Shining Paradigm

A tech blog for non-tech people.

[shiningparadigm]

iPad Pro in the Classroom

A bit of background

I stopped taking a Mac to campus back in 2011 when the iPad 2 came out. It was much more portable than the 17” MacBook Pro that I had at the time, and typing on the display was never much of an issue for me. However, I’d been supplementing the iPad with a paper notebook in math and language classes.

I started college in the Fall of 2013. I picked up an iPad Air for class and a 15” MacBook Pro with Retina Display for working at home. And, since I wanted to go completely digital in college, I bought a generic stylus for the iPad on Amazon and the Notability app by Ginger Labs. FiftyThree released the Pencil shortly after and I picked that up too.

I tried handwriting all my notes in Notability at first but that ended up being a terrible idea. In additition to losing the ability to search my notes, the quality of them took a huge hit. It didn’t take long for me to go back to just typing again, but Notability and the Pencil gave me the added benefit of being able to write the occasional math formula or draw a quick diagram when I needed to. (I should note that I never stopped taking a notebook to my Arabic class. That would have gone horribly.)

Hereon out, all instances of the Pencil are referring to the Apple Pencil; not the FiftyThree Pencil.

I’ve been using the above system — the iPad on campus and my Mac at home, with Notability running on both — until I decided to tweak it this semester. Some of of my professors have great lecture notes which are made available to us online, and I noticed that a lot of what I type in class ends up being repeated there. I started importing their notes into Notability and annotating them but it wasn’t a great experience. Notability is designed to create notes from scratch and treats imported PDFs as nothing more than background paper. It also saves them in its own proprietary format which makes sharing my notes a pain. I started looking for an app to manage and edit PDFs iOS and came accross this roundup by the fantastic Ben Brooks, writing for The Sweet Setup.

As per his reccomendation, I decided to buy PDF Expert 5 by Readdle on both Mac and iOS, and moved all my course documents to it. This gave me the ability to highlight & underline text and fill in text boxes, in addition to the freehand writing tools available in Notability. I’m a little disappointed it took me so long to get to this point but I’m very content with my current system.

Now, let’s talk about the iPad Pro.

I went to the Apple Store and picked up a Space Grey, 128gb model with Cellular connectivity on the morning of its release. Setting it up was a breeze; I pulled everything from an iCloud backup (which was a lot faster than I expected it to be), and added the device to my AT&T Mobile Share plan using the preinstalled Apple SIM card.

I had a hard time initially doing anything with the iPad Pro. It took me 5 days from that Wednesday to acclimate to the device, during which I was heavily rotating between it and my iPad Air 2. After the weekend, I decided to take the new iPad for its first full week of class.

I’m registered in 4 classes this semester, each with its own content distribution system and rules for submitting assignments: Intro to Astronomy, Intro to Linguistics, 5th-semester Arabic, and Linear Algebra.

Astronomy

My Intro to Astronomy class has 3 main components: 1. I have to read chapters from the textbook before lecture, and take notes in lecture. 2. I have to submit a homework assignment on paper at the start of lecture every other week. These assignments usually involve a few short-answer questions with a bit of math in them, and a couple of short essay questions. 3. I have to attend lab once a week, conduct some experiments, and answer the questions in my lab report. Reports must be printed and submitted at the start of lab every 2 weeks. This is what a typical lab assignment looks like.

I bought the textbook for the class before the semester to clear my conscience, and then proceeded to pirate a PDF of it. On Sunday nights, I like to sit on the couch and read the assigned chapter for the week on my iPad, highlighting things I think might be important. PDF Expert does a great job of collecting everything I highlight, underline, or comment on so that I can refer to it later. I could do this on my MacBook pretty easily but I’ve long preferred the reading experience of an iPad; there’s something about holding the document up in front of me and directly touching the words to annotate them that helps me retain the information better. The iPad Pro felt a little uncomfortable to use on the couch at first but, after adjusting to the increased size and weight, I definitely prefer it to the iPad Air now — the bigger screen size makes for a much more enjoyable reading experience.

This has been my first semester taking notes in lecture with PDF Expert. My Astronomy professor doesn’t provide us with lecture notes but she does make the presentation slides available on the course website. I converted those to PDF and I’ve been typing quick comments on top them. Lecture is really just an elaboration of what we read at home in the textbook so I don’t need to note down much more than a few homework or exam hints that get given out. Nothing exciting here.

Doing Astronomy homework usually involves me typing up the written part, leaving blank spaces for the math questions, while referencing the textbook. I either do all of it on my Mac with Split View, or I do the written part on my Mac and reference the textbook on my iPad. I print out the assignment when I’m done, answer the math questions by hand, and put it in my backpack to submit the next day. I have an AirPrint printer so while it’s been possible to do all of this on my iPad Air since the release of iOS 9, it always felt a little cramped and there’s been no real benefit over doing so on my MacBook. The iPad Pro changed that. Working with both Pages and the textbook side-by-side is as good as doing so on the MacBook, especaially when paired with a keyboard, and now I can do all the math questions with the Apple Pencil in Notes and just copy them as image files into my assignment. That’s enough of an advantage to make the iPad Pro a clear winner here for me. I now do the entire assignment, including printing, on the iPad Pro.

Lab reports are supposed to be printed out before the start of new lab assignments and filled out over the 2-3 weeks that we work on them, but I’ve been using my iPad Air instead. I download the PDF from the repository the night before we start the lab, import it, and type out the answers to the questions. If there’s a chart that needs to be drawn, I type the data in a table and either create the chart in Numbers later or print the report and draw it by hand. Using the iPad Pro in lab was initially a little frustrating — it’s a much harder device to hold and walk around with while noting down my observations — but it’s still doable, and it's definitely better than doing so on a Mac. I’ve been setting it down on my desk and typing my answers in Notability, and now I can also sketch diagrams & fill tables more efficiently with the Pencil. So while I’ve lost some of the portability of the iPad Air, the tradeoff has definitely been worth it.

