johnsherrod.net

I’m an IT professional and blogger interested in technology, entertainment, and libertarianism. Above all else, I am a Christian. (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-19723553-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

[jwsherrod]

Review: Chariots Of Fire

This evening I re-watched Chariots Of Fire. I’ve seen it many, many times, and I have a tradition of re-watching it every Olympiad. If you haven’t seen this film, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It came out the year I was born and won four Oscars, including Best Picture.

It’s the story of the British athletes who competed in track events in the 1924 Olympics and primarily focuses on two runners, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. Of course as with any historical drama the movie has its embellishments, but much of what is portrayed in the film either really happened or happened very similarly to what is portrayed on screen.

Liddell is Scottish, the child of Christian missionaries to China. He faces the tension of competing in track events and pursuing his missionary work, constantly fretted over by his sister who is concerned that he might be so preoccupied with his hobby that he misses his calling. Abrahams is Jewish and the son of an immigrant. He navigates a world full of anti-semitism while striving to embody what it means to be British. He’s also driven to achieve immortality by winning the 100m race and thereby become the fastest man in the world.

As a Christian, I love the story of Eric Liddell. Ian Charleson portrays him in such an earnest way, and this is that rare film that portrays Christian faith and principles in a sincere, sympathetic light. Liddell uses his notoriety as a platform to share the Gospel and tells his sister that when he runs, he can feel God’s pleasure. Later in the film he’s challenged in his dedication to principle when he faces pressure to run on Sunday, something he feels would violate his beliefs.

As much as I love Charleson’s performance, Ben Cross is absolutely incredible in the role of Harold Abrahams. He’s one of those actors who’s able to convey deep emotion with his eyes and face and it’s an absolute delight to listen to him recite dialog.

As a Star Trek fan, there’s a neat Trek connection in the fact that Ben Cross played Spock’s father, Sarek, in Star Trek (2009) and Alice Krige, who plays Abrahams’s girlfriend, played the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact. There’s actually a neat symmetry between Abrahams in Chariots Of Fire and Spock in Star Trek (2009) in that they’re both portrayed as outsiders who don’t quite fit into the worlds they find themselves in. In fact, the scene in Chariots Of Fire in which Abrahams is grilled by the university faculty is very similar to the scene in Star Trek (2009) where Spock confronts the Vulcan science academy.

This movie lands in a lot of sweet spots for me. In addition to everything mentioned above, it’s a period film and I love a good period film. This particular era is so rarely portrayed on-screen, and it’s great to see it come alive. If you love the Olympics, you should watch this movie. Getting a glimpse at what the 1924 Olympics looked like is wonderful.

The Vangelis score is one of the more unique soundtracks in movie history. It won the Oscar for best score in 1981. The mix of piano, synth, and high hat in the iconic opening theme is unlike anything else in movie history. While it’s impossible not to like that theme paired with the iconic shot of the athletes running on the beach, I’m not sure I love the overall Vangelis sound, but it’s certainly distinct. I do love all of the Gilbert and Sullivan tunes that are peppered throughout the film.

I recently purchased this film in HD on iTunes for $7, replacing my old DVD copy. It looks amazing in HD, and the movie was originally presented in 1.85:1, so it’s perfectly suited to a modern HDTV. My only regret is that currently the film has no iTunes Extras content. I’d love to have hours of behind the scenes videos to pore through, but unfortunately none are to be found in the iTunes edition.

Once again, if you haven’t seen Chariots Of Fire, do yourself a favor and watch it!

[jwsherrod]

Review: Game Of Thrones Season Six

If you haven’t done so already, I recommend reading my piece entitled “Thoughts On Game Of Thrones” which I wrote about a month ago. It’ll give you a good sense of my overall thoughts on this show. The bottom line is that if you haven’t started watching the series, I recommend you avoid it. I mean it as sincerely as possible when I say that your soul will be healthier because of it. I shouldn’t continue watching it myself, but as I mentioned in that piece, at this point I’d like to see how the story concludes.

Given that I’d been watching the show by borrowing the Blu-ray boxed sets of the previous seasons I didn’t expect to get to see season six any time soon. But I recently changed my plan with Comcast and my little old local channels only package came with HBO, so I spent the last week or so watching season six via Comcast on-demand.

As I wrote previously, my main problem with Game Of Thrones is its deeply bleak outlook. We have very few genuinely good characters in the show. Of those we’ve been presented with, most are dead. Furthermore, we have very little hope for a positive outcome for the few people we can morally get behind.

That of course continued in season six, but another of my concerns is that the show is getting very predictable. The show has used and abused the deus ex machina plot device so many times (particularly in the last few seasons) that I saw it coming a mile away when the Battle of Winterfell ended with a cavalry riding in at the last minute to bail out Jon Snow. I’m not totally opposed to using ex machina solutions in cinema, but let’s not overuse it. Also, any time you see a person or a group of people who seems to be doing well in the show you know they’re about to die, so it was a foregone conclusion that the Hound’s happy little religious community was doomed from the get go. Again, that’s fine but when you’re so predictable it makes the show less interesting (and less clever).

That said, the Battle of Winterfell was an incredible piece of cinema. It looked amazing, and the giant notwithstanding, it looked like a real ancient battle. The production values on Game Of Thrones continues to be world class.

Next I want to touch on a few specific characters and how I felt this season handled them:

Jon Snow - I think the writers are in a real predicament with Jon Snow. He’s just about the only decent character on the show and certainly the only decent character that could be a leading man in a show of this sort. So if they kill him off (at least prior to maybe the very end of the show) I don’t think they’re left with anyone the audience would really care about. Now of course, they did kill him at the end of season five only to bring him back from the dead early this season. That certainly makes for a compelling cliffhanger, but I feel like it’s cheating the audience to toss aside the finality of death in that way. It feels like a ploy to boost viewer numbers. It’s an overused trope in genre storytelling. That said, it certainly resolved some problems with his character. As someone who was oath-bound to remain with the Night’s Watch he would have been unable to leave his post and take part in the wider story, and unable to father any children to carry on the Stark family (though of course his standing as an illegitimate son of a lord is still unresolved). Seeing him made king of the North at the end of the season was a satisfying progression for his character, though it certainly would seem to place him in much more danger.

Sansa Stark - She had the most unexpected (and in my opinion unearned) character pivot this season. Throughout most of the series she’s been a real damsel in distress and one of the few characters you could legitimately pity as she was being used as an anguished pawn in the greater game. She was never someone with much of a backbone and yet this season she became out of nowhere someone who was throwing her weight around and taking bold action. It’s not that I couldn’t see her character move in that direction, but it never felt like the writers properly built her toward that. It just sort of happened. Tragically she seems to be moving in a dark direction. She gleefully murdered Ramsey Bolton and seemed somewhat enticed by Little FInger’s stated plot to put her at his side when he takes the Iron Throne. I hope she has a change of heart, because she seems to be rushing headlong toward being another character I can’t root for.

Bran and Hodor - It’s funny, a few weeks ago I was talking to friends and said, “You know who would be great in Game Of Thrones? Max von Sydow.” Well, he’s in season six and we see a lot of him in the role of the three-eyed raven. That was great! Unfortunately I have no idea what’s going on with Bran Stark. Nothing made any sense to me there. It all feels like something that maybe makes more sense if you’ve read the books, but I don’t think the show is communicating his storyline well at all. And I’m completely in the dark with what happened with Hodor. Of course he died tragically holding the door while Bran escaped, but it sort of seemed like the show was implying that Bran was controlling him. If that’s the case it makes his death not heroic, but darkly tragic. At the very least it seems pretty clear that Bran’s weird time-traveling is what is responsible for his feeble mind. Really weird, dark stuff.

