2018 iPad Pro

Apple iPad’s are curious devices; they started out as novelties, became marginal productivity tools for content consumption and have been trying (unsuccessfully) as content creation devices.

 

The first generation iPad Pro’s attempted to do that with the Apple Pencil and keyboard folio, but it really felt like a hack / first gen product. The device was basically a bigger, more powerful iPad.

 

That can’t be said for the 2018 iPad Pro. Available in two sizes, the current generation iPad Pro’s are actually really useful devices, smashing content consumption requirements, and meeting most (but not all) content creation requirements.

 

The device is extremely powerful, seems to have enough memory/storage and seems to handle almost anything you throw at it without slowing down. Probably the most fundamental change to the device is the switch from lightning to USB-C. Not only does this bring the iPad Pro line in step with the MacBook Pro line (notebook and iPad), but it also sets the scene for an iPhone Pro. Whatever that may be.

 

Its a great device; highly recommended. And if you’re going to buy it, don’t bother with the smaller one. The bigger one has a significantly bigger screen than the standard iPad, but is only marginally bigger in carrying it around.

 

PS. The pencil is a gimmick. Don’t bother.

iPhone XS Max

Another year, another iPhone. This time, the XS (Max). The biggest, best, yada yada iPhone Apple has ever made.

 

With the obligatory cheesy movie from Johnny Ive describing the amazing build process.

 

Except this one has one massive technical feature that does, indeed, make it different from the other iPhones. It supports eSIM, and amazingly, in China is available as a physical dual-SIM version.

 

While I did think about trying to get hold of the China physical dual-SIM version, I decided against it because I wasn’t sure what bloatware / backdoor was on the device thanks to the large Chinese market that Apple would be desperate to tap into.

 

So I got the local eSIM version from my carrier, and other than being bigger, I didn’t really notice much difference. Except when I travelled.

 

I managed to test the eSIM functionality using a company called Gigsky, in San Francisco, Thailand and Hong Kong. And other than paying a premium for the service from Gigsky, it worked perfectly and better than advertised! Buy the second data-only eSIM for the country you wish to use it, “download” it, and hey presto, 2nd SIM!

 

Coverage was adequate (not brilliant), and speeds were average to ok. But better than roaming rates, better than hunting for a local SIM and a device to carry it and infinitely more convenient to literally do nothing but switch your phone on! Awesome.

 

Punchline : if you travel, get an iPhone XS / XR. Otherwise, don’t waste your time and skip this version.

Apple iPhone X - revolutionary ?

I don’t think Apple makes a great phone. I don’t think Apple makes a great smartphone. Apple does make a reasonable phone, and a reasonably good smartphone. The combination is good enough for most people, and easy enough that they’re willing to live within the constraints in order to get something that “mostly works”.

Today, Android users fall into three categories;

1. They can’t afford an iPhone
2. They have a philosophical hatred of Apple, a philosophical love of absolute customisability, have some specific technical requirement that dictates Android or some gradient in between
3. They simply don’t know or care enough to make a decision of one platform over another

And for the most part, app developers have worked out that 1 and 2 exist, and so have solved the problem by building for 3. There isn’t an app that I use more than once a month that doesn’t exist in some shape or form on both platforms, with equal utility. I do occasionally (and hate the experience almost immediately) fire up Windows phone to see what that is doing, and on that platform you realise how close Android and iOS are in reality in terms of usable applications.

The iPhone X is a rather revolutionary take (as far as Apple goes) on design and UI; none of the reasons people don’t like Apple are eradicated. Those users who had decided / chosen Android actively over Apple won’t buy an X. But those users who simply don’t care, and can afford it, might and probably will. Is it revolutionary ? For Apple, yes. For the industry, not really.

Its physically well sized, sitting comfortably between what we today consider compact and large. This is the "large phone" from 5 years ago. The FaceID system actually works very well, and you get used to the gesture-based system replacing the missing home button.

I am really enjoying mine.

Apple AirPods - amazing!

I didn’t want to like the Apple AirPods. I thought they looked stupid, and overpriced.

But I succumbed, and bought a pair last week. Man, the pairing is magical, and the simplicity of switching from two buds, to a single bud, back to two buds, is amazing.

