Smarter AirPods gestures

November 14, 2018

by Matt

apple

It’s one of my favorite AirPods features: slip in a single AirPod, and iOS will send a mono-mixed signal to the active unit, while ignoring the other.

I use this all the time. For example, if my AirPods are running low on power, I’ll continue to listen in one ear while charging the other unit in its case.

Or consider the road trip scenario: we’re rolling down the highway, mile after mile. As the driver, I’m getting bored, but I can’t fire up the car’s built-in stereo without disturbing my snoozing passengers. Wired headphones are too fiddly to safely set up while driving. But I can easily pop in a single AirPod—without taking my eyes off the road. And because iOS mixes down to mono, I can leave one ear free for key safety signals: a blaring horn or the tell-tale thump-thump-thump of a tire that’s about to blow out.

However, there is one drawback to wearing a single AirPod: playback controls. I’ve set the double-tap gesture on each AirPod to separate functions: bump the left AirPod, and the audio pauses; bump the right, and I jump to the next track (or skip past the boring bits of podcasts).

But when wearing just one earbud, I’m stuck with just one gesture. Either I can’t play/pause (when using the right AirPod), or I can’t skip ahead (when wearing the left).

I’d like to see Apple add another setting to the AirPods’ “Double-tap on AirPod” options: “Single.” When I’m wearing just one AirPod, whether it’s the left or the right, let me choose the double-tap action. (I would likely set the option to “Next Track,” since I can pause the audio in a pinch by pulling the AirPod out.) ◾

Caught between computers

November 16, 2018

by Matt

apple

In terms of computing platforms, I‘ve been set adrift.

On the one hand, I don’t really want to return to Windows. Don’t get me wrong; unlike many Apple converts, I like Microsoft’s OS, and I frequently miss features and workflows from that platform.

But I left Windows for a reason; my favorite apps—OmniFocus, Procreate, Drafts—are exclusive to Apple’s platforms. There are no real equivalents on Windows, and I’m tired of “making do” with half-baked imitations.

On the other hand, it’s not a great time to have shifted to macOS. Yes, it’s true that Apple has suddenly remembered to make new hardware (see the new Air and Mini or the promised Mac Pro). But the software platform has stagnated, the App Store is eerily quiet, and Mac unit sales have declined in eight of the last twelve quarters, year-over-year. Settling in “Mac land” now feels like buying beachfront real estate in an era of rising sea levels—OK for now, but unsustainable in the long-term.

So what about iOS? Might I make “landfall” there? The short answer is, “Not yet.” Yes, the new iPad Pros are amazing kit, and the software has slowly matured. But too many of my workflows depend on a ‘real’ web browser (e.g. administering SharePoint) or ‘real’ Outlook (building pixel-perfect email templates).

Besides, even if I didn’t work in the enterprise, iOS would be a frustrating place to settle. I want legit external screen support, more robust keyboard shortcuts, and easier font installation. Hopefully, these power user features are on their way. But until they arrive, I can’t make permanent camp on iPad Island. ■

Buying an iPad Pro

November 11, 2018

by Matt

apple / Uncategorized

Happy consumer

We visited family near Philly this weekend; in between activities, I slipped out to visit the Apple retail store at the nearby King of Prussia mall.

As an aside, if you ever have the chance to visit this edifice of consumerism… don’t do it. This is the Mall Experience™ taken all the way up to 11, from the impossible hunt for parking to the shoulder-to-shoulder congestion in the Apple Store itself.

Given the size of that crowd, I was surprised to find a bleached-white table of iPad Pros available—my own personal demo station. I experimented for a solid fifteen minutes, hefting the two sizes, flipping and fingering the Smart Keyboard folio, and sketching with the Apple Pencil.

As you may have guessed, it wasn’t just curiosity driving my visit. I had skipped a planned phone upgrade earlier this fall, and that left some cash in our gadget savings fund. I’d been considering a reentry into the iPad ecosystem, so I almost wanted to fall in love with the 11-inch. I half-expected to leave the mall clutching a wee iPad Pro, the Pencil, and the Smart Keyboard Folio.