Arya Stark - I think we’re supposed to like Arya, but I find her a pretty despicable character. Of course it’s tragic what’s happened to her family, but she’s consumed by vengeance and is a murderer many times over at this point. I see nothing to root for there. As with the Bran Stark storyline I also found everything relating to her and the weirdos in Bravos to be utterly confusing.

Ramsey Bolton - The show has gone out of its way to make Ramsey a despicable, cartoonish villain. To me that’s lazy writing, and the zany way the actor plays him makes him more annoying to me than menacing. And of course this show, wallowing in utter darkness as it does, can’t have Ramsey dispatched on the battle field. No, they have to have Sansa murder him by having his dogs devour him alive.

Honestly, season six might be the worst season of the show yet to me. It had some good moments for sure, but I hope the next season is better. But at the end of the day I think Game Of Thrones is just not for me.

[jwsherrod]

How I Lost 40 Pounds In 12 Weeks

I was always a skinny kid. Growing up my relatives would say, “Boy, you’re going to dry up and blow away.” When I got to college I weighed 145 lbs. By the time I graduated in 2003 I was at a much more appropriate 160. But in my early twenties something changed and I quickly ballooned up to the low 200s. For most of the last ten years I weighed about 215 lbs. Something needed to change and I knew it. Throughout that decade I knew I needed to lose about forty pounds. But I never thought I had what it took to lose the weight. And I’m getting older. I’m just shy of thirty-five. Every year I feel closer and closer to my early fifties. That may seem silly, but one of my grandfathers and an uncle both died of massive stroke in their early 50’s, and my other grandfather had a massive heart attack in his early 50’s and later needed a heart transplant. It felt to me as if every year my time to get healthy was growing shorter and shorter. To the extent that I have any effect on it, I want to be around for my wife and kids for as long as possible. Earlier this year I got the push I needed to make a life change and I lost 40 lbs. in twelve weeks. In mid-May I weighed 215. Today I weigh 172.

I’m writing this for people who are where I was. Who know they need to make a change but aren’t sure they can. You can do it! If I could do it, I truly believe that anyone can. How’d I do it? The short answer is that I walked a lot more and ate healthier, smaller portions. It really was as simple as that. I didn’t count calories, I didn’t take pills, I didn’t do any kind of crash diet. I didn’t do any running and I didn’t have a gym membership. Saying it happened through diet and exercise is simple. Actually doing it was much harder. To put it another way, we often have the right knowledge but lack the right motivation. Changing your behavior and breaking bad habits is the hard part. But first, I want to talk about the push I needed to get started.

The Biggest Loser

My company held a “biggest loser” competition. The goal was to lose at least ten percent of initial body weight over a period of twelve weeks. I wasn’t eager to participate, but as the deadline to sign up approached I thought, “Well, twelve weeks isn’t that long.” So I signed up. It wasn’t easy. The first four days of my new lifestyle were horrible. I felt terrible, was grouchy, and constantly hungry. If this was how it was going to be for twelve weeks, I was sunk! But you know what? After those first four days my body started to adjust to its new reality. The discomfort went away. It wasn’t easy after that, but I no longer felt like I was going to die. I could do this. Every Thursday morning we had an official weigh-in, and the team member who was organizing the competition would send out a spreadsheet of how we did and include some encouraging tips.

So what was it about this competition that got me to finally change my lifestyle? I’m not totally sure. But it offered a specific set of goals, some structure, some encouragement, and some accountability. I think all of those things helped me stay focused over the course of that twelve weeks.

10,000 Steps

One of the things I decided to do early on was walk at least 10,000 steps every day, and except for a few days here and there I did that consistently over the course of the twelve weeks. There’s a sense in which this is easy. It’s a low-impact exercise that won’t leave you feeling exhausted afterward. That means that it’s easy to control. What makes it challenging is that it takes a lot of time. You’ve got to be very intentional. So what did I do? I became a mall-walker. Yep. A mall-walker. It’s not glamorous, and it’s not cool. But it works. Every week day I would go across the street to the mall and walk laps. If I didn’t get all of my steps in by the end of my work day, I walked around my neighborhood when I got home. On the weekends I would usually go out to a walking trail we have near our house and knock out all or most of my 10,000 steps in one walk. I tracked my progress with my Apple Watch. It was tremendously helpful to have that data at my fingertips. You don’t have to buy an Apple Watch (though I do love mine), but I highly recommend having some kind of smart watch or smart bracelet that can give you meaningful data about your daily physical activity.

Smaller, Healthier Portions

Exercise alone didn’t do it. I had to radically change the way I was eating. I consumed too much processed sugar, and too much fried food. And I ate too much at each meal. My wife was a huge help and encouragement to me. In the mornings she would make me a fruit smoothie and for lunch and dinner I typically had grilled chicken and a salad. There were other meals I had, but baked chicken and salad became my staple for most of the lunches and dinners during this period. I didn’t have an official cheat day, but if we had a team lunch at work or a meal out with friends or family I would eat out. But even on those occasions I ate a smaller portion and I’ve had very few sugary drinks and essentially no candy or sweet foods of any sort. I also made sure that I didn’t eat at all after dinner until breakfast the next morning. During this time I also increased my water intake. I keep a big water bottle at my desk at work and refill it often.

Do You Feel Better?

That’s a question I’ve gotten a lot since I lost the weight. In some ways it’s easy to answer and in some ways it’s not. Though I lost the weight in a relatively short time, it still came off gradually. So in some ways I don’t feel any different. But I’m also sure that if I could put the weight back on suddenly for a single day I’d notice a big difference! But I do feel a lot better about myself. I like the way I look now much better than before, and I love being able to fit into clothes that I haven’t worn in years. Also, before I started this journey I had chronic acid reflux. Every night I ate multiple calcium tablets and was often up for hours with extreme discomfort. All of that went away entirely as soon as I changed my lifestyle. I am very happy to leave that far behind.

What Happens Next

I can tell you this: I don’t want to ever put that weight back on. I hope and pray it never happens, but it will if I don’t stay focused. I’m still walking every day, but I’ve changed my focus from walking 10,000 steps to burning 600 active calories. (This still works out to 11,000 or 12,000 steps a day.) I’m also slowly working in muscle-building/toning exercises using an app on my Apple TV. I’m also still being very careful about what I eat. I don’t expect to change my diet much, though I do allow myself a little more freedom. Crucially, I’m still weighing myself regularly, in my case every morning. This allows me to track fluctuations in my weight and better understand what’s happening in my body. That may sound simple, but prior to starting the competition I never weighed myself regularly. If you don’t watch your weight, it’s all too easy for it to get out of control. Now if I see myself gaining weight, I can make adjustments to bring it back down.

If I Can Do It, You Can Do It Too!

I spent ten years of my life as an overweight person. I don’t want to ever go through that again. If you’re reading this and my situation has resonated with you, you CAN change your lifestyle! It won’t happen overnight. It may not happen as fast for you as it did for me, or it may happen faster. Every person’s body is different. But I firmly believe that if you do what I did, you will see your body change for the better! If you have any questions I’d be happy to try to answer them!

[jwsherrod]

How To Track Movie Deals On iTunes

Until recently I had always been a Blu-ray guy. After all, it is indisputably the best format for picture quality and sound. However, in the last several months, iTunes has won me over as the primary way I buy movies. Call me lazy, but I prefer not having to get up and put a disc in a player. Couple that with the seeming eternity of Blu-ray load times and unskipable commercials and trailers, and the convenience is real. It’s also great to be able to buy a film and watch it instantly when you want to. 

However, getting a good deal on a movie is a little more challenging. Since so many companies are competing on price for Blu-rays, it’s easy to find a great deal on movies in that format. Heck, you can go down to your local Walmart and rifle through the $8 bin and find some good titles. The good news is, there are ways to get really good deals on movies in iTunes, and I’ve developed a system for doing so. Although the image above is a screenshot of the iTunes app for Mac, I do the majority of my purchasing and all of my watching via the iTunes Movies app for Apple TV. Pricing changes frequently in the iTunes Store. Here are four ways of finding deals on iTunes movies:

1. Browse the iTunes Movies app - Yep, this is the simplest (though not the best) way to find deals on movies. Go to almost any category or genre in the iTunes Movies app and you’re likely to be presented with a section featuring movies in that category that are $7.99 or less.

2. Buy the Blu-ray - A lot of Blu-ray discs come with a card inside that allows you to download a digital copy. I recently bought the 20th anniversary Independence Day Blu-ray at Walmart for $7.99 just for the digital copy because that was the cheapest way to get it that I could find at the time. I’ve never even put the disc in my Blu-ray player and probably never will. The process for redeeming a digital copy can be a little tricky, but once you do it, it’s in your iTunes library forever. If the iTunes copy has iTunes Extras (which is the iTunes version of bonus features) you’ll get those too as I did with Independence Day. But you’ve gotta read the description carefully because not all Blu-rays come with a digital copy, and of the ones that do there are some that aren’t compatible with iTunes.

3. Download the Movie Of The Day app - This is an iOS app from 20th Century Fox, so it only helps you find deals on movies from that studio, but every day it will present you with a new movie discount that’s good for that day only. Usually the deal price is $4.99 but sometimes it’s higher than that. You can even enable notifications for the app so that it will remind you to open the app every day and see what that day’s deal is.

4. Blu-ray.com - This is my favorite way to keep up with iTunes Movie deals. I’ve used this great website for years because their reviewers meticulous rate Blu-ray releases for picture and audio quality. While all Blu-rays are HD, there’s a wide variety of the quality of transfers from film to Blu-ray, and this website is a great way to know what you’re getting before you buy. They also have an iTunes section. There are a few different ways of tracking deals via this website, but the page I visit every day is the Lowest Prices page. It refreshes every day and shows the day’s newest lowest prices. For example, The Big Lebowski is on sale in iTunes right now for just $4.99 in HD and with iTunes Extras. (But may not be by the time you’re reading this.)

I hope this has been helpful, and if it has, please consider sharing on Facebook or Twitter!

[jwsherrod]

Trailer Thoughts: Justice League Special Comic-Con Footage

I know this blog series is called “Trailer Thoughts”, but I’m not quite sure what to make of this first look at Justice League. As I mentioned yesterday in my post on the new Wonder Woman trailer, I haven’t seen Batman V Superman because of how put off I am by Zack Snyder’s vision of Superman. I mention that because I don’t have a sense of how that movie treated these characters beyond what they revealed in the various teasers and trailers. 

In a sense, this trailer embodies just how much catching up D.C. has to do to get to where Marvel is. It’s going to be impossible for general audiences to watch this film and not think of The Avengers. This trailer sort of has Bruce Wayne filling the Samuel L. Jackson role of building the team, but I was surprised by just how jokey they went with him. It really feels like they’re trying to make Ben Affleck the Robert Downey Jr. of this franchise. The scene where we see Flash’s perspective of time slowing down is all-too reminiscent of the work 20th Century Fox has done with Quicksilver. Cyborg looks unpleasantly similar to Deathlok from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. I say unpleasantly because neither looks very good or realistic. I also personally find it sort of painful to see someone other than Grant Gustin in the role of Barry Allen. He’s so good in that role on the Flash TV show that it’s going to be hard for me to be won over by any other actor. On the other hand, as a Stargate fan it’s always great to see Jason Momoa in any role.

At the end of the day, I have a feeling this movie isn’t for me. It’s another D.C. film from Zack Snyder, complete with this garish visual aesthetic and horrifying betrayal of Superman’s character.

[jwsherrod]

Trailer Thoughts: Wonder Woman Comic-Con Trailer

A slew of trailers for upcoming movies were released at the recent Comic-Con, and perhaps the most talked about is the above trailer for Wonder Woman. I’ve been very down on the new D.C. Comics movie universe (DCU). I thought Man Of Steel was a dreadful betrayal of the character of Superman (my favorite superhero) and on those grounds I voted with my money and did not see Batman V Superman. That said, I’m intrigued by what I’ve seen from the marketing for Suicide Squad and I’m not opposed to seeing non-Superman DCU films.

Right off the bat let me say that the new Wonder Woman trailer provides a tremendous first impression of this movie. First of all, it dispenses with the garish Zack Snyder aesthetic of the previous two DCU films for something with a lot more color and pop. The Wonder Woman costume itself looks brighter, and more like the traditional costume.

Secondly, it’s a period piece, and I love period movies! And on top of that, it’s a period superhero movie, and I really love those. At least in theory. I was so hoping that Captain America: The First Avenger would basically be a gritty, Saving Private Ryan-like WWII featuring Captain America. Instead we got Nazis with ray guns. Based on the Wonder Woman trailer, I’m going into hope-mode that we’re going to get a realistic-feeling WWI movie featuring Wonder Woman. Frankly, it’s exciting to see any movie tackle this era in world history, an era that is woefully under explored by Hollywood.

As a fan of the Fast And Furious series I’m automatically predisposed to appreciate Gal Godot, but I do wish Wonder Woman looked less like a model and more like a warrior. There’s no doubt Godot is in great shape, but I wish she looked more bulked-up. I’ve never found Chris Pine to be a particularly good Captain Kirk, but he is a good actor, so I’m looking forward to seeing him in this. The movie also features Robin Wright, who of course has been doing fantastic work on House Of Cards of late.

Wonder Woman is currently scheduled for a June 2, 2017 release, so we’ve got a bit of time before we can see this one. So far though, I’m intrigued and am looking forward to seeing more!

[jwsherrod]

Thoughts On Game Of Thrones

I’m a newcomer to Game Of Thrones. I’ve never read the books, and had never seen the show until a couple of months ago. (I’ve never been an HBO subscriber.) What piqued my interest in the show was just how wildly popular it is. Every Sunday night when the show is in season, Twitter lights up for the hour that it’s on. I was starting to feel like I was missing out on today’s version of “Lost”. So I began borrowing Blu-ray disc sets of the show from a friend who has all five seasons that have thus far been released on home video. I’ve now completed watching through those first five seasons, and I have some thoughts.

At the end of the day I’m going to roundly reject this series and recommend you don’t start watching it if you’ve never seen it. But this is going to be slightly different than my typical thrashing of a movie I don’t like because I’m largely not attacking Game Of Thrones on plot or technical details. And furthermore, even when I write a scathing review of a movie I don’t like, I don’t usually recommend you don’t watch it because, after all, taste is subjective. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Game Of Thrones is largely a political drama set in the fictional land of Westeros. Civilization is stuck in a sort of fictional Middle Ages, but magical elements are sprinkled in, albeit not generally so directly as in, say, Lord Of The Rings. There’s a sense in which you can think of Game Of Thrones as a medieval House Of Cards.

In terms of influence, it feels like it owes an awful lot to Frank Herbert’s Dune, a novel I like very much. Both feature feudal societies. Both feature warring great houses. Both feature machinations for territorial control. The maesters of GoT are very similar to the mentats of Dune. Ned Stark in GoT being asked by the king to come to Kings Landing to serve as Hand of the King is very similar to the Emperor in Dune asking House Atreides to govern Arrakis. Ned Stark’s death and its impact on the family in GoT is very similar to the death of Duke Leto Atreides in Dune, and I think you can even draw some parallels between other characters in the two properties - Jon Snow/Paul Atreides and Arya Stark/Alia Atreides. In fact, these two properties have so many similarities that I’m quite sure that if HBO or Netflix were to do a Dune miniseries (which I would welcome!), I’m quite sure that the general public would consider Dune a rip-off of GoT, even though Dune preceded A Song Of Ice And Fire by thirty-one years.

Don’t take the above catalog of similarities as a criticism. It’s mostly just something I find interesting. And if you’re a fan of GoT and haven’t read Dune, you should pick up a copy immediately!

The production values on Game Of Thrones are quite good, and the show runners do a great job of realizing the world. From a production standpoint my only criticism is that the show is often very dark and dingy looking. No doubt a creative decision, but to me it makes it somewhat unpleasing to look at. It almost has a Zack Snyder aesthetic. That is something that improved over the course of the first five seasons however.

While I find most of the characters profoundly unlikeable, they’re at least generally well-conceived and well-acted. 

So why am I so down on Game Of Thrones? Let’s get into that now:

First, there’s almost no one to root for. Across the first five seasons I only see two characters worth rooting for: Ned Stark and his son Jon Snow. Ned is portrayed as essentially the only honest man in the country. He’s played by Sean Bean who has always been one of my favorite actors, so that’s a plus, but he’s not in the show for very long. The show almost portrays Ned’s good qualities as a detriment to him. The show definitely seems to assert that the only way to accomplish anything in the world of Westeros by being ruthless and cunning. Jon Snow also has his father’s honesty and general decency. You can debate me on this point, but I think those two characters are the only ones worth rooting for. And that makes it a deeply depressing show for me. While it’s sort of natural in a sense to compare Game Of Thrones and Lord Of The Rings (both have Sean Bean!) it’s also a little unfair too. But in LOTR, despite the odds being against the heroes and the prospects for their future bleak, there was always hope because the central characters were fundamentally good, and they always found good allies along the way to help them. There’s really no such hope in GoT. I wouldn’t be surprised to get to the end of the show and find that we’ve spent all these seasons watching a drama that takes place entirely in Hell.

Secondly, this show is gratuitous in almost every sense of the word. It’s full of nudity, often full frontal. While it’s true that sometimes important expositional dialog is delivered in scenes where characters are naked, it’s just as true that that dialog could be delivered while the characters are clothed. And the overwhelming majority of the nudity in Game Of Thrones is clearly there solely for prurient reasons. I also doubt it’s possible that any show has used the word “rape” as often as it comes up on GoT. A lot of the violence and torture on the show is also over-the-top and characters like Ramsey Bolton are cartoonishly gratuitously cruel.

Game Of Thrones is undoubtedly a cultural phenomenon and if you’re not watching it already you might be tempted to see what the fuss is all about. My recommendation? Don’t. Your soul will be healthier for avoiding it.

[jwsherrod]

My Latest Phone: iPhone SE

I’ve never been one to buy a new iPhone every year. In fact, I’ve only owned four different iPhone models: the original iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 5C, and now the iPhone SE. Not since the iPhone 3GS have I bought the latest and greatest iPhone. To me the product has long since matured to the point where even an older model is sufficient for my needs and sits at a price point I’m willing to pay.

My wife and I each got an iPhone 5C just slightly over two years ago. I got the blue one, and she got the pink one. Much as the iPhone SE is now, the 5C was brand new at the time, but was introduced to be the “cheaper” iPhone. At the time, the iPhone 5S was the top-of-the line model, and the iPhone 6 would debut that Fall. Honestly, my 5C has been a great phone. The main thing that pushed me into getting a new iPhone at this point was that 16 GB of storage was just no longer acceptable to me. I was constantly having to delete content to eke out a little free space on the phone, and running with so little free space was causing my phone to run very slowly, often freezing for several seconds mid-scroll.

The iPhone SE, which was unveiled just this year back in March, wound up fitting so perfectly with my needs that it’s almost like Apple designed an iPhone just for me. I could certainly never go with the 6S Plus. The plus-sized iPhones are just way too big for me. I could compromise and go with the 4.7″ iPhone 6S, but honestly I still like smaller iPhones. They’re easier to pocket, and I can reach across the entire screen with my thumb without having to contort my hand. I even love the name iPhone SE. It’s a nice throwback to the iconic Macintosh SE from the 1980′s. 

The SE also meets my price needs. The 64 GB iPhone SE is $499. I don’t want to spend more than $500, even every couple of years on a phone. I also don’t want to make mostly payments on a phone. Even at 0% interest, we’re still talking about going into debt to buy a phone, and that’s simply not something I’m willing to do. Buying the phone outright was a necessity for me.

Of course, it had been rumored that Apple would launch an updated 4″ iPhone, but the pleasant surprise was that the iPhone SE packs most of the guts of the iPhone 6S in the body of the iPhone 5S. This includes the processor and graphics coprocessor and the camera. This isn’t what Apple did with the 5C at all. The 5C packed the guts of the then year-old iPhone 5 into a slightly altered case. The only significant difference (off the top of my head) is that the iPhone SE doesn’t support 3D touch. (But I can live with that.)

When I finally went to the Apple Store to buy my SE, I knew I wanted the 64 GB space gray AT&T model. Even though the SE had been on sale for several weeks at this point, I was dismayed to learn that they were sold out of the model I wanted. I knew rose gold and gold were completely out of the question for me, so I left the store and walked around the mall trying to decide if I could pull off having a white (silver) iPhone. Ultimately I decided I couldn’t because it would clash with my space gray Apple Watch. (Hey, listen. Fashion is silly, ok?) I went back into the store and talked with another salesperson who double-checked. Sure enough, they were out of the 64 GB, space gray model on AT&T, BUT they had a T-Mobile model. Given that the radios are the same, the sales person said he thought it would work fine once they moved my AT&T sim over. He went back to the back to confer with other employees and came back and announced that they were 99% sure this would work. “Let’s do it,” I said. Sure enough, it worked just fine and I spent another half an hour at the store restoring my last iCloud backup to it.

Believe it or not, I’ve never really loved the design introduced with the iPhone 4 that continued through the iPhone 5S, and has now been revived in the form of the SE. While it’s an unmistakably beautiful design (the Leica camera of phones), I never liked how emotionally cold it felt, or how the sharp edges felt in the hand. Honestly, while the iPhone 3G/3GS isn’t my favorite iPhone design I think it’s certainly the friendliest. I still have my old 3GS and every time I pick it up I’m struck by how comfortable it is to hold. So I knew I was going to need a case for my SE. I went with Apple’s leather case and picked up a dark blue one. And I love it! It makes the phone much more comfortable to hold, fits snugly, looks great, and rises up just slightly above the height of the phone screen, so if it were to fall directly on its face, the actual glass would stand a chance of being protected.

The phone itself has been amazing. It’s fast, has plenty of space, and has a great camera. Honestly camera quality might be the most important feature in a phone these days as it’s the camera we’re going to take the majority of our pictures with. This is also the first phone I’ve ever owned with Touch ID, the feature which let’s you unlock your phone with your fingerprint. It’s probably my favorite feature on the phone, honestly.

As an addendum, it’s interesting that Apple appears to have not correctly understood what customers are looking for in a phone size. When the iPhone 6 debuted, it had been clear for a couple of years that Apple needed to make larger iPhones. Aesthetic/usability arguments aside, there were enough people buying large Android phones that there was no doubt Apple needed larger phones in its lineup. But it seems clear that Apple underestimated how many people want a small phone with the latest hardware. Even now, iPhone SE models regularly sell out, weeks after the phone first went on sale. Hopefully they’ll have a better understanding of the market going forward.

