Other platforms — The Nokia N9

February 9, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Swipe

Introduction

I was interested in acquiring this smartphone because I wanted to understand what was so special about it; why it had reached a ‘cult’ status; why it’s so much sought after. I had been seeing eBay listings with relatively high asking prices for N9 units in good condition.

Fortunately I was able to acquire one just for the cost of shipping. As luck would have it, someone saw my tweets about the BlackBerry Passport I revived, and told me I could maybe have some fun with their old handset, which runs yet another OS. I thought they wanted to donate a Nokia Lumia 800, but it turned out to be an N9.

The phone is in very good condition, and with a battery that is still quite healthy, lasting almost two days on a single charge and with cellular and Wi-Fi connections enabled.

Quick Specifications

Introduction Announced in June 2011, released in September 2011
Dimensions Width: 61.2 mm — Height: 116.45 mm — Thickness: 7.6 to 12.1 mm
Weight 135 g
Display 3.9″ AMOLED, 16M colors, 854×480 pixels
CPU Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 SoC that includes 3 processor units: 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU (for OS and apps); Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 2.0; 430 MHz TI TMS320C64x Digital Signal Processor (image processing for the camera, audio processing for telephony and data transmission)
Memory & Storage 1 GB RAM, 16 or 64 GB storage
Connectivity GPS and A‑GPS, Compass, WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4 and 5 GHz), micro USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, NFC, FM receiver
Audio 3.5 mm audio jack; supported codecs: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, FLAC
Video 720P, H.263, H.264, MPEG‑4, WMV 9, Matroska
Camera Rear: 8.7 MP AF camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual-LED flash, wide-angle lens (ƒ/2.2, Focal length: 3.77mm / 28mm). Front: VGA resolution
Operating System MeeGo 1.2 “Harmattan”

What makes it unique

While MeeGo is certainly an interesting OS, and the Nokia N9 appears to be the only handset featuring it, what really makes this device stand out is the design of the user interface and the whole user experience.

When the N9 was introduced, Nokia created an entire mini-site to illustrate the user interface and interaction design guidelines. Since 9 years have passed now, those materials aren’t accessible anymore. Fortunately the whole mini-site, complete with downloadable assets, has been preserved and mirrored by the owner of the n9.dy.fi website: Nokia N9 UX Guidelines

What I really love about the user interface is that it’s based on solid foundational principles that in turn guarantee a very consistent, predictable, intuitive user interface.

The Guidelines strike me as being concise, sharply-focused, clear and straightforward, and more importantly extremely thoughtful. They are indicative of a great deal of depth, and at every turn you get the feeling that all the people involved in the hardware and software design of the Nokia N9 had very clear ideas and goals in mind.

With all the gestures and gesture combinations we have to learn on current smartphones (iOS and Android alike), it’s truly refreshing to see how the purposefully limited set of gestures (mostly swipes — the swipe is at the core of the user interaction on the N9) you perform to navigate the N9 operating system, give you access to everything you need without becoming overwhelming. The core gestures are extremely easy to memorise, remain consistent everywhere, and are sufficiently distinct so that you don’t run the risk of doing something wrong or destructive by executing them partially or incorrectly.

Central to the user experience is the flow — eliminating as much friction as possible was clearly one of the goals here, and was entirely achieved with an effectiveness I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Nokia N9 overal ui model

As I mentioned earlier, the swipe is the core gesture, and it’s how you access almost everything on the N9. The first thing you notice is that the N9 has no Home button or other physical or persistent software buttons for navigation. The only physical controls present on the device are Volume Up/Down buttons and a Power/Lock button located on the right side. Nothing else.

Like on Windows Phone handsets Nokia would introduce later, when the N9 is idle, time and notifications (such as new mail or app updates) are displayed persistently. The display is AMOLED, so this feature doesn’t impact battery life much. To wake the phone, you can either press the Power/Lock button or simply double-tap the screen. The screen becomes brighter, the lock screen wallpaper will appear, together with any notification that came when the phone was idle.

At this point, you can access the Applications screen by swiping down, or access the last view you were in by swiping right from the left edge:

Nokia N9 lock screen

 

Nokia N9 home 1

Once in the Applications screen you can swipe right to access the Events screen, where you’ll find notifications and feeds; or you can swipe left to access the Open Applications screen, where you can multitask by switching from an open app to another, or quit apps you no longer use by selecting them. Open apps can be viewed on a 2×2 or 3×3 thumbnail grid. You make the thumbnail bigger or smaller by pinching in or out. The most recently used apps are always on top.

Another little touch that I love is that you can cycle through these three main screens simply by continuing to swipe. For instance, if you’re in the Open Applications screen, there is no need to swipe right twice to go back to the Events screen: you just swipe left once more. No matter the screen you’re in, you can keep swiping in either direction; it’s a carousel:

Events ↔︎ Applications ↔︎ Open Applications ↔︎ Events ↔︎ Applications … etc.

And that’s essentially it — you’re in these three main screens 95% of the time. Each of these screens doesn’t have ‘sub-screens’ or multiple pages. There isn’t a separate Notifications pane and Today view like on iOS. It’s all on the Events screen. The Applications screen is just one: as you install new applications, you just scroll down to find them. You can use folders to keep things tidier — and of course you can rearrange the apps in exactly the same manner as you do on iOS — but you don’t have separate pages like on Android or iOS. Scrolling is very fluid, so it’s not really a problem.

Judging by what I’ve told you so far, you might find this UI model limited or too inflexible, but I actually think that it’s very efficiently organised. The gesture language is minimal but consistent. The spatial arrangement is such that you intuitively know that moving left and right in the UI changes the view, while going down gives you more of each view, so to speak.

The two remaining parts of the user interface you can access are:

Status menu

1. What Nokia calls the status menu. This is always accessible by tapping on the status bar (or status area, as Nokia calls it). When you tap it, it clicks like a button (it really gives you a haptic feedback). I love the design of the two volume sliders. Volume can be adjusted by tapping on the bar. Profile (ringer) also works with the phone’s volume buttons. As you lower it, the bar enters Beep and Silent status.

Quick launch bar

2. The quick launch bar. As the user manual explains, “In all applications, and even on the lock screen, you can easily make a call, or access the camera, web, or messages. When holding your phone upright, drag your finger from below the bottom of the screen onto the screen, and hold your finger in place, until the quick launch bar is displayed.” In practice, it feels like you start a meaningful, slow swipe from the bottom, and at one point you release and the launch bar pops up, as if you were uncovering something that was hidden under the bottom of the screen, if that makes sense.