That didn’t happen. As I played with the devices, I realized that the 11-inch iPad Pro makes compromises in all the wrong places. If you want a tablet for content consumption and occasional sketching, the 9.7-inch iPad gets you 90% of the way there—at just one-third the price. Sure, you’d be stuck with chunkier bezels, but are slightly thinner black bars worth $500?

On the other end of the spectrum, if you want “more iPad” than the 11-inch iPad Pro offers, the 12.9-inch model retains its advantages over its smaller counterpart—sketching and multitasking are better on the big screen. And thanks to the shrunken bezels, the new 12.9er is suitable for couch computing in a way its predecessor never was. It’s lighter, its footprint is smaller, and it’s surprisingly easy to handle. It’s a compromise you might be willing to make.

The other advantage to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro? Its Smart Keyboard is superior. The arrow keys on the 11-inch’s keyboard felt like tiny, cloth-wrapped chiclets—toy keys on a toy keyboard. Based on some brief experimentation, I also preferred the 12.9-inch keyboard’s viewing angles (though I would want to try both models while sitting before deciding on this).

As I compared, I realized that I didn’t want—and couldn’t justify—buying the 11-inch over its 9.7-inch entry-level sister. I knew that I could probably pick up that model for something like $250 on Black Friday, so I left the mall without making a purchase.

After getting home, however, doubt set in. No, I still didn’t want the 11-inch. But what about that svelte 12.9-inch model? It had felt surprisingly manageable. And If I wanted to buy it, now was the time; Apple’s online store is back-ordered, and we live too far from the nearest retail store to make a sojourn later.

Long story made short, we stopped by the mall again on our way out of town, and I bought the 64GB, WiFi-only, 12.9-inch iPad Pro in Space Gray, along with the second-gen Apple Pencil.

I’m still questioning the decision. $1,200 is a lot of money to spend on a device that could get squeezed out by my phone and my laptop. Fortunately for me, Apple’s generous return policy means I get a 14-day “trial” period to decide whether this iPad will earn a place in my computing workflow. ◾

The lingering heartbreak of a ruined watershed

November 8, 2018

by Matt

environment

Since 2012, we’ve lived in the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. It’s a beautiful area, full of steep mountainsides, deep canyons, and burbling waterfalls. The region has seen a revival of sorts in the past decade or so, attracting tourists, second home owners, and new residents alike. Many come to explore the area’s unique combination of outdoor recreation opportunities and beautiful natural landscapes.

Many visitors don’t realize that this natural beauty is hard-won. Countless individuals and organizations have fought (and continue to fight) to restore the local environment to good health.

Why is “restoration” necessary? A century ago, this region’s economy was driven by extractive industry—timber and coal. Felling the dense old-growth forest devastated the ecosystem, destroying native species’ habitats and literally washing away the topsoil. Fortunately, over the decades, the forests have regrown. The woods aren’t what they once were, but they are still beautiful.

Coal mining had a harsher, longer-lasting impact.

Acid mine drainage

When a coal company abandons a mine, it shuts down its pumps and allows the tunnels to flood. Water seeps in, bathes the exposed sulfur-bearing rock, and flows out again—only now, it’s highly acidic and infused with heavy metals. This toxic outflow flushes into the nearby watershed, coating everything in a tell-tale orange muck and acidifying the stream itself. Many types of aquatic wildlife struggle to survive in the lower pH; this results in decreased biodiversity and lower animal populations. For humans, the water is undrinkable and unsafe to touch.

Acid mine drainage can persist for centuries; in a very real sense, afflicted watersheds are permanently ruined. Yes, there are mitigation strategies to deal with acidic run-off. But even the most effective methods don’t actually prevent spoiled outflow from entering the watershed; they simply add something else to the water (e.g. lime) to neutralize the acidic pollutants. These approaches treat the symptom, rather than the underlying disease, which has no cure.

Mining’s true cost

When debating coal’s impact, we rarely factor in the cost of preventing permanent watershed degradation. Yes, it’s prohibitively expensive to coat miles of passageways with cement and seal those toxic metals underground. But that should be figured into the coal companies profita and loss calculation. If you can’t afford to fill the hole, don’t dig it in the first place. If you can’t restore the waterways to their pre-mining condition, then you can’t afford to mine. Communities dependent on the watershed shouldn’t be forced to pay for your shortsightedness with their health.

