The progression of advanced technology has rapidly changed our lives, most relatably in recent years with the advent of mobile technologies so advanced that PC purchases have been in decline year-over-year for some time now.  Yes, there are far more positive impacts than negative, but that doesn’t mean the negative should be completely downplayed.  While there are plenty of debates over what tiny screens in our pockets have done to us socially as a species, there are also many far-less controversial consequences, like distracted driving.

Today, however, I’d like to talk about one of those controversial impacts, and that is the issue of privacy.  The world has become very data-driven, for example, by services like Instagram, which is a simple photo-sharing app at face value, but is a huge sales and marketing tool for influencers.  We can now buy $50 devices that sit in our homes and react to commands to buy things and turn our lights on, and cameras on our phones are so good that owning a point-and-shoot digital camera these days is practically…well, pointless (pun intended).

But these things come with tradeoffs, and as we move further and further into this data-driven ecosystem, people are starting to become concerned about how much is too much.  Is it okay to put an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple HomePod in your home, knowing full well that those devices listen to you and have the potential to accidentally record and store much more data than intended?

We know, almost certainly, that the Amazon Echo is not recording everything that a person says.  The way these devices work is by waiting to hear a specific waveform – that of your trigger word (“Alexa,” “Okay Google,” “Hey Siri,” etc) – at which point it records the sound that follows, sends it home for analysis to Amazon, Google, or Apple, then returns a result (this is also how assistants work on your phone).  They don’t record all the time (except when an error caused the Google Home Mini to do exactly that), or we’d know by sniffing the network traffic.

The reason I used the phrase “almost certainly” above is that there is always the possibility of the government forcing Amazon (or any of these companies) to record and store all listening data for a single user, but the instant a savvy user noticed increased network traffic and tracked it back to their voice assistant, it would be the biggest news story of the week.

People worry about these devices, and have every right to, because as consumers, we don’t completely understand them.  However, because of that very concern, worry is often misappropriated.  Take, for example, those that refuse to have a Google Home in their living room, but carry a Pixel 2 on their person at all times, so far as even keeping it on a night stand 3 feet away from their head while asleep.  This same concept applies to those that tape over the cameras on their laptops but would never do the same thing on their Galaxy S9.

It’s not a completely black and white issue, but if you are truly concerned about privacy, it would be foolish to take precautions like taping over your laptop camera and depriving yourself of modern home assistant technology, but not also take some kind of precaution with your phone – the most personal device currently imaginable (which, by the way, probably has at least 2 microphones and 2 cameras, minimum).

Consumers are almost always willing to trade a little privacy for convenience, which is why Google’s entire business model of knowing everything about you is working so well for them.  Conversely, there are still those that are concerned about these types of things going too far, and Apple has a model that is more friendly to those consumers.  Yet, either way, some privacy is sacrificed, or at least, the possibility of complete privacy is given up.  Even with a privacy-focused company like Apple, if you backup your phone data to iCloud, the government can subpoena that data from Apple, and they will provide it.  But does that mean you should never use a phone?

We should always be wary of what information we give to companies, because whether or not that info improves your experience with a product or service, it is almost certainly also being used to feed complex algorithms with ways to make more money from you.  On a personal level, I don’t particularly care if Google knows the area I work in so it can advertise relevant local eateries around noon, but some people take offense with this, even if the company is upfront about it.

Privacy is a difficult and delicate issue, but there is no blanket statement that those of us that understand the intricate details can provide to make the less tech-savvy make better decisions.  Unfortunately, I’d guess the lack of brevity tends to make people disinterested.  What we need to remember is that we shouldn’t oversell convenience without taking into account what our data is worth, but we also shouldn’t oversell the value of certain data that we can exchange for a greater amount of convenience.

If you’re looking for a takeaway, I’ll say this: being concerned about putting a Google Home in your bedroom is absolutely, completely valid.  Do your research, understand how it listens and responds, then make that choice, but also remember that your phone follows you around and your Google Home does not.  Mentally separating the two because your phone is more familiar is cognitive dissonance if you truly want to sacrifice convenience for security.

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The original reveal of the Apple Watch is a pretty disappointing memory for me.  At the time, I don’t think anyone really knew what they wanted out of wearables, so I was okay with much of the functionality (barring some of the stupid things Apple expected people to do with their tiny wrist computer, but more on that later).  What really bothered me was the design and the price.

Apple is undeniably great at designing technology, but a watch is a fashion accessory.  They created and pushed a narrative that portrayed the watch as being stylish and hip by inviting not just tech journalists, but fashion journalists to the reveal, and this has been consistent ever since.

Honestly, the most fashionable thing about the Apple Watch is that it’s not as bulky as other smart watches.  Bigger watches go in and out of style, but some of the Android Wear watches out there are comically big.  However, there are round ones, whereas the Apple Watch is designed to look like a small iPhone.  Generally, watches (as a fashion item) should be round, according to fashion communities and publications like GQ.  While there are exceptions, I don’t feel like the Apple Watch, stylistically, is one of them.  It’s a pretty piece of technology, but it’s an ugly watch.  And yes, I know the utilitarians out there will go on and on about how round displays are inefficient for displaying content, but all of those arguments are predicated on the ideas of familiar design.  Personally, I think it’s very absurd to suggest that Apple couldn’t engineer content for a round display.  Heck, most of the content that’s already there works if you just cut off the corners.  You’d lose practically nothing of value in most cases.

But anyway, that’s a blog post for April 2015.  This is a post for December 2017, where we’re on Apple Watch iteration number four, I guess (do we count Series 1 as a separate watch?  I guess so).  We’ve now had two and a half years with these wrist computers, and Apple has had that same amount of time to refine the experience.

The original premise of the Apple Watch was that it was a small iPhone.  Apple demoed writing notes, watching Instagram videos, making calls, and sending texts.  Only the latter two have held up.  Legitimately, I don’t know if you can even still send heartbeats or digital taps/drawing.  My guess is that you can, but I don’t know how, as that menu has been completely taken over by the dock.

