Riccardo Mori

People and resources added to my reading list in 2019

January 17, 2020

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!

A brief summary of why I’m less enthusiastic about Apple than I used to be

January 15, 2020

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

Revisiting the feedback I privately received throughout 2019, I’d say that most of it revolves around a central subject: what’s my beef with Apple? And why has my position towards the company become so critical recently?

If I were to explain things in detail, I would probably have to write a book. Or at least one of those academic papers filled with quotes, footnotes, diagrams, and the like.

But since I’m summing up a series of points I’ve already addressed here at length, I’ll just make a bulleted list, so that we can start 2020 with this out of the way.

The fundamental reason behind my diminished enthusiasm about Apple lies in the company’s change of direction and priorities after Steve Jobs’s passing. This isn’t a matter of Apple is doing it wrong and they should listen to me. It’s more like when your favourite rock band changes a band member and/or makes their music ‘evolve’ in ways you don’t like. In ways that make you worry they’ll lose a not-insignificant part of their fanbase. You rationally understand that some things have to change, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them. The big difference is that with a rock band you can simply stop buying their music, and that’s it. With Apple it’s not as simple; especially if you’ve been using their ecosystem for decades.
The worsening of Apple’s software quality. I’d like to say that this is mostly a Mac OS problem, but iOS 11 and what I’ve seen of iOS 13 so far have definitely made me a cautious iOS user as well. Apple seems to lack ideas for new, interesting and useful first-party apps. The ones they currently offer appear to be more in a state of maintenance than development. Old bugs in the operating system itself remain unfixed. Sometimes there seems to be an attitude behind the tackling of issues that feels like, This is too complicated to resolve, let’s wipe the slate clean, but that often solves the problem for Apple, not for the customers.
The diminishing of Apple’s hardware excellence. Don’t get me wrong, I recognise an engineering and hardware design feat when I see one (the Mac Pro), but the MacBook’s keyboard fiasco is too big to ignore. I used to purchase Apple machines and not even bother to get AppleCare, certain of their reliability. If I were to buy a Mac today, I would add the AppleCare option without thinking twice.
Apple’s increased hostility towards repairability. If Apple could sell you a completely sealed device with no user-replaceable parts, and handle all repairs themselves (meaning, they recycle your broken device and give you a new one), they would. And I still think this is their ultimate goal.
Apple’s increasing emphasis on Services. This wouldn’t necessarily bother me that much if their Services included actually good, worthwhile offerings and related apps. So far, it’s all weak tea. What’s worse, is that it’s weak tea that dilutes the whole Apple sauce (if you pardon these atrocious analogies). I still cannot shake the feeling that, in an attempt to be everywhere at all costs, Apple is spreading their resources thin and struggles to maintain a level of quality in all of their platforms that goes above ‘good enough’.

One of the most marked differences between Jobs’s Apple and Cook’s Apple, in my opinion, is that under Jobs Apple cultivated a strong identity and a way of doing things that differentiated Apple from every other tech company. Jobs managed to make Apple successful without necessarily playing by the tech industry’s rules. The essence of Thinking different was this, I think. Jobs was like, “Here’s our take on what a computer (or phone, or tablet, or accessory) should be and work; we think it’s better than the competition because we operate at higher standards”. It didn’t always work, and I’m aware that not every product manufactured under Jobs’s tenure was perfect. But it was crystal clear that there was a genuine effort to adhere to such standards nonetheless. It was evident in both hardware and software.

Jobs’s figure was unique because, in a product’s life cycle, he was crucially present both at the conception stage and as a final user. He had a clear idea of how something should work, and that helped immensely in creating user-friendly products that ‘just worked’. I still see some of that thinking-different attitude and ‘Apple’s way’ in today’s Apple, especially when it comes to privacy and security. But generally speaking, Cook’s Apple appears to be less focused on what makes it a unique player in the tech industry, and more interested in doing things many other companies are doing, entering markets where the competition has clearly more experience and offers more compelling products. Apple’s reputation as main differentiator here can only work for so long.

A brief review of my 2019

January 14, 2020

by Riccardo Mori

Briefly

2019 was a strange year for me.

Looking at it superficially, nothing went wrong. I carried on with my life, managed to stay afloat, my translation work went somewhat satisfactorily, I was able to expand my technology horizons by getting to know other platforms better through the acquisition of new older devices; even the summer holidays went better than usual.

