A few notes on the iPhone 4S

February 9, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

iPhone 4S

About a month ago, for less than €40, I bought an iPhone 4S at a local second-hand shop. I wanted a 16 GB white model, but they only had an 8 GB unit in white. So I went with the black option. I already have a black iPhone 4: a white 4S would have really been a nice addition to my collection, but never mind, I’ll get there eventually. I was mostly interested in how it performed anyway, so for now æsthetics come second. 

The three main reasons why I decided to acquire an iPhone 4S now, specifically, are:

  1. I’m still taking notes on the evolution of iOS’s user interface in its most transformative period; I currently own several vintage iOS devices, each running a different version of iOS, from iPhone OS 3 on a first-generation iPod touch, to iOS 10 on an iPhone 5. All except iOS 8, so I needed a device where I could see it in action. The iPhone 4S can be updated up to iOS 9.3.5, and that’s the version you’ll very likely find installed when you acquire an iPhone 4S today. But the downgrade to iOS 8.4.1 is actually very straightforward, more than I expected.
  2. I wanted to see if and how an iPhone 4S — a device from almost eight years ago — could hold up in 2019 with regard to performance and features.
  3. I love the iPhone 4/4S design and form factor. I still use my iPhone 4 every now and then (mostly to keep using apps that are now discontinued, but also because it’s so great to handle), but its Home button has progressively become less responsive, making the phone less enjoyable to operate. An iPhone 4S was an ideal candidate to turn to.

After bringing my ‘new’ iPhone 4S home and charging it fully, I played a bit with the fresh installation of iOS 9.3.5 it came with, and the first impression was that it behaved a bit better than many reports had led me to believe. Sure, there was some lag here and there, but nothing especially intolerable. Perhaps this was because the phone had just been restored and was only populated with Apple apps, while performance starts degrading once the phone is loaded with a slew of third-party apps and needs to juggle more tasks.

Anyway, I needed to downgrade it to iOS 8.4.1 for my ‘research’, and I was already worried it would be a convoluted hacking process. Far from it. You probably can find other resources and tutorials on the Web. For me, these two videos by 91Tech were enough:

In broad terms, the process goes like this: you first jailbreak the iPhone so that you can install a piece of software that fools the iPhone into believing it’s still on iOS 6, so that in turn it can trigger the (genuine) over-the-air update to iOS 8.4.1. The beauty of this — for those who don’t like to have a jailbroken device — is that once you download and install iOS 8.4.1, the update process removes any previous jailbreaking, and you find yourself with a fresh, clean, legit installation of iOS 8.4.1.

And iOS 8 on this iPhone is indeed a better option. Everything is smooth and the device feels pleasantly responsive. Also, I was almost forgetting how nice it is to hold a smaller iPhone that can easily be operated with just one hand. 

I appreciated this especially when taking photos. While I really haven’t had issues when taking portrait shots with the iPhone 5 before and the iPhone 8 now, the iPhone 4S is simply perfectly balanced for this task. You hold it in your hand as you frame your shot, and the phone feels stable without you having to adjust your hand — or using two hands — to counterbalance any possible wiggling or shaking. Even in landscape orientation I managed to keep the phone stabilised with just one hand. 

Note: I wanted to talk more about the iPhone 4S’s camera in this article, but at present I haven’t tested it enough to say something meaningful about it. Expect a separate article dedicated to the phone’s 8‑megapixel camera, perhaps with a comparison with the 8‑megapixel camera of my iPhone 5.

Isn’t a 3.5‑inch display a bit small for today’s standards? — More than ‘standards’, I’d say ‘habits’, but anyway. There are two major scenarios where a smaller display such as this may show its limits today, I think. The first is media consumption, particularly videos. While you can definitely watch a YouTube video on the iPhone 4S[1] — the device is still powerful enough to provide playback without hiccups — you’ll just want a bigger, more widescreen viewing area. The second is web browsing. Here, the problem isn’t so much that a lot of today’s websites are tailored for bigger screens, even on mobile (although this has an undeniable impact), but web advertising. There are essentially no content blockers for iOS 8 (and 32-bit devices in general)[2], and a lot of websites end up crowding that 3.5‑inch screen with ads and popups that are difficult to dismiss given the cramped space. Still, I’ve been positively surprised by the iPhone 4S’s ability to handle certain heavy, ad-ridden websites.

The Verge's cookie policy

The Verge’s cookie policy popup warning is so big you can’t even view it in its entirety on the iPhone 4S display. But once you get past it, the site is capably handled by the device.

 

How’s the app situation under iOS 8? — I still haven’t had the time to thoroughly check whether all my favourite apps and services work on the iPhone 4S or not, but I’ve installed a basic setup of third party apps, and all of the following still work (I mean their ‘last compatible version’, of course):

  • Web Browsers: Safari, Brave, Firefox.
  • Music streaming: Spotify.
  • Cloud services: Dropbox and Box.
  • Photo/image editing apps: Camera+, Snapseed, BLACK, Skitch, Annotate.
  • To access Flickr, I use a nice client called Pure that still works under older iOS versions (even iOS 6).
  • RSS feeds and read-it-later services: Reeder and Instapaper.
  • Wikipedia browsing: both Wikipanion and Wikiwand are nice apps that work well on smaller screens.
  • Podcasts: Apple’s Podcasts works, of course, and Pocket Casts still works on my iPhone 4 with iOS 7, so I’ve reason to believe it should work under iOS 8 as well. 
  • The YouTube app.
  • Twitter’s official client works, and you’ll enjoy an overall less cluttered experience, but you’ll face the old 140-character limit when writing a tweet. (Alas, same goes for third-party clients such as Twitterrific and Tweetbot).
  • My favourite dictionary for quick lookups, WordWeb.
  • I haven’t yet installed third-party messaging apps. When I purchased the iPhone, I was told that WhatsApp wouldn’t work on this device, but since I don’t use WhatsApp it’s not a problem (when I told this to the young clerk, she looked at me as if I had just landed on Earth and exited my spaceship). But Telegram should work. (iMessage works, of course).
  • For some “Apple works in mysterious ways” reasons, AirDrop was not enabled on the iPhone 4S when the feature debuted in iOS 7, but Scotty, my favourite third-party utility to send photos wirelessly from iOS devices to Macs still work great under iOS 8.

