern UIKit frameworks, becoming iPad apps at the same time.

Is it a stretch? Yes. But giving the iPad the same processor as a Mac is a bold move, and that makes me hopeful that we can expect similarly bold moves from the software team over the coming year.

I was searching Apple’s App Store for something and came across a bunch of apps from a developer who offers a suite of apps that seem designed to confuse customers into paying for in-app purchases and subscriptions under false pretences.

First there is a “Find My AirPods” type app which costs $4.99 a month and claims to be able to find Fitbit devices as well. Obviously this is a scam since this functionality is built into iOS and the APIs are not exposed to allow developers to even do this.

Next there is a Among Us wallpaper app with a £2.99 in-app purchase - questionable as it seems to be using intellectual property owned by the creators of Among Us, Innersloth. This app is however nothing to do with them.

Finally, there is an app named “Audacity” that uses the same icon as the popular open source audio editor Audacity. Only judging from the screenshots, it offers none of the functionality you would expect from its open source namesake and its privacy policy is hosted by Google Sites, not on audacityteam.org as one might expect. Unsurprisingly, this fake Audacity app costs £4.49 a month.

There is also a “count down to a day” app which on the face of it doesn’t seem like a scam, this is a useful piece of functionality and I use such an app myself. This countdown app costs a whopping £9.99 per month.

When responding to the case of a man who lost $600, 000 worth of bitcoin by using a scam app, Apple claimed that “In the limited instances when criminals defraud our users, we take swift action against these actors as well as to prevent similar violations in the future.”.

I am surprised that this developer has managed to get apps that use the names AirPods, Among Us, and Audacity through Apple’s review process since they are all well known brand names. While not directly comparable, when developing an Android app for a well-known global bank that was to be published in the Google Play Store, I had to have someone from the bank contact the Google Play review team to confirm I was authorised to publish an app that uses the bank’s name and logo. While the stakes here aren’t as high as a fake banking app, I would expect Apple to do something similar for apps related to popular games and open source software, not to mention apps using Apple’s own trademarks.

So how to report these seemingly dodgy apps to Apple? The only way I can find so far is to install an app first.

Yes that’s right - it’s only possible to report a problem with an app by going to your App Store purchase history page after purchasing or downloading it. There is no “Report Suspicious App” button on the App Store listing itself.

But who in their right mind would install software they suspect is dodgy? I understand that some people might inadvertently pay for scam apps and need a refund, but waiting until after the fact seems lazy of Apple.

A quick tip for iOS users. It’s possible to view the dB level that is currently being produced by your headphones at any time on iOS. This is useful if you want to make sure that your headphones don’t get too loud.

To view the decibel level, you’ll first need to add the “Hearing” widget to Control Centre. You can do this by going to the Control Centre menu within the Settings app. Once you’ve added Hearing, the next time you swipe open Control Centre and select the newly added widget, you will see live a dB meter beneath the name of your headphones.

If you listen to only one podcast this week then it should be the latest episode of Talking Politics featuring the great documentary film-maker Adam Curtis. I recommend listening to the entire episode, the bit at the 29 minutes was of particular interest as he explores the modern Internet, whether online advertising can possibly work, and how peculiar it is that advertising is no longer an add-on to the economy but central to it. Curtis also likens mining ‘Big Data’ for hidden patterns and inferring causality to the way in which conspiracy theories work. This seems obvious in hindsight. Mind blown. If 48 minutes isn’t enough, he also delves deeper into a lot of the material covered in the podcast in his new BBC documentary series Can’t Get You Out of My Head, which I also thoroughly recommend.

I left school in the summer of 2001 and to help jumpstart my journey into further education, I used some money gifted to me by my grandparents to buy a G3 Snow iMac. Already a bit of a geek, I knew enough about Macs to know that they were now capable of running OS X, which was Unix based. This meant I could use it do geeky things like running Apache and PHP, and also write up college homework in Microsoft Office. Buying an G3 iMac in the summer of 2001 was also exceptionally poor timing because weeks later Apple would release an updated G4 model, which ran Mac OS X much more smoothly.

My early memories of Mac OS X were mainly of disappointment. Here was an exceedingly beautiful and stable operating system, but it was frustratingly slow. It would take many minutes to boot up, and simple tasks like opening a pulldown menu or resizing a window would cause it to chug. Until I received my free 10.1 upgrade from John Lewis, it was unusable, and so I stuck with MacOS 9.

After installing 10.1 I did however start using Mac OS X as my main system. I recently found some old screenshots from that era, and so I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the applications I was using 20 years ago. I’m not sure of the exact dates but I believe they are all from either 10.0 or 10.1. The screenshots were taken by 16 year old me, so please forgive the embarrassing MSN Messenger friend lists and poorly written homework assignments.

Scouting around the screenshots, here’s what I was running in 2001:

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  Mac OS X 10.1

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  Mac OS X 10.1

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  Mac OS X 10.1

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  Mac OS X 10.1

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  Windows XP, reading about Mac OS X

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  macOS in 2021

Activity Monitor - Still something I use often to see how my system is performing. Thankfully now it looks a lot nicer.

Adobe Reader - An awful piece of software, which is thankfully no longer needed on the Mac these days. In 2001, I must have thought it necessary, despite the Preview app being bundled with the OS.

AOL - It was ugly, but it was one of the best unmetered dialup services in the UK at the time.

Clock - Early versions of OS X included a clock ‘widget’. This wasn’t an official widget like we have now, nor was it the HTML based widgets we would later see in Dashboard. It was simply an application with a non-rectangular window. Best of all, it was possible to customise how translucent the clock was - a novelty in 2001.

Fire - Before iChat, Fire was the app to use for accessing instant messaging platforms. ICQ, AIM, Yahoo - I was on all of them. The idea of instant messaging that emphasises online presence feels exceptionally dated now, since we are now always online.

iCab - Back in 2001 decent web browsers were difficult to come by. There was no Safari yet. Internet Explorer was pretty good, and had the ability to customise its colour scheme to match the iMac being used.  There was also Mozilla, which was starting to become a usable alternative to IE, but was still extremely slow. iCab was the third option and the only one that really felt “OS X native”.  Astonishingly iCab is still available for download in 2021.

iTunes - The first of Apple consumer high quality consumer oriented software that later included the likes of iPhoto and GarageBand. iTunes was in of itself a reason to own a Mac. It made the process of ripping and burning CDs painless. I remember the novel feeling of being able to browse the web while iTunes was burning a CD, thanks to Mac OS X’s ability to multitask. On Windows ME and 98 (XP had not been released yet) this wasn’t possible. Burning a CD would make the entire computer unresponsive. iTunes came in to its own with the release of the iPod, which I was lucky enough to own early on too.

MSN Messenger - More commonly known as simply ‘MSN’, it was the centre of my social life from the age of 13. I would use it to chat to friends after school or to random people I’d added who I’d met on forums. I wonder if today we would be concerned if a 16 year old was talking to random people they’ve met online, but for me it was fine. At 16, I felt like I was an adult!

Microsoft Office - I purchased the full version of ‘Office X’ which included Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. It was clearly a straight port from the classic MacOS version, and was using some kind of translation layer to translate Windows code to Mac code. I remember writing Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code to make full on Windows windows appear. The headline feature for Word was non-contiguous selection.

Palm Desktop - This one really sums up 2001. Back then we had PDAs. My phone was a Motorola T191. If you wanted to have more than just a handful of phone numbers in your pocket, you needed a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). I would later upgrade my Palm IIIe to a Microsoft Pocket PC.

Stickies - The venerable Post-it note app. Enough said.

Terminal - I used to use this for learning basic Linux commands, and configuring the likes of PHP, Apache and MySQL. Oh, and browsing the web in Lynx, apparently.

Windows Media Player - Steaming audio or video on the web was a horrible experience in 2001. Partly due to limited bandwidth, but also because there were multiple competing formats. Apple would push QuickTime. Microsoft would insist on you installing Windows Media Player, and everyone else would use RealPlayer. Windows Media Player for the Mac wasn’t the full-on media management solution it was on Windows, but merely a way to playback files encrypted using Microsoft’s DRM.

After 20 years, I really think Apple deserve enormous credit for not screwing up macOS. Despite some missteps, on the whole they’ve keep modernising it without any major regressions. If you were to sit someone from 2001 down in front of the latest version of the operating system in 2021, they would find their way around just fine. Yet it doesn’t feel old. Contrast this to Windows, which has had multiple makeovers and seems to be less of a priority for Microsoft these days, doesn’t support non-modal dialogs, and still has screens that date back to Windows XP. Not many operating systems can claim to be referenced in a U2 song either. After all these years, macOS is still the only desktop operating system that feels like it’s made for users, rather than IT administrators or developers. Little things like being able to drag a project folder to the dock for the duration of that project in order to have easy access to all the related files, the ability to operate a background window without bringing it to the foreground, and best of all, the varied ecosystem of indie software.

Happy Birthday Mac OS X, here’s to 20 more years!

Global investment bank Citigroup has banned work video calls on Fridays in an attempt to help employees break free from the “relentlessness of the pandemic workday”.

Jane Fraser, Citi’s new chief executive, told staff that the last day of the working week would be known as “Zoom-free Fridays”.

This is in the context of what appears to be an unhealthy workaholic culture over at Citigroup, but it’s still interesting to see more and more people coming to the view that video calls aren’t always the right form of communication.

Here’s The Verge’s Nilay Patel:

https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1371873243045433344

Once it is safe to go back to the office, I can see myself and others opting to go in for meetings once or twice a week, while remaining at home the rest of the time to get work done. In this world video calls become increasingly unnecessary. It also sets a clear boundary between discussing getting work done, and actually getting work done, which might be quite illuminating.

I_mage courtesy of dbase.com_

Apple is ditching the word ‘Subscribe’ as a means to describe the act of telling your favourite podcast player to keep checking a particular feed and have the latest episode available at a moment’s notice. Instead it will use “Follow”, which seems to make a lot more sense as a way represent passively consuming a feed at no cost. Subscribe is one of those words that predates podcasts, I remember “subscribing” to newsgroups as a teenager and worrying that my parents were going to receive a bill for it. They never did.

My bet is the etymology comes from email mailing lists, where I think the word subscribe still makes sense. Funnily enough, in 2021 email mailing lists are having something of a renaissance. With paid newsletters being in, and advertising being out, I also expect this change will be because Apple will be pushing paid podcasts, where the word subscribe does make sense.

That’s me (right) - want your logo on display?

I am looking for ways to monetise my running.  I usually run 5 kilometres a couple of times during the week and a longer 10 mile (16.10K) run at the weekend. This is a heavy time investment. The 5K runs take between 22 and 30 minutes depending on the weather, my energy levels and the incline of the route. Similarly, the 10 mile run takes usually takes around 1 hour and 26 minutes from my Sunday. This may seem like a small slice of the weekend, but I have to make sure I get up extra early and eat a good breakfast and then wait for a couple of hours before I’m ready to start pounding the pavement. On my return, I need a shower, followed by a long recovery period which involves eating again and then sitting still for a few hours. There are other costs too; a decent pair of running shoes costs between £100 and £120, and only last a year. I could pay less, but I like to support smaller, specialist running shops rather than the likes of Sports Direct. I also need shoes that offer strong support due to the weird way I run which increases the price still. Not forgetting too the copious amount of pasta and other carbohydrates I have to consume. Running costs more than you’d think.

All this has led me to the conclusion that I need to find a way to earn some extra cash from my running.

This post is of course, not at all serious. No, I am not looking for anyone to pay me to do the thing I enjoy. Just as I wouldn’t expect to be paid to go climbing, canoeing, golfing, or to watch a film at the cinema. It’s fine to have an interest that you don’t make money from. I never expect to make money from this blog. It is something I do because I enjoy it. It’s a hobby. I won’t go as far as to say I should be paying you to read it, but I do expect to pay a small amount for WordPress hosting, and to put a few hours a week into writing content.

The reason I’m writing this is because I’ve noticed a theme in various podcasts, blogs and YouTube channels that I’ve come across recently that some creators who are doing the thing they love and not as their sole means of income are expressing their dissatisfaction at not being able to monetise what is essentially a hobby. I use the term “hobby” not in a derogatory sense - indeed the fact that many creators are not a full on professionals is what gives some of my favourite podcasts and YouTube channels their charm.

Of course I’m not saying creators shouldn’t try to make money, and some professionals will of course rely on their creative output as their main source of income. For many of us however, maybe a hobby is just fine? We can’t all be The Verge. Just I’m never going to be competing at running with Mo Farah, not everyone will end up as successful as the podcast ATP.

If you enjoy the process of creating, and giving something away to an audience, then maybe that’s payment enough?

Apple’s new M1 Macs use the same ‘always-on’ processor technology that mobile devices have been using for years. It has always been imperative that a mobile phone must be permanently sitting and listening, waiting for a call or message to come in, so it can sound the ringtone. Modern tablets such as the iPad evolved from this line of thinking and so are naturally always-on too.

Laptops and Desktops have however have never taken this route. Recent versions of Windows and macOS will wake up periodically to perform certain tasks, or in response network events, but I’ve never noticed them doing much in realtime.

I was surprised then to notice that my new M1 MacBook, while apparently asleep, was busy running rules on incoming mail seconds after it had arrived. My phone buzzes as a new email is received, and I open the mail app on my phone to see the message has been flagged, moved or whatever else I have set as a rule on my Mac. This would happen with my old 2013 MacBook, but the rules would only run every few hours. It’s not a bug as far as I can tell, as the battery life when the MacBook is sleeping is still outstanding. I’m yet to explore how this works, or how much 3rd party developers can take advantage of this always-on state, but the possibility of having powerful devices, which aren’t locked down in the same way as iPads and iPhones, performing useful tasks in near realtime while using hardly any battery, is pretty exciting.

Update: As of macOS 11.3, Apple has restored hibernation support to M1 Macs. Hibernation mode is a lower power state Mac laptops go into after being asleep for around 3 hours. I’ve not noticed any difference in behaviour yet, let me know about your experience in the comments.

Researchers at Stanford have identified four causes of what they call “Zoom fatigue”. They all resonate with me as someone who has a lot of online meetings,. (Though I’m not keen on the attempt to turn “Zoom” into a generic noun!)

I recommend reading the article in full, but the four causes boil down to excessive eye contact, always seeing yourself, reduced mobility, and higher cognitive load due to the fact it’s difficult to interpret body language. The solutions offered range from suggestions on how conference software could be adapted to taking regular “audio only” breaks.

Seeing people is great, and a necessary part of working together, but once the the initial greetings are done, it adds little value most of time, in my experience at least. Thankfully Microsoft Teams lets you hide other people’s video as well as your own. Back when I used to work in the office, I would often pace up and down while on calls with clients, and studies have shown we are more intelligent and creative when we’re moving. Now though, as the Stanford team point out, we are all sat in chairs, staring at each other directly in the eyes all day.

There is no doubt that video is useful when you’re meeting people for the first time and trying to form a connection with them, or for calls where you really want to gauge the other person’s true feelings about something. But for meetings that require excessive brainpower or creativity, it’s probably worth switching off video and going for a walk.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio.

I’ve been a paid LastPass subscriber for over 5 years, and over that time it has become a critical part of both my professional and home workflows. The problem is the issues it had 5 years ago are still problems now. The product seemingly hasn’t moved forward much at all. LastPass has a fundamental misunderstanding of basic User Interface design principals. It looks awful and is difficult to use. Each app behaves differently on different platforms, and features are shoehorned in with little regard to the expected user workflow. How many times have I searched for a site, copied the username, only to have to search for the site again in order to copy the password. Errors are frequent, when generating a new password I always end up pasting it into a text editor temporarily in case LastPass fails to save it. It’s also incredibly slow, even on 2020 Intel i5 processor.

I mention this because I recently helped a friend migrate from LastPass’s free offering to Apple’s iCloud Keychain. Compared so LastPass, iCloud is so much nicer to user. I understand LastPass are at a disadvantage in trying to make their product fit into the ecosystems of Apple and Google, but it made me think about switching. Now Apple have made an official way to access iCloud passwords on Windows, I’m seriously thinking about switching. To their credit LastPass do make it easy to get a CSV export of all your data.

What’s your experience with iCloud Keychain? Is it worth switching to from LastPass Premium?

Chromium detects how much system memory is available and utilizes enough of that memory to optimize the rendering experience. When other apps or services require system memory, Chromium gives up memory to those processes. Chromium tunes Teams memory usage on an ongoing basis in order to optimize Teams performance without impacting anything else currently running.
…
When computers have more memory, Teams will use that memory. In systems where memory is scarce, Teams will use less.

Put simply, Chrome is taking the idea that ‘empty RAM is wasted RAM’, and running with it. The article goes on to link to the specific documentation from the Chromium project.

This reminds me of when Windows Vista came out, complete with a sidebar full of widgets. One of the default widgets showed CPU and RAM usage. At the time I was working in my local computer retailer, and remember customers being shocked that even with no applications running, Windows Vista was often using 40% of the available RAM, even on higher spec’d machines. Of course Windows was doing a smart thing by pre-loading applications likely to be used into memory so they could be launched faster, and so it was nothing to worry about.

Chrome’s philosophy has long been that it is an operating system for the web - it even has its own task manager. So it makes sense from that perspective to grab as much memory as possible, and use it to speed things up for users. For users who spend most of their day inside Chrome, it’s probably doing them a favour. The problem is that these days we often end up running multiple instances of Chrome or Chromium derived apps like Slack or Teams competing alongside each other for system resources.

As Matt shows, the difference between Safari isn’t always that much, but the important thing to remember is that Chrome’s memory usage will depend on how much overall memory your system has available.

Some advanced users have been reporting an overuse of the SSD for writing and reading data on the newly-released Macs with M1, Apple’s first computer chip based on ARM architecture. The issue could eventually affect the lifespan of the internal SSD used in M1 Macs — not to mention the machine itself.

My betting is on this being a bug in the software being used to measure SSD usage (a utility called smartmontools that can be installed via Homebrew). SSD usage seems like something that should be pretty easy to automate testing for, and so for this to be a bug would be a major omission from Apple’s test suite. Not impossible of course.

Riccardo Mori has written a thoroughly enjoyable critique of the the latest macOS user interface design. This passage in particular made me laugh:

The Mac’s user interface is undergoing plastic surgery by the hand of surgeons who have studied on iOS books. The result is pretty much the same as when you see a favourite celebrity after a procedure. They look ‘younger’ but there’s also something weird about their appearance. Their traits have changed a bit. In certain cases you almost fail to recognise the person at first glance.

I’ve not upgraded my aging 2013 MacBook Air just yet, but I’ve experienced Big Sur when briefly using my girlfriend’s laptop. I agree there is something that feels slightly ‘off’ about the new design. Even small details, like the fact that the new control centre glyph looks like a set of miniature switches - which are a UI components themselves. Whether the new UI will grown on me as iOS 7’s did (I was an iOS 6 holdout for many months) will depend on how much Apple refine the new look over the coming months a years, as they did with iOS. Perhaps my theory will one day hold true, that Big Sur’s big surprise is that it will support touch screens after all.

My fondest memories of Mac OS X was probably Puma. This was a free updated related after 10.0’s abysmal stability and performance problems. I remember picking it up for free from John Lewis. (In lieu of an Apple Store - there were none in the UK at the time - they were the one of the few places to get such things.) Back then Mac OS X seemed like a new frontier in user interface design. Here is what 16 year old me’s desktop looked like in 2002:

The Fitness app in 2016 vs 2021

Lee asks Are Apple ruining user experience to promote their own services? - While using the Fitness app earlier today it occurred to me that the answer is most definitely yes! The current incarnation of the Fitness app (formally known as Activity) now squashes in Activity History, current day, workout lists, awards, and the recently added trends functionality into a single tab. Only Sharing and their brand new premium service, Fitness+ get their own tab, and the cynic in me thinks even Sharing is only there because it helps sell Apple Watches to friends and family.

Really, Fitness+ should be its own app, but that would make it easy to delete and forget about. Instead, Apple who were once leaders in user interface design (so much that they call it human interface), are using an entire tab (one whole third of the total tabs) to show a service many people (I’d wager most) won’t use. The original app was a joy to use, but the latest one just feels crowded. I hope Apple can find a way to promote services without lowering their famous user experience standards.

Asking it [Apple] to remove a show from its directory is like asking it to make a specific webpage inaccessible in Safari — is that something people want? Podcasting has, so far, avoided crowning one platform as king, meaning anyone, both on the creator and business side, can enter the space and possibly find success in it. That’s what makes podcasting great, even if it requires unclear answers on moderation.

The web browser analogy is close - podcasts are just audio files uploaded to web servers - but there’s a key difference. Apple (or any company) deciding to not include a podcast in its directory is not the same as blocking its URL outright. It is more akin to Google not showing certain web pages in its search results (which it does all the time, especially in the EU). This is very different to your browser refusing to load a particular web address because the browser maker has decided it doesn’t think you should see the content.

Likewise, in the Apple’s Podcasts app, you can either search a directory to find a show, or enter its feed URL manually. (Any app that doesn’t support adding feeds manually is arguably not a podcast app - I’m looking at you Spotify.) Adding a podcast by URL is how most paid podcasts work, and is the podcast equivalent of typing https://nodejs.org instead of Googling NodeJS.

For better or worse I can see Apple expanding its moderation role for its podcast directory, but just as with the web, eager listeners will always be able to find shows from some other source and enter the URL manually. This is an inherent strength of podcasting, which unlike Twitter and YouTube, is not subject to the same algorithmic recommendation spirals.

The BBC has started using its own custom Top Level Domain (TLD). The entire BBC Online offering is available at https://the.bbc [Update March 2022 - this link no longer works, so I’ve updated it with an archive.org link]. Many large corporations such as Apple and T.K. Maxx own their own TLD, which were rumoured to cost around $185,000.

Currently the site doesn’t seem to have officially switched as some components such as video and sign-in appear to be broken, and the site’s canonical URL is still set to use the old domain. However the fact that someone has configured the new one along with its own TLS certificate might be a sign that the Beeb is thinking of switching from their iconic bbc.co.uk address.

I suspect for many Internet users of a certain age, the web address http://www.bbc.co.uk was one of the very first they diligently typed into their computer back in the late nineties. The BBC’s use of .co.uk paved the way for this TLD to become the de facto for UK-based companies. To switch now may well commence the beginning of the end for .co.uk being the standard for companies in the UK. While not every company can afford the fee for their own TLD, there are now many others, from .mortgage to .furniture to choose from. The problem is few well-known brands actually use them. Perhaps this might change soon.

For me there is something about newer TLDs that make them less likely to stand out as web site addresses. If I saw weather.bbc or visit.london written somewhere, I wouldn’t necessarily think to visit them in a web browser, whereas anything ending in .com or .co.uk etc. is obviously a web address.

Great post by Greg about muscle memory and firing up the Twitter app as a habit, something I have struggled with (and continue to do so). I made the …

Twitter Muscle Memory (Via Lee)

Pleased to see more and more people coming round to this view. As I wrote in January, we all need to daydream a bit more!

You don’t need to spend lots to be productive.

My girlfriend and I are currently trying to move to a bigger house, but with a global pandemic it has been a slow process. Hence we are currently both working from our 1 bedroom flat and are likely to continue this way for the next few months. Both our jobs involve lots of online calls, and so after a many weeks sitting uncomfortably at opposite ends of the dining room table I decided there must be a better way. For 5’ 11" me the table was uncomfortable, even if my shorter girlfriend felt it was fine for her. Really though, being within earshot each other all day was starting to grate on us both. With her piano taking up a sizeable chunk of our living room, there was no space for a desk anywhere else.

So over the past few weeks I set about making the working day more productive and ergonomic. Astonishingly, for about £70 I was able to get a foldable desk and laptop stand from Amazon.

While there are lots of foldable desks available online, many of them are either too wide or didn’t have the depth required for comfortable typing. Eventually I found one that has enough space for the laptop stand, keyboard and all-important wrist rest. These, along with my company issued Dell XPS 9500 and existing Apple Magic Keyboard, Microsoft ergonomic mouse and basic office chair have helped increase my productivity and comfort no end. (I recommended the programme Magic Utilities for getting Apple’s Magic Keyboard to work with Windows.) I set the desk up in the corridor, and at the end of the day, I simply fold away the desk and the space is regained.

Hopefully once we’ve moved I will be able to have a nicer desk and multiple monitor setup, but for now this inexpensive solution that cost a little over £70 (and would work with a cheap £10 keyboard and mouse if you don’t already have them) has been a valuable pandemic investment. Contrast this with the narrative from some tech podcasters and bloggers who would have you think that you need to spend lots of money to be productive. You really don’t.

I can be a perfectionist when it comes to software, and one thing that bugs me when using Siri timers is the fact that the time taken for Siri to understand me is added on to the timer duration.

Frequently I will start a timer using the “Hey Siri” wake word, either using my Apple Watch or iPhone. Depending on where I am in the house and general WiFi signal, the time it takes for Siri to respond can range from a few seconds to 10 or more.

From the time between saying “Hey Siri” and completing the sentence “Set a timer for 5 minutes.” the device will upload the audio to a server, which will use a set of speech-to-text machine learning models to predict the words said. It will then use a natural language model to classify this text into an intent, deriving meaning from the sentence.

In many cases, this results in my 5 minute timer not going off 5 minutes after I decided I wanted to start a timer, but 5 minutes and 7 seconds after.

It doesn’t have to be this way however. The device presumably knows the exact time it successfully detected a “Hey Siri” command (a complex set of systems in their own right), and so it could simply deduct this from the requested timer duration. If Siri takes 7 seconds to figure out what I meant, then my 5 minute timer becomes a 4 minutes and 53 seconds timer.

A small request, but if any company could pay attention to small features like this, it’s Apple.

Since the days of Geocities I remember it being common for web hosts to have clauses in their Terms of Service that prohibit certain content. In fact, here is a snippet from the Geocities TOS in 2000:

You agree to not use the Service to: a. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous**[sic]**, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;

Geocities, 2000

Put simply, Donald Trump would have been banned from Geocities too. Of course AWS is a far cry from Geocities, and in 2021 the online world is far more entangled with the offline that it was in the year 2000. However, I still think important to understand that web hosts not wanting to host certain content is nothing new.

This is where the concept of Net Neutrality is important. While I think it’s fine for AWS to not want to host certain content, it would be a sad day for the Internet if ISPs could choose not to carry traffic for sites they find objectionable.

Is a console…?

I was recently listening to John Gruber and Rene Ritchie speaking on an episode of The Talk Show. They both make the argument that by calling an iOS device a console, it somehow justifies Apple’s position that the only way to load software onto it should be via their App Store. Have a listen. While I have a huge amount of respect for both John and Rene, I think this is a poor take. John even admitted that this was probably his most controversial take of 2020, and I’m not surprised.

Let’s have a look at the definition of the word “console” from the Oxford American English Dictionary, courtesy of Apple’s own dictionary app:

As you can see, none of these definitions bring to mind a device that anyone could sincerely claim encapsulates an iPad or an iPhone. The definition of a console is not “A locked-down computing device.”

Definitions aside, there is a point to be made that many people seem to find it acceptable that games consoles are closed ecosystems but have a problem when it comes to smartphones and tablets.

I believe this disparity is for two reasons:

1. Games console hardware is subsidised by charging more for software. There’s a reason games consoles are more popular than gaming PCs, yet PC games have traditionally been sold at cheaper prices than their console counterparts. Many more people can afford to buy the latest Xbox because it is likely sold at cost, or even as a loss-lead. The manufacturer will hope to make up for lost profit by selling games later on. (See razor-blade economics.) While this method of selling a product is frustrating in the case of printers and ink cartridges, it turns out that many people don’t mind when they get a high performance gaming computer as part of the bargain. My bet is that because buying games is something you opt into, rather than being forced into, you don’t feel so cheated by having to pay a premium for the software. (Unlike razors and ink cartridges, you never feel like you need to buy a new game to keep your games console working.) Apple on the other hand makes enormous amounts of margin on each device sale and takes a cut of all software sold through the store. It may be legal and it may be in the spirit of capitalism, but that doesn’t mean it won’t rub customers the wrong way.
2. Apple has long marketed iOS devices as being more than mere handsets or consoles. As long ago as 2016, Apple’s then marketing chief Phil Schiller noted that there was a huge market for the iPad in people switching from old Windows PCs. In a 2017 iPad advertisement they used the slogan “What is a computer?”. Inferring that the iPad, while not looking like a traditional laptop, is in fact a powerful computer. In one scene a boy is sat outside on his iPad when his mum asks What are you doing on your computer? The boy replies by asking What’s a computer? He does not say Actually Mum it’s a console, not a computer. Even The Verge wrote the headline in 2018 Apple really wants you to think the iPad Pro is a computer. More recent commercials have used wordplay such as Your next computer is not a computer. When introducing the iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs noted that it ran OS X with “desktop class” software and that Safari could show the full web, not the “baby Internet”. Contrary to what Ritchie said on The Talk Show, Steve Jobs absolutely did not introduce the iPhone as a console. (A search of 2007 iPhone keynote transcript for the word returns zero results*.) Over the years, Apple has set the expectation that iOS devices should be on par with real computers, and for many, that means freedom to install software from any source you want.

While I’m not advocating Apple open up their devices to software from anywhere, I do think it’s right that the pros and cons are properly framed. There are benefits just as there are drawbacks. My view is that for the iPad in particular to evolve, it must be a device in which you can not only play the latest chart topping game, but also make the next one.

* Update 11/01/2021: My mistake. Steve Jobs did actually mention games consoles during the 2007 iPhone keynote alongside digital cameras, MP3 Players and PCs. He talks about their comparative worldwide unit sales. What’s interesting is that all of the product categories in the chart he shows (below) have in 2021 either been entirely replaced, or replaced in-part by iOS devices, except arguably the PC. Regardless, it’s clear he is in no way calling the iPhone a console.

While I am inclined to agree - native software can often be superior to web software, it really depends on the UI framework being used. Outlook for Windows has a codebase that dates back to at least 1997, and so is likely using the Microsoft Foundation Classes, which themselves date back to 1992. Age itself is not the issue - Apple’s own Cocoa framework derives much from early 90s NeXTSTEP technologies. The difference is Apple have constantly updated Cocoa, whereas Microsoft have instead introduced a series of new frameworks that never took off (here, here and here) and using them would have meant rewriting much of the Outlook codebase. This means the latest version of Outlook in 2021 still operates very much like a piece of software from the mid-2000s. Searching a few thousand emails causes Outlook to stop responding on a latest generate Intel i7.

So given where Microsoft are, with no decent, modern and mature UI framework for Windows, what are the Outlook team supposed to do? Their biggest competitors are Gmail, Slack and Microsoft’s own Teams - all web apps. They could spend the next 3 years rewriting the native app in a new UI framework, or they could utilise the already feature rich web app and spend the next 3 years building competitive features. Chromium based apps are also slow, but they’re faster than a poorly written native apps. It’s a crappy situation, but I think they’ve made a pragmatic choice.

Of course if Outlook were Mac-only then it would be a no-brainier. The difficult choice would be between AppKit and UIKit.

I think back to before I had a smartphone. I would sit at a bus stop waiting and just think. 20 minutes could go by where I would often do nothing except listen to music and watch the world go by. Of course there would be often be times when I had a book, magazine, or a game of snake to help pass the time - but I certainly let my mind wander more than I do now.

With that in mind, I recently made a few changes to my iPhone setup that I have so far found to be beneficial to my overall mood and happiness levels:

Delete News apps: The media always makes the world seem worse that it really is. If a plane lands successfully we don’t consider it news. If a plane crashes, then it’s news. Not having my default cure for boredom being to pick up my phone and open The Guardian or BBC News has freed my mind to think about more worthwhile things. Reading the news and being aware of current events is an important and many would say an essential aspect to living in a democracy, but reading it constantly is not necessary.

Fewer Podcasts: Podcasts are a wonderful form of entertainment. They are the perfect for introverts: conversation with no response required. I find myself listening to them when I’m walking, running, doing household and garden chores, and even when falling asleep. Yet I’ve recently started to realise that this isn’t a necessarily a good thing, and reading this recent post helped me solidify the thought. While some podcasts can be informative, and pure entertainment is important, there’s only so much I need. I’ve recently tried to just ‘do nothing’ as I do the washing up or go for a walk, and while it initially felt strange, I have now actually started to enjoyed it. I won’t be going cold turkey: 10 mile runs without any distraction are not on the cards just yet.

Separate business email: About a month ago I was sitting down to relax at the end of a long day and my phone pinged. It was an email from my gas and electricity company telling me that my bill had increased three-fold. It made me think how odd it was that my utility company is able to reach me at 10pm at night. Thankfully days later I found out that the increase was simply because I’d been bit lax with submitting my meter readings and they’d made a poor estimate, but nevertheless it spurred me into taking action to prevent such intrusions happening again. I separated out business from personal email, and not just my work and personal email (those were of course already separated) - I’ve setup separate accounts for my private ‘business’ related subjects. Anything to do with my property, utilities, TV Licence, car etc. goes to the ‘business’ account. Anything fun and relaxing - mainly emails from family and friends and newsletters go to the personal account. Only the personal account is on my phone. I check my business account two or three times a day, and times of my choosing. Sometimes I don’t check it for days, and I’m much happier for it.

Social Media: I’ve written about this before so I won’t belabour the point. Much like deleting News apps from my phone helped rein in the ‘default’ behaviour of reading the news when bored, deleting social media apps from my phone did the same. I found a nice trick that allows me to incorporate a few Twitter accounts into my RSS feeds. Without the temptation to ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ and with no algorithm recommending content in attempt to try and increase my engagement, I find I get the benefits of Twitter (access to knowledge and opinions I wouldn’t have otherwise had) but without many of the downsides (which are well documented).

Those are my tweaks for 2021 and they won’t of course work for everyone. There are no doubt times when we need to be distracted and it’s good for our mental health. In those cases, I’m going to try reading books, listening to audiobooks or even getting back into coding. Let me know if you have tried any of the above or have any other recommendations.

Regulation,  Regulation, Regulation

The Internet is about to get more regulated, and it’s long overdue. Whether it will be done right is still to be seen. Recent attempts (such as EU cookie banners) have missed the mark and not achieved anything except ruining the web experience for everyone. The UK Government is set to introduce an “online harms” bill which, on the face of it looks positive: an internet with less online harm has to be much better than the current state of social media right now. However I have two concerns. One being that an ever-widening definition of “harm” might lead to overzealous censorship, though the list of harms it seeks to cover seems very reasonable. The second is the burden placed on platforms. We saw with GDPR that some US sites (such as the LA Times) simply blocked access to EU visitors as dealing with GDPR wasn’t worth their effort. California later implemented its own regulation similar to GDPR which meant many US sites ended up relenting and complied with GDPR. Might the same happen here? Additionally, would a company like Twitter have been able to flourish with the burden of huge fines for not policing content? If not (and I think likely not); will this legislation end up cementing the place of the current social media platforms as gatekeepers, making it harder for startups to compete? Will we simply see groups who get banned from the major platforms move to less centralised systems? $10/month gets you a Linux box from Linode, or for those with a decent uplink, a Raspberry Pi, either of those running Discourse could suffice as a small scale alternative to the big platforms. What happens then? Are hosting companies and ISPs also responsible for enforcing moderation? While I think it’s a good that the Government are trying to solve the problems we face online, there is also the law of unintended consequences.

