Category Archives: Reality Distortion Field

Apple and Mac related stuff.

The MKX® iPhone 6 review

As the editor of a major technical news website (this one) I am forced to upgrade my iPhone every year so you can read my refined opinions. Let’s do it.

Getting the review unit

The pre-order process was rough. Not only did I have to wake up at 2 AM on a weekday in excruciating back pain (different story) but the Apple Store website was having trouble – flashbacks to trying to buy World Cup tickets. I almost gave up…

… but a helpful soul on Twitter caught wind of my whining and alerted me that the website was back up and I was able to place my preorder.

The phones went for sale on Friday. I was able to skip the line at shul The Apple Store, and that was good because it was rough:

This is a panorama I shot of the line outside of the Apple Store at The Domain (left).
This is a panorama I shot of the line outside of the Apple Store at The Domain (left) sometime around 8:30 AM. Click to enlarge.

Battery life

I’ve only had the phone for a few days and so far it seems like the battery lasts longer than the iPhone 5s, which was just fine. This is not going to be a concern.

Missing in Action

Apple Pay. I like my wallets to be thin. The added bulk of a credit card kills me. So anything that helps avoid carrying more stuff in my wallet is welcome. Unfortunately, Apple Pay isn’t out yet so I can’t test it just yet. And not every place will take it so I will still have to carry the credit card for the foreseeable future. Dang.

Camera

I haven’t used it that much yet! So I can’t tell. Instead I will direct you to some reviews about the camera. In summary: it seems to be better than the previous iPhone 5s which had the best camera of all smartphones, 42 MP Nokia fat-phones be damned. This is important to me because

  1. I care that my photos look decent
  2. For the most part I don’t want to carry a large dedicated camera
  3. I am going to be taking a lot of photos starting in late October

So read “Apple’s iPhone 6 Has Finally Convinced Me To Ditch My Compact Camera” and  look at this crazy photos taken in Iceland and watch this video taken in Disneyland which is impressive because of how there’s no shake and how quickly the video adapts to the changes in darkness and light.

The camera does have one big drawback: the lens sticks out a little bit. If you use a case, then it’s a non-issue. If you don’t use a case, the phone will wobble on it’s invulnerable sapphire lens. Me? I use a case.

Screen

It looks great, and it can fit more content in it’s 4.7″ than the old 4″ iPhones (duh!). I like reading from it. But adding a large screen it has a big drawback…

Size

Left: iPhone 5s. Right: iPhone 5
Left: iPhone 5s. Right: iPhone 5. Hand model: Marcos. I tried to make the scale of the photo roughly the same. The size difference is striking.

It’s big, and this is the “small” model, not the gigantic iPhone 6 Plus. I get it: the demand for a larger iPhone was huge. And then there is that dirty little secret every other phone maker hasn’t told you yet: making large phones is easier. Apple can’t keep doing both forever: competing in specs and make the phone smaller. The market has spoken loud and clear. The giant iPhones are upon us.

The phone is very thin though, even with the case. And since it has rounded corners it slides in and out of my pocket just fine and doesn’t bother me at all – which was a pleasant surprise.

But oh boy, one-handed use suffers big time. You can’t reach the top of the screen without some impressive hand calisthenics , and the phone feels top heavy, precariously close to tipping over.

In the past years while at the public restroom at work I’ve accumulated accolades from both peers and higher ups due to my ability to keep up with my RSS feed while I urinate. This is going to be a lot harder now, and just imagine the embarrassment when my phone falls into the urinal while I try to tap that out of reach button (note to self: look into this). Reputations take years to build up, but a mere instant to destroy. Reachability may help, but it’s not yet second nature to me and it still seems like an inelegant easy way out. The original iPhone was a pleasure to use with one hand – at the expense of screen real estate. The new iPhone flips the table. Perhaps modern medicine can come to the rescue?

Other

The phone with its A8 processor feels faster, which is cool but not in a way you notice right away. In my experience, jumps in performance were similar across iPhone generations with the notable exception of the 3GS which was a much faster than its antecessor. But the speed bump is definitely there, and when you go back to use the previous phone, it feels sloooow. Every small gain in performance makes the thing more pleasurable to use and it adds up over time.

The phone now has a barometer, so not only do you know how many steps you take in a day, but how many floors you climb. I will be testing this more this week.