A dose of realism

Of course, given the current political climate, extractive firms won’t be held to this high standard anytime soon. And even if they were, that wouldn’t restore the degraded rivers of our adopted home, since the companies responsible have long since evaporated or been absorbed by other energy companies.

So, while I still love to visit the highlands’ waterfalls and wetlands, those trips are bittersweet, since I know that the beauty masks deadly problems bubbling up from underground. ■

The “$100 iPad Pro”

November 5, 2018

by Matt

apple

The iPad’s “jobs”

There are digital tasks for which the iPad is better-suited than a smartphone or laptop.

For example, drawing on the iPad (with the Apple Pencil) is fantastic. Not so much on the other devices (even if you pair a Wacom to your Mac). Or consider minimalist text entry, for which the “iPad + Smart Keyboard” combo is uniquely suited. The Mac feels over-built for that simple job, and the iPhone’s software keyboard falls short.

Despite these legit use cases, I didn’t preorder an iPad Pro last week. Honestly, the inflated entry price scared me off; sure, I like to draw and to write without distractions, but would I do those things enough to justify that much cash? Probably not.

Other (cheaper) tools for the same job

I’m bummed to miss out on the hotness, but here’s the thing: I can meet these “needs” without dropping $1,200 on an iPad Pro, a Smart Keyboard, and an Apple Pencil. It simply requires some creativity—and some willingness to compromise.

Here’s my recipe for a “$100 iPad”:

Use Case #1: Drawing

A new 7” x 10” drawing pad. No, I’m not talking about a Wacom device or an Android tablet. This is literally a $7 book of drawing paper!
A few color markers for “funning up” my line drawings. Total cost for 72 fine and extra-fine colors: about $30.
I already had some nice graphic pens, pencils for sketching, and a big honking eraser, but you could pick these up for $20 or less.

Use Case #2: Minimalist text entry

The iPhone works perfectly well for distraction-free writing. In fact, that’s pretty much how I took notes in grad school—on an iPod Touch, paired to an old Palm keyboard. That screen was much smaller than that on my iPhone X.

Here’s what I picked up this time around:

A folding stand from Anker to hold the iPhone upright. Eleven bucks.
A new folding Bluetooth keyboard. (Unfortunately, I immediately shipped this back to Amazon; its build quality and typing feel failed to measure up. I’m still on the lookout for a decent keyboard that folds into a pocketable form factor. In the meantime, I’ll use this less portable AmazonBasics model, which isn’t awful. It cost $26 when I bought it.)

All told, then, since I already own a smartphone, I can cover the iPad’s core uses for less than $100.

The obvious disclaimer: the real iPad is better

If cost weren’t a factor, I’d rather have an iPad Pro than a bag full of markers and phone accessories. It’s convenient to have one device that can do it all in a portable, compact package. But, as a novice artist who doesn’t need a dedicated minimalist writing device, the convenience of the iPad Pro is not worth $1,000+. ■

Mindless: the sorry state of meditation apps on the Apple Watch

November 2, 2018

by Matt

apple

When the Apple Watch first launched in 2015, it wasn’t clear exactly what the device was for. Was it a mini-iPhone, intended to replicate its big brother’s features on your wrist? Or was it a tool for informal communications, punctuated by scribbles and heart beats?

Eventually, the device’s purpose become more clear. Apple sells the Watch as a fitness and wellness tracker with some convenient peripheral functions (e.g. notifications and quick replies).

Given this emphasis on well-being, it’s surprising to me that there seem to be no great meditation apps for the Apple Watch. Oh, these apps exist; they’re just really bad.

Breathe

Well, not all of them, I guess. Apple’s first-party Breathe app is well-designed and fun to use for quick hits of mindfulness. But it’s not really designed to serve as a full-featured interval timer. For that, I’ve turned (without much success) to a variety of third-party apps:

Headspace

Take Headspace, for example. It’s the king in the mindfulness space, raking in tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually. You’d think they’d have the resources to deliver decent Watch app; the company has two dozen open engineer positions at the moment.

But, no, Headspace’s Apple Watch app is pretty sad. Even though its iPhone app is whimsical and well-designed, on the Watch, it’s ugly and weirdly spartan. It boasts two underbaked features: a "Touch" exercise that doesn’t quite work and "SOS", a single guided meditation for emergencies (e.g. panic attacks).