Overall, using an iPhone 4S with iOS 8 still provides a decent experience today. The hardware is snappy, the user interaction is fluid, and one-handed operation is just awesome — whereas under iOS 9 the kind of response you seem to get from the phone is I’m okay, but I guess I had too much to eat last night. And while you’ll certainly find more updated apps with iOS 9, the app situation under iOS 8 is not that bad. Perhaps because iOS 8 introduced a lot of new features at the time, in my research I’ve found a fair amount of apps that, when “downloading the last compatible version”, appear to have iOS 8 as minimum requirement. I’ve noticed that because when trying to install them on my iPhone 4 with iOS 7, I got the alert This application requires iOS 8.0 or later. You must update to iOS 8.0 in order to download and use this application.

Speaking of the new features introduced in iOS 8, I must say I was surprised to find many I thought had been introduced later:

  • The Health app and HealthKit.
  • QuickType, the predictive typing feature that displays word selections above the keyboard as you type.
  • The ability to install third-party keyboards.
  • Handoff.
  • iCloud Drive.
  • Siri’s hands-free activation (“Hey, Siri”).

The combination of such features and the decent availability of still-functioning apps make iOS 8 feel ‘younger’ than it is, and the device running iOS 8 less ‘out of the loop’ than a device that can’t be updated past iOS 7. (Though one very visible detail betraying iOS 8’s vintage is the use of Neue Helvetica as system font. The Apple-designed San Francisco font would debut in iOS 9.)

Would I recommend the iPhone 4S as a primary device today? Heh. It’s a tricky question to answer. I think the only kind of person to find an iPhone 4S appealing is someone who simultaneously: a) has essentially no budget to spend on a smartphone; b) isn’t a tech nerd but just someone who would use a smartphone for basic tasks; c) strongly dislikes big phones and for whom even a 4‑inch device like the iPhone 5/5s/5c is too big to handle.

Then there would be the software side of the recommendation: leaving iOS 9.3.5 or downgrading to iOS 8.4.1? It’s ultimately a matter of compatibility versus speed. iOS 9 would offer a wider selection of still-modern-enough iOS apps. iOS 8 would offer a more optimised, refined, faster performance and better responsiveness. 

  • Brief aside: the vintage iPhone I’d actually recommend to those with very limited budget (meaning they cannot afford even a second-hand 16 GB iPhone SE) would be an iPhone 5 with iOS 10, or a 5s with iOS 12. I’m in complete agreement with the aforementioned 91Tech YouTuber in thinking that the iPhone 5 is the best all-round iPhone Apple has ever made. It ran flawlessly all the iOS versions it supported with no decrease in performance as it went from iOS 6 to 7, to 8, to 9 to 10. It’s still a capable phone today even if it can’t go past iOS 10.3.3 (as I’m writing this, my iPhone 5 is downloading 28 app updates, so there’s still third-party activity for this two-year-old version of iOS), but an iPhone 5s may be more appealing to those who have just a little bit more money to spend, and want a 64-bit device with a current operating system and a secure authentication method such as Touch ID.

As I’m concluding this series of quick observations, it just occurred to me that the iPhone 4S could also make for an interesting backup phone or ‘detox’ phone for those who are reaching ‘smartphone fatigue’ and look for something more basic to use on weekends or during excursions or gatherings. Something that still enables them to make and receive calls and messages, check for that important email, etc., but not something that makes them want to stare at it all the damn time.

 

  • 1. Both in a browser and in the YouTube app itself, whose version 12.x that runs under iOS 8 still works fine at the time of writing. ↩︎
  • 2. Unless you were quick enough to act and installed the Brave browser for iOS when it was still compatible with iOS 8 and 9. If you did, you can reinstall it from your purchased apps and use its older version that will run under iOS 8 and provide a faster, less cluttered browsing experience. ↩︎

 

People and resources added to my reading list in 2018

January 15, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Oh, 2018, what a mess you’ve been, resources-wise. As usual, I’m talking about my experience, and I’m talking about written resources first and foremost. Since 2013, I’ve been keeping this tradition of writing a summary article to share interesting resources and people I’ve decided to follow on a regular basis. Checking past instalments, there were quite a few ‘rich’ years full of new discoveries. Most of what I’ve found over the past few years I have kept. But, as I wrote last year, in recent times I’ve also noticed an alarming trend in my feeds: I’ve been removing previously-added people and resources that have failed to maintain my interest (or their quality), while at the same time not finding new ones worth adding.

2018 was no different. Not necessarily worse than 2017 in general (see below), but not better either.

Fewer blogs, more video channels

One interesting thing I’ve noticed in my 2018 resource-seeking journey is this: I have found comparatively more tech YouTube channels worth following than personal tech-oriented blogs. And this is what ‘saved’ the year, for me. At the same time, I’ve observed that there are a lot of people using their YouTube channel as a sort of ‘video blog’, i.e. they sit there essentially reading their script at the camera. 

In some cases this is done masterfully, with hosts exuding enough personality as to make their videos interesting enough; but often I’ve reached the end of a video and wondered why they did not just publish the script as an article for everyone to read. It would have been less expensive for them, easier to follow for the audience (I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly thrilled when the person reads his or her script at a very quick pace because they also want to keep the video short), easier to quote if you wanted to respond with an article or blog post; and perhaps less boring overall. At the very least I could have absorbed their opinion better, and listened to some music while reading.

