As part of its Pixel phone announcement today, Google said it will give Pixel phone users free unlimited cloud storage of the full-sized, high-resolution images and videos that are captured on the phone. This includes 4K video, which the new smartphone is capable of capturing.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
If you haven’t updated to macOS Sierra yet, you might find your installation will go more quickly than you might have anticipated. That’s because Apple has made a subtle change to the way major macOS updates are sent to eligible Macs.
For a while now, macOS has featured an option to download software updates in the background. You can find the settings in the App Store panel of the System Preferences app. If you have the “Download newly available updates in the background” box checked, your Mac will do just what it says—download updates automatically, so they’re ready to install immediately.
But up to now, that setting didn’t cover major system updates like macOS Sierra. Beginning today and rolling out over the next few weeks, the full update to macOS Sierra will be available for background downloading on Macs that are compatible with the macOS Sierra update.
What this means is that if your compatible Mac running 10.11.5 or 10.11.6 alerts you that the update to macOS Sierra is available, rather than being prompted to download the (somewhat large) macOS Sierra installer, the installer will immediately launch, because it was downloaded in the background before you were alerted.
If you don’t want to update to Sierra, you can delete the installer. If you’re running short on disk space, the system will automatically delete the installer if it needs to make room for your files. What Apple has basically done is add the installers for major macOS updates to all the other software updates that download in the background so you can install them immediately rather than waiting.
To turn this feature off, you can uncheck the option to download new updates in the App Store pane. If you’ve got plenty of bandwidth and no bandwidth caps, however, allowing the system to download your apps in advance of installation can be a time saver.
As an early adopter of the Amazon Echo, the recent reports that Apple has already embarked upon the development of a competing product have me intrigued. Now that Amazon has shown that such a category has legs, it’s not hard to imagine Apple swooping in with a beautiful competing device that shows off all of the company’s trademarks of beautiful, thoughtful design.
While I’m a comfortable denizen of Apple’s ecosystem, I have to admit that I’m not wholly convinced that the company’s product will entice me to their side of the voice-controlled market. Over the past year and a half, I’ve become a big supporter of the Echo, and it’s hard to see that evaporating away overnight. But there are definitely a few moves that Apple could make that might tip the scales in its favor.
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Look, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are old hat. They’ve been out for a few weeks now, and really, what more is there to say about them? Jet black, blah blah, great camera, blah blah, waterproof, whoop de doo. Great, fine. Time to move on. Let’s talk about what we really want: the iPhone 8. I’ve painstakingly compiled a list of the top five features that I’d like to see on Apple’s next phone, which, as we all know, will be the phone that we deserve—until the iPhone 9 shows up, anyway.
Fireproof: The iPhone 7 is waterproof and that’s great if you go swimming with it, or take it into the shower, or try to skip it off the lake like a flat rock. But there are way more dangerous things out there than water. Lava, for example. If my next iPhone isn’t able to withstand heat up to 500° then Apple has failed. What good is a phone if I can’t drop it into a volcano, “accidentally” bake it in my oven for 30 minutes with cheese sprinkled on top, or leave it sitting next to a Galaxy Note 7?
Cutting-edge design: I’m not just talking about the fact that the iPhone 7 looks like the iPhone 6s or the iPhone 6, I’m talking literally. Why do I have to carry my smartphone and a knife? The thing’s going to keep getting thinner as long as Jony Ive continues his endless battle against the forces from the second dimension, led by his archrival: Mark Papermaster. (There you go, Apple executive fanboys—that’s a deep cut. If you will.)
Fewer buttons: By my count, the iPhone 7 still has at least three more buttons on it than necessary. I’m not saying that we should eliminate all of the iPhone’s buttons—that would be ridiculous. But one button ought to be sufficient for everything you want to do. Press it once to wake or lock the phone, twice to switch from ring to silent, an alternating pattern of long/short long/short to increase the volume, and an alternating pattern of short/long/short short/long/short to decrease the volume. Simple. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t already thought of this!
Even blacker black: What’s better than two different shades of black? Three different shades of black. Jet Black is lovely, from what I’ve heard, but what with the worries about microabrasions, it’s clear it’s not going to stand up to Apple’s high standards. So one more shot at this: Void Black. A black so black that if you drop it in the middle of the night you’re just going to have to buy a new phone, because that one’s gone, man. So black that even Spinal Tap will have to admit that their album cover is just slightly gray-ish. So black that if you stare at it long enough, you won’t even be sure which side of the phone you’re actually on anymore. And here’s the best part: As you gaze into the Void Black iPhone 8, it also gazes into you!
17 headphone jacks: But only one of them works, and it’s random each time.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people. I think that we’re embarked on that. Is the next step the iPad? Who knows? Will it happen next year or five years from now or seven years from now? Who knows? But I think we’re headed in that direction.
In the six years since, the iPad has become more powerful. While it doesn’t have some things Mac users take for granted like an exposed file system, it’s easier and easier to pick up an iPad Pro and work all day.
In the same time frame, more mobile features have come to the Mac. Something like Launchpad brings an iOS-like experience to the Mac. You can still navigate to the Applications folder, or use Spotlight — and now Siri — to launch apps, or you can hit F4 on your keyboard and look for the icon you need.
Launchpad is out on the surface. Things like full-screen apps, Siri and sandboxing have made the Mac more car-like than ever before. Likewise, the MacBook has a lot more in common with the iPad than Macs before it.
I believe Apple when they say that macOS and iOS aren’t on a collision course. I don’t think Apple is going to merge them into some weird, all-in-one OS like Microsoft has tried to do with Windows.
I’ve been a Mac user since 2001. I’ve used every version of Mac OS X over the years. I’ve made my living on a string of PowerBooks and MacBook Pros for as long as I can remember. As good as my iPad Pro is, the Mac is home.
However, I think a lot of the what has been added to the Mac experience isn’t for me anymore. The last several macOS releases have been full of features that I’m not interested in using. I don’t want iCloud syncing and optimizing my files automatically. Siri on the Mac isn’t changing my workflows. I didn’t need my computer to hide my user library folder or to try to force me into only running signed apps. I was perfectly clear on how the old Save-As system worked. I need a laptop with more than a single port.
In a world of features that Mac power users aren’t interested in, Apple has been doing some good stuff. Stuff like better power management, Metal and a new filesystem give me hope that somewhere, someone cares about the guts of macOS still.
I don’t begrudge Apple wanting to make the Mac more approachable for the iPhone-owning masses. The more popular the Mac is, the better it is for everyone. I just worry that the truck I love is becoming a little more car-like every passing year.
[Stephen Hackett is the author of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay FM.]
Dumb homes are so 20th century. Over the past year or so, I’ve been experimenting with smart home technology, upgrading bits and bobs here and there to really see what this burgeoning new field of technology is capable of. If you’re also thinking of exploring this area, I thought it might be helpful to run down the hardware that I’ve installed in my home in this quest for automation. (As I live in an apartment, my smart home options are a bit limited to things that I can easily install without my landlord’s help or approval.)
Philips Hue Starter Set It’s a pretty pricey way to start out, and maybe not for the faint of heart, but there’s no better and more fun way to dive in than with the Hue starter set. I installed all three of the included LED bulbs in floor lamps—two in my living room and one in my office. The included hub has to live in my entertainment center, because it requires a hardwired network connection. (Interesting note: the other night my power went out; when it came back on, the bulbs went on full power, which was pretty startling.)
There’s a lot to like about the Hue bulbs. Sure, you can control them remotely or automate them based on time or location (more on which later), but changing the colors? Just plain fun. Perhaps best of all, though, is that Philips’s API for the bulbs has made them widely accessible by a variety of home automation protocols. They work with Siri and HomeKit, the Amazon Echo, IFTTT, Yonomi, and a variety of other apps and services. (If you don’t need colors and/or only need a couple lights, the Hue White Starter Kit is also a solid option.)
Philips Hue White Bulb Two Pack Once you’ve got the hub set up, adding new bulbs is pretty easy. I put in two white bulbs in the bedside lamps in my bedroom; they work with the same hub as the starter set and at $30 for a two-pack, they definitely run cheaper than the color-enabled models.
Philips Hue Tap Switch I’ve extolled the virtues of adding a physical switch to your smart lighting setup, and the $50 Tap Switch is a nice option. It doesn’t require a battery and has four programmable buttons that you can assign to multiple lights in multiple rooms. Set up is pretty easy and it comes with an adhesive wall mount, which still allows you to detach the switch and carry it around with you.
Philips Hue Dimmer Switch If the Tap Switch is overkill or doesn’t quite do it for you, this wireless dimmer switch is also an option. Here’s what I like about it: it’s a little more elegant than the Tap Switch, comes with a mounting plate that’s got magnets on the back as well as other mounting options, lets you easily control the brightness of lights in a room, and can act as a detachable remote control. The one downside? Unlike the Tap Switch, it does need batteries.