In an ideal world, Headspace offer its rich library of guided sessions on your wrist; at the very least, I wish I could continue a meditation series from where I left off last time.

Insight Timer

Like Headspace, Insight Timer offers its own diverse library of guided courses, but I prefer to set up my own meditation sessions using its interval timer. I love being able to assign different bells to different stages of my meditation practice: high tones for preparation, deeper chimes for focused breathing, and even a gong to round out the exercise.

On the Watch, Insight Timer offers none of these features. I wish I could launch my preprogrammed sets of bell-marked intervals. Instead, the app offers generic timers for meditation and yoga, alongside a shortcut to launch their guided, seven-day introduction to meditation.

Seconds

The Watch app that comes the closest to meeting my needs isn’t actually a "mindfulness" app at all. It’s an interval timer called Seconds. Its target audience is fitness buffs who want to time complex workouts like high-intensity interval training.

But Seconds also supports interval sets for mindfulness sessions. Unlike with the other apps, it allows you to create any number of intervals of arbitrary length and sync the program to your Watch for "playback."

Unfortunately, it has a few fatal flaws as a meditation timer. First, it really is meant to be a workout app; at the end of the meditation, the app shows the calories burned—hardly a relevant statistic for pillow-sitting. More problematically, custom alert sounds on the Watch seem to be broken. Seconds will play both my custom "Tibetan bell" and a harsh mechanical beep—a dissonant combination that I find distracting.

Closing thoughts

The dearth of Apple Watch meditation apps may be a symptom of a deeper issue. There are plenty of other app categories in which there isn’t a single decent option, and many high-profile companies have removed Apple Watch support altogether. Three and a half years after the device’s initial launch, the Apple Watch app ecosystem may be getting worse, rather than better.

That’s harshing my zen. ■

When is an ISP rate hike not a rate hike?

November 1, 2018

by Matt

internet

I have a love / hate relationship with our internet service provider, Frontier Communications. On the one hand, it’s amazing that we can even get a legit broadband connection here; we live on two wooded acres in a remote rural valley, surrounded on all sides by National Wildlife Refuge. Fifty megabits downstream may be laughable in suburban areas, but it’s heavenly compared to what’s available to many of our neighbors. I’m genuinely grateful.¹

On the other hand, I hate that our provider has no real competitor. With no other game in town, Frontier has little incentive to improve its network. In fact, when we first bought our house, the best connection Frontier offered delivered less than 3Mbps. Only after we organized a neighborhood petition and recruited our senator’s office did Frontier prioritize upgrades to our local infrastructure.

You might expect Frontier’s local monopoly to impact service rates, as well. After all, there’s no real market pressure to keep their pricing strategy in line. But honestly, I’ve been pretty happy with the price I’m charged for broadband. Sixty bucks a month for a 50Mbps connection is highway robbery in the city, but I’m willing to accept that it’s more expensive to serve rural households.

Just this past year, though, Frontier has started to play fast and loose with its billing scheme. They haven’t changed our base rate—that’s still $59.99 per month. But they have tacked on a phantom fee: an “Internet Infrastructure Surcharge,” which started at $1.99 per month and recently doubled.

By labeling it an “infrastructure surcharge,” Frontier makes their fee sound like some government-imposed. That’s not the case; Frontier invented this surcharge out of thin air. As far as I can tell, this is their way of raising customer’s rates without raising the “sticker price.” That’s deceptive, consumer-hostile behavior—perhaps a way to stem the financial bleeding?

Here’s the thing: despite all this, I’m sympathetic to our ISP’s sorry state, and I’m rooting for them to pull out of their apparent death spiral. I’m even willing to pay a bit more to help them survive. I’d just rather see them hike their rates honestly, instead of slipping in a bogus charge and hoping that customers don’t ask questions. ■

When Frontier rolled out VDSL locally, I immediately signed up for the fastest connection they could offer—50Mbps download and 5Mbps up on a good day. Since then, I’ve made it a quarterly habit to ask Frontier if they’ve provisioned our local loop for even faster speeds via VDSL. The dream, of course, would be for Frontier to roll out FiOS in our area, but given our rural neighborhood and Frontier’s financial woes, I’m not holding my breath. ↩︎

Skipping the iPad Pro

October 31, 2018

by Matt

apple

I just can’t justify buying the new iPad Pro.