But I really got this vibe, though: that video is the new way (or maybe the ‘in’ way) of talking about tech today. This doesn’t necessarily make me sad — in the end, what matters is the quality of the content, and some people prefer video as their delivery medium — but I’d really love to see a resurgence of the traditional personal blog all the same. I know that nothing on the Web is exactly infused with permanence, but YouTube videos feel more ephemeral nonetheless. They feel like perishables, not materials designed to be revisited or referenced in the future. Creators (at least in tech) are aware of this, of course, and in fact a lot of what they publish are short videos talking about the topic du jour or the latest and hottest device. 

Nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s fast food. Every now and then I enjoy fast food. But it’s not my absolute favourite way of eating — literally and metaphorically.

YouTube channels

As I said, I discovered and subscribed to a few channels that have surprised me with their consistent level of quality (production, shooting, content) and professionalism displayed by the creators.

I’m still subscribed to the channels I mentioned last year (except for Unbox Therapy, I simply got tired of the host’s antics and attitude), and the following are the new additions.

Tech

  • Dave Lee (aka Dave2D) — Dave is really great at what he does. Most of his videos are product reviews, particularly of laptops, phones, and tablets, with a special preference for gaming laptops and technologies. Dave’s videos are usually short and to-the-point, and I really love his quiet yet confident style. His attention to detail is evident in his reviews and opinion videos, and he’s usually quite fair and balanced.
  • Matthew Moniz — He’s more effervescent than Dave, and maybe a bit more eclectic in the choice of products he reviews. He’s humorous and I like his light-hearted style. Like Dave, Matthew’s videos are usually short and very focused. And as I wrote in a comment to him, what I appreciate about his approach is that he’s fast, but not superficial; accurate, but not pedantic.
  • 91Tech — If you like to watch brief iPhone retrospectives, and enjoy topics like Is an iPhone 4S still usable today? or Is it worth buying a [insert past iPhone model here] in 2019? then make sure to check Josh’s channel.
  • This Does Not Compute — Colin is a down-to-earth, knowledgeable tech geek, and he covers a wide range of tech-related subjects. His videos, too, range from the long-form video podcast format, to the occasional longer investigation (I discovered him via this video: Can you install Windows 10 on a Pentium II?), to the short product disassembly or modding.
  • TechAltar — Marton’s videos are usually product reviews and opinion pieces. His videos tend to be longer and more in-depth; he does his homework for the topic at hand and it shows. Since I’m really lacking in understanding business and marketing, I’ve really enjoyed some of Marton’s videos that discuss e.g. Why Samsung lets Huawei win, or Can LG save its smartphone business?, or Why does Xiaomi limit its profits to 5%?, etc. He’s a really good explainer, and I really like his style: professional, but not irritatingly clever or smug.
  • Mac84 — A vintage Apple & Mac enthusiast who deserves more subscribers. No, you won’t find glossy animations, effects, or high-end production there; just an honest guy, talking to the camera about his passion for vintage Apple and Mac computers, his findings and acquisitions, and so on. If you find this appealing, go check out his channel.
  • Sara Dietschy — Sara is fun, energetic, and she’s probably the tech YouTuber who covers the widest range of topics on her channel: product reviews, photography, video production, tech tips and more; she also has a video podcast and does the occasional vlogging. She is competent, she has personality, and makes everything she does seem effortless.
  • Erica Griffin — Another great tech YouTuber. As you can see on the home page of her channel, Erica has neatly arranged her videos by topic, so you have “Insanely in-depth reviews” (my favourite), “Unboxings”, “News & Vlogs”, “Toys & Gadgets”, “Impressions & Events” and more. I like her pragmatic style when reviewing something, and the fact that she strives for providing more than just a quick cursory overview of a product or device. I particularly enjoyed her review of the Apple Watch Series 4.
  • front page tech — Last but not least, the essence of this channel is aptly summed up in its tag line: Tech news. Personality. Bad jokes. It’s hosted by Jon Prosser and edited by Brian Shoop. Every day I read tech news, then on Twitter I read about tech news with the added sarcasm, then I read the more or less informed commentary on tech blogs… It can get tiring. So I watch front page tech because sometimes you just need to approach tech with a bit of detachment and humour. Jon Prosser is very good at what he does: the quick delivery, the occasional off-script (bad) joke, but he also manages to convey his opinion and perspective when you look past the metaphorical fool mask he wears in every (short) episode of the channel.

Gaming

When I purchased the 21.5‑inch 4K Retina iMac in July 2018, having a decidedly more capable machine than my aging 2009 MacBook Pro revived my interest for games. Again, YouTube has been a surprisingly useful tool to “see others try before I buy”. Having said that, the so-called Let’s Play genre of YouTube videos isn’t exactly something I find captivating. While occasionally useful to get an idea of how a game feels and plays (sometimes trailers are deceiving), I found a lot of these LetsPlayers rather off-putting and in some cases even obnoxious, making the whole game experience about themselves instead of providing interesting critique of the game they were trying out. So I ultimately didn’t find anyone to be intriguing enough to make me want to subscribe to their channel. 

With two notable exceptions. Both these channels are somewhat obscure, with just 200–300 subscribers, and I think they deserve a wider audience. These two women have different styles and approaches, but I really like them both because, at the end of the day, they put their passion for games before their egos. Unlike many others, they’re not like Hey, watch how cool I am while I play this game, but more like Hey, you should check out this potentially interesting game which I happen to be playing at the moment.

