Matt 1 minute read
September 29, 2016

Criticizing the Things You Love

I really enjoy Timothy's writing, and one of the things I love is that he has the somehow unusual capacity to love something while still recognizing its flaws. The internet rewards options that are 100% in one camp: you can either love something, or you tear it to pieces. You can love something while appreciating that it has flaws. "Love" does not equal "perfect". God knows, I have a lot of criticisms to say about the Apple Watch, something I love more than just about any gadget I've ever owned!

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Matt 3 minute read
September 27, 2016

How Does the W1 Chip Work with Sharing Wireless Speakers and Headphones?

One of Apple's smaller announcements from this month's Apple event was the W1 chip inside the new AirPods and select Beats headphones. This new addition to Apple's increasingly long line of Letter-Number chipsets aims at making wireless devices easier to deal with. Bluetooth is notoriously annoying to pair between devices and one of the big things the W1 chip is supposed to do is simplify this process. Not only does the W1 make the initial sync with your iOS device easier, once you've synced with that first device, all your devices will be able to connect to that W1-enabled product via iCloud. This sounds great and seems to work pretty darn well from early impressions, but there's something missing from the conversation, and it's something that I do almost everyday. [read more]

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Matt 4 minute read
September 26, 2016

On Charging Your iPhone and Listening to Music Simultaneously

The Verge is really not happy about this whole headphone jack removal from the latest iPhones. I know they have smart people working there, and I honestly think they do a lot of good work, but their near-daily pieces on how this decision by Apple is an affront to simple human decency is getting a little tired.

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Matt 4 minute read
September 24, 2016

Purposely Breaking the iPhone 7 Plus’s Portrait Mode

Apple shipped the iOS 10.1 beta this week with it's much anticipated "portrait mode" on the iPhone 7 Plus. Lots of people are sharing the beautiful pictures this feature can create. So I wondered what the limits of this feature was, as Apple seems to have designed it for shots like the ones above. What if you took shots it wasn't really designed for? To find out, I took a few shots during my run this morning. I took very little time to compose anything and have not done any post-processing to these, they're exactly as they came out of the camera app.

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Matt 1 minute read
September 23, 2016

Josh Ginter on the Apple Watch Series 2

Josh Ginter is a great writer, and I always enjoy reading his thoughts on Apple's mobile devices (see here, here, and here). Today he shared some first impressions of the Apple Watch Series 2, so of course I rushed to check them out. I agree with him on almost every point.

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Matt 1 minute read
September 20, 2016

Critic vs. Fanboy

I was listening to one podcast today where a host mentioned the hiss sound coming from their iPhone. He wrote about it online and contacted Apple support to see if this was expected behavior. According to Apple, this was not expected, and they should return the iPhone and get a new one.

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Matt 3 minute read
September 19, 2016

Why an Expensive Nexus (Pixel) Phone Could Work

There are some pretty credible rumors out today indicating that the new phone from Google will start at $650, just like the iPhone and Galaxy S7. Many Google fans are upset by this, and I don't entirely blame them. The Nexus 6P currently retails for $499, so a $150 jump in price is not exactly what Nexus owners were hoping for.

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