And I am selling my old factory unlocked pristine 32 GB iPhone 5s. Great phone, usable with one hand anywhere in the world. Supplies are limited! Hurry up!

Additions (September 22)

  • The lock button was moved from the top to the right of the device. This is a good idea, because the top is hard to reach with one hand. But there’s a drawback: the lock button is now opposite from one of the volume buttons, so if you squeeze the phone to lock it, you may end up pressing the wrong button.
  • Touch ID (fingerprint sensor) seems to be a lot faster and a lot accurate. This may or may not be my imagination or due to the fact that I just programmed it – but my guess is that it’s a new revision of the hardware.
  • Apps that aren’t yet updated for the iPhone 6 look zoomed in. This makes everything look larger, means that the app doesn’t take advantage of the added screen space, and that the keyboard is larger. The last point is a big problem, since one relies on muscle memory for fast typing, and switching keyboard sizes is ver bad for that.

And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984”

Ten years ago (yes, The MKX® is that old) I posted a side-by-side comparison of the original 1984 commercial and the updated twentieth anniversary version shown in 2004. It even made it to the venerable MacSurfer’s Headline News. Sadly, modern QuickTime doesn’t like that video, maybe it dropped whatever codec I used, or the file got corrupted, or something.

So today, for the thirtieth anniversary (!) I whipped out good ol’ QuickTime 7 to put it together again. Here’s the YouTube version:

And for those of you who’d like to download the QuickTime file with both videos embedded (you can play with each element in QuickTime 7 in the properties dialog for the movie), a link to the original MOV file. Download the file and open in QuickTime 7. The browser embed messes it up (go figure).

And last, this is my Twentieth Anniversary 1984 poster, given out after the keynote by Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2004.

1984 poster.jpgWhere is my Thirtieth Anniversary version, with the girl wearing an iPhone in an armband?

iPhone 5s Touch ID sensor is a Big Deal

Updates (September 12, 2013):

Since this post was published, more information has become clear. First, this MacWorld article has details about the Touch ID fingerprint reader. It’s very interesting.

Second, Apple pulled the iCloud Keychain feature from iOS 7 GM. This makes Touch ID a lot less useful. It looks like access to Touch ID is also not yet allowed for third party apps. This is a shame. My guess is that these two things have been delayed, not cancelled. Perhaps iOS 7.1 released alongside OS X Mavericks, which still lists iCloud Keychain as a feature?

Security vs Convenience

There is always a battle between security and convenience. Not only when it comes to technology, but in every aspect of our lives. Otherwise we wouldn’t have locks in our house doors that force us to carry keys everywhere.

When it comes to personal computing, the importance of security has increased exponentially. Smartphones are computers that have lots of personal data and that we carry with us everywhere. Contacts, email, apps with financial info, photographs of our family with embedded GPS coordinates… Someone with malicious intent can do a lot of damage if they get to your phone.

Not only do we carry all this with us, but we keep a lot of personal information online. Some websites may be good about safeguarding it. But many aren’t. Stolen databases are scarily common.

To make things worse, most people re-use the same password (or a few of them) everywhere. And to make things even worse, computer power and sophisticated tools for brute-force cracking of passwords are more effective than you would think, especially if you aren’t using particularly strong passwords.

Why do we do this? It’s the battle. We have limited human memories, and typing strong passwords on a phone is a pain in the ass. Tools like 1Password (I’m a big fan) are very helpful but they still add a layer of inconvenience to the user experience.

Fixing the security issue while adding convenience

touchid_hero

Touch ID is a new fingerprint sensor that lives inside the home button of the iPhone 5s. Someone who doesn’t understand security may think it’s boring. But this both improves security (put your finger on the button, the software fills in a unique strong password for you) and removes inconvenience.

Other iPhone 5s features are important but incremental improvements: better camera, faster processor… this one is a leap in functionality. It’s a solution to one of the most annoying usability aspects of smartphones: typing passwords at all times. And it’s a solution to the most glaring problem with most user’s security: reusing weak passwords.

Why wasn’t it done before

Surely you’ve seen Lenovo or Dell laptops with fingerprint readers. Why didn’t anyone slap one on a phone before?

Because they sucked. They are large, slow, require a swipe, in a specific direction and are inaccurate. I don’t know of anyone who uses his other than when mandated by work. Just read this.