There are some snags; it doesn’t as magically pair to my MacBook Pro, but between iOS devices its absolutely seamless. Very neat!

On to sound quality; I’m afraid its not all roses in this department. Muddy, too much mid-bass, not enough treble. Audiophile ? Nope. You can see someone in the Beats department was doing QA.

But still a good investment; they’re pretty, pair easily, don't sound bad and are compact.

 

Update: about a month later, still LOVING them and they’re in use daily. Sublime!

Update2: the pairing with computers is crummy / inelegant, and the pairing with iPad’s also leaves much to be desired. But streets ahead what else is out there.

Update3: My wife thinks they look crap, but agrees that paying double for the B&O’s is extravagant.

2017 Tech updates

Its been a while since I posted updates. I'm going to post in short form what changed / what I played with as an update.

• I was debating changing my MacBook 12" for a 13" Pro with Touch bar. I did. It was not transformative. The Touch Bar, while cool, is a gimmick. You don't actually use it that much. About the only thing that is useful is the TouchID fingerprint scanner, which I do use often. The is useful. Other than that, the notebook resolved my main gripes with the 12", namely speed/grunt, and ports. The new Pro has plenty of both.

• I upgraded my Bose QC3's to QC35's. If the QC3's were good, the QC35's are simply sublime. And I don't experience the bass issues that seem to be widely discussed. Good battery life, extremely comfortable; my absolute go-to on flights and when I want uninterrupted listening. I did contemplate the Sony equivalents, but the Bose just seemed to have better build quality and class sound. Boo to the disparagers!
  
• I ended up buying a single discreet Bluetooth headset, for ad-hoc listening. The Rowkin Mini Plus headphone is absolutely discreet, well built and a good purchase for the price. Solves a gap for that "something to do while my kids/wife are busy and I have 5 minutes to kill"
  
• A massive win in terms of WiFi gear that I've been playing with is GL-Inet. Its like a Swiss-army knife of AP's. It can be a bridge, repeater, router, AP, OpenVPN client-termination device, can use a phone as a modem and solves the hotel "captive portal" / multiple device problem. A definite winner!
  

I’ve played with a lot of gear, devices and software. Nothing so impressive as to merit a review.

Apple MacBook 12"

I have had a few Apple notebooks; I've tried using Dell and HP's during the same time period, but I always revert back to the Apple machines. Its more to do with UNIX than with the hardware.

• I started out with a 15" Apple MacBook Pro in 2006. This was a great machine; stable, beautiful and one click access to the CLI
• I then changed to a 11" MacBook Air in 2011. A bit small, and underpowered - a mistake
• A 13" MacBook Air later in 2011 was a good compromise, esp when paired with a 27" iMac. This was the beginning of my current computing paradigm, which is a current daily driver / travel machine paired with a slightly older (and MUCH bigger screen) desktop
• The 13" MacBook Air was replaced with a Retina 13" Pro and the iMac got upgraded in 2013

I frankly didn't see the need to change from my 2013 Retina 13" Pro, until I started traveling frequently last year. Carrying around the 13" Pro seemed too much, so I bought a 12" MacBook. 

It has massive pro's, and only two con's;

• Pro - the chiclet keyboard has been derided, but new Apple notebooks are coming with it so better get used to it
• Pro - the big touchpad is pretty awesome to use
• Pro - its light and small
• Pro - the retina display is beautiful
• Con - single USB-C port
• Con - performance is spotty and a smidgen too slow

While this has been derided as an iPad with a keyboard, its actually quite useful. But having a single USB-C port is simply damn stupid. So, I'm considering the new 13" Pro's with the touch bar.

Its a significant cash investment, and I'm considering waiting for the upgraded version of it, esp with Kaby Lake processors. Decisions :-(

Apple iPhone 7+

I've been using an Apple iOS device as my daily driver phone for quite a while now. Initially, I felt quite limited doing so because Apple seemed to be so far behind on the customization and flexibility, but the app developers make it compelling because initially they tend to release first on Apple, if not exclusively.

In my last related post, I had a iPhone 6+. Like a lemming, I upgraded to the 6S+. The touted difference was the ability to push harder or softer on the screen to achieve a myriad of different actions based on how hard you pushed; not features I really use frankly, and I didn't really notice much of a difference other than the thing now being a lot heavier.