Note that I’ve been using both PDF Expert and Notability for different tasks this week. That’s because while both have been updated to take advantage of the iPad Pro’s resolution, only Notability works with the Apple Pencil. Readdle say a PDF Expert update is in coming “a bit later.”

Linguistics

My Intro to Linguistics class has 2 main components: 1. I have to read chapters from the textbook before lecture, and take notes in lecture. 2. I have to submit a homework assignment on paper at the start of lecture every other week. These assignments often involve tree diagrams and phonetic IPA symbols.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a PDF of the textbook that we use for this class online. This has long been one of my biggest hurdles in being digital-only in school; even though I’m willing to buy PDF copies of textbooks, that’s usually not an option. I’ve also made this harder for myself by stubbornly insisting on making all my book purchases in iBooks, which has a terrible selection for textbooks. And even if I can find what I’m looking for in the iBookstore, I’d much rather have it alongside all my other course documents in PDF Expert. What I usually end up doing is buying all my textbooks on Amazon at the start of the semester, pirating PDFs of whatever I can find online, and then selling the physical textbooks at the end of the semester. It’s a waste of money but stops me from feeling like I’m stealing from the publishers.

A quick aside: I’ve noticed that I tend to fall way behind on readings assigned from my physical textbooks. I’m currently several chapters behind schedule in my Linguistics class.

My Linguistics lecture added another workflow to my iPad setup. Our professor has fantastic handouts that he gives us whenever we start a new topic, but he only makes them available online after we’ve completed the topic. I emailed him to try and see if he could put them up earlier but got no response, so I took to The Sweet Setup again in search of the best document scanning app on iOS. I bought Scanbot as per their reccomendation and have been taking pictures of the handouts as soon as I receive them. Scanbot has great OCR recognition, supports multiple pages, and its new Magic Color Filter makes the documents look great. I take these pictures on my iPhone (because doing so with an iPad just looks silly) and then export them from Scanbot to PDF Expert in iCloud Drive. The document shows up on my iPad seconds later, text ready to be highlighted and underlined. It’s not ideal, I’d obviously much rather have my professor make the handouts available online before lecture, but I’m happy having this workaround. I annotate notes a lot more often here than in my Astronomy class and I’ve really started to enjoy the precision of doing so with the Pencil.

I’ve been doing my Linguistics homework on my MacBook for most of the semester, and it’s been such a chore. Between creating tree diagrams online and copying phonetic IPA symbols from the internet, my homework assignments have felt extremely laborious and not at all enjoyable. I haven’t yet had a chance to work on an assignment on the iPad Pro but I imagine doing so with the Pencil is going to be a much nicer experience. Sure, my documents will look a lot less professional, but this class is a non-major requirement. I’d much rather get it done quickly than neatly. (In hindsight, I’m not sure why I haven’t just been doing these on pen and paper until now.)

Arabic

Language classes have always been a huge stumbling block in my digital-only quest, starting with French in high school and more recently with Arabic in college. Boston University requires that I do 4 semesters of a foreign language which I completed last semester, but I decided to take it again for a 5th semester out of interest.

The class has several main components: 1. I have to complete homework assigned from the textbook before class 3 times a week. 2. I have to take notes in class. 3. I have to type and submit two essays via email at set dates in the semester. 4. I have to watch a short video online and answer 5 multiple choice questions on it every other Sunday. 5. I have to record and submit two video presentations online.

I've flirted with the idea of using an iPad in Arabic every semester but ultimately end up failing. The daily homework has been a large part of why. A lot of what we need to do is assigned from the textbook, but some of it requires watching or listening to content on the textbook website which, much to my bemusement, stores all its content in Flash. I pull out my Mac for these and write my answers on paper. After using the Pencil for a couple of days I decided to try writing in Arabic on it. It’s not perfect, but it’s damn near close. This inspired me to take pictures of the textbook with Scanbot on a per-chapter basis and start doing my homework in Notability. I’ve done a few fill-in-the-blanks assignments and written a bunch of sentences, and so far it’s been pretty good. I still need my Mac for the online content but I don’t need paper at all anymore.

Most of class is spent going over the homework we did (or, more accurately, were supposed to do) at home. We also go through a few additional assignments from the textbook and do some speaking drills. It’s not too intense so I’ve been able to keep up using the iPad Pro pretty easily. She occasionally gives us a handout to work on and I have to break out my iPhone and Scanbot. These assignments are usually completed within 10-15 minutes with a partner so the time spent scanning and uploading them is much more noticeable than with the lecture notes in Linguistics. Anyways, while I’ve only had 3 Arabic classes with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil so far, it’s had an extremely impressive start. I’m curious to see how it fares over the rest of the semester.

I also had the chance to work on an Arabic essay on the iPad Pro last week. I’ve always typed my Arabic essays on my iPhone or iPad because I prefer typing on the software keyboard over an on-screen one, but I’ve also kept my Mac nearby for referencing vocabulary on Quizlet and for Google Translate. Split View on the iPad Air allowed me to ditch the Mac and do the first essay entirely on the iPad by having Pages open on the left and Safari with a couple of tabs open on the right, but it felt a little cramped with the keyboard taking up half the screen and there was a noticeable amount of lag when cycling between keyboards. The iPad Pro alleviated all of that for the second essay; there was enough room on the display for everything, and switching keyboards was smooth.

Another quick aside: on the iPad Air, the emoji key turns into a globe when you have 2 language keyboards enabled; but on the iPad Pro, the Caps Lock key becomes a toggle for both languages and the emoji key remains untouched, as shown here.

The video for the multiple choice assignment is hosted on YouTube so I can watch it on any of my devices. I've pushed the video to my Apple TV through AirPlay a couple of times but it's always felt like overkill. I’ve recently taken to watching them in Picture in Picture mode on my iPad (à la YouPlayer). This lets me reference the questions without having to switch tabs or look up at the TV. Picture in Picture on the iPad Pro is huge; I miss none of the detail of the video working this way.