Now see the video about Touch ID.

All these technical challenges had to be solved in order to embed a fingerprint sensor into the iPhone 5s. There is a special new sensor, a sapphire crystal button, special co-processor hardware in the A7 chip for storing and decoding fingerprints, and code in the operating system to integrate the functionality. No other company could pull something like this off. Not Google, not Microsoft, not Samsung.

The iPad is 3 years old

whyipad

Time flies.

This is what I said back when it was announced. I underestimated how much laptop usage time would be replaced by iPad usage time.

If you want to see what professional technology reporters, analysts, etc. said at the time, then check out this post by Asymco. It’s eye-opening. Summary: iPad is an overpriced, underpowered, crippled disappointment that will bankrupt Apple.

In reality, the iPad turned Apple into the biggest and most profitable computer maker in the world, destroyed the horrendous netbook market, forced Google to clone it, and MS to completely redesign the Windows UI for touch and start making their own hardware.

Shows you how much faith you should put in the opinion of “experts”.

Late night surgery

Last year I upgraded Shlomit’s MacBook Pro to an SSD. A few months ago I upgraded my MacBook Pro. The only little Mac left behind with its puny little spinning platters was my Mac mini. So I finally broke down and bought an SSD for it. This time it was a 250 GB Samsung 840.

Samsung 840 SSD

Similar to the last times, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the contents of the original 2.5″ hard drive to the SSD. This took about three hours over USB 2. Slow but without a hitch.

CCC

But one thing would be different this time: turns out that when Apple ditched the DVD drive on the Mac mini, it left room for a second internal hard drive. So I can fit both the original drive and the SSD in the little box! Great. The problem: You need a special cable to do this. The solution: OWC ‘Data Doubler’ SSD/2.5″ Hard Drive installation Kit.

For $35 you get:

  • A little ribbon cable to connect the drive
  • Four cute screwdrivers: two were needed for the installation, two were not, and a third type that was needed did not come in the kit but thankfully I had it.
  • Four screws.
  • Four rubber bumper thingies.
  • A piece of green plastic they call “pry tool” and was actually super useful.
  • A U-shaped piece of bent metal, effectively used to move the computer’s motherboard out of the chassis.

A rip-off? Hardly, because they also bundled a very detailed manual with great photos and step by step instructions. Trust me, the booklet alone was worth the price. This was one tricky installation, they sure pack those little boxes tight.

mini
The Mac mini 40% into the installation. These little boxes fit together like one of those impossible to put together wooden puzzles.

I’m happy to report that although it took a long time, the operation was a success. The computer is a lot faster now. Nobody should be forced to use magnetic hard drives anymore. Now all I need to do is decide how to best distribute all my stuff across the 5 (five!) hard drives connected to this machine. I want iPhoto to be fast, but my giant library won’t fit in the SSD. Questions, questions…

1Password boomarklet for iOS

IMG_0222

I’m a huge fan of 1Password. If you aren’t using it or some other secure wallet / password manager, you should go set it up, then come back and read this.

In any case, I often find myself browsing on my iPad/iPhone and land in some website that I need to log into (my bank, Twitter, Reddit, Google, whatever). Since I use unique random un-rememberable passwords on every single website, I have to:

  1. Copy the URL from the Safari URL bar
  2. Open 1Password
  3. Paste it inside 1Password’s built-in browser
  4. Use 1Password’s auto-fill

or the reverse which is more painful:

  1. Open 1Password
  2. Find the login info I need
  3. Copy
  4. Go back to Safari
  5. Paste

So I wrote a small bookmarklet that will open the current Safari address in 1Password. It works with 1Password for iOS 4.1. And here it is:

Open in 1Password

In order to install it while on your Mac, just drag the “Open in 1Password” link to the Bookmarks bar. If enabled, iCloud Safari syncing will take care of making the bookmarklet show up on your iPhone/iPad.

If you want to install it directly from your iPhone / iPad, follow these instructions.

Once it’s installed, you can visit any page in Safari. Click on the bookmarklet you just created and the page should open in 1Password. I hope this saves several minutes of your life!

My other set of bookmarklets for changing font size in iOS Safari is quite handy and popular too.