Like a faithful lemming, I've upgraded to the 7+. It does have a bunch of differences (color, faster, etc), but the two key ones for me (and the reasons its worth getting frankly) are;

• Its waterproof - I'm not a surfer, but knowing that I can get the thing wet and not stress / lose data is a big deal
• The second camera being used to create portraits with good bokeh and/or being able to zoom in quite closely is very useful on a daily basis

If you're debating getting one, don't debate too long. Apple has clearly reached the point where massive steps in innovation are not present. But, the incremental ones are not bad if you skip generations (i.e. buy, skip the next one, buy, skip the next one, buy)

Libratone Zipp speaker

Multi-room, mostly wire-free audio is a hassle. And its almost never seamless.

 

A breed of Apple Airplay-compatible speakers has been around for a while, but they all tended to be quite ugly. I ended up liking the styling of the Libratone Zipp; classic Danish design, good reviews, solid sound from a wireless speaker with Airplay and Bluetooth built-in - sounds ideal!

 

Its not cheap; $320. And I’m sorry to say, its rubbish.

 

• Pairing it over WiFi is a disaster (can’t see the network, struggle to associate), and generally requires you to reset the speaker if you change the SSID or password
• The WiFi chip must be encased in solid lead, because even if its right next to the AP, it can’t connect
• Who builds a WiFi speaker that only has a 2.4GHz chip in it ?
• The audio quality is iffy at best, and is generally not memorable
• When you do miraculously get it powered, associated and playing music, it hardly goes 5 minutes without cutting out and requiring you to power it off and on again

 

On the positive side, its pretty, and the Bluetooth works well - but then I would have bought something else and saved $100. Sigh.

 

I am trying hard not to get into the Sonus ecosystem, but they’ve been around for a while, and it must be because they do things properly.

 

PS. Please don’t point to my WiFi network. I have RRD graphs that prove coverage and connection-rate density where the speaker was placed, tested and moved around are good

Sucky Bluetooth audio quality on a Mac ?

I’ve noticed audio quality on Mac’s is a bit of a hit & miss affair; until I read this article about terminal hints to fix stupid default Mac settings.

 

Applied the terminal hints, and happiness! In case it gets removed,

 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Max (editable)" 80 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 48 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool (editable)" 40 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool" 58 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Max" 58 

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Min" 48

Macbook Pro 13" (Retina)

I recently changed from a Macbook Air to a Macbook Pro 13” (Retina). I was going to wait for a new chipset release (Broadwell) for better battery life, but for a variety of reasons ended up buying the Haswell version.

 

Fundamentally the only difference between this notebook and the previous iterations I’ve used is the Retina display (beside the seemingly endless parade of more RAM, bigger and faster SSD and marginally faster CPU).

 

Is Retina display good on a Macbook ? In a word, yes. Is it worth shelling out for a model specifically for it ? No. Images and text are crisper, it seems less impactful on the eye, and the associated visual “refresh” going from iPhone / iPad Retina to notebook disappears. But, am I planning to replace one or both of my iMac’s to their Retina version because the display is crisper ? Nope. When it comes time to replace them due to age, feature creep or some other reason (oops I dropped it), then its logical to go Retina. Otherwise, save your money.

Long term iPhone 6+ thoughts

I wrote about the iPhone 6+ earlier in the year; at the time, I wasn’t sure if I would like the device and would I actually return it because it was too big.

 

I’ve now been using the device basically since its launch, and have travelled a reasonable amount with it (South Africa, Dubai, US). In short, I think this is the best iOS phone experience you can have right now. I did try an iPhone 6 for a while, but it felt very much like an incremental upgrade to the 5S, as opposed to the 5S - 6+ upgrade.

 

If you’re considering it, go get one! You won’t be disappointed. If you’re looking for an Android device, right now I’m a huge fan of the Motorola line (I’ve used the 1st gen X and G). But I only hear good things about the Z3 line from Sony.

My journey to the public cloud

In spite of having architected, built and managed some of the largest public cloud infrastructures in Africa, I have until very recently run a private cloud exposed to the Internet for my personal needs.