My interest in photography was rekindled: while I still love shooting film, the mostly unexpected and serendipitous acquisition of a few interesting digital cameras (Olympus E‑420, Pentax Q, Fujifilm X‑E1, Fujifilm FinePix F30) gave way to further experimentation — and that was a lot of fun.

From a personal workflow standpoint, in 2019 I was able to fully take advantage of my post-MacBook Pro setup — iMac as main workstation at home, 11-inch MacBook Air as mobile solution — and things have worked fantastically well. To the point that that iPad upgrade I was considering back in 2018 turned out to be unnecessary and has been delayed indefinitely. This happened thanks to the extreme versatility of the 11-inch MacBook Air, a machine I would never consider buying when new, which has now become, just a year after purchase, the second best Mac I’ve ever had (nothing beats my 12-inch PowerBook G4, of course).

But 2019 has also been a year of disappointment. I’m still very much interested in technology in general: the big picture, where tech is going, what’s being produced, and so forth. I haven’t really lost my enthusiasm and the ability to get excited over some new products or solutions. And I still am very deeply interested in subjects like design and usability in connection with technology.

But a lot of the people in technology, how technology is talked about, the debates over whatever it is the latest silly topic du jour, etc., have been wearing me down considerably. Engaging in tech-centric discussions, whether online or offline, has increasingly felt like an exercise in futility, no matter how articulately you present your point of view. This, in turn, has led me to write less on this blog. And while I’ve always maintained that I shall write an article only when I feel I really have something to say — as opposed to just keep this space updated with filler link pieces and one-line commentary when I’m not inspired to write long-form — I am disappointed that I haven’t been able to write more. At the time of writing, the entire body of articles I’ve written in 2019 consists of the ‘Latest 30 Posts’ you can see in my Archives page. It’s a bit disheartening.

Even worse, 2019 has been a terrible year with regard to my creative writing and fiction. Not that 2018 was better, but there were different reasons for its terribleness. Here, it truly feels like a ‘lost’ year. All my projects have progressed little, if at all. This time, it really wasn’t writer’s block, nor laziness on my part; and yet I lacked focus and organisation. I simply let work and other stuff take most of my mental energies, so that little was left for writing fiction at the end of the day. Which is rather stupid, in retrospect, given that writing is what I do best.

I try to maintain a ‘glass is half full’ kind of attitude and, when looking back at 2019, I tell myself that, sure, it wasn’t a great year for my output, but was a good ‘input’ year — meaning I spent it mostly learning new things, ‘consuming’ more ‘content’, researching stuff and feeding my inspiration. But I can’t help feeling dissatisfied. I can’t help feeling that last year was a big waste of time, right when I’ve reached that middle-age phase when time is perceived as an increasingly precious resource.

My only resolution at this point is to write more; or rather, to revisit my priorities in order to put my writing back where it belongs — sharing first place with my daily job. I’ve been keeping creative notes here and there, but I really need to finish my first novel of the Low Fidelity series; I need to act on these notes I’ve kept nursing and write the short stories that should become the third book in my Minigrooves series.

2019 wasn’t a great year for me, but I am thankful for all the people in my social network who have been supportive, who have lent an ear when I needed venting on Twitter, who have helped me in a way or another. That’s always appreciated and never taken for granted. Here’s to a better 2020!

Shopping: an increasingly overthought endeavour

December 27, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Et Cetera

When I saw this recent article by Casey Johnston, Shopping Sucks Now being linked and commented by a few trusted people I follow, I admit I felt a bit bemused. I really like Johnston’s writing and style, and I know that, while the search for a good pair of gloves was a real necessity, it also served as an example. And yes, it’s true, there is so much choice today that choosing a product wisely, especially online, can be challenging.

But as I read her article, I started to wonder if perhaps the overthinking behind the whole shopping process is itself more overwhelming than the abundance of choice^[1].

For a long time, our problem was there were not enough things to choose from. Then with big box stores, followed by the internet, there were too many things to choose from. Now there are still too many things to choose from, but also a seemingly infinite number of ways to choose, or seemingly infinite steps to figuring out how to choose. The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I go on not choosing something I need pretty badly, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.