Don’t get me wrong; Apple’s new tablets are gorgeous. I’m impressed by the edge-to-edge display, the Braun-inspired squared edges, and the overall thinness. And the new Apple Pencil fixes all of my biggest complaints: the cylindrical (roll-prone) profile, the fiddly end cap, and the awkward charging method. Overall, the iPad Pro looks like an incredible upgrade.

But it’s also incredibly expensive. Jaw-droppingly expensive. Prohibitively expensive (at least for me). Not only Apple raise the cost of entry by $150, they also tacked $20–30 onto the price of each accessory. All told, even if I bought even the cheapest model,¹ an Apple Pencil, and the new Smart Keyboard Folio, I’d be dropping just shy of $1,200.

That’s some serious cash—enough to buy a beefy Windows PC, ski passes for the whole family, a passable mountain bike, or a long weekend at the beach, steak dinners included.

If I honestly believed that I would use an iPad Pro, I might be been able to justify its exorbitant price tag. Unfortunately, the evidence is stacked against me. I’ve purchased three iPads in the past, and each one ended up gathering dust. I’ve just never found a great use case for an iPad; my Kindle is better for reading, my laptop is better for writing, and my phone is better for everything else. There was nothing in today’s keynote that makes me think this iPad would be different. (You know, like external touchscreen support?)

The iPad Pro is great for drawing, of course. And I do occasionally doodle. But why plunk down $1,200 when a $15 drawing pad works just as well?

So I’m sitting out this Apple launch, despite a gnawing gadget envy. I’m bummed that I can’t take another crack at the “iPad lifestyle,” but I’m excited to save that money for something I’ll almost certainly enjoy more. ■

I’d get along fine with 64 gigs of storage, but it’s lame that only the 1TB models have 6GB of RAM. ↩︎

Stranger in a strange land: a long-time Windows power user switches to the Mac

October 30, 2018

by Matt

apple

I spent decades using Windows as my primary computing platform. I may not love Microsoft’s OS, but I had learned to live with it, tolerating its quirks and forgiving its faults. By the time I had turned thirty, I was comfortable (if not quite content) in the Windows world.

More recently, though, Apple has managed to win me over. Since picking up an iPod Touch back in 2009, I’ve bought nearly a dozen different iOS devices. Then, I installed OS X in a VM, just so that I could run Omnifocus. And finally, this past July, I switched to an actual Mac as my full-time machine.

Adopting macOS wasn’t quite what I expected—hardly the aesthetic epiphany promised in those old John Hodgman ads. Here are some thoughts on switching to the Mac as a long-time Windows user:

The good!

After years spent Alt-Tabbing back and forth from a VM, I’m glad to have all my favorite software integrated into a single platform. There’s only one machine to shut down at day’s end, and I can freely shuffle data between apps. For example, I can now use AppleScript to push work emails to Omnifocus in just a few keystrokes.
I love that the Mac gets so much attention from design-minded software developers. Drafts, Fantastical, and Tweetbot are now indispensable parts of my daily workflow; none of these apps have true equivalents in the Windows world.

The bad.

Windows may lack polished indie apps, but there’s an equivalent problem on the Mac: underbaked enterprise-grade software. Microsoft Office is far superior on Windows: faster, more reliable, and more feature-rich. In fact, I’m forced to keep a PC close at hand, just so that I can occasionally boot into Windows to fix the formatting of an email or a PowerPoint deck.
It’s not just Microsoft’s apps, either. Cisco’s Webex is terrible on all platforms, but it’s far worse on the Mac. It takes me twice as long to join meetings as my Windows-running colleagues, and entire features are absent in the Mac app. For example, I can’t choose which display to share when I’m on a conference call.
macOS’s native PDF export options are surprisingly sub-par. Back on Windows, the PDF print dialog offers a rich suite of formatting options. But on the Mac, exporting a PDF feels like a guessing game, with no rich preview and a paltry set of levers to try.
I miss the ability to pin documents to apps in the taskbar (or the Dock, in macOS parlance). The built-in “Open Recent” command doesn’t cut it—and it’s only available when the app itself is open!
Windows is far better than the Mac when it comes to onscreen app arrangement. “Snapping” windows works so well that the Mac’s “Split View” feels like an afterthought. Yes, you can install third-party Mac utilities that imitate Window’s native behavior (I’m partial to Magnet), but that functionality should come baked in, for free.
Finally, this isn’t a software issue, but I don’t understand the MacBook’s charging brick. On the one hand, I like being able to disconnect the USB-C cable and wrap it up separately. On the other hand, the pluggable brick can easily fall out of some outlets, depending on the angle and slot design. That never happened with the PC power cords I’m used to.