 

I have two FreeBSD-based servers (one in South Africa, one in Germany), which for at least 10 years ran a very consistent configuration;

• Cyrus IMAP server with Cyrus SASL authentication (plaintext)
• Postfix SMTP server (with the accruement of SpamAssasin, clamav, grey listing, SPF and DKIM to combat malware, viruses and spam)
• Bind DNS server
• Apache web server
• Menalto Gallery for photo galleries

 

I kept my personal data in Dropbox since its inception, and about 18 months ago moved to Google Drive because of the more compelling pricing model, the pay-per-month option and the ability to search my data. I use a combination of Crashplan to keep a redundant copy in the cloud, and BitTorrent Sync to keep local files available (certain hosts are primary of certain data sets). LogMeIn Pro does a good job of allowing me to remotely manage several computer hosts. I kept my phone contacts in the corporate Exchange cluster, because in spite of all the terrible software they write, Microsoft has done a damn good job of licensing ActiveSync and making it fail-proof,  idiot proof and the de facto standard on every mobile platform out there.

 

This configuration served my data and personal needs, several vanity domains and similar for several friends and family members for over a decade. The only aspect that changed was upgrades for security purposes and a move from US-based hosting to Germany-based hosting (for cost and privacy reasons).

 

These servers acted as primary and secondary name servers, primary and backup MX and geo-distributed you to the closest web server for my family photo collection. And until about 6 months ago, I played down the progress in public cloud offerings and was confident in my own abilities as an ex-sysadmin.

 

Then Heartbleed hit. And then my FreeBSD version was EOL’d. And I had hardware failures, which caused me to stay awake at night, away from my family and friends and ruined an otherwise decent overseas trip. And while the lure of 18 degrees in a data centre used to thrill me, it no longer does. As does the reputation-damaging spectre of being hacked.

 

I decided to change all of this.

 

Over a 3 week period, while I’ve kept the Crashplan / Google Drive / BitTorrent Sync configuration to keep my “personal” computing requirements sane, I’ve migrated this configuration to;

• Google Apps for hosted mailboxes
• Afrihost bronze e-mail hosting for those domains that simply forward mail
• DNS Made Easy for DNS hosting
• Open Provider for DNS registrar services
• Zenfolio for photo gallery hosting

 

Along the way, I tried a mail migration tool called Car.bo (from Shuttlecloud), that did a great job on small mailboxes, but failed miserably on large ones (2-10 GB). And, they sneakily move you from a direct billing relationship with Google to a reseller model where they bill you and get commission from your business - not cool. I ended up using a mail migration tool called Yippiemove, that while expensive, certainly did end up moving users’ data.

 

I now have my phone contacts in Google Contacts, and am using a tool called Scrubly to clean it up, populating LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter data into the contact stream and profile photos. iOS and Android devices use Google Sync (which is licensed ActiveSync) to replicate contact data, Google Drive is my data repo and I’ll be able to shut down my servers from active use by the end of the month.

 

In this scenario, on-boarding a new compute platform, tablet, phone or similar is a 2 minute exercise - and I have access to all my data.

 

Yes, this is costing me some money - but nowhere near the hosting costs I would have incurred if I wasn’t working for an ISP. You’re looking at $5 per user month for Google Apps, $30 annually for hosting 10 DNS zones, $60 annually for Zenfolio, $30 annually for the contact cleanup utility and I’m springing an additional $10 per month for 1Tb of storage. Crashplan is about $6 per month for unlimited storage and backup of 10 computers.

 

Ultimately, the headache of keeping these systems in sync / up to date and secure is now not my problem. For me, that’s money well spent.

 

PS. The biggest headache was merging my and my users’ Google accounts (Plus, Voice, Drive, Chrome Sync, etc) from being unmanaged consumer-level Google accounts to managed Google Apps accounts. This migration is still too damn hard.

iPhone 6+ - and iOS 8.x

Yes. I bought one. Yes, you look like a tool using it. And yes, its big. And yes, it does’t fit nicely in your pocket.