Clearly, the Watch isn’t a small iPhone, despite it looking like one.  It holds certain use cases – mostly revolving around convenience and fitness – but it doesn’t replace your phone except in extremely specific situations.  It took Apple over a year, but they finally started honing in on those use cases and have been perfecting the Watch for those uses ever since.

I guess I should mention here that the Apple Watch has been a pretty successful product, despite some of the doom and gloom we sometimes hear from tech journalists.  I know at least one person that abandoned the product somewhat quickly, but I know more that have kept and still use theirs.  I bought the original version in 2015 a couple months after launch, and only recently (finally) upgraded to a newer version, the Series 3 aluminum model.

The Series 3, compared the Series 0/original Apple Watch has three main advantages: 1) it’s more water-resistant (you can swim with it), 2) it’s so much faster that it makes the Series 0 feel absolutely ancient and 3) the battery life is like 300% better.  They still market it as having “all day battery” but the reality is if you don’t keep the GPS on all the time or use/have LTE on it, you could go two days without charging, maybe almost a full three.  I used to end the day with around 25-30% battery.  I now end the day with around 70-75%.

Personally, I think the LTE model is a joke.  After carrier costs and fees/taxes, the watch will run you anywhere between $10 and $15 a month to add to your data plan, most likely, and I could count on one hand the amount of times my phone wasn’t within Bluetooth range of my watch and that I also needed to use it for some data-related purpose.  Again, there are very specific cases where the LTE model is probably not only useful, but a God-send; however, I’d imagine that for 97% of people, just the regular watch is fine.

I think within the 3% that will find use with the LTE model, some sort of outdoors or sports-related activity will be a key in defining that usefulness.  Apple has really been honing in on that market, and more recently, other health-related things that aren’t necessarily fitness, like their heart study program (to detect AFib/arrhythmia).  These things combined with the convenience of notifications on your wrist are the real selling points to most people, I’d say.

Personally, while I do enjoy the convenience of notifications, I’ve found that having the weather on my wrist at all times has been a game changer for me.  My expectation of basic data that a watch face provides has shifted from “time and date” to “time and date and weather.”  Yes, it’s nifty to know how many steps I’ve taken, how active I’ve been, but paradigm shifts like the former are more interesting to me.

That said, I can’t overlook that having Siri on my wrist has been important as well, but that’s almost 90% for setting reminders in my case.  There are times when my phone is across the room, so the ability to pause/play/skip ahead in music/podcasts, take calls, send messages, use Authy, or pause my Apple TV has been very useful.  While I rarely do use other apps, the occasions do still exist when I start my car from my watch, or even more rarely, check an email.

When I use Apple Pay, it’s almost exclusively with my watch, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I have found the ability to remotely control the camera on my phone extremely useful, even if only on a handful of occasions.

All in all, I’d say the Apple Watch, while still catering to certain niches with more specific functionality, has broken out of being a niche product as a whole.  I see them all the time now, and of course, wear mine daily.  I don’t think it’s worth upgrading yearly, and I don’t think it’s worth paying more than the base model costs, but it’s a product that I truly like – not because of how it looks, as Apple may market – but rather, in spite of how it looks.

A little while back, Google released their new earbuds, the Pixel Buds, no doubt in answer to Apple’s AirPods that were released late last year.  The marketing for this product is clear, as Google states on their storefront:

Loud, proud, ‘wireless.’  Well, the Pixel doesn’t have a headphone jack (no surprise there, it’s 2017 after all), so Google needed to release a product for Pixel buyers to use that would provide a quality experience after the port deletion, just like Apple did.  However, there’s one weird thing about the Pixel Buds, and that’s, well…

…the wire.  Yes, the Pixel Buds are wireless in that they don’t require a wire to go from the phone to your ear, but they do require a wire between each earbud.  This is very much in contrast to the way that Apple solved the “quality experience without a headphone jack” problem, which was to release a truly wireless pair of earbuds.

I found this rather odd, but Google isn’t alone, of course.  Apple’s own Beats X earbuds are “wireless” earbuds that have a wire, as are any headphones that claim to be wireless.  In fact, there are only a handful of truly wireless earbuds on the market, and I think it’s a shame that Google chose to go “wireless” rather than truly wireless.  I’m sure if you get the PixelBuds, they’ll be fine (or maybe not, TWiT owner Leo Laporte seems to think they’re disappointing), but I think that experience really could’ve been better.

I want to see more really wireless earbuds.

For the record, prior to the iPhone X, I would’ve said the the Apple AirPods are the best product Apple launched since the iPhone 4 or perhaps 5.  They are incredibly good, and the first product Apple has released in quite a while that captured some of that undeniably cool Apple magic that people used to rave about so much before it became cool to hate Apple

As I mentioned in my iPhone X review, iOS apps with “pure black” themes look gorgeous on the iPhone X OLED display.  After a quick search, I realized that there isn’t really a good list of these types of apps anywhere, so I decided to start one.

• Apollo – This is a reddit client that not only has a pure black theme, but the app in general is the absolute best reddit client I’ve ever used.  The developer taking advantage of the iPhone X’s design to the fullest, even including the volume in the left ear rather than having it pop up over the content like by default in iOS.  You’ll have to enable the regular dark theme and flip a toggle in the settings for pure black mode.  App Store link / Developer site link
• Today Weather – Weather apps aren’t terribly exciting, but this one is certainly beautiful and provides all of the information I’d expect a weather app to provide.  You can even choose the weather source you want, in case you’re not fond the default weather.com.  The pure black theme is enabled by default.  App Store link
• Pokemon Go – This is a slight stretch, but Battery Saver mode in Pokemon Go now actually makes sense on the iPhone.  You just have to turn it on in your settings, then flip the phone upside down while you’re not actively playing.  App Store link
• Unread – Unread is an RSS feed reader with a pure black theme.  It can use your accounts from Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, Feedly, Fever, and Newsblur.  It’s quite well-designed and looks great on the iPhone X.  Full disclosure: It’s not free to unlock the full version with dark theme, and I was provided a promo code to be able to check out the app.  App Store link / Developer site link
• Overcast – Overcast is a popular podcast app that just added a black theme.  I feel like if you listen to podcasts and you’re reading this, you have probably already heard of Overcast, but if not, check it out.  App Store link
• Feedly – Feedly is a feed reader, now optimized for iPhone X with a pure black theme.  The new design looks pretty slick and should be quite welcome to current Feedly users with the iPhone X.  App Store link / Developer site link

This list will be updated as necessary.  If you created (or know of) an app with a pure black theme that I can test without having to buy anything, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list (I am not against buying apps at all, I just don’t want to list something I can’t test, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll want to buy your app).