Designing the UI around the swipe: today, it seems trivial. Swipes are everywhere, in every touch interface, on smartphones, tablets, smartwatches; but the Nokia N9 is the only device where this essential gesture is implemented in a natural, intuitive, cohesive, frictionless way. Take for example the act of dismissing an app when you’re done with it. You don’t need a button to return to the Home screen, but you also don’t need to remember how to swipe and which direction to swipe. You exit the app by swiping wherever you want — up, down, left, right, whatever is most comfortable at the moment.

Earlier I wrote that, once you unlock the phone, “you can access the Applications screen by swiping down, or access the last view you were in by swiping right from the left edge”, but the truth is you can access the last view you were in by swiping in any direction. This is consistent with the way you dismiss an app, because you’re essentially doing the same task — dismissing a UI layer you don’t need anymore.

Tone and language

There is an interesting section in the Getting Started part of the Nokia N9 UX Guidelines that gives the prospective developer of an N9 app some advice regarding the tone and language they should employ in their app. While I’m sure this kind of suggestions are present in the UI Guidelines of other operating systems, I just wanted to point out how sensible these are. Further, they easily apply to any system you’re developing for. Here are a couple of examples:

• The tone and language we use is straightforward and conversational. This means we avoid engineering terms, overly technical words, obscure acronyms and industry jargon.

• Nokia N9 is friendly — But it’s not overly friendly. […] [W]hile we encourage you to keep the UI strings short whenever possible, we do not recommend you do so at the expense of a more friendly tone. You need to make a judgement call between space and warmth. […] Having said that, we avoid exclamations like ‘oops’, ‘eek’, ‘oh dear’. Though these can add personality, they are too widely used and add to the on-screen word count. We’re always looking for a balance between brevity and cordiality.

Quick aside on the hardware

At this point I’m going to state the obvious: the Nokia N9 is the best smartphone I’ve ever handled when it comes to one-handed use. It’s no mystery that it’s designed from the ground up to be used with one hand, and it shows. Size-wise, this is a phone in the iPhone 5/5s/SE range. But the curved polycarbonate shell of the N9 is sculpted in such a way that it feels particularly great in the hand. It’s never cold to the touch, and it’s smooth without being slippery.

When introducing the N9 in 2011, Marko Ahtisaari (Nokia’s Head of Product Design at the time) said this about the phone’s body:

The body is precision-machined from a single piece of polycarbonate, in inherent colour. What ‘inherent colour’ means is that the polymer is coloured throughout; and that means if it scratches, it’s still the same beautiful [colour] that you see here.

When speaking of the material employed for the case, he also throws a quick jab at Apple’s iPhone 4 and the then-infamous ‘Antennagate’:

The polycarbonate is also good for another reason: it gives us extremely good antenna performance. So, unlike some competitor products, you don’t need to hold it in a special way to make reliable phone calls.

And while ‘Antennagate’ was a stupid thing that got blown out of proportion, I must say that I’ve been using my N9 with a secondary SIM card for a few months now, and both cellular coverage and call performance have been remarkably good.

Back to the software: the visual design

Nokia MeeGo icons

Unsurprisingly, the visual design of the user interface is as consistent and well-thought-out as the rest of the experience. I find the icon design particularly pleasing. Icons have a unique shape that’s been called squircle because it’s not a square (like on BlackBerry OS), it’s not a circle (like on Android), and it’s not even a square with rounded corners (like on iOS). If anything, it’s more like a circle that’s just starting to morph into a square.

As you can see in the image above, the icon’s æsthetic is an excellent mix of skeuomorphism and flat design, and I personally think it has aged very well. First-party app icons are tasteful, and I particularly like the added depth to the main pictogram, so that it nicely stands against the background without trying too hard to look tridimensional.

In the Launcher Icons Guidelines document, icons’ design and properties are outlined in detail with simplicity and precision:

One light source

 

In app icons

 

Naturally, the squircle shape is a recurrent character throughout the system. It’s not just limited to icons (application icons, in-app icons, status area and lock screen icons, etc.), but it also appears in buttons, switches and sliders.

Settings

Another important element of the UI’s visual design is, of course, the system font. It is called Nokia Pure, and was specifically designed by the Dalton Maag type foundry. When the N9 was new, the font was used on the Nokia website and has been part of Nokia’s visual identity ever since.

Nokia Pure font

I find it very nice to read, and remains legible even at very small sizes. If you download the Toolkit in the Downloads menu of the Getting Started section of the Nokia N9 UX Guidelines, you’ll get the whole Nokia N9 UI as Adobe Illustrator files, plus a folder containing the three weights (regular, bold, light) of the Nokia Pure font in TrueType format.

Some examples of nice UI touches

ShotMee
How did I take these screenshots? The Nokia N9, surprisingly, doesn’t have a built-in action to capture screenshots. I found a cool app, ShotMee, that you open and keep in the background; when you need to take a screenshot, you double tap the phone on the right side. That’s right: the phone, not the screen!

 

Status area
The status area. I love the design of the two volume sliders. Volume can be adjusted by tapping on the bar. Profile (ringer) also works with the phone’s volume buttons. As you lower it, the bar enters Beep and Silent status.

 

Camera settings
Part of the camera settings. The N9 camera app features a fair amount of manual controls and the experience resembles more that of a compact digital camera than a smartphone camera. You can manually select the ISO (range is 100–800), aspect ratio (16:9, 4:3, 3:2), and resolution. You can also toggle Face detection and Continuous shutter.

UI-wise, you can appreciate once again the consistency of the icon design, and the clear contrast between the active and inactive states of a button.

 

Mail views
Mail app — List view and Message view. Nothing groundbreaking, just a simple, effective interface. The Nokia Pure font is quite readable even at this size. The contact’s profile icon and the Back button are, again, a squircle. The toolbar icons are tasteful and unambiguous.

 

Clock - Alarm
Clock app — Alarm view. Once again, a clean and simple design that allows you to set the alarm time with just one hand without friction. The Hour and Minute circular sliders are exactly where your thumb will be. Notice also how the subtle shadows give just the right amount of depth to the UI elements, striking a good balance between skeuomorphism and complete flatness. On a more curious note, the Clock app doesn’t feature a stopwatch or timer.

 

Nokia N9 device icon
To transfer files, pictures and music on the Nokia N9, you just connect it via USB to your computer and access the relevant folders. Just like you did with, say, the Palm Prē. It’s the simplest method and doesn’t require dedicated apps. By the way, when I connected the N9 to my Macs, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was given its correct icon!

 

Music app 1
Music app. This is the typical interface when an album is playing. Nokia was doing ‘dark mode, whoa!’ in 2011 already.

 

Music app 2
You want to see the other songs in this album? You tap once on the artwork and the track list appears.

 

Music app 3
When you tap the Back button (←), you return to the Music app’s ‘main’ page, showing the various album artworks. If an artwork image is not available, one is created using the album title and an accent colour. Much better than a generic ‘music note’ icon. Notice also how you can still see which track from which album is playing at the moment (Morphine’s You Look Like Rain in this case).

 

Music lock screen
When you’re playing music and you wake the device, a minimal controller will appear on the lock screen.

Is it still usable today?

This, admittedly, is the less exciting part. It’s a 2011 smartphone, but the fact that it’s a 9‑year-old phone isn’t really problematic per se. I also own an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4s — introduced in 2010 and 2011 respectively — and when it comes to ‘things that still work’, they’re both more usable than the N9. That’s due to their software. I may have become very critical of Apple in the past few years, but one thing is undeniable: iOS is the mobile operating system that has aged better of all, functionality-wise. Take any other smartphone from ten years ago, with any mobile OS version it supported at the time (BlackBerry, Android, webOS…) — you won’t get much done with it, as is.

The Nokia N9 is on this same boat. You’ll have to tinker if you want to restore some of its functionality. The N9 is the only handset that came with the MeeGo ‘Harmattan’ OS. It was just before Nokia switched to Windows Phone. Support was dropped soon. If you acquire an N9 today, you’ll soon find out that, out of the box:

  • All features relying on Nokia services don’t work. So, for example, forget Maps and driving directions, and forget Nokia’s app store or music store.
  • When inserting a SIM card, the N9 will prompt you to connect to your Nokia account. But since you can’t create a Nokia account anymore, that is going to be problematic.
  • Social network clients that came built-in, such as Twitter and Facebook, won’t work because they make use of now-deprecated APIs. Same for services like AccuWeather, Skype, Dropbox, Flickr, YouTube, etc.
  • Web browsing is going to be hit-or-miss. Lots of websites relying on secure connections with modern protocols won’t load.
  • If you acquire an N9 with an older version of the OS (the last was MeeGo Harmattan 1.3), the phone may tell you that there’s an update available, but since the Nokia servers delivering such updates are now unreachable, you won’t be able to just update it over the air.

I’ve probably forgotten other issues, but I’d say these are the bigger ones you’ll encounter first, and may sour your initial experience with the device. If you want to leave your N9 untouched because you don’t feel like applying a few mild hacks to make some stuff work, and you’re just curious about the UI and the general feel of the N9, you can still use the device in a limited way. Mail should work (Gmail is giving me problems recently, but up until January it was working), the Music and Video apps work. Basic Web browsing is feasible. Calendar, Clock, Contacts, Messages, Camera, Calculator, Documents (a nice document viewer), Feeds and Notes all work. Not much, but better than nothing. At the very least you can use it as a pocket camera, MP3 player, and alarm clock.

Since I always wish to put vintage devices to good use, I was willing to tinker a bit to make my N9 more usable. The problem is that I did the majority of fixes and workarounds the very first days I received the phone, at the beginning of November 2019, and I was so excited and eager to make the most of this N9 that I forgot to take notes of everything I did. As soon as I have some time, I’ll be writing another piece on the various steps to perform to ‘revive’ the N9 so that it can be more useful today. Meanwhile, an essential starting point is this page: Resurrect Your N9.

Media

 

Nokia n9 colours

Final thoughts

Now that I finally own a Nokia N9, I understand why I always get some kind of enthusiastic feedback when I mention it. I’ve been really blown away by the sheer amount of great user interface ideas and by its tight hardware/software integration reminding me of the ‘good’ Apple of a few years ago.

It’s truly a pity that this device was sort of doomed from the beginning. As the Wikipedia entry for the N9 states, “Nokia planned in 2010 to make MeeGo their flagship smartphone platform, replacing Symbian, whose N8 flagship launched that year. Thus effectively N9 was originally meant to be the flagship device from the company. On 11 February 2011 Nokia partnered with Microsoft to use Windows Phone 7 as the flagship operating system to replace Symbian, with MeeGo also sidelined. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop promised to still ship one MeeGo device that year, which would end up as the N9.”

I’ve grown to know and love Windows Phone as a mobile operating system, and I’ve already said that, in some aspects of its user interface, it was more innovative than Android or iOS. However once you reflect on the history of the Nokia N9 and MeeGo, you can’t help but think about what would have happened if things had gone differently; if Nokia didn’t partner with Microsoft and kept developing other MeeGo smartphones with the same, excellent user interface as the N9.

Whenever I pick up my N9, feel it in the hand, wake it up and use it, everything about it just clicks. The care and thought that went into the entire design of this device, from the hardware to the software, is so evident it somehow hurts that this device had such a limited lifespan and success when it was available. It hurts when you use mainstream platforms like iOS and Android and stumble onto gestures, features, and UI ideas that feel so clearly bolted on, or inconsistent, or simply poorly designed and frustrating to execute — and then you go back to this 9‑year-old smartphone and everything feels so tight and coherent.

(In case you were wondering: In my day-to-day, I usually carry more than one smartphone. My main unit is still an iPhone, but I typically have another handset with me. And since I now have accumulated a fair amount of devices from other platforms, they’re on rotation. I’ll have the Nokia Lumia 1020 with Windows Phone 8.1 for a few days, then switch to the BlackBerry Passport, then to the Palm Prē 2, then to the Nokia Lumia 830 with Windows Mobile 10, then to the Nokia N9, etc. But the N9 feels so great to have around that I found myself keeping it with me anyway. So yes, sometimes I’ll have three phones with me and maybe even an older iPod as well. I’m fine, there’s no need for an intervention.)

But it’s not all lost. Fortunately, many of the concepts of MeeGo’s swipe-based UI live on in Sailfish OS, another linux-based OS developed by Jolla, a Finnish tech company. As noted in its Wikipedia entry, “The OS is an evolved continuation of the Linux MeeGo OS previously developed by alliance of Nokia and Intel which itself relies on combined Maemo and Moblin. The MeeGo legacy is contained in the Mer core in about 80% of its code; the Mer name thus expands to MEego Reconstructed. This base is extended by Jolla with a custom user interface and default applications. Jolla and MERproject.org follow a meritocratic system to avoid the mistakes that led to the MeeGo project’s then-unanticipated discontinuation.”

