Somewhere in a box I have a bunch of old floppy disks that date back to the early to mid-90s, in formats for Amiga, PC and the Atari ST. I even have a box of old Commodore 64 floppies that date back to the mid-80s–more than 30 years ago now.
I doubt many or possibly even any of these would work now. For the Amiga and Atari ST disks I have no convenient way to find out, as I last owned the hardware for each…back in the early to mid-90s. And the current PC I have, already about four years old, is like the two I had before–no floppy drive. I suppose I could get a USB floppy drive if I really wanted to test the disks, but I’m not that curious.
Basically what I’m saying is the floppy is long dead and I don’t miss it.
But today it came back to haunt me in a way I could never have predicted.
I was taking an online course for Windows 10 and the labs involve using virtual machines through your web browser. In the final lab of the final day of the course, at Step 39 of 47, I suddenly hit a block. And it was shaped like a floppy disk.
Step 39 required me to copy some files to a floppy disk on VM #1 and then put the floppy in VM #2 and run the files from there. I thought it a bit odd to do this because really, no one uses floppies any more. Why not copy the files to a network share and move them that way? Or simulate a USB flash drive? I’m guessing a floppy disk was easiest with the VM setup. Or maybe someone just wanted to be all old school up in the hizzy. No biggie, it’s not like I needed to write a batch file to make it work or anything.
But after copying the files to the floppy and then “ejecting” it by clicking the appropriate icon, I found after “inserting” it into the second VM that it was not showing the proper files. As it turned out, both VMs refused to “eject” the floppy disk, even after restarts. The instructor dubbed it weird, copied the needed files over the network and kindly dumped them on the desktop of VM #2. I completed the lab a few minutes later. But for about 15 minutes I was suddenly reliving every bad experience I’ve had with floppy disks–and I’ve had a few. Press the eject button and you hear the disk try to eject, but it doesn’t. Instinctively start looking for a paperclip you can straighten out and stick into the little hole to force the eject mechanism. Wonder how much–if anything–would be readable once you got the disk out. Contemplate having to go to the computer store to buy another 10-pack of disks. Forget the whole thing and play an Infocom game instead because they’re on the fancy new hard disk you have in your PC and you never have to worry about ejecting it.
Then contemplate how long it will take to get an Invisiclues hint book mailed to you because you’re stuck. Again.
(This was before the internet. It was a dark and scary time, though perhaps less dark and scary than having the internet, come to think of it.)
Anyway, the instructor summed it up best by calling it weird. It truly was. This is not how I like my computer nostalgia.
On the plus side, I’m pretty sure I won’t need to handle a floppy disk–real or virtual–again any time soon.
This story really tickles me for some reason. Maybe it’s because of the sudden seeming obsession with and elevation of AI as a very important thing, coupled with prominent people like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk warning about our grim SkyNET future if we don’t keep an eye on it.
In short, Amazon’s Echo smart speaker is randomly laughing due to a bug. It sounds like the start of a horror movie.
The kitchen is quiet. You’ve just come home from work and set your keys on the counter. You haven’t turned on the lights yet, so it’s dark, the only light filtering in through the closed curtain over the sink. You don’t notice the soft glowing edge of the Amazon Echo over on the far end of the counter. But the moment the keys hit that same counter you hear it. A laugh. You swivel around, startled. It stops and you turn back and notice the lit-up ring on the top of the Echo. Did they keys wake it up? That shouldn’t be possible.
And even if it did, why would it laugh?
You stand for a few seconds to see if anything else happens. It remains quiet, so you flick on the light switch. And hear the laughter again. This time you are looking directly at the Echo and it’s clearly the source of the laughter. You’ve never heard Alexa laugh before. It’s unnerving and illogical. You think it must be a bug. You’ll look it up later on the internet (suddenly the thought of using Alexa for the task is incredibly unappealing). For now you decide to unplug it. You’ve just come home from work. You want to relax, not be harassed by a defective hundred dollar AI. You reach behind the Echo to pull the plug and wonder what you’d do if it kept laughing after…
The most important parts of a laptop, from my perspective:
Keyboard. I use laptops primarily for writing, so the keyboard is paramount
Display. This is #2 because I am going to be looking at the screen intently, riveted by my deathless prose, and I need a sharp, high-resolution display. It doesn’t need to be 4K and probably shouldn’t be, given how it affects battery life. Speaking of…
Battery. I need enough battery to allow me to use the laptop multiple times throughout the day without needing to plug it in. The ideal is 10 hours, as this provides plenty of breathing room based on my typical usage.
Trackpad. A mediocre trackpad can make editing infuriating. I shouldn’t need to add a mouse to make the laptop feel usable. On the other hand, I can use a mouse if I really need to.
Light and compact. I don’t want something that I feel I’m lugging around. At the same time I don’t mind a bit of extra heft if it means not sacrificing anything else on this list.
SSD. This is pretty standard these days. It insures that loading programs and saving files happens fast, to minimize disruption.
CPU. A Core i5 of some sort is usually good enough. Faster is always better but here it’s more nice than essential.
Ports. I don’t really plug a lot of things in, so a wide port selection isn’t necessary. At least a couple of USB-C ports is nice, though lacking those I’d want at least a USB Type A and maybe something to connect to an external monitor, like mini-DP or HDMI.
Everything else would come after this. For a Windows laptop a touch screen is nice to have but not essential, as is the 2-in-1 form factor. I don’t really watch any media on a laptop so have little need for a tent mode. Being able to draw in a tablet mode can be handy at times, but again is merely nice to have.
There’s probably several hundred million reviews out there for Apple’s true wireless earbuds known as AirPods, so I’m not going to go on at length about them. But here are a few thoughts after having them for several months.