The iPad Will Be Reinvented

In 2020 Apple really pushed the boundaries of what we can expect from a laptop in terms of performance. All of a sudden we have laptops with 20-hour battery life that are faster than even most high-end Intel laptops. At the same time, Apple neglected to significantly update the iPad line in 2020, with only slightly faster processes and new colours coming to the midrange, and a LIDAR sensor being added to the top of the line iPad Pro. This leaves the iPad in a weird position - unless you need the Apple Pencil for drawing - there is no longer big productivity draw. It used to be an iPad with a keyboard dock and could get you a fast, ultraportable laptop-like device with amazing battery life. Part of my disappointment with the iPad over the past 10 years is that what stated out as the next thing in computing has really gone nowhere - it’s simply evolved to become a laptop with a touchscreen. Now that actual laptops have many of the same benefits of the iPad but without the draconian App Store restrictions, where does this leave the iPad? As a sofa-based content consumption device it makes sense, but people aren’t buying £770 tablets for Facebook and Netflix. Apple must surely see this, and so I am expecting something at the high end that is a hybrid of a Mac and an iPad. Something with the elegance and convenience of an iPad, but with the power of a proper laptop.

GPT-3 Style Language Models Will Challenge the Media

I have only had access to GPT-3 for a few weeks, but already I am amazed by it. The biggest surprise to me was that you don’t need to train it with much of your own data, you simply give it a prompt such as “Summarise the following text for a 10 year old” or provide it with a list, and it will continue the list. There are many exciting and positive applications of this technology, but while Open AI, the company behind GPT-3 is being ultra-responsible by only allowing access via an API key (that can be shut off in the case of misuse), and is providing developers with an avenue to report potentially dangerous output, it is only a matter of time before someone else who is not as conscientious will invent something similar to GPT-3. This could exacerbate problems we already see in online media at the moment. Already the web is full of numerous “news sites” that purport to be providing journalism, but are in fact thinly vailed opinion pieces short on facts. If these sites could instead churn out content with the click of a button, it will make the problem of fake news even worse. It will be up to our already struggling media sector to resist the temptation to join the race for our attention with clickbait headlines, and instead double-down on the reporting of objective truth. I expect questions about how such media is paid for, and who has access to it to become even more apparent in 2021. Paywalls for example are good idea in some respects, as they do not incentivise content written purely to capture more page views (ad impressions), but they also leave the majority outside of the paywall with the lower quality content. Thankfully in the UK we have the BBC, but even that is under threat. While I have faith that most will have the critical thinking skills not to be taken in by fake news (AI generated or not), we have seen in recent years that it can be very easy to be fooled - especially when it’s something you’re inclined to agree with anyway.

Those are just a few topics I think many of us will give thought to in 2021. Depending on how the pandemic plays out, I’m sure there will be many, many others too. With vaccine rollouts underway, let’s hope we can get back to some sense of normality soon. What do you think 2021 will bring? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve changed the domain of this site to be imarc.co.uk. I had originally gone with imarc.me when I started the site earlier this year, but over the summer I jotted down all the domains I own, their annual cost and divided that figure by 12 and realised I was spending more than I wanted to on domain names. I’ve had the .co.uk domain since 2002 and don’t plan on relinquishing it anytime soon, so I figured why not use it? Additionally, the old-school internet user in me still can’t help thinking that any domain not ending in .com, .net, .org or a country TLD isn’t a real domain (Readers who know their Internet history will know that .me stands for Montenegro, and is actually not a generic TLD, but it gets used like one). imarc.co.uk been home to many of my home pages before, including my own CMS at one point. Now it’s home to this blog. The old .me domain will eventually expire and be bought by a domain squatter, so please update your bookmarks/RSS reader. Ultimately, it’s unlikely anyone will notice as content is what really matters, but in my mind, the small things matter too.

Secondly, I’m retiring my old personal blog Lost in Logic. The purpose the site you are reading now was to start afresh and only post content I believe adds something to the nonstop deluge of technology commentary we find online everyday, whereas my older blog was holiday photos intermixed with album reviews with the odd gadget review thrown in. It wasn’t very focused. Moving it between various web hosts over the course of 10 years also took its toll - many of the images are broken in older posts. That said, it’s still fun to be able to look back so I will keep the site online at this new URL: https://archive.lostinlogic.wickens.org.uk (I have migrated a few recent posts over to iMarc as I think they fit its theme). Some of my favourite posts were:

• My history in mobile phones (2000 - 2012)
• How basic was iOS 3?
• Florida from the sky
• 10 years of the iPod

Thank you for reading to the end - wishing you all the best for 2021!

So is Chrome bad? My take is yes, probably, but not because of it’s auto-updater. The system slowness issue doesn’t appear to effect everyone, and may be an unintentional bug by either Google or Apple. Chrome is of course funded by advertising and so is likely using your browsing data in ways you might find creepy. With Microsoft Edge now being based on Chromium, I’m not sure why anyone would use Chrome in 2020. Edge supports the same plugins, renders pages the same and includes lots of easy-to-find privacy enhancing settings that are burried in Chrome, and no it doesn’t use KeyStone to manage its updates. If you haven’t already, I urge you to give Edge a try.

The right airport is a year old, the left one a few weeks.

I’ve had my AirPods Pro just shy of one year now. The left AirPod however was replaced a few weeks ago. I used them today for a couple of hours and noticed for the first time how much faster the battery drained on the older AirPod. 13%! What a difference a year makes. There could be other explanations of course, battery conditioning being the main one. (It is a common belief that our electronics are able to gauge how much battery power is remaining, however they cannot; they are only able to estimate how much power has been used and subtract that from the last known total capacity of the battery.) Additionally, we’ve only had the luxury of smart charging since September. The degradation won’t be as pronounced for people buying new AirPods today.

Album: Even in Exile

At this stage in his career, you could be forgiven for being tempted to pass on a solo album by James Dean Bradfield. It’s only the second such album from the Manic Street Preachers singer, but even after all this time it’s perhaps one of the best of his career, including his Manics work. He’s stated in interviews that being a solo album he didn’t have the pressure to write a hit single, and so could just go where his mind took him and indulge a wide range of influences. This is a formula that has worked in the past (their first number one single If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next was originally planned as a b-side) but yet so much of the latter Manics career seems to be trying too hard. By seemingly not trying, he has made a masterpiece. The album is fantastic, full of fresh and heavily prog influenced melodies. Inspired by Chilean activist Víctor Jara the lyrics penned by Patrick Jones are also beautiful and perfectly match the mood of the music.

Book: WOOL

It was released in 2011, but I only got round to reading it this year. It tells the story of a community who live underground a giant silo, in what appears to be a world where the air outside is poisonous. The silo is big enough support most human needs with farms, schools, its own police department and even a mayor. As the story unfolds, we the reader come to doubt the story that inhabitants have been told over the centuries. What really resonated with me while reading this during lockdown was the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped inside for fear of what you might breath in if you step outside. While the situation in 2020 isn’t anywhere near as bad as the events in WOOL, as I read it I couldn’t help feel that I couldn’t have timed it better. The sequels are also pretty good too, so worth picking up.

Podcast: Do You Love Us?

Manic Street Preachers are one of my favourite bands. So when this little podcast started in January seemingly out of nowhere I was pretty excited. Far from being a love in, the band are approached from the point of view of two non-fans and one mega fan. They then proceed to critically cover the entire Manic Street Preachers discography. Perfect for anyone looking to get into one of the best bands ever.

Gadget: Raspberry Pi

Being a Mac/iPhone user has its benefits, everything mostly just works - but it’s not very interesting. Early in in lockdown I ordered myself the latest Raspberry Pi, a £35 ARM computer. After adding a case, fan, HDMI cable and memory card, it was closer to £100 - but still not that expensive all things considered. Within days, I rekindled my love of messing about with computers. I gained a newfound respect for Linux, the free operating system that can do literally anything. I was amazed how much I remembered from my days as a developer. I soon had an AirPlay server up and running allowing me to beam music from my iPhone to my Sonos without having to bother with the frustrating Sonos app. I had an old portable hard drive and SMB network share acting as a NAS drive, PiHole blocking adverts across my entire network, and WireGuard acting as VPN so I can get the benefits of PiHole and access my files when I’m out of the house (not that I was leaving the house much during lockdown). I then moved on to playing about with nodeJS and Apache. For a while I’d been looking to learn a new server side technology, having been a .NET/C# developer many years ago, and so an open source stack that runs on a £35 computer was perfect. I can’t stress how cool it is to be able to take an idea, and a few hours later have something working. If coding is not your thing but games are, try RetroPie.

So that was my lockdown entertainment. What was yours?

Christmas in 2020 will obviously be very different for many people, but like many people at Christmas I find myself looking back to my childhood, as let’s be honest, that’s when Christmas is at it’s best isn’t it?

On the topic of looking back, here are two fantastic articles from The Register that are by no means new, but worth a read or reread if you find yourself with some spare time over the lull between Christmas and New Year.

Search engines we have known … before Google crushed them - charts the history and demise of the early search engines. AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, GoTo, all the names you may remember from Christmas past.

The inside story of the news website that saved the BBC - A detailed look at how BBC News Online started. Back then nobody even knew what a news website should look like or how people would use it. They really were blazing the trail.

This set me wondering whether domain names really matter that much these days? Obviously some people see value in them, much like some people see value in a personalised number plate for their car (Something I have never understood - but each to their own.). A memorable domain name such moonpig.com or comparethemarket.com is genuinely useful for people looking to find you online, whereas a bespoke vehicle number plate is there to satisfy the owner. How many successful businesses use generic, one-word domain names anyway? For a while British Gas advertised their online presence as www.house.co.uk, but these days it redirects to www.britishgas.co.uk. Clearly trying to associate a well known brand with a tangentially related word didn’t work out. The exception might be offering email services: your.name@cheese.ai would be pretty cool, and hey.com is an obvious recent example - but again I don’t think many people are that bothered about their email address these days. For my job I have to review a lot of CVs, and I’m often surprised how many people who are clearly very qualified, have been in the industry for a while, yet have an email address with gmail.com or hotmail.com. When a domain costs around £10 a year, it seems like a no-brainer to have your own domain for professional reasons - yet most people don’t.

So I’ve come to that conclusion that for most people domains do not matter. The web is now search-first. Gone are the days of meticulously typing http://www.bbc.co.uk into your web browser and smashing down with great satisfaction on the enter key; for most people, their browser either suggests the site or a Google search does instead. If domains don’t matter, maybe I should start registering random strings instead? mimcxsxuqibozfq.com is it!

I’d really like to see mobile operating systems make less of a fuss when you have “Do Not Disturb” switched on. While the feature is a useful one, having a banner across the home screen, or an omnipresent icon at the top of the watch face only seeks to signify that not wanting to be disturbed is an exceptional state, not the norm. The default mode is “Disturb Me”.

Instead, I wonder if the default should in fact be “Do Not Disturb” and that we should have to choose when we want notifications - with options to allow close friends and family to override the setting of course. If someone outside your close circle phones outside of your “Disturb Me” hours, Siri could take the call and inform them of when you’ll be available.

It is one of the most contentious aspects of video game playing – a debate where opposing sides literally cannot see each other’s perspective. When the Guardian ran an article asking why a large minority of game players invert the Y axis on their controls – meaning that they push their joypad’s thumb stick down to move upwards on the screen – the response was huge. Hundreds of comments vociferously arguing why axis inversion was the only way to navigate a game world, and hundreds more incredulously arguing the opposite.

I am one of those people who cannot play a game without inverting the Y axis. I struggled with early 2000’s classic TimeSplitters 2 because back then there was no systemwide setting to change the preference on PlayStation 2 (though I think the original Xbox had one). Why do I have such a preference? I can only think it’s because I used to play a lot of flight simulators, but will keenly await the results of the study.

Kudos to Apple for getting a replacement AirPod Pro out to me within three days of me reporting the fault. Without any notice, a single AirPod arrived at my door in this cute little box. My AirPods Pro had developed the known fault where one of them (in my case the left one) starts to make a rattling/cracking sound with movement. You can hear it when walking fast, and it’s downright horrible when running. I’d also noticed the noice cancellation becoming less efficient, though it was very subtle, I recall having to have the sound much louder in order to hear over traffic.

One tip, if you do get one AirPod replaced then you need to make it pair with your case and the remaining AirPod. To do this, I found I had to unpair the case from my phone, leave the AirPods in the case for a couple of hours while charging, and then go through the usual paring process. if I tried to pair before leaving them for a few hours, they just got stuck with a flashing amber light.

So great service from Apple, but I wish they’d just offered to replace both earbuds. It seems likely at some point in the future my right AirPod Pro is going to have the same issue, but for now they are back in business and Apple’s 2-year warranty programme will take me through to January 2022.

I don’t use CRM Systems on a daily basis, but I have had to work on products that integrate with them. Salesforce is far easier to use and develop for than Microsoft Dynamics, so I think this deal could bode well for Slack users.

It’s crazy to see the British tabloids egging people on in trying and find loopholes in the UK Government’s Coronavirus restrictions. A better headline would have been “Ignore lightweight Agriculture Minister George Eustice, and keep to the spirit of the rules. Viruses don’t care about your intent, technicalities, or what the Government says”. Then again, there’s a reason why I didn’t go into journalism.

While on the face of it, Productivity Score does sound somewhat Orwellian, I think this is down to poor naming. What it really seems to be is a measure of how people use various Microsoft products. If it helps companies measure their ROI on Office 365 and respects privacy, then so be it. While it’s possible some gullible manager somewhere might equate software usage to productivity, I have faith that in most organisations this will not be the prevailing view. Productivity is all about efficiency of work produced, and is something that evening leading economists struggle to grapple with. Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes in a modern workplace will tell you that simply having conference calls and creating Powerpoint presentations does not equate to being productive. Calls, emails, spreadsheets and whatever else Productivity Score measures are byproducts of productivity, not evidence of it.

For many, especially those who listen to commercial radio, this is probably nothing new. The idea of a record label paying to get their acts in front of more listeners is a pretty standard affair. However, the idea these ads might be sold to customers as a personalised recommendations seems creepy to me. I hope they are clearly labelled as ads, even if the artist having paid for promotion is only one of many inputs into the algorithm that ultimately produces the recommendation.

I never really got on with Spotify’s user interface, but I do use Apple Music due to its Siri and Apple Watch integration. The recommendations seem to be very US centric and can be very hit and miss. I’ve found a couple of new artists via Apple Music, but mostly I find most of my new music via 6 Music. I can’t see Apple selling out like this.

Employees who continue working from home after the pandemic should be taxed for the privilege, with the proceeds used to help lower-paid workers, according to a new report. Economists at Deutsche Bank have proposed making staff pay a 5% tax for each day they choose to work remotely. They argue it would leave the average employee no worse off because of savings made by not commuting and not buying lunch on-the-go and fewer purchases of work clothing. Alternatively, the report suggests the tax could be paid by employers who do not provide their workforce with a permanent desk.

While I agree that there is a desperate need to rebalance the economy and ensure that essential workers who often cannot work from home are compensated in such a way that recognises how utterly essential their work actually is, it does seem somewhat shortsighted to me that you would penalise people for being productive at home while also being kinder to the planet and not commuting. For one, buying fewer clothes is a good thing for the planet, though I think most people will find other excuses to buy new clothes.

Many office workers do not buy expensive takeaway food every day as the article suggests. Anecdotally, when we were at the office, I noticed a lot of my colleagues used to simply bring in last night’s leftovers in for lunch. Those that do buy lunch every day will likely drive demand in local shops and cafes. Even in lockdown, my local village bakery frequently has people queuing out of the door at lunchtime. All of this is to say that such for some, such a tax could make it more expensive to work from home, especially those who drive to work rather than take more expensive public transport. Do we really want people driving to the office just to save money? Let’s hope governments skip past this one, as there are plenty of other ways to increase tax revenue.

His central theme is that software is more akin to creative projects like books or movies than big engineering projects like building a skyscraper. While I think there are some interesting ideas here, and as a practitioner of Scrum I am also keenly aware of how easy it can be to become dogmatic about the various ceremonies and systems it advocates so much so that you end up becoming less agile.

That said I think shorter iterations are useful when you are unsure of the value of a certain feature. Building the smallest MVP allows you to test the market in order to determine the value. The idea of setting a time budget and giving the team a couple of months to build out a feature without the overhead and bureaucracy that Scrum entails does seem incising however, and may be appropriate in some cases. I will try to keep this in mind as I develop projects in the future.

To solve this, I’m using a feature of Feedbin - my RSS sync service of choice. Feedbin allows you to include Twitter accounts as part of your RSS feed. This means you don’t have to “follow” the account, you never see how many “likes” or “retweets” a post has, and you can easily read any linked articles alongside other RSS subscriptions. There are no advertisements, no “recommended for you” lists, and best of all, you can’t see any replies either. No snark, no “purity spirals”, no inclination to reply or retweet anything myself. I’ve found that being a passive onlooker instead of an active participant on Twitter drastically reduces its addictiveness.

In the beginning, Samsung TV owners were seeing ads for new streaming content, apps or Samsung products. Owners are now complaining about larger, increasingly obtrusive, and unrelated ads.

Rasmus Larsen - FlatpanelsHD

This is why my Samsung TV is no longer connected to the Internet. Instead, I use an Apple TV to stream media. If you can’t do that, then I recommend using a Raspberry Pi and installing PiHole to block the ads. Even the cheapest model will run PiHole, and it’s laughably easy to install.

A reminder that you should make sure you have enabled the new ‘Reduce Loud Sounds’ option in both iOS 14 and watchOS 7, which puts a safe limit on headphone volume.

These settings were previous managed in different places within both operating systems and the limit I set in the previous version did not carry over when I upgraded. This is a bit of a worrying slip in QA from Apple, as it could quite easily lead to a potentially ear-damaging situation where someone happily sets their volume to maximum thinking they have a safe limit set, but they in fact do not.

I recommend setting the limit to to the lowest level, 75 dB. Your ears will no doubt have to contend with other shocks throughout the day, so don’t go adding any unnecessary ones. You certainly don’t want to end up with tinnitus like me!

The new setting can be found under Settings → Sounds & Haptics.

Update: Apple have acknowledged the bug described above.

It’s hard to believe that the Apple Watch has been a product now for over five years. It still seems like yesterday that I drove home from the Apple Store with the fancy new gadget in my bag, excited to see what it could do. That was June 2015. Over the past five years the product has evolved so gradually that if you’ve been paying close attention to each release, it would be difficult to pin down what exactly changed and when. However, just like seeing an infant relative for the first time in months and noticing how much they’ve grown, if you were to compare the current generation Apple Watch and its latest operating system to the original, it’s clear that the product released in 2015 and the product Apple sells today is vastly different.

When Apple announced the Apple Watch in 2014, it was billed as three things:

1. A highly accurate and customisable timepiece
2. An intimate communications device
3. A comprehensive health and fitness device.

At the time I felt they were trying too hard to mimic Steve Job’s famous introduction to the iPhone where he initially sold the audience on the fact he was introducing three products (A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device.) - but the joke was on them, it was of course a single device.

Whilst that framing helped consumers understand the iPhone, for the Apple Watch, it only seemed to add confusion. An accurate and customisable timepiece? Swatch watches are highly accurate and come in every possible combination of colours imaginable. Accurate? Some people pay thousands of pounds for less accurate mechanical watches. What does an intimate communication device even do that my phone can’t already? Health and fitness however. Oh… now I get it.

As the years went on, the watch became more and more focused on fitness - with the addition of GPS and waterproofing, and health, with fall detection, irregular heart rhythm detection and now the ability to measure blood oxygen levels. The operating system has also evolved to become more focused. The ability to set pace alerts when running, and see your current speed when cycling were obvious features missing from the original release that are present now. What hasn’t happened yet though, as many predicted, is the watch replacing our phones. While it can technically do the job of a smartphone: maps, directions, messaging, phone calls - the combination of a small screen and still terrible battery life mean it’s still not a viable phone replacement for most people.

Now after five years of the Apple Watch, it’s time for watchOS 7. I installed it the day after its release, eager to check out its new features

Installation

Let’s get the bad out of the way. Upon installing watchOS 7 my battery life became atrocious. On the second day, my battery was dead by 9PM, and that’s having charged the watch fully at 1PM. In addition, the watch stopped being able to track workouts using GPS. It was if I’d disabled location services, but I hadn’t.

If you Google anything to do with Apple devices having poor battery life after an update you’ll often find a common folktale that puts it down to “Indexing” - yes apparently after 13 years of software updates, Apple still runs a battery draining process to do “Indexing” after every update. This is most likely BS, as what is there to index on a watch anyway? After trying all of the obvious fixes, and with a watch that couldn’t log workouts or last the day, I ended up wiping the watch and reinstalling watchOS. Thankfully, this seemed to solve both the issues and was now back in business.

Sleep Tracking

The headline feature of watchOS 7 is of course sleep tracking. I’ve tried various sleep tracking apps in the past, and I’ve never really found them that useful. I just find that I don’t need an app to tell me whether or not I’ve had a good night’s sleep - it’s pretty obvious. Maybe I’m missing the point, but having to micromanage my device by charging it at the right time, and having to wear a chunky watch to bed seems like too much hassle for very little gain. Needless to say, I haven’t tried the new sleep tracking features. The addition of sleep tracking does mean that the wakeup alarm is now shared between the phone and watch. The end result is my watch telling me its set to wake me up with a vibration alert, even though my phone is actually what goes off - presumably because I’m not wearing the watch during sleep. I like this feature, but it does add complexity. In fact, to even set a wake alarm I was pushed into a long wizard that had me setting up a ‘sleep schedule’ complete with reminders to charge the watch and other things. It all felt a bit too complicated and onerous for a part of my life that’s supposed to be relaxing. It also smacks of technocratic solutionism - the idea that by defining a ‘sleep schedule’ on my phone, and with some pretty graphics and notifications, I will be on my way to a life of blissful nights of full and restful sleep. If anything, I imagine switching off my smartwatch and smartphone a few hours before bed would do a better job of helping me sleep than defining a ‘sleep schedule’ and monitoring my every move at night.

Fitness

The Activity app has been renamed Fitness. It’s a subtle change, but reveals a lot about where the engineers at Apple see the device fitting into people’s lives. The word ‘Activity’ implied passive measurement of one’s movements, whereas the word ‘Fitness’ is full of aspiration to become better, stronger and fitter. Not everyone who buys an Apple Watch will be a fitness enthusiast, even if that is what Apple would have us believe in their advertisements which are full of good looking, trendy people who live in gyms. I wonder how this change will affect people who know they aren’t fit, or who perhaps struggle with physical exercise. For a company that strives for inclusiveness, I do worry whether Apple can be a bit self indulgent sometimes, designing products that are perhaps a bit too focused on rich Silicon Valley 20-somethings, and not the population in general (except when those outsiders fit into neat boxes, e.g. old people who are likely to fall over). Perhaps that’s unfair, but it’s a concern I have all the same.

The new Fitness app finally lets you change the fitness goals for exercise and stand (the green and blue rings), but stops short of letting you choose different goals for different days of the week. While I love the gamification of meeting my active calorie target, I find that on days when I run 10 miles I tend to nearly triple my target, while on days when I am purposely resting, I struggle to meet 75% of my target (Even a 30 minute walk won’t get me close). In the end, I choose a target that I know is beatable most days with a bit of effort - but I’d much prefer to set either a weekly target, or to be able to designate certain days as ‘rest days’ - something that factors in the realities of real life fitness training. Despite what the Fitness app may recommend, you can’t just keep burning more and more calories each day without also taking rest days and eating the right foods. A more holistic approach to fitness would be welcomed here. The new Fitness app also integrates with the new apple Fitness+ service. The geek in my thinks this is super cool, the fact that my heart rate will be shown on the Apple TV, while the watch triggers haptic feedback that is synchronised to events in the workout video is frankly genius. However, the cynic is me also thinks that $9.99/month for what are essentially pre-recorded fitness videos is an awful lot when compared to a service like Netflix. I will definitely try it when it comes to the UK, but I’m doubtful whether I’ll keep it beyond the free trial.

Family Setup

The other big feature of watchOS 7 is the ability to setup watches that are paired to an iPhone, but can be used by another member of the family who doesn’t own that phone - for example children too young to haven an iPhone. I don’t have children, but I think this is an exciting step towards the Apple Watch not requiring a phone at all. Tellingly, when setup in ‘child mode’ the watch does not try to get children to work towards a calorie burn goal, instead they are given a ‘move time’ goal. Whether this is due to limitations in the calorie-burn algorithms or whether Apple thinks it would be bad for the mental health of children to be even thinking about how many calories they are burning I am not sure, I’m hoping its the latter.

Whether anyone would actually buy their kids an Apple Watch remains to be seen - if the child is old enough to wear a watch that costs nearly £300, then surely they must be old enough for a phone - but if it helps Apple learn how to make an Apple Watch that could work for Android users or without an iPhone, then that can only be a good thing.

Watch Faces

In watchOS 6, Apple finally decided to add some decent analogue watch faces. Before watchOS 6, almost none of the analogue faces had numerals, which coupled with the weirdness of having a circular face on a rectangular screen, made it frustratingly difficult to tell the time. In watchOS 7 Apple have added even more watch faces with actual numerals - three of which are essentially the same face with their own individual built in functionality: GMT lets you track the time in another timezone, Count Up has a built in stopwatch that is shown inline, as does Chronograph Pro - though the data is shown in the style of a traditional chronograph. Interestingly, these built-in applications keep running when you switch watch face and maintain their own state, unlike the original chronograph face from 2015, which simple displays data from the built-in in stopwatch app.

Disappointingly there is no update to the Siri watch face. It still looks like it was designed for the older 38/42mm size watches (Series 3 and before). In iOS 14, Apple gave us home screen widgets and the ability to create a smart stack - a single slot that can be set to show any number of widgets. The system will determine the appropriate widget to show based on your usage and the other data. Ever since 2015 I have wanted this feature on the Apple Watch. It should show me the weather when its about to rain, my cellular signal when the watch is using cellular, the time remaining on a timer when a timer is running, my battery level when its getting low etc.

Until this happens, the Siri face is the closest you can get to this kind of ‘smart complication’, but I don’t use it because it’s frankly ugly and not very customisable. Apple really needs to give it some attention, or if not, build in a ‘smart stack’ like system for complications and let any watch face be smart.

Miscellaneous

The other exciting feature of watchOS 7 is optimised battery charging - this feature means that the watch learns your typical usage patterns, and once placed on the charger for the night, will only charge to 80%. It then waits before charging up to 100% based on when you are expected to start using it again. This means less time with the battery kept at 100%, which means overall greater longevity for the battery. The system is linked to your location and wakeup alarm, so if you’re travelling or have an early start it will default to charging straight to 100%. (It’s also coming to AirPods soon, where due to their even smaller batteries, it is desperately needed).

Force Touch has been removed completely - this is mostly a good thing as it wasn’t a very good idea in hindsight, but it’s a shame they don’t allow watches that still have the hardware use it as a shortcut for pressing and holding - entering the mode to edit watch faces seems a lot slower now and I’ve even triggered it accidentally, which never happened before. Talking of speed, there are no issues on my two year old Series 4. In fact, Apple seems to have made a point of speeding the animations so everything feels much faster.

Many of the built in apps seem more polished. Maps for example now shows both directions and the map at the same time which makes using the watch for walking directions much more intuitive. The Remote app seems more reliable, and the Podcasts app seems to do a better job of syncing between the watch and phone. I can’t say whether this is the result of watchOS 7 or the consequence of wiping and reinstalling watchOS - but I’m happy either way.

In Summary

Overall watchOS 7 is a solid release - it’s faster on the same hardware, and brings with it some much desired new features. If I were Apple, I would be keeping my eye on the additional complexity that is creeping into watchOS. What made the Apple Watch such a joy to use in 2015 was in part its limitations. I understand the juxtaposition Apple is in - they have to be seen be moving the platform forward - but in an age where people are addicted to their smartphones more than ever, the Apple Watch’s sweet spot is being able to help you lead a healthier life by monitoring your activity and vitals, while also helping you lead a happier life by being simple and less addictive than a smartphone. How Apple strikes the balance going forward will be vital to its success.

Update: Apple have acknowledged the bugs described above.

Well, I paid the price for installing what is essentially beta software on my phone. Somehow when arranging home screen widgets, the springboard application managed to loose all knowledge of the folders I had created, and the applications I had placed into them - a system I had been building up and had carried over from my iPhone 5 when I switched back from Android in 2012.

I happened to be screen recoding at the time. In the video below, keep an eye on the number of home screens (the dots at the bottom) - watch them change from three to fifteen as all of my carefully curated folders are lost.

I could have restored my device from a backup, I didn’t like the thought of having to reauthorise all my Apple Pay cards and wait for hours while my phone sat there restoring (I’d also loose a day’s worth of messages and photos). In the end, I’ve decided to fully embrace iOS 14’s new App Library system, placing a few frequently used apps on the home screen and letting the system sort the other apps into folders for me.

Bugs happen, and while this is technically a data loss bug, the data isn’t that critical. The world’s most valuable company, with all its piles of cash, releasing its software in such a poor state has just served to reenforce the fact that when it comes to software (and possibly products in general), money alone cannot buy success. People and processes are what make successful software. In Apple’s case, I suspect the release date was decided not by engineers, but by the marketing division.

https://videopress.com/v/yl64FD6g?preloadContent=metadata

Now the math: When you multiply the hospitalization rate for 30-something men (about 1.2 percent) by the chronic-illness rate of hospitalized patients (almost 90 percent), you get about 1 percent. That means a guy my age has one-in-100 chance of developing a long-term illness after contracting COVID-19. For context, the estimated infection-fatality rate for somebody in their 60s is 0.7 percent

What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19. Derek Thompson/The Atlantic

Back at the end of February I decided I needed to get a pair of over the ear headphones for the office. (Little did I know I’d have only about another 3 weeks left in the office until my recent return at the end of August.)

I originally had my sights (sounds?) set on the Sony WH-1000XM3. These are often considered best noise cancelling headphones on the market - and noise cancellation is what I was after. Office life can be full of interesting distractions, but nothing beats putting on some Radiohead and getting lost in your work for a couple of hours. My AirPods were great, but over-the-ear headphones are even better for really blocking the outside world and being able to focus.

Moments before hitting the trigger on the buy button, I remembered that Apple owns Beats, and that means that newer Beats headphones have the same H1 chip founds in the AirPods Pro - this in turn means seamless pairing with all the Apple devices I own, the ability for new messages to be read out automatically, and handsfree use of ‘Hey Siri’. At the last moment, I changed my mind and went for the Beats Solo Pro instead. At the same price, most reviews has reassured me that the sound was actually pretty decent, unlike previous generations of Beats (which I ended up returning because of this).

First impressions were great. The sound is indeed very good - not as good as the AirPods Pro, but still extremely enjoyable and seemingly optimised more for music than for podcasts or phone calls. Comfort-wise, they can be a bit hot and because unlike the Sony WH-1000XM3 they are on ear not over ear, but are fine for wearing for a couple of hours at a time, but certainly not all day.

So far, so good. Until I took them outside during my government mandated daily lockdown exercise. It turns out that both transparency and noise cancellation modes are pretty much unusable outside due to the fact that even the smallest, most minor breeze will be picked up by the onboard microphone and amplified right into your ears. Imagine someone blowing into a microphone and that’s what it sounds like. While this obviously won’t be a problem in the office, I can imagine a lot of people buying these for use outside - and they will likely be disappointed.

So while the H1 chip and integration with all of my Apple devices is excellent, the sound really punches, they look decent and are OK-ish on the comfort side - this one issue makes me wish I’d gone for the Sonys instead.

This a just a brief review to highlight the issue of wind effecting the Beats Solo Pro. For a more rounded review, I highly recommend this YouTube video.

Update: August 2023

After nearly three years (1,051 days to be exact) the headband snapped, and the Beats went in the bin. A few months later I replaced them with the Sony WH-1000XM5s. The sound quality is remarkably better and make the beats sound awful with the benefit of hindsight.

In a strange move for a Conservative government, it was announced recently that workers will actively be encouraged to return to the office in order to help businesses such as coffee shops, who rely on the custom of office workers. I use the word ‘strange’ because asking the population to behave in a certain way in order to support part of the economy seems like the beginning of a planned economy – the antithesis of free market conservatism - proving it’s not the panacea they often claim. In addition, many local independent shops have actually enjoyed a boost due to people staying at home in places that would usually be deserted during the day.

I recently broke my streak of 115 days of home working and returned to the office for the first time since March. I eagerly anticipated not having to use Microsoft Teams video calls and seeing my colleagues for the first time in person. No more would I have to endure delay, frozen screens, and overhearing partners taking meetings with their own colleagues. I was granted the pleasure of instant conversation without the awkward fumbling of headsets and the repeated ‘Can you hear me now?’ punctuating every call. I thoroughly enjoyed casual chat and felt my wellbeing improve instantly. With a limited number of people allowed in the office, it felt different to the warm buzz that would usually emanate beneath rows of monitors, but it was still hugely valuable.

Working from home has it benefits too. The lack of a long commute meant more exercise, extra pocket money and less road rage. I was able to focus more on completing tasks and I no longer had the regular 10 minute coffee and chat break in the kitchen. You could argue that in knowledge work, taking your mind off the task at hand can actually reap massive rewards, so maybe having a balance between the productivity of home work and the creative head space of office work is probably the way forward.

Whilst for many the future of work will be remote, I believe there will always be a need for a common shared office space. Whether it be a the feeling of awe we get when entering a well designed, bustling office, the motivational speech given by a company leader, the wearing of corporate ID lanyards, or just having lunch with colleagues – these are quasi-religious behaviours that are deep-seated in human history and enforce a sense of ‘togetherness’ that is essential for productive teamwork. That said, some peace and quiet is also important – so my ideal split would be something like 3 days a week at home, and 2 days in the office.

Maybe the government doesn’t need to encourage the complete return to office work quite so earnestly. Maybe those that can remotely work should be given a choice to find the balance that works best for them.

A change discovered in iOS 14 and macOS 11 betas this week suggests that Apple is hoping to quietly hijack and redirect users into its paid Apple News+ service

From various comments I’ve heard of Apple News+, one of the most frustrating aspects of the service is that even after subscribing, when you click a link on the web that’s behind a paywall, but is from a publisher you have access to as part of your Apple News+ subscription, you are still locked out from reading it. The only way to read the article that you’ve paid to access is to search for it within the Apple News app. I’m pretty sure Apple are simply addressing this flaw in the design and common user complaint. If you don’t pay for Apple News, and haven’t started a free trial, this won’t effect you.

So no grand plan, no ‘power move’, and certainly no attempt to ‘hijack’.

That said, I think iOS should have an option to stop all web (http) links launching apps altogether - not just Apple News. I’ve uninstalled apps such as The Guardian because I was fed up of web links opening in the app. Apple already has an elegant way to show you that an app you have installed can be used instead of the web - “Smart App Banners”. One extra tap isn’t really a big deal and would’ve caused less uproar in the case of Apple News+.

Smart App Banners prompt users to install or open a website’s app, and once the app is launched, users are shown the same context within the app.

While I can see the argument that Xbox Game Pass is simply Netflix for games, as I see it, the key difference is that games are software and videos are content. If Apple allow software to be streamed in the store, could this, in theory, open the floodgates to other developers whose motivations might not be as sincere as Microsoft’s?

Apple already has a struggle on its hands to encourage big application makers to build high quality, native applications for its platforms. Many apps that need a presence on both Android and iOS use some kind of intermediate framework that makes the app cheaper to develop, as there’s only one codebase with minimal changes for each operating system. This usually comes at the expense of usability and inability to take advantage of platform specific features. You can usually tell when this is the case, as the resulting apps often won’t feel quite right - if you’re looking for an example, then maybe try your electricity company’s app (for some reason, utility companies seem to be ripe for this kind of cheaply made app).