Still, I wish Sailfish OS were less of a niche system than it currently is. Android and iOS need competition. All the mobile operating systems that tried being an alternative failed mainly due to the Not Many Apps syndrome, and at the same time every one of them had at least some features or some UI concepts that were much more interesting and innovative than Android and iOS. (And, as we’ve seen, the Nokia N9 has many of these). It’s a very frustrating pattern. Meanwhile, the iOS/Android duopoly has slowed down innovation in mobile operating systems and in their UI in particular. Think about the last four or five releases of iOS and Android: a lot of iteration and refinements, in some cases verging on more complication and feature creep, and a lot of ‘playing safe’ overall.

Anyway, I’d really love to try installing Sailfish OS on a compatible handset and explore the user interface. It appears that it can be installed on smartphones such as Sony’s Xperia X and XA2. If you own such a device, or another in the list included in Sailfish OS’s Wikipedia entry, and you don’t use it anymore, let me know if you’re willing to donate it. I’ll certainly document my experience here on this blog.

A mind-boggling defence indeed

February 4, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

I’ve said I’m done with the Mac vs iPad debate, and it’s true. I’m absolutely tired of this shit. Nothing is going anywhere, it’s a stupid kind of endless trench warfare. But Ben Brooks’ latest piece about the iPad was hard to ignore in that it’s just a disheartening read and, in a few places, a fair representation of a certain type of Reality Distortion Field at work.

In case you were unsure whether he attempts to be balanced or not in his analysis, look no further than the third sentence of his post:

Good for [the iPad], best computer ever made by a laughable margin.

I just shrug here. Everyone is entitled to be enthusiastic about their preferred device. What I take issue with is that it’s not necessary to insult all the people who have a different opinion about the iPad, are critical of some aspects of its OS, or simply don’t share the same enthusiasm — which in this case becomes outright fanaticism. His ‘TL;DR’ summary reads as follows:

I start with how great the iPad is, touch on the media sucking, and end with an explanation of a new virus called ‘Mac Brains’.

I frankly don’t get this kind of antagonism towards the Mac platform, Mac users, or simply towards those who just don’t see the iPad as ‘the best computer ever made’. Over the past few years I have never read an article written by a Mac user (with a minimum of authority on the matter), where they stated that the Mac is the best computer ever made and the iPad is a piece of hot garbage. I have indeed flashbacks of the Mac-vs-PC wars of the late 1980s up to the early 2000s, where Mac people used to make fun of Windows people and their ‘poor excuse of operating system’ (not my words), and I saw my share of battles over forums, mailing lists, usenet groups. But apart from truly extreme cases, these ‘wars’ rarely featured the levels of vitriol I have noticed in the Mac-vs-iPad debate, most of it coming from iPad fans who constantly feel their beloved platform to be under attack from all fronts. 

Yes, the iPad’s tenth anniversary has seen a fair amount of articles taking a look at the status of the iPad ten years after its introduction, and the predominant tone has been of a certain disappointment. But no one has said that the iPad isn’t a serious device for work. What has been pointed out is that ten years is a long time, technologically speaking, and the iPad’s development could have been handled better, so that the potential the iPad clearly showed in 2010 could have been expressed at a fuller degree today. 

Back to Brooks, I understand the impulse of writing something with the intention of counterbalancing the criticisms, but if one views even the most reasonable criticism aimed at the iPad through paranoid glasses, the response will hardly sound reasonable, balanced, or honest:

In other words, when someone the likes of John Gruber at Daring Fireball starts saying that the iPad can’t be used seriously, then the massive Apple developer community which reads his site will in turn shy away from developing anything serious for the iPad. This is the larger media and bloggers stigmatizing the device in such a way that, well, it becomes exactly what they complain it is. Because these writers make it a no-win scenario. Developer cannot make money without bloggers and the media alike promoting their software as worth the money. It is that simple, trust me I used to accept money from these companies for this site.

First of all, Gruber has never said that the iPad can’t be used seriously. Secondly, for the sake of argument, even if he said that, I highly, highly doubt that “the massive Apple developer community which reads his site [would] in turn shy away from developing anything serious for the iPad”. This is a flat-out insult directed at iOS developers, as if they weren’t capable of making decisions on their own, easily influenced by a bunch of tech pundits. Conversely, I have only praise for iOS (and Mac) developers: the amount of extra work they have to put in to deliver anything useful via the App Store nowadays is simply staggering. Their collective effort, admirable.

Thirdly, “the larger media and bloggers stigmatising the device”…? oh come on. I have yet to find an article (from someone worth reading) where the iPad gets utterly bashed and stigmatised. Unless you count as bashing someone saying that Apple could provide the iPad with a better, more consistent user interface. Come on, just re-read that paragraph: it’s a gross overreaction stemming from a false premise (Gruber saying that the iPad can’t be used seriously).

To kids today, the iPad represents what the advanced GUIs of the mid-90s did for most of the audience reading this. Asking todays kids to use something like a Mac or a PC is akin to me telling you that you should go grab Linux and use the Terminal because the power there is way amazing dude.

Ah, the kids argument. The kids always win! The iPad is so easy to use that even a kid…– But wait, we’re talking about the deeper features of iPadOS. Can a kid figure them out right away? 

Seriously, very few people are asking today’s kids to use something like a Mac or a PC, but this was also true before the iPad existed. Kids of the 1980s and 1990s had simpler computers, 8‑bit computers, and game consoles. People of my generation will likely tell you they grew up with Commodore or Sinclair home computers, or machines like the Apple II which — while extremely versatile — could be used in simple, kid-friendly ways. You won’t find many people saying, “Oh, my first computer when I was little was an IBM workstation”, or a high-end Mac laptop.

But with regard to intuitiveness, one thing I can safely say after much observation and after so many help requests, is that while the first generations of iPads were devices people of all ages mastered extremely quickly basically without external assistance and guidance, today’s iPads are different beasts. They do maintain — thankfully — a surface layer of intuitiveness that is enough to operate the device at a basic level; but the amount of hard-to-discover features and gesture combinations has been steadily increasing. And it’s problematic exactly because it hinders the iPad’s potential. 

Because ‘intuitive’ doesn’t just mean “Ah, I see this icon, its meaning is immediately clear to me! I recognise this shape, it’s a button, and so I can tap it to achieve a predictable result”. It also means “Ah, I see why things are placed like that on the screen, I see what you did there… I’m sure that if I swipe my finger from there, the content will move that way, or this other thing will happen”. In other words, ‘intuitive’ isn’t just limited to what it’s clearly presented to the user; it also has to do with what it’s implied, hinted at.