The degree to which you feel this problem definitely depends on your income, or at least, being in the privileged position of not having to make do with the only thing you can afford. But for people with even a limited ability to make an investment purchase, if it’s worth it, there’s even more pressure to get it right. Knowing you wasted a big chunk of money on a cheaper, worse thing that falls apart when you could have spent a little more money on a thing that is good and lasts feels like failure. You’ve then wasted your money, wasted your time, you’ve contributed to global warming, and now you have to start the entire thing over again and hope you don’t somehow end up making the exact same mistake.

I don’t really feel this problem that much. And I think I fit the profile of the consumer who should feel this problem more:

I’m a budget-conscious customer. Being a freelancer, my income fluctuates constantly, but even when I have more money to spend on shopping for stuff, I tend to be penny-wise all the same; it’s my upbringing. Therefore, finding a good deal when I look for something is important to me. I hate wasting money.
When it comes to articles of clothing, I’m a particularly difficult customer. While my body shape isn’t ugly, it is such that finding trousers, shirts, jackets that are a good fit straight away is very hard for me. Sometimes I joke that I’d love to be rich only to be able to afford a personal tailor. So, again, when I’m shopping for clothes, it’s rarely a painless process.
Typically I’m not a cheapskate either. When looking for something to buy, I don’t take the shortcut of aiming low and going for the cheapest option.

But perhaps it’s because my way of shopping is still pretty much old-school.

I do most of my shopping at local, brick-and-mortar shops. I usually shop online for items I can’t find here; for items that are only available on the used market; and for items that are only available online (obviously). If I had to quantify, my offline/online shopping ratio is probably 70/30, maybe even 80/20.

For the reason stated above, I absolutely do not shop online for clothes (or eyewear, for that matter). I just can’t buy something without trying it or feeling it in my hand first. I know that a common policy for online clothing sellers is that you can easily return your purchases if you’re not satisfied with the items, but I find this to be an unnecessary hassle. I usually waste less time by going to a physical shop. Sure, there was an initial exploration phase where I tried several shops and clothing stores only to get out empty-handed, but now I know that all those places don’t have anything my size, and I know a few good places that do.

While I like to do my homework when I really need something specific, I still value competent advice provided by other humans right where I’m shopping. Yes, sometimes you’re in a shop ‘just browsing’ and you keep being approached by overeager clerks offering to help you. But there have been occasions when they were indeed helpful. The Tucano backpack I’m using most frequently now was suggested by a kind and informed clerk who told me it was a better value than the one I was interested in, while being very similar products in many other aspects. And she was right. In truth, I hadn’t even seen that Tucano backpack while I was browsing.

I own an especially good hat and an especially good pair of leather shoes — I’ve had both for at least 20 years — that were my easiest purchases, in a way. I went to a local hat shop, and told the owner what I was looking for in general terms. His decades-old expertise narrowed the choice for me as he presented me with a limited selection of suitable candidates. And, surely enough, the hat I wanted was among those. Same thing happened with the leather shoes. These items weren’t the best in their respective categories, but were quality products nonetheless, whose durability far exceeded my expectations. Were they expensive? Well, they weren’t Made-in-China cheap, but didn’t cost me a fortune either. Sometimes people don’t realise that the time you spend by willing to ask for help to a shop clerk (or, better, a shop owner) and willing to listen to their advice, isn’t always time wasted. Quite the contrary.

Most of my shopping happens before shopping. Do I need that new pair of shoes? Do I need that accessory? While I perfectly know that sometimes you don’t have to need something to want it; that sometimes you just want to make a ‘feel-good’ purchase; I nevertheless always ask myself those questions. This kind of self-check never hurts, especially if you’re a bit of a hoarder like I am and you’re renting an apartment. (Nothing like having to move out at a relatively short notice to make you regret many of your purchases and hoarding habits.)

I think that shopping experiences like the example Johnston makes in her article are increasingly common for people who shop almost exclusively online. They end up trapped by what they craved for in the first place: a wider choice, the comfort of shopping from your home, the illusion of saving time (and sometimes money). Back to my example of my good hat and leather shoes, if I had shopped for them online, it probably would have taken me several days of Web searches and comparisons before making a decision, and I’m fairly sure I would have ended up with worse products.