  • Tench Froast — I don’t know the name of the host, but she’s a smart, witty, genuine, sarcastic, entertaining woman. She loves trying out indie games for the most part, and when you follow her in her playthroughs, you have this feeling of really being there too. She’s engaging, completely direct and spontaneous, and whether you like the game she’s playing or not, you’ll certainly gain a few good laughs from the experience. But I also like the fact that she’s not just in for the jokes and the lulz, she also makes smart observations and criticism during the gameplay, explaining what she likes and why, and what she thinks doesn’t work and why. I also like her “No Commentary” series, where she just shows gameplay without commentary, so that you can focus on a particular game; and the “Toast Bites” series, little compilations of ‘bites’ taken from 5–6 different indie games, with a brief review for each of them. This series is perfect to discover indie titles you may not have heard about, and which could be interesting to try out.
  • Level Joy — Joy is another smart woman whose gameplay videos I appreciate. Her style is very different from Tench Froast but, like Tench Froast, she offers good commentary and criticism during gameplay. I especially like how, in certain situations while playing, she shares her thought process with the audience, and analyses what the game is putting in front of the player. I discovered her by chance when looking for videos of Bioshock Infinite’s gameplay. She has a nice series of videos about it and that was enough to convince me to purchase the game on Steam a few months ago.

Music

Before you start thinking I’m getting addicted to YouTube, I have only one resource in this category, and it’s Rick Beato. He’s a musician and producer, and I think I discovered him because someone I follow on Twitter mentioned one of the videos in his “What makes this song great?” series. 

Simply put, Beato is the music teacher I wish I had had back in the day. He covers different topics in his videos, from music analysis, to music theory, to tips and lessons for other musicians still in the learning stages, and more; but to me the most interesting and entertaining videos are the “What makes this song great?” series, where Beato takes a song and dissects it to explain and demonstrate what makes it work, what makes it unique. And when I say dissects I mean it literally, because he’ll isolate the different instruments to highlight certain passages, solos and phrases of particular interest. 

This series has been quite great so far, because with songs and artists I already knew, Beato managed to make me listen to them in a different way, and made me notice things I completely missed (or didn’t even know were there, in some cases); and on the other hand, thanks to him I have discovered artists I didn’t know or only heard in passing.

Podcasts

Very little to report here. It’s the same list as last year, with a few podcasts removed. So now we have only:

But there are two very interesting additions. With these two podcasts, I really try my best not to miss an episode:

  • The Menu Bar by and with Zac Cichy and Andrew J. Clark. The podcast’s About page offers a very good description: …A place where he [Andrew] and I [Zac] could ramble on and expand beyond the confines of Twitter. And especially, a place where we could invite friends in the technology world to have a drink and discuss everything from weekly tech developments, to movies, to general life stuff. Anything was possible. Here, Zac Cichy is talking about the first run of the podcast a few years back. The podcast was revived last year and, well, this description still fits. What I love about it is that it’s not your usual boring tech-oriented podcast, exactly because it’s not always about tech. Sometimes there’s nothing technological in tech. Other times there’s technology where you don’t expect it. That may be one way of telling you what The Menu Bar is all about. But there are more ways than one. If you like it and want to show your support, The Menu Bar has a Patreon page.
  • The Relentless Picnic by and with three men whose Twitter handles are @georgelazenby, @juskewitch, and @erikk38. I really don’t know how to properly describe it, so I won’t even try. Topics are most varied. It can get philosophical and existentialist. Episodes are long, but infrequent (only five were released in all of 2018). Intelligent conversation. Rambling. Tangents. They have a Patreon page.

Tech blogs and sites

Almost nothing to report. You read that right. My RSS feed reader hasn’t seen any new addition in 2018, except for Eli Schiff. He’s a design critic who doesn’t update his blog very often, but when he does, it’s a treat. He usually prefers in-depth investigations on a particular topic, broken down into instalments (for example, I really enjoyed his 5‑part series Fall of the Designer — it starts here), but he also writes standalone pieces. He might come across as abrasive, but he’s clearly passionate about design; it’s something he deeply cares about, and that is reflected in his writings, which are analytical and articulate.

Check my previous People and resources added to my reading list instalments (you’ll find all the links at the end) to have an idea of whose blogs and websites I read on a regular basis.

There’s also another site I enjoyed visiting routinely: Great Technology Story, written by “Stan Peach” (it’s a pseudonym). Stan writes exceptional sketches set in an alternate world where Steve Jobs is still alive and interacts with other Apple executives, often criticising a current Apple product or event. Great Technology Story also features other humorous pieces (interviews and reviews) I’ve had a great time reading. Of course you won’t get much of the humour if you’re not into Apple and tech in general.

My RSS management

Again, nothing new has changed from last year. I still use the same apps on my computers, iOS devices, and Windows Phone devices. Because there’s no need to fix what’s not broken. So:

  • On my Intel Macs: Reeder, but keeping an eye on NetNewsWire 5.0 development.
  • 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 with Windows 8.1 Pro: Nextgen Reader.
  • On my Windows Phone 8.1/Windows 10 Mobile smartphones: Nextgen Reader and FeedLab.
  • On my Palm Pre 2 (heh heh): FeedSpider. Really a great app. You could mistake it for a first-party application if, you know, Palm were still around.

That’s all, I think. As you can see if you have read this far (thanks so much, by the way), I’ve talked at length about my discoveries, but in the end the new additions have only been 16. That’s not a bad amount per se, but only 2 out of those 16 are written resources, and I really hope I’ll find more interesting writers in tech this year. 

Past articles

In reverse chronological order:

I hope you find this series useful. (Keep in mind that some links in these past articles may now be broken). Feel free to send tips and suggestions for more resources, either via email or Twitter. Thanks for reading!

The gem Apple discontinued: the 11-inch MacBook Air

January 3, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

MacBook Air 11

When it arrived by post a couple of weeks ago, I joked on Twitter: Loving my new 11-inch iPad Pro!

