October 2017 – Chris Wolfe

Apple snap

Seeing how it’s the eve of the iPhone X preorder day (er, morning, early morning), I figured I’d get my thoughts down for why I won’t be there. After many years of loving iPhones and really enjoying the experience, it’s pretty much over. And no, it’s not to switch to Windows Phone, heh.

The months leading up to the annual new iPhone launch back just last month were exciting and a bit dreadful. The rumors were pretty ripe with info on the next generation of iPhone, and the specs looked awesome. What caused a bit of trepidation was the expected cost of this flagship phone, easily $1000 and more. I’d say probably 90% of the soothsaying nailed it, with the new OLED screen, screen style and size, internal hardware specs, overall size…. and unfortunately they were spot on for the cost of the beast. I think they missed the whole Face ID feature though, and of course no one knew what the new camera specs would be, but it’s nice to be surprised a little. Yup, it’s fine-looking… if you can get over that notch, er… monobrow 🙂

My beefs with the iPhone X:

Expensive (yeah I know, $1k is not a whole more than another new flagship phone from Samsung, see below…)
Face ID is new tech, what could go wrong? =)
Screen “surface area” is actually smaller than the iPhone 8+
Apple’s very first run with an OLED screen on a phone
Low production numbers/availability
As with the 7, no headphone jack
Sorry, just can’t get over that monobrow…

Apple also announced not just the new iPhone X, but also the new 8/8+. Not much to say about that, except it should have been called the 7S (or even just 6SS fercryingoutloud). Basically it’s just a jump in specs and not much more. Gut feeling? It’s almost retro how in looks… I mean, check out those bezels! Isn’t this 2017?! 😀

So, that was the big announcement in September and since then have been review after review, equal parts iPhone 8, since it’s already out, and analysis of the X specs. From then til now, and after much soul searching and mental anguish (heh, joking!), I’ve come to the realization, barring some kind of angelic proclamation or the equivalent, that I’m done with the iPhone, at least for the next couple of years.

What gives? The Samsung Galaxy S8 is what smote me. It came out back in April and immediately had my attention. Full-on edge-to-edge screen, great specs, very nice camera. Amazingly thin, even the big brother S8+ (which is really only a little taller than the S8… so worth it). And after its release and the reviews rolled in, this looked like a worthy competitor to the iPhone 7. BUT, this was only a few months before September (new iPhones!) AND there was already also talk back then about the new Galaxy Note 8 and that it would probably have a lot in common with the S8, like screen size/quality, bezel-less, and with the S-pen/other features; it was figured to be announced around the same time as the iPhones. Ah, that did come to pass, and the Note is a tiny bit bigger than the S8+, tiny bit thicker, tiny bit less battery (!) than the S8+, but quite close in specs and all. Right now it’s around $100 more than the S8+, and pushing into iPhone X cost range, ugh. Other than that (and just to acknowledge that these phones aren’t perfect) yes the fingerprint sensor on the back is in a bad spot, and that dedicated Bixby button is just, well, wrong. At least as of today it can be disabled…

Samsung Galaxy S8+ :

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 :

There’s more. The LG V30 was also announced in this same time frame. Even more: Google just recently announced the Pixel 2 / 2 XL, too! I wanted to keep an eye out for them as well, to see just how hot this competition was going to get. Competition is good but they’re all out of contention as far as I’m concerned; the reviews have come out for these phones, and it’s bad. The only thing the V30 has going for it is excellent sound. The Pixel 2 XL is getting scorched because of bad screen tech, with bad coloring and burn-in (Google’s taking a major hit on this). The Pixels are supposed to have excellent cameras and picture software, and the screen on the Pixel 2 is fine. There are a couple other niceties there, but even without the XL debacle, I don’t see enough reason to buy it over the Samsung phones.

So since last spring, through the long summer and early fall, I chose to just wait it out. And now my patience is starting to wear thin. 🙂 I’m ready to jump ship from the iPhone (I’m still on the 6, btw, from 2014!) and join the Android collective. I’m trying to decide between the Galaxy S8+ and the Note 8… just need to spend a bit of time with them (…already have been to the AT&T store once, lol…) and I’ve told myself to go just one more month, which gets us well into the November Black Friday timeframe. Given that the iPhone X is imminent, I am hoping that Samsung will feel the pressure and start dropping prices on their phones. I’ve got my money saved up and am ready to click that BUY button…

P.S. Yeah, I kind of went full-on geek mode doing my homework on the new phones. 🙂 I submit as evidence Photo 1, comparing the true sizes of the different new phones:

And, well, I wanted to know just how big that Note 8 would be, to test for pocketability and all, so I made a mock-up of the phone from a good ol’ piece of #2 pine with the same dimensions. Don’t you judge me! lol

[2017.11.08 Update]

The iPhone X’s are now out and a few people I know have one. They are very happy. But I’m confused. I just want to ask, why? Why is it worth all that coin? Yes the screen is nice, but so it is for any of the other recent phones with big OLED screens (or to clarify, SAMSUNG OLEDs). I understand that the FaceID unlock is pretty cool… but Animoji? Sure it takes nice pictures, but so do other phones… are you really going to put bokah on every picture you take, or change the backlight on each of them? I will give you a few extra points if you are upgrading from a fairly old iPhone and just want the most excellent new iPhone available, it is truly Apple’s future vision. You wrung every last penny from your older iPhone purchase, and that’s where I am today. But wow, $1000 is a bunch, and double-wow if you got the 256GB model. Don’t drop ’em on the sidewalk!

Oh, and… just.. this, SO funny:

[https://lifehacker.com/how-to-hide-the-iphone-x-s-ugly-notch-with-a-custom-wal-1820262216]

How to Hide the iPhone X’s Ugly Notch With a Custom Wallpaper

“The iPhone X design might be perfect if it wasn’t for that notch. The bit of bezel at the top of the screen may be necessary for Apple’s new Face ID to work, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hate the way it looks.

If you’d rather have a regular black bar along the top of the iPhone X instead of an awkward notch, there’s a simple solution: just get a custom wallpaper designed to hide the remaining bit of bezel. These wallpapers work by adding a virtual black bezel on either side of the notch so you don’t even notice it.”

I love it!

[2017.11.11 Update]

And now there’s even an app for that!

[http://coolmaterial.com/tech/notcho-app-hides-iphone-x-notch/]

This App Will Hide the Notch in Your iPhone X

“What would Steve Jobs say if he were alive for notch-gate? We think he’d be down with the removal of the Home button on the new iPhone X, as he was said to have despised buttons, but the notch seems to be a design flaw he wouldn’t have let out of Cupertino. If you bought the iPhone X and want to channel your inner Steve Jobs, you can download Notcho. Notcho is a free iOS app that gets rid of the unsightly notch. If you’re an Apple fan because of clean design, but you still had to have a talking poo emoji, you can download Notcho and feel a little better.”

Ok, I’ll try to stop now… or not!

SMH

Yup, shake my head, roll eyes, sigh… just, no:

[https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/18/giant-robot-fight-usa-japan-megabots/]

USA and Japan’s giant robot battle was a slow, brilliant mess

Team USA came out on top, but not before three rounds of action.

—-

I’ve written before about the current state of robotic affairs, and stunts like this just dropped the bar even lower.

AND… since that article came out a couple days ago, this one from today shows just how abysmal it truly truly was:

[https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/20/epic-live-giant-robot-battle-faked/]

This week’s ‘live’ giant robot battle was fake

This is a sad, sad day for us all.

—-

Yeah, guess I need to go watch ‘Pacific Rim’ again to cheer myself up.

There is no best browser

Pet peeve time. It’s long past time for tech writers to give up their click bait attempts with articles about which internet browser is BEST. These pop up at least once every week or two on the tech blogs. They are usually a head-to-head comparison to the top four or so: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and sometimes Opera or others. Here’s a recent example:

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/3213031/computers/best-web-browsers.html]

Best web browsers of 2017: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera go head-to-head

We take a look at the performance and features of the big four internet browsers to see which one will serve you best in 2017.

Let me just ask, who uses only one browser? I realize there are grandmas and kids and other less techie people in the world who might just use whatever came on their pc or laptop (IE, Edge, Safari…) but most people I work with, and every person who I’ve every helped over the years, use at least two or more browsers at the same time. Yes, there are strengths and weaknesses to every browser (every class of software), but there is no BEST one.

For myself, I gravitate to Firefox because of the extensions and it has a somewhat smaller memory footprint than Chrome. But even to this day, leaving it running for days on end and having multiple tabs open will result in FF sucking down a massive amount of memory. And it gets slower, and slower… and s l o w e r. I found the only way to stop that is by saving my sessions, killing the FF process, and firing it up again… starting the whole cycle again. FF can also get all locked up by a single rogue tab. I know the developers are working on these problems, but as of today (v56) it still has these and other problems.

