Month: September 2016

Organised, Not Organised
Having a digital calendar that I can access on my phone is wonderful. Except when I forget to put things in it. In totally related news, I have a ticket for the next Honeyblood gig (8th Dec) at St.Lukes in Glasgow going spare if anyone wants it… me? I’ll be at the Red Hot Chili Peppers gig that same night.

Apple Music still not great
As a heavy user of playlists, that’s where my focus is when it comes to choosing between streaming services. In that respect, Spotify is by far the better option. I can put together a new playlist and add tracks to it in a few clicks. Apple Music takes about the same number of clicks but OHMYGOD the search is slow, and the ‘back and forth’ between search and song result is clunky and doesn’t always work.

Bluetooth Headphones
I have a couple of pairs of bluetooth headphones (both recommended by The Wirecutter). They both sound good enough to my ear. Both suffer from the same issue when connected to my phone. This has held through iPhone 6 to my new iPhone 7 so it’s not phone related.

Depending on the proximity of my phone the audio playback stutters. Badly at times. It’s massively annoying (in a very first world problem kinda way) with tracks dropping in and out. I can solve the problem by removing my phone from my pocket but who wants to walk around with their phone in their hand all the time? Boooooo!!

Bearding
I almost shaved my beard off this past weekend. I didn’t, and if I did I would only be going back to the goatee I had before (which I had for… 20 years? shit). A close trim of the beard sufficed though, for now.

And those are the random observations of my nothing life this past week or so. I know, I know, edge of the seat stuff around here.

Given the upgrade cycle I choose to follow with my phone, this past week saw me get a new iPhone (7), which has a new version of iOS (10), as well as a new Apple Watch (Series II) which itself has a new version of watchOS (3).

That’s a lot of new and whilst a lot of the improvements across all of these devices and operating systems are evolutionary in nature, the increments are telling enough for me to notice and adapt my usage accordingly. Thankfully none of the changes are negative and are probably best categorised as ‘positive disruption’.

iPhone 7 and iOS 10

I’d been running iOS 10 betas on my iPhone 6 which wasn’t kind to the battery at all but got me a sense of how I’d be using the new iPhone 7. It’s important to note that the iPhone 6 does not have 3D Touch so, for people like me, the iPhone 7 brings that into play as well.

There are a lot of software changes in iOS10, I like the new Notifications/Control Centre changes, there are parts of the new Messages features that will be useful (and others which will be distracting), and the extension of Siri is already showing up with apps like Airmail (my email client of choice) hooking in to the API.

The screen itself is noticeably better as is the new camera, a welcome boost of hardware and software capabilities in one go.

Evolution aside, the biggest two changes for me are the aforementioned 3D Touch, which I’m still adapting my muscle memory too, and the new ‘non-clicky’ Home button.

The latter, plus the change to the unlocking process, is the biggest change I’ve noticed. With the button movement replaced by ‘haptic’ taps it’s a little odd at first if you aren’t used to it, but as I’ve had similar tapping on my wrist via the Apple Watch it wasn’t that big an adjustment, and I’d warrant users of the new MacBook which uses this mechanism in the touchpad won’t take long to adjust either.

Add in the new Raise to Wake feature – lift your iPhone to see the screen (yes I know Android has done this since forever) – and you end up with a subtle new way of using your iPhone without unlocking it, meaning I can check notifications or switch tracks from the lock screen.

Top tip: don’t register all of your fingerprints for TouchID and you can use a non-registered finger to tap the home button, turning on the screen without unlocking the phone.

I was also glad to see Apple bringing their Upgrade Programme to the UK (despite some day one teething troubles getting signed up), it’ll be interesting to see if I take advantage and upgrade to the iPhone 7s (?) next year.

Apple Watch

OK, this was a bit of an indulgence, but given the age of my old Apple Watch, and the improved water proofing, battery life, and processor speed, it felt like an easy to justify one. I wear my Apple Watch every day and probably interact with it more than my iPhone these days.

Add in the new watchOS 3 – which is a VAST improvement in many areas – and I feel more than justified. Bye bye Glances (and scribbles, and favourite contacts), hello ‘dock’ which is everything that should’ve been in the original OS but wasn’t. I couldn’t agree more with the articles I’ve read that state that what Apple did with the watch was the right thing. Release it, react to how people actually use it, and build from there (to those people complaining that you still need a phone to take calls on your Watch, how often do you actually do that? I’m not so sure that feature will ever be added to the Watch, I think Series III will be thinner before it adds in more features like that).

All in all, the Apple Watch now feels like part of the same ecosystem as my iPhone rather than the ugly sibling in the corner. It’s fast, responsive, and I’ve already started pushing more things to it (rather than limiting it as much as I could in the past because it was cumbersome and slow).

iPad Only

I’ve also upgraded my iPad Pro to iOS 10 so all of my Apple devices are bang up to date (well my MacBook Air (now safely gathering dust) remains on the last beta of macOS but I hardly use it these days).

In summary, I’m still a happy Apple fan boy. Yes, they aren’t as customisable, yes there are things I wish I could adjust but by and large there is nothing that gets in my way, and everything that is on my wishlist is very much down to my own personal taste. Equally, I like that every iOS update brings changes to my working/usage habits, I like that I’m challenged to tweak things, learn new things and adjust my usage a little.

Oh yeah, and no headphone jack on iPhone 7? So what? I’ve been using Bluetooth headphones for the past year anyway smug grin.

Walking home from a gig, late on a balmy evening in the West End of Glasgow, light rain was falling as I and others plodded our way along Great Western Road, disappearing and emerging from lamp light to lamp light. Most people were heading in the opposite direction to me.