Last year, I wrote a post about the iPhone 7, which I did end up getting for reasons I don’t feel like going into detail about.  It was a great phone, but like I detailed in that post, it was still a pretty lackluster upgrade from an iPhone 6, other than the extra RAM.  Anyway, the reason I bring up that post is because I also detailed the reasons I wanted to wait and buy the 2017 iPhone, and of course, the iPhone X ended up being literally everything I wanted out of a phone last year, and then some.  And before we go any further, it is “iPhone Ten”, not “iPhone Ex,” but if you like mispronouncing stuff, I guess call it whatever you want.

It’s been a while since I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to order something.  I suppose the last time would be for the iPhone 6, but it was actually kind of exciting this time around.  The last time I did that, I remember AT&T and Apple’s sites were both slow/unreliable, and now it seems like AT&T at least has sorted it out with a queue system that I have no complaints about, other than not knowing if you’ve got a phone while you’re waiting.  I hear that Apple’s site and the Apple Store app were pretty similar.

For the past few years, I’ve been pretty over Space Gray for my iPhone, but I can’t stand white bezels, so I didn’t have a choice.  This year, Apple finally put black bezels on the iPhone X no matter which color back you get, which makes sense since the screen is OLED, and pure black on the screen practically melts into the bezels.  Honestly, having now seen the space gray iPhone X next to the silver one, I am pretty confident in saying that the silver iPhone X is one of the most beautiful devices ever created.  So, if you didn’t read between the lines yet, that’s the one I got.

I don’t really want to talk tech specs about this phone.  It’s got the most powerful processor in any smartphone and it has enough RAM to background more apps than you’ll care to background.  Specs, as you might be aware, aren’t the selling points of the iPhone – rather, feature sets are.  When a feature makes sense and requires specific hardware, that hardware is added, so the iPhone X is packed full of great hardware.

First, let’s talk about the display.  The iPhone X has a 5.8″ screen, if measured with Apple voodoo that is actually kind of deceiving.  I believe it’s officially measured corner to opposite corner, not counting the curves (so rather than the actual edge of the display, it goes to where the display would end if it weren’t curved), and not taking into account that the notch is there.  That’s minor, of course, but the notch does eat up some screen real-estate, and the screen is a new, taller aspect ratio, so even though it’s 5.8″, the screen’s surface area is slightly smaller than the 5.5″ display on the iPhone 6/6S/7 Plus.

That’s just an interesting side note, though, because the real story with the display is that it’s gorgeous.  It’s the first OLED display Apple has included in a phone, and while it’s a Samsung produced panel, the display driver and the calibrations are all done by Apple, which has resulted in “the best performing smartphone display that [Display Mate has] ever tested.”  Even though it’s a Samsung panel, the iPhone X display is just ever so slightly better than the Galaxy Note 8.  One thing to note here is that Samsung, by default, loads a color profile on their devices that is overly saturated and very “punchy.”  You can change the color profile to “cinema” to correct this, but it’s still not as accurate as the iPhone X display.  Last week, I thought the display on the Galaxy Tab S3 that I regular use was incredible.  Day before yesterday, I turned it on, and my first thought was “why is this display so blue?”

The one downside of OLED is burn in.  Apple recommends leaving your display timeout on 30 seconds and not using the screen on a brighter setting than you need, because OLED pixels age, and there’s only so much that can be done to prevent it.  While Google clearly is doing a poor job with that on the Pixel, Samsung has done a pretty good job on their devices (I believe they randomly shift UI elements by 1 pixel), and I have little doubt that Apple has put some magic in there to keep the burn in away for as long as possible.  I feel pretty confident in saying that because, after over 2 years of use, my old Apple Watch, which also has an OLED panel, has no burn in.  Though, that’s a personal anecdote of course, and your mileage may vary.  I’m also confident there are people out there with OG Apple Watches that do have burn in.

My favorite thing about the display is the drastically improved contrast ratio over LCD.  Of course, blacks are now pitch black since those pixels aren’t lit (yay, improved battery life!), so you can expect some incredible dark-themed apps, like the Apollo’s “Pure Black Dark Mode” (excellent reddit client, if you haven’t tried it).  Again, this is why the bezels are black no matter which color option you pick.

So, what about the notch?  Well, it’s a thing.  if I had to pick between the way that Apple handles it (notch) and the way that others (barring the Essential Phone) handle it, I think I’d take the Apple way, because there is something that’s just wonderful about that feeling of almost having an edge-to-edge screen, as opposed to three bezel-less sides and one side with a bezel.  But of course, ideally we’d be able to eliminate all bezels and notches so the display is unhindered in any way by a bezel, and I would not blame anyone for preferring a bezel to a notch.  Personally, I’ve found that browsing the web on this screen, notch and all, is one of the best-looking web experiences I’ve ever seen.  The only way you really notice it is in landscape mode.  In portrait, you really just…don’t.  Maybe at first, but after like a day, it fades away.

Oh, and one last note on the display – until developers update their apps, the phone displays what I will call a “virtual bezel” and basically makes the phone look like an iPhone 6/6S/7.  It looks a lot better than when the iPhone 5 did it since the blacks are pitch black.

The iPhone X doesn’t have a headphone jack.  Love it or hate it, this is the future.  I’ve already written my thoughts on that in the same blog post about the iPhone 7 that I linked to above, so I won’t write them again.  I’d only add that if Apple’s EarPods fit into your ears and you don’t have AirPods, you are missing out on the single best, most magical product Apple has created in the past 5 or so years, barring only the iPhone X.

