My most used devices in 2018

If tech YouTubers do all those popular Here’s my everyday carry and My favourite devices kinds of videos, why not do the same here? As the photo above has already given away, you know it’s going to be a rather unusual ride, at least for some of my readers…

For practical reasons my two main Macs, a 2017 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac, and a mid-2009 15-inch MacBook Pro, have not been included in this picture.

Without further ado, these are the 18 devices I’ve used the most during 2018:

1. Mamiya ZE – This is an SLR film camera, introduced by Mamiya in 1980 (Camera-wiki.org has a few more technical details and links to other sites). Mamiya didn’t manufacture many 35mm SLR models, and their attempts have been less successful than their medium format cameras. These lightweight SLRs were interesting but, as I read from a few sources, prone to failures. My unit was a lucky eBay purchase: it was well cared for and came with three lenses — a 50mm ƒ/1.7, a 28mm ƒ/3.5, and an 80–200mm ƒ3.8 zoom lens — plus a winder and a carrying bag. It works well, it’s easy and light to handle, and I’ve found it to be a handy tool for street photography.

2. Canon T90 — Another SLR film camera (from 1986) which holds a rather important role in Canon’s history, as it was the last professional SLR with the FD lens mount before Canon switched to the EOS mount shortly afterwards. I completely agree with Stephen Gandy when he writes:

Introduced in 1986, the Canon T90 was years ahead of anything else on the market at that time. It is, quite simply, one of the best manual focus 35mm SLR designs of all time. Many features of the T90 were later incorporated into the EOS. Personally though, I like the total design of the T90. It gets my vote as the best Canon Design ever. […]

The T90’s strong point is the overall integration of a very intelligent and well thought out design. The sum is more than the individual parts. You really have to use it to know what I am talking about — a rare combination of great handling, intelligent controls, and incredible versatility.

My dad used to have a Canon AE‑1, and when the film photography bug bit me again 11 years ago, it was obvious that my first purchases on the used market were Canon film cameras with the same FD mount as the AE‑1. By the time I got interested in the T90, I had already accumulated a few good FD lenses. The story of how I obtained this camera is interesting, but outside the scope of this piece, and I’m already getting carried away as it is. Let’s wrap this up by saying that, despite having many scars and scuffs, this is the film camera I love and use most in all my collection.

3. Nikon D200 — This is my only digital SLR camera, a semi-professional 10.2‑megapixel model Nikon introduced back in 2005. It takes great photos (check my Flickr album for some humble examples), and it’s absolutely enough for my needs. I’ve had this D200 for a couple of years now and I still haven’t mastered all its many features and tweaks… I admit that, if I had a bit more money to invest at the time I acquired it, I would have chosen a full-frame DSLR, but I can’t complain, really; this camera has given me amazing results, and I particularly like how it renders colours, which tend to look natural, never oversaturated.

When I’m out and about, according to how many lenses & accessories I bring with me, I either use a LowePro Fastpack 150 backpack, or a LowePro Passport Sling III camera bag. Yes, I do love LowePro products.

4. Third-generation iPad (Wi-Fi, 32 GB) — Purchased new in 2012. I still use it as my main iPad despite its age and limitations. It’s not so bad, actually, and handles iOS 9.3.5 much better than the second-generation model does.

5. Third-generation iPod nano — I have many iPods of different vintages I still use regularly to listen to music from my personal library. But this is my favourite nano of all. It’s lightweight, has a bright screen, and handles nicely.

6. Third-generation iPod shuffle (Late 2009, 2 GB) — It would appear that I have a penchant for third-generation devices, heh heh… Anyway, this is perhaps the lightest wearable Apple has made, weighing less than 11 g. It wasn’t received very well at the time mostly due to the absence of controls on the device itself, and it didn’t convince me either. But after finding this unit for a mere €15, I decided to give it a try, and I ended up loving it. I wrote a post-review in October of last year, if you want to read more about it.

7. Nokia Lumia 830 — After the surprisingly positive experience I had with Windows Phone 8.1 on a Nokia Lumia 925, I decided to look for a more powerful Windows Phone smartphone. This Lumia 830, from 2015, is still a very capable phone and handles Windows 10 Mobile smoothly enough despite only having 1 GB of RAM. I’ve been using it as a secondary phone this past year, carrying it along with my main iPhone 5. I’ve been loving it mostly for its camera, a 10-megapixel Zeiss with optical image stabilisation that takes very nice wide-angle shots. Now that I upgraded to an iPhone 8, this Lumia 830 is getting used less frequently, but it’s always in my bag.

