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IFixit screwdriver set

In what feels like some sort of modern day right of passage, I just successfully replaced the battery on my daughter’s hand-me-down iPhone 5. It really wasn’t hard at all! #RightToRepair

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Lock Screen

Raise to Wake is a feature I’ve wanted for a while, so I love that. It sometimes seems a little sensitive, but I guess I’ll either get used to it, or it’ll be tweaked in a software update. The new behaviour of unlocking your phone without going to the Home Screen until you press the Home button seemed a bit unintuitive to me, I’ve changed a setting under General > Accessibility > Home Button to remove the press.

Notifications

Functionally, the new notifications are great, and will get better as more apps embrace the feature. Like others, I’m not a fan of the styling, which is very evocative of “Web 2.0”. Clear All is another minor feature I’ve wanted forever, so I’m glad that’s there; I just wish I hadn’t had to Google to discover it’s hidden behind a 3D Touch gesture. These hidden or unintuitive features and gestures are probably my biggest peeve with iOS 10 for now.

Related to the notification area, I don’t get why the “Today” widget area is duplicated here and to the left of the Home Screen. One or the other would’ve been better, at least in my opinion. Maybe because I never used the old “Today” screen, but did use the old search screen which used to be to the left of the Home Screen…

Messages

Overall I like the update, but I’ve found some of the new features to be really unintuitive to use. The message styles (hidden ink, balloons, etc) are hidden behind a 3D Touch of the send button – so if you don’t get it right you’ll find yourself accidentally sending the message before it’s finished. This is a very minor thing, but it does cause frustration. I also found the Digital Ink features to be confusing to use, and the associated gestures a bit hit-and-miss. “Playback” of these messages is also hit-and-miss: sometimes they play automatically, but most times they don’t.

This article from The Verge has a good rundown of the new features of iMessage and how they work.

Other

Being able to (finally) remove in-built apps is obviously something which has received some headlines. Surprisingly, I’ve removed fewer than I expected… I think it’s only Stocks, Tips, Find My Friends and weather. I’ve actually found myself switching to a couple of the in-built apps

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I’ve been using iCloud Photo Library (iCPL) for the last few months, basically since the day it went to Public Beta. It was one of the features I was most excited about for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. The idea is fantastic – all your photos available on all your (Apple) devices, and it’s integrated with what is probably your most frquently used camera, so new photos are automatically added.

When it works, it’s seamless and brilliant, and I can’t say enough good things about it… but this morning I turned it off on my iPhone and won’t be switching it back on any time soon.

Here are the two major problems I’ve had with it:

1. It causes (most) apps accessing the photo library to run extremely slow

Anytime I open an app which wants to access the photo library, that app tends to hang for a few seconds. This is easiest to see in something like Instagram, where if you go to add a picture, the icon in the bottom left which lets you select an existing image will show as blank for several seconds while it loads the first thumbnails. I’ve seen similar behaviour in the stock Camera app, and numerous image editors.

2. It absolutely destroys my mobile data allowance

I have a 4GB data allowance on my 4G data plan. When I have iCloud Photo Library enabled on my iPhone – even after syncing the entire library over WiFi before leaving the house – within a couple of days I will get a text message from my network telling me I’ve only got 200MB of my allowance left. This happens even after disallowing the Photos app from using mobile data, so it’s obviously some other process running in the background. To be clear: without iCloud Photo Library turned off, I have never been close enough to my data cap to trigger a warning; with it turned on, I use up my entire allowance within a few days.

This morning, in the space of 2 hours
This morning, in the space of just 2 hours

The first problem of slowness has improved with the iOS 9 public betas, but #2 is still happening. A lot. It’s probably cost me upwards of £60 in increased mobile phone bills over the last few months. And this is before we get to other issues, including: either iCPL/the new Photos app screwing up the metadata on a whole bunch of photos1; occaisional sync conflicts2; problems caused by turning it off because of the other issues3.

By and large, I get the impression I’m the outlier. For most people, iCloud Photo Library works without issue and they’re happy with it. Hopefully it’s the same for you! But for me it just doesn’t work reliably enough without some serious downsides.

What’s your experience of iCloud Photo Library been like? Let me know!