Cameras sell smartphones, and the iPhone X camera is as good as you would expect an iPhone camera to be.  If you’ve never used an iPhone 7/8 Plus before (I don’t recall if the 6/6S Plus is included), then it’s better than you’d expect, because portrait mode is pretty incredible.  Of course, the real story with the cameras here have to do with the front-facing hardware, the new True Depth camera, and all of the other components that make Face ID work its magic (and also animojis, which are surprisingly cool, despite being a huge gimmick that no one will use after a couple weeks).

Face ID is, of course, the replacement to Touch ID.  So far, I’ve found that it’s a marked improvement over Touch ID in 85% of situations.  That is to say, it’s definitely better, but there are also cases when Touch ID is more convenient.  The real magic of Face ID is when an app would normally ask you for Touch ID or a password, but rather than doing that, it’s magically unlocked because Face ID has already activated and authenticated you.  This is one of those things that works so well that going back to the old way feels like a chore on my iPad.

There is a lot of fear-mongering being spread about Face ID, so I’d like to address that really quick.  Every iPhone that has had Touch ID, and now the iPhone X with Face ID, has had a special security chip on it called the Secure Enclave.  When you setup Touch ID or Face ID, all of the data that’s collected to make that authentication work is stored in the Secure Enclave.  That data on that chip is not accessible by any app, or by Apple, nor does any data from the Secure Enclave get stored in the cloud.  It never leaves your device.  The Secure Enclave only stores biometric information and sends authentication tokens.  It isn’t impenetrable or anything, but it’s basically the most secure method of biometric authentication in any smartphone.  Apple doesn’t have your face data, because, by design, the Secure Enclave simply doesn’t allow them access to it.  Now, if you run an app that requests access to front camera and starts doing a map of your face, all bets are off, but you do have to approve that, so if you’re paranoid…just don’t do that.  However, I want to make this request of you: please don’t be paranoid about this technology.  Face ID is very secure, and Apple is not spying on you with it (this is not Google or Facebook we’re talking about, where you are the product rather than the consumer, and even then, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it).  If you don’t believe me, then you shouldn’t own a smartphone at all, because they all have 2 or more microphones, 2 or more cameras, and are on or around your person 24/7.

Two more things that you need to know regarding some FUD that’s being spread around: you can turn this off, but by default, attentive mode is on, which means your phone won’t unlock unless you are looking at it.  So if you’ve got a crappy significant other that likes to spy on your texts, they can’t point the phone at your face while you’re sleeping to unlock it.  If for any reason you need to disable Face ID, you can do so by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button (previously called the sleep/wake button) until the Power Off screen comes up, immediately releasing those buttons (please read this entire paragraph before trying this!), then pressing Cancel.  After that, you’ll have to put your passcode in to get back into your phone.  Make sure you aren’t looking at the phone while doing this (just hold it at an angle away from your face), or it’ll unlock, and disabling won’t work.  That said, and this is a VERY IMPORTANT NOTE, if you are going to try this, you need to be aware that if you continue to hold the side buttons after the Power Off screen comes up, your phone will go into SOS mode, emit a loud siren, and begin a countdown before calling 911 (or whatever your emergency services are if you aren’t in the US).  Don’t worry, besides the attention you’ll suddenly get if you accidentally trigger this, you can cancel it.  Just do so IMMEDIATELY.  I’ve accidentally set it off and canceled it without an issue, but if you don’t, emergency services WILL show up at your house, and it’s not cool to waste their resources.  This is actually a great feature for when it’s needed though, so if you didn’t know about it, it’s great that you’re now aware.

Anyway, Face ID is fantastic.  Any concern about it not working or letting random people into your phone is pretty much for nothing, unless you have an identical twin.  Because the iPhone X uses on-device machine learning, on the rare occasions when Face ID fails and you have to put in your passcode, it uses that opportunity to learn.  Since you know the code, the phone knows that what it saw was indeed you, and it becomes better at recognizing you by incorporating this new data.  This is also, I believe, why Apple only allows one face in Face ID, as opposed to multiple fingers in Touch ID.  The system can’t learn if it doesn’t know which face it failed to recognize.  That’s just my theory though.  I’ve also read a theory that Face ID would be slower if it supported more faces, which makes sense, but I think my theory makes a bit more sense.

On Qi charging, there’s not really a lot to say.  Many high-end Android phones have had this for years (except the Pixel for some bizarre reason).  Apple only supports wireless charging on Qi devices that follow the Qi spec pretty exactly, so that means the Qi charger in my car doesn’t work with the iPhone X (thanks, General Motors!), but many of the $14 mats on Amazon work just fine.  The inclusion of Qi charging is also why the iPhone 8 and X have glass backs.  Current wireless charging technologies can’t pass through metal, so if you want wireless charging, your phone has to have a glass or plastic back.  That means if you use a magnet or any other thing stuck to the back of your phone that has metal, Qi won’t work.  That aside, while Qi charging is much slower, it is SO much more convenient than plugging and unplugging a cable all day.  I am so incredibly happy that Apple has finally embraced this feature.

I haven’t used the speakers all that much, but Apple has done some amazing work with audio technology lately, especially in small spaces.  The speakers in my iPad Pro and MacBook are tiny, yet sound remarkably good.  The iPhone X shares this quality as well.  The one note I will make here is that since the bezels were deleted, the speaker for the phone is higher up, so if you actually use your iPhone to make real phone calls without using AirPods or speakerphone, you’ll have to hold the phone a little lower down than you may be used to.

It’s an iPhone, so it has the same class-leading battery life you’ve come to expect – not as much as an iPhone Plus, but more than a regular iPhone.

Phew!  So, what’s left?  Well, a big thing, actually, and that’s iOS 11.  There are multiple reasons Apple released the iPhone 8 along with the iPhone X, one of which is that since the home button is gone on the X, there are a lot of changes with how certain features are activated.  People that don’t like change, or people that have trouble adjusting, will probably want the 8 for that reason alone.  I say that not because the changes are bad, but rather, that’s just how some people are.  I would hope that those people would be willing to give the changes a chance eventually, because almost every single one of them is better than the old method of doing things.