Setup on my iPhone 6 was effortless. Bluetooth devices often have trouble pairing and Apple aimed to fix this with a custom W1 chip that makes pairing with an Apple device painless. And it works.
I got my AirPods after a critical software update that expanded the actions you could take by tapping the pods, as well as allowing separate actions for left and right. For me I chose Pause and Next Track for left/right as they are the most common options I use, other than volume control (which is not an option). I skipped the “Hey Siri” integration because if I want to talk to Siri, I’ve always got my watch with me. While having controls on the AirPods themselves is nice, the reality leaves something to be desired. More on this later.
The fit is nearly identical to the existing EarPods and really, apart from the long “stem” these could easily be mistaken for the same. It’s a bit disappointing that Apple didn’t try to push forward more on the design. Luckily, the EarPods fit well in my ears, so the AirPods stay in securely, too.
This is important because one of my regular uses of the AirPods is when jogging. Because they aren’t sealed, they allow other sounds to be heard (traffic, marauding bears, my wretched gasping breath, etc.) In the times I’ve used them on runs I’ve never felt them budge and the freedom of going true wireless is great. I’ve also done workouts on elliptical trainers and treadmills with the music on my watch playing through the AirPods, no phone needed, and again it’s great to have music for workouts without any wires.
The sound quality is not great but it’s perfectly decent. I have lousy ears but to these lousy ears the sound quality seems a little better than the EarPods. They won’t replace a pair of good quality headphones but for their size they do a good job of pumping out music without noticeable distortion, even if the overall presentation is slightly flat.
The battery life is perfectly fine for my usage. Apple promises five hours and I generally don’t use the AirPods for more than an hour at a time before they go back into their handy and compact charging case. The case is small enough to easily carry in a pocket and does a good job of boosting the battery life by proxy. It’s rare that I put the AirPods on with them charged below 100%. Being able to see the charge by flipping open the case near my iPhone is nice, too (it pops up an animated card similar to the one you see when pairing the AirPods).
I’ve worn them a few times when the weather has been a bit misty and while others report no issue wearing them in the rain, I’m hesitant to do so, simply because they cost $200+ rather than the $35 of the EarPods. I’ll probably get braver as they get older because going wireless is so much better when running.
On the downside, the controls are fussy. You double-tap to invoke an action and I find, especially when jogging, that the AirPods happily ignore the taps. I can be rapping on them like an insane woodpecker and they do nothing in response. I discovered you can tap the back of your ears to activate the controls, but sadly, this is also somewhat inconsistent. The inconsistency means that if I want to skip a track I usually just hold up my watch and tell Siri to skip to the next song. The lack of volume control is also a major omission. While I can use the watch for this, it’s not as easy to do while running as an actual physical control on the earbuds would be.
They have dropped connection a couple of times, but only briefly. Otherwise the connectivity has been very solid, something I really never expect with a Bluetooth device. It’s been a pleasant surprise here.
Recent rumors suggest Apple is developing new AirPods that can work with hands-free Siri (no interest) or offer actual water resistance (very interested). The latter is rumored for 2019, though, to which I say boo.
Overall, I’m surprised at how much I like the AirPods. I have come to terms with the weird look of them, which is mitigated partly by their increasing proliferation, but wouldn’t object to a tweak to the stems to make them shorter or…something.
On a scale of 1 to 10 Steve Jobs Cooing Over the iPhone 4 On Stage, I rate the AirPods 8 Steve Jobs Cooing. There is room for improvement here but they are a very solid version 1.0 product.
+ Things I Like:
– good fit (for my ears, anyway)
– comfortable (for the lengths of time I wear them)
– perfectly decent sound quality
– quick, painless Bluetooth pairing
– almost never lose connectivity
– very good battery life for true wireless earbuds
– charging case is compact and insures the AirPods always have some charge in them (assuming you periodically top up the charging case itself)
– automatically stops playing music when you remove one from your ear
– Things I Don’t Like:
– controls are flaky and unreliable
– no volume control
– you can get them in white, white or white
– they still look kind of funny
– no water resistance limits their use for outdoor activities (unless you’re willing to risk it)
– reasonably priced for the product category but expensive in Canadian dollars (currently $219)
Technology always marches forward, except for things like the Dark Ages and I guess World War III. But generally, it marches forward. The pace of change can sometimes be startling, while in other cases it feels like it’s taking a lot longer to progress for unspecified reasons (example: car technology has improved but not substantially changed at a mass production level in over a hundred years. The majority of vehicles are still fueled by gasoline that powers an internal combustion engine. Sure, whizzy electric cars and hybrids have gained, but they’ve yet to take over on a mass scale).
I was born in 1964, the same year a bunch of stuff happened. The Beatles were pretty popular. The American space program was in full swing and only five years away from a moon landing. And cars ran on gasoline that powered internal combustion engines.
But what technology over the past 50+ years has become obsolete or so little-used that it’s effectively obsolete? Most of it is stuff I grew up with. Do I yearn for any of this bygone technology? Let’s have a look at The Obsolete List and find out!
Rotary dial telephones. People often still refer to “dialing a number” but no one actually does it anymore. I remember back in Duncan you only had to dial the last five numbers instead of all seven and at the time it made dialing bearable, though you still hoped people had numbers like 222-1111. By the time the proliferation of phone numbers required you to enter all seven digits, plus the area code, we had moved on to push button phones and it was inconvenient but not the utter madness that it would have been on a rotary phone. Do I miss these devices? No. There is no nostalgia value in having to wait for a rotary dial to finish turning before you can enter the next number.