  1. I found this one out when I tried importing my library into Google Photos and Dropbox for redundancy. Roughly 2500 photos no longer have any date information associated with them, so both services sort them into the day they were uploaded, completely ruining any logical grouping. ↩
  2. In iOS 8, if I quickly edited a new picture on your device, while it synced to your other devices, one of two things would happen; 1: only the edit would sync, or 2: your edit would be discarded when the sync finished. ↩
  3. What should happen is your iCPL photos are removed from the device, apart from the Camera Roll pictures on the device previously. Except, it usually turns into a crap-shoot as to which photos are kept. And sometimes, despite removing all these photos, the storage space isn’t freed up afterwards. Which is awesome when you only have a 16GB device. ↩
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Over the last couple of weeks, my iPhone 5S has been rebooting itself during the night. Once (last Saturday) it got stuck in a reboot loop on the Apple logo screen. Strangely, it seemed to be emitting some kind of tone every time it restarted… maybe that was my woken-at-3am brain imagining things, but I’m sure it also made a noise in the early hours of this morning when it rebooted.

The most annoying thing about this, is that it’s only happening at night, while I’m asleep. I know it’s happening because my lock screen tells me so, and I can’t use TouchID to unlock the phone. That, and the fact the display flashing up the stark white loading screen sometimes wakes me up. Throughout the day, everything appears fine. It’s really quite bizarre.

I’d reset the phone to factory settings, but there are a couple of security-related apps installed which would be a massive PITA to have to de-authorise and set up again.

Has anyone else experienced this?

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TLDR; I’ve switched from an iPhone 5 to a Google Nexus 4.

OK, so I’m behind on the times a bit. The Google Nexus 4 has been out for several months, and I’d paid it no heed. I’ve been chugging along with my bought-at-launch iPhone 5 in that time, and barely paid the Nexus any thought. I read the reviews, and concluded it was a great Android phone, but I had no wish to rush out and buy one.

Then something strange happened.

I’m not sure why, but I got disenchanted with my iPhone. I never had that with my 4S, or 3G/3GS, despite the 5 being – in every way – better than all of them. Once that feeling settled in all the little niggles started to grate1. The easily chipped and scratched aluminium casing (as gorgeous as it is to look at); the way the sharper edges of the back felt in my hand; the random network-stack drop-outs; the hoops you sometimes need to jump through to share files/data from one app to the next; the keyboard that seemed to miss random presses, and still took me longer to type on than I could on my 4S (where I could at times type whole messages without looking at the screen).

I caught myself checking out other phones in the stores. Clearly it was time for the iPhone and I to “take a break”.

I looked at Windows Phones, but decided there wasn’t enough there to make it last. Blackberry? Err, no. That left Android.

I have a history with Android. I bought the HTC Desire HD on pre-order, as it had been loudly proclaimed “King of the Hill” at the time. Before it was even in my hands its crown usurped by (I think) the Galaxy S. We had some fun times, but I could never get along with the Sense UI. I rooted and flashed the phone, trying ROM after ROM. The experience was akin to installing Linux on an early Centrino laptop (anyone who tried it, back in c.2002-2003 will know what I mean) – where a feature worked, it worked very well… but only if you could live with the unsupported stuff. In the end, as much as I enjoyed parts of Android, I ended back in the warm embrace of iPhone.

Anyway, as I was saying, Android seemed the obvious choice, but which phone? I immediately gave up any notion of trying to get a phone that would be top of the specs pile for more than a few weeks2. I also ruled out those ridiculous “Phablets” like the Galaxy Note 2. The recent HTC phones look brilliant, but they’re still packing Sense. Sony’s Xperia line look distinct, but seemed to come with another GUI skin and a load of unneeded apps. Samsung… well I’ve never had a good experience with Samsung’s phone build quality, and they have the TouchWiz skin3… lets just say I ruled them out quickly. There’s the also-rans, but I was keen to get a phone that would get at least a few regular OS updates in its time.

I think I’d initially dismissed the Nexus because there was nowhere locally I could find one to try it out. Eventually I found somewhere with a display model, but I still couldn’t test it because the security system used by the store blocked most of the screen. In the end (after a couple of weeks mulling it over) I went ahead and ordered one through the Play store anyway4. A little over 24h later and the phone arrived.

First impressions were good. The unboxing experience was nice, and the first switch-on and setup was very fast. Within a few minutes my phone was syncing all of my Google services. If you use Google apps, then the experience is very, very smooth – everything “just works”. Contacts, Calendars, GMail, Google+, Picassa, YouTube, Music… all setup with just one login during start-up. I had some data issues with contacts and calendars, due to the way I had my iPhone setup, but that’s the subject of another post.

Of all the apps I regularly used on my iPhone (a decreasing amount recently), the only one I haven’t don’t have is Everpix, but I can keep using that one on my iPad Mini. Everything else either had an Android version – even my banking apps5 – or a suitably good equivalent (Falcon Pro instead of Tweetbot, for example).

Android itself has come a long, long way since I last used it. Jelly Bean is amazingly well polished, and the experience is very smooth. Coming from an iPhone, things do take a while to adjust to. I’ve found myself missing notifications on the lock screen, and application badges as indicators of which app just beeped at me. This is something I’ll get used to I guess.

If I can get round to it I’ll post a more comprehensive look at the Nexus 4, but for now I’ve not had it long enough to form more than first impressions. What I will definitely write-up is some of the experiences of moving my data from iOS/iCloud into Android/Google.

  1. These are all anecdotal, and in no way intended to imply they are common issues, or even that they’re not “all in my head”↩
  2. I think by now, in the age of quad-core CPUs and multi-GB RAM that Smartphone specs are good enough for most tasks they need to do. ↩
  3. What is it with Android OEMs and custom GUI skins? ↩
  4. I recommend going this route. Despite the £10 delivery charge, it’s at least £150 cheaper than buying at a retail store.↩
  5. I wasn’t too impressed by one of them insisting I needed to install anti-virus on my mobile…↩
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Things said about the iPod Mini:

  • Competitors are cheaper
  • Competitors have more features
  • Competitors are smaller
  • It’s not “open”
  • It’ll never sell (or, my favourite: “the only people who’ll buy it are Apple ‘Sheeple/fanboi’s/posers’ with too much money”)
  • You’re paying an “Apple Tax” just because it looks pretty/has an Apple logo

Things said about the iPad Mini in the 24 hours since it was announced:

  • Competitors are cheaper
  • Competitors have more features
  • Competitors are smaller
  • It’s not “open”
  • It’ll never sell (or, my favourite: “the only people who’ll buy it are Apple ‘Sheeple/fanboi’s/posers’ with too much money”)
  • You’re paying an “Apple Tax” just because it looks pretty/has an Apple logo

Even though I doubt I’ll be buying one in the short-term, make no mistake – I think the iPad Mini will sell in droves, just like the iPod Mini went on to.

I confidently believe it will outsell the Google Nexus 7, and probably also the Kindle Fire (the biggest competition in my mind) this Christmas, despite the much higher price. Apple has shown consumers will pay that extra “tax” for the overall experience. Not only that, Joe/Jane Consumer can now see the name brand iPad on sale below £300 for the first time. That’s a really big deal for anyone not trapped in the Tech Bubble.

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Thursday saw the public release of Windows 7, and as with any OS upgrade, it’s a chance for a fresh start, a chance to pair our software installs back to the minimum we need. It’s all with the good intention to keep our computer leaner and faster than before.

With this in mind I’ve been thinking about the software I use frequently; what I need, what I don’t, and what I can consolidate. I was quite inspired by Dan’s setup, with its focus on simplicity and “less”. From a developer standpoint I also referenced Scott Hanselman’s tools list, but not much of that makes it onto this list, which is more general.

Bare Essentials

I mean it when I say these are the very first things I install on any Windows PC:

  • 7-Zip: I’ve been a fan of 7-Zip for years now. It’s (in my mind) the best file archiver/unarchiver around. It supports nearly every format you can think of, it’ s free, and its own 7z compression format is the best around.
  • Firefox: Chrome nearly won out the browser war for my PC, thanks to its lean and fast nature, but Firefox beat it out by being so damn flexible. I won’t go into any detail on my Add-Ons just yet, as that’s subject enough for another post. Suffice to say, the browser is increasingly becoming the focal point of the computer, so having as much flexibility as possible is essential.
  • Cygwin: I love the command-line. There’s something about it that evokes all the wonder and mystery about computers I had when I was a kid. The standard Windows Command Prompt is under-powered, and Powershell has a steep learning curve, so for years I’ve relied on Cygwin to bring some Unixy goodness to Windows. For Windows 7, make sure to grab the 1.7 beta setup.
  • AVG Free: There are a lot of good, free, anti-virus packages around, that don’t have the bloat of the likes of McAfee or Norton. AVG hasn’t let me down yet, so it’s my personal choice.
  • Foxit PDF Reader: Faster and less resource intensive than Adobe’s Reader, Foxit is a fully featured, free alternative.

Staying Organised

I admit it – I’m bloody terrible at keeping myself organised. To try fix this I have a couple of tools in my arsenal.

  • Evernote: I have Evernote everywhere I go. Either through the desktop client, my iPhone, or through the web. I use it as a dumping ground for nearly any little snippet of information I think I might need later. One of my favourite tricks is to use the “Mail Tweet” function in Tweetie 2 to send interesting/useful tweets straight to Evernote via email.
  • App for the Milk: Like Evernote, Remember the Milk is a tool I (try) to use everywhere: through the web, on my iPhone, or on the desktop using my favourite (and newest) desktop client. App for the Milk is an Adobe Air application, which some people don’t like, but in my mind it’s no worse than needing the .NET framework for an application. If you don’t like Air, I can recommend the Windows port of Tasque.
  • Dropbox: If there’s any file I think I might need on another computer then it goes into Dropbox. I’m always losing pen-drives, but I can get Dropbox through either the synced folder or the web application. As an example, I keep my reference library of screen-casts and eBooks in Dropbox so I can access them from work or home.

New Media

Strangely, all the while I was running the Windows 7 RC, I found my favourite media video player to be Windows Media Player. This is certainly a change from previous versions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few other bits and bobs we can install to make it even better. As an iPhone user, iTunes is pretty much required, but I’m not including it below because I’d ditch it if I could!

  • Shark007 Codec Pack: This is a gem of a codec pack. With this installed I’ve yet to come across a video I can’t play. There’s a load of options you can configure, but I’ve found I didn’t need to and just left things as the default.
  • MKV on Windows 7: This is a “Tech Preview” from DivX Labs that lets Windows treat MKV video files like native AVIs – you get thumbnails, proper file information, compatibility with WMP, and best of all you can stream the files to any DNLA device such as a PS3.

Getting Social

IM, Twitter, Facebook and the like all fit into our daily lives nowadays, so it’s useful to have a desktop client to manage these.

  • TweetDeck: Another Adobe Air application, TweetDeck is a popular Twitter desktop client which lets you track a lot of information on-screen at once thanks to its multi-column setup. TweetDeck will also handle your FaceBook news feed meaning you don’t need another, separate client.
  • Skype: Admittedly, I only really use Skype at work, or on my Netbook, but it’s an excellent tool for quick video calls, especially as the call quality is second to none.
  • Pidgin: Formerly known as GAIM, Pidgin is a multi-protocol IM program which can connect to just about any network, from AIM to Windows Live Messenger (MSN). Plug-ins help round out any missing features, and it is theme-able.

Utility Belt

These are the nice little extras that make life that little bit easier. They’re not essential, but they sure do come in handy!

  • Console2: One command prompt to rule them all! With Console2 I can tabbed command prompts, and combine Windows CMD, Cygwin and Powershell all into one console. The only thing which would be more awesome would be if I could pipe the output from one prompt into another (say pipe Cygwin output into Powershell)
  • A Good Text Editor: Notepad sucks, and sooner or later you’re bound to need a decent text editor. My personal, all-time favourite editor, Textmate isn’t available for Windows, but E Text Editor sets out to be as compatible as possible, right down to supporting the same themes and code bundles. Other great choices include NotePad++ and Sublime.
  • Jing: I nearly didn’t put this down, as it requires a free Screencast.com account, but since coming across Jing (from the same folks who make Camtasia Studio and Snagit) I’ve been using it nearly everyday. Jing is a free screen-capture tool which supports both capturing pictures and videos. With it you can capture the whole screen, a certain window (or part there of), or just a selection of your screen. Some basic annotation tools are also required. The “Pro” version adds in a few extra features like MPEG-4 video recording and more sharing options

Where’s the Rest?