It turns out it was only half a joke. This Mac really invites you to treat it as a pro tablet + keyboard. It’s very compact, it’s very light (1.08 kg), it’s still a thin machine by 2018 standards, it has a long-lasting battery. It’s also absolutely quiet (yes, I checked, the fan works) and it’s instant-on.

Being an eBay purchase, I was wary. But the seller had a very high transactions-to-positive-feedback ratio, the pictures used in the auction were of the actual product (I asked them anyway for confirmation), the seller offered a three-month warranty plus a 30-day no-question-asked return policy. So, after a promising message exchange, I decided to go for it. This was December 13. The Mac arrived on December 18, amazingly quickly for an international shipping just before the Christmas holidays. And another pleasant surprise was that the Mac looked even better than how it was described.

Quick specs: It’s a mid-2013 model, with a Core i5 CPU at 1.3 GHz (turbo boost to 2.6 GHz), 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD. The 2013 vintage means it has two USB 3 ports, a Thunderbolt port, a better graphic chip (Intel HD 5000), and that it can run the latest version of Mac OS. I also managed to find a unit that was well taken care of: its battery is at 94% health, has a low charge cycle count, and still lasts more than eight hours on a charge. Not bad for a 5‑year-old Mac. 

My stairway to the Air

When the time came to upgrade my main Mac back in July, I decided I was done with Apple laptops. I just dislike the design direction Apple took in 2015, when for arbitrary, thinness-driven reasons they introduced the new flattened keyboard with the butterfly mechanism. Back then I hoped it was something specifically tailored for the 12-inch retina MacBook, to keep it as thin and svelte as possible. But when the 2016 MacBook Pros adopted the same keyboard, I was hugely disappointed.

So in July I decided to get a 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac, instead, and I’m still not regretting the decision. At that point, the plan was to turn my 15-inch 2009 MacBook Pro into my portable workstation, keeping all the essential work and creative materials synced with the iMac, and using it when I needed to work while out and about or while travelling.

But during my last trip to Italy, the MacBook Pro revealed more age-related issues, and proved to be unreliable when I most needed it[1]. After researching how much it would cost me to fix the MacBook Pro, I decided it was not worth it. With that money I could easily find a newer MacBook on the used market. And while at it, I could look for a more travel-friendly 13-inch model.

Like a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Or better, a 13-inch MacBook Air.

See, at first I hadn’t even considered the 11-inch model. I remember trying it out in a few different stores when it came out in 2010, but I wasn’t convinced. I remember thinking Apple had gone a bit too far with the compactness. The display didn’t look so bad, but Mac OS X’s interface felt a bit too cramped for my taste. My assessment was misguided. 

Maybe it was because as a primary machine it felt lacking for some reason — which is strange, coming from someone who used a 12-inch PowerBook G4 as his main Mac for 5 years — but I can’t really say why it failed to thrill me eight years ago.

However, now that the need for a compact machine had arisen, I simply thought: What the hell, let’s just go for the smallest Mac Apple has made that’s still equipped with a decent keyboard. If the 11-inch MacBook Air turns out to be too small for me, I’ll just return it and get a 13-inch model.

Well, after a day and a half spent putting this little Mac through its paces, I was utterly and unexpectedly astounded. What a great machine the 11-inch MacBook Air is. 

Here are some scattered observations.

Thin and light done right

You know me, I’ve been a fierce critic of what I called Apple’s obsession with thinness (or thinsistence). As recently as late November, in my piece Minimal surface nirvana, I wrote:

I don’t know if it all started in 2008 with the first MacBook Air, or slightly earlier with the wave of netbooks, but the obsession with ‘Thin & Light’ has definitely been contagious and has shaped many computing trends of these past ten years or so. The thrill of being able to do most things on a more compact device has been potent; to the point, I think, that which system powers the device is actually a secondary factor.

I don’t feel I’ve been a hypocrite by getting a ‘new’ thin and light Mac. Actually, the thinness and lightness of this 11-inch MacBook Air, while very welcome, weren’t the main features I was searching in a new laptop. I was looking for compactness first. A Mac that could give me back the fantastic experience I had with the 12-inch PowerBook G4, enough ports so I didn’t feel constrained, and a nice keyboard to type on. All that with a limited budget available.

With such requirements, you immediately reckon that the 12-inch retina MacBook was not an option. Compact? Yes. Great display? Oh yes. Ports? Nope. Keyboard? Nope nope nope. Price? Don’t even get me started.

After two weeks with the 11-inch MacBook Air, one thing is crystal clear to me: this is the best version of ‘Thin & Light’ Apple has ever made. If we put the 11-inch MacBook Air and his purported spiritual successor the 12-inch retina MacBook side by side, we can see how the only thing one can count as a ‘compromise’ in the 11-inch MacBook Air is the display; and how, on the other hand, the display is the only thing that’s not a compromise in the 12-inch MacBook. 

Michael Tsai has put this more succinctly than I possibly can: Nothing that Apple makes today has close to that combination of price, power, ports, and size.

Debunking some misconceptions

While doing my homework on the 11-inch MacBook Air before deciding to buy one, save for a few good exceptions, I encountered many reviews and YouTube videos that really sold this Mac short, spreading a fair dose of FUD about it, and almost succeeding in making me reconsider. Let’s go over the most egregious misconceptions:

The display is bad: not retina, not tall enough, not enough screen real estate

Sure, by now we are all accustomed to a ‘retina everywhere’ experience, but the display on this 11-inch Air is bright (I discovered that it was set at roughly 70% brightness after a few days of use, and it was already looking bright enough for me!). It’s not retina, but if you combine its native 1366×768 resolution with the small physical size of the display, you’ll get a denser image than the one you’ll get from, say, 1440×900 resolution on a 15-inch non-retina display. As a consequence, UI elements, icons, fonts, all appear a bit sharper. My eyesight isn’t great, and I love the 21.5‑inch retina display of my iMac, but I have absolutely no problems reading text at 9 pt on this MacBook Air. The comparatively shorter distance between your eyes and the display definitely helps here. 

