My entry in this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Yellow,” is a picture of one of my birthday presents from last year.
A couple of days late, but this weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Minimalism.” Here is my entry. It was take in Littlehampton earlier this year.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Signs of Autumn.” I’m entry number 34.
(Incidentally, this isn’t the first time “Minimalism” has been a theme. My previous entry was here.)
Keeping with tradition, I’m going to write about my new gadgets but my “unique selling point” is going to be brevity. And, in this case, another angle I bring is being a Brit — much of the mainstream tech press is American and content is still very much a local.
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Good
- The same but better. I liked the old one, so I mean that as a compliment.
- Feels much faster than the old one. (The hardware should mean that it does, but if Android has taught us anything it’s that specs don’t guarantee performance.)
- I think Siri is going to be great, and the more apps that it understands the better. For the past couple of weeks1 it’s only supported iTunes and some of the less useful stuff (weather, sports scores).
- I really like the remote. Clearly it’s not designed for serious gamers but I don’t consider that a flaw. I’m not a serious gamer. (As an aside, it’s weird that much of the press have been complaining about the remote as a game controller and saying that the device won’t replace your Xbox One or PS4. I think it’s a good compromise between the two extremes.)
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Bad
- I think the price is starting to get a bit high as a casual/streaming device.
- Missing a bunch of apps, though, hopefully, this is something that will be solved with time. There’s already Netflix, but I’d like to see BBC iPlayer2, 4oD and Amazon video. US media companies seem to have been more on the ball than those in the UK, though many had apps on the old Apple TV; maybe they had less work to do to bring their streaming apps to the 4th gen?
- I don’t have many apps yet but it’s clear that we’ll need folders sooner rather then later.
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Ugly
- The idea of copying all your credentials and configuration over from your iPhone is fantastic. Entering your Apple ID username and password using the on-screen keyboard is a pain. However, it seems not to be working for a lot of people and for me it took so long that I almost gave up.
Overall it’s already slightly better than the 3rd generation Apple TV and has the potential to get a lot better as the App Store fills out. In my mind, it’s odds of success likely rest on the cost. It’s therefore a shame that it’s possibly on the high side. Of course, that’s not been a problem for Apple in its recent history.
One of the slightly more hidden features of CloudKit, Apple’s cloud-based back-end service for applications, is that you can use it to synchronise content as well as simply query it. I use this approach to sync favourite search terms between devices in my app Yummy.
However, I found the process wasn’t as well documented as it might be. It’s all there, but it’s written as many man pages are: it makes total sense if you already know what you’re looking for. This post is my attempt to make the process clearer.
This weeks PhotoFriday challenge is “Color” (grr, spelling!). My entry also fits in with it being nearly Halloween, as it’s a bright orange pumpkin taken in California a couple of years ago.
I wrote a few words about iOS 9 when it came out, so I thought that I should also say something now that the new version of OS X is on the verge of release. As before, there are people who have written many words about it as a formal review, so I’ll stick to my highlights. I have no intention of being the most complete or thorough here!
Having said that, I am qualified to say a few words. I’ve been playing with El Cap since the first beta and have had it installed on my main Mac since the GM was first made available.
Apple are announcing their new iPhones tomorrow. Along with the new phone will be a new version of iOS, version 9. You can read all about what Apple thinks are the best new features. I’ve been using it myself for a couple of months now so I thought it might be worth a few words.
Here are my highlights:
- Battery improvements. Actually, they say you get an extra hour but I’ve not noticed. What works great is Low Power Mode. When it gets below 20%, the battery icon turns yellow and lots of stuff gets turned off or the frequency of background tasks is decreased. It’s not magic — if you use your phone it will drop to zero pretty quickly — but if it’s just sat in your pocket you’ll get a lot more life out of it.
- Spotlight search inside apps. This clearly isn’t going to be big until apps support it, but even with my own apps this is really big. I miss it on my iPad 3, which doesn’t support it.
- Looking in your email to guess the names of callers who are not in your address book. It’s kind of freaky the first time it happens. How does it know that this phone call might be from Bob?! But it works and it’s very useful. Oh, and if it can’t make a match it now tells you where the call came from (just as it has done in the US since the very first iPhone).
- Feels as fast, if not faster, than iOS 8 on both my iPhone 5 and iPad 3. After all the press claiming that Apple make big, clunky updates to force you to upgrade that’s nice.
Showing potential:
