I’m fascinated by this new iPhone feature. Here are some of my stats for last 7 days:
I think I’m probably a very light user. I’ll bet a lot of people would be shocked to see how much time they spend.
Broke down and bought a new iPhone yesterday. My 6SE was two years old and the battery was fading noticebly. I loved the smaller form-factor of the SE and was hoping Apple would keep it around but, alas, the smaller phone is no more. The clincher was the camera on the new models (Barb’s photos from her Yellowstone trip were breathtaking).
Took a couple of photos this morning of Terry Bledsoe, a coffee shop regular. The portrait modes is impressive.
I’ve got some issues with Apple TV but it works so well with my iPhone and MacBook so I put up with them. And the gizmo is worth the money just for the screensavers. They’re gorgeous. Last night I fired up the Apple Music app while I was ironing shirts. In a few seconds the first screensaver came up on the big screen. If you’ve never seen these it’s hard to understand what I’m gushing about. Fortunately someone has collected them but you won’t get the full effect on a small screen.
Apple recently updated macOS and iOS to enable syncing/storing of iMessages in iCloud. I don’t use some of Apple’s more popular apps (like Mail and Calendar) but I use iMessage constantly. Google has, what, seven messaging apps now?
Prior to this latest update, a user could have iMessage syncing problems between devices and the app was taking up a lot of storage on your device. Some people have conversations (with attachments) going back years. Moving all of this to iCloud solves that problem.
I never thought much about the archival feature of iMessage. I sort of knew my conversations were archived but rarely went back to look for something. Following this update I started playing with search in iMessage (I always thought of search as just a way to find someone with whom I had had a conversation). A search for “Land Rover” pulled up all of the conversations where that phrase had been used (left side of screenshot). On the right, the conversations with each. Any message containing the searched for word/phrase is grayed out just a bit.
Like a lot of folks, instant messaging (iMessage for me) has become my preferred method of communication. Voice-to-text works great and I occasionally just send a brief audio message. So having all of my conversations stored, sync’d and searchable will be handy.
“I really wish I was exaggerating, but these seven reasons are the main ways Apple critics attempt to explain why someone would choose to buy products critics believe are both overpriced and inferior to their competition. Because if you’ve already come to the conclusion that Apple products are overpriced and inferior, but hundreds of millions of people still buy them, the only conclusion must be that there is something seriously wrong with the people who buy them.” (Jonathan Kim)
Every week I see someone new come into the coffee shop with AirPods. Rare to see any other brand of Bluetooth headphones. Same with the Apple Watch. If you happen to spot something other than an Apple Watch, look around because there’s one of those two-wheeled scooters leaning against a wall close by.
The following excerpts are from a piece by Joe Tonelli (AirDrop Is Your iPhone’s Most Underrated Tool). I love this feature and, like Joe, use it daily to move file between my phone and my laptop.
AirDrop is kind of a miracle. Without any internet connection or cell service whatsoever, you can still send documents, photos, videos, nearly anything, between any Apple devices, as long as they are physically relatively close to each other. You might think you need a wireless network or cell service to send things because your iPhone will prompt you to turn on wifi and Bluetooth before you use AirDrop, but that isn’t the case. Apple is simply using the wi-fi’s radio signal to cleverly create an encrypted peer-to-peer connection between the devices. Once Bluetooth senses another device nearby, you’re in business.
One of the best things about AirDrop is that there appears to be no file size limit. I don’t think the importance of that fact can be overlooked. Consider the other primary ways of sharing items between computers. Assuming you don’t have AirDrop, you’d likely email something to someone (or to yourself). Gmail’s file size limit is 25MB. So you go through Google Drive, fine. However you’re still stuck with the lengthy process of uploading and then downloading the (presumably large) file. Without a solid internet connection (pretty much anything less than LTE or a reliable wi-fi connection) this will be near impossible or take hours and hours. Sure, wireless internet is nearly ubiquitous these days but even in NYC there are places where I don’t get signal (or don’t want to connect to public wifi).
Of course there are Apple alternatives like AnySend or Deskconnect, and interspecies options like Zapya or Xender for you Windowsheads out there. They largely accomplish the same thing, and I’m sure that software all works fine. But AirDrop is already on your damn phone.
Barb’s only had her iPhone X for a few days and is still getting the hang of new features. Today she played with some of the new photos options. Don’t know how they’ll look here but on my laptop (and her phone) they looked damned good. Not sure which setting were used for each photo but I can tell you I’ve never seen a photo taken with a phone that was this crisp and sharp. The new iPhones are just larger than I like so I’m hoping these new camera features come to some future SE model.
Once upon a time file names could only be a certain length. Was 7 characters for he name and 3 or the extension? 8 characters for the name? I can’t recall but somewhere along the way this limitation was lifted and we can name a file something useful. But I never developed the discipline to take advantage of this and have some old files with names like 4777959349_o.jpg . In my OCD moments this bugs me and I might take a few minutes (or a few days) and rename offending files.
I rarely see file names in iPhoto (I refuse to call it Apple Photos), just the Title I enter when adding photo. But my buddy George Kopp pointed out I can change the file name to the Title when exporting images for backup. This short screencast (4 min) shows this feature.
I am not an audiophile. I thought the AM radio (WLS) music coming out of the dash speaker on my Ford Falcon sounded pretty damn good. During the 70s I wore headphones four hours a day. I lived through the refrigerator sized speaker era. It all sounded good to me.
But the music never sounded as good as it does coming from the tiny Apple AirPods. Is that perceptual? Maybe. But all music is perceptual unless you have a spectrum analyzer implanted in your head.
I’ve never heard better, more natural, separation. I was listening to CSN&Y (on the highway) this morning and could hear acoustic guitars in my left ear (for lack of a more scientific description). Even that little raspy sounds made when the fingers are dragged along one of the base strings (?). I could shift my awareness to the base in my right ear. (Channel is a better word, isn’t it?) And the vocals were somewhere in the rear-center of my noggin.
It feels like I’m hearing these songs for the first time. I know, I know… this is old news to you pros with the big cans clamped to your head. And good for you.
I’m seeing more AirPods here in the coffee shop every week. If I’m familiar with the person I ask how they like them and why they decided to give them a try. Usually some variation of the story above.
There are probably a lot of good reason NOT to try AirPods. That they’re made by Apple is not one of them.