I recorded and submitted both video presentations before getting the iPad Pro so I can’t attest to how well it would work, but given that I recorded, edited, and uploaded the second presentation entirely on my iPhone, I think the iPad would work fine. iMovie is great for adding quick titles and transitions, and for direct upload to YouTube. (In case you were wondering, I recorded the first presentation entirely on my MacBook, and I’ve recorded several presentations on my iPad in the past.)

Linear Algebra

My Linear Algebra class has 2 main components: 1. I have to read chapters from the textbook before lecture, and take notes in lecture. 2. I have to submit a homework assignment online every week. These assignments involve a lot of vector math.

As with my Astronomy class, I bought a copy of the textbook for this class before pirating a PDF. I sit on the couch with my iPad every Monday night and read the assigned chapters for the week, highlighting important definitions and examples. I don't have anything more to add here than what I already said when discussing my Astronomy class.

My Linear Algebra professor makes fantastic lecture notes available online at the start of the semester. These complement the textbook what’s said in lecture very well. I have the notes in PDF Expert and follow along in lecture, highlighting anything I may need to refer to later and adding the occasional comment. I would love to use the Pencil to write comments instead of typing them here, but I’d rather wait for an update to PDF Expert than increase the number of files I’m shuffling between it and Notability. It’s not that big of a deal.

I saved writing about my experience doing Linear Algebra homework for last because it is, by far, my favorite anecdote about the iPad Pro. I usually have the assignment sheet open on my Mac in front of me, the textbook open on my iPad to my left, and sheets of A4 paper scattered everywhere else on my desk. I first go through the assignment, making lots of mistakes along the way, then rewrite everything again neatly on the second run. Next, I scan the 10-15 pages to my Mac, merge them into a single PDF document, and upload them to the course server. The entire process takes about 3-4 hours depending on the number of questions assigned and leaves me with a pulsing wrist every time. Last week, I did the entire assignment on the iPad Pro. I had both Notability and PDF Expert open in Split View; the former was a blank canvas where I wrote down my answers and the latter had both the assignment and textbook open in tabs. I was able to erase mistakes as I made them and I didn’t have to scan anything afterwards, both of which saved me a tremendous amount of time. I uploaded the document in Safari using iCloud Drive when I was done.

Almost immediately after I got the confirmation email, I decided that I wasn’t going to be returning the iPad Pro.

Closing thoughts

The iPad Pro is an odd device to think about. Compared to the new MacBook with Retina Display, it has both a larger, clearer display, a faster processor, better battery life, and it’s thinner & lighter to boot. Even as an iPad, it isn’t for everyone.

The iPad Air wins in any situation where you need to hold the iPad and do something; its portability can’t be touched by anything other than the iPad mini, and I'm going to miss being able to get stuff done on the train or while walking between classes.

The iPad Pro wins anywhere you can sit it down; be it on your lap when reading an article, in bed when watching a movie, or on a desk when doing work, its power really shines through. And when it comes to getting school work done digitally, no device does that better than the iPad Pro.

In an ideal world I’d be keeping both iPads, but I can’t justify buying a new Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV in a single semester without selling something. I’ve been using both my MacBook and iPhone more than usual since I got rid of the iPad Air, and I think I’m okay with that. I’m actually a little glad my MacBook is getting some use. I might decide to pick up a base model iPad mini as a couch computer in the future, but if I had to pick just one iPad, like I do now, I’m happy to have that be the iPad Pro.

I can’t stress just how much the Apple Pencil increases the utility of the iPad Pro. Its precision turns the device into a true digital textbook and makes it incredibly easy to eliminate a lot of paper workflows in college. I’m typing all my comments in PDF Expert for now but as soon as the app gets updated for the Pencil I’ll start writing those out, simply for the increased memory retention of writing vs typing. (Ben Brooks had an interesting discussion about this recently which you should check out.)

Apple’s Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro still isn’t out for sale so I picked up a Magic Keyboard and TwelveSouth Compass but I’ll be returning those and getting the Smart Keyboard as soon as I can. I don’t need a physical keyboard very often; in the time I’ve had the iPad Pro, I’ve only ever connected the keyboard to it to write about the device itself. I’m comfortable typing anything up to 1,000 words at a time using the on-screen keyboard. I also like writing on the couch which is hard to do with a bluetooth keyboard — I ended up writing several chunks of this article on my MacBook for that reason. I don’t think I’ll be using the Smart Keyboard as a case though; it’s probably just going to sit folded in the accessories section of my backpack, alongside the Pencil, until I need it. I didn’t put a case on my iPad Air, and I won’t be doing so with the iPad Pro either.

[shiningparadigm]

Upgrading with Apple vs. AT&T

Apple recently announced the details of its new iPhone Upgrade Program and I spent some time crunching the numbers. In particular, I wanted to see how it compares to AT&T Next - my current program of choice.

iPhone Upgrade Program

Let’s use the 64GB iPhone 6s Plus as our example.

With the iPhone Upgrade Program, you get an unlocked iPhone and AppleCare+ for $40.75 monthly. When you’re ready to upgrade to the iPhone 7 after 12 months, you would have paid $489.

This iPhone retails unlocked for $849, and AppleCare+ costs a further $129, so that comes to $978 pre-tax if you were to buy it outright. If you wanted to upgrade at the end of the year, you would have to sell your old phone for at least $489 to make this worthwhile.

AT&T Next 12

The AT&T Next program confusingly has 4 options, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll focus on the one I use: AT&T Next 12.

Next 12 divides the cost of the iPhone into 20 installments, and you can trade-in and upgrade after the first 12 months. That means you’re paying $42.50 monthly, and would have spent $510 after 12 months.

However, for those with Mobile Share Value (family) plans the Next program gets a lot more compelling.