If it wasn’t clear enough (and it’s possible, since I’ve a penchant for digression), my main preventive measure to avoid overthinking or entering rabbit holes every time I have to shop for something, is to give myself artificial boundaries like time or space/scope:

Time — If I need a certain product, I will research possible candidates for a reasonably limited amount of time (e.g. a couple of days), then I will proceed to buy the best candidate found within that self-imposed time allotment. There may be the occasional exception; when I need something I’m not really familiar with (such as a UPS unit), the search for a suitable candidate may extend for a longer time period.
Space/scope — I won’t deny the convenience of purchasing stuff online. When you know what you want, it can be exhilarating just how quick and painless the process is. When I needed a new charging cable for my Pebble Time smartwatch, I opened eBay, searched for it, found a seller with a good reputation and reasonably close to me (= shorter waiting times once the item is shipped), clicked Buy It Now, and placed my order — all this in maybe less than five minutes. Other times, however, the sanest option is just searching for stuff locally. I don’t get people who spend hours looking for a good screwdriver on Amazon (of all places), then having the item shipped the next day with Amazon Prime; when you can buy one by going to a local hardware store and choosing among the many offerings, and you can just ask for advice in the store, if you’re not sure.

In fact, asking for someone else’s help can be a time saver. And I mean asking someone who has experience and expert knowledge regarding what you’re looking for. I’ve been told that asking advice from shopkeepers about something you’re looking for in their shops isn’t a great idea because they’re probably biased and they just want you to buy the thing from them. In my experience, this has happened very rarely. A bookseller once told me: I want happy customers. Happy customers are returning customers. And returning customers in turn make me happy.

I wanted to briefly return to something Johnston writes in a paragraph I already quoted at the beginning:

The longer I spend trying to choose, the higher the premium becomes on choosing correctly, which means I go on not choosing something I need pretty badly, coping with the lack of it or an awful hacked-together solution (in the case of gloves, it’s “trying to pull my sleeves over my hands but they are too short for this”) for way, way too long, and sometimes forever.

This has never happened to me, thankfully. At least not with things “I need pretty badly”. Need should always be a stronger force than choice. Choice should never be this paralysing. When I have serious difficulty choosing a product among a series of candidates, and I’m pressed for time, and I need it (so I just can’t say Okay, let’s drop this for now, I’ll keep searching another day), then I’ll usually go for the ‘average’ offering. Thus, not the cheapest or suspiciously cheap product, and not the most expensive product either — especially when I have the feeling I’d only be paying for a brand name.

But that’s me. The more I’m writing about this, the more I have the feeling that I’m stating obvious things and ‘strategies’, or that I’m starting to overthink… so I’ll end this here.

1. One can also argue that maybe it’s the abundance of choice that leads to overthinking and ultimately to ‘shopping paralysis’. But I’ve also noticed an increasing number of people who approach shopping with an overthinking attitude even before facing the subsequent problem of abundance of choice. ↩︎

Other platforms — BlackBerry 10

December 15, 2019

by Riccardo Mori

Software

BlackBerry Passport

Two years ago, a renewed curiosity to explore other operating systems and their user interfaces led me to acquire a Nokia Lumia 925 running Windows Phone 8.1 and take a belated closer look at this OS. The plan was to carry the Lumia with me as a second phone, spend a couple of weeks with it, and report my observations. You know, the same process you go through when reviewing any product. What happened next surprised me. When the test period was over, I couldn’t let go of the Lumia and the Windows Phone 8.1 experience. I knew the platform was essentially dead, but I was able to set up the phone with all the apps providing essential services and functionalities to me, and using WP8.1 was surprisingly refreshing, so I kept it as my secondary phone, carrying it around alongside my iPhone 8.

Something had just clicked. Realising how wrong and prejudiced I had been towards Windows Phone, I began to wonder: maybe all these years as a loyal Apple user have been making me feel so cosy in my comfort zone, so certain I was using the superior platform, that I was completely blind to the designing and engineering work of other competitors.