First, my favorite of the new gestures are swiping up for home and swiping left/right at the bottom of the screen for app switching.  These are both super natural, and while the home gesture is honestly preferable to pressing a home button, swiping left/right for app switching is an entirely new gesture that totally changes multitasking, while leaving the traditional “card” system in place.  Reachability is a little more difficult until you get the hang of it, but it works very well once you do.  Basically, you swipe down somewhere between the middle of the dock and the very bottom edge of the display to activate it (and you have to turn it on in settings, because it’s off by default).  The multitasking menu (the “cards”, (previously activated by double tapping the home button) has been replaced by swiping up like the new home gesture, but then pausing until you get a vibration, or you can just swipe up and then to the right.  You can wait for the vibration, but you can activate it faster but swiping up and over.

Siri is activated by pressing the side button in for a second, but honestly why even both with that when you can activate it with “Hey Siri?”  A screenshot is just a quick simultaneous click of both the Volume Up and the side button.  Those sorts of things do have a learning curve.  It’s not hard, it’s just different.

The one area where the new gestures really don’t work are the gestures that are in the “ears” of the screen.  Swipe down on the top left for notifications, swipe down on the top right for Control Center.  I rarely use the notifications screen, so I don’t much care about that one, but I use Control Center many times every day, and the positioning of this gesture is just…terrible.  Remember, this phone is very tall, so that gesture just doesn’t work with one hand unless you activate reachability first.  Apple really needs to move this, maybe to the first “card” of the multitasking screen so you can easily get to it via the multitasking gesture.  Whatever they could do to fix it, the current gesture is bad. In all honesty, this is my biggest complaint about the iPhone X – this one, stupid UI decision that they can easily remedy with a software update.

So far, my brain has adapted pretty well going back and forth between the iPhone X’s gestures and the iPad’s physical button.  I’ve only tried to press the home button on the phone once, and I’ve only tried to swipe over/up a couple times on the iPad.  That, however, is just me, as I adapt to changes like these somewhat easily.  It’s kind of like going for the clutch in an automatic if you’re used to driving a manual.  You won’t do it often, but you’ll probably do it at least a few times.

Some people online have complained about wasted space with the new, elongated screen, particularly below the keyboard.  Apple clearly can’t move the keyboard down, otherwise typing would be extremely awkward, so right now, when you’ve got the keyboard up, it’s just got this unusual blank gray space below it.  It does feel a little strange to not at least make that space pitch black, but realistically, they should re-purpose it for something useful.  I’ve seen it suggested that maybe it could function like the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pros and show recently used emojis.  The mockups of that seem pretty nice, without looking cluttered, so, hey, Apple – get on that, please?

The iPhone X, overall, is a pleasure to use.  I’m trying my best to go caseless right now, because to cover this thing up seems like a real waste.  I had to use a case on the iPhone 6 and 7 because the size of the phone, combined with the slippery metal backs, just wasn’t conducive to grippiness.  The glass back on this phone, while being exponentially more fragile, is also far more grippy, so holding the phone is much easier.  If I do drop it…I’ve got AppleCare+, but of course, I’d rather not do that.

I know that $999 is a lot for a phone.  The iPhone X is the most expensive iPhone ever, starting at $50 more than last year’s most expensive iPhone, and topping off at $1149 for some additional storage that I guarantee you don’t need because 64 GB is plenty.  Add a possible case and AppleCare+ onto that, and it’s not a cheap buy in, to say the least.  However, I can confidently say that if you’re in the market for an iPhone, willing to spend the additional money, and you’re not married to the idea of physical buttons, I think you will adore this device.  I know I do.

So…I wrote this blog post for another blog a while back, and that blog has since gone neglected.  I don’t want to lose it, so I’m posting it here.  Enjoy!

As far back as 2008, I can remember wanting a Mac laptop with a multitouch display.  After playing with the original iPhone, I knew multitouch technology was finally good enough to put into a real computer, unlike those old, awful resistive touchscreens that had been in PC tablets for years.

I, as well as many others, was hoping the iPad would be that magic device that brought touch to OS X, but as we all know, the iPad ended up essentially being a larger iPod Touch and ran iOS.  In another case of “what techies want isn’t always what the market wants,” despite running iOS, the iPad was – and still is – a hit.  I was pretty down about the decision to run iOS, but I bought one anyway, and my parents ended up using it on weekend visits more than I did in general.

It’s easy to see why Apple would push iOS for their tablet rather than OS X.  iOS is built from the ground up for touch, and the iPad is indeed a touch-first device.  You don’t want to fumble with a dense UI designed for mouse and keyboard on a device that will rarely, if ever, have a mouse and keyboard connected to it.  And that’s not to mention that iOS is a way more profitable ecosystem for Apple.

But what about the MacBook line?  With touchscreens coming on more and more PC laptops, it feels like it won’t be long before it’s a standard feature, and having a Surface Pro 3, I can see why.  Touch is natural, and touch is fast.  On a desktop, sure, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, considering how far away most desktop screens are from the user, but on a laptop, where the screen is literally inches from the keyboard…come on, that’s a no-brainer.

My argument for touch on MacBooks – and laptops in generally – is pretty simple.  Even in an OS that isn’t designed for touch, there are things that are faster and easier, or just more natural to do with touch, even over trackpads with touch gestures.  I generally don’t have issues using “desktop” Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 on my Surface in the first place, even though it was designed for mouse and keyboard, but that’s not the argument I’m making.  For example, to open a file, the workflow is as follows:  place your finger on the trackpad, locate the cursor, drag your finger to the icon, double click.  With a touchscreen, the workflow is: place finger over icon, double tap.

The argument here is that including a touchscreen doesn’t mean you have to use touch 100% of the time, or even 50% of the time, or even 30%.  Just being there when you want to use it for things that are faster, easier, or more natural with touch is the benefit; you don’t have to try to work touch into everything you do.

Sure, you can browse photos with your trackpad, and even use gestures to zoom or pan, but touching photos just feels so much better.  In fact, I’d say that directly interacting with photos is more natural and revives something in the digital experience that was lost in the transition from store-developed, printed photos to pixels on a screen.