Belkin WeMo Insight Switch If you’re not ready to make the jump to an expensive smart lighting setup, the WeMo Insight Switch is a cheap and easy alternative. I replaced my older WeMo switch with this model, which has all the same features including remote access, app integration, and the ability to automate on and off times, as well as an additional feature that lets you monitor how much juice the attached gadget is using and receive notifications based on the power status. It works great with the Echo, but the only downside is that there’s no HomeKit compatibility.
Logitech Harmony Hub Getting a good universal remote for my home entertainment setup was just the start; that’s why I upgraded to the Harmony Hub—well, that and being able to talk to my TV and other devices. Integration with IFTTT opens this device up to the Echo and other services, which is nice, though it’s still pretty limited. There is some Hue integration, but it’s pretty sparse in this model—you can only trigger lights based on what “activity” you’re doing. There’s a newer version that adds specific smart home controls, if that’s what you’re looking for.
Amazon Echo Dot HomeKit and Siri will get you access to a lot of smart home features, but honestly the Echo line opens up a lot more possibilities. With the new Echo Dot down to just $50, there’s really no reason not to pick one up. As long as you’re not playing music directly on the device, it’s totally sufficient for automation style tasks. (And for music playing, you can always connect an external speaker.)
I do have a couple of other devices with some degree of automation, in addition to the ones listed above, such as a Canary security camera (full disclosure: the company was a sponsor on one of my podcasts) and a Sonos Play:1; in both cases, I’m still seeing if there are useful benefits to their integration. But rest assured that I’m still expanding my collection—it’s only a matter of time before my smart home is plotting my demise.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Subscriber Joe asked me to write about what Apple’s living-room strategy is these days. Sometimes I think the strategy is to stall and wait to see what happens. I’m not sure any tech company is really making great strides in the living room right now. Sure, there are players—Apple, Amazon, Roku, Google—and they’ve all got different product offerings. But nobody has taken anything resembling an insurmountable lead, and it seems like a whole lot of tech companies are willing to bide their time when it comes to traditional television.
Can you blame them? The traditional television industry feels like it’s crumbling day by day. It seems like a smart strategy to tinker around the edges until a crack opens up that lets you finally make a product that can change the game.
As Dan mentioned in a recent Macworld article, there’s been some talk of the FCC making new regulations that would basically allow any old box to be a cable box. I’m not sure I really believe that this will ever happen, but that would be exactly the kind of crack I’m talking about. When every cable company’s TV box is just streaming video over the Internet, why do cable companies need to have TV boxes?
This past couple of weeks I’ve been using Comcast’s new Xfinity TV app. That’s its name—TV. What it does is turn any iOS device in my house into a TV. Every channel that I can see on my TV, I can watch live on my iPad. Even restricted stuff like baseball games—if I’m in my house, I can watch it. That app is basically a cable box already—a Comcast app relaying its TV service, running on Apple hardware. (It also supports Picture in Picture on my iPad, which more than I can say for many other TV-service apps out there.)
Or maybe it won’t be a transition away from traditional cable boxes. There are all sorts of different ways that this industry could crack, which is why it pays to wait and watch and see what shakes out. Maybe the rise of various streaming bundles will make that a better way into the market. Maybe our very conception of television will change so much that what we consider must-have features today will turn out to be irrelevant.
What if big TVs are just for watching movies and stuff? What if people stop buying big TVs at all? I admit that might be a decade or two out, but it might happen. If VR stuff ends up getting really good, really fast, it might happen even faster than you think. (I want to believe that we’ll always want to watch a movie or TV show on a big screen in a darkened room with good sound, but lots of people believed that we’d always want to read a newspaper every morning, and look how that worked out.)
Anyway, Joe, what I’m saying is, I think maybe Apple’s just being prudent and waiting. The Apple TV is fine. It’s got some issues, but in the grand scheme of things I think Apple considers it more of a stake to stay in the game than a vitally important part of its strategy. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like the Apple TV to be a better product now—but maybe if we view it as more of a placeholder or declaration of intent, Apple’s on-and-off attention to it will make a little more sense.
I’ve got to say that it’s pretty strange that I now have anecdotes of writing about technology that date from 20 years ago. When I started, I was the youngest person in the office—in fact, the first person most of my co-workers had worked with who was born in the 1970s. They were appalled. (I told this story the other day and someone said, “Wow, the ‘70s!” They meant how old I was, not how young. These kids today.)
Anyway, my anecdote from the 1990s is this: When I told people what I did for a living, and they asked me how I liked it, my standard answer was that I get to play with all the newest toys for a living. And to this day, I still feel like it. The greatest pleasure in being able to write about technology as my profession is that I get to use the latest and greatest stuff, and have a legitimate work reason to do so. Nice work if you can get it.