Imagine if instead of building a cross platform app using one of these frameworks, there was an even cheaper option - build an app that runs in the cloud. It’s the ultimate option for companies that just need an app with the most minimal expenditure. The user experience would be terrible - but many companies don’t care. Your £1,000+ iPhone would be acting as a thin client.

So while I think streaming makes sense for games (I can’t wait to play Flight Simulator 2020 and streaming it over Xbox Game Pass might be the only way I can, due to its stringent hardware requirements) - I can kind of understand Apple’s reluctance to allow software streaming, and making an exception for games seems kind of arbitrary. If Microsoft can stream games, why shouldn’t Adobe be allowed to stream their Creative Cloud applications?

Will the future of software be in the cloud, a future where we all use low-specification thin clients? We’re not there yet, and Apple’s investment in low powered CPU and GPU technologies, coupled with the fact they make their money selling premium hardware, tells me that they see a future where our computing power is in our pockets, not the cloud.

This is Cambridge University, though, in Silicon Fen, where there has been a department of computer science since 1937 (when it was called the Mathematical Laboratory), home of computing pioneer Alan Turing, home of one of the world’s earliest digital computers (EDSAC in 1949). It saw email evolve from a system called Phoenix in the early days to Hermes running on a Unix-based system from 1994.

It’s sad that the inevitable commoditisation of Internet services has to lead to this cost cutting exercise - a true piece of Internet history will be switched off. The trend towards centralisation of the Internet continues…

If you’re paying for something with your data, then that makes data a currency.

So it seems New Zealand is at it again when it comes to leadership on the world stage. The government has released an ‘algorithm charter’ that aims to tackle the lack of transparency and potential bias in automated systems.

This is a long time coming, and other countries need to pay attention.

Whilst the document is a great start, its language is somewhat vague and aspirational - perhaps intentionally so, given it is early days for this kind of scheme.

As AI and automated systems become evermore present in our daily lives, with the potential to decide your next job or even the next US president - I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect companies to be more transparent about how their AI works.

Just as we expect companies to file accounts and keep records, we should ask companies to answer a few basic questions about how their algorithms work. This will give consumers confidence that they’re not subject to unfair bias when decisions that affect them are made by AI.

To make AI more transparent, I’d ask companies for:

• A high level description of the type of algorithms in use - most machine learning algorithms are not written from scratch - so just tell us for example whether the algorithm is a Logistic Regression or a Transformer Network etc.
• The source of the data used to train the model - did the company collect it themselves, if so, where from? Or did they buy it from a 3rd party, if so, who, and where did they get it from?
• The features used to train the model - knowing for example that ‘sex’ or ‘age’ are fed into the model would tell us where to look for potential bias.
• The methods, and datasets used to validate their model’s effectiveness - this is critical - a company without a good validation strategy is obviously going to have unconscious bias in their systems.

I’ve picked the questions carefully as I think companies have a right to maintain their trade secrets. The data itself can remain secret, as should the various parameters and other specifics about the algorithm.

While I’m not expecting the average consumer to understand the different between machine learning algorithms and the consequences of different testing strategies, having this information in the public domain would enable journalists and the tech community to better hold big tech companies to account.

The privacy invasion is the result of the apps repeatedly reading any text that happens to reside in clipboards, which computers and other devices use to store data that has been cut or copied from things like password managers and email programs

I love that Apple have started to notify users when an app reads the clipboard without the user explicitly pressing ‘Paste’, however I worry that adding yet more warnings and notifications will result in users becoming fatigued and eventually ignoring them.

Instead, why not allow apps that need to store sensitive data on the clipboard (LastPass, for example) to set a specific data type indicating that the information should be classed as sensitive data - much like they can set the data type to text or image at the moment. In order to paste this “secure object”, users would have to press the system ‘Paste’ button - any app just reading the clipboard by itself would just see it as empty.

This of course wouldn’t solve for cases where data is not known to be sensitive - how many people store their passwords as a simple note instead of in a password manager, for example? Still, fewer notifications and stopping any app from reading passwords from the clipboard might be the right balance.

Ofcom also found most people who use an address provided by their broadband company are former BT customers. BT says if customers want to switch provider but keep hold of their old BT email address they’re charged £7.50 per month to be able to access and use their account like they used to, including accessing it using an app.

Reading beyond the BBC headline, it turns out that BT are in fact allowing former customers to access their old email account for free, but this only works using a web browser, presumably this is because it’s funded by advertisements - I can’t see any other reason for this limitation. It is only for continued access via POP/IMAP that BT demand payment for.

Even so, £7.50 a month seems extortionate considering you can get a full Microsoft Exchange account for ~£4.50 a month including VAT.

This kind of exploitative pricing is in poor taste, especially considering that in many cases - the type of customer who still uses their ISP for email is most likely still running Outlook Express - as it was configured in 2007 - and so any change will be more confusing and disorientating than it would for someone who knows how to setup a Gmail account and configure email forwarding (BT do offer forwarding, but I’ve no idea if this is covered by the free option).

We solved this problem with mobile operators by having rules that mean that as a consumer, you have the right to take your phone number with you when you switch to another operator. Email is unfortunately not regulated in the same way, and in fact its architecture makes it impossible for an email address with the domain “btinternet.com” to be be routed to a server owned by another ISP. Instead, I’d like to see the option to forward emails for free to another email address for a set period of time (say 2 years). If major ISPs and popular webmail providers could somehow automate this process, even better.

Though email is arguably less relevant today than it was 15 years ago, I would still strongly advocate buying your own domain name (around £15 a year) and then setting it up either to forward to a free email account, or even better, paying for proper email with the domain (around £2/month with FastHosts). For those who fancy a technical challenge, for around £4/month you can setup a lightweight Debian VM on somewhere like Linode and run your own mail server - this gives you the benefit of being able to setup unlimited email addressed with your domain - though it’s not for the fainthearted.

Either way, £7.50 is a ripoff.

Take this recent blog post from their CTO:

Enter GMass, a plugin for Gmail that adds spy-pixel tracking, amongst a grab bag of other stuff. They hadn’t been on our original list of 50+ services we name’n’shame, but thanks to a new blog post where they brag about defeating protections that recipients might take to defend themselves, they came onto our radar.

It turns out the makers of this Gmail plugin have used the unimaginative steps of using URLs with no obvious parameters (we called them “friendly URLs” in 2006), encryption of those parameters (not so friendly), and setting up a CNAME record so senders can appear to be hosting the tracking images on their own server, all to try and avoid being tracked by Hey.com (the irony, right?).

Whatever your take on tracking pixels, I just think it’s great to see a company saying it how they see it and taking a strong stance. Personally, I’ve long set my email client never to automatically display images - not so much because of tracking pixels from companies like GMass, but avoid confirming my address whenever I accidentally open up spam.

The Maximum PC site is still online to this day, as it was when it was abandoned in 2001

On the most recent episode of ATP, John Siracusa referenced once of his early Mac OS X reviews. This prompted me to revisit his review of the Mac OS X public beta, as the evolution of computer interfaces is something that I find fascinating.

In one of his screenshots, he shows the Ars Technica home page. At the top of the page is a banner informing readers that Ars is part of the “Maximum PC Network”. I immediately recalled this web site, as it was closely related to many other publications I was into at the time, including .net magazine. So, I decided to see what became of the Maximum PC Network by visiting its site in 2020. I expected to find a domain for sale, or it redirecting to a parent company - but no, to my surprise, maximumpc.co.uk is still online, and is still showing the date of when it was presumably last updated - 26th February 2001. Complete with references to em@il and asking whether Windows XP is worth upgrading to, the site is straight out of 2001, but amazingly - still online. Some server, somewhere in 2020 has been left running sine 2001.

I’d love to know the story of how this has happened - how does someone forget a web site existed, but continue to pay for its hosting – even going as far as renewing the SSL certificate each year? That said, I think it’s great and I wish more web sites could stay online once they are abandoned.

To reduce battery aging, AirPods learn from your daily charging routine so they can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use them

I have long speculated that the reason AirPods are much more disposable when compared to other Bluetooth devices is that fact that their poor batteries are pretty much always in constant use. They are always either in the case charging, or in your ears discharging.

I own a pair of Plantronics wireless headphones from 2015 that have much better battery life than my AirPods which were purchased in 2016. I know there are many factors at work but the speed at which the batteries on AirPods decline is staggering. I suspect (and hope) this update will dramatically increase the longevity of AirPods.

Great work Apple.

.net magazine was hugely influential to me as a teenager, capturing the excitement of the Internet in the late 90s. Some of my earliest memories of using the Internet revolve around .net magazine. Within its pages I learnt many things about how the Internet works; how to configure domain names, what emoticons meant, tips to avoid spam, what a flamewar was and how to solve problems with Netscape and Outlook Express, to name a few. The first issue I remember buying (issue 54 if I recall correctly, in late 1998) even had an interview with David Bowie, talking about amongst other things, his recently launched Internet Service Provider (ISP), BowieNet. Bowie was incredibly forward thinking, however music artists running their own ISPs never did take off (though I seem to recall some who’ve been successful at making headphones). [Update: it was issue 55, and I’ve scanned the Bowie interview for anyone interested]

Even now, 22 years later, I can recall the excitement of installing the Internet Explorer 5 beta from the cover CD and marvelling at how it dramatically changed the way Windows 98 operated. Strangely, I have a memory of disconnecting from the Internet, in order to phone a hotline to get a code that would let me use one of the applications included on the cover CD, “Starfish Internet Sidekick”. The code was “MANAGER”. It’s weird how such memories stick with us. My first look at Mac OS X was from a preview in .net magazine, which touted its photorealistic icons and UNIX underpinnings - I never thought back then that one day in the year 2020 I’d be sitting at a laptop writing this, running the same OS, still using essentially the same UI paradigm, only with far less photorealistic icons.

As a teenager who wasn’t really into books, .net magazine taught me more than how to use the Internet - it helped me to increase my reading age, develop an inner voice and writing style that is still with me today.

What I looked forward to each month the most however, was waiting to see if any of my forum posts had been picked for inclusion in the ‘penny arcade’ section - where four or five of the funniest posts from the .net forums were featured in the magazine. I don’t think my posts contained enough witticisms to make it into the magazine, but just the possibility was exciting.

The .net forums were a magical community of likeminded geeks, mostly in their teens, who just loved the Internet. These days, nobody “loves the Internet” as we did then. Today that would be like having “electricity” as a hobby. Yet back from around 1999 to 2001, the .net forums were where I spent a considerable amount of time socialising (though at the age of 15, my parents didn’t think of it as being very social). I remember posting a message to the Futurenet NNTP server through Outlook Express and within minutes getting a reply. It was like Reddit, but far more humane, and because there were only about 20 or so regulars, it felt like a real community. I remember the Microsoft .NET announcement - how could Microsoft steal the name of our beloved magazine? Waiting for the world to end as Nostradamus predicted in 1999, checking that the internet still worked on January 1st 2000, and posting a link to my latest Geocities creation to the reader’s site newsgroup - eagerly awaiting feedback from fellow readers - all on the .net forums. The community faltered slightly when Future Publishing closed down the NNTP servers and moved the forums to web-based software. Thankfully many of forum regulars found a new home on IRC in #netmag on the Blitzed network. There I would spend whole weekends chatting to my friends on IRC, in-between TFC sessions. It wasn’t long after that we built a site called “DFNET - The .net reader’s site network” which further reinforced the sense of community between readers.

That idea of having your own website and even forming a community of sites is something I miss from today’s Internet. The web is now so centralised. How many ISPs even bother offering free webspace today? Back then, out of the entire online population, there was a disproportionate percentage of computer enthusiasts online, and so learning HTML and how FTP works was a challenge they would gladly take on. People created web pages about cooking, Half Life and the X-Files. It’s easy to look back and laugh at the animated Gifs, the “best viewed in Internet Explorer 4” badges and the “Sign my Guestbook” links - but a part of me mourns the loss of this amateur enthusiasm - the web is now so much more polished and corporate, and “user generated content” mostly resides on major platforms like Twitter, Facebook and IMDB. I would love for Internet providers and OS manufactures to activity encourage people to make their own websites again (remember when Windows used to include FrontPage Express?), but I think that is sadly a pipe-dream and the reality is most people aren’t interested. With modern broadband connections, personal websites could even be hosted at home - unrealistic - but part of me is nostgltigc for the dream of an Internet where everyone is an equal player.

https://twitter.com/russty\_russ/status/377116375250370560

I must have stopped subscribing to .net sometime in 2002. By then, the Internet seemed less interesting to me. Perhaps due to the .com crash or because I was 17, now at college with a Saturday job, and for some reason didn’t have time for it any more. Aged 17, the gap between 1999 and 2002 felt like a lifetime. Now, aged 35, three years ago seems like yesterday. The magazine eventually morphed into a web design magazine, focusing less on Internet culture and more on design trends and technical implementation. I picked it up again in 2009 for a year or so but as I became more professionally interested in server side technologies the design centric content wasn’t as appealing to me (I am no designer!).

Although I hadn’t read it for a many years, hearing of its demise did make me sad that a part of my childhood is no longer. I’m gutted for those who worked at the magazine and may now be out of a job. Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if Future Publishing produced PDFs of the magazine archives (they surely must exist, right?) and put them online for historical record? I could genuinely lose hours reading Internet articles from 2000.

Anyway, goodbye .net, it was a blast.

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1272968382329942017

While the service appears to be a refreshingly original rethink on how email should work (I’ve not signed up myself), it appears to be designed to lock users in. There is no way to use an external email client, and right now there is no support for custom domains (despite being targeted at business users with a $99/year charge - they say its coming). You’ll also have to continue to pay if you decide to move to a different provider but want to keep your Hey.com address forwarding. I see no reason why the features advertised (great as they are) couldn’t be part of an email client designed by Hey.com - using a combination of cloud services and native clients, Hey could provide a powerful front-end to any open email service such as Outlook.com or Gmail which provide access via IMAP.

Instead it seems they want to lock customers in, which goes against the open, standards based approach that has made email so successful so far. Putting aside the fact Google or Microsoft could easily copy any of these features, and probably will, this is a service I’ll be skipping.

Update: thanks to Shauny for informing me that Hey.com does in fact offer free forwarding for life for customers who pay for a year’s service.

As someone who is fascinated by technology and its societal impact, I often think back to the first piece of technology I remember owning as a child: A Casio Telememo 50 digital watch (photo from the Argos catalog I would have ordered it from).

Back in 1996, the idea of storing phone numbers on your wrist was a niche that probably only appealed to geeks like me. Now, in 2020 millions of people walk around with smartwatches and don’t even realise they have their contacts synchronised to their wrist.

I can’t find the exact model I owned as a child, the photograph above is the nearest I’ve been able to find on Amazon, and is unfortunately not as good.

Here’s what I remember being so cool about my first smartwatch in 1996:

• The blue illuminator backlight looked so cool in the dark. I was always worried about using it however, as it drained the battery big time, and aged 11 new batteries aren’t easy to come by. Best thing though? It flashed when the alarm went off.
• The hourly time signal - during school assemblies, from about 5 minutes to the hour until about 5 minutes after, there was a chorus of “beep beep” sounds as everyone’s Casio watches went off. Mine of course would always be perfectly always accurate as I would set it to the time shown on Ceefax (much cheaper than the other option of phoning the speaking clock).
• World time - At 11 years old, I had no need to know the time in other countries but it was so cool being able to tell my friends, uncles, and aunts what time it was in New York when I visited them.
• Scheduled alarms - Long before anyone would dream of being able to set a calendar appointment on their phone (an Americanism - back then we’d have called it a ‘diary entry’), my watch would let you set an alarm for a specific time, on a specific date. Whether you’d hear it or not was a different matter. I didn’t have many events happening aged 11, but I do remember setting it for my occasional hospital appointments.
• Water resistant - I wore this thing swimming, in the shower, in the sea. Quite a novelty at the time to be able to have an alarm go off to remind you its time to get out of the pool.

If my 11 year old self had any sense, he would have kept this watch, but alas it is sadly most likely to be landfill somewhere now. I’ve found a similar one on Amazon, but it has far fewer features and doesn’t look anywhere near as cool.

Microsoft is to replace dozens of contract journalists on its MSN website and use automated systems to select news stories, US and UK media report.

I’d love to know why so many news organisations are using the term “robots” to describe algorithmic selection of content. Google has been doing this since 2002 with Google News, so I’m surprised that this is even news (though I’m of course sad for those who are now out of a job). I’ve always thought the term “robot” to be a pointless one. We don’t call our washing machines robots, so why would we call any other machine that isn’t anthropomorphised a robot?

I can’t help thinking this is also being used as an excuse to remind people MSN News still exists.

The Apple Watch is great for many things, but listening to music or podcasts is still problematic. Apple haven’t been able to solve what, on the face of it, seems like a simple challenge: synchronising content to the watch.

While you can now stream music and podcasts, theoretically removing the need to synchronise media, in practise many people (such as myself) live in areas where 4G signal is poor, simply don’t want to, or own a watch without a data plan.

The solution Apple seems to have proposed is to simply mark content you want to be stored on the watch, and let them do the rest, at their time of choosing. This leads to random frustrations because inevitably this “smart synchronisation” doesn’t sync the right content at the right time. Sometimes transfers only happen when the watch is plugged in, other times they seemingly get stuck and drain the battery right down. Due to the fact that watchOS is very restricted in what it can do, there is no room for third party applications to try and do better either. The experience of setting off for a run only to find the latest episode of your favourite podcast isn’t available is surely familiar to any Apple Watch owner.

What I’d like to see is a way to from the watch itself, select a song, album or podcast and have it transferred over from my phone there and then. No “pending”, no waiting for a charger to be attached - just do it right now, so I can go for my run, and please Apple - show a progress bar while you’re at it - like iTunes did in 2001. If having a power source is really needed, then tell me to charge the watch there and then, and instead of nightstand mode, show a progress bar while the watch is on the charger. This functionality needs to be made available to third party applications such as Overcast too.

While I’d love for synchronisation to be automatic and happen at night without me knowing, in practise this doesn’t seem to work. I missed many buses as a teenager waiting for my iPod to sync and while I don’t take the bus as much these days, it’s somewhat reassuring to know things haven’t changed that much as I sit and wait for my Apple Watch to sync before I leave the house. The difference is my iPod would generally work first time.

You are most likely to catch the SARS-CoV-2 virus by spending a long time near an infected person in an enclosed space. Researchers in Guangzhou, China, examined how the virus was transmitted between 347 people with confirmed infections and the people they had contact with. They found that the risk of the infection being passed on at home or by repeated contact with the same person was approximately 10 times greater than the risk of passing it on in a hospital and 100 times greater than doing so on public transport (medRxiv, doi.org/dwgj).

Probably the most informative, accessible and actionable article I’ve read about minimising Coronavirus infection.

It’s all very well asking people to use “common sense”, but vast swathes of the population don’t know how viruses spread. Take for example the tradesperson who came to visit my house recently to fix a problem with a door. While he demonstrated plenty of common sense in being able to fix the problem (10 minutes to fix something that I had spent hours trying to fix and couldn’t), he also wore a face-mask so low down on his face that I could see his top lip. One motto I’ve taken with me throughout my life is that there is no such thing as “common sense”.

The rise of Zoom could be the headline for the 2020 technology scene. Zoom has replaced classrooms, board meetings, concerts, and even some low budget sporting events. What I find interesting about Zoom is how it took off for video communications while we had other services that were better in a lot of ways. I particularly want to look at FaceTime during COVID-19, and how despite having a nearly decade long existence and being built into every iOS and macOS device, it didn’t have its ‘Zoom’ moment, and why Zoom became the new default group video service. It doesn’t work on Windows, Android, and the web

Bradley Chambers - 9to5Mac

There have long been rumours that Apple have FaceTime and iMessage running on Android in a bunker somewhere. The global health crisis and resulting lockdown would have been the perfect opportunity to put customers before the need to lock them into an ecosystem, and release them both for Android. If it’s not already a product that’s ready to go, then I can’t see a good reason not to build it now. I don’t buy an iPhone because it has FaceTime or iMessage, and I’m not sure who would. Messaging and video calling are now commoditised. WhatsApp, Houseparty and of course Zoom are ubiquitous and cross platform. In the end, it’s because of Apple’s stubbornness that their own customers are forced to use less secure, less privacy-aware battery-draining alternatives.

Distance So Far - While I don’t particularly care about time elapsed, knowing the elapsed distance allows me to know how far there is to go, and therefore how much energy I can afford to expend.

Current Heart Rate - The speed of the heart is a good indicator of how hard you’re working. I generally know if I’m above 185 then I’m putting in a lot of effort. A more relaxed run should be between 140 and 167. However if it’s particularly hot, or I’m coming down with something then my heart rate will be higher even if I’m not running at my usual pace - therefore I’ll want to take it easier than usual to avoid overly fatiguing my body.

Current Pace - I’ve always worked in kilometres when running, possibly because this is how the treadmills worked at the gym I belonged to when I first started out running. Knowing your current speed is of course the best way to make sure you’re on track to finish in the time you planned to.

Average Pace - This among with a bit of mental maths let’s me know my predicted finish time. I know whether I should speed up or hold off the gas slightly. One thing I wish Apple would add is the ability to see your predicted finish time instead, based on your average pace.

Average Cadence (Steps Per Minute) - Knowing my cadence is for me the best indicator of whether I’m running well. When I’m tired I am prone to running with bad technique and this usually coincides with a lower SPM. Making sure I keep above 175 reminds me to avoid stomping and focus on posture and arm movement, crucial factors when trying to avoid injury. I tend to get better times with a higher SPM too.

Now though Edge has been reborn using the same engine as Chrome, Blink. Gone is the legacy of Trident. Now we have what is essentially Google Chrome but without the annoying things Google likes to do. It’s strange, but it’s similar to Netscape and Mozilla. Netscape after being bought by AOL ended up being bloated out as a way to sell other products. Chrome feels this way these days. Privacy enhancing settings are buried deep in the settings so that no casual user would every find them. That and the browser really wants you to sign into your Google account and synchronise everything, even if you really don’t want to. Edge however is a breath for fresh air. On my 7 year old MacBook it flies by, and anecdotally seems faster than Safari. It supports Chrome plugins, and so is actually better than Safari in this respect. Safari took the regressive decision to require plugins install a full Mac application. On my even older Windows laptop, Edge manages to hide the hardware’s age with surprising grace. Microsoft make it easy to turn off 3rd party cookies and offer other privacy enhancing settings. The browser seems to be written for users and not for the benefit of its creator, a sure good sign. If you decide you don’t want to sign in, it’s not overly pushy about reminding you, even though I’m likely to actually trust Microsoft with my bookmarks and browsing history, and so will probably end up creating an account.

It feels odd seeing the word “Favourites” instead of “Bookmarks” in the menu bar. It takes me back to using the web as a teenager in the late 90s and using the last version of Internet Explorer for Mac on Mac OS X version 1 back in 2001.

At work, I’ve switched from Firefox to Edge. At home, I’m seriously considering switching from Safari to Edge. The only thing holding me back is the lack of synchronised reading list between Safari on my iPhone. When Apple eventually allow Edge to become the default browser on iOS too, I’ll give it more serious consideration.

Yet one more feature Apple have added to iOS that would make it difficult to switch to Android.

AirPods Classic

I’ve been using AirPods since 2017 – boy does time fly, it seems like yesterday. I was immediately a fan. The main selling point for me was the fact there was no ‘on/off’ button, and you didn’t need to worry about leaving them switched on. I was forever leaving my other bluetooth headphones powered on and in my bag, and then getting frustrated when Siri didn’t work because it was listening to me through the headset and not my phone’s microphone. AirPods solved this brilliantly. The fact they were such an elegant package, and worked so seamlessly with the Apple Watch was also really cool. I swear running without my brick of an iPhone 8 Plus helps me get a better time. I still use my 2017 ‘original generation’ AirPods regularly, although the battery life is now a little under 2 hours when listening to music, or about 45 minutes if making a call. I can’t help but think the relatively quick degradation of AirPods’ battery compared to say my Plantronics BackBeat FIT (which I’ve had since 2015 and still manage 5 hours) is due to the fact they are constantly charging in the case when not in use. Apple released a feature for the iPhone in iOS 13 that stops your phone from charging all night, in order to lengthen the battery longevity. Using that same logic, being plugged in 90% of the time must take its toll on the AirPods’ battery. Needless to say, the convenience, small size and sheer utility meant I was excited about upgrading the the AirPods Pro.

Fit & Style

The biggest noticeable difference with the AirPods Pro is the shape and size. Gone is the long pole that hangs down form your ears. Objectively, the AirPods Pro probably look better than the classic style of AirPods, however the classic AirPods are so ubiquitous now that what once seemed ridiculous now comes across as quite fashionable. If anything, I can see the classic AirPods (which Apple continues to sell) being more popular with younger, more cash-strapped individuals, and consequently more fashionable. Due to their price, AirPods Pro are more likely to be seen on middle-aged IT workers, which may limit their fashion appeal. Despite that, they fit exceptionally well thanks to the three sizes of ear-tips that come in the box, and a built in software utility that helps you to determine if you have a good fit for noise isolation. They are slightly more fiddly to put away than the originals – I find the ear tips often fold inside-out when I remove them from my ears which can be annoying. On the whole though, a better fit means better sounding music. The classic AirPods had terrible noise isolation, so much so that I couldn’t use them on the train in the summer when the windows were open. As a sufferer of tinnitus since I was 23, I am very conscious of not increasing the sound levels on headphones above the EU recommend limit. With AirPods Pro’s more secure fit, I rarely need the volume above 75%.

Sound Quality

There’s a lot to be said for the line of thinking that goes: the more you pay for a pair of headphones, the better they sound. Just knowing you have a pair of premium, 24-bit, gold plated headphones can cause a placebo effect in of itself. The AirPods Pro however, do genuinely sound amazing. I’ve heard parts of songs I’d not noticed before: previously hidden rhythm guitar sections, or faint backing vocals. This is on songs I’ve been listening to for 20+ years. The AirPods Pro sound great. The biggest new feature, Active Noice Cancelation (ANC) is extremely good too. I’ve only ever had one pair of noise cancelling headphones before, the Plantronics BackBeat Focus – my office daily driver for Skype Calls. I’d say the AirPods Pro’s ANC is much better, especially considering their small size. I don’t travel often, but I did a short flight recently and was able to listen my AirPods Pro at about 40% volume with ANC switched on which was outstanding. When out and about, Transparency mode does an exceptional job at passing through the sounds of the world around – essentially for walking or running on country lanes against the traffic, as I do frequently. It’s an odd sensation, it seems to slightly increase the higher range meaning you notice the birds singing more than usual. After a while it’s easy to forget you are wearing the AirPods as the outside world sounds so natural, except if it’s windy. I’ve found that running or walking in a breeze does lead to an uncomfortable sensation of of what sounds like someone blowing directly into your ears. I’m surprised there was no way with all the technology onboard this sound could be offset, but I imagine that’s not an easy problem to solve. I hope Apple can improve this with a software update. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s also not something I’ve ever noticed with other headphones before.

Controls

With the classic AirPods, you could double tap either side to invoke Siri, or trigger play/pause – depending on your configuration. With the new AirPods, double tapping is gone. Instead you need to squeeze the tip. This is more flexible as you can now either press once, twice or three times for play pause, skip forward and skip backward respectively. Pressing and holding switches between ANC and Transparency mode. Overall it’s a better system however I’ve noticed that I often pull the AirPod slightly out of my ear when using this control mechanism, which means I inadvertently loose the seal needed for decent noice cancellation. Siri is as inconsistent as ever. Unlike my OG AirPods, there’s no need to double-tap, I can just shout ‘Hey Siri’. Sometime Siri works like magic – ask it to turn on transparency mode, or lower the volume and 70% of the time it responds instantaneously saying ‘Okay, done’. The rest of the time however, it either takes too long that you doubt yourself – did I say the right thing? – and end up getting your phone out of your pocket, or it gets the wrong idea completely. There is something infuriating about requesting your favourite song, and having your phone proudly inform you it’s going to play a totally different song, from a genre you can’t stand, at maximum volume. Once thing I do notice is you need to say “Hey Siri’ pretty loud. Probably no louder than normal conversation, but louder than I’d like to when I’m in a public place. There’s something about asking your phone to remind you about buying toilet paper, or to send a text your significant other with a question asking them what they want for dinner that means I don’t want to scream it like Dom Joly.

A feature I have enjoyed is one hidden away under the notification settings for iMessage that allows messages to be announced and read by Siri when they arrive. This is genuinely cool, but I’m flummoxed as to why it’s only available on AirPods. Yes you can reply instantly without needed to say ‘Hey Siri’ which requires some clever work by Apple, but I’d be willing to forgo this if I could have this feature in my car too. It’s also of limited use because it doesn’t work with WhatsApp, which is the de facto SMS replacement in the UK.

Overall

I’m very impressed and would recommend them to anyone in the market for some premium headphones. Then again, for a staggering £250, I expect to be impressed. I understand there’s a lot of new technology in these, but I feel £199 would have been more reasonable for something with a 3-year lifespan. The main downside of the AirPods is their limited lifespan. For 2-3 year however, expect to enjoy great sounding music.

However I ran into a slight hitch the other day when I ordered something online from for pickup in an Apple Store. I placed the order while walking through the shopping centre, knowing the item was in stock and would be ready for me to pick up within 30 minutes. I paid using Apple Pay on my phone, and an order ticket was placed into my digital wallet. About 10 minutes later a notification appeared on my phone saying it was ready for pickup. Excited, I took the escalator to the upper floor of the shopping mall and walked into the Apple Store, phone in hand, QR code ready on the screen. All went well until the Apple Store employee asked to see some identification. I had none. Why Would I? I use a digital wallet. In many respects, I am the prototypical Apple Customer, using minimal time from staff and making my purchase online using Apple Pay, from an iPhone. Yet they wouldn’t give me my new AirPods without seeing some form of identification.

While I understand that you can’t just handover expensive items without some kind of validation in place, I was surprised that Apple, of all companies, did not have a digital alternative in place. You could argue it’s not the role of Big Tech to be creating digital ID cards, and perhaps there are benefits to plastic-based identification. In the UK, thankfully there are no laws requiring citizens to carry identification (even when driving). That said, I’d love to see a solution that works in tandem with our existing systems and doesn’t exclude anyone who doesn’t own a smartphone, or wants to keep using plastic ID.

I thought I was just unlucky. It seemed that around 50% of the time I tried to exit a train station by inserting my ticket into the barrier, I’d receive a message asking me to seek assistance. Whether starting or finishing the journey in my local town of Reading or further afield, it seemed to happen very frequently, while everyone else seemed to strut through the barrier with no problem at all.

Today it finally clicked. I’ve been putting my train ticket in my pocket along with my AirPods. The charging case has the same satisfying click as you close it as a premium brand car does when shutting the door. It achieves this using magnets. My theory is that the magnets are interfering with the magnetic strip on the train ticket.

Paper train tickets probably aren’t long for this world anyway, but if you’re also experiencing the humiliation of having to speak to an actual human being on your commute, check your AirPods or other devices bearing magnets aren’t near your ticket.

Within weeks of buying my car, a four-year old 2015 Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TSI SE 5d DSG, I discovered that I would occasionally be presented with an error message while driving stating “Error: Workshop! Only leave vehicle in position P.”

Although most of the time the audible tone and error message would disappear within five to ten seconds, it was disconcerting all the same, and a distraction while driving. For a long time I’ve been a “Do Not Disturb While Driving” convert, making use of iOS’s ability to silence notifications while I’m in the car. An alert that beeps and lights up your dashboard with a warning light is dangerous in its own right. If my car incorrectly thinks it’s in the workshop, or my gear shift should be somewhere else, that’s dangerous too.

Like any good millennial, I googled the error message and quickly found forum posts from other VW owners who’d seen the same message. The consensus was that it was caused by a faulty gear selector, and since it’s a known manufacturing fault, the forum posts informed me VW have a service bulletin out and their technicians should be able to identify and rectify the problem swiftly. Knowing I had one year’s warranty included with my purchase, I booked my car into the VW garage I’d bought the car from, who after a couple of hours told me they couldn’t find anything wrong. They said to see if it happens again and bring it back if it did. They left me their standard complimentary biscuit and I was sent on my way. Surprised by this, but trusting Volkswagen (and enjoying my sugar fix), I went away hoping the error, which had only occurred two or three times, would go away by itself.

Skip forward a few months and the error had reoccurred, and I’d also seen estimates that the cost of a new gear selector could run into the thousands. The error had kept happening every few weeks. At the same time I’d noticed my coolant kept dropping down below it’s expected level: I had a slow leak in my cooling system. When I booked this in to get fixed under warranty, I asked them to look at the “workshop!” error too. Again, they found nothing, but did replace my cooling system, over a thousand pounds worth of repairs. Surprising for a car that was only four years old, I was grateful for the warranty and another complimentary biscuit.

A month or two later, the message starting appearing more frequently. I booked it in again, keen to get it resolved before my one year warranty expired (even though as a manufacturing fault, VW should really cover it anyway). This time I told the them there were many forum posts stating it was probably the gear selector, and showed them a video I’d taken of the error (this was difficult to do without breaking the law, but thankfully on at least one occasion the error remained until I was parked off the road and able to take a photo).

After a having the car for a few hours, I was the told the error could be fixed by a software update to my infotainment system, and that as software isn’t covered under warranty I’d have to pay a £110 diagnostic fee. Even after explaining the forum posts saying it’s the gear selector, they insisted it was a software problem. Not happy about having to pay to fix a fault, I insisted I shouldn’t have to pay. The garage wouldn’t budge, stating that the warranty only covers mechanical and electrical faults. Even when I explained that software is powered by electricity and so is technically electrical, they refused to waive the fee. In the end I had to phone Volkswagen HQ, and after expressing my frustration and disappointment in Volkswagen in no uncertain terms, they were able to convince the garage to let me off the fee as a “goodwill gesture”.

While doubtful the software update would resolve the problem, I gave the technicals who work for Volkswagen the benefit of the doubt and hoped they had finally fixed this annoying and dangerous error message. I also got a another biscuit.

About a week after this, the alert showed again. In fact, it now started showing up more frequently. Sometimes multiple times in one journey, and sometimes not disappearing until I stopped the car and restarted the engine. I phoned Volkswagen again, this time in full “angry consumer” mode and, exacerbated by their inability to fix an issue that a simple web search returns a solution for.

For the fourth time, I dropped my car off. They had preordered a replacement gear selector this time, and so I was quietly confident it would be fixed. About six hours after handing over my car, I received a phone call informing that they had indeed found it was the gear selector and there was even a technical bulletin about this very fault. Thankfully there was no difference of opinion with warranty cover. 10 months into my 12 month warranty, I was reassured.

This was two days ago. I’ve not seen the message since. My fingers are crossed that this will indeed fix it, but after this experience, in all honesty, I’m not holding my breath. I think they’ve given up with the biscuits now. It’s disappointing but probably better for my health considering how many times I’ve had to go back.

If you experience this error, don’t give up. Mine got worse over time, so get it fixed- no matter how many times they push you away with free confectionary. It’s the gear selector!