But if a new feature gets introduced, and it’s supposedly a feature that makes the iPad a bit more versatile or simplifies something in the user’s workflow, and this feature is hard to discover or figure out, you’re doing something wrong. The user simply won’t have the immediate opportunity to take advantage of that feature, which will go undetected. You don’t want this to happen to a device that is supposed to be more intuitive to use than a traditional computer.

Multitasking on the iPad today leaves a lot to be desired. I think John Gruber’s criticism on the matter is constructive and fair. Multitasking is awkward and poorly thought-out. It should be handled by a much more intuitive user interface, not by a series of gestures and behaviours that a seasoned, tech-savvy person struggles to execute consistently.

Ben Brooks’ defence is just ridiculous:

But what also needs to be kept in mind is that this level of multi-tasking is incredibly new. It’s not a 10 year old paradigm that we are still trying to wrap our heads around, if that were the case he would be spot on, but in fact is: the iPadOS stuff came out less than a year ago. To be fair Apple dipped its toes into the water in 2017 with iPad multi-tasking, so it is not all new. But what people are really complaining about are the iOS 13, or iPadOS, multi-tasking features. These were introduced June of 2019, and released publicly in September of 2019. Or to put it more directly: we have barely had 4 months using this new system, so it is far to early to judge this one.

Actually, the first iPad-specific multitasking features — such as Split Screen and Slide Over were introduced with iOS 9 in 2015. After more than four years, and after four iOS releases, Apple hasn’t been able to improve on those iOS 9 features by building on them organically. The concept of iPad-specific multitasking is far from new, it’s almost five years old. And I’m not going to cut Apple any slack on this: a company that always prided itself on its user interface design prowess should have come up with something much better than this array of gestures that feel like a last-minute addition.

Brooks seems to suggest that, since “this level of multitasking” is ‘new’, it only appears confusing and difficult to master because users are simply not accustomed to it. He says that it’s “far too early to judge”. His argument here appears particularly disingenuous to me. Even other iPad-only people have admitted that multitasking on the iPad is an awkward, inelegant affair. Brooks seems so enamoured with the iPad to not even admit to certain flaws in the operating system everyone is seeing. 

No no, he says:

Multi-tasking on the iPad isn’t bad or hard, but it is very new. And if you are someone who simply doesn’t use the iPad as their full time/main computing tool, then it will still be a jarring system to you because of that newness.

Ah, the ‘blame the user’ argument. 

Here’s the thing: when you have a well-designed user interface, learning a new feature or behaviour may take a moment the first time, or the first few times. But when you grok it, it stays with you no matter how often you use it. Instead, as Gruber describes, with iPad multitasking we have this (emphasis in bold is mine):

Launching the first on-screen app with a simple tap, but the second on-screen app with a tap-and-hold-then-drag-to-the-side-but-make-sure-you-drag-it-all-the-way-to-the-side-or-else-you’ll-get-Slide-Over is inconsistent, incoherent, and requires unnecessary dexterous precision. iPadOS should be less finicky than MacOS, but all of the multitasking features are the other way around.

It’s just new, you’ll get used to it; and when you do, everything will be better, is just a poor response that refuses to acknowledge the obvious, insults people’s intelligence, and ultimately contradicts the previous stance that [multitasking’s implementation in iPadOS] is far too early to judge.

The fact that a user can eventually get accustomed to performing certain operations doesn’t mean that the way such operations are designed is inherently good. From what I have learned after studying user interfaces for the past 25 years or so, the opposite tends to be true: the mere fact that you have to get accustomed to performing a certain action through constant repetition suggests that that action is not entirely easy or intuitive in the first place.

I know how to multitask on a current iPad, but very little about the process is natural or becomes second nature after a few tries. Every time is an exercise in repeating the various steps mentally, and executing them with patience and precision. When you’re working at a desk or table, it’s tolerable. Everywhere else, when for instance you’re holding the iPad with one hand and you can only perform gestures with the other, the process becomes halting. 

Around the end of his tirade, Brooks quotes Lukas Mathis, but instead of emphasising the central insight of Mathis’s piece (more on that later), he decides to focus on a less relevant remark, and again offers a poor, hasty response. Brooks chooses two bits from Mathis. The first is this one:

The iPad is now ten years old, and people still have to write articles about how, no, really, you can do real work on an iPad!

And that’s true. The second is this one:

There was no need to write articles about how you could use Macs for real work, because for Macs, it was – and still is – actually true.

This appears to greatly annoy Brooks, who retorts:

Bullshit. Like, for real, you really want to say that there was no need to write articles about using Macs for real work? First, there were, and are, entire magazines written expressly to tell people how to do this. Heck, there were even classes being taught in person to do this. […] PCs were the tools of the Fortune 500 where real work was done, and Macs were the tools of a select group of misfits who contorted everyday to get them to work with the PC driven world. Yes, different tact that what Mathis means, but you have to compare apples to apples, and when you do that, Macs have long fought the real work battle.

Mind boggling defense.

My turn to call bullshit now. The articles and entire printed magazines dedicated to the Mac (but also to computers in general) weren’t written to prove you could use a Mac for real work. They often included tutorials on how to make the most of complex applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, etc., which everybody knew were applications for serious work. Then there typically were software reviews, hardware reviews, opinion pieces, and ‘tips and tricks’ sections in response to readers asking for help. For ten years I have translated several articles from English into Italian from magazines such as Macworld, MacUser and MacFormat, and I don’t remember ever stumbling onto pieces that said No, really, you can do real work on a Mac!

Historically, the Mac was considered a toy at the time of its introduction, but thanks to a few software companies that believed in the Mac’s potential for doing serious work, the Mac soon revolutionised publishing, which was a pretty big deal. For a long time, Macs weren’t considered business machines, but at the same time Apple never really showed much interest in entering the enterprise sector, so…

Another little gem:

Macs were the tools of a select group of misfits who contorted everyday to get them to work with the PC driven world.

I really laughed out loud when I read this. Sure, and we also never went to the moon, it was all staged in a film studio. Microsoft has made Mac versions of its Office applications since the 1980s. There were file format translation tools like the excellent MacLink Plus which greatly facilitated Mac/PC file exchanges. I have done ‘serious work’ on Macs since 1989 and, while there could be the occasional document formatting issue, or some driver-related incompatibility, there certainly were no ‘everyday contortions’ to get the Mac to work with the PC-driven world. As I said more than once, there is no need to rewrite portions of the Mac’s history to extol the virtues of the iPad, especially if you weren’t even using a Mac before the 2000s. 