And so I started exploring more. I started to do what any intellectually honest individual should do: taking a deeper look firsthand before criticising anything. While trying to impact my limited budget as little as possible, and with the help of kind people who donated their old device, in the following months I was able to acquire:

a Nokia Lumia 830 to try Windows 10 Mobile on it;
a ThinkPad T61, and then a T400, to try the Windows 8.1 experience on a traditional computer; once I received the T400, I installed and tried Ubuntu Linux on the T61;
a ThinkPad X240 to try Windows 10;
an HP TouchPad, to finally experience webOS on a tablet-sized device (I love my Palm Prē 2, but I think webOS shouldn’t be experienced solely on a device with such a small display);
a BlackBerry Passport, to have a look at BlackBerry OS (something I was so not interested in, I didn’t even know how the OS looked);
a Nokia N9 smartphone, to see what was that made this device and its OS — MeeGo — so intriguing as to elevate the N9 to cult status.

So, after these past few months I’d say that — while I still have plenty left to explore and write about the UIs of other mobile platforms that didn’t manage to stay relevant like iOS or Android — one thing is clear by now: the two ‘winning’ platforms are ultimately the least interesting. And in a few aspects, they’re even worse than the ‘losers’. This is what you get, I presume, when you become mainstream.

The BlackBerry platform

The BlackBerry platform is perhaps the one I have ignored the most over the years. During the pre-iPhone smartphone years, when friends and acquaintances sported their Nokia E‑something or N‑something, their Palm Treos, their SonyEricsson P800 and P900, their BlackBerrys, etc., I still had simple feature phones… and my Newton PDAs. Cramming full QWERTY keyboards in phones of a relatively small size looked very impractical to me. All those tiny keys, how could you be fast and efficient at typing? Interfaces looked awkward, crowded. My interest in owning a smartphone was piqued only when rumours of Apple entering the picture started circulating. At that point, I just waited until that rumoured ‘iPhone’ became a real thing.

I hope BlackBerry fans won’t be offended, but I never found anything interesting in that platform. The fact that a lot of BlackBerry handsets have always been targeted at a business/enterprise audience was another factor that kept me at a distance. It’s a bit like scientific or accounting calculators… if you don’t have to do scientific or accounting calculations, it’s unlikely you’ll want to buy one.

There was even a time, the final years of the co-CEOs Lazaridis and Balsillie era, where I, by then a loyal iPhone user, watched with amused snobbery as RIM repeatedly tried to stay relevant in the smartphone arena with devices that didn’t seem very forward-thinking.

BlackBerry reappeared on my radar around 2013, when BlackBerry 10 OS was showcased along with the Z10 smartphone. While still being very satisfied with iOS, I’ve always thought that healthy competition is essential in tech, so that all parties have the incentive to improve constantly.

The BlackBerry Passport

But it was when BlackBerry introduced the Passport in late 2014 that I turned my head and exclaimed, Okay, that is a cool phone. The Passport was clearly designed to elicit that kind of response, but still, I liked the fact that the company was trying something different. Having my usual tight budget, however, meant that I couldn’t get one to play with and maybe keep as a secondary phone, so I just thought, One day, one day…

When an acquaintance contacted me via Twitter and told me something along the lines of “I’ve noticed your interest in other platforms. I have a BlackBerry Passport I was about to sell. I took it out of the drawer after more than a year and the thing won’t even boot. Probably I’ve bricked it when I tried to revive it, so… it’s yours for £25 if you want to try your hand at reviving it. Otherwise I guess I’ll recycle it or something…”

Challenge accepted. And achievement unlocked, after some patience and perseverance.

I took this photo ten minutes after the phone came to life. While waiting for its battery to charge (it was totally drained), I went through the setup process. The first thing that gave me a positive impression were the tutorials helping you familiarise with BlackBerry 10 paradigms and gestures, and actually correcting you if you don’t execute a gesture properly. (For brevity, I’ll refer to the BlackBerry 10 OS as ‘BB10’ from now on.)

The hardware

The Passport is well-built. When you handle it, it has a premium-feeling heft. I like the grippy material of its back cover. Hardware buttons are clicky enough, but I wish the power button were clickier. It has a short travel. It feels a bit mushy. The Passport is not really a one-hand device. While I certainly can use it one-handed, due to its width and angular edges it doesn’t get super comfortable in the long run (it is however much more practical to handle than the Xiaomi Mi A2). But once you cradle it in your hands and use it with both, the overall experience improves dramatically:

A two-handed experience

The square, 4.5‑inch, 1440×1440 IPS LCD display is bright and very nice. At 453 PPI, text is incredibly crisp and so very readable even at font sizes my eyes would find rather hard to tolerate elsewhere.