Chrome is nice but does take up a lot resources, as each tab is a new system process, though this does help by not letting one tab crash all of Chrome. I always feel I have to be more ‘miserly’ with my Chrome tabs than with FF. New versions come out very frequently and I believe that they were the first to get a functional 64 bit version out than FF (sorry, too busy to google that). I keep all my Chrome sessions across all my devices synced to the same account so that extensions stay in sync, and I can keep track of open tabs on all of the different devices.

Edge: ha, who uses Edge? Still no good extensions, still does not work with all sites. No other words necessary.

Safari: Not a Mac guy, but it works very well on the iPad and iPhone. Tightly controlled by Apple, just like everything else. I think once, a very long time ago, I tried it on a Windows PC. Not sure if normal people still use it on PCs. Chrome is a good alternative on iOS.

Opera seems pretty solid, but to be honest, I only use it to log into my Facebook account. Why not connect to FB on FF or Chrome? You must have missed it when it was discovered that FB can track you ALL OVER THE INTERNET from the browser you are using, EVEN AFTER YOU LOGGED OUT. Sorry to get all caps locked on you there, I just can’t believe how bad that speaks to FB and privacy. And it’s not just about using cookies and clicking on the Like buttons. You think FB really ever lets you go?

Ah, but another great browser is Vivaldi! Spunky and still relatively fresh to the scene, it also is pretty solid and reliable. But again, like Opera, I really only use it to stay logged into my personal Gmail account. Using Google products is funny and slightly annoying as they seem to still think, in this grand year of 2017, that people have and use only one Gmail/Google account. 🙂 So, needless to say, I don’t use my main Gmail account (open in Vivaldi) for much else in the Google environment, hence that’s why I don’t use Gmail from FF or Chrome because outside of Incognito mode they only let you have one account logged in at a time. (So yeah, it gets a bit unwieldy when you need to use four or five Google accounts on your computer at one time.. but it’s manageable!)

Just for grins, there was also the standalone portable QtWeb browser back in the day. I just checked their site and the last update was 2013! Guess they just couldn’t compete with the PortableApps group, which are the versions of Chrome and Firefox that I use… highly recommended!

Windows Phone is dead

So… that only took about seven years to crash and burn out. Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 in the fall of 2010 but they never had a chance against the iPhone or the Android vanguard. It’s been interesting to watch the slow tank over the years and just a twinge painful because Nokia was involved and they used to make solid phones. Sure, there were a couple or three flurries of news bites where MS would make some grand announcement, like when they released Windows Phone 8 and WP10, but there was generally no interest from NO body. They were never a contender.

I used to be a MS basher, but to be truthful I changed my mind when Ballmer finally stepped down around the summer of 2014 and passed the CEO reins to Nadella, and I watched what happened with the company. Ballmer leaving was a shot in the arm that MS needed and they were able to really get to work on new versions of Windows and other initiatives, even focusing on their software to run on their phone competitors (smart!). I was interested in the platform enough that a couple years ago I bought a lower-end phone running WP7 so I could play around with it. Even with the low phone specs, it ran well and I did enjoy seeing what it offered. It’s true that one very big reason for the phone’s failure was always the lack of apps.

So I’ve softened my stance since 2010: it’s too bad that Windows Phone didn’t work out, only because competition is good for everyone involved. I’m not saying this is true about their phone at all, but in the tech industries, the best does not always win out. WP was classy and different. MS is cutting the fat and culling the herd… looking back now it seems like it was just kind of a big experiment, anyway.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/9/16446280/microsoft-finally-admits-windows-phone-is-dead]

Microsoft finally admits Windows Phone is dead

“In a series of tweets, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore has revealed that the software giant is no longer developing new features or hardware for Windows 10 Mobile. While Windows Phone fans had hoped Microsoft would update the platform with new features, it’s now clear the operating system has been placed into servicing mode, with just bug fixes and security updates for existing users.”

Work distractions

Not being distracted BY your work, lol, but distractions AT work to keep you from, you know, actually working. Here’s the real culprit that sucks down productivity:

[https://gigaom.com/2017/10/13/millennial-optimism-about-workplace-technology-ignores-a-key-problem-ourselves/]

Millenial Optimism About Workplace Technology Ignores a Key Problem — Ourselves

Curt Steinhorst – Oct 13, 2017

The bright, shiny future of meetings in augmented reality, AI assistants, smart workspaces built on the internet of things, and other Jetsonian office technologies fast approaches—and American workers can’t wait for them to improve productivity. A year ago, Stowe Boyd presented research here on Gigaom that found significant optimism about the potential for technology to make work easier and more collaborative.(1) Unsurprisingly, the research found this positivity strongest among Millennials.(2)

However, that same research found that nearly half of Millennials believe the biggest time waster at work is glitchy or broken technology. Millennial frustration with current technology might explain their simultaneous wide-eyed excitement about cool, acronymed stuff like VR, AI, and IoT. This is at odds with the overall population, which perceives wasteful meetings and excessive email as the biggest enemy of efficiency.(3)

The problem is, both diagnoses are wrong. Research shows that the most significant barrier to productivity, by far, is the good, old-fashioned problem of getting distracted. It’s not that distractions exist—it’s that we succumb to them.

