Android
Essentially a Disaster
Andrew Martonik has some choice words for the Essential Phone over at Android Central:
Aside from the hardware, every other aspect of my Essential Phone experience has been about frustration. Mostly, it boils down to horrendous software stability and performance. Despite dozens of updates and the anecdotes you may have seen that indicate performance issues
Google Can’t Seem to Wait to Kill YouTube on Amazon Fire Devices
YouTube no longer available on Fire TV as Amazon signals lack of deal with Google - 9to5Google
Amazon has gone ahead and disabled the YouTube app ahead of the impending January 1st deadline. The company is readying users for the shut down by directing them to visit the YouTube site directly through either the Silk browser
Links
Save $5 at Fandango When You Use Apple Pay
MacRumors reporting:
Apple is offering an Apple Pay promotion this week that discounts Fandango movie tickets by $5 when you make a purchase using either the Fandango app or the Fandango.com website.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping Apple would start doing. Android Pay has done this once or twice
Links
Settling into your Smart Assistant Groove
When Alexa Becomes Part of the Family - Slate:
“I thought that I would be continuously testing the new features that came out of it, that it would always be a source of something novel,” Primiano said of her Echo. “But in reality what happened was that I settled down upon certain Alexa features that I
Links
Ulysses’ Early Adopter Promotion Ending Soon
In case you didn’t realize, my favorite writing app of all time switched to a subscription model earlier in the year. As any move to subscriptions results in some bad blood with the community (although rarely from me), the good folks over there have been allowing people who have bought the app previously to
Game
Civilization VI (all of it!) Comes to iPad
Correction: now through January 4, the full game upgrade is on sale for $30.
In yet another surprise iOS game release this month, Civilization VI just hit the App Store. No, not some watered down mobile version of the game, this is the entire PC game from last year.
You can download the game for
Links
When the Tech Press Strikes Out
You’ve probably heard about the fact that Apple has confirmed they throttle iPhone performance down when battery health degrades past a certain threshold. This means that if your iPhone’s battery starts to struggle to hold a charge like it used to, the phone will slow down slightly to make sure your phone stays
iOS Apps Might be Coming to a Mac Near You
Mark Gurman has the scoop of the week:
Starting as early as next year, software developers will be able to design a single application that works with a touchscreen or mouse and trackpad depending on whether it’s running on the iPhone and iPad operating system or on Mac hardware, according to people familiar with
Links
AutoSleep is Far and Away the Best Way for Apple Watch Users to Track Their Sleep
AutoSleep is my go to sleep tracking app for the Apple Watch and it got a big update today:
Much faster, simpler and more accurate.
Now with automatic "live" sleep tracking on the Watch face! No buttons to press.
iPhone X Support. Optimised for WatchOS 4.
I love this tracker because it requires
Links
Google (sorta) Releases (a link to) Chrome on the Windows Store
Google Chrome Lands on the Microsoft Store As a Download Link - Thurrott.com:
The company today released the Google Chrome Installer on the Microsoft Store, which is a modern Windows 10 web wrapper app that loads the Google Chrome download page. From there, users follow the usual download link to download and install the browser
Links
"Ron's the handsome one" and Other Gems from a Computer Trying to Write a Chapter of Harry Potter
Botnik Studios ran the Harry Potter series through their machine learning keyboard and had it write a Harry Potter chapter of its own. The results are amazing.
"Ron's the handsome one," muttered Harry as he reluctantly reached for his. They cast a spell or two, and jets of green light shot
goodie
Use San Francisco Mono All Over macOS
This is a simple tip, but one that not enough people know. If you like the look of San Francisco Mono and want to have it available in all apps on your Mac and not just Terminal and Xcode, you can run the following command from the command line and get this slick monospace font
podcast
The BirchTree Podcast #46: My iPad Pro Setup
I have 100% more iPad in my life this week than last week so you know I have to talk about it! Today I’m just talking hardware, not software just yet.
Subscribe to The BirchTree Podcast here.
Game
Zelda Breath of the Wild: My Favorite Game of 2017
When Horizon Zero Dawn came out I felt bad for Zelda. How could Zelda live up to the masterpiece that is Horizon? What a shame that these games were coming out just a few days apart, right? Well yes, but it turned out that not only was Breath of the Wild above to best Horizon
Game
Horizon Zero Dawn: My 2nd Favorite Game of 2017
Holy crap! That’s what I thought to myself countless times while playing Horizon Zero Dawn this year. This game is from Guerrilla Games, who’s previous work entails mostly the Killzone series, which are good games at best, and underwhelming shooters at worst. This is their first attempt at an open world adventure game