 

But wow, is that screen awesome to work with. Its ungainly big. But that screen is awesome. Did I mention its so big ? What isn’t obvious (or what someone with any degree of honesty will tell you) is that the silly thing is easy to drop. Its so large, and the edges so rounded, that it can (literally) just slide out of your hand. Which I suspect is more than slightly intentional, because how else do you force people to upgrade quickly.

 

I have seen all the #bendgate comments; if you’re going to take an $850 phone and try and bend it, you’re an idiot who deserves a bent phone. And who puts a phone in their back pocket, sits on it and still expects it to be straight ? Grow up people.  

 

I did have this funny orientation bug happen to me, but I suspect thats rather due to the rubbish QA that obviously went into iOS 8.

 

Its big. And as someone pointed out, awesome when you’re using it. But painful when you’re not. Below is the 5, 6 and 6+. Go big or go home.

 

PS. The best feature of this phone is the amazing battery life! I get about 2 full days worth - very impressive.

Q4 2014 review - reality

I had mentioned previously that I was quite excited about the new technology we were going to see in Q4 2014. While we’re not through Q4, enough has happened that its worth summarising things thus far.

 

• The successors to the Moto X and G were released; other than bigger screens, very little else has changed. Understandable, but slightly underwhelming. The Moto360 broke out too, and its distinguishing feature is that its round, and needs to be charged every evening. Hmmm. Again, underwhelming. Am I the only one who doesn’t really get this smart watch category ?
• The Nexus 6, which looks like its being made by Motorola, hasn’t broken cover yet - but its tipped to be even bigger. Yikes!
• The new iPad’s haven’t broken ground, but the iPhone 6’s have, and all the rumours were basically correct. Bravo to Apple on the Apple Watch, rumours of which have been floating but no leaks until release date, which is very impressive. Not as impressive as the watch itself, IMHO. I don’t see the point. It will be the best of a pointless category.
• We had the iOS 8 reboot; and boy oh boy, are we still rebooting. It feels like a series of Microsoft Windows updates. Unreliable, buggy and borked several peoples devices (at least, 8.0.1 did)
• We’re still waiting for Intel to hurry up and release those Broadwell chips. Come on guys, lets hustle a bit. The buzz around the 14nm production process had better yield some damn good results in terms of battery life.

 

Overall, thoroughly underwhelming.

Q4 2014

The last quarter of 2014 (which we’re effectively heading into now) should be interesting from a technology perspective! Its weird, but you get the sense that manufacturers keep all their thunder for Q3/Q4 in order to capitalise on the Thanksgiving/December rush. I would have expected them to shift it earlier to let the market settle and allow smart buyers to plan (these things cumulatively are not cheap after all). But living in the US, I can now see that most of it is catering to the impulsive (and generally misinformed public), and no human impulse is quite so strong as the good feeling you get from perceived savings from a sale - even if its completely artificial. I am expecting to see;

• a follow up to the Moto X and Moto G, both really solid handsets which seem to indicate to me, along with the Moto360 smart watch at least, that Motorola’s mobility division got its groove back (before Google decided to flog them off to Lenovo - lets hope this wasn’t a few hit wonder rush). I doubt I’ll order either (simply because there is nothing wrong with the ones I have), but if you’re looking for a solid Android device, these are pretty awesome; well priced, decent specs and solid build quality! Also relatively unmolested from the manufacturer
• a Nexus 6 running the rebooted Android L. Loads of rumours, no facts. So not going to speculate
• the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini with Retina 2 and two versions of the iPhone. Again, too many rumours so not going to speculate. To be honest, Apple’s announcements have become pretty stale in this arena and frankly uninspiring. I’m not expecting this to change with this slew; faster, more RAM (maybe) and bigger. Not inspiring
• an Apple Watch - for such a giant in the personal consumer electronics space to not have a wearable is insane; these rumours have been running for more than a year now, and given that all of their rivals have launched, the Cupertino behemoth would be insane to not deliver something to the market - but its going to have to be rather special for me to consider it (thats not to say it won’t sell millions; it will even if its garbage, because it’ll be the “best garbage you’ve ever seen”)
• reboots of the OS X and iOS for computing and mobile devices respectively
• Mass production of Broadwell-based Intel processors. Its time for a new notebook for me (run through the 3 year cycle), and its requiring all of my restraint to wait for the new processor architecture to hit Apple’s devices. Broadwell-based Retina 13” Pro, here we come. While I like the profile of an Air, it just simply does’t have the juice I would like, even though it only gets booted up when not at the office - and with the new architecture, it should comfortably whip the Air for battery life compared to what I’m using now

 

So overall, an exciting time!

iPad Air

As with my previous Apple product-related blog post, this update too can be summed up as another incremental update. It doesn’t have a better screen, its a little faster, battery life is the same and it doesn’t do anything significantly different from its predecessor (or even its predecessor).