If you have under 15GB of data on your plan, you get a $15 discount off your bill for each phone bought through AT&T Next. That number rises to $25 if your plan comes with 15GB or more data.

Therefore, after 12 months, you would have essentially paid $210 or $330 and would be eligible for an upgrade.

At that point, you can also pay off the remaining 8 installments and keep the phone. This will cost you $340 — and the phone can be sold to Gazelle for $370 (if in the right condition) or on Craiglist for close to $500.

I bought my iPhone 6 through AT&T Next 12 on launch day last year, paid off the remaining 8 installments the day Apple announced the iPhone 6s, and bought the new iPhone through the same program when the preorders went up. I’m selling my old iPhone to a friend for $500 and will make a profit there.

Caveats

My biggest drawbacks going through AT&T are:

I would much rather pay Apple every month than pay AT&T.

I have to pay for AppleCare+ separately.

I have to use an external service to unlock my iPhone.

However, overall, AT&T has a much more compelling package and for families with large data plans they make it easy and very affordable to upgrade your iPhone annually on launch day.

[shiningparadigm]

How the Apple Watch made me active again

Background

It’s no secret that a while ago, I lost a lot of weight. My total drop was about 135 lbs (over 60 kg) in under 6 months, between December 2012 and June 2013.

Losing the weight was was tough (to say the least), but I always feared that maintaining it would be just as hard once I cut out the exercise. I was wrong.

My metabolism adjusted surprising quickly and I managed to maintain almost the exact same weight for over a year, without once going to the gym. And I took it for granted.

Late in October 2014, I damaged a kneecap playing recreational soccer with my friends. I was a little uncomfortable for a few days but I shrugged it off, and it ostensibly fixed itself soon after. I ended up completely forgetting about the incident until I went home for Winter Break. I usually don’t have a lot to do in Ghana so I spend a lot of time on the Indoor Bike, but I soon noticed that biking for just 5–10 minutes made my kneecap start clicking. Confused, I kept trying again every day, until eventually I invariably pushed myself a little too hard and clicked my kneecap out of place.

That was December 2014. It’s now June 2015 — half a year later — and I’ve only just fully recovered.

So what happened in the meantime? Well, I let it get to my head that I had this super-fast metabolism, so I put my regular diet on pause and ate. A lot. And, before I knew it, I gained 25 lbs (over 10 kg).

Truthfully though, even with the injured kneecap, I could have started going to the gym at least a month ago. And even before that, once I noticed I was gaining weight (and fast), I could have cut down on the ridiculous amount of food I was eating.

But I didn’t. I think a part of me was enjoying being free from the diet again — it reminded me of just how much I love food — but the bigger problem was the injury left me with a mental block with working out. I was scared. I’ve strained every single lower-body muscle there is to pull — that happens when you do 4–6 hours of cardio every day for 3 months — but this really hurt, and I didn’t want to go through that again.

I knew I wanted to lose weight. I hated that I actually allowed myself to gain that much after already working so hard to lose it. But I was doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

Enter the Apple Watch

So where am I going with this? Well, as you might know, I got my Apple Watch on April 24. A month in, I wrote this:

Ever since the Health app came out in iOS 8, I’ve obsessively tracked my Steps and Flights Climbed counts and have tried to maintain a good daily average. Now, with the Watch, I simply glance at the Activity ring on my Watch Face and I have a quick snapshot of how active I’ve been today. If I’ve been sitting down for too long, it gently taps me and reminds me to walk around for a minute, and it updates me every 4 hours with how I’m doing towards meeting my goals for the day.

For the uninformed, the Apple Watch has a Move Ring, an Exercise Ring, and a Stand Ring. I’ll focus on the first two: the Exercise Ring wants you to get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day (measured by the pace of a brisk walk or more), and the Move Ring wants you to hit a certain Active Calorie goal every day (through walking or otherwise).

Every Monday morning, the Watch takes a look at how you effectively you kept up with your Move Goal over the last week, and suggests a new goal for you to target. This goal has harassed my life for as long as I’ve had the Watch.

I like to think I’m a fairly active person. Boston University has a large campus and you can find me all over it throughout the day. I’m also obsessed with closing my rings every day, which has sometimes led to me frantically walking along the Charles River or in the pouring rain at 11pm trying to hit my goal in time.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered that I was walking north of 20,000 steps a day just to hit my Move Goal. That’s a lot of time spent walking; time I could have spent studying or doing homework. I still kept trying to close my rings by walking, but after failing a couple of times I realized that going forward I’d have to start working out again.

In that moment, I completely forgot about my fear. All that was on my mind was closing my Move Goal for the day. So I went to the gym.

That was 8 days ago. I’ve gone each day since, continuously pushing myself harder and harder.

After a long, long hiatus, I genuinely feel like I have my old determination back. I’m eating much more reasonably and logging calories again, and working out now holds a fixed time in my calendar.

The Watch did that. Slowly, with 7 weekly incremements, it took me from walking 10,000 steps a day to doing an hour of high-intensity cardio. And I couldn’t be happier.

I’m now more confident than ever that I’ll be back to my best before the summer ends. And I have the Apple Watch to thank for that.

I’ll be giving a brief talk at the Apple Store on Boylston St., Boston on Wednesday at 6pm on behalf of LoseIt!, discussing my weight loss journey and the process and effect of logging calories.

If you live in the area and would like to know more about my story, feel free to reserve your seat here.

[shiningparadigm]

Why I love my Apple Watch

Disclaimer: I wrote this a while ago but never got round to posting it.

I got my Watch on launch day and I love it. It’s remarkable how profoundly it’s impacted me in such a short period of time. However, this is a product category that has been met with a lot of skepticism, and I’ve been struggling to find the right words to explain its worth; why you should buy it.

I’ve actually been pondering this for weeks because I (rightly) anticipated having a lot of questions from my friends to answer, being the resident Apple expert (read: fanboy) and because I was set to receive my Watch much earlier than most. It’s not been easy.