If I’m not mistaken, spec-wise the Passport is the most powerful BB10 device. It features a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage which can be expanded — the Passport has a microSD slot, too.

The rear camera, as stated by Wikipedia, is 13 megapixel, with ƒ/2.0 aperture, 1080p video recording at 60fps, autofocus, and optical image stabilisation. In practice, it takes decent photos and does its job properly. Nothing bad, nothing exceptional.

The stereo speakers are another thing that surprised me very positively, together with the audio quality in general. The speakers deliver a loud, full, yet balanced sound. Music played through the headphones sounds crisp, with no noise or distortion I can perceive.

There isn’t a tray to insert the SIM and the optional microSD card. Instead, you remove the upper part of the back cover to access these slots. This is the only user-accessible part of the chassis, and it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. By looking at the back of the phone, you wouldn’t even guess this part is removable:

Insert SIM

But let’s talk about that keyboard.

Here’s the thing with the BlackBerry Passport’s keyboard: I honestly thought it would be awkward. Firstly because apart from the Palm Prē 2, I’ve never used phones with physical QWERTY keyboards. I went from keypads and T9 text entry to an iPhone. Secondly because the Passport’s keyboard is a hybrid of physical and virtual keys, as you can see in the picture:

BB keyboards

Yet, to my surprise, this layout works. It’s an entirely different experience from an iPhone or Android phone, but I’m getting accustomed to it quickly.

It’s all about how you hold the phone. This phone’s form factor in particular invites you to cradle it between your hands and thumb-type, as we’ve seen above. And the [Shift] key, and the [123] key are positioned in such a way that you reach them easily with your thumbs.

Extended keyboard

When you tap the [123] key, you get the extended symbols/numbers keys, and if you just look at them, you may think it’s a confused mess. Look at where they put the zero. Instead you just reach over there, and it’s unexpectedly comfortable and makes sense, believe it or not.

Note that, ever since I started using smartphones with virtual keyboards, I’ve never been able to type quickly with just my thumbs. I’ve always typed by holding the phone with my left hand, and using my right index and middle fingers. Despite having small fingertips, the lack of physical feedback in the keys and their tight spacing thwarted my attempts at a precise thumb-typing. The Passport is the first smartphone I can thumb-type on, and at a respectable speed.

I’m still learning the various keyboard tricks and shortcuts, but what I’m seeing so far is much more thoughtful than I expected. You can type an uppercase letter by long-pressing its key. One way to select text is to tap Shift and swipe your finger over the keyboard. When you’re writing and you need to move the cursor, e.g. to make corrections or insert a word, you double-tap on the keyboard and the magnifying lens pops up:

Magnifying lens

Then you just move it by scrolling & swiping your finger on the keys — the keyboard acts like a trackpad. It’s a detail that looks counter-intuitive and gimmicky on paper, but in actual use I’d say it’s fairly brilliant, because the textured surface of the keyboard as a whole makes you swipe and scroll more purposefully and precisely.

Predictive text

When you’re typing, predictive text makes suggestions like on iOS, Android, etc. To speed things up, if you see that the suggested word in the middle is the one you want, you just swipe up on the keyboard. Once you learn the gesture, it’s pretty handy.

I’m also finding the predictive engine and autocorrect rather smart when handling multiple language keyboards.

The software

The default installation of BB10 comes with all the expected essentials. There are Box and Dropbox clients, and the usual suspects like Twitter and Facebook. There are also LinkedIn and Evernote apps. The first obstacle you hit when attempting to use them is that they don’t have access to the latest APIs of these services, so in late 2019 none of them will work, except Evernote.

The most effective workaround is to use Android apps, since BB10 features an Android runtime that lets you run Android apps (not the latest and greatest, though, unless they can run under Android 4.3). In theory, you can install them directly using the built-in Amazon Appstore app, but sadly this is another client that has stopped working. By perusing the CrackBerry forums, I was able to find a workaround and install Google’s own Play Store to manage Android apps. Then I was able to download Firefox, Android’s Box client, a good Twitter client called Twidere, the official Spotify client, among other apps. Though the default BB10 Weather app works well and has a nice, austere look, currently I’m also enjoying an Android app called Today Weather, whose UI both reminds me of Yahoo! Weather and is elegant enough to be mistaken for a native BlackBerry app:

Today Weather

My Passport is currently running the latest BB10 version, 10.3.3.2137 (at least, the system tells me that the OS is up to date), and despite what you may have read in earlier BB10 reviews, Android apps appear to run quite smoothly and I’m not noticing any significant difference in performance compared to native BlackBerry apps.

