Stephen Hackett:
It’s a different approach then what Apple’s doing with OS X and iOS, and Google with Chrome OS and Android, but I think it can be successful, if the company can prove investing in their platform is worthwhile for developers.
Could not agree more.
Shawn Blanc:
In short, for me, the 6s Plus is equal parts wonderful and terrible. There are some people who find the size to be just right, and so they have no sense of trade-offs with the device. But it is just too large for me to comfortably use as a hand-held phone.
Yeah, the iPhone 6s Plus is actually a terrible phone. But it is the world’s best pocket computer. And the best camera that can fit in my jeans pocket. And a fantastic wifi hotspot. And a great video communicator.
But as just a phone, it sucks.
I’m poking fun at Shawn here, but I truly mean this: don’t think of the 6s Plus as a phone, think of it as a computer. Once you do that, you realize how amazing it is.
Really misleading title, as the difference appears to mostly be about battery life. Now Engadget is claiming huge differences of up to 2 hours better performance with the TSMC chip phones, but speed differences are unknown. Interesting stuff.
Update: I didn’t realize at the time of posting that this was a user submitted post. Most of the data here is from Reddit. While not the best source, there does seem to be some anecdotal evidence to support the claim. This is going to be interesting as people test it more.
Peter Bright:
The Surface Book should offer another feature found in laptops: better performance. The keyboard unit can include a discrete NVIDIA GPU. That’s only usable when the tablet is docked, of course. The keyboard also includes an extra battery; the system as a whole can manage a 12 hour battery life, Microsoft says, but that’s only when using both batteries. The tablet itself has much less battery life.
Yikes, that keyboard attachment is hideous looking. Despite all that — the Surface remains a compelling product whose success is hampered by the lack of good touch-first applications.
Nice article from Wired, going over the how of the new water resistance in iPhones.
One new feature in El Capitan is the ability to auto-hide the menubar. Like with the Dock auto-hiding, the menubar only appears when you move your mouse to where the menubar should be. When I found the option during the beta period, I immediately turned it on and have not looked back. It’s one of the best new features of OS X.
Why would you want this?
Well for starters: on a small screen it gives you some extra height to the display. It also makes your desktop look really clean — for example when I don’t have an app window open, all I see is the wallpaper.
I signed up to BespokePost a while back to get the Dispatch box, which contains a shoulder bag from Line of Trade. From what I gather this bag can only be had in this box, but the box is $45 so it makes the entire thing seem like quite the bargain. And that’s free shipping too, it was begging me to buy it.
(If you aren’t a Bespoke member, use this link to sign up and I get a kickback.)
Looks like we had a stellar 8 day streak in April…
Adamant has come out for Safari 9 (this might be El Capitan only, not sure). It works just like its iOS counterpart: set it and forget it. No clutter in the toolbar like you get with Ghostery. Very cool.
Good infographic.
Horace Dediu:
Looking at new features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, and better cameras, one can observe how easily acceptable and desirable they are to those who first see them. As were Siri, FaceTime, Touch ID and iCloud, making something meaningfully better is a sign of sustaining innovation which does not over-serve.
Paradoxically, the improvements are not usually things that users ask for. Surveys always show that consumers want “better battery life” or a “bigger screen” but delivering something else entirely which nevertheless leads to mass adoption shows an uncanny insight into what really matters.
I love this passage from Dediu. Coincidentally, the Evening Standard had an interview with Apple SVP Eddy Cue, in which he said something very similar:
Can customer feedback be something of a minefield? “There are things people can tell us and there are things they can’t,” he continues. “Both are really important but one of the dangers is to only do things people tell you to do. You would never do [new iPhone features] Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond. We used to say that we get paid to look around corners.”
It reminds me of a story I heard in college about cars in the 1950s. (You know, the cars with the big fins on the back.) The parable told was that the big car companies asked people what they wanted in a car, and cars kept getting more and more boring. Then they started asking people what their neighbors would want in a car, and people said things like: “Oh he’d want something crazy with wings, and bubbles, something like a jet.” And thus they made cars with tail fins, and people loved them.
It’s an adaptation of this Henry Ford quote:
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
We are often the worst judges at what we truly want. We would all love better battery life, but very few us would be compelled to go spend another $400 for better battery life.
I’ve become one of those 6s Plus elitist who chastises their pals for using a non-plus model of an iPhone. There’s a lot of arguments to be made for the 6s Plus, but the biggest argument must be seen to be understood.
It’s out now, and it’s my new go to for RSS on the Mac. What a beautiful looking app.
Good insight.
Since my initial testing, a lot more content blockers have come to market, and many have seen large updates. I ran through and tested all the content blockers I own once again, and added everyone I could find in the App Store. All told, I tested 32 content blockers on my iPhone 6s Plus to determine which is the best.
MG Siegler on Live Photos:
That is, static pictures which suddenly come alive. But the true power comes from the re-creation of a memory, in front of your eyes, on your iPhone. It sounds like I’m overplaying it, but I’m not.
As a parent, it’s one of my favorite features.
One thing that I keep hearing, is people trying to figure out if Live Photos are a gimmick or not. No one has had access to Live Photos long enough to know for sure, but I can say, that when I get little moments like you see in the video of a live photo below — well that makes it something I will always cherish.
(Should be on Vimeo soon if this embed fails on you.)
So far, it seems Live Photos are anything but a gimmick.
Holy shit:
CPU SPEED IS KNOCKING ON THE DOOR
The single core CPU performance of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is roughly comparable to that of the 12″ MacBook Retina. The multi-core CPU performance is ‘knocking on the door.’GPU SPEED MATCHES OR EXCEEDS 13″ APPLE LAPTOPS
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus blow away all the dual-core laptops in the Manhattan OpenGL 3D animation. And they beat all but the 13″ MacBook Pro in the T-Rex 3D animation.
Updated my content blocker test with Adblock Plus (slow) and Blockr 1.0.1 (much improved). Also updated the data savings post.
Jack Marshall:
Mr. Murphy said he’s taken Eyeo up on its offer, and plans to implement an option within his app whereby “acceptable” ads will be displayed to users. The feature will be switched on by default, Mr. Murphy said, and he will receive a flat monthly fee from Eyeo in return. Mr. Murphy declined to disclose the fee, but said he expects to make less money from Eyeo’s payments than from sales of the app itself.
Go ahead and scratch Crystal off the list of content blockers to buy.