So it’s been three weeks since I got the newest toys. Because I’m a product reviewer, I’m in the enviable position of having both an iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in the house, which is great, because it lets me use both and be able to write about both knowledgeably. I don’t think I would choose to buy a Plus model, but having some time with a review unit lets me at least have some experience with it. And it let me test out the new Portrait mode in the beta of iOS 10.1 last week, which was pretty cool.
I’ve already reviewed the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and at some point soon I need to review the Apple Watch Series 2 and watchOS 3. But in the meantime, just for you, here are some additional impressions:
A few weeks of using the Jet Black iPhone 7 without the case has convinced me that this is the model I want to buy for myself. I had forgotten just how delightful the curved edges of the iPhone 6/6S/7 design are, because the 6 and 6S were so slippery that I had to use a case. I wouldn’t say the Jet Black phone feels like it’s glued to my hand or anything, but it’s just tacky enough to give me the confidence to use it caseless.
A lot has been made of Apple’s warning of microabrasions on Jet Black cases. You know that if Apple didn’t put that warning on there, we’d be in the midst of Scratchgate or Jetblackgate right now, right? It’s an interesting bit of pre-emptive warning on Apple’s part. Now we expect the scratches. So after a couple of weeks in my pocket and on my counter, how is my Jet Black iPhone holding up? To my eye, extremely well. If you’re the kind of person who goes over your phone with a jeweler’s loupe looking for imperfections, maybe don’t get the Jet Black, put it in a case, and live a happier life. But it doesn’t bother me one bit.
I’ve also heard a lot of people say that they were opting for the Black model over the Jet Black model, not because of fear of microabrasions but for dislike of fingerprints. This is a personal choice, obviously: the Jet Black back of the iPhone 7 collects fingerprints just like the glass front of every iPhone collects fingerprints. It’s even got an oleophobic coating, like the glass does, so you can wipe those fingerprints off more easily.
The iPhone 7 Plus I have is in Black, rather than Jet Black. It looks great, and if it were the only black phone option, I would choose it. But if fingerprints bother you, I’m not sure the Black phone is much better. It reminds me a lot of the old Black MacBook—it’s a matte black that still picks up fingerprints, but since the fingerprints come from shiny oil from our fingers, they end up smudging all over the matte black case. I don’t think finger smudges on matte black look better than fingerprints on shiny, slick black, but your mileage may vary. Once again, if a reminder that we are beings who ooze oil from our fingertips (and everywhere else) makes you uncomfortable, you might want a case and a phone color that doesn’t remind you of this fact!
I’ve also had an Apple Watch Series 2 strapped to my wrist for the last couple of weeks—except when I sleep, of course—and I am happy to report that you’d never know it was a new watch. I like the original Apple Watch design and this new model doesn’t feel thicker or heavier (though it is, a little), and of course, uses the same bands. The battery life is noticeably better, the screen is definitely brighter (I can tell when I’m trying to look at it in bright sunlight while wearing sunglasses), and while I haven’t taken it swimming, I have it on good authority that it’s waterproof.
Still, unless you’re a swimmer or tend to go running without a phone (and therefore want to use the GPS features), the Apple Watch Series 2 isn’t a must-upgrade product. It’s a product for people who waited for the second version of new Apple hardware. Not only is it good, but watchOS 3 is fantastic, and keeps getting better as I receive app updates that take advantage of the new app features of watchOS 3, including fitness apps that can stay in the foreground. When the AirPods ship next month, people who use an Apple Watch won’t feel constrained by their lack of remote controls, either, since the Apple Watch is a pretty good remote itself.
Next step for me: Switching from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 7 Plus as my primary phone for a few weeks. I don’t love the act of switching iPhones—there’s a lot of Apple ID nonsense that happens—but it’s worth doing so I can have the full experience with the device. I’m traveling to Ireland in late October (see the next item for an exciting offer!) and may bring the Plus phone with me then, because it’s got better cameras and more battery life and those are pretty good things for when you’re traveling. We’ll see.
And, with any luck, next month will bring some more new toys into the house: new Macs. There are a lot of rumors flying around that we’ll finally see updates to the Mac, especially the laptops, but hopefully the desktop models, too. The entire Mac line needs a refresher, and while rumor had it that there were going to be new Mac laptops announced at WWDC this summer, none arrived. Two years ago, Apple followed up a huge iPhone and Apple Watch event in September with a smaller, low-key event in Apple’s tiny Town Hall theater. Last year the September event was all we got. This year, I’ve got a strong feeling that Apple’s got one more event in it. Here’s to October, and with any luck, new Mac toys!