The ugly.

macOS feels slow. Honestly, Windows feels downright snappy. On the Mac, it takes longer to launch programs, switch between them, and close them at day’s end. And macOS’s penchant for animating everything often gets in my way. Windows somehow felt “closer to the metal” (even if that’s not technically true).¹
The Mac’s window model drives me crazy. For some reason, closing an app’s window doesn’t close the app. Instead, the program hangs around, burning resources in the background. And because there’s no easy way to close apps with the mouse, I often end up with far more apps open than I need.
There’s something wonky about macOS’s Bluetooth stack. I can’t use more than one Bluetooth device at a time. When I connect both my Logitech mouse and my Plantronics headset, audio playback stutters and skips. This is apparently a known issue, and there are a variety of proposed workarounds, but this never happened on my PC.

Wrap-up

To be fair, most of my complaints boil down to unfamiliarity. A life-long Mac user would probably have the reverse experience switching to Windows. For me, though, macOS feels like foreign territory; I don’t know the terminology and I sometimes struggle to find my way around. ■

FWIW, my most recent Windows machine and this 2017 MacBook Pro are roughly equal, spec-wise. ↩︎

How much should Apple Watch cell service cost?

October 29, 2018

by Matt

apple

For me, run prep often feels more exhausting than the workout itself. That’s particularly true in wintertime, when cold weather demands a long list of layers: track pants, long-sleeve T, light jacket, gloves, fleece hat, and neck buff. Predawn runs require that I add a blaze-orange vest and a headlamp, for visibility’s sake.

Then there’s the tech gear: Apple Watch on the wrist, AirPods in the ears, Polar heart rate strap around my chest, and the iPhone, tucked into a “fanny pack” at my hip. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it can take me fifteen or twenty minutes just to get out the door, start-to-finish.

Given this overly complex arsenal, I’m glad for any change that speeds up workout prep or simplifies my running accoutrements. For example, I was thrilled to discover that the Series 4’s heart tracking is good enough to forgo the Polar strap.

Similarly, I’d rather leave behind the heavy iPhone, which bangs against my thigh in its fanny pack. But losing the iPhone’s cell connection has distinct disadvantages; I can’t change my “running soundtrack” on the go, and I’m on my own should I have a heart attack or get clipped by a car.

So why not just pony up for the cellular model? In short, it costs too much! Consider the “real” price:

$100 more up front for the cell-capable model (versus the GPS-only edition)
$15 extra per month for the AT&T service (once you figure for taxes and fees)¹
An undetermined amount to change our base data plan. Dumping our grandfathered family package (which doesn’t support the Apple Watch) would require at least another $35 monthly.

All told, sporting a cellular Apple Watch means $50 or $60 more each month than I’m paying now. I’d love the added convenience and peace of mind, but are they worth that much?

Even if you accept the higher device price and ignore our particular data plan problem, you’ve still got that pesky monthly fee. So… what is a reasonable price for an Apple Watch cell connection? I polled my tiny Twitter audience:

Poll time. What’s a fair price for adding an Apple Watch to your cellular plan?

— Matt Hauger (@matthauger) September 18, 2018

Poll results notwithstanding, I don’t expect a free ride from AT&T for the Apple Watch. But $15 feels like too much. Ten bucks seems more reasonable—but that should include taxes and fees. ■

Some carriers do better than AT&T on this. For example, U.S. Cellular (which actually has good coverage in my rural area) lets you add an Apple Watch for free on some cell plans. But their network is small, and their roaming agreements come with pretty severe data use restrictions. ↩︎