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) – Tom Vanderbilt

Have you ever wondered about the psychology of road users, including yourselves? Doing so will make you a better driver. Facts I still remember a decade on:

• Merging late is better for everyone overall, but people find it annoying when people merge in front of them because our brain feels although our personal progress is being inhibited.
• The lane you chose probably feels like the slowest since we spend more time looking forward when driving, and so notice people passing us much more so than we notice people we pass.
• One of the reasons people buy fancy cars is to make themselves feel important, because unlike many other aspects of live, on the road all drivers get equal priority, no matter their job title or bank balance.
• Tailgaters can only keep it up for a few minutes because driving so close to someone requires a lot of attention.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari

Widely noticed as one of the most eye-opening books of the century so far, the cover of this book had quotes from both Barack Obama and Chris Evens (yes, the radio presenter) – quite a variation in gravitas. Some amazing facts or at least theories I learnt were:

• What differentiates Humans from other animals is not our brain power, but our ability to hold a collective imagination together, which in turn allows us to cooperate in the millions, unlike any other animal.
• Money, companies, countries and even football exist solely in our collective imaginations. They literally do not exist outside of it.
• Prehistoric humans had the same brains we we did, and were as intelligent as we were. What changed was our ability to pass on information through generations.
• Many diseases that have plagued humans throughout history were only passed to humans after we starting manipulating the environment and living in close quarters to other animals (e.g. started farming).

The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? – Paul Davies

Ever wondered why life exists? It turns out that if the laws of physics were changed ever so slightly, life probably wouldn’t exist. This books attempts to explain why this might be. Some interesting takeaways I recall were:

• The basics of the “standard model” – how each of the forces interaction with each other to create the world we live in. We all know about gravity and electromagnetic, but I’d never heard of the strong or weak forces before.
• Religion cannot explain how the universe started, if the answer is ‘God made it” then it simply pushes the question to “well, who made God then?”
• There is a surprising number of serious consideration given to everything existing inside inside a simulation.

A UNIX Box on every wrist

Maybe it’s just because I’m now in my early thirties and relatively old, but it seems to me quite fantastical that the smart watches, especially the Apple Watch, are now mainstream. That it’s actually considered normal for someone to walk around with an always-on, UNIX-based computer strapped to their wrist - a computer far more powerful than any of the computers I grew up with back in the late nineties and early 2000s.

I find this especially interesting because these days, other consumer hardwire such as smartphones and laptops (or tablets) just aren’t that interesting. Phones don’t really do anything new anymore. Nicer screens, easier ways to log in, slightly better cameras - incremental updates that make the experience a little bit nicer. Smart watches on the other hand are vastly more compelling from a geek’s point of view.

First, there is room for a variety of styles: some of the designs released by LG and Fossil look genuinely beautiful, though Apple Watch is in a league of its own on that front.

Secondly, there is plenty of potential for new sensor input on the wrist. At the moment we have heart rate, accelerometer, and now ECG sensors with the latest Apple Watch, and there is so much more potential for a device that’s always on, and always being worn. Will the smart watch eventually displace the smartphone, just as the wrist watch displaced the pocket watch? I don’t think it will be as clear cut but I think they will eventually surpass mobile phone usage for many tasks. I certainly find that I need my phone less when wearing a smart watch - I just prefer to use it for certain tasks, mainly idling time reading the news or Facebook, or using the camera - the former is something I want to cut down on anyway.

Despite my initial skepticism, I’m now hooked on the Apple Watch. My home is strangely devoid of clocks. Apart from various computing devices, and my microwave, I have no clocks that I can easily glance at (partly due to finding ticking annoying!). Apart from making daylight saving days less of an event, it does mean I rely on a watch or smartphone to keep me on track during the morning. Outside of just telling the time, I’ve found the Apple Watch useful for using Siri to do things like set timers and reminders. This means I have no need for a dedicated smart assistant like Amazon Echo, a smart watch beats a stationary cylinder in many respects because it’s always with me. It’s now second nature to dictate reminders into my wrist. Those reminders can always be location based (“At work”, “when I leave my car” etc.), unlike an Echo or equivalent. Admittedly, I’m not going to listen to music on the watch’s speaker, and the inability to easily control Sonos via the watch is disappointing (there are 3rd party apps, but they’re pretty clunky). Apart from this, I do occasionally reply to text messages and emails I receive while at home, more often though I’ll initiate a text via the watch using Siri to dictate. Initially I thought I’d use the remote control ability for Apple TV more than I do, partly because there’s no volume control for the TV on the watch, nor the ability to send Siri input to the TV (for example to search for something), and so I end up usually needing the Apple TV remote anyway.

Wearing a fitness tracker like the Apple Watch has also helped motivate me to keep active. I was an occasional runner before I owned an Apple Watch, but since, I’ve really progressed in part due to the ability to easily measure my pace and exertion using the GPS and heart rate sensor. The built in activity app is pretty minimal, and so I find exporting to Strava useful to get some more useful insights into my progress. The ability to go for a run with just a watch and some headphones, and still have access to music, podcasts and statistics while I run is truly amazing.

The downside of wearing a computer all the time is that it can be difficult to switch off. Whether it’s BBC News or Strava, companies and apps are desperate for our attention, and the watch can make it easier for them to grab it from us. I’ll address this in a future post, but I feel the Apple Watch’s fitness goals and achievements are focused on gaining “streaks” and never missing a day. I’d love to see Apple admit that once in a while, disconnecting is also good for your health and reward users for doing so.

Overall though, I’ll admit I’m hooked.

Gradually though I warmed to the idea, and invested in a Sonos system. The Sonos Play 1 is a brilliantly piece of kit. Affordable at £200, and expandable (For six months I only had one speaker and it still sounded great, eventually I saved up make it a stereo pair making it sound amazing), it’s not really designed for people with local music collections however. While you can play music from your iTunes library but then it’s dependant on the device that hosts the music being switched on. I succumbed and subscribed to Apple Music. I considered Spotify again, but really liked how Apple Music integrates with the Apple Watch. Being able to download a playlist onto my watch and listen while running with no phone is extremely useful.

Two years later it’s become something I am just used to. Any song I want, I can have it within seconds. Part of this makes me feel a sense of remorse – we used to wait, as the Arcade Fire once sang, but now everything has to be instant. Could I go back to buying music? It turns out, I actually quite like disassociating the act making a purchase with actual consumption. Somehow it now feels crude to link artistic enjoyment to capital. I get that I own none of it – there’s no option for me to sell my CDs secondhand to make some money should the need ever arise, and if I stop subscribing then I’m left with no music at all. But being able to enjoy music purely on its merits, and not have to think whether it was worth £9 is strangely liberating.

This Manic Street Preachers album was released in 1998, not 2018

Apple Music isn’t perfect however, there’s a few issues I’d love to see them solve:

• Support for Amazon Echo (they have this in the US, so I’m hoping the UK won’t be too far behind)
• Some albums have been uploaded carelessly, they have demos play as part of the main album, or missing tracks.  We need a way to report such errors.
• When albums get remastered, they are just added as a new album for the the artist with the current year as the release date. Instead, it should show the original release date and a separate field saying “remastered in”. Kind of like how you see the “first published” date along with the edition date in books.
• Again with remastered albums, you end up with duplicate songs. It would be great if your playlists (and shared playlists) automatically got the remastered versions of a song, and the old versions were hidden. I understand not everyone likes modern remastering techniques, so maybe make it a checkbox “Prefer remastered songs” ?
• Don’t ever recommend to me Boyzone again 🤣

To my surprise, and much like the Kindle, Amazon’s previous foray into selling hardware, my usage of the Echo in the months since I bought it has dwindled to be at the point where I’m seriously considering whether or not I should simply sell it. It’s very disappointing.

I should state now that I have no ‘smart home’ appliances – while it’s a pretty cool demo I’ve seen at friends’ houses, I’m quite OK with setting my thermostat on a timer or pressing a light switch when I need some light. I’m even OK with opening curtains manually, and don’t get enough visitors to warrant a smart doorbell. So perhaps I’m the wrong audience.

I also don’t have an Amazon Prime account, and although I’ve considered it, Amazon’s pushy sales technique of trying to trick me into signing up has made me actively avoid it. They’ve tried trick me, and I’m not going to give in! I’ve also seen what’s on their video service and wasn’t at all impressed. Again, maybe the Echo simply isn’t aimed at people like me?

Music could be good though, right? For roughly £3 a month the Echo can set itself up with Amazon Music Unlimited. That seemed fair enough. A small amount on top of what I pay already for Apple Music that’s worth it for the convenience of being able to shout the name of any song, artist or album and have it play immediately. (As long as it’s easily pronounceable.) Indeed it was good, great even as I was able to connect my Sonos speakers and therefore command Alexa to play songs would would in turn start playing on my Sonos Play: 1 stereo setup. The sound was brilliant. Until that is, Amazon (or maybe it was Sonos) released an update which stopped Sonos from working with the £3 Music Unlimited subscription. It now wants me to upgrade to something that’s substantially more in order to enjoy Sonos integration. So I cancelled the music subscription. It felt dishonest of Amazon to allow this to work, and then take it away. I still have Apple Music on my Sonos, but that doesn’t work with the Echo. I could switch to Spotify, which works on both, but that doesn’t work on my Apple Watch, which I do enjoy using when running. Vendor lock-in is brilliant, isn’t it?

As it happens though, using an Echo for music for a month or so while I had the subscription taught me something significant: I actually quite like browsing music visually. If I have to recall a song or album from memory then I tend to only play the big hits or albums that for some reason stuck in my mind as being great. That means lots of U2’s Achtung Baby but far fewer obscure album tracks from Manic Street Preachers’ Know Your Enemy get played.

It’s quicker to look at my phone to see the weather. Timers are annoying on the echo because you have to keep asking how much time is left – there’s no visual indication. The National Rail skill for Alexa is a joke. It asks me every time if I mean ‘Reading station in Reading’. It’s actually quicker to use my phone than try and have a conversation with this awful app. Most other skills seem more of a novelty than an innovation.

I thought being able to wake up and say ‘Alexa good morning’ and have the Echo read out the traffic, weather and BBC News might be good, but I’ve ended up setting the Echo to start playing BBC Radio 4 every morning. I get the news and weather, without having to articulate anything first thing in the morning, the traffic was mostly useless anyway as it would have changed in the 15 minutes I take to eat breakfast and shower. Yes, I paid £90 for a clock radio.

Don’t get me wrong, the Echo does have some good uses. I’ve moved it into the kitchen and now use it as a Bluetooth speaker for podcasts. It’s good for quick maths questions, adding appointments to calendars, querying random facts. On the whole however, I feel it’s basically a gimmick rather than the next evolution of personal computing. Maybe that’s OK?

With my Sonos, iPhone, laptop and Apple Watch I feel as though if any of these broke I would want to replace them. With the Echo, I don’t think I’d miss it at all. Just as my Kindle sits on the shelf (I call it a ‘black hole for books’ because I usually forget about the books that are on it, unlike physical books which I almost always finish because they are sat there on my bedside table), I wonder if the Amazon Echo will be a passing craze and that the product category will need to evolve in some significant way before it can really become a mainstream device like smartphones or televisions.

What do these technologies have in common though, apart from their interoperability?

They were invented in the distant past.

If I take the apps and services I now use regularly that were invented within the past 10 years, I struggle to think of one that supports interoperability. SMS was replaced with Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage. Two of which are owned by the same company, all of which are designed to keep users locked into vendor ecosystems. Slack, which raised billions of dollars in 2015 is essentially 1990’s IRC with support for logins and cute emoji, and of course it’s closed. Twitter, the debate forum of our time, tightly controls which 3rd party clients can access the service in any meaningful volume, and decides who and what is deemed appropriate content.

This problem highlighted itself further recently when I realised that if I wanted to access a music streaming service on both my Apple Watch and my Amazon Echo, I’d have to pay for two separate streaming services. Apple do not allow users to play music from 3rd parties on the watch, only their streaming service Apple Music. Amazon does not support Apple Music however. How ridiculous is this? Can you imagine Sony releasing a CD player in 1980 that only played songs from artists on the Sony record label?

My worry is that email is next. Google is pushing users towards its Gmail app, and withdraws features such as Push email from users who choose to use a different app. We are lucky that at the low-level, technical details such as how to implement HDR are still agreed as standards. But for how long? What we need is government regulation or oversight to ensure that technology companies compete on the merits of their products, rather than the vendor lock-in they manufacture. Interoperability didn’t stifle innovation or harm profits in the previous century, and it won’t in this one.

To start with, the pre-sale function of the web site doesn’t work on an iPhone. I loaded it a minute before the pre-sale was about to begin, watched the clock tick over, and pressed refresh. Nothing. Nada. As a web developer, I had the inclination to try loading it on a desktop PC, and unsurprisingly an ugly popup appeared telling me that the pre-sale was now open. Not a great start. I was on the same Wi-Fi network, and cleared the cache on my phone, so I don’t think it was a CDN issue. Anyone who only had their phone would have missed out on tickets.

Next, I had to register for an account (because this is a mandatory step – when it shouldn’t be), as usual I was careful to check the right boxes so that I opted out of marketing materials and to make sure they didn’t save my card details.

Before I pressed submit, I wanted to make a note of my login details with my generated password. I tried to copy my email address out of the text field, only to find Ticketmaster had disabled copy and paste. I really wish browser makers would disallow this user-hostile practise. Thankfully you can drag and drop text holding the control key to get the same effect, even when they’ve disabled copy and paste. But why do such a pointless thing?

I submit the form to find out my password is invalid, surprise surprise – the preference I’d set NOT to save card details, and to OPT OUT of marketing had been forgotten. Other information such as my email address and name had been remembered, but other settings seem to have conveniently erased and defaulted back to what I would imagine Ticketmaster would prefer. On the password issue, it was because my password contained some non-alphanumeric characters. A modern, secure system should not be restricting the complexity of passwords. I use a password manager, so my passwords are 20+ characters, randomly generated and contain all sorts of numbers, characters and digits. Ticketmaster however, thinks it’s a good idea to limit how secure passwords can be, and so rejects a perfectly good password, for no good reason. If they are hashing their passwords (with a salt) when storing them in the database, then it shouldn’t matter how long, or what characters my password has.

Finally after my payment is confirmed, I am asked to “Confirm my details for a chance to win £3,000 to spend on Ticketmaster. ”

“Confirm my details” ?!  This immediately seemed to me like a disingenuous way to get people to part with their personal information. If you’re going to have a competition, then label is clearly as such. Asking someone to “Confirm their details” directly after an order process gives the impression it might be mandatory. It looks like this functionality is from a 3rd party partner called Rokt who boast on their web site they allow their clients to “present internal offers as well as up-sell and cross-sell offers to customers that have just transacted on your site.” – I’m sure there’s a great idea in there somewhere, but it’s not presented very well on Ticketmaster. If you want people to sign up for offers (a valid thing for someone to want to do) then tell them that, don’t ask them to “Confirm their details” and hope they won’t notice -especially when they’ve already opted out of marketing communications on the previous page.

Unfortunately you can’t easily avoid doing business with Ticketmaster, because if you want to see a particular band on a certain day, they’re your only choice. Still, I’m looking forward to the gig.

So yes it’s nice to have these new features, but like everything in life, they come at a cost.

Is Apple intentionally slowing down your old iPhone? The data suggests not

The article reads:

Futuremark collected more than 100,000 benchmarking tests, from the iPhone 5S to the iPhone 7, and averaged the performance of both the processor (CPU) and the graphics chip (GPU) once a month between April 2016 and September 2017 with different versions of Apple’s software from iOS 9 to iOS 11.

According to Futuremark: “iPhone 5S GPU performance has remained consistent from iOS 9 to iOS 11, with only minor variations that fall well within normal levels.”

They’re missing the point. New operating systems don’t get slower because the manufacturer writes codes to throttle down CPUs. The reason new versions of iOS are slower on older hardware is because they _do more. T_o be fair, the article does explain this. iOS 9 on an iPad 2 is almost unusable, it’s certainly a long way from the speed of iOS 4 the iPad two debuted with. Clearly something changes overtime, and CPUs do not wear out over the course of 4 years!

But is it intentional or not? Of course it is. I’m sure there is a business decision made by Apple on how much time to spend optimising software for older devices. It’s a tradeoff. iOS versions are made in less than a year. At some point you have to balance the needs of the ecosystem (having as many users as possible running the latest software), the cost of development, and the needs of users – which includes having a device that runs at an acceptable speed, as well as having the latest security updates and new features.  I’m don’t think it’s a bad tradeoff, but to say a smart company like Apple does this unintentionally doesn’t sit right with me.

Why don’t you need it? Well, you do, just not yet.  The battery seems to be just able to cope with the demands of a 4G connection, and it’s still very limited from a software standpoint. For example, if you dictate a long reply to a message, and the dictation inevitably gets a word wrong, you can’t edit that one word by hand,  you have to say the whole phrase again, or just leave the mistake in and hope the recipient understands you. Guaranteed to loose any kudos on the train you thought that red dot might have given you. Apple will get there of course, but by the time they do, a new model with better battery life and a faster processor will be with us. So while like any technology geek I think it’s a cool gadget and a genius piece of technology, I do feel it makes sense to wait until there’s a better version, unless money is no object of course, or you have an exceptional circumstance that means having a phone on you at all times is a burden you’d rather not carry.

So why have Apple released it now, when it’s probably not ‘as ready’ as they’d like? My guess is that it helps the watch’s neglected app ecosystem. Now all of a sudden, rich people with their cellular Apple Watches are going to want to send WhatsApp messages from their watch. Time to build an app, WhatsApp. The same could be said for lots of the big players who’ve not yet bothered building watch apps. watchOS apps have been able to work somewhat independently from the phone for a couple of years now, by this I mean they can connect to the Internet (via WiFi or the phone), get their data and present it to the user interface without the phone. Original watchOS apps needed the phone for absolutely everything, including updating UI. Twitter and BBC News, to name just a few, still haven’t updated their apps to benefit from this new way of coding apps (which vastly improves performance), but now faced with a user base that doesn’t have their phone with them but expects the app to work, they might feel inclined to.

My favourite gadget

Finally, it’s here – a smartwatch that has it’s own cellular connection and so doesn’t require you have your phone with for it key functionality to work –  while also not looking like an ASBO tag.

I’m impressed that Apple were able to cram this new functionality into a watch that’s almost the same size as the previous generation. The ability to go out for a run, to a gig or to the pub for the evening and leave your phone at home is a game changer.  Being able to listen to music, get directions, take calls and respond to calls without anything on your person is something I imagine to be a very freeing experience. It’s still early days, and I expect the new watch to have significantly worse battery life when the cellular connection is used. Just as the current generation suffers when you use the GPS and heart rate monitoring functionaries, the new models will see less battery life if you use them away from your iPhone a lot of the time. In two or three years time however, when battery and processor efficiency has improved even more, these watches will be capable of  replacing our phones for many of their core uses. Will people want to replace their phones though? No camera, no web browser, no games. I doubt it. Having the option though, can be only a good thing. If you can leave your phone at home more and more often, you might even consider a bigger phone, or just having a tablet-sized device instead of a phone. Or perhaps we’ll just pull down out Apple Glasses when we need a bigger screen.

So will I be upgrading to the Series 3? In short, no. I bought an Apple Watch last year, and I’m going to make it last.⌚️

Apple Watch

Anyone who is into running will no doubt own a running watch of some sort. One I don’t see that much at events and running clubs is the Apple Watch. For me, the Series 2 with its built in GPS was a no-brainier. It’s a decent-looking watch that can serve as a daily fitness tracker, while also coming into its own as a way to measure runs. Starting a run is simple, and while on a run you can see your vital stats: current pace, average pace, heart rate, calories and distance are all available and you can add up to 4 stats to the screen at once. It’s actually quite nice that you can customise this screen, and and even remove stats so there are fewer than four, as sometimes it can feel like information overload. I have just my current pace and my heart rate. A handy, if not a little hidden feature is the ability to double-tap the workout screen and set a new ‘section’ – essentially a split. Once the run is finished a map of the route taken is shown, the marker is coloured from red through to yellow and then green, showing your pace from slower, average to fast. The weather forecast at the time alongside times for each kilometre (or miles if you have it set that way). That’s about it really – the Apple Watch isn’t able alert you when you’re drifting off your target pace as some dedicated running watches can, and the battery life will be severely drained if you run for more than about 30 minutes. My biggest complaint however is the reliability of the heart rate sensor. It seems to really struggle once you start to sweat, or if you’re running in cold, rainy or windy conditions (I live in the UK, so that’s basically 8 months of the year). Often I’ll look down at my wrist and see the heart rate greyed out where it can’t get a reading. Placing a finger under the watch to clear the sweat away seems to help, but it may well just be a placebo effect. On the plus side, being a fully fledged smartwatch, there are plenty of 3rd party apps available that could fill in at least some of these gaps. Nike Run Club is one of these apps, I’ve not tried it, but it may well (or at least could) implement features such as pace alerts. Of course as someone who was an iPhone developer a few years ago, I could roll my sleeves up and have a go at filling the gap myself, but that would be a lot of time and effort, but it’s good to know the option is there. Overall, its a good running watch but probably not as good as a dedicated one, but then you probably wouldn’t want to wear a dedicated running watch all day long. So for me the balance of having a watch that is also my main watch outweighs the fact there are better running watches out there.

Wahoo Tickr – heart rate tracker

To mitigate the Apple Watch’s unreliable heart rate tracking, I invested in a separate Bluetooth heart rate monitor. It was also a good opportunity to get a ‘second opinion’ of my heart rate while running. As a former sufferer of Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) I am fascinated by my heart rate, both when resting and when I’m exercising. The Tickr seemed like an affordable option that promised to work with the Apple Watch, and also with its own app for use without the Apple Watch. It seems to measure my heart rate accurately, at least while at rest. I’ve not been able to measure it manually while I’m exercising to compare, as when I stop to take my pulse my heart rate inevitability comes down. At rest though it’s as good as my manual reading. I also get the feeling it’s more precise than the Apple Watch when running. The Apple Watch seems to always show my heart rate as a familiar set of numbers: 52, 60, 82, 170 etc. while the Tickr will show a wider set of readings, making me think that it’s doing less averaging over time. My only complaint would be the way it’s worn. It’s a strap you wear around your chest. I’ve found that the system for adjusting it is easy to accidentally change, but not easy to notice that you may have somehow loosened it. At least 5 times I’ve been out running and had to either stop to adjust it, or in some cases take it off because I didn’t want to ruin my time messing about with a heart rate tracker. One time I actually dropped the tracker without realising (it was hold and my hands were numb), thankfully, someone from my running club was behind me and noticed! This is the fatal flaw in the product, it needs a better adjustment mechanism and isn’t susceptible to accidental/gradual loosening over time.

Headphones

I’ve been using the Plantronics Backbeat Fit since summer 2015. They are still going strong, and have survived many hot, sweaty summer runs, as well as cold, wet and windy winter runs. They use Bluetooth, and so the only wire is the one that goes around the back of your head from one ear to the other. This means the phone can be placed in a pocket or pouch, or even cooler, I can leave the phone at home and play music straight from my Apple Watch. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t support Podcasts on the Apple Watch, so I usually end up bringing the phone with me on long runs anyway. Unlike earbuds, the Backbeat Fit’s speakers point upwards into your ear, rather than directly down into your eat canal. This means you can still hear clearly what’s going on around you. This is great when running outside, in fact it is quite literally is a lifesaver when running on roads with no pavement. This design isn’t as good when you’re in a noisy gym that insists on playing awful dance music at maximum volume, but on balance I like the fact they are more open that most headphones. Even after 18 months of regular usage, they still get over 5 hours of battery life. Upon powering them on, a little voice tells you how much time you have remaining which is pretty cool. Like most Bluetooth headphones they do suffer from some Bluetooth quirks. Annoyingly if I leave them on but take them off, they stay connected to my phone, so I often find myself trying to invoke Siri using my phone’s microphone, and getting frustrated because it’s not understanding me, before realising the reason it can’t make out what I’m saying it because it’s trying to use the microphone on the headphones, which are in my gym bag.

And that is ist. I’m not going to go into non-gadgety stuff like trainers and running clothes… because, well, I don’t really find any of that very interesting. Hope this was useful.  🙂

This is good as it brings closer a day when I don’t need to carry around my wallet. One of my biggest anxieties about not carrying a wallet is running low on fuel and not being able to refill my car. To that end, I’ve been trying out various petrol stations to see whether Apple Pay works over £30. Anecdotally,I’ve found that in BP stations the contactless sensor is switched off for transactions over £30, so waving your phone or watch in front of it does nothing. In Shell, it does work – usually to the surprise of the cashier  who was halfway through telling me “It won’t work for transactions over £30.” I’ve also paid for food in some local pubs, again to the surprise of the waiter.

So try it out in your local shops and see if they’re using the latest kit. You might find you can leave the wallet at home most days. Welcome to the future!

Of course a year is not an just arbitrary measure. A year is the time it took for our planet to orbit the sun. Just consider that for a moment. Then consider than our sun is itself orbiting a black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which is itself spinning and drifting through intergalactic space. You may think you’re going back to the ‘same place’ when you return to a familiar spot on earth, but in actual fact no person has ever returned to the exact same point in the universe more than once. Isn’t that just a mind-blowing thought?

I digress, though I think it’s important for us not to forget about our place in the universe when looking back on our past, and considering our future. So here are a few moments of 2016 that stood out for me, looking back on some of the experiences I had last year.

2016 started off in an unusual manner for me. Instead of waking up feeling dazed and hungover, I woke up feeling fresh and relaxed as I headed to London to see the New Year’s Day parade. It was the first time I’d seen it, and it was a really fun experience. How heartwarming it was to see all these people, some of whom had travelled a long way from across the globe, putting on a show for London. Topped off with some nice food and the fact that it didn’t rain, it was a fantastic day out. I would highly recommend going to the parade to see in the new year, as opposed to my usual style of drinking too much cheap Champaign and not really remembering any of it.

As January progressed I returned to visit a flat I’d seen just before Christmas with the intention of making an offer. It was a good size and a good price, although it was very close to a major motorway meaning noise from traffic could have been an issue, but I’m a realistic with these things and release you can’t have it all. There was a slight problem however. With it being a flat I knew there would be service charges and ground rent. I wanted to see what these were before I made an offer, as these could be an important part of my monthly budget. The estate agent couldn’t tell me, and weeks went by without them giving me any new information. I decided to take it upon myself to go to the block, and look through the main entrance in order to see if I could make out anything on the windows or noticeboards referencing a management company. Lo and behold, there was a leaflet with a phone number pinned to a notice board. I phoned the management company to ask them what their costs were and if they could tell me anything about the ground rent. The management company seemed surprised that the flat was even up for sale, as it was apparently reserved for a ‘Help to buy’ scheme where the purchaser only buys part of the property. This wasn’t what I wanted, and the estate agent disputed this. After about three weeks later I had a voicemail from the estate agent saying they had some ‘good news’ and that I should call them back. I didn’t. Something about this property and the fact that nobody else seemed to be putting in any offers smelt fishy. I’m glad I didn’t put that offer in now, as although it would have bend a good sized apartment, the commute to work would have been pretty crazy and the noise would have been unbearable. A lucky escape!

As I set off on my journey to work on the morning of the 10th January, I put the radio on to hear David Bowie’s “Heroes” playing. Being a natural cynic, I thought to myself how bloody typical, he’s just released a new album and they’re playing one of his oldies. Then the song faded out and the radio DJ gave a recap of the morning’s grave news: David Bowie had died aged 69. Unlike any celebrity death before it, this really struck a chord with me. I found myself actually grieving for someone I’d never met. I think that it was partly because his music had been a big part of my life growing up, and also that I distinctly remember seeing him on the Jonathan Ross show in the early 2000s. I worked out that back then (it seems like yesterday) he was the age that my Dad is now. Those 12 or so years went by so quickly. It brought home how brief life can be, and that’s even if you’re lucky enough to make it to 68.

As March rolled around I decided to make a big change in my life and move back home. I had been renting a room since I split with my girlfriend a year earlier, and although the room was pleasant and the house was very clean and tidy with good people as housemates, I knew that by moving back home I could save shedloads on rent and top up my savings with the hope of putting down a deposit on a nicer house, or even just reducing the amount I’d need to borrow on a half-decent house. Moving home after 4 years was weird at first, but after about a week it became routine. It’s amazing how quickly you fall back into old routines. I was blessed to have family who live so close and who had room for me.

What’s the first thing I did having moved back home, with a lot more disposable income burning a hole in my pocket? Book a holiday of course! I was originally intending to do a bit of solo-traveling, but when I told a friend I mine that I was thinking of going to Barcelona, he said he’d come too. It was my first visit to Spain, and based on my experience of Barcelona I think it’s a beautiful country. So much culture and great architecture in such a short square mileage. I’d definitely like to go back again sometime soon. Highlights include exploring the seafront, the art galleries and touring the Nou Camp.

As May drew to a close and the beginnings of summer could be smelt around the corner, I took a trip to Swansea to see the Manic Street Preachers at the Liberty Stadium. The Manics are my favourite band, and this was like a mini-festival exclusively for die-hard fans of the band. It was here that I got into Public Service Broadcasting who were the first support act. I’d seen them back in 2013 also supporting the Manics, but it wasn’t until this gig that I fully appreciated their music. The next support act were the Super Furry Animals, who to be honest I don’t care much for, but they’re a decent enough warmup act. Finally the Manics came on and played their colossal 1996 album “Everything Must Go” – it’s crazy to think that it’s 20 years old now. It was here that my brother asked me to be his best man for his wedding next year. A great night, with a festival like atmosphere, despite the rain.

At the beginning of June I went to a Podcast meet up in London. It was great to meet Federico Viticci from the Connected podcast, as well as chat to other listeners of the show. Not many of my friends share my interest in technology so it was good to be able to fully geek out while enjoying a few beers and some food.

The summer was pretty quiet for me. Still focusing on my saving and having already been away to Spain back in the spring, I wasn’t planning on going on holiday again. I did get convinced into running a 10K run at work, however. I’m really glad I did as it was a lot of fun and has definitely whet my appetite for taking part future events. Until then I’d been focused on running as a solo activity. Even now I enjoy the ‘me time’ that I get with running, but running with other people and with people cheering me on from the sidelines was a cool experience and one I’ll hope to repeat. Who knows, maybe a half marathon could be on the cards in 2017?

In the last week of August I put an offer in on a flat I’d seen and to my amazement it was accepted. This one felt right in a way that the first one didn’t. It was in a semi-rural location (By that I mean quiet, surrounded by lots of trees and single-track country roads, but it’s half a mile from a train station and it still has fibre broadband.) and has a garden and a garage. The commute was going to be an extra fifteen minutes into work, but that’s a small price for living in a good location (When your neighbour’s car looks like it might have cost half the value of your house, you know it’s a pretty decent area!). Unfortunately being a leasehold the mortgage agreement took absolutely ages to go through. I waited with baited breath.

While taking a week off on the Isle of Wight (My parents have a place there so it’s a pretty cheap week away.) I received a text message from my boss asking if I’d be free to go to Santa Cruz for a few days in a in two weeks time in order to take meetings with clients. Obviously I didn’t have to think much about the answer to that one. I was lucky enough to be able to tack on a few days holiday before the business meetings, and stayed up in San Francisco for four days. I really love the States, especially California so I was not going to let any chance to visit again go by. The meetings were a success and Santa Cruz was a beautiful as everyone had told me it was. It felt more like California I know from Beach Boys songs than San Francisco or Los Angeles, with the prominent surfing culture and the frequent smell of weed! San Francisco was equally as exciting, such a great vibe down on the bay-front. Although it’s full of English people. I sat down at a bar in a diner and to my left was a bloke from the same town as me int the UK (he’d even done the same 10K I’d done a few weeks earlier), and to his left (but not with him) was a British girl who lived about 60 miles north of where I live. What a crazy small world it is. As October began I’d still not made any progress with the mortgage offer – it seems mortgage companies are in a unique position of power. There’s not a lot of market forces driving them to offer a good service, as people are just going to go with the best rate. Not having bought any new technology this year so far, I splashed out on a new Apple Watch Series 2. Better to make the most of not having a mortgage while I can, I told myself. The original version had become my favourite gadget. I find the idea of a smart watch so much more compelling than a phone. A computer that’s always on, and always on me. The new model was properly waterproof and can measure swims, it also has a markedly better battery life. I went for the stainless steal model this time, as I think it looks classier, i was wiling to pay the extra this time as I now know that it’s money well spent. When I bought the original model last year I wasn’t sure if it would be that useful so I just went for the cheapest version. It should last me at least 2 or 3 years if I look after it. Unless Apple release one that has cellular connectivity, I really can’t see a reason to upgrade again any time soon. Overall I’m super impressed, I just wish it could work without a phone so I could have my watch on me at all times for communication needs, and just use an iPad when I need to do something more complex.

Towards the end of the month I went to see the Duke Spirit in London, another of my favourite bands. Being a London based ‘art rock’ band the crowd were quite a bit different to what I’ve come to expect at Manics gigs – not much in the way of a mosh pit, but still great music and some good support acts too.

November was also pretty quiet for me. Apart from regular calls to nag my mortgage broker of course.  I found my work getting more interesting. Working with the latest craze in tech, ‘Artificial Intelligence’, otherwise known as Machine Learning: The ability to use clever probability mathematics to make computers do human-like things such as image recognition and language translation. Some say it’s nothing more than brute force statistics, no different to a weather forecast. Others think it really is the key to inventing machine intelligence. Whatever you call it, I think it’s reached a point where the Internet was in 1998. Nearly every startup for the next 15 years will be taking an idea and applying machine learning to it, just as they have done with the Internet during the past 15 years. It’s super cool, but also a but scary. Bus drivers, airline pilots, lorry drivers (to name a few) will likely loose their jobs to machine learning algorithms during the next 15 – 20 years, if the technology continues to progress at the rate it is now. Does this pose an existential question to our consumer-based society? With fewer jobs, how does anyone earn any money to pay for those automatised taxis? Or will the AI revolution, like the industrial revolution before it, create a multitude of new jobs we can’t even begin to imagine today? I’ve no idea, but I do know it’s an exciting time to be working in the tech industry.

As the year drew to a close, I finally completed on my flat purchase. I’m still using an upside down cardboard box as my coffee table, but I have all the basics: A fridge, a cooker and Internet access. I’ve never lived alone before but I’m actually quite enjoying it.

Overall I feel that 2016 was a transition year for me personally. I moved on from some old friendships, formed new ones, and moved into a new home. I feel I’ve gown as a person more than any other year. I realise I’ve been incredibly lucky to have visited some cool places and purchased my own flat. That said, I’m a strong believer that what you own, or the destinations you’ve visited is not a measure of success or happiness. Having good friends and family coupled with good health are all that really matters, the rest is just a nice bonus. A technique I’m going to try for next year is to write an idealised version of 2017’s review before 2017 starts, and then try and make all the things I want to do actually happen.

Congratulations on making it to the end of this article, wishing you Happy New Year!

There was a time when a new OS update meant inevitable slowness until you finally succumbed to the marketing and upgraded by either stuffing more RAM into your PC, or shelling our for a brand new machine. This changed in the PC world with Windows 7, which famously had the same operating requirements as it’s then 2 year old predecessor, Windows Vista. Apple hasn’t always been so kind, with new versions of iOS regularly slowing down older hardware, though this hasn’t been so much of a problem since the 64-bit era (2013 iPhone 5S or newer), but even now an iPhone 6 doesn’t feel as snappy as it did 3 years ago.  So it was a nice surprise when Apple announced back in June that its latest incarnation of the operating system for the Apple Watch, watchOS would be focused on performance. This was long overdue. Apple Watch’s main failure was it’s slowness. Unlike a laptop or a phone, a slow smartwatch can be physically painful to use. So for the most part people didn’t it seemed – 3rd party apps were few and far between.