I’ve purposefully made this list cover just what I consider the absolute bare essentials for my computer. There are other applications I could list, such a office suites, developer tools… heck, I’ve not even mentioned an email client! Developer tools will be covered in another post I have in the works, but the rest is down to personal preference. For both email and office needs I use Google Apps, where as you might prefer OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, or even Office 2007. Install what you need, just make sure you really need it, and try to keep it light-weight!

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With all this iPhone hoo-ha happening of late, I’ve finally started thinking about this “mobile web” thing. It’s been hard not to, with all the noise about iPhone SDKs – or lack thereof. Personally, I’m all for the whole web app thing when it comes to phones. Maybe it’s just me, but it makes sense. Obviously there’s the local data storage issue, but I’m sure some bright spark will figure out a solution some day.

Anyway, where was I going with this? I forgot. Oh yes… Blogging from a phone. We have WordPress, MovableType, SimpleLog, Textpattern, and so on, but they’re all desktop web browser dependent. Most are graphic – and JavaScript – heavy. Most which I have tried out reward larger screen estate. These are all major limitations of the mobile web as it stands.

This week I will be getting my hands on my new phone. It’s not an iPhone, but an HTC P43501. We’ve been using them at work for a while now, and they rock pretty hard. Yes, yes, I know I’m a Mac user, and it’s a Windows Mobile device… big whoop. Anyway, I’d love it if there we a nice blogging tool like the afore-mentioned WordPress, etc, which featured a nice, mobile optimised writing interface in addition to the fully-featured desktop version. Something which fits a 240×3202 screen nicely.

I have a feeling though that if I want something like this, I’ll have to make it myself. Which is a shame, because it means it’ll probably never get done…

  1. Catchy, huh? Maybe they should have stuck with the “Herald” code-name instead. ↩
  2. Well, 320×240 once oriented for use with the keyboard. ↩
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I’m a bit of a phone addict. I tend to upgrade my handset every 6 months or so, whether my contract is due for renewal or not. Ebay is a wonderful thing. That said, I was hoping to put off upgrading for a while yet. I do like my Motorola PEBL. It’s nice and simple, doing onlywhat I wanted it to (phone/SMS/camera), wrapped in a nice design. Horrible, horrible, horrible, UI – solved by setting up a heap of shortcuts – but an otherwise nice phone.

Unfortunately mine seems to be going on the blink. GPRS flat out refuses to work any more (so no media messages or web surfing), signal reception in general seems to be decreasing, the in-built speaker is a bit… spotty and it’s developed a nasty habit of switching itself off now and then when in my trouser pocket. The first two problems point to a failing internal aerial.

I have basic needs for a phone:

  • Good as a phone
  • Good at SMS/MMS
  • Fits comfortably in a front pocket of a pair of jeans
  • Good UI

A few other features are “nice to have”:

  • Decent camera
  • Bluetooth sync with OS X (Calendar + Contacts)

I like Sony Ericsson phones; good UI, robust and reliable… apart from their clam-shells. Great to sync with OS X and usually great cameras. The old s900i was a damn good (if rather chunky) phone.

I don’t really like Nokia phones anymore. The Nokia 3210 was probably the best phone I’ve ever had (going old-skool!), but with the exception of the highly-expensive N70, their recent offerings seem gimmicky and/or plain-old cheap. Build quality has been an issue with most recent Nokias I’ve seen.

I could get another Motorola, but as mentioned, I hate the UI. I also dislike the feel of theRAZR and SLVR handsets – too wide/thin for comfort – and there’s the issue of whether I’d want another Moto after the first one failed after 6 months? Hrmm. The RIZR looks cool though.

Samsung phones suck. I can’t put it any other way; from the design to the UI, they blow goats.

Having thought about it a little while writing this entry, I think I might leave things a while. My PEBL isn’t quite broke yet and there aren’t any handsets I really want to upgrade to. Maybe if I wait a couple of months something awsome will come along. The iPhone, maybe? So um yeah, this entry has pretty much been an inconclusive waste of mine and your time… That said, if you want to give a shout out for your favourite handset, please go ahead!