8-track tapes. I’ve discussed these before and the short answer is no: digital music does everything an 8-track tape did, without all the weirdness of putting songs out of order, duplicating tracks, splitting them in two and not to mention the inevitable tape-eating that happened. These had one minor convenience over cassette tape, in that you didn’t have to flip the tape over (if you were one of those poor sods that didn’t have a tape deck that could play both sides automatically). Speaking of…
Side A and Side B. Okay, this isn’t technology, strictly speaking, it’s more about how albums were always split into two halves before the Compact Disc (see below) took over. While this allowed some bands to experiment by doing different things on each side, I think the benefit of having a single cohesive whole makes for better albums overall.
Cassette tapes. These are still around, so like vinyl, technically not dead, but it’s very much a niche product. While more compact than vinyl, durability was always iffy, with tapes unceremoniously unspooling and getting eaten in the tape deck. You also ended up with the degraded tape exhibiting a lot of pops, cracks and other un-musical sounds. May casette tapes rest in pieces, I say.
Floppy disks. No one in their right mind would miss these. Everything now is better. I still have a box of them dating back to the mid 90s. I wonder if they would be readable today? (I checked and you can get a USB floppy disk drive for $30. I’m not sure it’s worth $30 to find out.)
Compact Disc (CD). Officially introduced to the world in 1983, they became the dominant music format by the end of the decade. Now, with digital music and especially with the rise of streaming music, the CD is not dead but is on life support. It had a few advantages over vinyl: better audio quality (provided the recording was managed properly–vinyl aficionados will always argue that records offer a “warmer” sound than CD), a more, ahem, compact format, the ability to hold more music (about 75 minutes, where vinyl was pushing it at 48-50 minutes) and because the disc was read by a laser, you no longer had to worry about a needle scratching across your record when you bumped the player. Instead you had to worry about the laser blinding you. Do I miss CDs? Really, no. They were better than vinyl and tape, but ultimately they now look like more of a stopgap on the way to digital music. And they could still get scratched and have playback suffer. Plus the album art was hard to make out.
Compact Disc-Recordable (CD-R). These were discs you could record to (multiple times in the case of CD-RW) and they allowed for early mass backup/storage. But they were slow, prone to errors and clunky to use. DVD-Rs were not much better, just higher capacity. I do not miss these. As with floppy disks, everything now is better.
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TVs and monitors. You know, the big, boxy things that you could warm your cat on and weighed between 50 and 1000 pounds. While the cats probably miss them–LCD monitors and TVs offer little room to accommodate sleeping felines–the only aspect I miss about CRT monitors is how blacks were much..blacker. This is offset today by OLED technology, but OLED hasn’t really percolated into widespread use, apart from some TVs, smartphones and laptops, because it’s still really expensive. I don’t miss the weight, energy cost, blurry text or industrial beige styling of most CRT monitors, though.
Digital watches. OK, these aren’t obsolete, but with watches now being more fashion statements than actual timepieces, who would still wear one? Anything a digital watch can do can be done better on a smartphone, or even a smartwatch. Still, I kind of miss that Casio I had back around 1978 or so. It could play 12 songs for no real reason and it was cool to set alarms. It felt like being in the future. As digital watches go, it wasn’t hideously ugly, either. At least that’s the way I remember it.
Mimeograph machines. I remember these from elementary school, circa 1971-1977. They produced weird purple text and the ink smelled strange and alien. Smudges abounded. It felt like 1850s technology that somehow lasted into the 1970s. I don’t miss them. I suspect teachers may have paid for the privilege of smashing these machines when photocopies and printers replaced them. Speaking of…
Dot matrix printers. These are still used in some places where multi-part forms are needed and the people there haven’t figured out how to load a tray with three different kinds of paper at once. They were noisy, slow, pretty bad at graphics, did I mention noisy, required ribbons you had to wind and worst of all, they would go haywire as soon as you turned your back to them. It was like they knew and waited to misfeed the paper. Again, I don’t miss these. Ink jet printers are better in all ways, save for ink drying out if not used for long periods of time, but that’s easily solved by getting a laser printer instead. Or just go paperless, like we were supposed to 40 years ago.
Microfiche. This was very cool in the early 80s. It’s been superseded by, well, computers, and the ability to digitize content. Back in the olden days you had to load a negative from, say, a newspaper, into a microfiche reader, then zoom in and pan around like you were using a microscope, except instead of bacteria, you were examining old news stories. I actually do kind of miss this. Looking back on the times I used them, it felt like I was doing real research and making real discoveries instead of just typing something into Google’s search box and getting 10 million results. The latter is still better, mind you.
(My previous look at Apple’s line-up was done in August 2016 and can be found here.)
Today is the 10th anniversary of the MacBook Air, so it is perhaps appropriate to take stock of Apple’s product line as we look back at the debut of the laptop that ushered in many of the design choices (thin, light, etc.) Apple still follows today.
In recent times Apple has faced criticism from a couple of fronts: neglecting certain devices, abandoning standard ports, raising prices to new extremes, introducing “gimmicky” tech and so on. Are the criticisms fair? In some cases yes, in others it’s more complicated.
Here’s a breakdown of where every Apple product is at.
Disclaimer: I am not an industry insider, Apple evangelist, tech guru or even a love guru. I’m just someone who has long been fascinated by Apple and its products, decisions and impact on the world of consumer technology.
I’ve gone from owning a single Apple device–an iPod Classic–to the following (I’m excluding obsolete devices like my iPod nano, may it rest in peace):
Phone 8 (just acquired)
iPad Pro 10.5″
MacBook Pro without Touch Bar (2016 model)
Apple Watch Series 2
Apple TV 4K
Basically I own nearly everything Apple currently sells. I don’t have a Mac Pro, but I do have a 2011 iMac 27″ from work I use for PD.