The new version of watchOS achieves this speediness by keeping apps in memory for as long as it can. You now get to choose your 10 favourite apps and place them in a ‘dock’, and they’ll be prioritised over other apps to not only stay in memory but also receive more frequent background updates. Frequent background updates also apply to ‘complications’ (widgets on the watch face). What is striking though is the amount of fit and finish that’s been applied to the system. Now apps do really launch instantly, for the most part. If like me you only use 4 -5 apps of a regular basis, then it’s likely those apps will always be in memory. This results in a much more usable device.

Siri, the voice controlled virtual assistant is now much more efficient at communicating its status as when you ask for something. Instead of having to watch your wrist to see if it managed to understand what you said, you can now drop your wrist and it will subtle tap you when it has your answer, or to tell you if it didn’t understand. A small change, but it makes a big difference to the usefulness of the feature.

You can now draw characters onto the screen to transcribe text. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s a nice way to quickly reply when your phone is out of reach. Reminders are now available on the watch, and stay on the screen for up to 8 minutes after you last used the app, so I can walk round the supermarket checking off my shopping list on my wrist. The watch now feels more useful then it did before, when I was only really using it for notifications and fitness tracking (which are still first class).

On my smaller 38mm machine battery life still isn’t great. It seems to be slightly worse than before. Where I would have previously been at 25% at the end of the day, I’m now at 10%. This may well be because I’m using it a lot more now. I’ve long been in the habit of a post-lunch charge at my desk, so it’s not an issue most of the time.

I’ve always been compelled by the idea of having a computer strapped to my wrist, accessible at any time. This ‘ambient computing’ experience is finally realised with watchOS 3. What is really needed now is a watch with it’s own cellular modem, so the phone truly becomes an optional extra.

After spending a good 20 minutes taking in the view and getting some good photographs (I was paranoid about dropping my iPhone from the top – I wonder how many people actually do that?) I went back down and headed towards the bay, assuming there would be something interesting to see there. I was not wrong. Pier 39 was brimming with live music (I got a signed CD from a band called The Luck – I’m sure they will be huge one day), performers, shops and stalls selling donuts, cookies, pretzels and everything else you want to eat but know you shouldn’t. After watching a show and some excellent music, I mooched around for a bit, soaking up the atmosphere, before walking on to Fishermans Wharf. From here I caught a tour boat that took us out under the Golden Gate Bridge and around the former prison island of Alcatraz. It was a really fun trip, and the audio narration was decent. It did start to get rather choppy as we got all the way out to the Golden Gate Bridge, but this only added to the sense of fun.

After this, feeling pretty exhausted (my body thought it was 3am still), I sat looking out over he bay and read a little on my Kindle, soaking up the sun (I am now bright red and have since picked up some some tan lotion from Walgreens!). After this I went and ordered some dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe on Pier 39. I have a thing about Hard Rock Cafe – wherever I see one I’ve not been before I like to visit it. So far I’ve been to about 5 around the world from Florida to Barcelona. I like the fact that they don’t jus pop up in any old place, even if the menu is a little limited. Now feeling tied, my body thinking it was 5am (the locally brewed larger probably didn’t help with the tiredness) I started the two mile walk back to my hotel, where I promptly fell asleep.

So what to do? Our governments seem keen to pass laws which promote and support DRM – I can understand this. An economy where goods are easy to steal and stealing is virtually undetectable – an economy based on good will if you like, is probably not an experiment they want to attempt. But what if they also passed laws that promoted consumer rights; rights not to be locked into a single platform? In this world, any digital goods purchased from one platform would be available to download again from rival platforms at no cost. If the other platform is somehow better (e.g. higher definition) then of course users would be expected to pay for the upgrade (though, I would expect the original version to still be available), but if it’s like for like, then consumers would have the right to transfer their purchases to as many platforms as they wish. This could be backed up by a common verified email address or block-chain style database, with safeguards in place to prevent abuse. It could be done, and it would make digital media much more competitive, improving the experience and price for consumers overall.

Will it happen? Let’s say I’m not optimistic.

Take a step back however, and you may realise that this doom and gloom is often nothing more than a distortion of reality. The human brain is hardwired to focus on what it hasn’t got and to always want more. It’s why the human race migrated and populated each and all of the continents on earth and eventually landed on the moon. To be dissatisfied with what you have and to strive for better a is natural behaviour. That doesn’t mean it’s always a useful behaviour. Just as aggression can be put to use in driving someone to do well at sport , it can also be incredibly destructive.

One-hundred years ago, my great-grandparents were born at a time when the average life expectancy in the UK was around 55 (This figure is sadly skewed because so many unfortunate children died young of diseases which have now thankfully been eradicated.) In just four generations the quality and length of life somebody can expect to live in the UK has increased dramatically. This really is a good time to be alive. Being born in the UK, one of the most prosperous countries on the planet is incredibly lucky. Most of us have the opportunity to visit many wonderful places – if I were to put my home ownership ambitions on hold for a bit, I could probably afford to visit many more far-flung parts of the world.  Low cost travel is something we now take for granted, but it’s something our ancestors could only dream of. You only have to go back a few more generations to find a time when visiting the next town was a special event. [1. While saying that, I do think it’s important not to define oneself based on where you’ve been. The ‘where’ is meaningless. If you visited Mexico and spent the entire time in a 5 start hotel complex, then did you really visit Mexico? You might have a good tan, and if you enjoyed yourself, then that’s all that really matters – this underlines why listing places you’ve been in an effort to define yourself is a futile exercise.]

So why am I writing this? Because frankly, over the past year I found that I became obsessed with what I thought was missing in my life, and forgot to be grateful  for what I actually have. If you have good friends, good health and a good job, then count yourself lucky too.

Back then I had a Nokia N95, which had a brilliant camera and proper GPS – none of which could be said for the iPhone 3GS. Back then it was so unbelievably cool to be able to download a entire web page on a phone, or even a large file such as a podcast over 3G. My network plan included something like 500MB of data, but I never got anywhere near that limit. My iPhone changed this. At the time I was familiar with iOS, having owned the first generation iPod Touch, so getting a phone that did the same but more – an always-on Internet connection, a compass, a camera, and it was so much faster too (the ‘S’ in 3GS was for ‘speed’ remember) was absolutely brilliant. At the time I’d been working as a junior developer for just over 18 months – my first proper job as I like to say.

It’s amazing what a difference 7 years makes. Back then, sitting smugly on a train or in a dentist waiting room surfing the Internet was only something us geeks did. Tweeting what you had for lunch was a novelty. Now technology has gone mainstream. Everyone is on the Internet all of the time. The iPhone was to mobile phones as broadband was to the Internet. It redefined normal.

I do wonder what will be next. Yes there is the cloud, there’s deep learning and VR/AR, but these are technologies that have yet to be productised in the way that capacitive screens and low-powered ARM chips were with the iPhone. All I know it, the world we live in will be exciting in 7 more years. Roll on 2023.

I’ve been a fan of the Manic Street Preachers ever since I heard their first number one hit “If you Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” back in August 1998, aged 13. I subsequently received the album on which that single resided – “This is My Truth Tell Me Yours” the following Christmas. When was 13 and living in the middle of nowhere, having the means to the get to a shop and buy the CD was not something that occurred frequently. This was before the days of the iTunes Store and downloadable MP3s. Napster wouldn’t be released for another 6 months, and it would take the good part of a day to download an album on a 56K modem. (Not to mention without a CD burner or portable MP3 player, the best you could do with an MP3 was listen to it though some crummy ‘multimedia’ speakers on a PC). I fell in love with the CD. From the opening track “The Everlasting” to the closing “SYMM”, i loved its rich texture and atmosphere. I soon acquired the previous album “Everything Must Go” and shortly after that, the rest of their back catalogue. What drew me to the band was not just the brilliant music, but also the intriguing lyrics about politics, civil wars and depression. A stark contrast to what you’d hear if you tune in to radio back then where the lyrics would be either about a) falling in love b) braking up or c) wanting to have sex (and still today – Capital FM is dire, but thankfully the Internet and BBC 6 Music have balanced things out) Unlike a lot of music around at the time, the Manics’ lyrics were (and still are) staunchly political while also poetic. So it was with great excitement that I set off for Swansea on the morning of the 28th of May 2016. I’ve seen the Manics plenty of times – at festivals, greatest hits tours, intimate album tours, an entire singles gig at the o2 – but never like this, on their home turf on a beautiful summers day in Swansea. There is something about being a Manics fan that you don’t feel with other bands – you can’t help but have a degree of respect and comradery for anyone you see at the gigs, not just for their good taste, but also their dedication (it’s been 16 years since their commercial peak) and ostensible intellect and curious  mind needed to follow such a band.

The gig started with the first of two support acts – Public Service Broadcasting. I’d seen them support the Manics before and was mildly interested, this time however their music really struck a cord (I’ve since had both their albums on non-stop). They’re an odd band to watch live – a but like I imagine it must be like watching Daft Punk or the Pet Shop Boys – they are pseudo-anonymous and only speak through a computer generated voice. This ties in nicely with the band’s core mastery – putting old public service broadcasts to music. I probably haven’t done it justice the way I’ve just explained it, but suffice to say they’re bloody brilliant so check them out. Next on to the second and final support act, the Super Furry Animals. I’d never been a fan, and 20 years on from their commercial peak, I can’t say I am now. It was a chance to go and grab a hotdog from the friendly staff at the Liberty Stadium. Finally at about 8PM, the Manics appeared and played the entire album “Everything Must Go”. It flew by. It was odd because the song they nearly always play as a set closer “A Design For Life” is the second track on the album, and it didn’t quite work as well so early on into the gig. But hearing classic such as “Kevin Carter” and “Enola/Alone” which I’d never heard live before was just breathtaking. The highlight for me was the last song on the album, “No Surface All Feeling” for which I was hoping they’d do a 10 minute Swansea special extended version (sadly not). After a 5 minute interval the boys then want on to play a second half, which included the Wales Euro 2016 theme and many other amazing songs. The most memorable moment of the night had to be Nicky Wire, who as the rain started getting heavy shouted in defiance “you’re not going to let the weather spoil the fun” (or words it that effect) – and at that exact moment there was a clap of thunder and flash of lightening. If it hadn’t been so damn loud I’d have sworn it was a special effect and part of the show.

As the rain fell and the night went on the atmosphere was ecstatic – it was like a festival just for fans of the Manic Street Preachers. As “Tolerate” rang out and I left to get the last train, I thought back to that day in 1998 when I first heard the song, and wondered how I would feel back then, aged 13, knowing that I’d one day hear the song live aged 31. Can’t wait for the next gig.

Why this madness?

iPhone SE, Rose Gold

The last phone I bought was an iPhone 5 back in December 2012. I was pleased with the phone and only gave it up last November when I decided to start using my company issued iPhone 6 as my main phone. The reason for switching was mainly because its ageing A6 processor was beginning to start showing its age, and the lack of M-series motion co-processor meant any motion tracking applications needed to keep the entire phone awake when in use, so battery life wasn’t that great for me. The iPhone 6 also has a much better camera. I’d refrained form upgrading my personal phone for so long because the iPhone 6 and the 6S did nothing for me – they don’t look particularly good, and they’re way too expensive for anything but the 16GB model, which I would not recommend to anyone but my worst enemy.

Modern processor niceties aside, I wasn’t too happy with the size of the iPhone 6. It was awkward to use with one hand, and impossible to put in a pocket while running – I needed to strap it to my arm instead. So when Apple announced the iPhone SE a few weeks ago, I knew this was the phone for me. The classic, beautiful iPhone 5 design and more importantly a usable size, but with the far superior camera and processing smarts of the iPhone 6S. I feel like this is a product Apple made just for me.

Upon going back to the smaller size everything felt so much nicer. The phone just sits in the hand much more naturally, and I can reach any part of the screen without using two hands or performing a balancing act in order not to drop it. There is also something particularly cool about using such powerful applications as Pixelmator, iMovie and Numbers on a 4 inch screen – there is a certain elegance in making an app that can do so much with such little screen real estate.

I went for the 64GB mode, which makes this the first iPhone I’ve ever owned with more than16GB of storage space. What a difference it makes. 16GB was fine back in 2009 when I had a 3GS, but in 2012 it made no sense, and it’s worrying that Apple still sells them. I can for the first time actually install apps without needing to delete something else first. Before I had to consciously keep applications installed to a minimum, in order that I could have 2 albums downloaded (for running) and space ready to take photos (usually 500MB or so). Now I don’t have to worry, and I can even install games. If anything, the storage upgrade is more significant than the superior processor and camera.

Finally I went for Rose Gold – why? I just felt like a change. I’ve always had the black iPhone, and Rose Gold was this year’s “new colour”. People can joke that it’s a girly colour, but honestly, I’m confident enough with my own masculinity to use a pink phone and not give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Overall I think it’s a brilliant upgrade over the iPhone 6. More usable, nicer camera and much faster. It is missing the barometer (sad face) and the front-facing camera isn’t as good, but that’s a small compromise, there’a also no camera bump.

While I like that Apple is pushing the iPad a PC replacement – for many people it is (including myself, mostly); I do think that people still using a 5 year old PC are likely to be in the ‘technologically conservative’ camp and will therefore run up against limitations if they tried to use an iPad as a replacement.

For example:

• They may still have an older generation of iPod or MP3 player that needs to sync with a PC.
• They may still buy CDs, and want to rip them so they can play them on such an MP3 player.
• They may want to print things, and seeing as they have a 5-year old PC, they probably don’t have a wireless printer.
• They might own a lot of legacy media such as video tapes and vinyl records. They may want to use a USB conversion device to modernise this media, which won’t be supported on iOS.
• iPads still need iTunes in the event of an unsuccessful update, although rare, having to drive to an Apple Store or relative’s house to restore an iPad would be very inconvenient.

Not to mention that the cheapest iPad Pro with a keyboard cover is an extraordinary £628.00!

Yes, it has many, many benefits over a PC – low maintenance (the only real maintenance iOS devices require are OS updates and managing the puny amounts of storage they have) – and best of all there’s no antivirus software or other crapware preloaded.

So nice a nice idea, but in reality anyone who hasn’t updated their PC in 5 years probably isn’t going to blow £628.00 on a device that isn’t a dead cert to cover all scenarios. Also I’d expect a £628.00 laptop to have more than 32G of storage.

I suspected that the app was receiving lots of ‘silent notifications’ which can cause the app to wake up and start fetching data in the background, regardless of the ‘Background App Refresh’ setting. To counter this, I decided to uninstall Facebook, wait 24 hours and then reinstall it. Upon launching it for the first time after reinstalling, it asked if I wanted to receive notifications. This time I chose “Don’t Allow”. This means the Facebook app won’t get access to a unique token enabling it to send those silent notifications which I guessed were causing all of this background activity.

Sure enough Facebook is now reportedly using less battery, and none of it is background usage. Waiting 24 hours between deleting the app and reinsalling it is important because otherwise iOS will simply remember your previous notification settings, and not ask you if you’d like to allow them again.

This is based purely on my anecdotal usage, I’d love to know the actual machinism that causes this improvement

I phoned BT and found their helpline very unhelpful. When asked to unplug the router overnight, I asked why this was needed and was told ‘it’s technical’. Throughout the process I felt as though I was just being read a script and not being listened to.

Anyway, I had managed to get my work laptop connected and had hooked into my company’s VPN when all the devices in the house stopped working again. My phone, the Apple TV, Kindles – all except for my work laptop. How odd. When I disconnected from the VPN, it too started to not work.

This made me think to try using Google’ DNS instead of BT’s. To my surprise, the Internet started behaving like a 70Mb/sec Internet connection should for the first time in months. My next step was to log into the painfully slow BT HomeHub router to try and change its DNS settings at the network level, rather than for each and every device. It turns out BT have restricted that, because normal people can’t be trusted to change their DNS servers, it seems.

After doing some digging, I discovered that the Apple Airport Express base station I’d been using to extend the range of the wireless network could be used as a NAT bridge and in place of the BT Homehub. I found this helpful post on the BT Forums which I will recap here incase BT decide to shut down or move their forums.

In short, you plug in the Ethernet cable from the white BT Openreach box into the WAN port on the Airport. Your username can be anything @btbroadband.com (I’m sure BT don’t rely on this for actual authentication, that’s tied to your line) and your password is simply a space.

You can then use Google’s DNS servers in place of BTs. One extra thing I had to do was set IPv6 to be ‘local link only’ under ‘Internet Options’.

This setup allowed me to retire my BT HomeHub for good, and the Internet connection has been flawless ever since. My Kindle can even connect, which is saying something.

Oddly, the default IP range for the Airport’s DHCP server is Class A, which means your devices won’t have the usual ‘192.168.1.X’ scheme, but this can be changed if needed. You can change this under the Network > Network options tab, though there really is no need other than it being a more common practice.

Most people don’t create

The iPad’s big differentiator is that unlike an iPhone, it can actually be used to create content (By content I don’t mean social network updates!). Witness the suite of applications Apple provide for free or next to nothing; GarageBand, iMovie, Pages, Keynote and excellent apps like Pixelmator, which is the only image editing application I’ve ever been able to comprehend (I even managed to ‘photoshop’ someone who was in from one photo and place them into another, while making it look convincing). The problem is, most people don’t create content very often. Outside of work and school (where people obviously do), most people’s computing needs boil down to what is the quickest and most comfortable way to consume content. The iPhone’s success in business was dominated by it’s consumer success (the so called ‘consumerisation of IT’) but the iPad hasn’t followed this because for most people, the phone is simply ‘good enough’ to check Facebook, lookup that recipe or watch Netflix.

The phone is the best compromise, for now

Most people have learnt this over the last four years of iPad usage. The iPad isn’t better than a phone at the ‘phone’ things people do (Facebook, messaging, email) and it’s not better than a laptop at the ‘create’ things people do (with all the edge cases these entail). If you’re going to put down £400 or more on a new computer, why would you buy an iPad when you know it’s not going to replace your aging laptop and you’ll still need to replace that thing when it dies too. So most people buy new laptop instead, and that would seem like a smart decision to me.

Phone sales remain strong and this is because the phone is currently the best compromise for mobile computing. A small screen with lots of sensors and are useful while you’re out and about – camera, GPS, compasses etc. The iPad is a more enjoyable and productive device to use than a phone because of it’s larger screen size, but that also means it can’t replace a phone because nobody wants to carry a large bag on them at all times. It’s not an ‘always with you’ device. The phone is therefore the best compromise between having a nice big screen, and having something that is always on your person. Will this always be the case however? Once smartwatches are able to connect directly to cellular networks and don’t need to be tethered to a phone, will they be able to take on the role of ‘always with you’, for messaging, directions, checking headlines etc? If this happens then what do we need the phone for? It’s no longer necessary to have this compromise of a smaller screen. In this case, would people decide that a watch and an tablet (or laptop, if the iPad or its competitors haven’t improved its software yet) will take on the roll of web browsing, Netflix and Facebook, fulfilling the rest of their computing needs? I could quite see myself using just a watch and a tablet, if both devices progress in the right directions over the next few years.

What has changed?

The A329M was until recently a two lane ‘duel carriageway’ that ran all the way from Reading to Bracknell. The A329M was originally intended to directly link the M4 to the M3, but these plans were scaled back in the 1970’s, no doubt due to costs (and you can bet local residents probably weren’t too happy about another new road being built through their town either). What’s changed recently is that just after the Winnersh junction, the left-hand lane has been turned into dedicated slip road to enter the M4, with the first exit taking you onto the M4 towards London, and the latter taking you onto the M4 towards South Wales. No longer is the A329M a duel carriageway for its entire stretch.

This has caused two problems:

1. Traffic jams for those who want to stay on the A329M and head towards Bracknell.
2. Increased ‘last minute’ lane changes by drivers who are unfamiliar with the new layout, or decide to change lanes at the last possible moment, one assumes to avoid sitting in the traffic jam (see problem #1). Many feel this is dangerous.

But why was this change made in the first place? The reason is that trying to join the A329M Bracknell-bound from the M4 could frequently take a ludicrous amount of time, often over 20 minutes to travel a what can’t be much more than a quarter of a mile along the M4 > A329M slip road. I know this because in a previous life, I used to take this journey daily. I also know many other people who travel from Reading to Bracknell via the M4 who shared this experience. One day a friend suggested that instead of leaving the M4 and keeping right to go towards Bracknell and sitting in the traffic jam, I should instead take the left lane back towards Reading, traverse the A329M back up a junction, exit at Winnersh and get back on in the Bracknell direction. To my surprise, this was actually about 50% faster than sitting in the queue to get on to the Bracknell-bound A329M directly from the M4. I would often do this and take note of a distinct HGV or van, so as I cruised by on the A329M I could look over at the traffic jam on the slip road and see how far the queue had progressed. The HGV would usually only have made it halfway through the queue.

So it is clear to me that there was a problem to be solved. The Highways Agency were not having a jolly when they decided to make this change, they had to do something – if it was quicker to take a ~2 mile detour to Winnersh and back than take the slip road, something was clearly very wrong.

So rather than simply moaning at the Highways Agency, I wondered what could actually be done to solve the problem? How does one even measure that a problem like this is solved? As the quote goes “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. Until we all go to work in automated, computer-controlled flying drones, there is always going to be some congestion as everyone decides they want to get to work for exactly the same time as everybody else each day.

Please bare in mind I approach this as someone who is interested in problem solving, but with no expert knowledge in large construction projects (I build software for a living, not roads) – but I thought it would be a fun thought experiment if nothing else.

How to solve it?

Our first problem – the traffic jam. This would seem to be caused by the fact that the volume of traffic (that’s us, traffic is just another word for people, remember) is too great for the road. How could this be solved, while not reverting the M4 > A329M junction back to it’s untenable situation?

The problem is that people actually get into the right-hand lane too early. I understand why they do this; to stay safe, it’s polite, and because the road signs encourage drivers to do so. However, from a pure ‘volume of traffic’ point of view, if we could encourage people to use the both lanes right up until the last minute, and to merge in an organised and safe fashion, studies show this would reduce queues because it makes use of the full capacity of the road.

This brings us to our second problem – aren’t those last minute lane changers dangerous? Obviously if you’re reversing up a slip road then you’ve left it a little too late, that is dangerous. Surely there’s nothing wrong in theory with changing lanes at the last moment, as long as it’s a considered manoeuvre? In order to encourage this, I would suggest that instead of going to the M4, the left-hand lane ends up merging into the right-hand. This gives drivers in both lanes the responsibility to merge. At peak times a speed limit would need to be lowered to 40MPH (enforced by average speed cameras) to aid safe merging, and also to help drivers in the right lane refrain from powering straight into the slower moving traffic that’s entering from the M4 further down, braking hard and causing tailbacks as the breaking forms a wave that spreads along the rest of the road. They may be unpopular, but variable speed limits have used to good effect on M25.

In Summary

• The left-hand lane would have two distinct exits (instead of trailing off to the M4).
• The land-hand and would merge into the right-hand lane.
• During peak times a variable speed limit of 40MPH would be enforced.

I’m sure that much greater minds at The Highways Agency have considered this (and I say that respectfully). There is sure to be a reason why this wouldn’t work. I’d love to know. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to try and keep all of us road users happy. I hope the problem is addressed, but for now my real-world solution has been to set off on my journey 30 minutes earlier and avoid the rush.

I look forward to a day when I can leave the house with nothing in my pockets – my watch will have a cellular radio and be capable of keeping me in contact with the people that matter, so too will it allow me to unlock my car/house, in addition to letting me pay for things. While the first two in that list might be a few years away (decades at the rate I upgrade cars), my watch can actually make payments today, how cool is that?

The reality is somewhat less cool. The problem is the payment limit. Since Apple Pay uses the existing ‘Contactless’ payment systems, it’s also hampered by the same £20 limit. While this limit makes sense with a contactless debit card (there is zero authentication), both the Apple Watch and iPhone are secure; the iPhone asks for your fingerprint, and the watch asks for a PIN when you first put it on, as long as it says in contact with your wrist it is authorised for Apple Pay.

This authentication is also a hindrance – why would I fiddle about trying to get my phone to detect my fingerprint (while everyone in the queue is staring at me) or roll three layers of sleeve up to try and get my watch to be recognised when I can whip out my wallet and tap my debit card? The key point is that I still have to have my wallet on me in case the shop in question doesn’t support contactless, or the amount comes to over £20. Don’t get me wrong, Apple Pay is much better than entering a PIN, it’s just not as fast as tapping your card.

So what needs to happen? I’d like to see the limit raise for Apple Pay purchases to something more reasonable, most cash machines allow you to take out £300 in a day, so why not the same for an arguably more secure system such as Apple Pay, while keeping existing contactless limits where they are of course

This ‘limited software’ is not always the fault of Apple, developers purposely try and simplify their iPad releases in an effort to route out the bloat that dogs their desktop equivalents. This is mostly a good thing, as someone who runs complex software projects for a living, I am always a proponent of the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid). However, there haven been numerous times when I’ve had to walk back to my desk and grab my laptop because something just isn’t possible on an iPad.

Take Microsoft Excel. The desktop version may be a horrible, bloated and full of legacy code (it seems to have its own rules on when to wipe your clipboard unexpectedly), but to its credit, it does make a lot of complex, routine tasks very quick and easy. If I have a list of stuff and I want to remove duplicates, it’s one click. If I have a CSV file (or values separated by another delimiter), converting this to columns is only 2 or 3 clicks. None of this functionality exists in the iPad version. Microsoft OneNote on the iPad doesn’t have Outlook integration (the ability to pull in meeting details), and while Microsoft have recently added support for audio recording to OneNote, it’s modal - meaning I can’t take notes while I am recording - which is one of my favourite features of the desktop version, because it synchronises your note with the timestamp of the audio recording, meaning you can quickly seek to important parts of a meeting when you’re trying to remember what was going on. Again, back to my laptop.

I don’t want to pick on Microsoft, they make some of the highest quality iPad software out there, and I know all too well that quality, time to market and the number of features are all opposing interests, and Microsoft has made the decision to go for quality over features. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact it’s the best decision they could have made in my view, but it doesn’t change the fact that the iPad just can’t do these seemingly simple things a laptop can. Adobe and Apple both have examples too. I was sent a wireframe that had been hand-drawn and had been scanned and emailed directly from a networked printer/scanner. I wanted to annotate the resulting PDF. On the Mac I would use Preview, on Windows I’d use Adobe’s Reader application. Preview on iOS doesn’t support annotation, so I used the Adobe Reader app for iOS. It did support annotation, but due to the way the image had been scanned in, it was upside down. Surprisingly, there was no way to rotate the PDF. Back to my laptop, again. Yes with a little help from Google, I’m sure I could find an app that lets me rotate a PDF, but will it also support all the other things the Adobe app does? The bottom line is, it’s not feasible to go on an app hunt every time one of the simplified versions of an app comes up short. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007 he made a big deal out of the fact other smartphones only showed you the ‘baby web’ and the iPhone didn’t - we have the same situation on iOS now, we get baby applications.

Then there is the inability to have more than one document open at once. I can now have Twitter and Pages open at the same time, but not two Pages documents. Even just a way to quickly switch between documents would be nice. At the moment I have to close the first document, find the other one (navigate a long list of files and folders), load it (and wait while it loads), and then repeat the process when I want to return to the original document. Writing one document when referring to another is not an uncommon computing task, and yes there are workarounds like exporting one of them as a PDF and opening it in a separate application, but this isn’t very clean, and what if I want to edit both documents?

I don’t want to take way from the iPad what is is great at; web browsing, writing this blog post, simple spreadsheets, reading books, playing games, managing email, task lists - the list goes on. While I’m sure the iPad Pro is a beautiful device, and if money was no object Id buy one today, I don’t think having a bigger screen is going to turn it into a laptop replacement. I would love to be able to work solely on an iPad, but until the software improves, I can’t see this happening, no matter how big the screen is.

This one shows that I have just over 2 minutes remaining on that timer (very useful when cooking, or when you’ve paid for park for a fixed amount of time):

I could also configure it to show the remaining battery percentage, my favourite stock price, sunset time or various other tidbits of information. So what’s the problem? The problem is i need to configure it every time. It’s not just a case of setting a timer, and the watch automatically replacing the weather with the timer, I have to manually edit the settings each time (unless I save a different watch-face with each combination, in which case finding the right one would take just as long).

Instead I should be able to say ‘show me one of these things, depending on what’s happening’. So if I’ve set a timer, show that. If it’s going to rain, show the weather. If my battery is low, show the percentage. This would be a really cool addition in my view, and as far as I know it’s not been announced for watchOS 2.

What was the first question from the audience? ‘What source control system do you use?’. The conversation then turned to favourite text editors. Really?? That’s when I felt out of place. I wanted to know how he would go about trying to integrate Unity with a native iOS UIKit Interface, what platform constraints the Xbox One has, the differences between developing for PS4 and Xbox One, but everyone seemed to want to ask trivial questions about infrastructure.

It made me think: There’s a difference between someone who is interested in technology for the sake of technology, and this is why we see 15 year old games being ported to JavaScript, and someone like me who is fascinated by what technology can do that’s new. How it’s done interests me of course, but that’s not what matters. The world undoubtedly needs both types of people, but it did make me think: I’m not a geek.

Note: Like with battery saving tips for phones, these tips will reduce functionality, so they’re not meant for daily use. Apple Watch has a built in power save mode, but with that switched on the watch is less useful than a £10 Casio watch (at least you don’t have to press a button to see the screen on one of those!). These tips are meant for those long days or weekends where you want to keep the watch going for as long as possible, while maintaining the fitness tracking and ability to receive notifications (these things are not possible in Power Save mode).

Turn off Wrist Raise

On the watch itself, under Settings > General you can turn off Wrist Raise. This makes the watch a lot less useful because you will have to press a button to see the screen, but if you are out and about on a weekend and don’t particularly care about the time, but want to make sure your fitness progress still gets tracked, it’s a great way to save significant battery life.

Use the X-Large watch face

If you can do without seeing the weather or other useful widgets on your watch face, the X-Large’s use of lots of black and no widgets means it uses far less battery juice, in my experience at least.

Use Power Saving Mode for workouts

In the Apple Watch app on your phone, choose the settings for the ‘Workout’ app, and select power saving mode. This stops the watch from continuously reading your pulse during workouts – very useful if you’re doing long runs or walks, as the heart rate monitor sucks battery life. It will mean however, that your calorie burn stats wont be as accurate.

Turn on Airplane Mode

This one is only slightly better than Power Save mode. You’ll still be able to track your activity, receive stand notifications or notifications for appointments already synced to your watch – obviously you wont get any alerts that come from your phone (such as messages). If you’re away camping for the weekend, maybe that’s OK?

Stay near your phone

I’ve noticed the battery life is a lot worse when I spend a lot of time away from my desk at work, but leave my phone at my desk. This makes sense – when the phone is within Bluetooth range, the watch will use this connection for things like alerts. When you move away from your phone, it instead has to connect to Wi-Fi directly. Wi-Fi is much less power efficient than Bluetooth.

So after 3 weeks, what does a ‘normal’ technology enthusiast think? Well… I went for the 38mm black ‘Sport’ Model as I figured fitness would be my main usage scenario.

Wearing a watch

I’ve always loved watches. Not for the bling factor – for me something being expensive doesn’t equate to it being stylish or useful. Ever since my Granddad introduced me to a Casio watch at the age of 8 I’ve loved a good gadget watch, and so the Apple Watch was right up my street. I actually have a Casio which I wear at weekends. It’s a radio controlled analogue/digital hybrid. I don’t wear it to work during the week since I’m usually at a computer all day long, it doesn’t really add much utility. So wearing a watch isn’t a habit I’ve had to get back in to.

Needing the phone

So a major factor in anyone’s purchasing decision is going to be ‘do you own an iPhone 5 or newer’ – if you don’t you can’t make much use out of an Apple Watch. My two and a half year old iPhone 5 still does the job (and until Apple increase the base storage from 16GB, I won’t be upgrading), so I was fine.

The iPhone is needed for a number of things – most apps require the phone to either be in Bluetooth range or the watch to be on the same WiFi network as the phone. This is fine for me as my office has WiFi throughout the building, so I can easily leave my phone in a draw and walk anywhere in the office (even outside) and receive notifications – pretty cool. Some apps don’t even need your phone, they only need a WiFi connection. Messages is one of those apps – I left my phone in my car at the gym, but was able to send and receive iMessages from the watch no problem. Siri also works like this. Maps didn’t work, although it was able to determine my location (from the WiFi base station, I assume), just not show me the map.

Overall the ‘need’ to be tethered to an iPhone is overstated in my opinion, though one thing to note is that the watch will only connect to a WiFi network your phone has previously connected to. So you can’t just head to a coffeeshop with only your watch and expect to get online.

Apps

Most of the built in apps seem well thought through, though with some annoying limitations. I can reply to text messages, but not emails. Both the BBC News and Guardian apps only show me a paragraph before requesting I take my phone out. I’m sure people can make that choice for themselves, so why not show the whole article?

Battery

If you use it like a watch, the battery will easily last you all day. If you use the Workout app or play with apps a lot, you’re going to struggle to get through the day. My Casio is solar powered, so I’m used to feeling the warm rays beat down on my watch and thinking about all that goodness it’s doing charging the battery, however that’s sadly not the case with the Apple Watch. If anything the heat will kill the battery’s longevity. I do hope Apple add solar charging in future iterations.

Workout

It seems to be pretty accurate (once trained by running outside with your phone’s GPS). I tested it on a treadmill and it was a few percentage points out. I have a tendency to rest on the side of the treadmill for 10 seconds while I switch tracks, it knows I’ve stopped running unlike a treadmill. The ability to leave you phone at home when you go for a run is great, you can play music from the watch via Bluetooth headphones. Unfortunately changing a track while running is not easy (it made me pine for my iPod classic). You have to exit the ‘Workout app’ by pressing home, tap the Clock icon and then swipe up to get to glaces, then swipe across to the ‘Now Playing’ glance. You could also open the music app from the home screen, but it’s way too complex and an odd oversight from Apple.

The daily activity goals are good, however the recommendations are a bit basic. For example I had a daily active calorie burn goal of 400 – On 5 out of 7 days in a week I exceeded it, however it took my average calories over the entire week and suggested a new daily goal of 220 (I had a very lazy weekend). It seemed more logical that it would know that a lot of people will have different behavioural patterns on weekends and suggested something a bit more realistic.

Style/Cost

I went for the cheapest option, the black Sport model (I went 38mm not for price but because I have skinny wrists). I looks pretty nice, even with the leather buckle. I probably wouldn’t wear it to a  formal occasion such as a wedding, but for business, or social it’s absolutely fine.

Notifications

The best thing about notification is I never have to check my phone any more, since I know I will have gotten a tap on the wrist if anything of note has happened. I had to make sure all but the most critical apps were turned off however, I don’t really want to be interrupted because someone followed me on Twitter.

Text Input

The only way to input text is via voice-dictation. This is fine if your a technology journalist who works from home, or an exec who has their own office – but for the average person who works amount other people (this applies to social occasions too), it’s not polite to start dictating messages to your girlfriend in front of other people. I value my privacy, and so unless I’m alone I generally don’t enter text into the watch. What this device really needs is a way to enter text, Microsoft have the right idea, and I’m disappointed Apple haven’t even included this in watchOS version 2. (I guess it did take the iPhone OS 3 iterations to get copy and paste).

The Watch

One of the coolest things about the watch is the customisable watch faces. You can add widgets that show the weather, sunset time, battery life, next appointment and more. In this sense, the watch really has utility that makes it worth wearing. I can look down on my wrist and see my next appointment or the current weather conditions.