Web browsing, for another example, is something that is almost always better with touch, but great to be supplemented by a trackpad and keyboard.  It’s easier and a more immersive experience to reach out and touch a link to open it rather than: touch trackpad, move cursor, click link – but it’s also easier to select text for copying with a trackpad in some cases.

No doubt, Microsoft has realized this, and that’s why the Surface line exists.  However, something like the Surface is not at all Apple-like.  Tim Cook has made it clear that he disapproves of hybrid devices like the Surface (though saying one thing has never prevented Apple from doing the opposite thing a year later), but more importantly, simply “activating” touch on OS X is not Apple’s style.  It’s more Microsoftian to give users what they want where they want it, and it’s more Appleish to guide users to what Apple thinks is best for them (which in this case, is iOS, if you’re in the market for a touchscreen device).  Neither of these is necessarily a better approach, but it does sort of preclude Apple from putting touch into their notebook line.

My verdict:  Apple isn’t going to change OS X, and thus will never put touch into any Mac running OS X, because in their minds, they already have an OS for touch.  If you’re waiting for a touchscreen Mac running a desktop-class OS, you might be waiting forever.  However, that doesn’t mean you’ll never get a touchscreen Mac notebook.  I have very little doubt in my mind that Apple is prototyping ARM MacBooks running iOS in their labs, but who knows if something like that would ever hit the market.  That’s certainly not something I’m interested in, but like I said earlier, what techies want isn’t always what the market wants.

Let me start this post off by saying that I did not – and have no plans to – pre-order/buy an iPhone 7.  This is the first time I’ve attempted to go 3 years between phone upgrades, and it’s probably not for the reason you’d expect (MUH HEADPHONE JACK).  The reason I’m waiting is because other than the A10 Fusion processor, I find the iPhone 7 to be a pretty lackluster upgrade.  That combined with the fact that my iPhone 6 still works well means I just can’t justify the $649 purchase.  Then, there’s the another big reason: the rumors for the iPhone 8/10th anniversary iPhone/2017 iPhone are all things I’ve been wanting for years: wireless charging, smaller bezels, OLED display…literally some of the only things on the small list of Android phone features I’m jealous of.

But I’ve seen and heard a lot of stuff floating around on the Internet that’s just been ridiculous, and I just had to write about it.  So let’s do that.

The elephant in the room – the headphone jack is gone.

I get it.  You can’t use your favorite pair of $300 headphones anymore.  If you can’t afford or don’t want to buy new headphones to go along with your $649+ pocket computer, then the choice seems obvious:  switch to Android.  Honestly, if I was an audiophile with $300 headphones, I might be weighing my options as well.

But let’s make sure we look at the big picture first.  Lenovo has already dropped the headphone jack from the Moto Z.  More flagships will likely follow.  Not all, but many.  You may only be delaying the inevitable, but that’s just speculation.

I think the real kicker here is something I’ll cover later: Android devices don’t last as long as iPhones.  You might save $300 now, only to spend it later upgrading phones.  Note: this isn’t an empty claim that I will leave hanging.  It will be quantified and qualified later in this post.

“Bluetooth streaming quality isn’t as good.”  Legitimate argument if you’re an audiophile, which is why there are audiophile-quality lightning headphones out there that have interchangeable lightning/audio jack cables.

Yes, it is completely ridiculous and inexcusable that the EarPods you get with the iPhone 7 can’t be used on your Mac.  That’s why Bluetooth is the way to go, in my opinion.  A few weeks ago I pulled my (normally neatly wrapped) EarPods out of my bag and they were a twisted mess.  I spent about 3 or 4 minutes untangling them, and it just hit me: I get it.  Wires suck.  There was a sale on some Aukey Bluetooth earbuds for $9.99, so I bought them, and they’ve been pretty great, actually.  They’re kind of ugly, but I can deal with that until I buy something nicer.

The point here is that the argument that Apple is trying to move to a proprietary standard is completely bogus.  You can enter the Bluetooth earbud market for as little as $10, and you can get Audio Technica 4-star rated Bluetooth headphones from Amazon for $130, and for audiophiles, there’s the Bose QC35.

“I can’t charge my phone and listen to music with my old headphones at the same time.”  You’re right.  You can’t without a somewhat bulky $40 dongle from Belkin.  I’d be surprised if Mophie or someone else didn’t come out with a battery pack case that has a built-in Bluetooth transmitter, so you can plug headphones into the case and stream to your phone, but that’s not really the point.  Apple took away the 30-pin dock adapter and people were pissed.  But lightning is better.  Apple took away the floppy drive, and life is better without it.  If you think that Bluetooth technology won’t leap forward because Apple is taking away the headphone jack, then you don’t understand the precedent here, or possibly just markets in general.

Apple has almost always held a smaller marketshare than their competitors, but they have a dedicated user base.  Honestly, I’m pretty sure the only people that are saying “I’m going to switch to Android” after seeing the iPhone 7 are people that were on the edge anyway.  The iPhone 7 very likely won’t be a flop. Maybe it’ll sell less than the 6S or 6, but that’s not very telling of the headphone jack as much as it is of the 7 in general.

“Welcome to 2014, iPhone users!  Android has had all of this stuff for years!”

I saw this image floating around on reddit, and it’s one of those things that makes me wonder if the creator knew s/he was lying, or they are actually that braindead.  For some reason, some people can’t wrap their head around the fact that a spec sheet is not the end all, be all when it comes to phones.  I guess they have it in their head that “more is better” and there’s no convincing them otherwise.

Look, if I was building a gaming PC, which I have done, clearly I would be spec’ing that rig out.  But when I bought my MacBook, I just wanted it to work.  You could look at the spec sheet for a MacBook (non Pro) and have a fit of nerd rage because it has a Core M processor, or you could breathe and realize that what it’s meant to do doesn’t require more power than it has (which is a point that I’m making as a side note, because the iPhone 7 actually blows every other smartphone out of the water in terms of CPU benchmarks).