On to the products:
iPod
As expected, Apple killed off the iPod nano and Shuffle last year, leaving the iPod Touch as the only iPod (which got its last significant hardware update in July 2015). I will boldly predict the Touch will get the axe in the next year or so, finally ending the iPod line.
iPhone
The bulk of Apple’s revenue continues to come from the iPhone, now over a decade old. I remember when we had fuzzy 3.5″ screens–and we liked it!
Last year Apple made the controversial move to eliminate the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, even as the rest of the phone was just an iterative design on the previous 6s, which was an iterative design on the 6. Some phone manufacturers have followed suit with the jack removal, notably Google with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. It remains to be seen if the rest of the industry follows through. My prediction is the headphone jack will be a scarce thing on most smartphones within two years.
Meanwhile, Apple released three new phones last September. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are again iterative designs, with some tweaks, like glass backs to allow for wireless charging, along with the usual processor and camera improvements. More attention was given to the iPhone X, a near bezel-free design that forsakes the home button and Touch ID for Face ID, introduces an OLED display and, of course, adds animated poop in text messages. The most controversial part was probably the price–$1,000 (over $1300 in Canada with exchange rate).
Scuttlebutt suggests the X sold very well in the first month, with sales falling off notably after, mirroring what happened with the original iPhone in 2007. Back then Apple responded with a price cut. Would they do it again? There’s certainly enough of a gap between the 8 and X to allow for one. Apple hasn’t been cutting prices much lately, though.
Also, the iPhone line-up is a bit bonkers right now. Apple is selling:
iPhone 6s and 6s Plus
iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
iPhone 8 and 8 Plus
iPhone SE
iPhone X
No iPhone SEX yet, though.
That’s still eight models to choose from. I expect the 6s and 7 to be culled when the next phones come out in September. There are rumors the SE will be updated, which seems entirely plausible.
I think Apple will forge ahead with its iPhone plans regardless of sales for the next year or two. Price cuts are possible, but I think they’ll only happen if sales begin to fall off significantly.
iPad
Last year Apple made the difference between the regular and pro versions of the iPad more distinct, by introducing an iPad (called…iPad) that was in some ways better than the iPad Air 2 (faster processor) but in some ways worse (the screen, size and weight are closer to the original Air). The big change, though, was the price. Instead of the usual $499, it now sells for $329. Apple refreshed the iPad Pro 12.9″ and ditched the 9.7″ Pro, replacing it with a 10.5″ model that is only slightly bigger, thanks to slimmer bezels. The Pro iPads can in some cases equal the performance of decent laptops. The refreshed 2017 line-up saw the first increase in revenue and sales in years, though the difference between revenue and sales gains suggests more people were buying the $329 model.
The overall line-up has been simplified, too, down to four:
iPad
iPad mini 4
iPad Pro 10.5″
iPad Pro 12.9″
For the first time, each iPad offers a different size.
I don’t anticipate any dramatic developments for iPads this year, though Apple will continue to push the Pro models as replacements for laptops. I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance the mini will get killed, It hasn’t been updated since 2015.
Apple TV
Apple introduced a 4K version of the Apple TV last year, alongside the current model. It costs a little more and is the priciest Apple TV to date. Unless you’re deep into the Apple ecosystem and have a lot of media purchased through iTunes, there remains little reason to pay the premium when other streaming devices can do what the Apple TV can at much lower prices.
The app store is somnolent. Not dead, exactly, but not particularly alive, either, but it is Apple TV’s biggest differentiating factor compared to other streaming boxes.
Apple Watch
The watch went from an ill-conceived fashion accessory to a fitness-focused device and in the process has claimed most of the smartwatch market, setting companies like Fitbit back on its heels. Last year Apple introduced the Series 3, which includes LTE, making the watch more independent of the iPhone. Overall, the Apple Watch has found its niche and is doing well after a slow start.
I don’t expect any big changes this year, but a redesign is a small possibility. Additional sensors may be added, but I’d expect those to come in 2019 or later.
HomePod
Originally scheduled for December 2017, it’s been bumped to early this year. Many are already declaring it a failure in the making, overpriced ($349) compared to the competition and saddled with inferior voice recognition (Siri vs. Amazon’s Alex or Google’s Assistant). I tend to favor this view. I think the demand for a premium speaker with voice activation is even more niche than something like the watch. It’s kind of like Apple TV–you’ll pay more but if you’re deeply invested in Apple products, the high price might be worth it.
I’m hedging on a prediction here, but leaning toward flop, with a retooling within the year or quiet exit from the market. Then Apple will buy Amazon. 😛
And the Macs:
First, my one BOLD Mac prediction: Laptop Macs will support touch no later than 2021.
Mac mini
Nothing has changed since my last overview in August 2016. These aging machines are still selling at the same prices as they did when they were actually new, an embarrassing low light in a line-up that has mostly seen updates over the past year. Apple’s made vague comments indicating support, but nothing more.
I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance the Mac mini will be killed off in the next year. If not, I’d wager on a radical redesign (even smaller and completely sealed).
Mac Pro
Last year Apple admitted the “trashcan” Mac Pro was a mistake–a cool-looking design that was self-defeating because it couldn’t properly dissipate heat. So not so cool after all. They have promised a new modular Mac Pro, but so far no specs or release dates have been forthcoming. The current Pro has seen price reductions but it still isn’t exactly cheap.
iMac
Apple made a few improvements to the iMac line last year, updating processors, displays and including new options in some standard configurations, such as a dedicated graphics option for the 21″ model and fusion drives as standard for the entire 27″ line. The core design remains unchanged and was last updated in 2012.