8. iPhone 5 (32 GB) — Acquired second-hand in really good condition back in March 2015, it has been my daily driver until I purchased a 64 GB iPhone 8 last month. Together with the iPhone 4, it is my absolute favourite iPhone design and size. This unit has performed very well for the whole time it was my main phone. In June of this year its battery started to swell, and when I saw that the display assembly was starting to bend, I got the battery replaced by a local repair shop for just €29. Now the phone lasts two days and a half on a single charge. I still use it often because of some 32-bit iOS apps that haven’t been updated for iOS 12 or that have been retired from the App Store; apps I still love to use, like KitCam.

9. Nokia E61 — An older smartphone from 2006 I actually found in the tech bin at the university where my wife works. It still works very well and battery lasts at least four days on standby, despite its age. I keep my Italian SIM card in it. It’s a constant reminder of how the iPhone has truly revolutionised the smartphone sector.

10. Third-generation iPod touch (32 GB) — When my little project of writing a book about iOS user interface design was still on the front burner, so to speak, I needed a device that could run iOS 5, and this was kindly donated to me. Again, I’ve been using this for music and for certain apps that still work and remain usable after all these years.

11. Fourth-generation iPod touch (64 GB) — For the same reason outlined above, I needed a device that could run iOS 6. I had an iPhone 3GS for that, but one day it just stopped working. This was another kind donation — Thanks again, Joe. What’s lovely is that not only is it a great device to carry around (compact, light, huge amount of space to store music, can even take photos), but I can experience iOS 6 on a retina display.

12. iPhone 4 (16 GB) — I purchased this iPhone in 2011, just a few months before the iPhone 4S was introduced. Sadly, I couldn’t wait for the 4S, as at the time my iPhone 3G was simply getting too sluggish to be still my daily driver after three years. I needed to upgrade, and I actually don’t regret my choice. A good friend of mine always said about purchasing tech devices, You have to get what’s available when you need it, otherwise you’re always waiting for the next best product. This has been the iPhone I’ve probably loved the most. I used it from 2011 to early 2015, took an insane amount of photos, and discovered a lot of great iPhone apps. Today, its original battery still lasts a lot if I leave the phone in Airplane Mode. For its compact size, I still use it as my alarm clock and kitchen timer. And to study iOS 7’s user interface, of course…

13. Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 [in a MessagePad 2000 chassis] — I’ve been a regular Newton user since 2001. This particular unit was received in 2006. Smartphones and tablets may come and go, but this has been my favourite ‘digital notebook’ for the past 17 years. It still lasts weeks on standby (it runs on four AA cells), and after a period of initial training and continued small adjustments, it recognises my handwriting almost flawlessly (certainly better than Siri understanding my requests). It’s truly a pity that the poor handwriting recognition in the first version of NewtonOS essentially tainted the Newton’s reputation. NewtonOS 2.x was a stark improvement in this regard. If you’re interested, there are several Newton-related posts in this blog’s archives, notably Digital Notebooking, Ten years with the Newton, Who wants a stylus?, Why Newton, and A hands-on assessment of Apple’s Newton MessagePad — but you can find other pieces (both in English and Italian) by browsing the blog by the ‘Newton’ tag.

14. First-generation iPad (Wi-Fi, 16 GB) — I’ve wanted to get my hands on the original iPad for a while, and my friend David was generous enough to send me one. As I wrote in more detail in Ten days with the first-generation iPad, and Follow-up: The iPad 1 as daily driver, I’ve been absolutely blown away by this device:

In short — this iPad 1 has turned out to be more useful than anticipated, also thanks to the careful app setup I’ve assembled. On a personal level, the fact that I can go back and enjoy certain apps I had been missing (such as Posts, the WordPress client) makes the iPad 1 possibly more useful than my iPad 3 in certain areas.

The fact that iOS 5.1.1 is less bloated than iOS 9.3.5 on the iPad 3, and that there’s better optimisation and integration between iOS 5 and the iPad 1 hardware than there is between iOS 9 and the iPad 3 hardware, makes the original iPad feel more responsive and better-performing than the iPad 3 despite having more limited tech specs. For more about the subject, refer to the two articles mentioned above.