• 750p iPhone 7 / 1440p Nexus 6

Most people can’t tell the difference between 720p, 1080p, and quad HD on a screen that small.  Some can, but most can’t.  I also seem to recall reviews saying the Nexus 6 screen was good, but not great.  Quad HD displays also consume more battery and use more processing power on graphics.  None of these things translate well to spec sheets.  The iPhone is faster, has better battery life, and results in an extremely similar experience as far as how the display looks.  The thing that Apple is sorely lacking in this department is an OLED display, not some ridiculously high pixel density.

• Water resistant

The Nexus 6 was not rated to be water resistant.  The iPhone 6S had water resistance; Apple just didn’t market it because there was no rating.  I’ve washed my iPhone 5 with soap under a faucet, and it still works (dropped it on a public bathroom floor, nope nope NOPE).  This bullet point is just dishonest.

• 12 MP camera iPhone 7 / 13 MP camera Nexus 6

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

No, seriously, hahahahahahaha.  You’ve never taken pictures with either phone.

• Raise to wake

This feature works on iPhone 6S, SE, and 7.  Because iPhones actually get updated.

• Notifications on lock screen

This one is just bizarre.  iOS has had this literally for years.  This person is clearly just drinking the Kool Aid and hasn’t used an iPhone since like 2009.

• Contextual word prediction

I have this on my iPhone 6 and I can use 3rd party keyboards?  Why is this here?

• Photo search

You do realize that Google Photos is available on iOS, right?

And then there’s this weird blurb at the bottom: “In 2018, you guys will love wireless charging, VR support, curved displays, multi-user support, selectable default apps, app installs from a browser, and seamless updates!”

Clearly, the wireless charging thing is legitimate.  No Qi charging, lack of OLED displays, and large bezels are my biggest gripes with the iPhone.  You’ve got me there.  But VR support?  You can put goggles on an iPhone.  I have Google Cardboard.  I’m sure it won’t support Google Daydream, but neither did the Nexus 6 that you’re comparing the iPhone 7 to. Google Daydream is releasing this fall.

Curved displays, app installs from a browser…I just don’t care.  I’m not a big fan of the Galaxy Edge and I hope Apple doesn’t do that.  Selectable default apps have been addressed with iOS 10, so try 2016, not 2018.  Multiple user support barely makes sense for a phone, which is literally the most personal device I can think of.  Maybe if you’re handing your phone off to your kid so they can play a game in the car, but that’s it.  iPads have multi-user support, which is where that actually makes a lot of sense.

But the real kicker in this closing remark is “seamless updates.”  I’m really scratching my head over this one.  iPhone updates are a colossal reason that the platform is subjectively better than Android.  How exactly is “Google releases update > handset manufacturer releases update for specific phone model > carrier okays update 3 months later” a more seamless process than just going into your settings and pressing “Install update” the day it’s launched, on any iPhone made in the last 4 years?

The person that wrote this is either incredibly disingenuous, braindead, or is so drunk on the Android Kool Aid that s/he’s literally willing to ignore reality.

Remember when I said earlier that I would quantify and qualify my argument that iPhones last longer than Android devices?

I have an iPhone 5 on the shelf across the room.  If I wanted to, I could pull it out on Tuesday, press the update button, and be running iOS 10 on a 4 year old phone.  Find an Android phone – any Android phone – released in 2012 or earlier that will run Android Nougat.  Please, do look.  My 2013 Nexus 7 LTE is already obsolete according to Google, and it’s just 3 years old.  No Nougat for it.

“Why would you want to use a 4 year old phone anyway?”  Some people don’t buy phones every year, some people use hand me downs, whatever.  That’s not the point.  If you’re going to make the argument that Apple is evil for removing a headphone jack that has at least 2 viable alternatives and other less viable alternatives, but you won’t make the argument that Google is evil for declaring 3 year old devices “end of life,” or other Android handset manufacturers taking months to update their flagship phones with critical releases, then you’re the worst kind of person.

Remember how I said specs aren’t everything?  This is a fun one you can’t put on spec sheets.  Android has crappy battery life, and Google has been taking steps to remedy that with Doze and Doze on the Go.  But in the meantime, handset manufacturers have been trying to remedy that with bigger batteries.

So the fanboys look at the spec sheet and say “3,000 mAh battery in my Android and 1800 mAh battery in your iPhone lolololol” when in reality, the phones have the same battery life in terms of actual usage, or the iPhone totally destroys Android in standby.  But wait, that’s still not my point.

So suddenly, batteries in Android take forever to charge because they’re so much bigger (iPhone batteries still charge quickly, something else that rarely makes the spec sheet), so handset manufacturers adopt quick charging formats, and of course, this makes the spec sheets and the Android fanboys go nuts again.

But here’s a fun fact: quick charging technologies literally kill your battery faster than regular charging.  Yes, they degrade your battery life over repeated usage.  Tesla recommends you use their superchargers only when you need them and not all the time for this very reason.  So now, you’ve got a bunch of people out there constantly quickcharging their Android phones, and suddenly their big 3,000 mAh battery isn’t keeping up anymore.  My iPhone 6 is at 93% of original battery capacity after 2 years, and it charges quickly.  Once again, this doesn’t make the spec sheets.

When I switched to the 2014 Moto X (2 GB of RAM), one of the reasons I switched back to my iPhone 6 (1 GB of RAM) after 3 months was because Android got slow.  Very slow.  Apparently there was a bug in 5.0 that was fixed in 5.0.1 or 5.1 or whatever it was, but wouldn’t you know that the update that fixed that bug had to go through Motorola first? (Not only that, if you look at comparison videos, Apple devices consistently perform better than Android devices with double or triple the RAM.)  So I was stuck on a slow Android release at the mercy of Motorola, even though my Moto X was carrier unlocked and didn’t need to go through anyone past the manufacturer.

The fact is if you don’t buy a Nexus device (or I guess Pixel, pretty soon), this is your life.  You’re beholden to the handset manufacturer.  Of course, Google is trying to rally them to commit to updating quickly, but it doesn’t matter if this means a 1 month turnaround on updates, or 2 weeks, or 4 days, it doesn’t change the fact that Apple can push updates immediately.  Even Microsoft is doing this with Windows 10 for Phones, just like they’ve done on computers for years (can you imagine if every Windows update had to pass through Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc?  What a nightmare that would be!).