I’m not expecting any big changes this year, but I am reasonably confident that sometime before the end of 2019 the iMac will get a full redesign–and be even less user-accessible as a result.
iMac Pro
Who wants a $5000 all-in-one? Apple thinks professionals will, so they’ve stuffed professional-grade components into the standard iMac case. It’s only been out for a month, but one retailer has already offered a $1,000 discount, which seems a bit ominous for a new product. Also, unlike other iMacs, users can’t upgrade the ram themselves, it now has to be done by a dealer.
This seems very much like a stop-gap until the revised Mac Pro debuts. I predict the iMac Pro will never see any updates and will be killed off sometime after the new Mac Pro debuts (in Apple time this could still be years).
MacBook Pro (non-Retina)
This was finally killed off, long after it had become outdated. This was the last Apple laptop to ship with an optical drive.
(Old) MacBook Pro (Retina display)
Only the 15″ model survives, the last Pro with a non-butterfly keyboard. I expect it to be axed from the line-up within the year, joining its 13.3″ brethren in the Mac graveyard.
MacBook
Still the only Mac available in four colors. Get your Rose Gold fix on here. Not much has changed with the MacBook, though it got an improved version of the butterfly keyboard. A processor update and optimizations added another hour of battery life.
I don’t expect any changes in design, though processor updates seem to be happening on a yearly basis, provided there is an appropriate CPU available. This will be the eventual MacBook Air successor (see below).
MacBook Pro (2016/2017)
In October 2016 Apple introduced an all-new design for the 13.3 and 15″ MacBook Pro. The changes:
dropped all legacy ports in favor of USB-C
added an OLED Touch Bar to replace the function keys on all but the base 13.3″ model
changed the keyboard, using an updated version of the butterfly mechanism featured in the MacBook, with firmer keys and very little travel
the usual display and processor updates
thinner and lighter
touch pads the size of the landing deck of an aircraft carrier. In the case of the 15″ model, two aircraft carriers.
Both models were refreshed less than a year later with newer processors, but no other notable changes.
The revamped models have been controversial. The Touch Bar has its advocates, but seems underwhelming 15 months after its introduction. The new keyboard mostly inspires love or hate (I find it strangely unsatisfying to type on–not bad, just kind of joyless).
Apple is unlikely to retreat from any of the design choices made (USB-C, for example, is now on nearly all notable PC laptops, albeit often with a legacy port or two still included), though dissatisfaction with the revised keyboard, as well as production problems plaguing both the 2016 and 2017 models may lead Apple to further revise the butterfly mechanism.
The Touch Bar may live on, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets quietly dropped in a few years.
MacBook Air
Today, the MacBook Air is 10 years old and it’s been almost that long since its last update, ho ho. It did get a minor speed bump last year (some believe this only happened because the slower CPU Apple was using was no longer available), but has seen no significant updates since 2012. Most assume it lives on in the line-up as the “affordable” MacBook.
It will likely linger on until Apple is willing to drop the price of the MacBook. The difference is currently $999 vs. $1299. It seems unlikely Apple will reduce the gap soon. Maybe by the end of 2019? There’s also the possibility Apple will just kill off the Air and force people to move to the $1299 MacBook (or $1299 base MacBook Pro).
Other stuff
There are no strong rumors regarding other new Apple products, though they continue to work on Augmented Reality and the retooled car project (shrunk down from an entire Apple car to merely making other cars more Apple-ish).
Summary Apple updated a lot of their devices through 2016 and 2017, to the relief of the faithful, but many of the updates came with controversy and some products still linger around as reminders of the bad old days (hello Mac mini).
Apple’s next quarterly call is coming in a few weeks and while they should report record revenue and profits, it seems likely it will come in the shadow of slowing iPhone X sales. Apple has raised the prices of almost all of its devices–the iPad Pros cost more, the phones cost more, the new MacBooks cost more, the iMac Pro requires you to sell body organs–leaving me to wonder how sustainable it all is, especially when there are indicators that people will scoop up more affordable Apple offerings (the new iPad) while largely staying away from ones that offer poor value vs. the competition (Apple TV).
My hunch is that Apple is poised for a downturn. Nothing like the near-bankruptcy that preceded Steve Jobs’ return in 1997, but something significant enough to prompt the company to react. How it will do so–or if such a downturn even happens–remains to be seen.
Apple’s AirPods work like some other true wireless Bluetooth earbuds in that you operate the controls by tapping on the earbuds directly. iOS 11 allows for different controls for the left and right bud, though the controls themselves are limited to only:
You don’t necessarily have to tap right on your AirPod to use the double tap gestures. Many people prefer to tap softly on the back of an ear instead. It’s a little less audibly jarring and it works just as well.
I verified this on my run today and it is entirely weird to control music by bapping on your ear. It was a tad inconsistent, which no doubt made for a strange sight to others on the trail (“Why does that man keep hitting his ear?”) but the same can be said for the controls in general, they just seem a lot harder to execute when jogging.
Still, the novelty of hitting my ear to skip to the next track may never grow old. Or at least not until I remember I can just tell Siri to do it instead.
I’ve spent far too many hours searching in couch cushions for my Apple Pencil
Does Chance Miller really spend hours looking for his Apple Pencil in his couch? Is his couch as big as a city block? Perhaps. I’ve seen some pretty big couches. Or maybe he is perpetually losing it in every couch he encounters, as he goes through life dangerously nurturing his couch obsession, risking permanent loss of his Apple Pencil.