Mapping it all out

google_maps_iphone

Anyone who is tech-savvy enough to read this blog has undoubtedly heard about the “Apple Maps debacle”. The press has written lots and lots about it – some justified, most over-simplified link bait, as follows:

  1. Apple hates Google ‘cuz they copied the iPhone
  2. Apple wants Google off the iPhone so it created its own Maps, got rid of Google Maps
  3. Apple Maps suck.

The reality is, of course, much more complicated. Since their negotiations happen behind closed doors, all we can do is use what we know and speculate on the rest. My take follows.

Continue reading Mapping it all out

Adventures of an iPhone 5 in Mexico

I have my new Sprint iPhone 5 and I had to travel to Mexico. I obviously wanted to use my prepaid “Amigo Telcel” SIM card.

These are the steps:

  1. Call Sprint, ask them to provide an international unlock.
    Some carriers will sell you an unlocked iPhone, meaning that it will work with any GSM-compatible SIM card in the world. Most won’t, they will sell you a phone that is programmed to work only on the specific carrier’s network. Some carriers will, however, unlock you iPhone. In the US case, Verizon iPhone 5 comes unlocked, AT&T will unlock it once your contract is up, and Sprint will sometimes unlock it for international use only assuming your account is in good standing and some secret set of circumstances are all fulfilled. The way they do this is unclear to me, but basically you call them, they ask you for your phone’s IMEI code, and then they do something (tell Apple to unlock it?) on their end so that your iPhone is unlocked.
    If you are on a different carrier, then you need to research whether that carrier will unlock your phone. The easiest way is to contact them directly. Multiple times if needed.
  2. Back up your iPhone.
    After some indeterminate amount of time, the request Sprint places on Apple goes through. Connect your phone to your computer, open iTunes, and back it up.
  3. Restore your phone.
    This takes a while, and in my case, there was no “Congratulations! Your iPhone is now unlocked.” message. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps because what I got is not a full unlock, rather an international unlock, which means I can use it with any cellphone company outside the US that has SIM cards, but not with AT&T nor T-Mobile. The lack of message made me nervous that the phone did not get unlocked.
  4. Get a nano SIM.
    The SIM card in the iPhone 5 is smaller than the regular ones or even the iPhone 4/4S microSIM cards. This is where you may need to get crafty and cut down your SIM card. Be careful!

    Left: nanoSIM for iPhone 5
    Right: microSIM for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S
    After my handy work, the former microSIM is now a nanoSIM. I was nervous about the metallic edges shorting on the aluminum iPhone 5 SIM tray, but everything worked fine.

    I had access to a nicely equipped soldering station for my SIM operation, microscope included. You may not be as lucky, nor as handy. Be careful!
  5. Use.
    Once I arrived to Mexico, I popped in the “new” nanoSIM and it worked like a charm!

    Yep, that’s a real iPhone 5 screenshot taken in Monterrey, Mexico connected to Telcel.

Verizon iPhone 5 came fully unlocked for some reason, and AT&T will unlock them at some point. I’d love to hear other people’s experiences.

Google is not making any friends

From Counternotions:

For over a decade, Microsoft — the monopolist of its era — treated its customers on Macs as second-class. Its Office suite never achieved parity with its Windows sibling, even when the differences were not dictated by platform architectures. Whether it was document compatibility, font-metrics, macros, integration with other Microsoft software or myriad other gotchas, Mac versions were always lacking. Every new version of Office promised better compatibility but never really delivered it. Worse, Microsoft never quite integrated Apple-grown technologies into Office to better blend it into the Mac ecosystem, claiming it would break cross-platform compatibility with the Windows versions.

Sadly, this wasn’t an occasional inconvenience but a source of daily frustration for millions of paying customers, corporations and individuals alike. With business so dependent on Office, Microsoft’s message was loud and clear: if you want the real thing switch to Windows.

Sufficiently annoyed by all the trouble, some users did.

Most didn’t, and haven’t forgiven Microsoft ever since.

Therein lies a lesson for Google

I should not need to spell out the analogy they are making, but here it goes anyway:

“Google Maps is to iOS is what Microsoft Office is to Mac OS”

To be fair, Mac users resent Microsoft for more than that. After all, Microsoft ripped off Apple’s groundbreaking user interface whole-heartedly when they created MS Windows.

Oh, wait…