This is the one I use when I’m not at work – it shows me sunset time (how much time I have left to go out for a walk or run before it gets dark), the battery level,  the day of the week and my activity for the day.

When I’m at work I like to use this face, which gives me the timezone of our other office, in addition to putting the date front and centre.

Overall, I’m impressed and don’t regret the purchase. Plus, future versions of the device can only get better .👍🏻

I currently use OneDrive (and before that, Dropbox) to backup photos and was thinking of using Apple’s iCloud Photo Library in addition to this. I like the idea of having every photo I’ve ever taken (in recent memory at least) available from the photo picker in iOS, and on my Mac. However from what I’ve heard in reviews, doing this slows down iOS devices (I have an iPhone 5, which not being the latest device from Apple means it’s inevitably slowed down anyway) and I also want more control over what gets stored on my device. Apple may make nice looking products, but when it comes to storage they are stingy as hell, and my phone is forever warning me that I’m running low on space. I tried iCloud Photos for a few months and found it didn’t save space on my phone as promised, I still ended up with the majority of space on my phone used by the photos I’d taken. It’s also not cheap – you get 5GB ‘free’ from Apple – no matter how many devices you own. So me, with an iPhone, 2 iPads (home and work), as well as a Mac get the same as someone with just an iPod Touch. Out of this 5GB comes any backups you make (which is the majority in my experience), any emails you receive to your iCloud email account, and of course any photos you upload to iCloud Photos. Buying more space is expensive considering you’ve already paid a premium for the hardware in the first place.

So a combination of being expensive and not that good made me decide to stick with OneDrive (despite the fact it can be buggy, it’s at least cross platform and a good price, you get 1TB of space and Microsoft Office for less than £10 a month). Then Google announced Google Photos….

With any Google product there are two things you need to consider: How long will it last before they shut it down, and what are they doing with my data?

I hope this product lasts, and doesn’t go the way of Google Buzz, Reader, Notebook, iGoogle or Latitude (and Google+ ?). With Google, you never know. That’s a big risk when you’re trusting it with your lifelong memories. Luckily it’s free (if you are happy for all images to be down-sampled to a maximum of 16 megapixels – my camera is nowhere near that resolution, so I am) so I would urge anyone using it to also use a service like Dropbox or OneDrive who have a better reputation when it comes to shuttering services.

What are they doing with the data? I’ve no doubt the GPS coordinates tagged inside every photo will be extremely useful to Google for targeting me with adverts. It’s basically my location history. I’m fine with this really.

The app itself is very well written. If you have 3000+ photos to upload like me, then you’ll want to download the helper application that will sit in the background and upload instead of using the browser interface. The web interface scrolls very smoothly and makes it easy to go back a decade without trying to load everything in-between. Unlike the OneDrive web interface, it correclty uses the EXIF data in images to pull out the date, rather than the file’s timestamp. In OneDrive it looks like I took all my photos in March 2015, because that’s when I copied them accross from Dropbox. Google Photos isn’t so stupid, thankfully. Like Apple’s iCloud Photos, you can make edits from within the Google Photos interface. Apple’s approach cleverly stores what you changed in a photo, as opposed to the end result. This means you can adjust the brightness on one your phone, but undo it and add a filter on your laptop without any loss in quality (it doesn’t create a losssy JPEG each time). I’m not sure if Google is doing something simular, but it wouldn’t supprise me.

So all in all, I am impressed – I’m just worried it will be switched off in 4 years when Google get bored of it.

Update: 31/5/2015

I’ve been using an external keyboard with my iPad a lot recently, so hardware wise it’s more on par with a laptop. Here’s what I miss most from a full blown Windows/Mac laptop:

• The ability to have more than one document open within a single app. Some apps such as Mail support having mutipe drafts open at once, but all the apps I use most frequently such as Microsft Word, Pages and Excel can only open one document at a time. It takes about 30 seconds to close a document and to load another, which just slows me down.
• Lack of keyboard shortcuts - such as being able to press ‘Enter’ to send a message, or CTRL + Enter to send an email. Also being able to switch between documents / apps using the keyboard would help too.
• Applications getting unloaded from memory. Or rather lazy developers not bothering to reload the state of an app when it gets reloaded. Again, like with the document switching - it gets in the way when you return to a presentation and find the app has gone back to the open screen.

These days, we all carry cameras in our pockets. We can capture and record any event with very little effort and at a moment’s notice. Not surprisingly, a backlash has occurred. (From experience, anything that’s easy and rewarding enough for mass adoption is eventually frowned upon by early adopters.)

People are now criticised for filming events instead of ‘being in the moment’. Kate Bush even banned cameras from her much-hyped comeback shows. Amongst all groups of friends, there’s always the inevitable member who photographs and videos the goings-on (that’s usually me), and while they might seem annoying now, in 20 years’ time, when you want to look back, you’ll be glad for their amateur documentaries.

Having recently discovered some videos of my family that were taken in the early '90s (when I was five!), I am firmly of the opinion that it’s our duty to make sure future generations have the opportunity to see such material. Seeing your parents and grandparents as young people really changed my view of them, strangely putting my own life into perspective. While I’m sure future generations won’t care to see a Kate Bush concert that will undoubtedly end up being available to buy anyway, seeing their mum, dad, or uncle dancing, smiling, and enjoying the event would be fascinating.

So, lose your cool and get that camera out. Take that photo. You’ll be glad you did.

(Though I’m still not sure about iPads at gigs.)

In essence, the watch has 3 main functions: a fitness tracker, notification viewer and of course telling the time. You could also add a 4th function: fashion accessory.

The fitness tracker part of it excites me most, as I have used the Nike Fuelband previously and found it was good at telling me how inactive I was, convincing me to workout more often. After 6 or 7 months, I didn’t need to wear it anymore as I kind of knew when I was active and when I wasn’t. I guess if I was marathon training I might need more detail, but surely and GPS enabled Garmin watch would be more suited in this case? So for me I’m partially excited about this aspect of the watch, but it doesn’t seem groundbreaking to me.

The notification viewing aspect of the watch doesn’t excite me at all. Mainly because it requires I have my phone in the same building. Not being a high-flying executive who needs to view every email within seconds, the thought of having notifications on my wrist makes me shudder. If the watch had cellular networking and meant I could leave the house without a phone, then I would be interested. In fact, one day I see the iPhone being obsolete and the watch being the main connectivity device. When they need a bigger screen, people will tether their iPad to their watches.

Telling the time is of course a very useful function. At work (where lets face it, I spend a good chunk of my time) I have a computer in front of me with the time omnipresent, and typing with a watch on can be uncomfortable. So I only need this functionality at weekends or when I go out after work. My Casio serves its purpose here – do i really need an Apple Watch for this?

Then there’s the fashion element. Apple has, since the iPod been a fashion brand – though a slightly geeky  fashion brand. I have a feeling Smart Watches will end up like calculator watches in the 1980’s and early 1990’s – looking dated and ‘of their time’. Then there’s the ridiculously priced ‘Apple Watch Edition’ made out of solid gold. I get that some watches cost tens of thousands of pounds. However, isn’t part of what justifies the price of a Rolex that fact that they have been engineering watches for over a hundred years, and have a reputation for exceptional quality? If Volvo released a Rolls Royce-priced car, it wouldn’t make it comparable to a Rolls Royce. Making something expensive doesn’t make it fashionable. I personally go out of my way not to wear overtly branded clothing (to my dismay, the craze of wearing ‘Super Dry’ plastered over your front like you’re selling children’s nappies door-to-door hasn’t subsided yet, at least in the UK), and so I wouldn’t want a watch that was too ‘showy’.

Of course I haven’t mentioned the apps yet. This is where I think the watch could excel. it could be like the iPad, which I was doubtful about upon its release, but now I think it is the world’s greatest personal computer. Will I buy an Apple Watch? No. I’ll wait and see what the second generation has to offer. My hope is it will have a way of using the device purely over WiFi (I accept cellular is  a long way off for battery reasons) so I could realistically go out for the evening, and as long as the place I am going has WiFi, I can still keep in touch.

I was excited when I first heard that the online versions of all the games were going to be included, with every map that’s ever been added (I’m not one for buying DLC, so a lot of these were new to me).

Unfortunately the multiplayer side of things is one big opportunity missed. Rather than take the latest, most refined gameplay elements from Halo 4 and let you play in any map, the game actually loads the version of the game that the map originally came with. I know that might sound obvious, but I was looking forward to playing Halo 4 online, but in some of the revamped Halo 2 maps, or original Halo maps.

I’m sure there’s technical reasons why it wouldn’t be easy to do this, but the experience would have been far greater. At the moment if you join a playlist such as ‘Big Team Battle’, you could end up one of 41 maps, which could run in one of 4 different game engines. Your weapons look different, extra abilities aren’t available, even the height of your jump is slightly different. Why should a user care about different game engines? How are they supposed to learn the game when it’s different everytime, for no other than technical reason?

Want to play your favourite map ‘Ragnarok’? Roll the dice, you have a 1 in 41 chance.

That brings me to my other main complaint, which is that the playlists are too huge and it’s not easy to select which maps you want to play. Team Fortress Classic managed this back in 1999 by showing a list of games, their current map, and the number of players. Take ‘Big Team Battle’ again. This playlist has over 40 maps in it that could randomly get selected. How is anyone suppose to master a map (really get to know the environment, and all of it’s hidden features) when they’re getting one of 41 random chooses in each game?

I’m sure there’s a reason for this, the developers want to make sure a wide selection of maps get played perhaps? Maybe they want to reduce the complexity of the user interface? Whatever it may be, I think being able to choose a map is crucial. Players tend to gravitate towards their favourite maps (take 2fort and rock2 in Team Fortress Classic), surely this is vital feedback for what works? Yes, you can create your own custom games of course, but these only seen to be open to Xbox Live party members.

So in my view, this game is a massive opportunity missed. Buy this game for it’s single player modes, not for the multiplayer.

Outside the corporate world, the app supports Outlook.com, Gmail and other well-known providers. I like to keep work and personal email separate, so I haven’t tried these yet.

Attachments

Another surprising feature of Outlook for iPad is the ability to connect to cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive^[1]. A lot of network administrators will lose sleep over this, but ultimately it’s a step forward—especially for Office 365 users, who can access all their OneDrive for Business files and attach them to emails wherever they happen to be.

A weak point, however, is the lack of a system extension, so you can’t share a link from Safari to Outlook or send a document directly from Word for iPad. I’m sure this is on the way, but I do think it should have been included in the initial release.

Calendar

The calendar seems quite basic. It doesn’t do a great job of letting me see other invitees’ free/busy information (the main benefit of the desktop version of Outlook), but it’s serviceable for a version 1.0 release. It’s quite buggy; for example, I tried to update an appointment’s start and end times, but it just didn’t work. No crash, no error message—it simply did nothing. I’m sure Microsoft’s latest purchase, Sunrise, indicates that the company is putting some thought into its calendaring strategy, so major improvements should follow. I’m not sure about the unified-app approach—I’ve always wished Outlook on the PC were separate applications instead of one big conglomerate (especially since it’s still full of modal dialog boxes!). Separate apps seem especially fitting for iOS, and I can only assume it’s a branding decision to have one big ‘Outlook’ app on iOS.

Security concerns?

The first release had no security requirements at all, so if your system administrator mandated a passcode on your device, Outlook would ignore it. This has been resolved, though unfortunately it now requires you to set a system-wide PIN rather than just one for the app (as was the case with the previous OWA app). I liked that I could have laxer security on my personal device (for example, ‘ask me for a PIN after one hour’) while the app could be stricter (‘ask me for a PIN after five minutes’)—this worked in the old OWA app, but not anymore, which is a major disappointment. Some administrators might lament the fact that the app will store your emails on Amazon’s AWS servers (soon to be Azure, I would imagine), but this does allow the app to perform cloud processing that ultimately benefits users. The bigger concern, in my view, is that Microsoft released the app without warning or a way to block it, which surely upset organisations with established security practices (ISO et al).

Conclusion

Overall, Outlook for iPad cements the iPad as a tool for business and makes me think that one day many users will be able to use an iPad (or similar device) exclusively at work. It’s missing some key features at the moment (you can’t set your Out of Office), but I’m certain they will arrive in time. The bigger question is whether tablet devices will ever replace traditional PCs in the workplace. That’s probably the subject of a future post, but with Outlook, Office and the cloud it’s becoming an increasing possibility. I personally use Outlook for iPad as more of a sidekick device than a laptop replacement—my job involves traditional desktop software such as Visual Studio and macro-enabled spreadsheets. That said, for many enterprise users an iPad with a decent hardware keyboard is now a viable alternative, if only the screen were larger.

I came back into the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone in 2009, and later an iPod Touch (now retired), iPad and more recently and Apple TV. They all work well together, and the hardware design and quality is second to none.

So I was excited when Apple announced as WWDC that iOS 8 and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite would further deepen that integration. About a month ago I finally upgraded my phone (a trusty 2-year old iPhone 5) and iPad to iOS 8., and two weeks later my MacBook Air to Yosemite. My Apple TV also got upgraded (after weeks of nagging me) to iOS version 7.0.2 (oddly it seems to be on a different versioning system).

In short, I have regrets.

Yosemite on the desktop is the polar opposite of 10.9 Mavericks. While Mavericks was all about optimisation, whether it was battery life or memory consumption, Yosemite is a lavish excursion into a world of translucency and bright colours and unfortunately, some bugs.

Take for example listening to music over headphones. No longer possible if you have an Apple TV on the same network. You either need to unplug the Apple TV, or turn off Wi-Fi. Animations are choppy, and the new looks resembles the much derided Windows Vista. There are a few useful new features; Safari now feels much more streamlined and being able to send and receive SMS messages from the Mac is brilliant. I’d rather have a fast, bug free system running Mavericks and sacrifice these small but useful features, however.

On the Apple TV side things are even worse. It used to be that from a Mac or iOS device you could start beaming audio or visual content while the Apple TV was in deep sleep mode (“off”). This no longer works. Now I need to hunt around for the infrared remote and switch on the Apple TV first. This also rules out using the iPhone Remote app, as it uses the same mechanism and cannot wake the Apple TV. Often I try and beam a video to the Apple TV an get sound coming out of the TV but no audio. Frustrated, I reboot my iPhone or Mac and it still happens. In the end I learnt that I actually need to reboot the Apple TV to get my videos to play.

Nothing major on its own, and yes the very definition of a 1st world problem – my frustration is that this stuff used to work so brilliantly, and now it doesn’t.

On the iOS 8 side things have been surprisingly non-eventful. After the upgrade that was iOS 7 it might just be it seems that way in comparison,  but it seems to work pretty well. I love being able to use LastPass in Safari. Occasionally I find Safari will show me a white page, only to show the content when I try and scroll. No big issues though.

Writing bug free software isn’t easy, I know that all too well, so I don’t feel like its fair to call out Apple as being any different to say, Microsoft (one word: Excel). However Apple could make the lives of its users easier by letting them downgrade! There’s nothing wrong with trying something, deciding it’s not for you right now, and going back. Software should be running on a device because the user wants it, not because they have no way of removing it.

New Scientist is a weekly periodical and appears in newsagents on a Thursday. Back in 2006 (and for many years) this meant it would arrive on a Thursday in the post. Unfortunately as time went on, it became Friday…and then Saturday. Recently I’d been receiving some issues on the Monday, 4 days after I’d seen it on the newsstand and 3 days before the next issue. This seemed a bit bizarre to me, so decided to switch to the cheaper subscription ‘digital only’ subscription.

I read a lot on my iPad, but i’ve always enjoyed the feeling of ‘switching off’ that comes with picking up a real, printed magazine. That said, I’ve found the NewScientist iPad app a vast improvement on earlier attempts at magazines on tablets. Unlike a lot of earlier magazine apps I tried when I first got an iPad in 2011, the NewScientist app is not a scanned-in image of the printed page. That means text is infinitely sharp, and you can select words to look them up (or even copy and paste them). A push notification alerts me when a new issue is available to download, although so far is hasn’t downloaded in the background as iOS NewsStand are apparently able to do. Being mostly text this does mean the downloads are relatively small, so that’s not a big deal.

One thing that does strike me as odd, being ‘digital only’, is the concept of an ‘issue’ itself. Does The Verge have ‘issues’, does the BBC Newswebsite? Of course not, they’re digital publications. I wonder whether magazines of the future will either. There is, however, something to be said for having a completed body of work that can be enjoyed as a whole, and having it delivered on a regular schedule and to be able to refer to back to an article based on its issue number and page rather than URL.

So glad I made the switch. Not sure I’ll be taking my iPad with me to the beach though. Sand and screens have never been a great mix. For that I’ll resort to good old paper.

Home screen

This was how it looked from iPhone OS 1 through to 3 – the metallic dock. The iPod Touch always had separate ‘Music’ and ‘Video’ apps, whereas iPhones has a single app called  ‘iPod’. No wallpaper, but apart from that it stayed pretty much the same until iOS 7 moved Spotlight search to the top instead of being on the left.

Lock Screen

The lock screen stayed exactly the same until iOS 7 – the only minor change was the additional of a camera button in iOS 5.1.

Home button

The days before ‘multitasking’ (aka recent task switching) meant the home button ‘double tap’ action could be customised. I always remember having it be set to launch the music player. If you had ‘Show iPod Controls’ selected then you would get an alert box with music controls, no matter which app you were in. Multitasking.

iTunes Store

The iTunes Store was a major selling point of the iPod Touch. Being able to wirelessly buy and play an album within minutes was pretty darn mind blowing at the time.

Wallpaper

The bundled lock screen images seem very ‘of their time’ – silhouettes with white ear buds.

No Speaker

This setting is a carry over from the classic iPod. The original iPod Touch had no loudspeaker. The noises it could make were on par with a Casio watch.

About

Released in 2007, the iPod Touch got its last software update on February 2nd 2010.

• iCloud Drive is looking to take on Dropbox and SkyDrive, with Windows clients too.
• CloudKit looks to be something similar to Microsoft’s Windows Azure Mobile Services, but free. Will it support non-iOS clients, though?
• HealthKit and HomeKit look interesting, as long as they don’t go the same way as Game Center.
• Finally, we have unified communications between all your devices. Receive SMS on your PC, make phone calls from an iPad. Great stuff.
• With widgets in the sidebar and lots of translucency, I couldn’t help but think of Windows Vista when I saw Mac OS X 10.10. I joke of course, though I will miss the 3D dock.
• The new Spotlight service looks like it will be extremely useful, and could reduce iOS/Mac OS users’ reliance on Google.
• The new photos in the cloud service should really help me with my measly 16GB device. Can’t wait for the Mac version to be released.
• Objective-C replaced! I was not expecting that. Great to see a more modern language being introduced.

Luckily, the 13 inch MacBook Air models have an SD card slot, so it is possible to add in an SD card and gain additional storage that’s easily portable. The problem with most SD cards is they extrude from the side of the laptop – meaning anyone who leaves a card in all the time is likely to damage or loose it.

Enter the Nifty MiniDrive

The Nifty MiniDrive looks great when inserted into my 2013 MacBook Air

The nifty MiniDrive promises to solve this problem by offering a microSD adapter that fits into the SD card slot. Unlike a normal SD card, it sits flush with the edge of the MacBook. What a brilliant idea. For £76.87 was able to increase the storage on my MacBook by 50% by ordering the Nifty adapter along with a 64GB microSD card – a bargain right? It depends…

Really slow

When I tried to move my 20GB iPhoto library on to the drive, iPhoto crawled to a halt and was unusable. I’m pretty tech savvy and so I of course took this on as a challenge and spent quite a lot of time trying to solve this; by rebuilding photo thumbnails, repairing permissions, making sure the drive was formatted HFS+, and even rebuilding my library from scratch. In the end I came to the conclusion that the microSD card supplied was simply not up to the job.

Battery Life

One of the best features of the MacBook Air is the ability to leave it in sleep mode for days on end without the battery draining much. I noticed after I’d started using the MiniDrive that my battery seemed to go down a lot while it was in sleep mode. After some digging, I discovered that Mac OS X will put the laptop into a “deep sleep” mode (similar to Hibernate on Windows) after a few hours in normal sleep to save on battery life. The problem I found is that Mac OS X will never do this if an SD card is inserted. That means standby time is significantly reduced when the Nifty MiniDrive left in, and the while point of the Nifty MiniDrive is that you leave it in. I must stress this is not the fault of the Nifty MiniDrive (any SD card will cause this to occur) but I was surprised to see it wasn’t mentioned on their FAQ page, as it could be a problem for some people.

So what’s it good for?

iTunes and Steam

I found it was quick enough to store my iTunes library on, and Steam had no trouble storing and loading games on it. Team Fortress 2 ran absolutely fine from the Nifty MiniDrive. For anyone with a MacBook bursting at the seams with games and music, the MiniDrive is probably worth getting. You could also theoretically move your Dropbox or OneDrive folders onto the drive.

Backups

Another often quoted use of the Nifty MiniDrive is as a Time Machine backup drive. This can work well in theory if you want to make use of Time Machine’s versioning features, but as a total backup solution, having your backup inside your laptop at all times means if your laptop gets lost or stolen then so does your backup, so for me this was a non-starter.

Worth buying?

So would I recommend the Nifty Minidrive? My answer is yes if you’re aware of it’s limitations. For people who routinely shutdown their Macs instead of using sleep, they shouldn’t notice any big changes in battery life. If you need to store large, rarely used files then you shouldn’t notice the performance issues either. Hopefully the next version of OS X will iron out the battery life issues, and faster microSD cards will be released in the future, making it a good investment.

So when setting up my MacBook with a clean installation of OS X 10.9, I decided to see if it was possible to live without Flash. My guess was it would be, and why not? One less thing installed on your system means a reduced attack surface for malware, fewer processes running and hence better longer life, and in my experience, fewer browser hangs. I was wrong however - instead of using “feature detection” (as good web developers should) to determine whether the browser supports the Flash alternative to video, “HTML5 Video”- it seems the vast majority of sites employ user agent sniffing and will only show you the non-Flash version if you’re on a known mobile device. I kept on being asked to install Flash, even though my iPad works just fine without it. User agent sniffing is the reason why sites designed for IE6 will ask you to “upgrade” if you visit in IE11 -I can forgive any web developer working back when IE6 came out in 2001 for following what was then a standard industry practice, but User Agent Sniffing is now generally considered outdated, so why are so many sites still doing it when it comes to playing video?

The games look amazing

I have one game (Forza 5) and at £50 a pop I will likely only have one game for many months to come. That said, together with the new controller that has vibration motors in each trigger (lets you feel feedback from the brakes), speeding around Circuit de la Sarthe has never felt so real. Whether it’s being blinded temporarily by the sun, or seeing a glimpse of the driver in the windscreen, it just feels so real.

The Interface is Confusing

While I wanted to love ‘Metro’ on the PC, after trying it for just over a month on my main development machine, I had to revert to using Start8 – it didn’t work out for me (loved it on the Surface RT, however) – so how does it stack up on the Xbox One? My view is that it could work, but the current execution isn’t great. On the main screen the positions of apps move about too often, so it’s impossible to remember where anything is. After a while I realised the tiles on the main screen amounted to a ‘recently used list’ the with exception of the left and right columns, which are fixed. There’s no visual differentiation, barley any visual hierarchy (the currently running app is the largest, everything else just looks like it was thrown in) and so it all gets rather confusing. To get to Settings for example, you have to go to ‘My Games & Apps’.

Apps for the sake of Apps

No device these days would be complete without an ‘App Store’ – however the Xbox One has taken this to extremes. For example, if you’re in a game and you get an achievement, in order to see the full details of that achievement you need to leave the current game and open another app (complete with an awful “splash screen” which makes the effect of leaving one app and going to another feel even slower), if the Xbox 360 could do this, surly the Xbox One should be able to? Another example of this was when browsing the video store, in order to view ‘TV Deals’ I had to install the Xbox Video app. It seems a bit ridiculous that this isn’t just built in.

Kinect is impressive if still work in progress

Having Kinect recognise you and automatically log you in is very clever. The speech recognition however is limited. Unlike Siri on an iPhone you need to keep to a precise syntax, and it’s not very forgiving. Say to Siri “Hello my friend, could please turn on the Bluetooth thingamajig” and it will turn on the Bluetooth radio. Ask your Xbox to “switch off” rather than “turn off” and it does nothing. I really hope this gets improved. That said it is still very useful, especially the “record that” function that lets you record the last 30 seconds of gameplay and share it online. I can’t imagine using the Xbox One without the Kinect plugged in, it just feels like work in progress still. I don’t have any Kinect games, so I can’t comment on how good it is for games, which I guess is its main purpose after all.

Everything is fast and fluid, it multitasks like a dream

The Xbox 360 despite being able to render Skyrim at a decent frame-rate was seemingly unable to load a simple system menu without a few seconds delay. Game updates would block the entire interface and it just felt very sluggish, The Xbox One however always feels snappy. Even mid game I was able to press the ‘home button’ and get straight back to the Start Screen, compete with a smooth transition and sound effect. Subsequently opening an app such as Skype or Internet Explorer was very quick. I was also able to install a demo from the store and keep playing. I hope it doesn’t slow down over time, but this fluidity will do a lot to tempt me to use the Xbox One rather than the Apple TV or Virgin TiVo box to access Netflix or rent movies etc

The best is yet to come

I hope (and predict) Microsoft will keep updating the Xbox One as they did with the 360. I’ve only used it for a couple of days so far and you can only fairly judge a a games console after many months of usage. Overall I’m very pleased with it, and look forward to more exciting releases.

2000: Ericsson A1018s

All I remember about this was it came free when you saved up enough Coca-Cola ring-pulls. Thankfully a friend of the family drank a lot of Coke. Back when this came out, all a phone could do was literally make calls and send texts. Unusual for its time, this model could store SMS in its own internal memory as well as on the SIM.

2001: Motorola T191

Wanting something a bit more stylish, I blew one my early paycheques on this baby. It made calls, and could send and receive SMS. It had a cool little ‘Bick’ came too. The vibrate motor was pretty substantial.

2002: Nokia 3330

Realising everyone else in my family (and the world) seemed to have a Nokia, I went for the 3330, they must be good – right? The 3330 was to the 3310 what was the iPhone 5S to the iPhone 5 – more memory and WAP in this case. More memory meant more space for custom icons, WAP meant getting football scores from the BBC on your lunch break.

2003: Nokia 3510i

Nokia had the best interface and the best battery life, so I stuck with them for my first colour phone. No camera, the colour screen was only for receiving MMS messages as I sure was going to be sending any without a camera. It used to lightup like a nightclub when it rang, great phone and served me well for many years after as a ‘backup phone’ for taking to festivals and places where it’s likely to get ruined.

2004: Nokia 6110i

While it might be cool to have the biggest phone possible these days, back in 2004 having the smallest was what it was all about. Not much of a change from the 3510i except mobile browsing was improved, and it let me share internet out to my PDA via infra-red.

2004: Nokia 6630

My first smartphone. It was also my first 3G phone and was capable of making video calls, although it had no camera on the front. Instead it came with a desk stand that would allow you to point the rear camera at yourself. The on-board software was pretty amazing for its time – email, browsing, MP3 Support, even a little app that would put photos and video together into one long video and with background music (iMovie does this to this day). Two phones in one year? I think I took out some form of insurance that allowed me to return my phone and get a new one anytime I liked (at the expense of getting a new phone number, unfortunately)

2005: Nokia 6020

While I had enjoyed my first foray into smartphones, I the 6630 was underpowered and something as simple as opening the Contacts app would take about 10 seconds. So I decided to switch back to a ‘classic’ Nokia. By now Series 40 phones had quite a few smart features themselves: background email checking, mobile web browsing, ‘Push to Talk’ to name a few.

2005: MDA Vario (AKA HTC Wizard)

The geek in my needed a smartphone, this one ran Windows Mobile 5. It was very cool, it had a full keyboard and meant you could do really advanced things for the time such as connect to a WiFI network (!), crop photos, run an RDP session to your PC and edit Office documents. Unfortunately unlike a Nokia, the alarm could not be relied upon to wake you up in the morning – it would regularly fail to go off or crash. I remember spending a lot of time hunting for jobs when I had this phone, and having a decent email client really came into its own. The stylus used to keep falling out, eventually I lost it I think.

2007: Nokia N95

This was the phone to beat all phones: WiFi, GPS, HD Video and 5MP Carl Zeiss camera with an optical zoom (not just digital zoom as most phones to this day still have). The podcasts app was great, so was email and browsing the web (it would show desktop sites and allow you to zoom). It did get slow after a few years of use however, and the volume up button broke twice for me (after 1 replacement). This made me decide not to go with Nokia again.

2001: iPhone 3GS

Probably my favourite phone looking back, because it did change the way I used my phone. I already owned a first generation iPod Touch, and so I was completely sold on iOS. The App Store, easy video editing, games – everything was a joy to use. For the first time I would use my phone instead of a laptop for casual web browsing. Not to mention it was also an iPod. Brilliant, although iOS 4 did slow it down somewhat, it was at its prime when running iOS 3.

2011: HTC Desire S

I thought it’d give Android a try – everything was just slower, uglier and less reliable than the iPhone.

2012: iPhone 5

After about 18 months using the HTC, I just had to jump ship and go back to iPhone. It’s easy to use, the battery lasts forever and it has more apps that I could download in an entire lifetime. I’m undecided on iOS 7, although I’ve yet to use it day-to-day. Looking forward to installing it, although I will probably wait a month or so for the bugs to be ironed out.

Where Next?

Whatever happens my current phone will have to last me least another 18 months, whether I get the iPhone 6 or switch to Windows Phone 8 depends… all I know is that I’m unlikely to switch back to Android – although I would consider a Nokia again, having played with some of their newer (much more sturdy) phones.

I bought my Samsung laptop well over a year ago, and it came running Windows 7. Despite having the most awful keyboard I have ever used, I’ve stuck with it because the Core i5 is pretty decent, and it’s got plenty of storage for all my music and I’m not going to shell out for a new laptop until this one gives up the ghost.

One of the interesting features that Samsung included was a piece of software called ‘Easy Settings’ which allowed me to configure the battery to never charge above 80%, supposedly lengthening the life of the battery. I turned this on (since my laptop is plugged in 99% of the time) and forgot all about it. A few months later I installed Windows 8 and found that Easy Settings no longer worked. When I tried to install it I got this message:

Loosing 20% of your battery capacity might be fine around the house, but sometimes I do like to take my laptop out and so I really wanted to be able to configure this. Even forcing Windows to install meant the app would run but wouldn’t display correctly function at all, I guess Microsoft blocked it for a reason.

Install Version 2.1

It turns out Samsung do offer a version of this tool for Windows 8, they just don’t make it easy to find. Version 2.1 works perfectly fine on NP300E5A model. Before I could change any power management settings, I had to update my laptop’s firmware however. The link to the download was hidden away on this Windows 8 update page, so check your model is listed before performing any firmware updates!

One nice addition if the ability to turn your laptop into a wireless Access Point (yes, Macs have had this feature for years I know, and it’s very useful).

My first impression is that the lighted screen is beautiful to read from, and it makes it easy to read in complete darkness. That’s the real benefit here. Whether in bed at night or outside in the sun, the screen looks great. You may read reviews complaining about some unevenness in the lighting along the bottom of the screen. Yes, I noticed that, but it’s really not an issue, since that part of the display only shows progress information, not the book’s text.

Unfortunately, the touch screen is a major step backwards for page turning. Instead of two large buttons on each side of the device for backwards and forwards, there’s an invisible grid on the screen: tap on the far left to go back, tap in the middle or right to go forwards, and tap at the top to bring up the menu. It feels clumsy and keeps this device from being the perfect reading tool. The touch screen does make the virtual keyboard easy to use, so buying books is much simpler. However, I spend about 0.0001% of my time on the Kindle inputting text, so I’d be happy to do without that. I often find myself losing my place in a book because I’ve gone forwards instead of back by mistake.

So I’m mixed about this one. A great screen, but missing physical buttons. I guess Amazon needs to save something to tempt people into upgrading again next year 😉

I have never finished a great book and been absorbed for days by the texture of the book in my hand – a satisfying plot, however has made me do just that – and digital advances can improve the reading experience by offering custom fonts, synchronsiation, character profiles, built in lights, and being easier to hold. I’ve probably converted about 4 people I know who said they loved the smell and feel of printed books to e-readers, because good story is what makes a good book, after all.

That’s all well and good, but do app developers want their brand to be muffled into another system? I think most developers like having their icon on the home screen, like being able to design their app as they see fit, and wouldn’t be happy if the operating system simply surfaced their content as part of a people centric approach.

Ecosystems are nothing without the support of developers and big brand apps. Everyone wants their cut of the ‘mind share’ pie.

Well it turns out iOS will remove a notification after the event has finished. Kind of makes sense, although it does mean if you totally miss an appointment, you’d be none the wiser unless you pay very careful attention and see it before the notification quickly disappears.

Odd quirk, but probably not a bug – just a design choice (I would say it makes sense to remove them from the notification centre, perhaps not the lock screen) and Apple should probably hide it before the screen turns in to avoid the confusion of seeing something for a split second.

The one thing the app is missing is the ability to download podcasts automatically without opening the app. iOS really could do with an API that allows apps to schedule in long, power-hungry tasks to be performed when the device is plugged in and idle.

Search ‘Podcasts’ in the store.

Unlike Skype, there’s no ‘free’ calls if you call someone else using the app, all calls are charged as if you made them on your phone, as are messages.

To me this is less of a challenge to Skype, but might have more of an impact on people using iMessage, BBM or Google Talk for messaging across their devices. Now instead of being locked into your device operating system vendor’s ecosystem (iOS, Android, Blackberry), you can be locked into your network operators (albeit far more interoperable) system instead. This is a nice idea, since SMS messages sent from this app can still be receive by someone with an old phone. I do like iMessage, the typing indicator is particularly useful for knowing whether to keep you phone out because you can see the other person is about to respond but I am seriously considering switching to this since my contract gives me unlimited SMS anyway.

It remains to be seen how this app will affect battery life. On iOS at least, VOIP apps get launched on system boot and can poll their sever a minimum of every10 minutes. On Android anything goes with regards to background activity. Of course users without a cellular network connection (most iPads sold) will only be able to receive calls when they’re in a WiFi area. If it had a big impact, I probably wouldn’t use it.

What this does blur the line between what a phone is, and what a tablet is. How long before we just buy a device with a 3G/4G connection, and download our favourite VOIP app for making calls with? With a Bluetooth headset, could the iPad mini be your next phone?

Yes it’s a cool idea to be able to see a computer screen on a pair of glasses, as well as take video from your personal perspective – but will people really want to a) wear glasses all the time (for this to make sense, you need to wear it every waking hour of the day) b) interact with other people who may or may not be busy using their glasses while you talk to them c) interact with people who may or may not be videoing you while you’re talking to them.

Just as people didn’t want to prod a Desktop PC interface with a stylus, I can’t see these glasses being accepted by the masses in their current form. I think the idea does have merit, and would love to see something less intrusive that somehow manages to overcome these social barriers.

Google adverts for the glasses are an example of your typical “geek trying to make themself look overly extroverted to make up for being a geek” syndrome. How many people go skydiving that often? How many people if they did would wear such an expensive pair of glasses? Most normal people (like me) whose daily routine doesn’t involve jumping out of a plane, walking down a catwalk or juggling with fire will struggle to find a use for such a device.

Still, kudos to Google for putting them out there, just as with the Tablet PC in 2002, someone else might just make it work by 2023. Also I admit I haven’t tried them, so I might yet be converted. Better start saving…

Apple seems to be getting a lot of bad press recently because of their refusal to release a larger iPhone. That and the fact that iOS is apparently getting ‘stale’ because hasn’t changed much since its release in 2007.