Finally, many criticise the 16:9 aspect ratio, saying that while you have enough pixels horizontally, there isn’t enough breathing room vertically; you have to scroll a lot, Web browsing is a pain, etc. Granted, the 13-inch MacBook Air’s display is better proportioned and more spacious, but I still use this Mac with the Dock on the bottom, always visible, and when I need the vertical pixels — when browsing, writing, doing email, editing photos — I just use the apps in full-screen mode. It’s really not that bad, and certainly not a deal-breaker as many make it out to be.

It’s an underpowered machine

You look at benchmarks, you make comparisons on paper, and you probably think that getting a unit with just 4 GB of RAM (that is not upgradable) was a mistake. You think you’ll probably have to keep just a couple of apps open at the same time, otherwise the machine will lag, and so on and so forth. Well, while opting for an 8 GB model certainly doesn’t hurt, and while this 11-inch MacBook Air certainly cannot compete with the quad-core or more-cores CPUs of current Macs, it has handled very capably a lot of different tasks I’ve been throwing at it these past days. Undoubtedly, a great help comes from having an internal SSD instead of a spinning hard drive.

In normal use, it’s quite responsive, it doesn’t lag even with 6–7 apps open and several tabs open in Safari, and so far I haven’t been able to hear its fan except once briefly during the update from Mac OS Sierra to High Sierra. It handles way better than my 2009 MacBook Pro, and in all regular tasks it doesn’t feel less responsive than my much newer iMac with a quad-core 3 GHz CPU.

It’s not that great of a value today

The cool YouTube tech kids will say that if you’re looking for something ultraportable, you should look elsewhere. Get a 12-inch retina MacBook! Or even, Get an iPad Pro with a keyboard! While not wrong pieces of advice, per se, I think they’re debatable, as it really depends on what kind of work you plan to do with an ultraportable device. Now, if you’re looking for such a device, it’s clear that you’re not really after pro workstation performance. As I mentioned above, a 12-inch retina MacBook will have more updated technologies under the bonnet, and a better display. But if you don’t like its keyboard, and you want more than just a single USB‑C port, the 11-inch MacBook Air is already starting to look good. If your budget is limited, even a used 2015 retina MacBook can easily cost you 1.5 to 2 times more than a 2014–2015 11-inch MacBook Air. 

Again, choosing an iPad Pro over this machine is a matter of preferences. If iOS is enough for what you have to do when you’re mobile, go for it. But if you, like me, favour Mac OS for productivity, I think you should re-evaluate the 11-inch MacBook Air. It may have a small, unexceptional 16:9 display, but you also get:

  • a lightweight and compact machine you can really carry everywhere[2];
  • a good keyboard to type on, that’s also backlit and has the better ‘inverted T’ arrow keys layout;
  • a machine that can still last hours on a charge (provided you find one with a good battery — but then again, you could purchase and install a new one without breaking the bank);
  • a Mac that still offers a reasonable amount of connectivity given its small footprint (two USB ports, Thunderbolt port, headphone port, MagSafe connector);
  • a Mac that’s still quite capable of handling all everyday tasks, and that can sustain the occasional medium load if needed;
  • a Mac that — if you do a bit of research — can be found on the used market for very reasonable prices. My unit cost me as much as a regular iPad, including shipping.

I’ll reiterate: we’re in totally subjective territory when it comes to assessing what constitutes ‘good value’ today, but when you take a look at the list of features outlined above, that pretty much defines ‘good value’ for me. The thing is, too many tech nerds are generally quick at dismissing machines and devices that haven’t been produced in the last year or so. Too many consider a computer like the 11-inch MacBook Air a bad proposition because it doesn’t have a retina display, because ‘the design is old and unbalanced’[3], because it doesn’t deliver the same performance of current pro machines, because it can’t play the latest games… The problem is that they’re approaching the 11-inch Air from the wrong angle, because never in its entire lifetime was the MacBook Air positioned as the go-to machine for such tasks. 

Conclusion

iPad 1 and 11-inch MacBook Air

When, during my research, I encountered AnandTech’s predictably well-written, informative, and balanced review of the 2013 11-inch MacBook Air, I found the third image to be particularly striking, as it shows just how similar the 11-inch MacBook Air and the first-generation iPad’s footprints are. This review helped me a lot in deciding whether to get this MacBook Air model or not, so consider my photo above a little homage to the folks at AnandTech.

After about two weeks of use I can definitely say I found exactly what I was looking for, and more. It’s pretty incredible how easily the 11-inch MacBook Air won me over. Those who know me know that I prefer working with lots of screen real estate: I usually favour big displays and retina displays. The 11-inch Air has neither, but I’m surprisingly okay with that. Could I use it as my sole machine for day-long work sessions? Not all the time. But I’ve already used it twice for very long sessions, and I didn’t feel as constrained as expected. The good keyboard and the good trackpad helped a lot. I didn’t have to stop and self-consciously review my workflows as I do when I switch to an iPad. What I do on the Macs at home, I do on the MacBook Air when out and about. Same keyboard shortcuts, same spatial navigation, etc. 

At the same time, while using the 11-inch MacBook Air I quickly realised that the whole experience has felt a bit like enjoying the best of both worlds for me. This machine has both the hardware & software versatility of the Mac, and the portability and practicality of an iPad. It can go wherever an iPad can, and it also feels like using a mobile device as far as daily habits go — I don’t even bring the charger with me, I can charge the MacBook Air later when I get home, and it’s ready for another day. 