It’s a nice part of the world, a mix of affluence and well to do university students, all branching off into different areas along Great Western Road, a long straight busy street. It feels, to me, safe. But as I walked I noticed something.

Every single woman I walked past did the same thing, I didn’t notice if they did it a few steps away from me or just walked this way all the time but, of the 10 or so who I passed, all of them were walking with their head slightly bowed and their body slightly turned away from me.

Some were on mobile phones, and one was accompanied by a large Alsatian walking happily beside her, the lead slack (which suggests a very well trained dog, and well trained dogs are loyal and protective) yet she too felt the need to turn away, to hide and cower as she walked past, to make herself as small as possible. Trying to be invisible.

I’m a big guy, I’m aware of my size and I did everything I could to not be intimidating. I mimicked their behaviour and turned away, I deliberately looked away to the other side of the road so they could see I wasn’t looking at them. I tried to figure out if it was better for me to walk on the inside of the pavement, away from the road, or nearer the edge. I stuck with the former thinking that the open road would be an ‘escape’ where as the hedges and fences away from the road would be a trap?

And then I realised just how fucking horrible it is that I have to think this way. That this is what men have done to women.

Perhaps it was the recent ‘how to talk to a woman when she’s on the phone’ thing that was doing the rounds, but the body language of all the women I passed was striking in their similarity.

It’s saddening and horrifying. How many of these women were conscious of what they were doing? How many were doing it because they saw me approaching? How many were doing it because that’s ‘just what women have to do’? How many were doing it because they have been shamed into thinking that, if something were to happen, it would somehow be their fault?

As I’ve said before, these are the thoughts of a cisgender, upper middle-class white male. I am afforded all of the privileges that society has to offer. It’s up to me, to all men like me, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with allies and help change this.

It starts with the smallest consideration of the words you use everyday, even things you may think are trivial – “Hey guys” when the people you are addressing includes women (or perhaps people who are trans or non-binary gendered) – it starts by challenging your friends when they are using their privilege to the detriment of others, it starts by calling out behaviours that you know aren’t acceptable regardless of who is using them.

It’s not easy. I will try my very best, and the memory of my walk home will stay with me for a long time.

Men, we’ve had it too easy for too long, we have to be the ones that change.

I’ve recently made the jump from laptop to tablet as my main ‘home computer’. It sounds dramatic but, for my usage, all this really boils down to is changing my modus operandi from a multi-window to single/duel window way of working.

The transition has been pretty straightforward, largely thanks to my slightly over-obsessive desire to only use apps that feature on my phone, tablet and laptop, but also because I’ve moved most of my working files to the cloud.

The main driver behind this switch was screen resolution. My MacBook Air has a low (by Apple standards) resolution 13″ screen and whilst hooking it up to a secondary monitor was ok, I found it constantly jarring to have my main workstation NOT have a Retina capable screen. Sure I could’ve got a MacBook (Pro?) but I don’t need another laptop and, having tried one for a while, the split screen capabilities of iOS brought the iPad Pro into play (plus it’s a big enough screen to watch movies on without feeling like you are compromising too much).

Of course I am writing this from an Apple viewpoint, which just so happens to match the latest adverts for the iPad Pro (What’s a computer?). I’m not sure if such a move would be possible in other ecosystems, Windows, Linux, Android, Chrome OS?? No idea.

One thing which has struck me is how little time I spend on the iPad once I’ve done whatever I need to do. I think this is more psychological than anything, as the tasks I’m doing don’t vary between devices. If I normally use a web browser rather than an app, for example, then it doesn’t matter if I’m on my laptop or my iPad given that I have pretty much the same apps installed in both platforms.

But the fact I have to switch apps completely seems to have altered the way I work. I know I could’ve achieved the same effect by using full-screen apps on my laptop but they never felt right to me. Why would I limit myself to one app at a time when I can have multiple apps running, even if I can only see partial windows of some of them, hidden behind other windows?

Well whatever my brain is up to it seems to be working. I’m gaining speed on the iPad – most of my slowness is fighting muscle memory – but on the whole I’m getting the same stuff done with what feels like fewer distractions.

If you are considering making a similar switch be aware that I did a lot of research and even adjusted some of my working practices before making up my mind. A lot of the changes I adopted also brought benefits to my iPhone usage as well. Yes, I’m further locked in to the Apple ecosystem which is both a good and bad thing, but as I see it there are only a few viable options and most of them boil down to the same decision; trust ‘someone else’ with your files and data (be that Apple, Google, Microsoft or a 3rd party like Dropbox), or manage them all yourself (which means setting up and maintaining a web server and handling the security issues, connection issues, and whatever else crops up).

A couple of tips; I’m much stricter about notifications on my iPad (I have an Apple Watch and iPhone to buzz at me if I need them to), and I use Do Not Disturb a lot more than I have in the past, toggling it on and off when I need to get something done. Without either of these I think the distractions would be too intrusive on the iPad (again not sure why it’s massively different from MacBook usage but it just feels like it is).

Overall I’m happy with the switch, and I’m finding a few additional benefits (as mentioned, the larger retina screen is handy as a second screen on those ‘two sportsball events happening at the same time’ moments. I’m using the Apple Smart Keyboard which on the whole I’d recommend as I don’t mind the way the keys feel, but I do miss having a backlit keyboard so that’s next on the list of ‘upgrades’.

Now I just need to figure out how to back up a website over FTP using the iPad and I can consign the MacBook to the back of the cupboard.