[jwsherrod]

Thoughts On The iPhone And The Headphone Jack

Oh, boy. It’s only July and we already have a controversy about the next iPhone, which probably won’t make its debut until September. The current hot rumor about the iPhone “7” is that it won’t have a headphone jack. Despite the fact that Apple has made no announcement yet about the next iPhone at all. Every Apple-focused blog and podcast has been abuzz about the latest rumor. Nilay Patel penned an incendiary piece over at The Verge titled, Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid. John Gruber responded in a piece at Daring Fireball titled Headphone Jacks Are The New Floppy Drives essentially looking back at the history the ports Apple has abandoned and musing that those decisions usually work out for the best in the long run. The people I feel most sorry for in all of this are the poor folks staffing the various Apple Stores. I worked in Apple Retail for over seven years, and I know what it’s like to get questions about unannounced products that there can be no good answer to.

I can tell you this: I just recently purchase an iPhone SE, and my guess is that I will never plug anything into the headphone jack. I love listening to audio content on my iPhone, mostly podcasts. I used to always use Apple’s wired earbuds for this purpose, with the wire channeled down my shirt and into my pants pocket to the iPhone. This presented some problems. First of all, the cord would frequently get horribly twisted. Second, and worse, the ear buds would wear out after about three months. I went through probably three sets in a nine month period before finally saying, “enough is enough.”

Last October, after seeing several friends with them, I bought my first pair of Bluetooth earbuds, the LG HBS-750 to be specific. If you don’t have anything like this yourself, you’ve probably seen tons of people with this type of headphones. True, you’ll look a little nerdy wearing them, (there are less nerdy Bluetooth earbuds available) but mine have worked solidly for the last nine months. I love using Bluetooth headphones, and I don’t see myself going back to a wired set. Millions of people have already joined me in this.

That’s not to say there are no downsides to a Bluetooth headset. I have to charge them about every other day. It’s often finicky about connecting and I have to go into the Bluetooth settings on my iPhone and force the connection more times than I’d like. And sometimes if I move my head just right the audio goes choppy for a moment. But all of these real negatives are outweighed by the convenience of not having a wired connection and the reliability of wireless headphones as opposed to what I had used before.

If Apple removes the headphone jack from the iPhone starting later this year, (and again it’s an “if” at this point) I suspect it’ll be in favor of a wireless solution. When it comes to things like ports, Apple likes to skate toward where it thinks the puck is going, not where the puck is. Despite all of the advantages of the traditional wired headphone port, the future is wireless. If it happens, I hope that’s why it happens, and I can’t wait to see what Apple’s wireless earbud solution is.

[jwsherrod]

Review - Independence Day: Resurgence

Independence Day is one of my favorite movies of all time. If you want to read why I love it so much, in gushing form, read my blog post on it here. It is no joke that I’ve waited twenty years for a sequel to this movie. I remember being in Walden Books in Governor’s Square Mall back home in Tallahassee not long after the original film came out and thumbing through a licensed novelization of what supposedly happened after the events of the first movie. But that sequel never came. When Independence Day: Resurgence (hereafter referred to as IDR) was announced, I was ecstatic. Since then I’ve said I was looking forward to IDR more than I was to the new Star Wars trilogy. 

Look, if Independence Day isn’t your cup of tea, I get it. But Roland Emmerich’s bonkers sense of humor and action just generally work for me. That’s not to say I like all of his movies, but he’s made some that I really love, particularly Independence Day and Stargate. 

Yeah, yeah, but how was IDR? First of all, it’s not as good as the first one. But I don’t think anyone should have expected that. Independence Day was Roland Emmerich’s crowning achievement. And while I’m always interested in what he’s up to, he’ll never top it, and that’s ok. In particular, the original Independence Day masterfully walked that laser fine line balancing the grave threat that humanity faced on the one hand with light-hearted humor and genuine human warmth on the other. While IDR tries to hit all of the beats of the original film, it never quite lands in that perfect groove. It also never quite gives us the great little character moments the original had.

And while we get to catch up with a lot of the characters that we know and love from the original film, the absence of Will Smith really hurts this film. To add insult to injury, my screening had the trailer for Suicide Squad before it. It was like having it rubbed in the audiences’ faces that Will Smith is in a summer blockbuster this year, but not the Independence Day sequel. In a sense IDR replaced Will Smith’s character with two young fighter pilots. Both actors are ok, but none of them have Smith’s charisma or effective one-liners.

Also, the original Independence Day was relatable because it took place in the real world of 1996. So we got to see the aliens destroy our real cities and humanity fight back with real military hardware. In IDR it’s still 2016, but it’s like an alternate 2016 because now humanity has adapted alien technology to our own. So characters can effortlessly travel from the Earth to the Moon and back using anti-gravity technology and fusion drives. That made the world of IDR much less familiar.

On the other side of that coin, it was fascinating to take a tour of the 2016 of the Independence Day universe and see exactly how mankind has learned to harness alien technology to its advantage. It felt like an homage to H.G. Wells’ novel The War Of The Worlds in which man learned how to create flying machines by reverse engineering alien technology after an invasion.

And despite Will Smith’s absence, it really was great to reconnect with so many of the characters from the original. It’s always a delight to see Jeff Goldblum in anything. The movie of course had a lot of humor. In fact, I think it had even more of it than the original. Brent Spiner had more to do in this movie and got probably more laughs than any other character. The movie also does a pretty masterful job of making fun of itself including a dog-rescue scene played for laughs because of the much lampooned dog scene in the original, and once again a gag that references Goldblum’s role in Jurassic Park.

I don’t actually expect IDR to do well in the theaters, but if you love the first movie, you should definitely go see IDR. Keep your expectations low, but it’s a fun mindless popcorn blockbuster that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I’d sign up for a third one if Roland and the studio want to make it.

[jwsherrod]

Recapping WWDC 2016 Part Three: macOS

iOS may be where I spend most of my personal computing time, but the Mac was my first Apple love. I always eagerly look forward to hearing what Apple has in store for my favorite desktop operating system. To start with, this year Apple changed the name of the operating system. When I got my first Mac, the operating system was called Mac OS. When OS X debuted fifteen years ago, the name officially became Mac OS X. Then in 2012, Apple did the unthinkable: they dropped the word “Mac” leaving only OS X. I and many others were appalled at this. Fortunately this year Apple made amends for that mistake. The Macintosh operating system is now officially macOS. This is mostly great news. First of all, OS X was a confusing name. To this day lots of people say “oh ess ex” when they should be saying “oh ess ten”. And who can blame them? I think dropping the Roman numeral and bringing back the word “mac” is fantastic. I only wish it would revert fully to “Mac OS” with the capital “M” and space in tact, but I understand that “macOS” harmonizes nicely with Apple’s other operating systems (watchOS, iOS, and tvOS). Going into the event, I was curious how Apple was going to handle the numbering scheme given that everyone expected the name change. Would they call it macOS 11? macOS 1? macOS 10.12? While I expected the latter, you could make a case for the other options as well. In the end, it is indeed macOS 10.12. They’re also retaining the California places for the marketing names, so this release is macOS Sierra. It’s a great name, and certainly rolls off the tongue better than El Capitan. While the overall Macintosh part of the presentation was fairly short, there were some important things mentioned:

Siri - At long last, Siri is coming to the Mac. You can trigger it via the Dock or menu bar icons, or set up a keyboard shortcut. She’ll essentially do the same things she does on iOS, but with the added benefit of drag and drop. Ask Siri to look up photos of your favorite college football team, and you’ll get a grid of photos that you can then drag from to add to a document. Neat. You can also ask her to find specific files for you. I’m most looking forward to being able to ask Siri to create calendar appointments for me at work. I hate creating them manually in Calendar.app!