The problem is that this is a really hard product to explain to skeptics. Apple claims that the Watch is their “most personal product yet.” I don’t think that’s hyperbole; I think that word — personal — was chosen very deliberately, because after reading a bunch of reviews I’ve realized that I, and everyone else, uses their Watch differently. That makes it really challenging to ‘sell’ the Watch because what different people will most definitely have different uses for it.

So, how do you know if the Watch is right for you? Honestly, I can’t answer that. What I can do, however, is describe how I’ve been using it, and you can see if that resonates with you at all.

I’ve managed to break down what I love about the Watch so far into 4 categories: Notifications, Continuitity, Fitness & Activity, and Timekeeping.

Notifications

I’ve always suffered from notification anxiety. Whenever my phone vibrates I immediately have to know why, in order to not miss anything important. Do Not Disturb on iOS has helped to a large extent but I still find myself checking my lock screen for notifications far more often than I should. Enter the Watch: I spent a lot of time tweaking my notification settings for the Watch on an app-by-app basis to make sure that only important notifications make it to my wrist, and everything else goes to the iPhone. (For example, texts and mail from my VIPs show up on the Watch, but Instagram likes, Twitter retweets, and all other mail shows up on my phone.)

How does this help? Well, Apple has made notification delivery really smart: Notifications that ping your Watch don’t ping your iPhone. They go to Notification Center, but that’s it. Unless you’re using your iPhone when the notification comes in, in which case it pings your iPhone but not your Watch. This has allowed me to leave my iPhone in a near-permanent state of Do Not Disturb. It rarely notifies me of anything anymore, yet I’m not missing important notifications because my Watch gently taps me as they come. (I also have an extensive list of Favorites set up that can bypass Do Not Disturb, so I’m not missing any important calls either.)

Continuity

So what happens when I get one of these taps? Well, the vast majority of my notifications are messages, so I look at my Watch for a few seconds and decide what to do. A lot of the time I just respond with a quick-reply message (Cool, Okay, etc.). If it’s a little longer, I just tap the mic button and dictate my reply. While I never dictate replies on my iPhone, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the feature on my Watch. Other times I start reading a conversation on my Watch, realize I’m going to need to do a lot of typing here, and just Handoff the conversation to whichever of my 3 other devices I have closest to me. It’s worked great so far. Handoff has also been very useful for Phone Calls. The Watch has a speaker and microphone and I’ve been making and receiving a fair number of calls on it, but sometimes I start a call there and it drags on for longer than I anticipated. In those cases I just Handoff the call to my iPhone and continue it there. It’s been seamless and super convenient.

In addition to this, I’ve also really gotten used to controling Music Playback on my iPhone through the Watch. This is especially helpful when I’m walking outdoors and don’t feel like taking my phone out of my pocket just to change songs.

Controlling my Apple TV with the Remote app on the Watch isn’t something I thought I’d find msyelf using a lot, but it’s been surprisingly convenient. Although it certainly helps that I lost the physical remote for my Apple TV a few weeks ago.

Fitness & Activity

I’ve wanted to buy a standalone fitness tracker (the Jawbone Up in particular) for a while. The Watch has removed the need for that by incorporating most of its functionality into a device I was already wearing every day: my watch.

Ever since the Health app came out in iOS 8, I’ve obsessively tracked my Steps and Flights Climbed counts and have tried to maintain a good daily average. Now, with the Watch, I simply glance at the Activity ring on my Watch Face and I have a quick snapshot of how active I’ve been today. If I’ve been sitting down for too long, it gently taps me and reminds me to walk around for a minute, and it updates me every 4 hours with how I’m doing towards meeting my goals for the day.

As far as Workouts go, I’ve ordered the Black Sport Band and I’ll start working out with my Watch when that comes in because I don’t want to ruin my Classic Buckle (Black Leather) with sweat.

It’s only been a few days but, based on experience with my iPhone, I don’t see my obsession to complete the Activity rings fading anytime soon — and that’s a good thing.

Timepiece

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the Watch as a timepiece. The hardest part about getting the Watch was knowing I’d essentially be giving up the watch collection I’ve grown over the last decade. However, I’ve been extremely impressed with the beauty of the Watch. It’s a lot more sleek than I anticipated, has a good heft to it without being heavy in any way, and I’m yet to miss any of my old watches. Better yet: I’ve been using the Modular Face on my Watch and I find myself glancing at my wrist often to check the local time, time in Ghana, my Activity snapshot, the current weather, and/or details of my next event. It’s a convenience I can’t fully explain; it’s akin to the convenience traditional watch wearers have been touting over people who check the time exclusively on their phone for years, but on a higher level.

Truthfully, I’d probably buy the Watch for any of the above reasons. Having all of them has been really useful. While it still definitely feels like a 1st generation product at times, after using it extensively for a few days I’m confident Apple is on to something here.

My biggest takeaway from the Apple Watch is that, unlike your other devices (iPhone, iPad, and Mac) you’re not going to be using it for long periods at a time. It’s made to provide information at a glance, to let you take quick-action on important notifications, to help you live a healthier lifestyle, and to look good doing it. If that appeals to you, the Watch is a great device. If not, that’s fine too.

In terms of its impact on my other devices, it’s still too early to determine but so far my Mac and iPad usage has remained unchanged. My iPhone, on the other hand, gets used a lot less. I usually don’t take it out unless I have a specific reason to (say, catching up on my Twitter timeline). And since using the Watch takes a considerable toll on the battery of your iPhone (Bluetooth is connected all day, and the Watch uses the iPhone’s LTE connection for data) I’ve strongly been considering a Plus for my next iPhone.

Note: Watch refers to the Apple Watch, while watch refers to traditional watches.

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App Updates: Snapchat and SoundCloud

The official Snapchat and SoundCloud apps for iPhone were recently updated to versions 8.1.0 and 3.6.0 respectively.