More curiously, he states that “I’m hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book over the Smart Keyboard” then lists the Slim Book’s superior features:
a holder for the Apple Pencil (take that, couches!)
backlit keys
lasts for up to two years on battery
costs less
a full set of function keys (wait, he doesn’t even mention this, though they are plainly visible in the review’s screenshots)
a decent amount of travel in the keys
is easier to use on your lap
is more versatile, with multiple viewing angles
includes a palm rest
has a much sturdier stand
It’s clear why one would be hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book when its list of superior features is as big as a couch.
But wait, let me provide the full quote from above:
I’m hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book over the Smart Keyboard, but I’ve grown very accustomed to the typing experience the Smart Keyboard provides
Thus proving himself utterly mad for preferring the terrible, joyless, noisy MacBook Pro keyboard. Okay, to be fair, I actually find the Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro to be superior in feel to that of the new MacBook Pro, but he still professes “to love” Apple’s keyboard design and specifically calls out the MacBook Pro. Insanity!
Mostly, I wished he had written “I’ve spent far too many years searching in couch cushions for my Apple Pencil” just to see if the editor was paying attention.
This post was lovingly hand-written using my iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Nebo note-taking app.
Nebo converts the handwritten text to type on the fly and the accuracy seems pretty good considering l’m writing this in bed while the neighbors make strange thumping sounds upstairs.
All in all, I give the technology ten thumbs up and this post’s excitement level half a thumb up.
To be fair the author of the comment was likely being deliberately colloquial or just committed a plain old grammatical error. In any case, his comments and the others, help underscore the main point of the article–people put a lot of trust in search engine results and Google, as God Emperor of Search–seriously, do you know anyone who uses Bing?–regularly trips up by elevating misinformation and fabrication and skewing results to the user in order to steer the user to the “desired” ads/companies/services.
There’s always DuckDuckGo. They take full aim at Google (without mentioning them by name, of course) the first time you hit their site with this card:
I’ve had a MacBook Pro, officially known as the MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) model when checking About This Mac from the Apple menu, for the better part of the year, and in that time I’ve grown used to the extremely low travel keyboard it uses, but I’ve finally realized I don’t like it.
Others have mentioned it’s not fun to type on and that may seem somewhat glib, but it’s true, at least as far as my own experience goes. My greatest fear–that the low travel and extreme firmness of the keys would lead to sore fingers during long typing sessions–was unfounded. I’ve typed thousands of words over hours on the thing and my fingers have emerged intact.
But it’s still an oddly joyless experience, something I hadn’t even thought in relation to typing until I started using it. I always feel like I’m on the verge of making mistakes by hitting the wrong keys, it’s annoyingly clicky without any of the benefits of a mechanical keyboard and every time I go back to any other keyboard I regularly use, like the Logitech K780 or even the previous wired Mac keyboard with numeric keypad, I’m reminded of how much more pleasurable the typing experience can be. The new MacBook keyboard feels like something that’s meant to be used only sparingly. Maybe that’s why the touchpad is so gigantic on the newer models.
The 2016 MacBook Pro is kind of an odd thing. Parts of it are great, like the display and touchpad, while others, like the keyboard, are unsatisfying compromises.
It’s actually got me thinking about getting a Windows laptop again because there is no escaping this keyboard now. Apple is on the verge of killing off their last models that used the old-style keyboard (the models date back to 2015).
HP has a new edition of their Spectre x360 coming out later this month. I’ll give it a test drive if it’s carried locally. If the touchpad is tolerable and the keyboard is better, they may just have a sale.
Anyone want a slightly-used MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)?
UPDATE April 2, 2018: My search for a replacement laptop is documented here and here. I am still mulling over a replacement as of this update.
Now that my MacBook Pro is out of warranty, I am starting to experience what I call KA, which is not related to the mumbo jumbo in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. KA is Keyboard Anxiety, the fear that something will happen to your keyboard, necessitating an expensive repair.
And across the scores of professional reviews and hundreds of online comments we’ve seen since this keyboard design debuted, few people say they love typing on it. Many people admit that, like us, they’ve gotten used to the new keyboard, while others actively dislike using it.
Here’s another article on the new MacBook keyboard that highlights issues with the design, which notes how it’s all but impossible to remove the space bar for repair without breaking it, so if the space bar is not working right, you’re likely looking at getting the entire top assembly of the MacBook replaced, since the keyboard is an integrated part of it. The cost of the replacement, out of warranty, can be hundreds of dollars, even if it’s just that single key that is not working. This keyboard design was done in the name of making the laptops ever-thinner and lighter. I think this is probably peak Apple form over function, as they have retreated on their “thin or die” philosophy since the development and subsequent fallout over the butterfly mechanism the new keyboard uses. The iPhone 7/8, Series 3 Watch and new iPad are all thicker and heavier than their immediate predecessors (though not by much).
Also amusing is the official Apple support document on How to clean the keyboard of your MacBook or MacBook Pro. Hold your MacBook (minimum cost $1729 Canadian before tax) at an absurd, near-upside down angle and spray air into it. I especially like the second image where the guy doing the cleaning is apparently palming the MacBook instead of actually gripping it. He’s putting a lot of faith in that left hand:
If reliability problems are as bad as they may be, I suspect this will be a rare case of Apple retreating on a design, though I expect them to spend at least another generation trying to fix it first. If they do abandon it, the result will probably be slightly thicker and heavier laptops, but other companies have demonstrated that light and thin is still quite possible while retaining a more traditional laptop keyboard design.
UPDATE April 3, 2023: Yes, almost exactly to the day, five years later, another update! It turned out I was right, as Apple did indeed continue to use the butterfly keyboard on early 2019 models, but finally stopped with the 16-inch MacBook Pro introduced in fall 2019, which switched back to a scissor switch mechanism. I traded in my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports) just as its four-year keyboard warranty plan was expiring, getting a nice 2020 M1 MacBook Air. I sold the Air a few weeks ago, as I no longer need a laptop at all, and my Mac needs are now provided by a Mac Studio, which came with no keyboard at all.