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I’ve been editing video for a very long time. Since the days of wiring two VCRs together and pressing play on one and record on the other. I’m not a professional video editor and never will be, but I’ve been an amateur long enough to appreciate how far we’ve come from the days of two VCRs. (Sorry, people who grew up editing actual film—I never had the privilege.)
This year I made an effort to generate video editions of one of my podcasts, Total Party Kill. It led me down the path of using Final Cut Pro X more than I’ve ever done before. And while I know that Apple’s redesign of Final Cut made a lot of professional video editors very angry, as an amateur who needs a tool to bodge together Internet videos from a bunch of different sources, I’ve been floored at how easy it is to get the results that I want.
The timeline stacks audio and video clips on top of one another.
It starts with the timeline, into which you can dump just about anything you need—video, audio, graphics, you name it. The different levels of the timeline stack, so for visible objects (as opposed to audio files) you’re creating layers of objects that lay on top of one another.
For Total Party Kill, I need to take two different video files—video of our faces playing Dungeons and Dragons generated by Google Hangouts, and video of the map we’re playing on as captured via QuickTime Player from my web browser. In order to fit them together on a screen, I scale down the video of our faces and scale and crop the video from QuickTime Player.
The idea of scaling and cropping video seemed extremely intimidating to me, but once you figure out how to do it in Final Cut Pro X, it’s pretty easy. When you select a video in the timeline, you can click on its characteristics in the Video pane. Click the Transform tool to move and scale your video file—you can even just drag it around on the screen in the preview window. Click the Crop tool to crop your video.
The video pane (right) lets you move, crop, and scale video clips like the map capture selected at far left.
The shape of our D&D maps can vary quite a bit based on the rooms that we’re exploring, so the cropping I do on my map video varies throughout the entire three-hour-long session. To make different crops at different points, I use the Blade tool in Final Cut Pro. To use the blade tool, just type the letter b, and your cursor becomes a blade, ready to split any clip in the timeline into two separate clips at the place where you click. (Type a to return to a normal cursor when you’re done.) I use the Blade tool to chop my two video files whenever I need them to change their orientation, and then move and crop them as needed.
Another cool option is duplicating your video clip and using different parts of it in different places. My Google Hangouts video features a large image of the person who’s currently talking, and a series of thumbnails of everyone’s faces at the bottom of the screen. When I want to put them in different places, I duplicate my video in the timeline and crop each copy to only display the relevant portion. You can even do this multiple times, creating a big stack of duplicate videos, all with different portions cropped out.
The shapes of my Google Hangouts video and the map capture don’t usually fit together like pieces of a puzzle, so I bring in some graphics files to fill the space (and remind people what they’re watching). A quick trip to Photoshop generated a banner version of our podcast logo that I was able to drop in and fill a bunch of black space on the screen. I also brought in a transparent PNG file of the Incomparable logo, and dropped it in the bottom-left corner of the screen and set that object to a low opacity, replicating annoying TV-network bugs. Always be branding.
That leaves audio, which is also pretty straightforward. I was able to drag in audio files of the podcast’s theme song and position those properly, drop in a large video logo at the very start of the podcast as a title card, and drop in a high-quality audio file based on every participant’s local recording of their microphone rather than the muddy version recorded by Google Hangouts.
The end result is hardly a network TV production, but it’s a lot better than any of the source material on its own. And I was able to do it in Final Cut without too much of a learning curve.
The Úll Conference may be the single best conference experience I have ever had. It’s always held in a small venue where the conference takes over the facilities, and the last three years it’s been out in the Irish countryside. This year’s Úll (Irish for “Apple”) conference is November 1-2 in Killarney, Ireland, in the same amazing venue as last year’s event. This is a unique event and if you can make it, I highly recommend it. Attendees board a chartered train (that’s right, we get our own train) at Dublin’s Heuston Station, which will take us across to Killarney. It’s magical.
I’m so fortunate to have been asked to return to Úll this year. I’ll be doing something a bit different: I’ll be hosting and producing a series of audio programs from the event, featuring the speakers and attendees. It’s called Ull Radio and even if you’re not going this year, you can subscribe to it as a podcast via iTunes or Overcast or any podcast app via this RSS feed.