The really interesting part of Lukas Mathis’s piece is this:

The thing that truly hurts the iPad is the App Store. 

When the original Mac came out, it didn’t have multitasking, either. But it also didn’t have an App Store. There was no gatekeeper deciding what was allowed on the Mac. So when Andy Hertzfeld wrote Switcher, he knew that he could sell and distribute it.

Who is going to write something like Switcher for the iPad? Nobody, because it can’t get on the App Store, so it can’t be sold.

Who is going to write a real, truly integrated file manager for the iPad? Nobody.

Who is going to invest a year — or more — into creating an incredible, groundbreaking new app, the killer app, the desktop publishing equivalent for the iPad? Knowing that Apple could (and probably will) just decide to not put in the App Store, destroying all of that work?

Nobody.

The biggest obstacles to the iPad’s growth are the App Store and ultimately Apple itself and its whims, not the people who dare point out how inadequate iOS on the iPad still is in a few key places after ten years, especially compared with the stellar hardware quality and performance. 

iPad fans should understand that nobody is attacking their precious device out of spite. Nobody is driven by the burning desire to see the iPad fail. And even if there were someone out there writing bitter blog posts on how shitty and useless the iPad is, they would have zero impact on the iPad’s fate. Behind all the constructive criticism towards Apple’s questionable design choices in iPadOS there is genuine concern and the wish that the iPad may become even better than it is — even more versatile and powerful. Not a device you can truly take full advantage of once you’ve learnt the secret handshakes and accumulated dozens of Siri shortcuts.

The iPad after ten years

January 28, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

When I stop and think that the first iPad was announced ten years ago, it just feels unreal. Sadly, however, the next feeling isn’t Look how far it has come, but more like Look how little it has matured. Ten years later, the iPad is certainly not a revolutionary device, and it has been at best a somewhat evolutionary device.

When I had the idea of writing a piece to sum up my observations after ten years of iPad, I checked this blog’s archives first, because I don’t like repeating myself too much. Meanwhile, I got to read a few articles by other writers on the matter and, unsurprisingly, the one I feel closest to is John Gruber’s The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10.

It turns out that what I wanted to say today about the iPad, I already said in May 2019. The whole first part of My kind of tablet (that is, the part from the beginning up to the “21st Century tablet” section) pretty much sums up my views on this great-but-disappointing device.

If you have time, please do read my other articles referenced in My kind of tablet, because they outline in greater detail some other criticisms I have about the iPad and iOS-on-the-iPad:

As for my personal history with the iPad, it’s amazing how, over the years, its trajectory has progressively moved farther away from my interests, and it has become a much less compelling device overall. It’s quite interesting for me to observe how I couldn’t wait to get an iPad in 2012 (when it first shipped with a retina display) and how, about 8 years later, I don’t really feel like upgrading to the latest and the greatest iPad despite my frustrations with the now-sluggish third-generation iPad I enthusiastically purchased in 2012.

Back in January 2010, Steve Jobs started introducing the iPad by talking about a possible new device category wedged between laptops and smartphones:

…And so all of us use laptops and smartphones now. Everybody uses a laptop and/or a smartphone. And a question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that’s between a laptop and a smartphone? And of course we pondered this question for years as well. The bar is pretty high. In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They’re gonna have to be far better at doing some really important things: better than the laptop, better than the smartphone. 

At the time, I remember feeling in full agreement with Jobs, and when the iPad was finally unveiled, I truly believed it was going to be as revolutionary as the iPhone had been. The potential was utterly palpable. Ten years later, here I am, with a sufficiently large and advanced iPhone on one side, and a sufficiently compact and powerful laptop (the 11-inch MacBook Air) on the other. And the combination of these two devices has effectively neutralised any need I might have for an iPad. After ten years, the only area where the iPad has truly become far better than a laptop and far better than a smartphone is art creation. For that, it’s a really astounding tool. But being a tablet, and an Apple tablet at that, it’s also expected to excel at this. While truly revolutionary products typically have a lot of unexpected markers in their DNA.

Poor feedback during OS updates

January 21, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Software

A friend got in touch with me a few days ago. He wrote: 

I finally had the opportunity to apply the latest Security Update 2019-007 on my 2015 iMac with High Sierra. The update was taking longer than usual. I know I have to let it do its thing. I usually grab a coffee and do other stuff while the Mac updates.

This time, after 30 minutes it just seemed stuck. On the screen, just the Apple logo and the progress bar, I’d say it was at about 80% or something. At that point I did something stupid: I force-rebooted the iMac. 

As I laid my eyes on those words, I winced. He concluded:

The good news is that my iMac didn’t get bricked in the process. The bad news is that I had to restore from a backup, and the most recent was from 5 days ago. I lost some work updates. I know this was mostly my fault, so don’t get mad at me… But man, what you see on the screen during a system update is really terse… I wish I had more clues as to what the Mac is doing… A way to understand if it’s working or stuck. 

Every time I update my Macs (or iOS devices), I never touch them, no matter how long it takes, no matter how frozen they look during the update process. And this is usually the advice I give others.

Having said that, I agree with my friend on that last point: visual feedback during a lengthy software update could be improved.

When installing older versions of Mac OS X, I remember the Installer going through different stages, telling you which system components it was installing and what it was doing during each stage, with progress displayed with an animated progress bar and measured in percentage. 

Mac OS X Tiger installation

Today we have a black screen, an Apple logo, an iOS-style thin flat monochrome progress bar and sometimes you’ll see something like “Installing [or Installation in progress]: About n minutes remaining.” Just this.

Mac OS X updating install

It’s not unusual that during a major update the Mac will restart on its own once or twice. But since the boot chime was removed a few years back, you don’t even have an auditory clue — sometimes you just see the screen go black, then the Apple logo and progress bar reappear. 

And the progress bar is at a different point than before. You see it go away when, say, it’s at about 65%, and it reappears at about 20%. Expert users understand that behind the scenes there is more than one thing being updated, so the progress bar doesn’t really indicate the absolute progress of the update process as a whole. There are stages, but what appears on screen is so little as to be confusing. The bar so small that you really have to look at it closely to detect movement during the slowest stretches of an update.

I don’t get Apple’s choice of such a minimalistic interface in a situation (a system software update) where ‘how it works’ is a bit more important than ‘how it looks’, especially when looks can be deceiving (Is it ‘doing its thing’ or is it stuck?)