Apple Pay - Apple Pay too is coming to the Mac via Safari. If a merchant offers Apple Pay as a payment method, you’ll be able to authenticate the payment via your Apple Watch, or with Touch ID on your iPhone. I hope every online retailer makes this feature available.

Continuity - Continuity is the shared feature between iOS and macOS which allows your Mac and your iPhone to work in concert. I mentioned this in my watchOS blog post, but you’ll now be able to unlock your Mac just by sitting down in front of it while wearing your Apple Watch. A truly incredible feature that your company’s IT department will likely block for security reasons. However, it’s a great feature for use with your personal devices. They’ve also added shared copy and paste. So you can copy something on your Mac and instantly paste it on your iPhone or vice versa. Neat!

iCloud - A few interesting things with iCloud. First, your Mac’s Desktop and Documents folders will now be synced to iCloud so you’ll always have access to that data. If you’re logged into iCloud on more than one Mac, those folders will be instantly synced between each one, and you can even access those files on your iOS device. This next part is both awesome and scary sounding. I’ll let Apple’s macOS website explain:

When you need more space, Optimized Storage makes room by storing infrequently used documents, Mail attachments, photos, and previously viewed iTunes movies in the cloud. Files you’ve used recently always remain on your Mac along with optimized versions of your photos. You can easily find every file right where you saved it. Just open it up and download the original as if it was always there.

That sounds magical, but the real question is, how reliable is it? For that we’ll just have to wait and see. Sierra can also optimize your drive by getting rid of old items in your Trash can, caches, app installers etc. I hope this works well, and I assume it will be turned off by default. If it fails, it could be a spectacular disaster, especially for novice users. If it works well, it can be a game changer.

New File System - This wasn’t mentioned during the keynote, but Apple has announced a new file system, called APFS. The file system is that part of the computer which governs how files are managed on disk. I’ll let Apple’s Developer website explain why this is important:

HFS+ and it’s predecessor HFS are more than 30 years old. These file systems were developed in an era of floppy disks and spinning hard drives, where file sizes were calculated in kilobytes or megabytes. Today, solid-state drives store millions of files, accounting for gigabytes or terabytes of data. There is now also a greater importance placed on keeping sensitive information secure and safe from prying eyes.

A new file system is needed to meet the current needs of Apple products, and support new technologies for decades to come.

APFS might wind up being the most exciting thing (at least for a nerd like me) to come to the Mac in a decade. As a Mac-focused IT guy I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-image a Mac due to file system corruption. However, it’s currently only in beta for developers and won’t be officially released until next year.

macOS Sierra looks to be a great release. Unfortunately, none of my four Macs are cable of running it. That said, my newest Mac is eight years old, so I wasn’t totally surprised at this news. Still, it’s a little sad. Fortunately I’ll still be able to run it at work. Can’t wait for 2017 and APFS!

[jwsherrod]

Recapping WWDC 2016 Part Two: Apple Watch

Ahead of WWDC, I highlighted three things I wanted to see Apple do with watchOS: more speed, a better use of the side button, and more watch faces. With watch OS 3, Apple delivered on all fronts and added lots of little niceties that I would never have thought of. Apple touts these achievements with the tagline, “Feels like a whole new watch.” I’d say that’s accurate. These changes represent a huge rethink of some core watchOS functions and feels like a big maturing of the platform. And I must say that the watchOS portion of the keynote was my favorite.

Speed - I was really skeptical that Apple could get more speed short of new hardware, but if it works as well as the demo at WWDC, they worked wonders. Now your favorite apps are stored in memory, so when you navigate to one, it opens nearly instantly. This is a nice change given that in watchOS 2 it often takes so long to launch an app that you have to lower and raise your wrist to get the watch to wake up again. Dramatically improving the speed takes away the single largest pain point of using an Apple Watch, and may cause me to reconsider my view that it’s not really an app platform.

The Side Button - Currently, pressing the side button takes you to your friends list where you can quickly draw a picture, send an animated emoji, or send your heartbeat to an Apple Watch-wearing friend. From the moment Apple introduced the Apple Watch this seemed like a poor use of this button, and everyone seemed to agree. It must have been a case of group think, or someone at Apple who really strongly pushed for the feature. That’s fortunately changing in watchOS 3. Now when you press that button you get to slide through your favorite apps. Apple calls it “The Dock”, mirroring the nomenclature from macOS and iOS. This makes far more sense, and eliminates the “glances” interaction that has existed in watchOS to this point.

Watch Faces - I really wanted to see some new watch faces, and fortunately Apple delivered. Unfortunately I didn’t see a face that looks as if it was designed for a rectangular watch, but it’s possible they didn’t show off each new face. My three-year-old daughter is going to love the Minnie Mouse watch face as Minnie is a favorite character of hers. In fact, last night I showed her the current Mickey face and she immediately asked, “Where’s Minnie?” My favorite new faces are the activity-centric ones where the activity rings are brought front and center. (You can see one of them in the image above.) I may wind up using one of those.

Activity - This is one of the things I love most about my Apple Watch, particularly because I’m currently working to lose weight. In watchOS 3 Apple is bringing interactivity to activity by letting you and your friends share your activity data with each other. (The tagline on Apple’s website says: Share. Compare. Compete.) Other fitness trackers have already had similar features, and I can’t wait to have it on Apple Watch. Seeing how your friends are doing could prove to be a great motivator. You can even taunt your friends right from the activity app. Apple also introduced activity enhancements specifically for people in wheelchairs. Very cool. They also introduced a new app called Breathe that periodically takes you through a deep breathing routine.

A few other features of note: hold down the side button for a few seconds and your watch will call 911 for you. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it can absolutely save someone’s life in an emergency. However, I’m concerned this could lead to accidental calls, particularly if a child gets a hold of the watch like mine tend to do. Maybe it only works if it’s on the wrist? Your IT department will hate this next feature (and likely block it), but you’ll be able to unlock your Mac just by approaching it while wearing your Apple Watch. Lastly, Apple Pay now works within apps. As Apple puts it on their website: “Reload your gift card. Add minutes to your parking meter. Order your favorite takeout meal. Now you can securely pay within apps using Apple Pay — right from your watch.”

watchOS 3 looks like a tremendous update for Apple Watch, and I can’t wait to get it this Fall.

[jwsherrod]

Recapping WWDC 2016 Part One: Apple TV

Today Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference with its traditional keynote, where it talked about updates to watchOS, macOS, iOS, and of course: tvOS. It was a keynote that lasted more than two hours, and yet had so many new things to discuss that it each segment felt rushed. And if you weren’t careful, there were a lot of details to miss. Unlike in keynotes past where it seemed as if Apple’s executives had forgotten the Apple TV, our favorite little black box is now one of Apple’s main software development platforms and WWDC is a conference for developers. Here’s what Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, had to say about Apple TV today:

First, he gave some tvOS statistics. He highlighted the fact that on the old Apple TV, Apple had eventually grown its library of streaming video channels to 80 and announced that on the new Apple TV, developers had pushed that number to over 1300. He further announced that after just seven months there are now over 6000 total apps in the tvOS App Store. He then announced a handful of new apps coming soon to Apple TV. Unfortunately there was (as expected) no mention of Amazon Prime Video. However, Cue did announce that Sling TV, an online-only cable TV service alternative, was available for Apple TV starting today. This is a long anticipated app launch for Apple TV. Cue also announced that Fox Sports Go would be arriving this summer. Finally, he mentioned a handful of games that would soon be coming, including NBA 2K and Minecraft: Story Mode. After that it was time to talk about new Apple TV features.

This is a sample of the full post I wrote for my Apple TV blog, The Cupertino Hobby. To read the rest and get the full details on what Apple announced, click here.