I completely disagree with this criticisms – and here’s why: Firstly, when it comes to a phone, I don’t believe bigger is better. What matters to me is the portability of the device, coupled with software which is of a high standard and turns this ‘black mirror’ into something useful. If anything, quality and resolution of the screen matters far more than the dimensions.

When people start talking up screen sizes, it reminds me of the TV market, where people routinely buy the biggest screen they can get for their money, even if it means the screen will disproportionately intrude into their living room. There hasn’t been much innovation in TVs in the past 6 years, we’ve seen half-hearded attempts at ‘app’ ecosystems, but ultimately people just want to sit passively and watch stuff, not mess about with apps. Since the iPhone was released in 2007, introducing multitouch, inertia scrolling and a touch screen that didn’t need a stylus, we haven’t seen any other big changes in paradigm. The iPhone 4 got a super high resolution screen that made reading text all the more pleasurable. Apart from that, in terms of hardware at least, we’ve gotten thinner, lighter and faster and that’s all.

With phones, the quality of the apps and ease of use is what makes the difference – not the size of the thing. Price also plays a part – a big part. Having used Android for the past 18 months (HTC Desire S, and a Nexus 7) I can’t help but be drawn back to iOS, purely because th software is so much better.

At the time of getting my Android phone I wasn’t too happy about the state of the iOS ecosystem. Apple was banning apps left right and enter, and the iPhone 4 didn’t excite me much. I took the plunge and switched to Android, and was immediately pleased with what I got. Over time however I came to regret that decision. What I took for granted in iOS was missing from Android – quality.

Quality is a difficult concept to describe. We all know it when we see it, but it isn’t always obvious to see when you’re looking for it. In the case of my HTC Desire S, quality means the small details in the user interface that you would never notice until you have to do without – take for example making a phone call to someone who isn’t available, I’d go to my recent contacts list (3rd in the list), tap their name, and wait while it rings. After 20 seconds it would hit voicemail. This was an urgent call, so I wanted to call back straight away. I hit ‘Hangup’ and went back to the recent call list, thinking to tap the name – still 3rd in the list. Just as I tap it however, it moved from 3rd in the list to 1st, and I end up calling someone else instead. The phone was just slow. It may have been dual-core compared to my single-core iPhone 3GS, but that comparison is like sitting a motorbike and a lorry next to each other with the same engine, and expecting them to hit 60 at the same time.

Then there was the lack of updates – it took a year for me to get Android 4.0 and when I  finally did it was through a HTC developers site (and made the phone even slower).

The on-board software was buggy and confusing. There seemed to be 2 of everything. A HTC Twitter app, the official Twitter app. A HTC mail client, and GMail, HTC Facebook and well, you get it. On the other hand with iOS you get minimalistic software that actually does useful stuff.

It wasn’t all bad of course, as by original blog post stated. You do get a lot more freedom, but I found myself not caring since Apple seems to be far more reasonable these days when it comes to App Store Approval (and I actually quite like the fact that Apps can’t take over system functions so easily).

So, I am glad to be back

Go direct to notifications from the Lock Screen

You can slide individual notifications to open the associated app instantly. Not very discoverable, but very useful!

Keep folders in the Dock

Access your favourite apps from any of the home screens by keeping a folder in the dock.

Limit what your friends can see or do

Lending your iPad out to someone? With “Guided Access” you can limit users to only one app, and even specify which parts of the screen will respond to touches. You simply triple-click the Home-button and enter your PIN to return to normal. Find this under “General > Accessibility”

Remind yourself where that app is

Spotlight on iOS leaves a lot to be desired for when searching for apps. Thankfully it will tell you which folder an app is in, if any. Just check the column on the right – if there’s no folder mentioned, then it’s not in one.

Give presentations with a projector

The iPad, along with Apple’s Keynote app can be used to give presentations. With the Apple VGA Adapter (or the HDMI adapter) you can display your slides on the projector, and view your presentation notes on the iPad’s screen. With the iPad 2 and above you can also display any app on the TV/projector.

I’d installed Windows 8 on my laptop and my first thoughts weren’t that good. The ‘Metro’ interface was vastly different to Windows 7, and having to right-click to get menus to appear seemed counter-intuitive. I couldn’t even work out how to copy a hyperlink from the built-in mail client. Having now used Windows 8 on a touch device for the first time, it finally made sense.

Based on ARM, the Surface only runs apps downloaded from the Microsoft App Store. You get Office Home and Student bundled, although these run in desktop mode. The only reason I can assume they run on the desktop is because Microsoft didn’t have time to port them to Metro (no simple task, I’m sure). It does however make the surface confusing, since the desktop only shows up as 1 app when you use the Metro task switching functionality, when in reality you could have 3 or 4 apps open on the desktop.

The unique trick that surface has up its sleeve of course is the Touch Cover - a cover similar to the SmartCover for the iPad, that is also a keyboard with a trackpad. The Surface goes from tablet to notebook with ease. (note, I didn’t say laptop, you won’t want to use this on your lap, it’s too unstable). Windows RT can also run two apps side by side, and have multiple user accounts on one device.

So while the hardware is certainly unique and very useful indeed, Windows RT can be confusing. This is compounded by a lack of apps. I am typing this now on an iPad, because there is no software that I could find in the Microsoft App Store that will let me connect and post to WordPress. This lack of software will hopefully be a temporary problem, and once this gets fixed and Office comes to Metro, the desktop can be removed and this tablet can stop being a split personality.

If you forget the desktop, and forget office then you have a promising device for consuming media. Sometimes it feels a bit laggy, like when rotating the screen or launching apps, but only occasionally - most of the time it feels pretty snappy. Whether not people who have invested in content on Android and iOS will want to put that aside and buy content from Microsoft is anther question. In theory if you buy a film on the Surface, you should be able to watch it on your Xbox 360. Browsing the web is frustrating because there seems to be no way to set Google as your search provider - this really would be a deal breaker for me, because Bing just isn’t as good, and not having decent search at your fingertips is like forgetting to wear a watch, you really miss it when it’s gone. Favourites are also difficult to find (you have to focus the address bar, and then swipe to the right, they cannot be grouped into folders). I prefer the iPad here, but this is an early version of IE for Metro despite the version being 10, I’m sure this will improve with time.

So is the device for? It’s not gong to replace a PC for power-users, and the lack of Outlook/Desktop software will probably off business users. That leaves casual home users (would-be iPad buyers) - though I wonder whether the lack of a 7 inch version might sway those users towards the cheaper iPad Mini or the Kindle Fire. One group who this is made for however is students. This device is perfect for taking to lectures, typing up coursework and doing research on.

Overall I’m impressed, though I think I’ll stick with. My iPad for now (despite that fact it feels really old now) and wait and see what Surface version 2 looks like.

Yes you can use the built in Dropbox app, but it’s very clunky and doesn’t let you sort by date. With this solution, photos you take on your Android phone will appear in your iCloud photo stream, which is a far more elegant solution.

What we will do here is essentially make your Dropbox Camera Uploads folder the same folder as your iCloud PhotoStream uploads folder.

Note: I got this working by using my Windows 8 PC with Dropbox installed – it should work fine for Windows 7, and instructions will be different for Mac OS X but it should still be possible. Follow this guide at your own risk!

Step 1: Install Dropbox on your phone

If you haven’t done so already, install Dropbox on your Android device and make sure automatic camera uploads is switched on. This will create a new folder in your Dropbox called ‘Camera Uploads’

Step 2: Install iCloud Control panel on your PC

I already had iTunes installed, so this was a case of running Apple software update and selecting ‘iCloud Control Panel’

Step 3: Remove the iCloud Uploads folder

Open the iCloud control panel and find the location of your photo stream on disk:

Kill the any iCloud.exe and ApplePhotoStream.exe processes from the task manager, and then browse to your photostream folder and delete the ‘Uploads’ folder.

Step 4: Recreate uploads folder

Now the magic happens, open an administrative command prompt and create a junction that will recreate the Uploads folder, only showing the contents of your Dropbox’s ‘Camera Uploads’ folder.

Example:

mklink /J “C:UsersMarcDesktopPhotoStreamUploads”  “C:UsersMarcDropboxCamera Uploads”

The first path is where I want the uploads folder to go, and second is where my camera uploads folder in Drobox is. Remember: you haven’t made to copies, if you delete from one, it gets deleted from the other.

Step 5: That’s it…!

Now any photo you take will be uploaded to your PC, from your PC it will be sent to iCloud. and from iCloud it will find its way onto your iOS devices.

Upon receiving the case, I was mightily disappointed. For a start, it feels very cheap. It’s not very sturdy: with the Smart Cover you can stand the iPad up and use it as a picture frame or to watch a film. The Smart Case apparently supports this function, but the iPad seems very precarious in this position; any slight nudge of the table would send it crashing to the floor. The Smart Case also adds an enormous bezel around the screen, making the iPad’s display seem small. It also seems to trap a lot of dust on the screen, and it doesn’t wipe the screen clean when you open and close it as the cover does. Speaking of opening it, it’s not obvious which side to open it from, and once you have discovered that you will need long nails to release the magnetic closure.

On the plus side, it does protect the iPad well, even the back. However, I can’t recommend this product for day-to-day use, and given how poor it is, it seems excessive to shell out for it on occasional trips to places such as the seaside. I’m not sure what has happened at Apple; it’s certainly not up to their usual standards (but it’s still at their usual prices). I have now reverted to using a Smart Cover and it’s like I have a brand-new iPad.

Yes this is a fast moving industry, and yes the iPad 1 was woefully underpowered (especially when it comes to lack of RAM, the version of iOS it came with didn’t support multitasking remember) and you might argue the that iPad 1 is a special case, as it was mostly purchased by early adapters who will probably be running the latest model of iPad by now. I can also see how Apple might not want developers to hold back their software to ensure it works on the older hardware - iPhoto doesn’t run on it today.

That said, I really think Apple should be sending the message to consumers that their tablet will be relevant in at least 2 years time (you would expect a laptop to be). If they can continue to support the iPhone 3GS (released roughly 6 months before the iPad in 2009) then why not iPad? 

In 2002, the web was a very different place compared with today. The first dot-com bubble had just burst, and there was still far more amateur content online. It was quite common to find personal home pages complete with family photographs or sites devoted to someone’s favourite band. These days, the web is far more corporate, and everything we share is via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Why is this? Has web design become an elitist art form? Textured backgrounds and blinking text may have looked horrible, but back then it was all about a love of the subject matter, with appearance very much secondary. No one doubts that modern design techniques have improved the look and accessibility of the web, but have they frightened off the average Joe armed only with a copy of FrontPage?

Perhaps the world has simply ‘moved on’, as our favourite Gunslinger once said. People have better things to do than maintain their own sites. Blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger offer the ease of use of Facebook while allowing a greater degree of personalisation and independence. Perhaps these days people are writing apps instead.

Or maybe I’m just getting old. Who knows? I’m simply rambling.

Happy anniversary.

Not an uncommon sight back in 1999 (source)

Like everything eventually, popups are back in fashion. This time they’ve manifested as inline DIV tags that bypass popup blockers. Don’t be convinced by the transparent background – having to dismiss a popup before you can browse a site is a still a horrid user experience.

What were they thinking? This one disappears by itself, but not all do this.

I understand sites need to make money from advertising. My worry is that the more obtrusive advertisements become, the more likely users will be pushed to install ad-blockers, and then they wont see any advertisements at all.

iTunes Account Sharing

Yes the bosses at Hollywood and the big music companies will hate this idea, but we humans like to share. Who knows what evaluation might have thrown up if we had been purely selfish creatures. That means when my partner downloads a TV show on her iPad, it would be quite nice if we could watch it on my iPad without jumping through hoops. How about a feature to link up to 5 iTunes accounts, so they can all download each others purchases? It would be one more argument for buying DRM protected content as opposed to downloading it for free from other unofficial sources.

Automatic App Updates

More ‘normal’ users don’t religiously check the App Store for updates, so having an Android-like feature whe selected apps can update automatically would be useful. This would need to be user-controlled, as some apps makers have a tendency to make their apps worse over time instead of improving them.

Standard platform for magazine/newspaper content

Digital newspapers and magazines are a mess. Most are custom apps that contain a series of digital images. There’s no ability to email links, lookup words or save out articles. What iOS needs is a standard system for newspapers (and a lesser extent magazines) – that offers a consistent way to navigate articles. When you pickup a newspaper, you expect it to work like every other newspaper. That’s not the case on the iPad. App makers might say this limits their creativity, but I think the egos of software developers can take the hit, and that the written content should take centre stage. It would surey be cheaper to produce for a system like this where all the publisher needs to worry about is the content and not the cogs and wheels that drive the app.

Less Clutter

iOS 5 seems a little bloated in placed. Cick the action button in Safari and the options no longer fit in on one screen on the iPhone. Where we once had ‘Add Bookmark’, ‘Add to home screen’ and ‘Mail link to this page’ we have now options to Tweet, Print and do even more. This is systematic of the OS in many places.

System wide sharing to other apps

Instead of a ‘Tweet’ link hard-coded into the operating system, why not have a share system simular to Android. The UI would need some work and the ‘intent’ be more specific that Android (on my Androird phone, sharing a link brings me a list containing Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and a File Explorer app, why would I want to send Dropbox a URL?) – perhaps a way for apps to register as social applications ?

Scheduled Notifications

I like the fact my iPad has push email. I don’t like the fact it notifies me of new email at 2 in the morning. ‘Nuff said?

Google’s service, named “Google Drive” (a name I was hoping they would reserve for their exciting autonomous car project), offers tight integration with Google Docs and other Google products such as Picasa, and no doubt with their Chrome OS and Android operating systems in the near future. One of the key selling points of Google Drive is its search facility; they even use OCR to let you search images. You get 5 GB free and can pay for up to 1 TB of space. Crucially, Drive supports sharing files with others, making collaboration on documents much easier. There is support for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS (no Windows Phone).

Microsoft’s SkyDrive has actually been around for a few years but has always been a web-only interface, so despite their initial offering of 25 GB free it was difficult to see how anyone would ever use it if they had to upload files one by one in a browser (I think they knew that too, since now it’s more usable it only offers 7 GB free). SkyDrive also has tight integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem; the upcoming Windows 8 will use it to synchronise data within apps and to keep your settings in the cloud. Office documents can be opened using Office Web Apps and there is support for sharing files too. It supports Windows, macOS, Windows Phone and iOS (no Android).

Apple’s iCloud is rather different. There is no way to use the storage arbitrarily like a folder as you can with the other services mentioned here. Instead, developers use the APIs to build iCloud into their apps. For many people this is fine: most ordinary users just want their documents and photos to be safe and do not care much about the file system underneath. For many (including me), this is a major limitation. It’s great if you own multiple iOS devices (say, an iPhone and an iPad), because your bookmarks, notes and documents will stay in sync. It’s not so great if you want to share a document. There is no way, for example, for two iPad users to work on a spreadsheet using Apple’s Numbers app – it just can’t be done. Of course, Apple have not added support for cloud rival Dropbox to their apps, so I found myself continually emailing a spreadsheet back and forth as if it were 1998. Welcome to the future. The biggest drawback of iCloud is the lack of Windows support. Not that I would be able to open my Pages documents on Windows anyway. However, if you have a Mac and use only Apple’s products, it’s not bad.

So who needs Dropbox?

With all these major players now involved, I’ve read many blogs and comments suggesting “Dropbox is doomed” or that there’s no point in it any more. How wrong they are.

The purpose of these three services is to keep you within an ecosystem. Each has its own small limitations that might seem like a minor inconvenience now, but remember—this is your data, and one day you might decide you no longer want to belong to a particular ecosystem. How easy will it be to move all those gigabytes of data? Dropbox (and other pure‐cloud providers; I just happen to use Dropbox) is not trying to get me to adopt their phone operating system or make it difficult for me to share with a rival. They are just offering cloud synchronisation without the platform politics.

Audible

I enjoy listening to Audiobooks while at the gym or driving, and this app makes it so easy. You can download any books you’ve purchased from Audible and the 30s rewind button and sleep timer are excellent additions. The ability to bookmark is also nice. Being owned by Amazon, I’m surprised your position and bookmarks are not backed up to the cloud (as they are when reading a book using the Kindle app) – so this means when I launch the app on my iPad I’m not in sync. Great app and great service.

Call Filter

I don’t like answering calls from anonymous callers – it’s usually someone trying to sell me something I don’t want. This handy little app silently sends anonymous incoming calls to voicemail, meaning anyone who does actually want to contact you can still leave a message for you to call back.

Dropbox

A while back I blogged about a rather convoluted way to mimic the excellent Photo Stream feature found on iOS on Android. That just got much easier thanks to the latest update to Dropbox which can now automatically synchronise photos and videos to your Dropbox account. No more plugging in your USB cable to download all your photos, and if you loose/wipe your phone your precious memories are safe.

IM+ Pro

A great chat application that lets me sign into MSN Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook all at once. The app cleverly maintains your sessions on their servers, and uses a highly efficient Push connection to keep you connected – meaning you can be signed into all your accounts and your battery won’t even notice. (Also well worth getting for iPad)

Dogcatcher

I love podcasts, and Dogcatcher is a great player for Android. I wouldn’t say it has the nicest User Experience I’ve ever seen, but functionality it has everything I could ask for from a mobile podcast player – including automatic downloading of new episodes (you can specify WiFi or Plugged in only). iPhone users should checkout Podcaster which provides similar functionality.

Hope you find this useful, let me know if you have any favourites.

It was no surprise to me then that when I switched to BT ADSL that both my Kindle 3 and my Dad’s Kindle 4 wouldn’t connect to the Home Hub 3 router. I counted 11 other devices in the house which connected without any trouble; laptops, iPods, Xboxes and phones of different makes – so I knew the problem was with the Kindle. After not getting much help from Amazon (for what its worth, their support staff answer the phone quickly, and were pleasant to deal with) I decided I would just need to go through a trial and error process myself. This was time consuming, because the problem only seemed to manifest itself once the Kindle had put the WiFi radio to sleep, so after making a change to the router’s configuration and reconnecting the Kindle, it would always work, and only after 30 minutes or so when the Kindle failed to connect would I know if there was still a problem.

Anyway, the solution for me was to disable mixed WPA and WPA2 encryption, and set the router to use only WPA2. Contrary to other Internet sites, changing the wireless channel or turning off ‘N’ mode made no difference to me. This fixed worked on my Kindle 3 3G and the new Kindle 4 WiFi. All my other devices still connect fine (event a first generation iPod Touch) so not having the original WPA specification in use doesn’t seem to have any drawbacks.

I hope this is of use to someone – let me know in the comments if you’ve had the same problem.

On the first screen, checking the checkbox will stop you from progressing and installing the update (contrary to almost every other wizard I’ve seen) yet on the second screen the checkbox needs to be checked in order to continue. What were they thinking?

Most people will not read the associated text (they certainly wont lead the license agreement), and will check the box assuming they need to for the update to install. As Raymond Chen wrote (one of my favourite tech blogs) “Don’t require your users to have a degree in philosophy”

Is this bad UX or am I just wrong? I’d be interested in hearing comments.

What struck me was the simplicity and purpose the device was beaming with, it integrated with iTunes so well and songs transferred across at lightening speed. Before the iPod I had been using an MP3 CD player which was a nightmare to navigate, and exceptionally bulky. I was getting the bus to college daily, and I remember I would have to pack it up the stop before because listening on the move wasn’t really an option due to it’s general bulkiness.

Any music player is pretty useless without good music to put on it, at the time I remember listening to Turin Brakes’ debut album The Optimist LP. Even today when I listen to this album, I am reminded of the novelty of the first iPod (as well as standing in freezing January weather waiting for a bus).

Apple released various updates, to support AAC and improve battery life – but the iPod remained the same essentially, a beautiful music player.

By about 2004 my iPod was well and truly battered, this was before it was common knowledge that that “durable” metal back was also very stretchable. I decided to move to a HP PocketPC running Windows Mobile 4, with a 500MB Compact Flash Card. It was nowhere near the 5GB of the iPod, but the geek in me wanted something that could play video and surf the web (using IrDA and GPRS). It was a functional little device, but shoddily built. In 2006 I decided to get an iPod Video 5.5. By now Apple had moved well and truly away from the physical scroll-wheel to a touch-sensitive one – I still use this iPod today and I have never managed to get on with it as well as the first iPod. The video was great though, and the battery was even better. I remember it got me through the hours I had to sit in LAX when my flight was cancelled. That trip was to New York in 2007, a few months after the release of the iPod Touch. After visiting the Apple Store on 5th Avenue, I couldn’t resist the spending my entire holiday money on one of the things and promptly purchased an iPod Touch.

The first generation iPod touch was all about music, and being able to buy it online wherever you were – there were no games, no apps, you couldn’t even edit calendar appointments – this was all about the music (and video). It was therefore a nice addition when Apple released an update (I think it cost about £5) that gave users the ability to install apps.The iPod Touch was also the first time I had ever used a mobile browser and actually enjoyed the experience. My phone at the time (a Nokia N95) was a great phone, but browsing the web it it was awful.

The iPod Touch, like the iPod Video I own remains in use today (I have passed it down the family). Shocking when you think since 2008 I have had 2 laptops fail on me yet these devices still work perfectly. The original iPod powers up, but the battery only lasts a few minutes, and I don’t have a PC with FireWire to get songs onto it anymore

So just some of my iPod memories! I wonder what I’ll be using in 10 years time?

1. Inside your Dropbox folder, create folders with the same name as the ones you already have on your hard disk, in my case “Music”, “Documents” and “Pictures”.
2. Move all your data from the existing folders into your Dropbox folder (they should start uploading to Dropbox) – Yes I said move, so make sure you backed.
3. Delete the original folders (which will now be empty as you moved everything into your Dropbox)
4. For each folder, create a symbolic link from your original location to the new one inside your Dropbox by running mklink from an administrative command prompt. Example: mklink /D “C:UsersMarcDocuments”  “C:UsersMarcDropboxDocuments”
5. That’s it! When you setup a new PC, you will have to start from step 4 and all your documents, pictures and music will just appear.

It will also work the other way round, creating a link from inside the Dropbox folder to your existing documents folder, however Dropbox only recognises changes when it gets restarted which defeats the point if you’re using it as a backup service and want to make use of it’s ‘Previous Versions’ feature.

Hope this might be of use to someone, and I hope Dropbox make doing this easier like Windows Live Mesh. Happy syncing!

I broke my Acer laptop at the weekend (well, I put it in the boot of my car inside a laptop bag, and afterwards the screen stopped working, and I am a good driver I promise!) so I decided I needed a new laptop since the laptop was so cheap anyway the cost of a new screen plus the likelihood of it happening again just doesn’t justify a repair –and a PC is for me at the heart of all things digital that I do. I didn’t want to spend stupid money on a laptop (I would love a MacBook Air, but at £1000 for one with a decent spec, I’ll pass) so I found a Samsung with an i5 and 4GB of RAM for a decent price.

Clearly while Samsung may have taken inspiration from some of Apple’s design (or may not have depending on who’s argument you’re listening to) they certainly haven’t noticed that Apple are not just about shiny products but about the overall user experience. Unboxing and switching on an iPad for the first time is enjoyable, like getting in a brand new car for the first time – doing this for my Samsung laptop was all but enjoyable.The first screen I was greeted with was some partitioning software! Do Samsung really think the average user cares how their partitions are setup? Even I don’t and I’m a self confessed geek.

After finally getting to the desktop, (about 20 minutes later) the next thing I see is a warning from Kaplinsky Security telling me I need to pay up for some security software. Do theses companies not get it? The game’s changed and you can’t treat consumers like this any more. Microsoft have said Windows 8 will have built in antimalware, lets hope they also take control of the setup experience too.

Then I had to spend another hour or so removing crapware. An Apple-esque dock that sat above the Windows 7 taskbar, a Bing Bar, and media players I will never use.

Finally, for some reason the power management was set so that the laptop would use hybrid sleep, this is where instead of shutting down you put the system to sleep, and simultaneously the system hibernates, so if power is lost no data is lost. This is designed for desktops and should never be enabled for laptops, lots of disk activity when you are chucking your laptop in your bag is not a good idea, not to mention the battery drain of always being in standby.

So not a great experience, and nothing like getting a new Apple product. Can’t say I would be eager to try any other of their products after this – what are your experiences?

From the first Apple product I owned (the G3 slot loading iMac, released in 2001), to the  second (the first iPod – yes people laughed at me for wearing white headphones, and I still think the physical click-wheel device was the best of the classic iPods) to the iPad I purchased recently, they’ve all been accompanied by an enchanting Steve Jobs announcement. It will feel odd not seeing that again, and is something I will definitely miss.

RIP Steve.

Wi-Fi-only would have been enough

I opted for the more expensive 3G option, thinking I might take advantage of the free 3G to browse the web or buy books when I was out and about. I have rarely needed or wanted to do this. When I’m at home I can use the Wi-Fi; the same goes at work. When I’m on holiday, there’s usually no shortage of Wi-Fi available (in Lisbon even the tour bus had free Wi-Fi!). In those situations where there is no Wi-Fi, frankly I can wait a few hours before purchasing the next book. Oh, and the web browser isn’t particularly useful—not when you have a smartphone in your pocket, at least.

A better reading experience

In all honesty, I can say that the Kindle is a more enjoyable reading experience than a normal book. Yes, it lacks that woody aroma, and you never get to see the cover artwork in its full-colour glory, but as someone once said, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover anyway. Being able to make the text bigger and control the line spacing really helps. Some books that were 900 pages long with an 8 pt text size would have put me off in the past, but with a Kindle you don’t really notice how “fat” a book is; all you see is that percentage indicator gradually creeping up. The built-in dictionary makes it so easy to look up words that I actually learn a lot by looking up words I didn’t know instead of simply inferring what the meaning might be.

It’s still a gadget

Of course, there’s no getting away from the fact that these things cost a lot of money, and the books themselves aren’t really that much cheaper than their paper counterparts (thanks somewhat to UK VAT laws, which mean digital books are subject to VAT, but traditional paper books are not). Taking an expensive gadget everywhere isn’t always an option, and you’ll probably want to buy a case for it. Oh, and please don’t do what I did and put the Kindle in the same bag as a bottle of sunscreen (yes, the case was a good investment!). That said, I think the benefits outweigh the negatives, and my Kindle has survived trips to the beach. I’d definitely recommend a Kindle.

Not prefect, but very good

The iPad 2, despite considerably lower specs than my laptop on paper feels snappy and rarely do I have to wait for anything to happen. Unlike a laptop, there is no fan – so I feel comfortable leaving it on my bed, or on the carpet knowing I’m not to come back and find it with fans whirling while it melts. The device seems durable, whereas the iPod has a an easy-to-scratch surface, the iPad won’t get scratched under normal use.

Lack of apps

One thing I have found is the lack of iPad specific apps. It’s still quite a new platform, so I can forgive app developers slightly – but the big hitters such as Spotify and Audible still make you use the iPhone versions of the app, which only work in portrait mode and look pixelated. The keyboard layout is also different for iPhone apps, which is rather confusing. While I can type pretty fast on the iPad, the lack of any blogging software as good as Windows Live Writer means I still prefer to fire up my laptop to write anything substantial. An iPad version of Google Chrome would be nice, or at least a way to sync your Google Chrome bookmarks easily (it can be done now, but involves using a 3rd party service and isn’t worth the hassle in my opinion).

Quality not quantity

Having said all that, the apps that come with the iPad are of a very high quality. The Mail, Calendar and Contacts app are very impressive. I was surprised Apple didn’t include an alarm clock and weather app, seeing as there is one available for the iPhone but it’s not a big deal as 3rd party apps have filled the gap.

For casually browsing the web or responding to emails, iPad wins. Booking a holiday? Then I’ll want 30 tabs open at once, and the iPad isn’t good at context switching. Overall I am impressed, it really does fill the void between a smartphone and a laptop. Tablets won’t replace laptops in my opinion, but they will take on many of their roles relegating laptops to the more comprehensive tasks.

Highly recommended.

Maybe I am showing my ignorance here, but it seems to me that JavaScript might be great for small scale projects, but would I choose it for a large enterprise system over Java or C#? Is it popular simply because it happens to be the only scripting language almost guaranteed to be available on any device, rather than because it lets developers write elegant, maintainable and scalable code?

[Appcelerator](http://www.appcelerator .com/) is a tool I’ve been using recently to develop an iPhone app. It’s actually quite good, if not a little buggy here and there – but their central premise is that you can reuse your web skills and code JavaScript instead of Objective C. However, all you borrow from the web is the syntax of JavaScript, since there’s no DOM, no JQuery and instead a bunch of custom components. It’s a nice tool, and will surly get better over time, but I do sometimes wonder why they chose JavaScript as opposed to Java as their supported language.

This reminds me of when “RAD” was big in the mid-nineties, Visual Basic was the future (remember, in VB there was the variant data type that could be anything). A few years later Java was the future, with its strict enforcement of OO practises. Now it’s swung the other way with JavaScript and Ruby be touted as the way forward. What will be next I wonder?

Compared to iOS, Android has a very “home-brewed” feel to it. The interface is much more complex and far less intuitive. On the flip side, however, that means everything is a lot more configurable. In this respect, Android reminds me more of Windows Mobile and Symbian than it does of iOS. I can schedule my work email to only push new items during work hours, for example – something I missed from my Nokia, which the iPhone did not offer. The home screen is far superior to that of the iPhone, but it falls down on simple things. Renaming a folder was surprisingly difficult to work out; it turned out I needed to click and hold on the folder name in the folder’s pop-up. Dragging widgets is awkward, as you can’t seem to have more than one floating at once, so rearranging them when the screen is full is impossible.

Unlocked Doors

While the software does have a “rough and ready” feel to it, this has benefits, as there is virtually no vendor lock-in. I managed to stream music from my DLNA NAS box quite easily. Apple will let you do this, but only within their ecosystem. There is free satnav (although the phone doesn’t come with a car kit), voice input, and a whole host of good-quality apps available from the app store. One really useful feature is HTC Sense Online, which lets you locate your phone, make it ring, and lock it remotely – great when you think you may have lost it.

Battery Life

I am disappointed with the battery life. My iPhone (when new) would be at about 70% at 5:30 pm when I left work, with average use. The Desire S was at about 40%. It is doing a lot more, however, and just proves how little battery technology has improved in the last few years.

Having used the phone for over a month now (nearly two), I have a good idea of what I think of it and how it compares to the iPhone.

User Experience

The user experience is nowhere near as good as the iPhone. A good example of this is when I enter the contacts app and press the Search key. The search field does not automatically get focus, so I have to tap at the top of the screen (having just pressed the search key at the bottom), and then move back down again to begin typing. It feels awkward and unpolished.

Then there are the bundled apps. Like a new laptop, the phone came bundled with lots of OEM crapware. It seems HTC want me to use their Twitter client, and there’s no way to delete it (or even remove the icon). What is it with hardware manufacturers trying to be software companies? Just like those pointless Wi-Fi utilities or launcher bars that the likes of Acer and HP used to bundle with their laptops (HP even made their own Media Centre – the Me Too Edition).

Anyway, it’s a small annoyance, but the abundance of icons is likely to confuse many people.

Battery Life

The battery life is abysmal. It will last a day if you don’t use it much, but if you use it frequently, you’ll need to carry a charger with you. The iPhone wasn’t great, but its battery would always last a day and still have plenty left over.

On the other hand, this is the price you pay for carrying a much more powerful device in your pocket, one that can actually multitask. (The iPhone currently just pretends to, except for a few limited tasks.) Once you get used to that, I think it would be hard to go back to a single-tasking system. Being able to have the phone download new podcasts automatically every night and update Google Reader on schedule is a breath of fresh air for anyone who used to do that five years ago on their Symbian or PocketPC-based phone – and then, like me, switched to the iPhone when it became the big thing.

There are numerous ways to improve battery life. The best is to turn off background data, which rather defeats the purpose of having such a phone, but it’s nice to know you could, in theory, get a couple of days out of it if needed. Great if you ever go camping at a festival (although the camera also drains the battery quite a lot).

Missing iOS?

For all its UX faults, I prefer Android. Want Wi-Fi music sync? There’s an app for that. Free satnav? There’s an app for that. Tethering over Wi-Fi? There’s an app for that. Want to download the latest albums? Guess what, you can do that too.

In fact, there’s an app for almost everything available on the iPhone, and the Android version is usually less restricted and cheaper. The exception here is games, but I’ve still found a number of quality gems – just fewer of the big names.

So I can’t say I miss iOS much, except for the eye candy. Maybe iOS 5 will sway me next time.

A highly recommended phone!

How can that be possible? Can you imagine the iPad having 10 hours of battery life if it had to run all the background processes (and crapware) that comes preinstalled on most PCs? Bloated AntiVirus software, scheduled disk clean-ups, random Adobe icons, it can be a bit unwieldy for a system that is suppose to be “always on” – the iPad will after all, receive notifications while in standby (and yes the 10 hours is actual usage, not standby). I can’t see Windows doing that, and even with specially tuned hardware all it takes is for someone to install a bit of rouge “classic” software (rather than software using the new JavaScript and probably Silverlight APIs) and that all gets thrown out the Window (sorry, bad pun).

So maybe Microsoft has taken the technology it developed for Windows 7’s “XP Mode” and made it so when you buy a tablet PC, the classic side of the system that can run all your old software is completely virtualised. This would mean the entire legacy system would be contained within a single process that could be paused to save battery.

When installed on a desktop, this extra layer probably wouldn’t be needed (Obviously games and other high-end software won’t run well in a virtualised environment) – but for a tablet I think it makes sense.

Obviously this is just pure speculation on my part, so lets hope all will be revealed at this year’s BUILD conference.

XBOX live

I have been using this service since I first got my XBOX 360 in 2006. I was at first very sceptical about paying to play games online, after all I’ve paid for the game so shouldn’t the online play be included in the price? Having seen other free alternatives however (Steam on the PC, and of course the PlayStation network) XBOX Live seems a more cohesive service. Starting games is simple, as is inviting friends to voice chat. A nice way to waste some time on a Sunday afternoon.

£4.99 / month (I got an annual pass for about £27, look for special offers)

Audible

Audiobooks are a great way to “read” while you’re doing other things, in the gym, in the car, doing boring household chores, or sometimes just when falling asleep. The monthly subscription gives me a book each month (which when some of them are over 30 hours long, will easily last that long) and is genuinely a good way to get more reading time in. There’s an Android app, and books will play on the Kindle too.

£6.99 / month

DropBox

DropBox is a neat online backup service. While Windows Live Mesh is technically superior, you can’t get more than 5GB of storage as you can with DropBox. Therefore I use it, and it’s very useful to have all your documents available wherever you are. If only the software would make is easier to sync existing folders (currently it’s a longwinded process involving symbolic links) I wouldn’t feel the need to be looking for alternatives all the time. Still, it’s a good price and the features they do have are very useful.

$9.99 USD / month

Spotify

I am still on my free trial of Spotify, after having initially been sceptical about “renting” music rather than owning it. Being able to try out albums is great, and now they have offline access for mobile phones it’s actually not a bad product. I have discovered a lot of new music using sites such as BBCify, which I would never have done without Spotify. It’s a shame not al of the music labels have signed up, that is misguided in my opinion. The desktop client it a bit clunky – a classic case of “design by committee” but the underlying functionality is worth the money.