So maybe if you’re an audiophile with $300 headphones, you’ll have have to adapt to the iPhone 7, or maybe you’ll feel like you’re forced to buy new headphones.  But you can buy the iPhone 7 and feel confident, based on an actual track record, that you can use that phone for 4 years.  And you won’t have to replace the phone after 2 years because battery capacity was annihilated by quickcharging, and you won’t feel abandoned after 6 months because Motorola stopped supporting it, and you won’t have to wait weeks for under-warranty repairs without a phone like many Android users fall victim to, and you have access to most apps before Android users do.

Look, I don’t even hate Android.  I just don’t like Android super-fanboys, or people that rabidly hate Apple because ‘muh walled garden’ or whatever the hell it is that makes them so angry about life in general.  A lot of Android devices are really cool and do have features that iPhones just don’t have, but you can’t pretend like Android is objectively better than iOS.  It’s such an asinine outlook to have, and requires such a narrow view on reality to maintain.

Maybe it feels like the iPhone 7 not having a headphone jack is a big deal right now, but rest assured, Tim Cook isn’t on his way to your house to burn it down (I think that’s currently Samsung’s job…whooaaa sick Galaxy Note 7 burn).

The list below reflects the 1.2 GHz/512GB SSD model of the 2015 MacBook.  I mostly use it for web browsing, taking notes, research, and writing, so keep my use case in mind.

• Performance is great on El Capitan.  Scrolling through photo-heavy sites in Safari suffered a bit in Yosemite.  That was resolved in El Cap.  The Core M CPU was really the only tradeoff on this computer that I wasn’t sure would be a non-issue, and so far, so good.  Future OS X updates will tell if this holds true.
• It’s so thin and light that sometimes it’s hard to believe there’s a fully-functioning computer in there.
• Battery life is amazing. 9-10 hours and can be recharged from a battery pack and a USB-A to USB-C cable if you need more absolute portability for some reason.
• The keyboard is a love it or hate it thing.  I love it, despite the lack of travel.  If you don’t like it immediately, I’d say give it a day or so of casual use.  It’s very satisfyingly clicky.
  • Note: Of the ~60,000 words into the novel I’m currently writing, I’d estimate a third or so was written on the MacBook.  So, I have used it substantially.
• If you try to run a game on it, it’s going to get pretty hot.  I don’t know why you’d buy an ultraportable laptop to game on, but Steam in-home streaming actually works amazingly well if you have a decent PC to stream from.  I played Fallout 4 for a few hours like this on ultra-high settings.
• The trackpad is incredible.  Apple has always had the best trackpads in the business and they keep making them better.  Easily the best trackpad I’ve ever used, twice as good as the one on my 2010 MacBook Pro.
  • Note: Force touch is neat, but kind of gimmicky other than to allow the laptop to be so thin.
• The display is gorgeous, exactly what I’d expect out of a pixel-dense Apple display.  I usually keep it around 60% brightness just because it’s so bright.
• I’ve used the USB-C port with an adapter only one time in a month and a half (to install Windows).  Having one port is a non-issue for me.
  • Note: USB-C is awesome.
• I haven’t even used the webcam, so the 480p resolution is a non-issue for me.  No other comments there.
• The hinge and magnets are so utterly perfect.  The machine opens and closes with exactly the right amount of resistance.  Apple’s attention to detail really shines in these kinds of things.
• This machine is kind of stupidly expensive.  I only bought it because of some great promos on my Discover card that allowed me to save about $500 off of the retail price of $1599.
  • Note: The less expensive/cheapest model is $1299, which is honestly still a bit much, even for the model I got.  But, you know…Apple.
• Filed under most surprising feature: the speakers are phenomenal, especially given the amount of space they’re in.  Seriously, they sound better than the speakers on my 2010 MBP by a long shot.
• I got Space Gray, and it’s a super cool color for a MacBook.  The Gold (which is actually more “champagne”) is surprisingly nice and much more subtle than you’d expect in person (this would’ve been my second choice in color).

• There is a lot to be said about how open a platform is.  There are many positives, but also negatives. In Android’s case, I think the positives do outweigh the negatives.
• Apps are better on iOS.  Period.  Many Android apps feel like an afterthought.
• Even though you can swipe from the left to go back in most iOS apps, having a dedicated back button is still better since it technically does more than just go back.
• Windows Phone still destroys Android and iOS in usability.
• For how much people complain and poke fun at Apple when an iOS update is a bit buggy, Android 5.0 sure is full of bugs…
• Overall, I think the App Store on iOS is a “better experience,” but Google Play wins hands down on functionality. It’s really nice to be able to tell an app to install on a different device.
• The ads you get in Android apps remind me a lot of ads targeted to Windows users.  “Computer slow? Download Android phone sweeper!” “Clear your phone of viruses!” So dumb, but one of those negatives of a more open platform.
• The Bluetooth stack on Android definitely seems to be not quite as good as it is on iOS, but I also have more Bluetooth devices paired to my phone than ever. When/if Google releases Android Wear on iOS, I’d really like to put this to the test.
• Live tiles on Windows Phone are still the best home screen experience I’ve used to date.
• Not being able to put icons where you want on the iOS home screen is just stupid.
• The updating situation on Android is spectacularly broken.  It’s really annoying, and Google/handset manufacturers need to fix this somehow.
• The approach that Google takes to Google apps and Microsoft takes to Microsoft apps is way better than the approach Apple takes to Apple apps.  I don’t want crap taking up space on my phone that I’ll never use. Let me delete it.
• I will never understand putting core UI functionality at the top edge/corners of the screen.  Every developer on every platform, first and third party, stop this crap.
• Google needs to do something about Android’s battery life, which is no doubt linked to memory usage, which is another negative of a more open platform. I get that Android has real multitasking, but needing double/triple the RAM of an iPhone for an Android handset to perform similarly is kind of ridiculous.  Maybe this is unrealistic, but I wish there was a “best of both worlds” solution.