Apart from the iPhone 6 optimization pictured above, they both bring some nice updates.

Snapchat now lets you Stack Filters so, for example, you can add the Black and White filter and show the current time. You can stack filters by swiping regularly to apply the first filter, then hold one finger on the screen while swiping with another finger to apply the second filter. You can also do more with text. You can now pinch to resize and change the color of Special Text. You can see both these additions pictured below.

The SoundCloud app (finally) lets you add tracks to a new or existing playlist now, but unfortunately that's it. As far as editing goes, you can make the playlist Public or Private, but unfortunately you can't reorder or remove songs from playlists. 

You can check out a video on how it works on the SoundCloud blog. Also:

This is just the beginning: we’re upgrading our app for iPad, too, coming in early 2015. We’ll let you know as soon as it drops.

The iPad app is pretty terrible right now so hopefully we get a major redesign and some feature updates soon.

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Apple Releases iOS 8.1.2

Apple released iOS 8.1.2 earlier today. The release notes:

This release includes bug fixes and addresses a problem where ringtones purchased from the iTunes Store may have been removed from your device. To restore these ringtones, visit itunes.com/restore-tones from your iOS device.

I only recently downloaded and installed this update thinking it would be a minor one, but there have been lots of little bug fixes and my iPhone feels a lot snappier after the update. And I know I'm not alone here.

You can update from Settings > General > Software Update on an iOS device.

If you've been holding out on updating to iOS 8, it's getting more stable with each release and I think now's a good time to do it. If you don't have enough space to do it from your phone, you can do it in iTunes with just 1 GB of free space.

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Wish List: Apple Pay your friends

I've been enjoying Dan Moren's Wish Lists at Six Colors recently, and his latest one is something I'd really like to see:

The seamless nature of the Apple Pay experience has me wondering if Apple might not be able to—yes, I’m going to use the dreaded ‘d’ word—disrupt another stale process: person-to-person payments.

I've written about why Square Cash is the best way to transfer money to friends and why Snapcash matters recently: because they're both super easy, frictionless ways to send money. There's still one barrier of entry though — the sender and the receiver both need to have an account set up. That's a big barrier.

Transferring money with Apple Pay would make sense. Your iPhone and iPad already have your Debit Card details stored, and payments would be secured with your fingerprint. The hardest parts would be figuring out how to implement it and what happens when you send money to someone who doesn't have a device that supports Apple Pay. 

Related Reading

"Wish List: Apple Pay your friends" by Dan Moren

"Wish List: Handoff for iTunes and Music" by Dan Moren

"Wish List: Siri integration with Apple TV" by Dan Moren

"Transferring Money to Friends" by Karan Varindani

"Introducing Snapcash" by Karan Varindani

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Thoughts on the iPad Air 2

I’ve had my iPad Air 2 for almost a week now and I think I’ve formed a final opinion of it.

I'm impressed. Very impressed. And given that I upgraded from last year's iPad Air, I didn't expect to be this impressed. Here are my favorite things about it, in increasing order of importance to me:

Touch ID is flawless, as expected. It works pretty much all the time without fail, and it even works when I try unlocking my iPad in landscape mode. I only wish more apps supported it. There are only a few apps that take advantage of Touch ID on the iPhone, and even fewer on the iPad. I use it to buy apps from the App Store, to unlock Day One, and to pay for groceries in Instacart. That's it.

The iPad Air 2 only a few grams lighter than last year's iPad, but it does make an impact. I feel like I can hold the new iPad for longer periods without my arms getting tired. Maybe it's all in my head but my original iPad Air feels thick and heavy now, which is insane given how blown away I was by its size and weight just 12 months ago. (The iPad Air 2 is 18% thinner than the iPad Air, which was 20% thinner than the iPad 4 before it. It's also slightly lighter than the iPad Air which was 28% lighter than the iPad 4 before it.)

As you may know, the iPad Air 2 has 2 GB of RAM which is twice as much as last year's iPad Air and the iPhone 6. This is very, very noticeable. Jason Snell writes at Six Colors:

iOS devices, though, have much less RAM than their Mac counterparts. When an iOS device gets low on memory, it gets aggressive about freeing some back up. This all happens automatically, in the background, and it’s a little like a magic trick—it’s designed so you won’t really notice. But have you ever noticed that sometimes when you open or switch to an app you’ve run recently, it resumes as if it were already open, and other times there’s a splash screen and a few seconds of setup? That’s the magic trick—that app was purged to free up memory for something else. The price you paid for running some other app is that you’ve got to wait while this app gets back in running order, ready to use.

In Safari is where the real magic happens though. I do the vast majority of my research for both school and this website on my iPad and tabs hardly ever need to be reloaded when I switch between them anymore. I noticed this earlier today when my iPad was able to hold not just 4-5 websites but 2-3 large PDF documents in RAM without hiccuping. The iPad Air 2 also has an all-new A8X processor (the iPhone 6 has an A8 processor) and that helps everything run snappier too. Games are also supposed to be better with this processor but I'm a casual iOS gamer at best so I can't really comment on that.

My favorite feature though is the Laminated Display. Apple has eliminated the air gap between the layers of the display — a feature of the iPhone since the iPhone 4 — and this brings the pixels closer to the screen. On the iPad Air's 9.7 inch display this lack of lamination was very noticeable. It's hard to explain without seeing it, but with the iPad Air it felt like you using a touchscreen device while with the iPad Air 2 it feels like you're directly manipulating objects on the screen. The display is also more vibrant with better image quality.

In short, the iPad Air 2 is a fantastic device, and in my opinion the best tablet on the market today. I expected the removal of the Silent Switch to drive me mad, but in reality it's not been a big deal just adjusting it from Control Center. A bigger nuisance to me is that (having gotten used to the new button placement on the iPhone 6) I'm constantly pressing the Volume Up button while trying to lock my iPad.