Also, during normal use, the OS doesn’t feel particularly fragmented. BlackBerry apps and Android apps happily coexist and the OS does a good job at maintaining cohesion. The only moment where the illusion is briefly broken is when you install or update an app from the Play Store. The app will begin to download from within the Play Store, but the final steps of the installation are handled by BlackBerry World, BlackBerry’s native app store client.

The user interface

After being positively impressed by the BlackBerry Passport’s hardware, the biggest surprise for me (long-time iOS user, never touched a BlackBerry handset before) was BB10’s UI. Visually, it perfectly epitomises the business æsthetic: a minimal, mostly black-and-white colour palette with tasteful accents — usually blue — which thoughtfully and consistently direct the user’s look towards what’s relevant or important on the screen (a setting, a button, a change of state, etc.). The system font is nice and readable even at very small sizes.

Here are a few more examples and comments:

BB10 App screen
This is the first app screen on the BlackBerry Passport. Like on iOS, you have dots representing the various app screens. Unlike iOS, dots aren’t generic — each app screen is clearly numbered; the Home screen is indicated by a Home icon, and the BlackBerry Hub has an envelope/email icon. Both the Home screen and the BlackBerry Hub can be accessed by swiping from the left. Phone and Camera are persistent icons for quick access to these frequently-used apps.

BB10 Home screen - Multitasking
Interestingly, BB10 considers the Home Screen what in other platforms would be considered the Multitasking interface. Here you can see miniatures of all active apps, and from here you can quickly switch from one app to another, or close their processes. Apps with changes or unread notifications are indicated by a red badge with an asterisk.

BB10 Quick Settings
BB10 has an array of Quick Settings that are accessible by swiping down from the status bar. What appears here — and in what order — is customisable by going into Settings > Quick Settings. The interface may seem verbose and take up a lot of space, but I actually like that BlackBerry wanted to prioritise clarity above all else.

BB10 World Clock

BB10 Stopwatch

BB10 Timer
BB10 clock, world clock, stopwatch, and timer. I think they’re better designed than their counterparts on iOS and Android.

BB10 File manager
This is the File Manager (grid view) in BB10. The design reminds me of Windows 10 Mobile a bit, but icons are less stylised and more elegant.

BB10 Lock Screen options
I like that on BB10 you can set a custom message to appear on the lock screen.

BB10 Device Monitor
App Manager > Device Monitor looks a bit like Activity Monitor on the Mac. It’s nice that I can see all this information at a glance.

BB10 Battery Saving options
I also like that there is a modicum of customisation in what gets disabled when in Battery Saving Mode.

Detailed explanation
I like that there are clear explanations for certain system features, so that the user knows exactly what they do and what is going on — in this case, when Battery Saving Mode is enabled.

App permissions
When you enter Settings > Security and Privacy > Application Permissions, you’ll see a list of all the installed apps. When selecting one (Maps in this example), you can examine its permission settings and change them as needed. Though you can do the same on iOS and Android, I really like BB10’s clean approach and presentation.

Overall, BB10 has a sober, elegant interface, and features consistent interactions and gestures. It’s logical and you familiarise with it rather quickly. Discoverability is generally good, and what you can’t discover on your own, you can find in the built-in tutorials. These are very good and really train you, so that you can use the system in the most effective way possible.

Apps are designed in a way that, in my opinion, maximises reachability, especially on this particular smartphone. The most important controls in the interface are located on the bottom bar, which places them right above the physical keyboard. And that is where your thumb or thumbs are gravitating most of the time. So it’s rare that you’ll have to adjust your grip in an attempt to reach some far-off key UI element. A lot of the apps I’ve tried out so far — the better-designed at least — tend to follow this logic.