I love my new 11-inch iPad Pro.

 

  • 1. The main SSD repeatedly didn’t show up at boot, and I had to reset the SMC several times before everything went back to normal. Also, the stated 2 hours and 15 minutes of battery life after a full charge turned out not to be an accurate estimate, as the Mac shut down unexpectedly after only 30 minutes. ↩︎
  • 2. Seriously. The other day I accompanied my wife to the dentist. While waiting for her in the waiting room, instead of my iPhone, I just took out the MacBook Air. I connected to the Internet by enabling the iPhone as personal hotspot in the Wi-Fi menu, and I was amazed at how comfortably I could work. I simply used my messenger bag on my lap as a desk, and my hands were resting perfectly on the keyboard/palmrest as I typed. ↩︎
  • 3. WTF, really. There’s nothing unbalanced about the 11-inch MacBook Air’s design. The keyboard is standard size. Yes, the Function keys are smaller, and the bottom row has slightly shorter keys to allow for a slightly bigger trackpad. But it’s a non-issue — it doesn’t affect typing at all, and the trackpad is just the right size to be usable without interfering when your hands are on the keyboard. ↩︎

 

I miss the headphone port too

December 30, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Greg Kumparak at TechCrunch still misses the headphone port after two years:

Apple wasn’t the first to ditch the headphone port — but, just as with its decision to include one, its decision to remove it has turned the tide. […] If 2016 was the year Apple took a stab at the headphone jack, 2018 was the year it bled out.

And I’m still mad about it.

Technology comes and goes, and oh-so-often at Apple’s doing. Ditching the CD drive in laptops? That’s okay — CDs were doomed, and they were pretty awful to begin with. Killing Flash? Flash sucked. Switching one type of USB port for another? Fine, I suppose. The new USB is better in just about every way. At the very least, I won’t try to plug it in upside down only to flip it over and realize I had it right the first time.

But the headphone jack? It was fine. It stood the test of time for one hundred damned years, and with good reason: It. Just. Worked.

[…]

None of these [annoyances] are that big of a deal. Charge your damned headphones, Greg. Stop losing your dongles. The thing is: they took a thing that just worked and just made me happy and replaced it with something that, quite often, just bugs the hell out of me. If a friend sent me a YouTube link and I wanted to watch it without bugging everyone around me, I could just use whatever crappy, worn out headphones I happened to have sitting in my bag. Now it’s a process with a bunch of potential points of failure. 

I pretty much agree with everything Kumparak mentions in his piece (please go over there and read it in its entirety). And — believe it or not — I have even additional annoyances on top of those he talks about.

Why I can’t go all-in with wireless audio

First and foremost, among the devices I regularly use to listen to music and podcasts, there are some that lack Bluetooth (five different iPods, portable CD player, portable MiniDisc player, my home hi-fi stereo, my car stereo). If you’re thinking Dude, ditch the old stuff and listen to music on modern pieces of technology, then you must be new here. I’m not going to throw away perfectly working devices and systems just because I can’t use wireless headphones with them. My hi-fi stereo isn’t audiophile-quality hardware, but it nevertheless comes from an era when they built things that were meant to last — and in fact it still sounds great after 36 years. When I want to take a moment for myself and filter everything else out, listening to a CD through over-the-ear headphones connected to this 36-year-old amplifier is still the best way to experience music for me.

But there’s another reason why switching to wireless audio is problematic for me, and it’s as maddening as it is simple: I haven’t been able to find a good pair of Bluetooth earphones that fit my ears in a satisfactory and satisfying way. 

Note: I wrote earphones, not headphones, because while I’ve tried out many different over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones — both open-back and closed-back — and found many interesting candidates, even at very affordable prices, there are many situations where it would be more desirable and convenient to have Bluetooth earphones. They’re lighter, less intrusive, and my ears don’t feel like boiled meat after an hour of wearing them.

The problem with Bluetooth earphones is that, from my experience, 98% of the offering out there is for in-ear models, and I just can’t wear in-ear earphones. I’ve tried different brands, even expensive models with different silicone buds to provide the best fit. It’s too much for my ear canals. Maybe I have small canals, but they hurt. And I can’t get used to having such buds so deeply embedded in my ears. It’s such an annoying sensation that it becomes distracting. 

Just get yourself some AirPods, I hear you say. I wish I could. I’ve tried them on. The left bud fits and feels fine. The right one keeps falling off. And that’s something you don’t want to happen with truly wireless earphones. The funny thing is, I haven’t had such issues with my wired Apple EarPods, that have a very similar earbud design.

Man, you’re such an extreme case, you’re now uttering in frustration. Maybe I am. But I keep finding wired earphones that fit my ears perfectly. Sony, Sennheiser, Panasonic, JBL, JVC, Pioneer, you name it, I’ve tried it, and they’re great. Then I check their Bluetooth offerings… and the majority are in-ear earphones.

Mind you, I’m not arguing it’s impossible for me to find a good pair of Bluetooth earphones. Only that, so far, it has been a surprisingly difficult endeavour. Whereas I can literally buy the first pair of wired earphones I lay my eyes on — as it happened with the Gumy earbuds by JVC — and they’ll typically fit well enough.

Thankfully, I don’t need to go all-in with wireless audio

To be perfectly honest, I’m still not in a position to be personally annoyed or impacted by the disappearance of the headphone port in many current devices. So far, the only device I own which lacks a headphone port is the iPhone 8 I purchased in November. All my main computers and all the devices I’ve used the most in 2018 are equipped with a headphone port. And I can still quite happily use all my wired headphones and earphones with all of them (I usually leave a pair of earphones in every bag I use, and it’s a very practical solution). I have already purchased the mandatory dongle to use my iPhone 8 with regular wired headphones, and at the moment I don’t feel the same kind of everyday friction experienced by Greg Kumparak.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed by this trend of removing the headphone port at all costs.