 

The most revolutionary change in the iPad world was the inclusion of the Retina display - that was cool. And the change to a Lightning connector - really reduced the number of inventory parts required. Again, this is a humdrum update which you would be best to avoid completely if you had the iPad 4, or if you had someone to give your iPad 3 to in order to get homogeneity across connectors.

iPhone 5S

In a word, this review can be covered with one word; meh. Its the same form factor as the iPhone 5, except a bit faster, an integrated touch sensor and world-wide LTE band support.

 

To be honest, the band support is the only reason to change, and even then only if you plan to change continents (which I did). Or because someone gives you a stupid amount of money to trade in your old device (which they did). Otherwise, save your money.

iPad Mini

When Apple launched the iPad Mini, I thought back to Steve Jobs saying that 7" was a rubbish form factor. Maybe it was all the other kick-ass 7" tablets that made them build it ?

Whatever the reason, they did. And its pretty. Its literally like they shrunk the original iPad; it feels good in the hands, size is perfect, texture is great. So, on the plus side

• size is excellent
• lightning connector is brilliant
• price point is fair (I said fair, not cheap)

 

There are three caveats though;

• why did it need a nano-SIM, as opposed to the micro-SIM that they made ubiquitous two years ago or a normal SIM for the 20 years before that ?
• why not fit a retina display to it ?
• why does it feel so damn sluggish and often pause when running multiple applications ?

 

As usual, Apple has released a great market and effectively reinvented a segment they already dominated. I suspect that you'll see over time the 10" iPad market stabilise (not shrink) with substantial growth coming from the 7" market. I suspect they'll piss off tons of early adopters by releasing a retina-upgraded version of the display by June 2013, and then a jump/quantum change in September/October (processor bump, better cameras, etc). But for now, its a damn fine piece of kit.

iPhone 5

However much I didn't want to like the iPhone 5, I have to admit that after using it for a few days, I do. Physically, the only thing I really noticed was the fact that its larger/taller. Yes, its thinner. Yes, its lighter. Enough to buy a new phone ? If you have a 4S, nah; or a Galaxy S3, or an HTC One X. For anything else, its a real no-brainer. Get one.

 

The height makes it still usable with one hand, and it feels pretty good in the hand compared to the Samsung S3 or HTC One X. Its very fast, and battery life has improved notably - I used to get to 30% with a 4S, and 10% with a 4. With this 5, I now am sitting at 40% after a business day. So thats improved, which is great. And I'm seeing unbelievable network speeds, which means quite a lot of work went into the radios on this device. This is the device that should have been released instead of the 4S, which was the predecessor to this device.

 

But I don't like one thing, other than that I got it in white because thats all that was available. I love the Lightning connector because its so small, and doesn't matter which direction you stick it in. I don't love the fact that basically nothing that I have (docks, cables, adapters, chargers) work with it. So, I've done the only logical thing you can do; bought tons of micro-USB chargers and data cables, and bought a lightning-micro-USB adapter, and will stick to that. Micro-USB is almost universally available now, and the adapter really is well made and small - it should be, its damn expensive at R200+

 

Overall, a great device.

 

PS. The service I've been getting from Cell-C since I ported has been stellar. They had the phone for me when they said they would, nano-sim and all. And my bills are coming in literally at half Vodacom. No brainer if you're still with anyone else and paying your own bill; port!

 

PPS. WTF did they change the SIM design to a nano-sim ? Stupid.

Facetime HD camera's and Skype

Just a quick post, noticed that my video using Skype was stretched on a laptop with a Facetime HD camera.

This blog post was quite useful in getting it sorted out.