[jwsherrod]

Thoughts Ahead Of WWDC 2016

Tomorrow Apple kicks off the 2016 edition of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. While the conference itself is specifically intended for the many developers of apps for Apple’s various software platforms, the opening keynote is intended for a general audience. It’s a time in which Apple typically unveils the upcoming versions of its various operating systems and web services, and also often releases new hardware as well. While I’m certainly not privy to the specifics of what Apple’s going to talk about, it’s always fun to speculate.

The Macintosh - I’m actually not super interested in seeing a new hardware announcement for the Mac at WWDC. I’m pretty happy overall with the current lineup that Apple offers. There is one exception though. Apple hasn’t updated the Mac Pro in at least a couple of years. Personally, I’d love to see a return to something like the the “cheese grater” design first introduced with the PowerMac G5 and continuing through 2012. While the current “trash can” Mac Pro design is brilliant and beautiful, I’d much rather see the Mac Pro return to a design that allows for more after-purchase user customization. We’ll probably never see the device move back in the direction. But it would at least be nice to see the Mac Pro get updated CPUs and GPUs.

We may not see any new Mac hardware at this year’s WWDC, but we will at least get a cursory look at the next version of the Macintosh operating system. The rumors currently suggest that Apple will rename OS X to something familiar yet new: macOS. While I’d personally prefer it to be “Mac OS”, at least macOS would be in keeping with Apple’s current operating system naming scheme and it will also be very nice to see the word “Mac” return to the name of the product, even if they insist on the lower case “m”. It will also be a less confusing name for customers. No longer will my skin crawl at the sound of “Oh Es Ex” coming out of someone’s mouth. My big question is this: how will the numbering scheme be affected? I’m not surprised that OS X has persisted for fifteen years. After all, early on in the OS X life cycle Steve Jobs proclaimed that it would carry the Mac for two decades. But will the new “macOS” continue the 10.x numbering scheme and be tagged 10.12, or will it go in another direction? I feel like 10.12 is the most likely path they’ll take, but who knows? They could either make it macOS 1.0 or macOS 11.0. (It’s worth pointing out that tvOS, Apple’s newest platform, is not at version 1.x but rather it’s 9.2.1, in keeping with the numbering scheme it had before it was an official development platform.) I’ll bet they also keep the California location naming scheme as well. I’ve been saying for a while that I want to see Hollywood as a name. Give me that, and make the wall paper a gorgeous view of the Hollywood sign and I’ll be a happy camper.

iOS - I have really no insight or even hunch into what they might do here. But it’s interesting that this year will bring us iOS 10, and humans love big round numbers like that. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to see Apple do something big for iOS 10 like some kind of UI shakeup. There have been rumors of a “dark mode” coming to iOS, and I have at least one friend who would be very happy to see that.

tvOS - I run a sometimes-updated blog called The Cupertino Hobby, and I wrote a piece today on what we may see regarding Apple TV at WWDC. You can check it out here.

watchOS - I’m not expecting Apple to announce new Apple Watch hardware at WWDC, but I certainly hope to see improvements to watchOS itself. The number on thing Apple Watch needs is more speed. I doubt there’s much Apple can do to address that short of new hardware, but it would be nice to see them address it in software any way they can. I also hope they’ve been paying attention to how customers are using Apple Watch. While I love my watch, I find myself rarely using an app. I’m not sure what the solution is to the “app problem” on Apple Watch, but I’m hopeful that Apple has been rethinking this. I’d also like to see the “friends” button be given another purpose. I rarely even want to message a friend, and when I do its usually a prank of some kind. That button would much better be used for something else. I’d also love to see additional watch faces. I don’t have a strong opinion whether or not Apple should open up watch face creation to developers, but I certainly hope that at least Apple has created some new faces. I’d personally love a face that is truly designed for a rectangular watch. The only way to get that on an Apple Watch currently is to buy the Apple Watch Hermés.

Siri - Developers have been asking for a Siri API for a long time, and I think it’s finally time to give them one, particularly as voice assistant competition from Google and Amazon has increased. Siri has seen steady improvements since its introduction, but it’s time for a big leap forward. I hope Apple has been working on some incredible new features for Siri, and I hope that it opens it up for developers to work their magic. There have been lots of rumors about Siri coming to Macintosh, and it’s about time.

Apple Pay - Perhaps my favorite service, Apple Pay is still not nearly “everywhere you want to be”. I’d love to see Apple announce some kind of push to get it in more retailers, and perhaps announce some big new partners. There have also been rumors that Apple will enable you to in some way send money person-to-person via Apple Pay, similar to other products like Venmo. This too would be a wonderful addition to the lineup.

[jwsherrod]

Review: Attack On Titan - Season One

Yeah, I can’t talk about a show without talking about the entire show. So you should know this post is chock full of spoilers. So don’t read this until you’ve seen the show, k?

I’m a little late to the game on this, but I recently finished watching season one (the only released season so far) or the wonderful 2013 anime series, Attack On Titan. I have to say, I have never seen a more incredible anime series, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The premise of the series is that there are giant human-like creatures called Titans who eat humans. To cope with this horror, humanity has built a kingdom within a massive system of walls. For the last century, mankind has lived in peace behind the shelter of their walls. Then one day, the titans breach the outer wall and begin eating people. The show follows three young people: Eren, who possesses an indomitable will and an all consuming desire to destroy the titans. Then there’s Mikasa, whose skills in combat are nearly unparalleled. Finally, there’s Armin, who possesses a brilliant mind. The show follows their progress as they join the military and eventually go into battle against the titans.

So what’s so special about this show? Well, it’s one of the most beautiful looking anime series I’ve ever seen. The titans are, of course, horrific, but the scenery and machines and cities are gorgeous. It’s also an intricately detailed show in terms of building a world and giving the viewer deep insight into lives of the people who live behind the walls, and the strategies and equipment the military uses to fight the titans. It also does a great job of fleshing out the different strata of society, the government, and the different military branches. It’s also one of the best series (animated or otherwise), in dealing with the nature and true horror of war, and the physical and mental toll it takes on those involved. Seriously, the only thing I can think to compare it to in that aspect is Band Of Brothers. It’s also a show full of amazing and varied characters.

One thing you should definitely know is that this show is extremely violent and extremely graphic in terms of blood and gore. It’s honestly shocking at times. This is definitely, definitely not a show for children.

DEFINITELY DON’T READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN THE SHOW. 

You still here? Ok, good. If there’s anything that let me down about the show, it’s that it still adheres to the popular anime trope of involving humans piloting mech suits. However, there’s a big and honestly interesting twist on it in this show. Instead of some humans piloting giant mech suits, some humans in Attack On Titan can form giant titan bodies that they themselves control from within. It was mildly disappointing at first that the show moved in that direction, but it really handles it well. I also thought it was really gutsy to build up Eren as the main character only to seemingly kill him off five episodes in. It was almost disappointing when they brought him back soon thereafter, and in the way they did. But these are minor complaints about things that are handled very well by the show.

I can’t say enough good things about this show. I was bummed to see that there’s only one season, and I desperately hope that a second season finds its way to Netflix as soon as possible. It definitely teased fascinating things to come, and built up enough mystery to keep me wanting more. Four stars out of four for Attack On Titan!

[jwsherrod]

Review - Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

Yeah, I can’t talk about a movie without talking about the entire movie. So you should know this post is chock full of spoilers. So don’t read this until you’ve seen the movie, k?