15. 17-inch PowerBook G4 (1.33 GHz, 2003) — Another kind donation (thanks again, Ross!), I’ve had this machine since circa 2012 and it still works well. It has 2 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, a SuperDrive that’s capable of burning CDs and DVDs, a 64 MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics card driving a 17-inch beautifully matte display at 1440×900 resolution. It’s still a useful Mac to me despite its age. I use it for a variety of tasks and its big screen is a joy when browsing the Web, writing, reading my RSS feeds, or even doing some photo editing (believe it or not, performing some basic editing in Aperture 2.x is totally feasible). But it’s its diverse array of ports and connections that makes this Mac a key element of my data flow across vintage machines: two USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire ports (400 and 800), and a PCMCIA card slot allow me to use older peripherals and access backups of old personal archives to transfer files to other Macs if needed.

16. 12-inch PowerBook G4 (DVI, 1 GHz, 2003) — This is essentially my absolute favourite Apple laptop of all time. It has been my main machine from 2004 to 2009. It has gone through thick and thin, even surviving a couple of spills. It’s technically less capable than the 17-inch above, having only a 1 GHz CPU, a 32 MB GPU, and its RAM maxed out at 1.25 GB, but it’s still an excellent machine for distraction-free writing. I’d love to replace the 40 GB hard drive with an SSD, and get a new battery for it one day.

17. Lenovo ThinkPad T400 — 2018 has been the year of my Windows re-discovery, something that actually started in late 2017 with my belated exposure to Windows Phone 8.1 on a Nokia Lumia 925 handset. The desire of knowing Windows 8 (and 10) better, together with a long-standing design preference for ThinkPad machines, made me look for a vintage — but hopefully not too obsolete — unit. Another donation and a very good deal afterwards have brought into my home both a ThinkPad T61 and a T400. The T61 is now a Linux machine (what can I say, I’m a long-time Apple user, but it’s also short-sighted not to keep your options open), and this T400 a Windows 8.1 Pro machine. It’s definitely capable of running Windows 10, but I prefer the UI and æsthetics of 8.1. Despite being a model from 2008, it’s still a capable machine and can comparatively run much modern software than a Mac of the same vintage. On the ThinkWiki page you can read the full specifications and configuration variants. My unit has an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 CPU at 2.4 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, and it doesn’t have the dual GPU but only the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics. It has the 14.1‑inch LED display at 1280×800 resolution. But above all it has a very, very nice keyboard. I also love this machine because it’s compact, fairly lightweight, and quite versatile when it comes to ports and connections. I have used it several times for work and writing when out and about, and I didn’t encounter any particular issue with the system itself or when adapting to a Windows-based workflow.

18. 15-inch Titanium PowerBook G4 (400 MHz, 2001) — A Titanium PowerBook that still looks pristine after 17 years. A battery that still lasts for about two hours. A machine that can run both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS 9.2.2, therefore giving me an extensive selection of vintage applications and games. What’s not to love?

This is an already extensive list of devices, but there are even more that I have left out. I had to establish a common denominator, otherwise this would have been a piece about everything I got. Still, you may have been wondering: Whoa, Rick, isn’t this a bit redundant? Do you really need to use all this stuff?

Well, sure, there’s some redundancy, but as I wrote in An unusual travel kit, despite several attempts at minimalism, I realised I simply am not a minimalist: “[…] Instead of concentrating functionality in the fewest possible devices, I have the tendency to do the opposite — i.e. to distribute tasks across multiple devices.”

Then there are personal preferences and personal quirks. Take my film cameras: I own more than 30, when two should suffice. But it’s all about the experience, how certain cameras feel and handle, how they make you experience the act of taking photographs. With the devices pictured above, it’s the same. The feeling of moving a touch-wheel when browsing the music you selected from your personal library and loaded on an iPod is sometimes more satisfying than tapping on playlists in the iOS Spotify app on my iPhone 8. Wearing a feather-like device like the third-generation iPod shuffle to listen to music while riding a crowded bus or metro train is much more comfortable than fiddling with an iPhone 8. I could make dozens of other examples.

With writing it’s the same. I can write everywhere and take notes everywhere, whether on paper or digitally. But sometimes writing a part of a story or a novel on the 12-inch PowerBook G4 just feels right in a particular situation. Often, jotting down notes for an article or a quick reminder on my Newton, knowing that everything will be permanently stored in the device’s memory without even the need of a Save button, just feels right or is even less frictional than firing up a specific app on the Mac or iPad.

And last but not least, there’s the constant amazement at how lots of devices every cool tech type considers ‘obsolete’ and ‘unusable’ today are still actually quite useful and capable.

That’s all for now, I guess. If you have quick questions about anything I’ve mentioned here, feel free to hit me up on Twitter.