Roku announced five new streaming devices: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/26/roku-five-new-streaming-devices/
New features, Photos has them: http://www.macworld.com/article/3122966/macs/6-photos-features-that-are-worth-the-upgrade-to-macos-sierra.html
Firewatch is coming to theaters: http://www.gamesradar.com/firewatch-is-coming-to-theaters-courtesy-of-dont-breathe-production-company/
Apple now sells Sonos speakers: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/sonos-speakers-apple-store,news-23543.html
Xiaomi’s new fingerprint reader is probably what Apple will do: https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/27/xiaomi-mi-5s-plus/
Security flaw in iTunes backups: https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/24/ios-10-itunes-backup-security-flaw/
Lex likes his Amazon Basics iPhone 7 Plus case: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Slim-Case-iPhone-Plus/dp/B01I48LNBE/ref=nosim/thelexfiles05-20
Our thanks to Mack Weldon (https://www.mackweldon.com/rebound). Mack Weldon makes glorious underwear to hold your bits in the way they deserve, anti-microbially. It is truly awesome stuff. So go to MackWeldon.com/REBOUND and use the promo code “REBOUND” to get 20 percent off your order.
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It’s been nearly five years since Scott Forstall stood on stage and introduced Siri to the world. Siri has come a long way since the days of the iPhone 4S, and now Apple’s voice-controlled assistant is on our iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and even-thanks to macOS Sierra-our Macs.
But by almost any measurement, these are the very earliest days of intelligent-assistant technologies. Five years might as well be a wink of an eye. The next few years will be very important for Siri and its cousins-Cortana, Alexa, and the Google Assistant. Here’s a look at where Siri goes from here.
As teased last week, the CW has released an update to its iOS app that brings support for streaming shows via AirPlay and Chromecast, as well as finally—finally—making content available via an Apple TV app.
The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” CEO John Chen said in a statement. “This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital.”
We talked about this on today’s episode of Clockwise. It’s really easy to point at BlackBerry executives’ denial upon the announcement of the iPhone and laugh. But BlackBerry was in a tough position—they had all the advantages of a successful incumbent, but that success also made it difficult to change. Even if they had realized months or even years earlier that the iPhone (and soon, Android) was going to destroy their business, I’m not sure if they would have been able to make the changes necessary to compete with those upstarts.
It strikes me that the right strategy for BlackBerry might have been to embrace the idea of BlackBerry as a secure information service provider rather than a hardware maker, and roll out BlackBerry apps on every possible mobile platform. That way, even if a government or enterprise worker wanted to get an iPhone, they’d still be using BlackBerry servers and sending BlackBerry messages.
I don’t think BlackBerry was ever going to be able to compete with the rise of iPhone and Android. But perhaps they could’ve benefited from it anyway.
Bill Atkinson points to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series from the 1980s, in which an artificial sentience called “Jane” lives in a crystal planted in the ear of the main character, Ender. Jane can do millions of computations per second and is aware and responsive on millions of levels. She’s hesitant to make herself known to humans because she’s painfully aware of the dangerous feelings of inferiority she may awaken in them. Pretty brilliant stuff.
Siri is headed for something like Jane, eventually, Atkinson says. “I think of this as Jane 0.1,” Atkinson says. “Within a few years it’s going to be able to do lots of things: It will hear everything you hear, it’s going to be able to whisper in your ear.”
I vividly remember Atkinson giving his presentation at Macworld Expo in 2011 about the future of user interfaces and how he described in great detail how we’d one day put in an earpiece that could talk to us, listen to us, and look at the world around us—and how that would be how the global Internet interacted with us on a moment-to-moment basis. With every passing day his description of that technology seems more accurate.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The Amazon Kindle Oasis (left) with the Kobo Aura One.
The ebook reader market is funny. After an initial flurry of excitement, we seem to have settled in on the idea that paper books and ebooks are going to coexist, and that some people who choose to read ebooks will just do so on their smartphones and tablets. But that still leaves a really interesting niche for people who do love reading on dedicated reading devices with screens that are more like a book’s pages than a computer’s backlit display.
For pure utility, the $120 Kindle Paperwhite is the ebook reader you should buy. But what’s more interesting are the developments at the high end of this category, where premium ebook readers have become a thing. First was the $290 Kindle Oasis, which is beautiful, small, and thin.
So when Kobo announced the $229 Kobo Aura One, I was intrigued. It’s a premium ebook reader like the Kindle Oasis, but Kobo has made a bunch of different choices about what that means and what features matter to ebook readers.
I bought a Kobo Aura One to try it out and have been using it for a couple of weeks, the first time I’ve used an ebook reader that wasn’t a Kindle. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a lot of the choices Kobo has made, and while I’m not sure it’s better than the Oasis, it’s most certainly different.
Let’s start with the size: The Aura One has a 7.8-inch diagonal screen with a screen resolution of 300 ppi. That’s the same resolution as all but the cheapest of Amazon’s Kindles, but it’s a much larger screen—the Kindle screens are all only 6 inches diagonal. The end result is that reading a book on an Aura One feels like reading a hardcover, while reading on a Kindle feels like reading a paperback. There’s more text on the screen and you need to turn the page much less frequently. The extra reading space isn’t necessary, per se, but it does feel luxurious.
The tiled Kobo Aura One home screen.
Hardcover books can be heavy, though: the last hardcover novel I read before I bought my first kindle weighed 2.8 pounds! The Aura One isn’t like that—at 8.1 ounces, it’s about the same weight as the Kindle Paperwhite. The Oasis, on the other hand, weighs 4.6 ounces. I was comfortable holding the Aura One and reading for long stretches of time, but if you’re looking for the lightest ebook reader around, the Oasis is for you. The Oasis also offers hardware page-turn buttons; to turn pages on the Aura One, you’ve got to swipe or tap on the screen.
This is not to say that the Aura One doesn’t have its own advantages. It’s waterproof, for one, which no Kindle has ever been able to claim. If you’re someone who reads in a bathtub or hot tub, or otherwise walks the perilous path between reading and water, this is a huge feature in the Aura One’s favor.
Like the Kindle Voyage (but not, strangely, the Oasis), the Aura One has a light sensor that allows it to dynamically adjust its screen brightness based on your surroundings. (Like most Kindles, the Aura One is illuminated internally by a ring of lights.) Unlike the Kindle, the Aura One has a feature that’s akin to Apple’s Night Shift—it can skew its lighting into warmer tones in the evening. If you’re someone who wants to get blue light out of your eyes at night, that’s another point in the Aura One’s favor.
In the end, though, shopping for an ebook reader comes down to the ecosystem it’s connected to. Kobo readers are wired to buy books from the Kobo store; Amazon readers buy from Amazon. You can’t easily migrate your books from one store to another, so if you’ve invested in the Kindle ecosystem it would be hard to switch to the Aura One. That said, I used the open-source app Calibre to convert some of my Kindle books into DRM-free Epub files and then read them on the Kobo. So it’s not impossible to make the transition if you only occasionally want to dip into the archives.
Pocket on the Aura One.
Amazon still offers daily newspapers for the Kindle, which Kobo doesn’t, though both stores offer magazines. Kobo has a leg up on Amazon in a couple other areas: native support for Pocket and Overdrive.
Pocket is a read-it-later service that lets you save stuff on the Web to read at a later time. It’s a perfect fit for an ereader—I use Instapaper to send stories to my Kindle all the time. But on the Aura One, Pocket is integrated right into the device. Just log in with your Pocket account, and your articles will sync, ready to be read on the device. It couldn’t be easier.
Overdrive is a system (owned by the same company, Rakuten, that owns Kobo) that lets your local library offer ebooks for check-out to patrons. You can check out books from Overdrive and download them to your Kindle, but it’s a multi-step process that involves logging in to the Overdrive web site, picking a book, then linking over to Amazon. On the Aura One, all of that happens on the device, which is much more convenient.
Library check-outs are hidden in a sub-menu.
There’s just one problem: The Aura One doesn’t give you a way to search your local library’s collection of ebooks on the device. If you want to read a book, you can search for it in the Kobo store and then tap a More Options icon to see if it’s available on Overdrive. It reminded me of that Douglas Adams line about an item being put on public display “at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” Once you find a book that’s offered by your library, it takes a couple of taps to check it out and read it—but Kobo is not making much of an effort to let you find library books or remind you that a particular book is available for free check-out. Two steps forward, one step back.
After years of using the Amazon Kindle interface, I was interested in Kobo’s very different approach. Instead of making a list of your documents the home screen, the Aura One features a set of tiles that highlight books and apps that you’ve used recently. I’m not sure if I prefer it to a no-frills list of what’s on the device, but I generally never needed to go to that list, since the books I was currently reading were always offered on tiles. I also found Kobo’s typography quite good, with several different font choices as well as the ability to turn off forced justification on books. My only complaint on this score is that book text seemed strangely framed on any book that wasn’t bought from the Kobo store or checked out via Overdrive, with almost no white space at the top of the screen and too much at the bottom.
(Update: Thanks to reader Eliot Lovell, I discovered this set of Calibre plugins that gets Epub files in a more Kobo-friendly format, and solves the rendering issues it seems to have with generic, unconverted Epubs.)
In the end, where does the Kobo Aura One rank? If you’re not deeply tied into the Amazon ecosystem and screen size or waterproofing mean more to you than weight, the Aura One’s a better choice than the Oasis—and it’s $60-$80 cheaper. (Unlike Amazon, Kobo doesn’t make you pay $20 to remove ads—and it does the right thing and shows the cover art of the book you’re currently reading when it’s turned off.)