Tonight I finally sat down to watch The Abominable Bride, the Sherlock Christmas special from this last year. First a little background on my relationship with this show. I absolutely adore the first two seasons of Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are fantastic as Sherlock and Watson in contemporary London, and Andrew Scott’s off-kilter and very uncharacteristic take on Moriarty is delightful. But I found season three to be a steep decline in quality from the previous two seasons, and the way season three ended with Sherlock murdering his opponent after being beaten in a game of wits was absolutely appalling. What was more appalling is the way fans of the show just casually accepted Sherlock Holmes’s dark turn with little more than a shrug of the shoulders. (I wrote all about season three here. Check it out, it’s one of my better pieces.)

It was with some trepidation that I approached The Abominable Bride given what the show had devolved to last season, but at least since this one was ostensibly set in the classic Sherlock Holmes era of the 19th Century I had hoped I could shed the memory of recent episodes. Heck, I’d even be very cool with a complete series reboot that set the show in the past.

Unfortunately, The Abominable Bride is little more than a Holodeck episode. Remember the Holodeck? It’s that magical room in Star Trek: The Next Generation that can simulate any environment, real or fictional, complete with realistic characters to interact with. At least once a season there was an episode where the Enterprise crew would become trapped in the Holodeck, and often these episodes were tedious. In fact, more than once they were trapped within the world of Holmes and Moriarty. That’s essentially what The Abominable Bride is. In the last season of Sherlock they really played up the notion that Sherlock can essentially enter and explore his own mind in something the show calls a “mind palace”. Frankly, the way they handled it in season three was completely ridiculous, but it soars to new heights of silliness in The Abominable Bride. For most of the episode you think you’re actually just watching a “what if” version of Sherlock set in this earlier time period, but near the end of the episode you find that in fact this special is set within the main timeline of the show, and Sherlock is only entering his mind palace to simulate how he would have investigated this 100-year-old mystery in order to figure out what’s going on with Moriarty in the real world of the 21st Century. I found that to be a tremendous let down.

Let’s talk for a moment about what’s good: mainly it’s the actors. Again, Freeman and Cumberbatch are phenomenal in embodying these characters and are a real treat to watch. And Scott is so delightfully zany as Moriarty that it continues to be a shame that the show runners killed him off in season two. The supporting cast is phenomenal as well. It’s also a very good looking episode. The production quality on this show has always been top-notch.

Now back to what’s bad. The Abominable Bride has a heavy social justice angle dealing with how women are treated in 19th Century England. I have no trouble with using a teleplay to call attention to wrongs in society (heck, I’m a Trekkie for goodness sake), but this was like being hit over the head with a metal plate level of in-your-faceness. The actual resolution of the case was so silly that it didn’t feel anything like Sherlock episode: it felt like a Doctor Who episode, and not in a good way. Listen, I love Doctor Who. Steven Moffat produces both Sherlock and Doctor Who and frankly he’s running both shows into the ground. It really felt like it should’ve been Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman confronting the creepy secret society of angry women instead of Holmes and Watson.

Come on, BBC. Let’s hit the reset button on this show and pretend season three never happened. Or truly set the show in the 19th Century. But for goodness sake, let’s get someone new to run this show please.

[jwsherrod]

Review - Captain America: Civil War

Yeah, I can’t talk about a movie without talking about the entire movie. So you should know this post is chock full of spoilers. So don’t read this until you’ve seen the movie, k?

I almost hate to review Captain America: Civil War after only one viewing, because there’s a lot going on in this film, but I’m gonna do it anyway. The short answer is that, despite a messy third act (more on that later), I mostly liked this film. That was refreshing to me, because I didn’t care for either of the previous two Captain America films. However, ever since the first film I’ve loved the character of Captain America, and especially the way Chris Evans portrays him, and I’ve hoped we’d eventually get a good Captain America before Evans is no longer interested in doing these movies. And with Civil War, we finally have!

What I don’t really understand is why this film is called “Captain America: Civil War” instead of “The Avengers: Civil War”. It’s true that Hulk and Thor are missing, but they certainly have a quorum of Avengers in this film (plus Spider-man, Ant Man, and Black Panther) and the movie essentially involves the death of The Avengers as an organization.

The movie wrestles with a few themes: the consequences of the actions of superheroes, vengeance, accountability, friendship. I thought it mostly dealt with each of those themes really well. How refreshing to see a movie in which a superhero is horrified to see that she has just accidentally killed and wounded several innocent civilians! It also keeps the action smaller scale and doesn't resort to massive CGI set pieces that are too difficult to keep up with.

From a visual standpoint, I only have a couple of gripes. The location title cards are gigantic in this film. Like giant Ant Man gigantic. They might look better on TV, but in the cinema they were so large they were hard to take in. The fighting mostly looked good, but the fight scene in Lagos at the beginning suffered from a lot of icky shaky cam.

There’s a lot of great humor in this film, largely from Ant Man and Spider-man (as you’d expect). That provided a nice relief from the seriousness of the film. I’ve really got to give Marvel a hand for casting Tom Holland as Spider-man. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him in anything before, but he is fantastic as Spider-man. He really nailed the character, particularly the humor. I also loved the interactions between Tony Stark and Peter Parker. They played off each other really well. The only critique I have of how Spider-man was handled is that his introduction was very coincidental. We learn that Tony Stark knows about Spider-man and has figured out who he is, but we never get an explanation of how he learns this information. I definitely saw enough from Holland in this film that I can’t wait to see him get his own Spider-man movie.

Black Panther was also great in this film, and his introduction made a lot more sense in the context of the film. I know next to nothing about this character outside of this film, but Chadwick Boseman did a great job with the character, and he has a nice arc in this film. I’m not sure what a standalone Black Panther movie looks like, but I’m now interested to find out. I think it was smart to introduce him in another film like this.

There are actually two different points of contention amongst the Avengers in this film, and the first is the most interesting. Essentially, in the aftermath of the events of the second Avengers film, the United Nations wants to put the Avengers under their control. One faction of Avengers is on board with this decision, led by Iron Man. The other faction sees this as a way of keeping the Avengers from acting when they need to or forcing them to act where they shouldn’t. This faction is led by Captain America. Frankly, I found Cap’s position much more sensible and thus am definitely Team Captain America. I’m frankly a little surprised Tony Stark didn’t get into more trouble after the last movie given that he was the one who created Ultron. I think the movie handled this point of contention really well, and the big fight scene between the two factions at the airport was fantastic.

Then there’s that third act... John Gruber once expressed the insight that if you look at any James Bond movie, the first half is way better than the second half. I think that also holds true for most Marvel films. Probably the most tragic example is Iron Man 3. For the first two thirds of that film you had a really interesting Shane Black story. And then it was like the Marvel bosses pushed him out of the director’s chair and said, “our committee will take care of the ending”. The third act of Civil War is also the weakest part of the movie, though fortunately it doesn’t ruin the movie the way the third act of Iron Man 3 ruined that film.

The big problem with the way the movie ends is that it hinges a lot on coincidence. The bad guy, Zemo, basically needed Iron Man, Captain America, and Bucky to all end up at the Siberia station together to watch the video tape of the Winter Soldier murdering Tony’s parents. Given the conflict at the airport, this should have in no way been seen as a foregone conclusion. If Iron Man hadn’t shown up, Cap could’ve turned to Bucky and said, “We can never let Tony see this.” They then could have destroyed the base and gone back to the first conflict about whether or not to sign the Sokovia Accords. Or, Iron Man could’ve seen the tape and had this reaction: “Look, Sgt. Barnes, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for what you did to my parents, but I also know that you were totally under the control of Hydra.” It also seems like Zemo could have just emailed Tony the video and possibly achieved the same result without going to so much effort or ever even really exposing himself. 

It’ll be interesting to see what the fallout is from this movie with one half of The Avengers essentially on the run as criminals. It’ll be interesting to see if the rest of them remain tools of the U.N. or if they realize the folly of signing the Accords. I give Captain American: Civil War three stars out of four. Definitely worth a watch!