£9.99 / month

User Experience

The user experience is no where near as good as the iPhone. A good example of this is when I enter the contacts app and press the Search key. The search field does not automatically get focus so I have to tap at the top of the screen (having just pressed the search key right at the bottom), and then move back down again to begin typing. It feels awkward and unpolished. Then there’s the bundled apps. Like a new laptop, the phone was bundled with lots of OEM crapware, it seems HTC want me to use their Twitter client and there’s no way to delete it (or even remove the icon). What is it with hardware manufactures being wannabe software companies? Just like those pointless Wifi utilities or Launcher bars the likes of Acer and HP used to bundle in with their laptops (HP even made their own Media Centre, the  Me Too Edition). Anyway, it’s a small annoyance but the abundance of so many icons is sure to confuse a lot of people.

Battery Life

The battery life is abysmal. It will last a day if you don’t use it much, but if you do use it frequently then you’ll need to take a charger around with you. The iPhone wasn’t great, but the battery would always last a day and have plenty left over. On the other hand, this is the price you pay for having a much more powerful device in your pocket, one that actually can multitask (The iPhone currently just pretend to, save for a few limited tasks) and once you get used to that, I think it would be hard to go back to a single-task based system. Being able to have the phone download new podcasts automatically every night, update Google Reader on schedule is a breath of fresh air for anyone who used to do that 5 years ago on their Symbian or PocketPC based phone – and then (like me) switched to the iPhone when it was the big thing. There are numerous ways to improve battery life, the best is to turn off background data – which kind of defeats the point of having such a phone, but it’s nice to know you could i theory get a couple of days out of it if needed, great if you ever go camping at a festival (although the camera sucks the battery a lot too).

Missing iOS?

For all it’s UX faults, I prefer Android. You want Wifi Music Sync? There’s an app for that. Free SatNav? There’s an app for that. Tethering over Wifi? There’s an app for that. Want to download the latest albums? Guess what, you can do that too. In fact, there’s an app for almost anything there is on the iPhone, and the Android version is nearly always less restricted and cheaper. The exception here is games, but I’ve still found a number quality gems, just less of the big names. So I can’t say I miss iOS much, except for the eye-candy. Maybe iOS 5 will sway me next time.

A highly recommended phone.

I started off developing for iPhone and Android, using the packages provided by their download to get up and running. Great stuff. You write an app using HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS3 and then deploy to each device. The PhoneGap package contains a directory for each platform, with a number of files – the important one being phonegap.0.9.4.js.

So I developed the app on my Windows PC, copying the files across to my trusty Mac to deploy to iPhone. There are some subtle differences in the way Safari and Chrome render, so it was important to test across both devices. I kept coming across intermittent problems on the iPhone however, with the deviceready event not firing. What was going on?

phonegap.0.9.4.js

Due to the negligible amount of documentation available on PhoneGap’s site (Hey – I am used to having MSDN at my disposal!) I found myself digging through the sourcecode to work out how on earth I could do things. I noticed a lot of Android specific code, but no iPhone code. How odd. I then checked in my BlackBerry project folder and noticed the file was much bigger.

Yes, folks – the various phonegap.0.9.4.js files – despite having the same filename are totally different for each OS implementation. Not once in the many hours spent reading PhoneGap’s web site did I see anything that told me that. Turned out my iPhone problems were because I was deploying an Android version of PhoneGap to the iPhone. Having the same filename is confusing and they seem destined to get used in place of one and other. I suspect many others will have tried to deploy the wrong file to the wrong device.

I would really like to see the folks at PhoneGap have a more sensible naming convention. e.g.  phonegap_android.0.9.4.js? It would be apparent straight away the it was specific to that OS, and avoid what amounts to DLL hell issues for mobile apps.

Of course a file is a file, and I can rename it to whatever I like (and probably will) – but it’s nice not to have to (who renames jQuery?) and would certainly make learning the platform easier.

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

The Arcade Fire’s third album is one of those albums that sounds better as a whole that any single track. From the epic orchestral thumping of “Rococo” to the quiet introspection of “Wasted Hours” to the delightfully poppy “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” this collection of songs deserves your full attention while listening. While it probably is slightly too long, I couldn’t pick a song to drop and I’m glad they didn’t. There really is no filler on this album, a rarity indeed. Original,  catchy, melancholic this if my favourite album of the past 5 years, let alone 2010. It just hooks me every time, it has its rockier moments, it’s quiet moments but they all feel like one. The hallmark of a great album is one where your favourite track changes regularly, for now my favourite track is ‘We Used to Wait’ (checkout this amazing dynamic video) but in the past it has been Rococo, Deep Blue, Ready To Start (in fact they’ve all been a favourite at times). Brilliant.

Manic Street Preachers – Postcards From A Young Man

The Manics return for their tenth album, a milestone in their career. Thankfully they are still on top form, and this album could be seen as a continuation of what was started with “Send Away The Tigers”. They sound unusually upbeat with tracks like “I Think I Found I” and The Wire is on top form with his lyrics in tracks like “A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun” and “Don’t Be Evil” – the latter seemingly taking a swipe at Google and internet blogging culture. They’ve said this is their last chance at “mass communication” and I have mixed feelings about this, some of their best songs were written when they were trying make popular music but wonder what they could achieve without that constraint. Favourite track? It’s difficult because they are all so good, but it would have to be the title track ‘Postcards from a Young Man’ or ‘Don’t Be Evil’.

James – The Morning After

When James got back together in 2007, many could be forgiven for thinking they might release a new ‘best of’ complication and do a tour (they did) to make some money and then go back to hibernation. Thankfully they stuck around, and we now have their third album since the reformation. A sequel to ‘The Night Before” the silky guitars from Larry and Soul’s energetic violin make this album melt away in your brain. My favourite song, “Tell Her I Said So”.

The Duke Spirit – Neptune

Technically released in 2008, however I came across it in 2010 which is why I am including it here. It’s been a long time since I’ve discovered a new band that write such interesting music with lyrics to match. This album spans multiple genres, from the poppy “My Sunken Treasure” to the all out rock energy of the title track “Neptune’s Call” to the blues of “This Ship Was Built To Last” every song on this album sounds fresh and the lyrics will make you laugh, or send a shiver down your spine. Looking forward to their next album out in 2011. My favourite track would have to be “Neptune’s Call”.

Other features include the ability to download books over the Internet (but strangely, not 3G which would have been more useful), add bookmarks with notes, customise the length of time the rewind button goes back, a button-less interface for when in the car, and a sleep timer. Overall the user experience is much more suited to audiobooks than the default iPhone interface and I highly recommend it.

For those if you you haven’t discovered the joy of audiobooks, they are a great way to read while driving, doing household chores or just when your eyes feel too tired to read (I get that a lot since my job involves using a computer all day). If you like books then give them a try.

Now if only there was some kind of Kindle like device that would play audiobooks, but keep your place in sync between the audiobook and the eBook.

I’ve been playing Halo Reach a lot over the Christmas period and I am really enjoying it. I was a huge fan of the original Halo, the story and simplicity (there were only 6 or 7 weapons) and nonstop action. Yes some of the levels were repetitive (I remember one level, where you had to get to the top of a building fighting The Flood, and each floor was essentially the same, meaning you did the same over and over level 5 or 6 times!) but others like the wide-open second level where you drove around the planet Halo were ground-braking for an FPS. Halo 2 was more of the same, now with dual-wielding and some more weapons, and multiplayer. What I didn’t like was playing as someone other than the Masterchief , I lost interest during these parts. Halo 3 was for me, more Halo 2 with prettier graphics and better online play. The story didn’t really grab my attention, possibly due to the parts I’d blanked out while playing Halo 2 and me not knowing what on earth was going on except there were enemies to shoot. ODST was a return to form for me, a totally new set of characters in a rich, dark, film-noir (Blade Runner-esque) atmosphere and good backstory that compelled me to keep playing.

The good

Halo Reach takes the good parts of ODST’s story and gameplay, but adds some new features such as jetpacks and the sprint ability. What makes a big difference between it and say, Halo 3 is the story seems to grab my attention and gives me a reason so shoot all those

Covenant. The levels are also very varied and don’t get boring. The multiplayer is rock-solid too, unlike Halo 3, I don’t seem to end up getting shot from out of nowhere every 10 seconds – it seems more well balanced.

The bad

Not all is good however. Only 2 months after its release, Bungie are expecting loyal fans to pay more for some extra maps in order to enjoy the full online experience. I am all for additional content that can be purchased, but it seems that these days games developers hold back content specifically and then sell you it a few months later. I wouldn’t mind if we were 1 or 2 years down the line but to release it so soon just makes me think that nowadays when you buy a game, you actually get 90% of it and can expect to pay another ~£7 in points to get the full experience in 2 or 3 months time. I have also seen the new maps being bundled with the game in shops for the same price as the original, further penalising the loyal fans who go out and buy this stuff when it comes out.

Conclusion

The game is great, and will provide hours of fun. There is plenty of replay value, not just with the online play, but also the solo campaign which can be played on multiple difficulties and with friends. I am slightly annoyed about the additional maps being released so soon (they should have come with the game), but I wouldn’t that spoil what is the best Halo game to date and one of the best shooters of the 360.

Software updates. We all all love them don’t we? Unlike any other industry I can think of, users of software expect to get updates on a regular basis. When Microsoft included Windows Update with Windows 98 it hailed a new era of self-updating software. But what happens when you are forced to update software? Microsoft has always been pretty conservative when it comes to forcing users to install updates, prompting, prompting again, and providing administrators with means of delaying updates (much to the dismay of web developers, as many institutions are still using IE6, which is 9 years old) while Google on the other hand takes the opposite approach with its web browser, Chrome that updates itself so quietly you’d never notice. This is fine with me, as Google have continued to add features and make the browser better and faster.

So what happens when (as seems to happen with all software) the browser starts to get a bit bloated and therefore needs a beefier machine to run on? Will I be so pleased when my browser suddenly takes longer to start up? Of course two things redeem Google here, firstly I would be free to downgrade and turn off automatic updates, and secondly they give it away for free, so it’s not as if would have lost anything, except perhaps the time investment spent learning and configuring the browser (which rules by the way, I used it on all my PCs and can’t recommend it highly enough)

I want my money back

When you pay for a piece of software, the publisher changes it considerably to its detriment, and then forces the update upon you then I have a problem. This was the case with Team Fortress 2. What started out as a fun, well balanced, class-based classic game of Red vs. Blue has slowly morphed into a terrible, badly balanced game of class-based luck that has more in common with Monopoly than its excellent predecessor Team Fortress Classic. Class upgrades and in game purchases are not what I originally bought into and it’s certainly not how the game was sold to me when I paid for it almost 3 years ago. Yet here I am 3 years later unable to play the game I originally purchased because that game no longer exists. Instead I have a considerably different game where they expect you to pay extra to get the best weapons. Can you imagine if your TV manufacture insisted you upgrade to a 3D TV and then burdened you with paying extra for silly 3D glasses you’d have to wear for the rest of your TV viewing years? Maybe there is an analogy here with the switch-off of analogue TV or when motorists were forced to stop using lead based petrol – but these were in the interests of the public good, and the decisions were no doubt made after lots of discussion by elected members of government.

I am struggling to think of any instances of when this sort of forced update would be acceptable. Security patches are a different matter, because they rarely take away features.and so I fully support them. Of course when the updates are actually good, then I don’t mind (TFC for example gained teleporters midway through its life) – but one person’s great new feature could just as easily ruin the game for someone else. There is no easy solution, I’m sure Value would argue it’s impossible to support each version ever released and still have people playing against each other. Had they released a whole new game called Team Fortress 3, then people would accused them of cashing in like they did when Left 4 Dead 2 was released.

So no easy answers, but as cloud computing becomes more commonplace in business I don’t see this problem going away.

The story follows three characters over a number of years, and by the time the narrative climaxes, you truly feel as though you are inside their heads, fully empathising with them and their actions. Along the way, there is, of course, plenty of action, heartbreak, and surprises – but what really makes this book so compelling is the fascinating world it exists in and the characters that inhabit it.

I was sad when I finished this book, not because the ending was bad (it isn’t) but because I knew I would be leaving that world behind. Luckily, there is a second book, and I’ve just started it. So far, so good.

I highly recommend this book.

No thanks to Primus, our first choice of phone line provider – who never seemed to be able to hear or understand us at the other end of the phone. So we nipped that in the bud, and thought we’d go with Talk Talk instead, after hearing positive things about them from family members.

Well, after the usual delays and waits, we paid £70 for an engineer to come out and spend 10 minutes configuring the line, only to be left with a connection that struggled to reach 1Mbs. 1.2Mb was about as good as it got, and the pings were awful. After weeks of waiting on hold and speaking to first line, second line and third line support, they determined it must be the wiring in our apartment and we’d have to pay BT Openreach £160 (+60/hour) to fix it, and even then there’d be no guarantees of a speed increase. Are you having a laugh? We live a few hundred meters from the exchange, that can’t be right.

We decided to quit that joke of a company and go with Virgin Media. It didn’t start well, with Virgin putting the “wrong type” of ADSL on our line, and not sending the router out until 3 days after our initial activation (although it was a fairly decent D-LINK, not a £1.50 own-branded one with only 1 Ethernet port,  like TalkTalk’s),  but after about 3 weeks we finally got a connection. The speed started at 1.2 Mbs, and then went up to 2Mbs a few hours later. Now 2 days later it’s reaching 7Mbs – on the same line Talk Talk couldn’t get over 1.2Mbs on. I’ll wait and see over the next few days if it stays at 7 or drops, or if it actually reaches the promised 10Mbs – but a ping of 30ms is much more like it, and despite the cock-ups, and am pleased so far with the service.

So my advice would be, avoid Talk Talk like the plague!

Main Screen

Shows are listed along the left side of the screen, with individual episodes on the right.

Download Manager

Download Podcast Tool (freeware)

I have a lot of media on my various computers: music, photos, videos, and the like, but I’ve never found a satisfactory way of storing them all. My solution was to put them on my main laptop, which has a large hard disk, and then share the folders to my other laptop and Xbox 360. This is fine, except I tend to reformat my laptop quite often, and I don’t keep it on all the time at a desk. Instead, it’s packed away in its bag when not in use, making playing some music from my Xbox a bit of a hassle. So I decided a NAS box was what I needed. My only consideration really was price; I really don’t care about speed since most of the time I’ll be using 802.11g to access the files, and so the Iomega 1TB drive is what I picked. It cost £120 from PC World, which I thought was good value. I’d read a few reviews, but since those reviews, Iomega has released a new firmware (which came preinstalled on mine), and so a lot of the drawbacks have been addressed.

I have to say, I am very impressed. The drive is fully accessible via SMB, meaning the software that comes with the drive is not essential (I only needed to install it once to find out what IP address my DHCP server had assigned it). The drive is actually a very small computer (probably running Linux, though I can’t be sure), and so it offers extra functionality. So-called “Live Folders” allow you to create a folder that’s contents get uploaded to Facebook, YouTube, or resized, for example. The NAS box can also act as a BitTorrent client, but unfortunately, it can’t be set to download a large file over FTP/HTTP. The device is also an iTunes server as well as a DLNA server (this is an open standard that the Xbox 360 uses to stream music and video over a LAN). If only TV shows purchased from iTunes didn’t have DRM, I’d buy a few, since being able to download a series of 24 straight to this device and watch it on my Xbox would be amazing. Still, having all your media always available via Media Centre/Xbox/iTunes is great.

The downsides to this device are that the hard disk appears to be FAT32 (according to another review I read) – this means it’s not journaled and in the event of a power cut, the drive/data could be corrupted. There is only one hard disk, and 1TB of data is a LOT of data to be held at the whim of someone spilling something on it or a cat knocking it over, so I will still be keeping the stuff I value most in two places. Anyone wanting a proper backup solution rather than a media server solution would be wise to get something that has RAID. It’s also quite noisy and doesn’t spin down the hard disk when it’s not in use.

Overall, I am pleased with this purchase and would recommend this media server to others looking for a good value solution.

Update

I found the following information in the manual that states the drive actually uses the XFS file system, which was one of the first journaled file systems. Hooray!

The Home Media Drive shares files using the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol and stores its files on XFS (built-in), FAT32 (external), and NTFS (external) hard drives.

I didn’t mention this before, but you can also plug in a USB drive and share it, or you can plug in a USB printer and then share that instead. Shame there’s no SSH access, however. :)

I liked that promise, in a world where Microsoft Outlook takes about 10 times longer than the combination of Google Chrome and Gmail to load, web based software certainly seems to me to be the future. So I was surprised today when I discovered that the BBC is launching some new pieces of client software for mobile phones. These days, all the major web sites have their own ‘app’ – The Guardian, RadioTimes, WordPress, even the White House to name just a few examples – yet nearly all of those apps could work just fine in the web browser. Does this mean the web application is dead? I pondered this, and came to the conclusion that no, web apps aren’t dead. The fact that The Guardian and The Whitehouse haven’t released an application for Windows or MacOSX tells me that this is just a mobile thing, and that installable applications are perhaps easier to use than web sites, with their caching, gestures and smooth animations. The BBC’s applications will feature high-quality flash, something Apple don’t allow inside the iPhone’s web browser so that’s probably their reasoning. Installable applications (on the iPhone in particular) create a desktop presence, you can bet that people who’ve installed The Guardian’s app visit The Guardian more often that those who have a bookmark buried away somewhere, or type the address manually, so there is added benefit to the content provider. Of course, as the Windows Quick Launch area taught us, too much branding on the desktop can get annoying, so maybe it is a fad after all, and we’ll all be using web based mobile apps in 2 years time?

This Week In Tech Or TWiT, as it’s known is a general technology news ‘netcast’. The flagship podcast of the TWiT Network, it consists of regular guests discussing the latest tech stories. Being American, it is heavily focused on US consumer issues, but that doesn’t matter since what happens in the US inevitably follows here in the UK, and they do sometimes have British guests. I find a lot of the people are too easily drawn into the latest crazes such as Twitter and Facebook but thankfully regular contributor John C Dvorak is there to bring them down to earth! Overall a top show, highly recommended.

Boagworld A slightly odd name, until you realise it’s named after the show’s creator, Paul Boag. This podcast focuses on web design, and it aimed at those who work as designers, and to a lesser extent developers. It is light hearted, the guys don’t take themselves too seriously, so while you’re learning new facts and keeping up with what’s going on in the world of web design, you’re also enjoying it. Worth subscribing to if you have aspirations to become a designer, or are a web designer, or if like me, you’re a developer who has to do some designing. Top podcast indeed.

Security Now! This podcast, from TWiT, is all about the latest news in the world of computer security. The show alternates each week between a listener Q&A session and a chosen topic that the show’s creator, Steve Gibson will talk about. This could be how SSL works, how a particular worm works or sometimes a non-security related topic. All episodes include the latest security news, which is essential if you’re an IT administrator, or care about the security if your own home network. Sometimes the topics can be very complex, then other weeks bizarrely simple – the show has a huge range but never fails to hold my interest. Anchorman Leo Laporte does a good job of representing the average listener, and asking Steve the questions we’re all thinking. Highly recommended.

PC Pro A discussion of the latest tech news with a refreshing UK focus. The folks are very knowledgeable and raise some good points. They don’t seem to be as obsessed with the latest crazes like Twitter and FaceBook as other podcasts, which is so refreshing. Recommended for anyone who is at all interested in the computer industry.

Windows Weekly Another TWiT podcast – if you’re interested in Windows, Xbox or Zune then a must-listen. Paul Thurrott has contacts within Microsoft that often mean you will find out things before anyone else. I sometimes wish it could cover more technical stuff for us developers, but we’re not really the show’s primary audience (there’s Channel 9 for that). Overall highly recommended if you have an interest in Microsoft technologies.

Diggnation I occasionally listen to this one. It’s a roundup of the top stories submitted on Digg. Alex Albrecht is a very funny guy, and so too is Kevin Rose (the founder of Digg.com) A great laugh and good way to keep up with the less serious goings on in the world, also available in video, in fact it’s best viewed in video although personally I’m not so keen on video podcasts since I can’t do anything else at the same time (although watching Diggnation especially is a great Sunday morning remedy to a hangover). Overall I highly recommend.

Geek News Central I’ve been listening to this podcast on and off for over a year now. It’s a show about technology news, but it’s not one bit dry and boring as one might first expect, this is thanks to the great host Todd Cochrane who has such a great passion for what he’s doing. With two shows a week, keeping up with this podcast requires dedication – and when you first listen you might wonder why Todd spends the first 15 minutes just having a general chit-chat about what’s going on in his world – but as you listen each week you realise that is part of the charm, and what differentiates this tech podcast from the myriad of others out there. This is the cream of the podcasting world, highly recommended!

Mark Kermode’s Film Reviews This podcast is a repeat of Mark Kermode’s regular Friday afternoon section on BBC Radio Five Live. Kermode, along with host Simon May do an excellent job of providing information and reviews on the new releases each week. If Mark recommends a film, it’s a good sign that it’s worth seeing. Nice way to start the weekend.

However, it was time for an upgrade. I seriously contemplated sticking with T-Mobile and the N95, perhaps switching to a cheaper tariff. But the N95’s biggest flaw let me down: build quality. My first N95 had a loose keypad, and the volume-up button broke. After about 20 months, the volume-up button broke on my second handset as well. A quick Google search reveals it’s a common fault. Whereas Nokias were once virtually indestructible (think 3310), the N95 was a fragile ornament. Other aspects of the N95 began to bug me too. The upper keypad is too cramped, making it easy to accidentally exit an application when trying to press the ‘C’ key. Application start-up times are also slow; nothing feels seamless. I decided I needed a new phone.

I was torn between the iPhone and the N97. After the disappointing build quality of the N95, I swore never to return to Nokia, which is a big deal for me. I’ve owned the 3330, 3510i, 6630, 6100, and 6230i – and of course the N95 – since 2001. I tried out the N97, and it looks amazing. The camera is top-notch, and it feels a lot more solid than the N95. However, the touchscreen is very poor. Like the 5800, it’s resistive, which means it works on pressure, making it a real chore to use. The UI isn’t designed for touch but rather adapted for it, and poorly in my opinion. Still, the slide-out keyboard and integrated flash in the browser were tempting enough to keep me interested. Yet, I decided to stick to my guns and not risk another N95 disappointment. I opted for the iPhone.

I’ve had many iPods before. I hate iTunes – it’s a prime example of bloatware. I’ve been using iTunes since 2001 when it was version 1 and came with Mac OS 9, so I have a lot of experience with it. From about version 6 onwards, it became painfully slow. On Windows, it has an annoying bug where it steals focus every few minutes, which can be fixed by adjusting Windows Live Messenger not to display your song information. I’m sure Apple makes iTunes run as slowly as possible on Windows to make Microsoft look bad. Why on earth does QuickTime, a mediocre media player that no one ever runs (except as a plug-in), need a notification icon? What exactly is it notifying me of? Anyway, we all know iTunes sucks, but for syncing music and downloading podcasts, it does the job adequately.

The iPhone, like the N97, looks great. However, unlike the N97, it’s not immediately obvious where the SIM card goes, so be sure to read the manual or, as I did, Google it. The screen is capacitive, meaning it works by conducting electricity from your finger. It’s much smoother and more enjoyable to use. The browser and email are excellent, but I do miss a few features of my N95.

Firstly, the calendar. An iPhone will only let you set a reminder for two days before an event. This is no good for something like a car service or a big birthday, where you might want a reminder a week or so in advance. It seems like a pointless limitation or oversight to me.

Secondly, Bluetooth. The iPhone might as well not have Bluetooth, as you can’t send photos or contacts using it. I understand Apple restricting music, but why limit photos, contacts, and calendar entries? These are basics, Apple, and you’ve got them wrong.

Additionally, you can’t download podcasts over 10MB or use the iPhone as a modem – the N95 could do both. The N95 was a phone, not a marketing tool for O2.

Thirdly, 3G reception seems poor compared to other phones on the same network in the same room.

The camera is bad. Even the newer 3GS, which I have, is subpar and lacks a flash.

I don’t want to sound entirely negative – the iPhone is a worthy upgrade from the N95. Email is much quicker and supports HTML (though Apple limits you to sending five photos as attachments), and it also syncs emails and calendars with Exchange. The N95 would take about 30 seconds to ‘think about’ my emails after receiving them, which was just plain annoying. Direct uploads to YouTube, along with some great games and applications, put the iPhone ahead of Nokia. Facebook, Twitter, even Windows Live Messenger via push (although the developer notes that the application is under review by Apple, likely because it might affect network revenues) all work seamlessly. The interface is a pleasure to use.

Overall, I’m glad I upgraded – though I do miss a few key features!

1. The new version fixes some bugs, and also provides some convenient options. There is now a gray RSS icon when a podcast hasn’t been downloaded, and a blue one when it has, allowing you to see from the list quickly what you’ve already got.
2. When you update podcasts the status bar now tells you how many were added, and when.  I found myself wondering if there were any new shows or not. I plan to expand this is and have a separate view for ‘recently added’ shows.
3. The options dialog now has two extra options. The first is to automatically check for new shows when the program runs, the second is to automatically download new shows after checking.

Again, feedback and suggestions are welcome, so please send me an email if you use the application.

Where Google really comes in handy is tring to find an answer to an error message or programming query. I’ll be giving Bing a test over the next few weeks.

However on my laptop I don’t want to be installing iTunes, and a quick search on Google left me thinking there weren’t many lightweight solutions out there for just subscribing to podcasts. Sure a general RSS reader would keep me up to date, but it wouldn’t download the files. I decided to write my own bit of software, which I’ve aptly named “Podcast Tool”. It basically lets you subscribe to, and download podcasts, remembering which podcasts you’ve listened to. I’m putting it up here for anyone to test and give feedback.

If you too download a lot of podcasts, then please give it a test.

The Nokia 6630 is Nokia’s latest smartphone offering with a 1.3 megapixel camera, 10mb of internal memory, a 200mhz processor, Bluetooth, 3G, stereo MP3/ACC playback and the latest Symbian operating system, version 8a.

The basic functions work well, the processor is the fastest yet to be used in a Nokia phone, and makes the menu lags and photo delays that dogged many previous Symbian based phones a thing of the past. The fast processor does take its toll on battery life however, with the average battery time with Bluetooth switched on with moderate usage of the phone about 2 days. My old Nokia 6100 lasted about 4 days, so this short time is by and large the biggest shock to me, but its not as bad as it sounds. This is a smartphone running many processes at a time and so battery life was always going to be an issue. The 6100 was a series 40 Nokia that didn’t do much at all. It’s a case of features vs. battery life, and since I am don’t need to take this phone out in the wilderness for days at a time without mains power access, the 2 day battery time is not a problem.

Texting is a joy on this phone, the keypad is small yet responsive enough to text very quickly. The screen is so large that you can fit a whole text message on the screen without the need for scrolling, and of course with 10mb of memory there’s plenty of room for hundreds of text messages, and multimedia messages. The messaging application also has a POP3 and IMAP client, which is flawed because it doesn’t let users choose any port to connect on - such a basic concept and Nokia have left it out. So unless your ISP uses the standard ports for email (Gmail don’t!), this will be of no use to you. Other email applications can be installed, but many of them cost money.

Making calls on the phone is also easily done, just like any Nokia in fact. The loud speaker isn’t as loud as I’d have liked, but it does the job and I seldom use it anyway. The phone, being a 3G phone also supports Video calls - in my opinion the stupidest idea ever, why would I want to pay over the odds to see the person I’m calling when I can just hear them? For those that do see a use for this, and can afford it - the phone makes it easy, when you select call a menu pops up allowing you to select phone or video call. There’s no camera on the front, so in order for the other person to see you you need to connect the phone to the stand, which comes in the box. Not exactly video on the move, but adding another camera to the front would just add to the bulk and Nokia have obviously realised that hardly anyone wants to use this feature anyway.

The camera on this phone is brilliant. It can take photos at an amazing quality, but its such a shame there’s only 10mb of internal memory. This trivial amount of memory is simply not proportionate to the other great specifications of the phone. The video recorder also captures sound, and can record for up to an hour if you have a big enough memory card. The phone takes dual voltage reduced-size multimedia cards. Why couldn’t it just take standard MMC cards? Is it a plot by the memory card manufactures to make people like me who already own an assortment of memory cards go out and buy more? The reduced-size card comes with an adaptor that is suppose to make the card fit into a standard MMC slot in a card reader. IT DOESN’T WORK. Mine doesn’t anyway, and so I’ve had to use the data able that came with the phone to access the phone’s memory and the card. The phone comes with a 32mb card, enough for about 8 music files at a decent quality.

MP3 playback is average and no way near as good as my PocketPC. Vodafone decided to restrict the phone so you can’t set MP3s as ringtones. Luckily you can set AAC files as ringtones, AAC is Apple’s music format and you can create AAC files using iTunes. Music playback also drains the battery big time, but its good enough if you don’t want to be carrying a phone and an MP3 player all the time. Playing music for about 4 hours a day made the battery last about a day and a half. I’ve used it extensively with the supplied headphones (which also double as a hands-free kit) and found them to be lacking in base, I think this is not because the speakers are no good, but because there’s no equaliser on the phone.

Browsing the web is also a joy on this piece of equipment, the large screen and Opera web browser make it a easy and fun The 3G speed is also blindingly fast, and with a free program called Agile Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ can all be used on the move. Watch out however, 3G is stupidly expensive. The fast speed simply means you spend more in less time, so I’d advice anyone to switch off images on the browser to save them selves money. One day maybe we’ll get mobile data at a decent price, but Vodafone charge a whopping £2.75 per megabyte!! Daylight robbery, but fair enough they did give me this £400 phone for free on a £33/ month contract which is a pretty good deal.

Word and Excel file can be viewed on this phone using the built in QuickOffice applications, there’s also a first-rate image viewer that displays images in a rotating wheel format, or as a slideshow with fade-in animations. This is useful for showing your mates a collection of photos in full-screen. There’s also a photo editor, where photos can be cropped and borders added to them. Its quite difficult to use, and I think I’ll stick to sending photos to my PDA via Bluetooth, and editing them on the PocketPC - some tasks are just easier with a mouse or stylus. Then there’s a video editor, videos captured can be slowed down (good for photo finishes) and background music can be set (disappointingly not any music file, only MIDI files). You can probably do more, I haven’t had a chance to play with this application much yet.

Overall: A very impressive phone with nearly every feature I could want.

At £279 this PDA seemed too good to be true. It has 56MB of usable internal memory, a compact flash slot and secure digital slot. It also has Bluetooth, infrared, backlight and a replaceable battery that lasts about 8 hours, depending on usage and backlight brightness.

Out of the box you get everything you need, except one thing, which I’ll come to later. If like me you decide to buy from Dixon’s and take advantage of the “buy now, pay in 9 months” option be aware that SD cards and CF cards are sold at much lower prices on Amazon.co.uk – although at £279 you need to spend over £300 to use the “buy now, pay in 9 months” option. If you don’t want to pay later, then the PDA is also available cheaply online.

The 2200 is a good size, with a brilliant screen. If you have a digital camera that takes either SD cards or CF cards, then you will find much use for this PDA as you can view your photos on a much larger screen than most cameras, crop photos, adjust brightness and contrast, and even email your photos – without even stepping near a proper PC. The small size and lightweight can be a disadvantage. Coming from a Palm m105, I was used to having a PDA with a built in screen protector. The iPaq has no such thing, the screen is exposed much of the time like that of a phone. A soft case included does partially solve this issue, but it is no way near as convenient as the flip-top my Palm m105 had. It’s annoying when using the iPaq as an MP3 player when you want to skip songs on the move.

The build quality of the device seems good, however the 5 way directional button does pop-out on times (it has been made removable for cleaning purposes) and the rubber side grips seems to peel off within a month – THIS IS A BIG ISSUE! Many users have reported this problem, which is why I suggest HP include some superglue in the box, as that seems to do the trick. Having said that, the battery door seems very secure, the CF and SD slots are well built, even if it is all too easy to eject the SD card while pushing the device into your pocket. I guess having a door would have made the device bigger, so I can’t really complain there. The 5 other buttons seem solid. The software included is very good.

You get Outlook 2003 for your PC, and Outlook for your iPaq. This consists of Address book, Inbox, Tasks and Notes. Pocket Word and Pocket Excel are also included. Pocket Word really is nothing special, more a glorified notepad application than a word processor. It has basic RTF formatting but no images sadly; I don’t see why support for images has been omitted. Maybe because Microsoft need some sort of reason for people to upgrade to the next version, other than a few new icons like we seem to get on the desktop counterparts. Excel however does have what you’d expect, since images aren’t really needed in a spreadsheet the fact that again they are not supported doesn’t matter. Viewing large sheets can be awkward, when the start bar, toolbar and input panel are being used – luckily there is a full screen option. Windows Media Player Mobile edition is also included, and it does a fine job of playing back MP3 and WMA. Windows Media Videos are also supported, but there’s no support for rival formats like .mov, which is a shame since most other mobile devices (cameras, phones etc) seem to record in the QuickTime format. Still, rivals will be rivals but it happens to be a shame. Perhaps the best bit of included software is ‘nevo’. A universal remote control. Have fun switching off TVs in shops that have them at the front showing CCTV footage. Apart from that obvious use, you can control your video, DVD, stereo, projector, lights – in fact anything that supports infrared control. What Nevo doesn’t know, Nevo can learn from the existing remote control.

Getting online is easy too. That’s if you have a Bluetooth phone with a modem, an infrared phone with a modem, or a WiFi CF Card. You can easily send and receive email, as long as your ISP allows you to use their SMTP server from other networks (assuming you use a different ISP on your phone than you do on your PC). For some stupid reason, the Inbox application can’t have different usernames and passwords set for POP3 and SMTP – they have to be the same. The web browser (Internet Explorer) is great, and thankfully has an option to switch off images – because GPRS costs a lot, and I easily spent £5 in one session. MSN is a good addition, and integrates well into the OS when you place it in the background. The operating system itself is a typical Microsoft affair and resembles early versions of Mac OS. With a main menu in the top right. Sometimes you get “OK” in a window at the top right title bar, other times it’s a command button on the actual form. Standardisation on issues like this would be good. Having said that, I did make a conscious decision to choose PocketPC over Palm because it has better multitasking abilities, and better built in software.

Switching between tasks is badly done; the iTask application is inconvenient, having to press a hardware button to bring up a list of tasks. Instead I use a 3rd party program called Magic Button, which is far better.

Overall, a good buy. The dictaphone facilities, mobile net access and music features have come in handy, so much so that my iPod hasn’t been used since I got the PDA. Well worth the money. As after all this is a Pocket PC.

First impressions were OK, at least the installer had worked. The only thing I use communicator for really is to browse newsgroups, and so the first thing I tried was to connect the password protected server I use. Now NS4 didn’t remember my password every session, that was livable, NS6 however can’t even remember it within 1 session, every time I changed group or composed a message I was asked to re-enter my password. Maybe fiddling around in the settings could solve this, but at the speed which NS6 functions, looking around the settings dialogue is a chore. Browsing the web in NS6 was slow and many sites didn’t appear correctly, and please Netscape, for the last time – I DON’T want to join Netcenter!!

So overall, I’m completely unhappy with Netscape 6, it may look nice, but it’s slow and bug-ridden.

Compare it to Internet Explorer and there’s no competition. Internet Explorer works, it works fast, and doesn’t have (as many) annoying bugs. People mock Microsoft for the occasional bug and security hitch, but don’t seem to act the same way with companies like Netscape release a program like this. Netscape is a tacky,  poor quality, below standard web browser suit,  even if it was bundled with Windows sixty times over, I would never use it. Internet Explore works, and I’ll be sticking with my current set of applications: IE5 for web browsing, Eudora for email and Netscape 4 for newsgroups.