UPDATE, September 9, 2024: Just noting that Apple revealed the iPhone 16, etc. today. I am still using my iPhone 12.
UPDATE, January 19, 2021: Added the iPhone 8 (RIP) and iPhone 12, corrected several egregious typos
Way back in the primitive days of 2008 I had something now known as a landline. This consisted of a telephone that was connected, via physical wires, to a dedicated telephone system that connected not just to my abode, but to pretty much all others, as well as businesses and even little structures known as phone booths. Any time of the day or night the landline meant I could pick up the receiver and hear the comforting drone of a dial tone, ready for me to punch in some numbers and get with the calling.
Today I have no such device. After getting my first cell phone in 2009 it grew increasingly obvious that I did not need two phones that did the same thing and especially two bills that did the same thing–expect me to hand over money willingly. And also especially considering my propensity to rarely call people or otherwise receive calls. Why pay two bills totalling $70? (This turned out to be a naive question now that we have companies like Telus trying to entice people into two year plans for a mere $95 per month.)
But never mind that, this is a list because I like lists and so here are the cell phones I’ve owned since 2009.
2009: The Year I Make Contact (with a cell phone)
Device: Samsung M320 (retail value: $40) Fun Fact: Samsung has released 15 billion different cell phone models
My first cell phone was a Samsung M320, which sounds more like an airliner model than a cell phone, though to be fair, the phone could fly–briefly–if hurled with enough force.
I got this phone with my first mobile carrier, Virgin Mobile. When I eventually switched from Virgin to Telus, the customer support person at Virgin called me a “naughty boy” for switching. Things were different back then.
I actually still have this phone and on a lark connected it to USB and..it’s charging! Here it is in all its charging glory:
I still think having a red button labeled ENDis a bit ominous.
In terms of style, this is my favourite phone, though it’s a mere “feature phone,” meaning it doesn’t have a fancy touch screen interface and all that jazz. While it’s not a smartphone, it’s not entirely dumb, either. It’s more of a dim phone. The best part is it flips open like a communicator on the original Star Trek. I confess to flipping it open multiple times and uttering, “Beam me up.” This was especially confusing to people when I did it while I was on a call with them. The phone had a low resolution colour display, a Tetris demo that worked about as well as you’d expect, and had TALK and BACK buttons next to each other, which I’m sure was just a coincidence. It was neat to me in that whole “wow, you can actually take your phone with you anywhere” way, but in 2009 it was already obsolete thanks to a little phone introduced two years earlier you may have heard of. I moved on quickly to…
2010: I phone, You phone, We All iPhone
Device: iPhone 4 Fun Fact: Steve Jobs made out on stage with the iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Here is a stock photo of an iPhone 4 from Apple’s support page because mine has probably been recycled into a transistor radio by now:
My iPhone 4 was black back when black was black and not space grey.
What convinced me to get my first iPhone was the Retina display. It really did look sharp. Steve was right! I downloaded bunches of apps that I promptly ignored, because apps were new and amazing. I kept a handful that were actually useful. Actually, I lie, I kept all of them because for the longest time I had no idea how to get rid of them. I was now ensconced in the iOS ecosystem, but it turned out that in 2010 that wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted something…bigger.
2013: Bigger is Better (in theory)
Device: Samsung Galaxy S3 Fun fact: I spent more time moving icons around on screen than actually using this phone
Stock photo because my Galaxy S3 by all rights should have been shot into the sun (see below):
Now picture this phone going dead after a few hours of not doing anything at all. Grr.
Three years later (phone contracts were three years long in the olden days) I jumped ship to Android, or at least to Samsung’s version of it, dubbed TouchWiz, which reminds me too much of Cheese Whiz. What seduced me away from the iPhone was again the display–this time due to the Samsung Galaxy 3 offering an absurdly spacious (at the time) 4.7” display. I loved the larger screen. The phone was a little slippery to hold, though. Very slippery, really. It would squip out of my hand like a bar of soap. And to be honest, it felt pretty cheap and plasticky, pretty much the opposite of the classy iPhone 4. Also, it turned out the phone had a mysterious battery drain issue that could not be resolved. It would sit on the desk while I was at work, in sleep mode, and be drained before my shift ended. I spent oodles of time troubleshooting it, turning on power-save modes, disabling Wi-Fi, placing it in a pentagram on the floor and offering my first born. Nothing worked. It was the first time this fancy new technology let me down. Telus kindly allowed me to swap the S3 for any other phone they carried, up to the same value. This led to…
2013, Part 2: Back to the Fruit
Device: iPhone 5c Fun Fact: This phone was an experiment of sorts for Apple. I loved it and so it was killed dead after one year.
So green. So groovy. Image courtesy of MacRumors.
By the fall of 2013 I had returned to the Apple fold by getting a funky green iPhone 5C. Design-wise, this is still my favourite phone. It also fit nicely in hand without needing a case. It wasn’t slippery like the S3 and the plastic looked nice, not cheap. The display was larger than the iPhone 4 at 4 inches, but still smaller than the S3. I didn’t mind, though, it was enough for me. I downloaded more apps and for a time was content, but eventually chafed at the 16 GB of storage. My music collection alone would come to surpass this. So my next phone was based on something other than the display or battery/reliability.