If you want a no-frills ebook reader, I stand by my recommendation of the $120 Kindle Paperwhite. If you’re looking for something more, the $229 Kobo Aura One is an appealing option.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I like a whole lot of what Apple’s trying to do with Messages in iOS 10. Message-sending is the killer app of smartphones, and Apple’s text-and-photos approach to messaging was too basic. With iOS 10, Messages is fun again.
And effects! Don’t get me started. Sending the word balloons, but with the Lasers effect? It’s the best. I really do enjoy sending messages with those effects, though I admit that my enjoyment is almost entirely ironic. It doesn’t matter. They’re silly and fun.
But here’s the thing: Apple has packed tons of fun things into Messages in iOS 10—but the interface itself has broken down. No, Messages isn’t as inscrutable as Snapchat, but it’s not what I’d call a well-designed app. It’s an app that’s full of features, but too many features are impossible to discover. Overall, Messages for iOS 10 is just way too complicated.
Let’s start with the blue up arrow, which has replaced the Send button. Its placement, where the old Send button was, is probably enough to get across what you do when you tap it, but I’ve seen numerous people upgrade to iOS 10 and then get confused how to send a simple text message.
What’s worse than the arrow itself is what’s hidden behind the arrow. If you use 3D Touch (or touch and hold on non-3D-Touch-capable devices), you get access to all those effects—four effects that animate the bubble you’re sending, and five that animate the entire message window. Those effects are fun, and once you know to use 3D Touch they’re pretty easy to send (though if your grip’s not secure, you could find yourself pressing the send button instead of bringing up the effects window).
What about discovery? There’s simply no way, short of trial and error, for someone to figure out how to send effects. This is a problem with a lot of the design of iOS 10, where there are lots of extra features concealed a tap or swipe away, but without any indication that there’s anything more you can do on that screen. (Try to toggle shuffle on and off in Music. You have to know to scroll the album art up to reveal the additional controls, but how would you know? Again, once you know the feature is there, it’s pretty nifty—but it’s just frustrating unless you are in on the secret.)
On the iPad, there’s an ink button parked on the keyboard. Tap it, and you get a white area where you can draw a message as if you were writing in ink. I don’t really understand the rationale for placing that feature inside a software keyboard, and I always forget that it’s there, but that’s where Apple has put it. On the iPhone, it’s even weirder—you get to the interface by turning your phone on its side so it’s in landscape orientation, at which point the writing space appears.
All the other features are located under a gray greater-than symbol to the left of the text input area. Tap that symbol and you’ll see three different symbols—a camera, a heart with two fingers, and the somewhat familiar App Store logo. The camera icon is clear enough, though you have to swipe to the right to reveal that you have access to a full-screen camera view as well as the traditional photo-library picker.
The Digital Touch view (the heart with two fingers) has been imported from the Apple Watch, and combined with a video-camera feature. I’m willing to accept that this is the most Snapchat-like of all Messages features, and that someone my daughter’s age might find it awesome. I find it a little confusing. You can tap a carat icon to take the Digital Touch panel full screen, so you can draw an animated messages in a larger space. There’s an animated panel just above it that shows you what different finger gestures will do, and if you tap it, a help page will slide up. For a simple, fun feature, it’s not so simple.
Then there’s the app store. I like the idea of a Messages app store, full of sticker packs and apps that can integrate the intelligence of standalone apps with the freewheeling conversation of a text message. But the complexity of this interface is pretty breathtaking. Here’s how to direct someone to the Messages App Store: Tap the gray greater-than sign, then the App Store icon, then the four-circles icon in the bottom left corner of the screen, then the icon with a plus symbol that’s labeled Store. Four taps to get to the App Store seems like a lot, but there it is.
Finally, let’s talk about the message window itself. Stickers can very easily cover your conversation, and it’s not obvious how to get them out of the way to read a text. The Tap Back feature, which lets you give a quick reaction of one of six icons to any given message, is invisible unless you go looking for it—or activate it accidentally.
I like Apple’s instincts in transforming Messages like it has in iOS 10. But the interface is in need of a lot of refinement. Some features aren’t at all discoverable, and others are buried behind complex chains of icon taps and slide-up interfaces. (I’m also not sure why Digital Touch and the ink-writing feature are different.) There’s a lot of fun stuff here, but for more people to embrace it, they need to be able to find it and use it with ease. A messaging app shouldn’t be boring—but it also shouldn’t be hard to use. In iOS 10, Apple has traded one problem for another.
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