BlackBerry Hub

Speaking of well-designed aspects of the BB10 OS, a special mention must be reserved to Notifications and the BlackBerry Hub. Coming from a mainstream mobile OS, it may seem weird to have a single place like the BlackBerry Hub collating email messages, SMS/MMS, calls and notifications. But after a little while you realise that this concept makes a lot of sense. Of course, this works well largely because the BlackBerry Hub is very well-designed.

Visually, it’s essentially an email client displaying messages in chronological order. Logically, it’s like looking at a page from an organiser showing what’s happening during the day. It’s like a big messaging system, where every item is treated like a message or event. Icons differentiate between emails, notifications, text messages, so that it’s instantly clear which is which; but looking at them separately is just as easy — a quick tap on the Hamburger menu will open a sidebar and you’ll be able to move between categories. I was especially surprised by how I liked this kind of implementation because I usually prefer to keep things separate, email messages in particular. But on the Passport, I found out I actually don’t mind looking at a unified Inbox and I happily added my five main email accounts.

BlackBerry Hub main UI
BlackBerry Hub’s main interface.

BlackBerry Hub - Hamburger menu
Tap the Hamburger menu and you can check messages/notifications by category.

BlackBerry Hub - options
Tap the three-dot button on the right and you have access to different options and commands.

Notification red LED

Add to this the well-known hardware blinking red LED that alerts the user to the presence of a new notification (see picture above), and in my opinion you have the best notification system ever. It’s not intrusive, but it’s effectual, and you hardly miss anything. If you don’t check the Hub right away when you have notifications, you’ll see which apps have new notifications because a red badge will appear on their icon. Here the approach is similar to Android’s blue dot, in that there isn’t an ‘unread items’ counter on the badge like on iOS, just an asterisk. As I said in my last piece on Android, I much prefer this approach — it’s less stressful.

Advanced Interaction

Advanced interaction
Those last two features are quite handy, especially the last one. But on the whole, all these are thoughtful and useful additions. If I researched this info correctly, ‘Lift to wake’ should predate the similar ‘Raise to wake’ on iOS by more or less two years.

‘Flip to save power’ was implemented earlier than on iOS. On iOS it appeared in 2015 in iOS 9, and it wasn’t as straightforward as it is here. The feature was called Facedown detection and what it did was to keep the iPhone’s screen turned off when you received notifications while your iPhone was placed face-down. This saved a bit of battery power, but that was it. It also worked only on iPhones equipped with motion coprocessors (iPhone 5s and up), and if fitness tracking was turned on. On BB10, it’s just a matter of flipping this switch, and the battery saving is more similar to iOS’s Low Power Mode.

BB Passport - Work Wide
Image taken from BlackBerry’s website in 2014. Having a wider screen was marketed as a productivity bonus, and — at least in some cases — I’m inclined to agree.

Final thoughts

Obviously this piece doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive look at BB10’s user interface, but I hope the selected examples provided are enough to illustrate how tasteful and thoughtful its design is on the whole. When I was tweeting my very first impressions immediately after reviving the Passport, I received some funny feedback from people who basically were asking me what the hell I was doing. In case it still isn’t clear, it’s my love for user interfaces that drives me to explore other platforms, whether dead or alive or on life support. I still remain an iPhone/iOS user first.

However, the more I explore other platforms, the more I appreciate what they tried to do UI-wise. And yes, I used to be one of those Apple users who sincerely believed Apple was always the best at creating user interfaces. But the truth is that, in some cases, other platforms implemented a feature in a more consistent/intelligent/innovative way than Apple. The fact that a platform was left behind or failed doesn’t mean that everything about it was a failure.

I understand why BlackBerry decided to switch completely to Android as opposed to carrying on with a native OS solution for their smartphones, but from what I’ve been able to observe in the two months I’ve used this BlackBerry Passport, it is indeed a pity that BB10 has been left behind. Its design, while some consider it ‘boring’, is a perfect fit — visually and functionally — for business users; but it is also clean and easy to grasp for regular people or users (like me) who had never touched a BlackBerry smartphone before. It might be less distinctive or visually striking as Windows Phone 7 and 8 have been with their Metro UI, but it is very much in line with BlackBerry’s identity. And just like I was genuinely shocked by how much I have been enjoying the user experience and interface design in Windows Phone 8.1, my experience with BB10 on this particular handset has been surprisingly positive and enjoyable.