Put another way: poor tech and erupting inboxes don’t waste our time—we do. We have lost our ability to choose where we spend our attention.

In one survey, 87% of employees admitted to reading political social media posts at work.(4) Other research shows that 60% of online purchases occur between 9am and 5pm and that 70% of U.S. porn viewing also happens during working hours (“working” from home?).(5) And if none of that convinces you, perhaps this will: Facebook’s busiest hours are 1-3pm—right in the middle of the workday.

To be clear, this isn’t just a Millennial problem. The 2016 Nielson Social Media Report reveals that Gen Xers use social media 6 hours, 58 minutes per week—10% more than Millennials.(6) Overall media consumption tells the same story: Gen Xers clock in at 31 hours and 40 minutes per week, nearly 20% more than Millennials.

And if there weren’t enough, each instance of distraction comes at a significant cost. An experiment in Great Britain showed that people who tried to juggle work with e-mails and texts lost an average of 10 IQ points, the same loss as working after a sleepless night.(7) And this affects essentially every office worker, every day.

What’s to be done, then? Fortunately, if you’ve read this far, you’ve already done the most important thing: understand that the true problem doesn’t lie anywhere but in our own lack of focus.

Regaining focus—becoming focus-wise, as I like to call it—doesn’t require a rejection of technology, however. Becoming focus-wise only requires we reconfigure our tech usage habits.

For instance, instead of expecting ourselves (and our employees) to be 100% available throughout the day to emails, chats, and walk-bys, set time aside in “focus vaults” where you are completely unreachable to the outside world for a set period of time. When you emerge, you can have complete freedom to check emails and Facebook, batching those communications so you don’t lose IQ points switching to and from them during the actual work.

Another example is how we use the tech itself. For instance, if you know you can’t resist checking the screen when your phone dings—turn off the sound. Or disable your computer’s internet connection for a period of time. Even something as simple as making your application window full-screen encourages your brain to focus on the single task.

Normalizing simple, focus-wise habits like these throughout your enterprise can reap huge rewards in workplace productivity. As technology starts to fill our offices with artificially intelligent robots, virtual work spaces, and self-configuring environments, you can be confident that you will use the technology to accomplish your goals—rather than letting the technology use you.

References

Boyd, Stowe. “Millennials and the Workplace,” Gigaom.com. Oct 26, 2016. https://gigaom.com/2016/10/26/millennials-and-the-workplace-2/.
Dell & Intel Future-Ready Workforce Study U.S. Report. July 15, 2016. http://www.workforcetransformation.com/workforcestudy/us/.
Workfront 2016-2017 US State of Enterprise Work Report. Sept 9, 2016. https://resources.workfront.com/workfront-awareness/2016-state-of-enterprise-work-report-u-s-edition.
Kris Duggan, “Feeling Distracted by Politics? 29% of Employees Are Less Productive after U.S. Election,” BetterWorks, February 7, 2017, https://blog.betterworks.com/feeling-distracted-politics-29-employees-less-productive-u-s-election.
Juline E. Mills, Bo Hu, Srikanth Beldona, and Joan Clay, “Cyberslacking! A Wired-Workplace Liability Issue,” The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 42, no. 5 (2001): 34–47, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010880401800562.
Sean Casey, “2016 Nielsen Social Media Report,” Nielsen, January 17, 2017, 6, http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/reports-downloads/2017-reports/2016-nielsen-social-media-report.pdf.
“Emails ‘Hurt More than Pot,’” CNN.com, April 22, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq

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So, recently with my own group at work we’ve been trying to work on online training. We’ve found that there are just too many distractions when at our desks with many people around us, and walk-ups, and the constant interruptions from email, Slack, other projects going on, etc. We decided the best option (besides working from home cough cough) is to find an unused conference room armed with only a laptop, and to take an hour or two away from it all to concentrate on the training. I hadn’t before heard this called a “focus vault”, but that is a very appropriate and descriptive term.