I do have a bigger problem though. Every time I hold an iPad mini, I can’t help but feel that it’s the device for me. There are so many times when I’m leaving home and all I need is my iPad, but I still need to take a backpack. (I could hold it but Boston is freezing cold most of the year so my hands are firmly in my pockets.)

The iPad mini fits in my inner jacket pocket and would solve that problem, but the Laminated Display and extra RAM of the iPad Air 2 are too important for me to pass on.

Last year the iPad mini and iPad Air were on-par with each other, with the only real difference between them being the size and weight. This year all the focus was on the iPad Air with the iPad mini receiving almost nothing but Touch ID. I’m hoping that next year Apple manages to achieve parity between both iPads again, in which case I’ll most definitely be picking up an iPad mini 4.

[shiningparadigm]

Apple Pay a Billion Dollar Business

Horace Dediu ran some numbers over at Asymco:

These assumptions result in a cumulative revenue of over $1 billion by 2018 and a yearly run rate of $1 billion in revenue by 2020.

So it looks like Apple Pay is set to become yet another billion dollar business for Apple in a few years' time. And while that might not be a lot of money for Apple — 0.5% of Revenue and 2% of Earnings, as Dediu notes — it's a nice 'little' business to have on the side.

Apple Spotlight nails it on the big picture though:

That’s a nice ‘little’ business, one that many companies would love to have. That said, I see Apple Pay as more of a supporting character. It makes Apple devices even better, keeps Apple ahead of the competition, and supports Apple’s high customer satisfaction levels. These all, of course, drive sales. And that is much more important to Apple than whatever profits Apple Pay generates.

Exactly.

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Apple Pay in Canada

I spent most of this week in Toronto for Thanksgiving Break and I was taken aback by just how much better payment systems are there as compared to those in the United States. In Canada, much like the rest of the developed world, Chip-and-PIN cards are standard. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that every single payment system I was presented with had NFC Support. It turns out that many Credit Cards in Canada have NFC chips for Contactless Payments, and the payment systems all take advantage of it. Taxis, supermarkets, coffee shops, cheap restaurants, expensive restaurants, you name it. I literally didn't use my physical Credit Card once; Apple Pay worked everywhere — even though most payment systems didn't have the contactless payments logo. (I think the technology is so standard now that they don't even feel the need to advertise it.) This is in stark contrast with the United States, or at least with Boston, where Apple Pay is still only available in select stores and there are lots of stores actively blocking it. Clearly, in terms of Credit Card security and Payment Systems, the United States has a lot of catching up to do with Canada and other countries where these have been around for some time now.

[shiningparadigm]

Homescreen Stats

Betaworks collected information from 1,000 iPhone home screens and posted the information online in an excerpt from Betaworks Shareholders Book. Some of the statistics are pretty interesting. For example:

Twitter related apps are on 85.5 percent of homescreens. Given that the sample was based on Twitter users there’s sample bias to the Twitter number, but despite that there are some interesting conclusions to draw out of the data. Seventy-nine percent have one Twitter app on their homescreen, 6.5 percent have 2 or more and 14 percent have none — presumably these users use Twitter via the browser or an app not on the homescreen. Vine is on 12 percent of people’s homescreens, which is impressive. But Twitter’s client app is only on 37% of homescreens and third-party clients are on a whopping 55 percent of devices, with one client, Tweetbot, making up a full 49.5 percent of the sampled homescreens. It’s remarkable that a non-Twitter owned client has more market share than Twitter’s client. It’s a byproduct of the early adopter sample bias, but I think it points to the fact these users — myself included — prefer using a different, and more advanced, workflow for Twitter.

Tweetbot is a fantastic Twitter client, and you should get it. Check out the rest of the article for more, including stats on Yahoo and Microsoft's apps. 

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Read Receipts

Ben Brooks argues that you should leave your Read Receipts on, and I agree.

Apart from the obvious — knowing whether a message has been read or not — it saves time: my favorite thing about having my Read Receipts on is I never have to say "Yeah," "Cool," "Thanks," or any of those 'confirmation messages' because the person sending the text can see that I've read it.

And, like Ben says:

The only reason you don’t have them on is because you want to delay your response, or “hide”. Get over it. Or just unlock your phone and pull down notification center — that will allow you to read messages without sending the read receipt.

Exactly. Now go enable them.

You can enable Read Receipts by going to Settings > Messages > Send Read Receipts on an iOS device, or by going to Messages > Preferences > Accounts > Send Read Receipts on an OS X device.

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Gorilla Glass 4

Corning, long-time Apple supplier of the Gorilla Glass found in iPhones, announced Gorilla Glass 4 recently.

Corning says that the new Gorilla Glass 4 has been "formulated to address consumers’ No. 1 issue – screen breakage from everyday drops." If you watch the video below, you'll see that Corning have worked on reducing damage from real-world drops such as 1m drops on to asphalt with great results, citing:

Gorilla Glass 4 is up to two times tougher than competitive glasses

Gorilla Glass 4 survives up to 80 percent of the time

Soda-lime glass, as deployed in today’s commercial devices, breaks nearly 100 percent of the time.

One of the biggest complaints I get from friends about their iPhones is cracked screens. Hopefully this helps stop that in the near future. Check out the video below for more.

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"Get" Replaces "Free" on the App Store

The App Store changed a couple of times today. Free apps are now no longer displayed as "Free," assumably to comply with an EU ruling that it's misleading to say an app is free when it might offer In-App Purchases.

At first, Apple went through and replaced the word "Free" with "Get" all over the App Store, which made very little sense. Thankfully, a few hours later, Apple decided to just remove the "Get" label as well from the Featured page. You can check out the progression below.

The "Get" button still shows when you need to download the app, which makes sense.

I personally preferred the way things were, but hiding the "Get" button from the Featured page is a lot better than what Apple initially rolled out, so I'll settle for this.