2014: Big and Not Really Beautiful
Device: iPhone 6 Fun Fact: I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs rolled over in his grave at the design
Space Grey: The new not very black
In late 2014 (like, a few days before the year ended) I got an iPhone 6 after nearly three months of searching for a store that had the model I wanted in stock–a 64 GB Space Grey. The iPhone 6 was the first “big” iPhone and was popular as all get-out. This had the same 4.7” display as the S3, and like the S3 it was also very thin and slippery to hold. I got a green silicone case for it, to make it look a bit like my beloved 5c and to keep it from shooting out of my hand. That case turned out to be a little too grippy, making it somewhat difficult to get the phone out of my pocket. I opted for a black leather case instead, since green leather cases were not available and would probably have been hideous, anyway. Speaking of hideous, I am 100% certain that Jobs would have barfed at the way-ugly antenna cutouts on the back of the phone (the Space Gray colour made them a little harder to see, at least). I didn’t care about the looks, though, because with 64 GB of storage I was able to comfortably load all of my music on the phone, plus all the apps I’d never use.
Three years later and that same iPhone 6 is trucking along, albeit more sluggishly than before. I’m long past my two-year contract, so I’ve been eyeballing possible replacements and trying to decide what’s important to me now. Really, if the iPhone 6’s performance was still top-notch I wouldn’t even be looking at all. Since I have an Apple Watch I am more or less beholden to Apple (I rather like the watch) and where once Apple offered an iPhone and that was it, they now sell:
iPhone SE
iPhone 6s
iPhone 6s Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 8
iPhone 8 Plus
And next month (November), the iPhone X (that’s 10, not the 24th letter of the alphabet)
Yes, Apple has gone from the simplicity of offering one phone model to octupling the choices. The Canadian prices range from $469 to $1319, or from the sublime to the ridiculous, if you prefer.
I have made no decision as of yet and so my cell phone story has reached a pause, for now. I’m finding it hard to imagine I could justify $1300+ (before tax) on a phone that doesn’t actually do impossible things, like shoot money at me or do the laundry, so the iPhone X is probably a no-go. Plus it’s all-new first generation technology and Apple is pretty good at borking that sort of thing. Better to wait a couple of versions, then get the second generation at a discount.
Or just buy a cheaper phone, because as I mentioned near the start of this, I have a propensity to rarely call people or otherwise receive calls, which makes a $1300 phone seem a little silly, even if it can recognize my face.
UPDATE, January 19, 2021
I have acquired two more phones since this post was originally made. See below!
2017: Slightly improved
Device: iPhone 8 Fun Fact: Really just a refinement of the 6, though with a glass back, so Steve Jobs is probably no longer rolling over in his grave
By 2017 the performance of the iPhone 6 was getting noticeably slower, thanks to Apple’s “We’re totally not trying to get you to buy a new iPhone” updates to iOS. I decided to upgrade and because I was off contract, opted to buy the phone outright (I did a comparison and buying the phone and paying monthly over two years would have saved me about $20), so I took my 6 to an Apple store, considered the $1,300+ price of the then new iPhone X, chuckled quietly, then got an iPhone 8 in space gray with 64 GB of storage. I was essentially getting a faster version of the 6, with a better camera, wireless charging and Force Touch1Or 3D Touch, or whatever name Apple gave the phone version. This was maybe part of the problem–even Apple seemed confused by the feature. (which Apple later went on to kill, anyway). I immediately got a case and the phone never left it. It is in that same case right now.
Phone-wise, the 8 is so close to the 6 that I can’t really say anything new about it. I did appreciate the camera improvements and it led me to ultimately getting an actual camera, so that was a plus (except to my bank account).
The iPhone 8 served me faithfully for over two years, but in its third year, things turned sour. See below.
2021: The future is notch-shaped
Device: iPhone 12 Fun Fact: My biggest phone yet that strangely doesn’t feel that big
In 2020, the Worst Year Ever, my trusty iPhone 8 started developing battery issues. Specifically, the battery was not able to hold a decent charge. Then it got worse. The battery would drain so rapidly that it would go from 100% to 4% to “I’m shutting off now” in a matter of minutes. It got to the point that if I went out taking photos with Nic, I would need to bring along a portable power bank and run the iPhone tethered to it. At first I considered getting a new battery, but given the age of the phone, I ultimately decided to wait for Apple’s new models to come out and maybe get something on contract again, and using the “spread the pain over multiple years” to get a so-called Pro model with a telephoto lens.
In the end, I did everything differently, in a way:
I replaced the battery of my iPhone 8. With a new battery I can sell the phone used. Without a new battery, no one would want it unless they were mad. Or willing to deal with the hassle of replacing the battery themselves. But the battery replacement was more complicated than expected and the phone had to be shipped off to Apple.
The delay prompted me to finally move forward on getting a new phone, but in the meantime I had also decided to get an actual camera, so I went from considering the iPhone 12 Pro/Pro Max to settling on the regular iPhone 12.
The iPhone 12 model I have is Graphite, which is apparently Apple’s new version of Space Gray. I also bumped the storage up to 128 GB just to be on the safe side, even though I will now be taking more photos on my actual camera (a Canon EOS M50–more on that in another post).
This is my first iPhone with the new design language of “full screen” display, camera notch at the top and such. The larger display (6.1″ diagonally) is nice, and because the bezels are so much smaller, the phone is not actually much bigger than the 8. The flat sides also feel nice for holding it. It feels solid.
The camera is improved again and night mode works as advertised–handy for grabbing pics when lighting is bad and I am sans dedicated camera.
Other than that, it’s an iPhone and works like an iPhone. It’s fast and slick, but I use my phone much less than other tools these days. I made a rule only to install apps as I need them and I’m keeping the home screen free of any apps I don’t use regularly. It’s mostly empty.
Oh, it has 5G support. I have not noticed this making a difference anywhere at any time. So woo on that.