My friend isn’t a Mac power user, but he is not a novice, either. If he decided to act, force-rebooting his iMac, I’m sure it was because he honestly thought that the machine was frozen, that too much time had passed without any indication of progress. I don’t think he acted hastily. And we still don’t know what was happening. Maybe his iMac did actually freeze.

I think a first step to improve things could be to revert to a more descriptive interface. Keep showing the black screen with the Apple logo and the thin progress bar, but make the text below describe what’s happening. It doesn’t matter if it’s technical jargon some people won’t understand — they will understand more clearly that the Mac is performing a series of tasks. It will convey the idea of progress in a less ambiguous way. And if a certain stage of the process needs a restart when complete, display something like Stage 1 of 3 – Updating firmware. The Mac will restart and continue with the security update.

Or have at least the Mac display a permanent warning during the whole update, like: There will be times when the update process could appear frozen. Please do not power off your Mac or force a restart.

We can debate the wording of the message, but I think you’ll agree it’s better than, literally, nothing.

People and resources added to my reading list in 2019

January 17, 2020
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Welcome to my traditional summary article commenting on how my previous year went with regard to online reading habits and people/resources worth sharing.

Since 2017, there has been a noticeable decline in what and whom I have discovered and found interesting enough to add to my RSS feeds, especially in the blog category. Concurrently, as I wrote in the past two summary articles of this kind, another depressing trend in my feeds has been the removal of people/resources failing to maintain my interest (or their quality). Between 2017 and 2019, the number of resources I removed from my feeds has been comparatively higher than what I added.

Tech blogs

Some tech people are funny: they routinely come up with triumphant declarations saying that Blogs aren’t dead, blogs are important, and we must hold on to them as they embody the original spirit of the free Web, then they proceed to revive their long-abandoned, mostly-empty blog or website to write just that, and then they go back to neglecting it. These types have indeed chosen the podcast or YouTube channel as delivery medium, or they have actually stopped writing regularly and prefer exposition and ranting via Twitter.

The result is that finding good-quality tech blogs (not tech sites/portals, mind you), that are updated with reasonable frequency is getting harder and harder, at least for me. In 2019 I’ve mostly read here and there, often following a link referenced in sources I already read on a daily basis; while I found a lot of well-written, interesting pieces, a subsequent visit to the author’s site often revealed a disappointing scarceness of content. In these cases my reasoning for not adding them to my feeds has been that if they write another interesting article, they’ll probably be mentioned by one of my sources. In the meantime I won’t be missing much, really.

In 2019, only three blogs have been added to my RSS feeds:

  • The Eclectic Light Company, by Howard Oakley — I discovered Howard via the always-excellent Michael Tsai — whom I already follow and highly recommend — and his name kept sounding familiar. Shortly after, I realised I had been reading Howard’s contributions on MacUser UK and MacFormat UK magazines for years. His website mainly features articles about Mac OS and articles about art and paintings. I’m interested in both topics, but if you only want the tech side, you can easily just follow his Macs section (he also collects Mac problem-solving articles in the Mac problems page). When it comes to tech writing and developing Mac utilities (check his Downloads page), Howard is both thorough and prolific. Most of his tools focus on the analysis of the OS and its security systems, and they’re definitely targeted to power users. The few I’ve tried out have worked very well for me. Howard is a great writer and is very responsive to feedback. I’ve asked him for advice on a couple of occasions and he’s been quite helpful.
  • The Entanglement, by Alex Roddie — Alex is a friend and a great writer and editor. Since he started focusing more on outdoor writing, however, I had been missing his tech-oriented contributions. I was very happy when he launched The Entanglement and I love the fact that it approaches technology from a broader perspective. But he explains this better on the What is The Entanglement? page. Read that first. If you end up being intrigued, then welcome to the club and follow the blog. Updates aren’t very frequent, but always thought-provoking.
  • Tyler Hall’s website and blog — I discovered Tyler in October 2019 when his article on Mac OS Catalina was linked by many of the sources I usually follow. I really liked it, so I checked his website and found other interesting articles. Looking at the archives I soon realised that Tyler wasn’t just writing the very occasional rant, and that his writings had become more frequent throughout 2019. So I added him. He’s a Mac/iOS developer, and I’m always interested in listening what Mac/iOS developers have to say. I find his writing style to be very enjoyable. Pay him a visit, and check out his software at Click on Tyler.

YouTube channels

YouTube is a productivity killer. During 2019 I started recognising the signs of a growing addiction to the site, and fortunately I’ve managed to contain it. What works for me is simply to grant YouTube a limited time frame in my daily routine, and only watch videos in that time frame. Some exceptions may be the occasional video watched on my iPhone when I get home by bus, or when I’m having a break at a coffee shop — stuff like that.

For the past year, I’ve been doing a lot of channel hopping on YouTube, watching several different videos from different sources, but keeping subscriptions to a minimum. YouTube’s algorithm has worked in my favour: even without subscribing to a potentially-interesting channel after watching some of its videos, the algorithm has periodically suggested more videos from that channel, and this has worked as a gentle reminder, or as a sort of bookmark if you like. So, even if I haven’t subscribed to a lot of channels, I keep having them on my radar until I decide whether or not to subscribe.

Ever since my interest in games has returned to the forefront, I’ve found a lot of interesting game-related channels, but I’m not talking about those so-called Let’s Play videos where you watch someone play games. Rather, I’ve found a few intriguing channels that focus more on game analysis, whether it’s from a technical or philosophical standpoint. 

Here’s a small selection of YouTube channels and creators worth mentioning in this regard:

  • Nick930 — I already mentioned him in a post back in September, saying: “Nick produces terrific game reviews and game comparisons. He’s very honest and balanced, and keeps his reviews pleasantly short (8–12 minutes on average); but he also makes very nice documentaries about the histories of various game franchises. The material is well-researched and well-presented. I stumbled on his channel by chance while looking for videos about Tomb Raider, and found his great History of Tomb Raider (1996–2018). You’ll see that Nick has currently more than 146,000 subscribers [now about 195,000], and while it’s a respectable audience, I still think his channel is very underrated and that he deserves at least 5 times that number.”
  • Digital Foundry — This channel is definitely more technical, often talking about graphics cards, GPU performance, … Wait, let me just paste here their own description in the channel’s About section: Digital Foundry specialises in game technology and hardware reviews, using bespoke capture and analysis tools to provide a unique look at the way games play. Video is just one dimension of what we offer — check out http://www.digitalfoundry.net for all of our articles. If you’re passionate about this particular aspect of gaming, subscribing to this channel is a must, in my opinion.
  • Max Derrat — I found Max’s channel… not really by chance. Rather, for a while YouTube kept suggesting what is probably one of Max’s most popular videos, The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History, and one evening I finally decided to take the algorithm’s hint and check it out. And it was good! And so are his other videos on game analysis/criticism. But his range of topics is wider: as he says, he does videos on whatever he wants: “Those include video games, movies, philosophy, psychology… but I seem to be best known for my videos on autism and mental health.” So far, I’ve only watched his videos on games, movies, and philosophy. But I’ve no reason to doubt his other videos are of lesser quality.
  • Jacob Geller — And while I was watching one of Max Derrat’s videos, that sneaky YouTube algorithm suggested one video by Jacob Geller. Then it suggested the same video while I was watching a YouTuber play Control, a fascinating game released last year. At this point, I had to check this Jacob Geller out. The video in question was Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House. After watching it, I was intrigued. So then I watched Museum Theft, and then Artificial Loneliness, and then The Decade-Long Quest For Shadow of the Colossus’ Last Secret, and then Judaism and Whiteness in Wolfenstein, and… I had already subscribed to his channel by then. Jacob is an intelligent, articulate storyteller with a lot of great insights on the subjects he touches. Unlike Derrat, Geller remains focused on games for the most part, but often the game is simply a starting point to talk about themes and subjects that are presented with well-written scripts and captivating narratives. He’s not a frequent uploader, but every upload is meaningful.
  • Ahoy — “He’s not a frequent uploader, but every upload is meaningful.” These words work just as perfectly for Stuart Brown, a.k.a Ahoy. His channel’s About page simply says, Insighful gaming videos, and while true, it’s also a tragic understatement in my opinion. I think the first video I watched was his short documentary titled FLATLINE: How the Amiga Languished, which is part of his RetroAhoy series (highly recommended). I was amazed by the quality of the writing, presentation, narration, and production. Stuart definitely knows how to write a story and how to read it as well, in his British accent and deep voice that somehow reminds me of BBC broadcasts of old. But he also knows how to give the presentation a visual design, a ‘feel’, a mood, an æsthetic that is just the cherry on the cake. The masterful 1‑hour documentary The First Video Game is presented as a series of old transparencies that slide away and come into view as the narration proceeds. On paper, this sounds boring and uninspired, but you really have to watch to see how effective that is, given the subject of the documentary. Also of note his recurring series of short videos called Iconic Arms: each video gives a brief history of a weapon or firearm, how it was popularised by movies, and how it ended up in videogames. Even if you, like me, care very little about guns, I think you’ll appreciate the minimalistic graphic style and transitions. The use of bold colours, silhouettes, and big Helvetica type reminds me of old manuals and brochures from the 1970s and 1980s. But enough with this verbiage — go check Ahoy’s channel.

Podcasts

Nuked. All of them. 

In 2018, I wrote:

I don’t want to start another tirade about podcasts, but let me reiterate one fundamental criticism: there is simply too much supply, and too little time. I can’t spend my day listening to podcasts, as I find practically impossible to follow a podcast episode while doing other things. Music can be enjoyed even when it’s in the background. I can’t follow what people are talking about while reading stuff on the Web or working. It’s just interference. I have to make time for your podcast. And if I’m going to give you one hour of my time for an episode, you better deliver on the quality and content, otherwise it’s bye-bye. 

As a medium for tech debate specifically, podcasts pose another problem for me: if you want to extract information to analyse, quote, criticise, respond to, the burden is entirely on you. You often have to sift through long, rambling conversations between two or more people, transcribe the bits that interest you, and respond on your blog. This gets tedious very soon.

Podcasts may not be trivial to record and produce, but it’s certainly easier to just chat about something instead of having to write an article about it. When more people wrote on their blogs more regularly, the debate was a bit more balanced. One took the time to write their thoughts, another could easily extrapolate, quote, and respond. But reacting to a conversation? Either you make the aforementioned effort, or I don’t know, perhaps you make your own podcast and respond accordingly.

In either case, a more extended conversation is difficult to maintain. In the best scenario, you listen to an 1½-hour long podcast episode, you patiently extract the parts you want to discuss, you let the interested parties know, they respond in the next episode, and so on. It becomes an awkward cross-medium back and forth. That’s why I often feel that some people have chosen the podcast as their preferred medium for expression to shield themselves from debate and criticism — at least in part. They know that challenging their opinions becomes more laborious, and it’s just easier to listen and move on.

Anyway, one day last year I simply realised I had no time for podcasts. No time to listen to them in a meaningful way. And certainly no time to prepare an adequate response in case I disagreed with something being said in an episode. I still listen to the occasional bit from some favourite sources or if someone passes me a link to a podcast episode worth listening, but I’ve unsubscribed from everything. I still recommend the podcasts I used to subscribe to, and you’ll find them in the past articles of this series (links are at the bottom of this post).

My RSS management

It hasn’t changed much from the past few years. I still use the same apps on my computers and devices. Because there’s no need to fix what’s not broken. So:

  • On my Intel Macs: Reeder, but keeping an eye on NetNewsWire 5. I’ll probably switch to NetNewsWire if and when I upgrade my Intel Macs to Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. (Yes, not Catalina).
  • On my PowerPC Macs: older versions of NetNewsWire.
  • On my iPhone 8, iPhone 5, iPad 3: Unread.
  • On older iOS devices: Reeder, and an older version of Byline.
  • On my first-generation iPad: an older version of Newsify, Slow Feeds (which is now called Web Subscriber), and the Feedly app itself.
  • On my ThinkPad T400 and ThinkPad X240 (with Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows 10 respectively): Nextgen Reader.
  • On my Windows Phone 8.1/Windows 10 Mobile smartphones: Nextgen Reader and FeedLab.
  • On my webOS devices (Palm Prē 2, HP TouchPad): FeedSpider. A really great app.
  • On my AndroidOne phone (Xiaomi Mi A2): the official Feedly app. It’s good enough, but if you have a better candidate to suggest, I’m all ears.
  • For my BlackBerry Passport, I’m temporarily using an app called Gazzet but I’m open to suggestions.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed that in the end I only added three written resources to my feeds. Let’s see if there’s really a renewed interest in keeping personal sites and blogs this year, and not just empty talk.

Past articles

In reverse chronological order:

I hope this series and my observations can be useful to you. Also, keep in mind that some links in these past articles may now be broken. And as always, if you think I’m missing out on some good tech writing or other kind of resource you believe might be of interest to me, let me know via email or Twitter. Thanks for reading!