As Kumparak says, there’s inherently nothing wrong with it. It just works. It’s practical. And its removal isn’t exactly necessary to improve a device in significant ways. With our computers we’re at liberty to choose wired or wireless keyboards, wired or wireless mice; why can’t we have the same with audio? I understand the convenience of not having wires that get tangled in your clothes or that are not long enough and they may limit your movements (seriously, headphones manufacturers: 1.2 m cables are too short), but on the other hand the price of not having wires is that you have yet another accessory you need to charge. Let people have both ways. I for one prefer a smartphone that gives me this kind of flexibility to a smartphone that lacks a headphone port because now it can be thinner or fully waterproof. (By the way, there are thin devices and waterproof devices equipped with a headphone port). 

At the end of the day, it all boils down to what I tweeted almost a month ago: It’s 2018 almost 2019, and no one in tech has yet given a compelling explanation as to why getting rid of the headphone jack is a good thing. Getting rid of something because “it’s old” is a silly excuse. You get rid of something if its age has become a problem in some way, if its technology is clearly past being useful or practical (the floppy drive, I/O ports that only provide slow data transfer speeds, the CD/DVD drive from laptops because it takes up a lot of space that can be better repurposed, etc.). None of these examples applies to the headphone port. Its removal is largely arbitrary. And that’s what essentially makes me mad about it.

Have a shit cookie

December 26, 2018
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Ever since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [Wikipedia | Official text] was enforced on 25 May 2018, the majority of websites I visit has welcomed me with privacy-related popups, prompting me to either accept or reject their cookies. Of course, in 99.9% of cases, advertising trackers are involved. The blurb provided in the popup dialog typically says something along these lines:

This website uses cookies to personalise content, provide custom experiences, target ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. Etc.

The really infuriating thing is that in most cases the user interaction of such popups is designed in such a way as to make the rejection of said cookies hard to discover or unnecessarily complicated for the user. Basically, you’re given the ‘easy path’ — Accept all cookies or the ‘necessary’ cookies with just one click and the popup is dismissed; or you can choose the ‘hard path’ — Click to expand the popup dialog box or to go to a entirely different page that provides a most detailed list of cookie options you can enable/disable according to your needs and wants.

You may say this is laudably transparent: the website gives you a great amount of fine-grained customisation for the cookies and trackers you want to enable or disable. I say this is employing a dark-pattern-style behaviour to make the visitor choose the path of least resistance. 

Accepting everything is the quickest, easiest way to access a website, and since most of the time this dynamic happens when a visitor is following a suggested link to an article or video, all the visitor wants to do is to read that article or watch that video as soon as possible. So they accept the shit cookie and the website has managed to maintain the pre-GDPR status quo of abusive tracking with minimal effort, while doing nothing wrong on paper. A lot of these popup cookie prompts proudly proclaim: We value your privacy. Bullshit.

Here are some examples.

SourceForge cookie

 

Leaf group cookie

In my opinion, this is how it should be done. Now, I don’t know for certain that clicking on I do not accept will effectively disable unwanted cookies, but from a user experience standpoint, this is acceptable behaviour in my book. Whether you accept or do not accept, the process is one single click. If you want to know more, you click on the More Options or Show Purposes links. But sadly, at least in my experience, these prompts are in the minority.

A lot more frequently, you’ll find things like these:

Macworld c1

If you click Got It, the window is dismissed and you can access Macworld. If you click Settings, you get this:

Macworld c2

At least the user interface is clean. But it’s still a mess of nested settings and options you have to go through and toggle individually.

Other times, you don’t even get the clean interface:

Other popular cookie popup 1

Here, if you click on Cookie Details, you can enable/disable entire categories of cookies, but the information about each cookie is presented in a very geeky way that’s hostile towards non-tech-savvy people:

Other popular cookie popup 2

The interface is intentionally cramped, the text font size is small, you have to scroll through a lot of details, and the ‘Necessary’ category cannot be disabled anyway, so you’ll always allow a minimum of tracking when you finally click on Continue with Recommended Cookies. This template, as far as I know, isn’t specific of the website I was visiting — I have encountered it many times on other sites. That’s why you don’t see the website name in this example.

But wait, there’s worse:

Pop mechanics cookie

 

Atlas Obscura cookie

 

Time cookie

Here we have three different examples where only the Accept option is featured prominently. If you want to exercise your right to disable privacy-abusing stuff, you first have to click a link (which sometimes is very clearly indicated, other times it barely stands out from the rest of the text block), and then you’re directed to a Privacy Policy page where you hopefully will find something to disable after going through a wall of text that in some instances looks like a EULA. In the three examples above, TIME seems to just shower you with a selection of links you can visit to ‘get more information’, ‘explore your options’, blah blah blah. 

Again, I ended up with this popup on my face simply because I wanted to read an article on TIME after following a link on Twitter. And I was using my iPad. Imagine when this happens and you’re on your phone, in a coffee shop or while commuting. You don’t want to read the fine print or tap on small checkboxes. You want to read the damn article. You tap Continue, go on your merry way, and get fucked in the process. No, let’s use a tech term of my own coinage here: you get trackfucked.

So here’s what I do

If I’m given a 1‑click option to Accept or Reject cookies, I’ll just click on the Reject option. If I’m made to jump through stupid hoops to revoke my cookie consent, I’ll click on Accept, or Continue, whatever. Why? Because I have a full arsenal of content blockers that will block this shit anyway. Among the blockers I happily use on my devices are:

There are more, of course, but these represent a very good starting point and offer a faster, track-free, less resource-demanding browsing of today’s Bullshit Web.