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Search Every Tweet Ever in the Twitter app

As Federico Viticci of MacStories just pointed out, Twitter announced on its Engineering Blog that every tweet since 2006 has been successfully indexed earlier today. It's a tremendous feat given the scale Twitter's had to work with, and you can read the details on the blog if you're interested.

Notably, this means that you can now search every tweet ever sent in the official Twitter app for iOS. Here's how:

In the Search Bar, you enter a name, date, and what you're searching for, formatted "from:[name] since:[yyyy-mm-dd] [search query or hashtag]". Hit search then switch from Top Tweets to All Tweets, and voila.

Here are a few examples:

from:karan301_ searches all tweets from @karan301_ ever.

from:karan301_ since:2014-11-17 searches all tweets from @karan301_ since yesterday.

from:karan301_ since:2009-04-01 test searches all tweets from @karan301_ since April 1st 2009 that contain the word test.

from:karan301_ since:2009-04-01 #mufc searches all tweets from @karan301_ since April 1st 2009 that contain the hashtag #mufc.

Pro tip: from:username filter:links – search for all the links you've ever tweeted in the Twitter app

— Federico Viticci (@viticci)

November 19, 2014

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WatchKit

Apple announced WatchKit today,  the Software Development Kit (SDK) used for creating Apple Watch apps, and released some informational guidelines along with a 30-minute video about developing Apple Watch apps on its WatchKit website. Here's what you need to know:

Firstly, and most importantly, the Apple Watch will not have fully native 3rd-party apps until "later next year." This was kind of expected. There's such limited power in a watch that while it'd be great to have fully native apps right away, it'd probably be disastrous for battery life.

Instead, Apple is allowing developers to build extensions of their iPhone apps that run on the Apple Watch right now. This is really clever because the Watch just has to serve the UI while the iPhone does all the heavy lifting.

So, as Apple explains above, developers can build 3 types of iPhone app extensions to run on the Apple Watch: Apps, Glances, and Actionable Notifications.

Actionable Notifications, like on iOS, are notifications will pop-up and let you take action so, for example, you can quickly favorite a tweet you were mentioned in.

Glances are single pages of information that an app can choose to provide. You don't take action on them, though tapping on one will launch the respective app. You can swipe through Glances in a horizontal list. For example, your Calendar might inform you that there's an hour left until your next appointment in a Glance, and you can tap it to launch the Calendar app and see more such as Location, Notes, etc.

Apps are, well, 'full-powered' apps. (Or at least as fully powered as an app running jointly on an iPhone and a Watch can be.) 

Apple Watch will also be able to push notifications from your iPhone. These notifications will either be Short Look or Long Look notifications. Serenity Caldwell explains at iMore:

Notifications are split into two categories: Short Look and Long Look notifications. Short Look notifications contain minimal information, in part to preserve your privacy: It just displays the app icon, a quick title such as "New Message" or "New Photo", and the title of the app in the program's primary color.

If the user raises their wrist or taps on the Short Look notification, a Long Look notification appears. Long Looks are more detailed: You'll see the app icon and title at the top (in what Apple is calling the "sash"), followed by custom-designed content that displays the notification itself, along with up to four actions you can take (like replying or commenting) and a button for dismissing the notification.

And that's about it. Apple is set to release Watch during Spring 2015 and I'm super excited to see what developers do to take advantage of it. It's certainly going to be more powerful than I expected, thanks to apps being able to run off the iPhone.

I'm already thinking of all the cool places I'd be able to use it: At supermarkets to pay for things with Apple Pay, at airports to board flights with Passbook, and even to check-in to my flights with apps. And should HomeKit take off, a smart-home controlled by my iPhone and Watch doesn't seem to far away. 

Related Reading

"What you need to know about WatchKit" by Serenity Caldwell

"Initial Impressions for WatchKit"by David Smith

"Apple Launches WatchKit, iOS 8.2 Beta" by Federico Viticci

[shiningparadigm]

HiRise Deluxe

Let me get this out of the way: HiRise by TwelveSouth is the best iPhone 'dock' out there, period. I quote the 'dock' because it's so much more than that. As TwelveSouth say, it's "a beautiful metal pedestal for charging and hands-free use of your iPhone or iPad."

Beautiful is an understatement. The original HiRise looked great but TwelveSouth have gone a step further with the HiRise Deluxe, adding a chamfered detail to the base and adopting the machine dial from HiRise for MacBook.

The HiRise Deluxe comes with a Lightning Cable and a Micro USB Cable, and also new is support for the iPad Air, which I'm super excited about. The original HiRise — still being sold — works great with iPhone and iPad mini.

Like I said 6 weeks ago, I prefer docking my iPhone than plugging it in for a few reasons. I don't have to deal with cables falling behind my desk/nightstand, or deal with cables altogether for that matter, and docks add a certain elegance to any surface — especially the HiRise.

However, what makes the HiRise better than other docks out there is that it's made to work with almost all iPhone cases thanks to its unique, adjustable design. The new machine dial on the HiRise Deluxe should make it even easier to adjust the stand to fit a variety of cases now.

I usually get the official iPhone docks but this time around Apple decided not to produce a dock for the iPhone 6 so I had to look elsewhere, and the HiRise — originally designed for the iPhone 5 — worked great, which speaks to its adjustability. I haven't had a single regret since.

So, like I said, the original HiRise for iPhone and iPad mini is still on sale for $34.99 in Silver and Black, and the new HiRise Deluxe for iPhone and iPad is available for $59.99 with an additional Gold color option.

$35 seems about right for a premium dock, but $60 seemed a little pricy to me at first. However when you consider that for $25 more you're getting an even further polished device and free Lightning and Micro USB cables, it's really not too bad.

I already have two of the original HiRise stands and I'll be ordering one HiRise Deluxe very soon and I'd suggest you do too. If you like HiRise for iPhone and iPad, be sure to check out the rest of the family, including HiRise for iMac and HiRise for MacBook. And if you still have doubts over the HiRise, check out TwelveSouth's website to see how beautiful it is, and watch the video below: