Readjusting the sync

February 22, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Software

I was beginning this piece by writing, If you, like me, use several computers and devices of very different vintages on a regular basis…, but I reckon I’m a bit of an extreme case here. Anyway, I use several computers and devices of very different vintages, and for years I have relied on a syncing solution that truly unified and harmonised my workflow, letting me write notes e.g. on a 2004 12-inch PowerBook G4 to then resume my work on a 2017 iMac, to then add yet another idea using my iPad 1 (with iOS 5), and so forth.

This solution consisted of three simple ingredients: the Notational Velocity app on my Macs, the Simplenote app on my iOS devices, and the Simplenote sync service.

What made this solution great was that Notational Velocity works on both PowerPC and Intel Macs, going back as far as Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (but also 10.3 Panther by downloading an earlier version), and that the Simplenote app works even on older iOS versions.

But, as it always happens when using vintage devices and PowerPC machines, you’re constantly wondering when the good things will eventually come to an end. And that’s what happened recently, when something that was updated in Simplenote broke the authentication process in Notational Velocity, which now throws a “Not found” error when it tries to synchronise.

A possible, promising workaround was switching to nvALT, a very nice fork of Notational Velocity with some interesting extra features, but while using nvALT 2.2.8 (the current version at the time of writing) solves the Simplenote syncing issue, it only solves it on my Intel Macs. While the app can be downloaded and installed on PowerPC Macs, it just doesn’t launch. The earlier version 2.0 works well under Tiger and Leopard (PPC), but the Simplenote syncing is broken just like in the original Notational Velocity. 

A bit of brainstorming

Yesterday I stopped and thought about finding an alternative solution with the same level of versatility as the previous NV+Simplenote scenario when basically everything worked everywhere. These are the first three options I came up with:

  1. Equally seamless workflow, but more limited in scope — I could switch to nvALT on all my Intel Macs. This would maintain things in sync between the Intel Macs and (hopefully) all my iOS devices, but all PowerPC Macs would be cut off.
  2. Equally extensive in scope, but more cumbersome workflow — I could move the Notational Data folder where all my notes are stored (it is located in ~/Library/Application Support/) to a place like Box.com or even to the storage space for morrick.me, and then switch from using the Simplenote sync service to pointing every instance of Notational Velocity to the new, shared folder location. This would be a rather awkward artisanal syncing solution, because every time I want to use Notational Velocity on a PowerPC Mac I would have to first mount my Box’s ‘cloud drive’ via WebDAV[1], or access my storage space on morrick.me by connecting to the server via the Finder.
  3. The radical approach — This could work as seamlessly and cover an equally wide range of devices and Mac OS and iOS versions, but it would mean a complete change in the tools I use. This solution involves switching to Evernote. I have a basic account since 2008(!) there. I could probably try to import my archived notes in Evernote, and then I could access them and keep them in sync from everywhere. Evernote has maintained an overall decent degree of backward compatibility. Their older PowerPC client still works, and the last time I checked their iOS app it still worked under iOS 4.2.1. But while this would manage to preserve the seamlessness of my workflow, I would dearly miss using Notational Velocity. It is among my very favourite Mac applications of all time (I’ve praised it more than once on my blog, and I talked about it in more detail in Synchronised writing, a post that is now nine years old) and I’ve been using it for so long I’ve become quite fast and productive with it. Further, it works in a way that deeply reflects my mindset — if this makes any sense — and to me Notational Velocity has reached the same indispensable status as Alfred has for many Mac users.

The most reasonable solution

Sometimes we devise complicated workarounds when a simpler solution lies just before our eyes. I’m sure there are sharper — or at least less sleep-deprived — people than I among my readers, who will already have figured out what I’m getting at. The best, more reasonable course of action is to implement Option №1 above — i.e., to switch to nvALT on all my Intel Macs — and use a browser on my PowerPC Macs to access Simplenote’s web app. This is way less cumbersome than Option №2, it doesn’t involve switching to a whole new service like Option №3, and is overall tolerable enough. I really don’t like not being able to use Notational Velocity on my PowerPC Macs, as it certainly is less resource-intensive than having to keep a browser tab open in Simplenote’s web app[2], but it’s honestly better and less painful than the alternatives I’ve considered. 

I’m sure I had overlooked this solution during my initial brainstorming because I was fixated on finding a solution that would have allowed me to keep using Notational Velocity (or nvALT) on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. 

I admit I’m a bit bummed by the progressive disappearance of cloud/sync services that play nice with PowerPC Macs. I realise it’s essentially a matter of older Mac OS versions not supporting current security protocols, and that a browser like TenFourFox is a lifesaver because at least you can authenticate correctly and use a web interface. At the same time, if you offer a Dropbox-like online storage and sync service via the cloud, consider creating an HTML-only version of your file browser, so that it can be usable when accessed by older hardware. Navigating through my Dropbox files and folders and doing some basic operations using the web interface is unnecessarily slow and cumbersome even on my Mac mini G4 at 1.42 GHz, the fastest PowerPC Mac in my arsenal. 

 

 

Retail: C

February 19, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

When I got to the end of John Gruber’s 2018 Apple Report Card, I liked that he added his evaluation of the state of Apple’s Retail, and I agree that Retail should be one of the categories of Jason Snell’s report card. Gruber writes:

I’ve disliked the experience of buying stuff at the Apple Store ever since they did away with queues for checking out. I just want to get in line, wait my turn, pay, and leave. Instead, the way to check out at an Apple Store is to wander around until you get the attention of an employee who has one of the handheld checkout iPod Touches. This can be maddening. My wife refuses to shop at an Apple Store for this reason. I know you can use the Apple Store app to check yourself out, but I don’t like it. Part of the reason Apple’s stores are too crowded is that people are wandering around trying to pay for things.

And getting technical support at Apple Stores is terrible now. In the old days you could just walk in with a broken or otherwise problematic device and get an appointment at the Genius Bar within the hour. Now, the Genius Bar is booked for days in advance — sometimes close to a week. In some ways that’s inevitable — Apple is way more popular now than it was pre-iPhone. But inevitable or not, the result is that getting support at an Apple Store now stinks. And frankly, the technical acumen of the Genius Bar staffers is now hit-or-miss. 

I rarely visit my local Apple Store. Friends of mine have been to “Today at Apple” events and they told me they had a nice time. I wanted to see for myself, but I’ve always had scheduling conflicts, or I didn’t book my slot in time. If I just want to pay the store a visit to look around, it’s a frustrating experience because the place is usually crowded and I don’t want to fight with stubborn 12-year-olds to have a chance to put my hands on a new iPad Pro.

Thankfully all my Apple hardware has been reliable, so I can’t say anything about the Genius Bar service of my Apple Store, but the anecdotes I’ve heard paint a similar scenario as the one Gruber describes.

But the one time I needed actual information, and acted on the information I was given, it was a disaster; for the simple reason that the Apple Store clerk who ‘took care’ of me gave me incorrect information. This happened in June 2018 when I was trying to purchase an iMac. I simply asked if it was possible to do a partial financing at the time of purchase. For example, suppose you want to buy a €1,500 Mac and you want to pay €1,000 up-front and the rest in a few instalments. The clerk told me this was “totally possible”. Even online, without coming to the store? “Sure! You can, for instance, buy a €1,000 gift card, go to the store, go through the payment process, do a partial payment by typing the gift card code, then choose the financing option when the system asks you how you want to pay the rest of the amount.” This sounded logical to me, so I did as instructed.

Except, after typing the gift card code, the only option was (if I remember correctly) to pay the remaining amount by using a credit or debit card. Since this was late in the evening, the following morning we phoned Apple Support and, after waiting a while, we talked to someone who told us that no, partial financing was not possible. “Who gave you such information?” they asked. “One of your guys,” we replied bitterly.

Now, normally gift cards aren’t refundable. I was too angry and frustrated for this, so I let my wife handle the situation. She later told me that, once at the Store, she explained the issue to a manager. The manager asked her who gave us the incorrect information, and luckily that clerk was present, so my wife was able to literally point at him. The manager kindly refunded us the €1,000 of the gift card, and that was that. 

That was an annoying setback for me, however, because at the time my old MacBook Pro was behaving in such erratic and unreliable ways that I truly feared I couldn’t complete the work assignments for which I would earn the remaining money I needed to buy the iMac. Fortunately the MacBook Pro didn’t leave me stranded, and I could purchase the iMac the following month. 

But that clerk’s incompetence had cost me time and unnecessary grief. And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t cross-check the information he gave me before proceeding, well, it’s because I trusted the guy. And I trusted that a company such as Apple would prepare their retail employees enough to provide what I consider basic information. This is what ‘taking care of the customer’ ultimately means, not just being superficially kind and welcoming and displaying a confident attitude. Design is how it works, not just how it looks, even in retail.

I don’t cover my webcams

February 18, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

When my main job keeps me exceptionally busy, I don’t have time to react to the tech’s topic du jour as quickly as others do. So I try to take a few notes and publish my views when I can.

I’m sure most of you will have read Joanna Stern’s piece for the Wall Street Journal about webcam security, What I Learned From the Hacker Who Spied on Me. [If this link doesn’t send you to the full version of the article and you hit the WSJ paywall, just google the exact article title and click the search result link.]

While I’m all for giving security advice, especially to non-tech users, and while I certainly agree with most of the tips Stern provides in her article, I’m also in full agreement with John Gruber: in both the Windows and Mac scenarios, the hacker was considerably helped by a series of intentionally careless steps Stern performed to lower the built-in security of her machines.

Gruber’s commentary here is spot-on:

Stern also claims she’s now using a physical stick-on camera cover. But why? In both cases — Mac and PC — the built-in system software did its job and issued clear warnings that she had to ignore for the attack to proceed. And even then — on both Mac and PC — the light next to the camera went on when it was in use.

There’s nothing in Stern’s story that makes me worry in the least bit about the security of my Mac webcams, and I don’t see anything that should worry someone running Windows 10 with Windows Defender (Microsoft’s built-in security software). The path to compromising Stern’s cameras was like a test of your home security that starts with a request that you leave your door unlocked and turn off your alarm system.

I have never understood the mass paranoia over laptop webcams — which have in-use indicator lights, which I’ve seen no evidence can be circumvented on Macs from the last decade — and the complete lack of similar paranoia over microphones, which cannot be blocked by a piece of tape and which have no in-use indicator lights. And I don’t see anyone taping over the cameras on their phones. This story is only going to feed that paranoia, because the takeaway is going to be “The Wall Street Journal says you should cover up your webcam.”

Apologies for the extended quote, but this is exactly, exactly the point I would have made even before reading Gruber’s take. And, like him, I don’t cover my webcams either. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the underlying issue of an attacker having remote access to my webcams and microphones (the latter for me is a more serious concern than the former, actually). So I installed a very nice, very unobtrusive utility called OverSight written by Patrick Wardle. As the exhaustive webpage informs, OverSight monitors a Mac’s mic and webcam, alerting the user when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses the webcam.

I recommend it. It’s a more elegant and effective solution than taping your webcams, and it monitors the internal microphone’s status as well. The app is free but you can support Wardle on Patreon.

On the camera of the iPhone 4S

February 16, 2019
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Iphone4s camera

When the iPhone 4S was introduced in October 2011, people were looking at a device that on the outside was essentially identical to the iPhone 4. Same size, same design, same materials. But Phil Schiller delivered a good presentation explaining how, under the bonnet, the iPhone 4S was a completely different beast than its predecessor. And one of the key differences was in the camera system. 

If we take a step back and look at the evolution of the camera and optics in iPhones, this is when the biggest jump forward took place. From the 5‑megapixel camera found in the iPhone 4, the 4S got equipped with an 8‑megapixel camera. Other important highlights, taken from the 2011 introduction, were:

  • An 8‑megapixel sensor, taking photos at 3264×2448, also meant 60% more pixels than on the iPhone 4.
  • The sensor featured backside illumination, allowing the iPhone to gather 73% more light per pixel than the iPhone 4 sensor, and provide better low-light performance.
  • It was also 33% faster at taking pictures.
  • The camera system also featured a Hybrid IR filter, for better colour accuracy and more uniform colours across the picture.
  • The optics consisted of a five-element lens (the iPhone 4 had four), allowing 30% more sharpness.
  • The lens provided an ƒ/2.4 aperture versus the ƒ/2.8 of the iPhone 4.
  • Inside the A5 chip there was an Apple-designed ISP (Image Signal Processor), which allowed for features like face detection, a 26% better white balance, and the ability to capture photos at faster speeds (according to the graph shown by Phil Schiller, the iPhone 4S’s ‘time to first photo’ was only 1.1 seconds, and the ‘shot to shot’ time was even shorter — 0.5 seconds).

I remember at the time how a lot of iPhone 4S owners were really amazed at the results taken with the camera. I also remember, when the iPhone 5 came out, how some people even said that the iPhone 4S’s camera was better than the one in the iPhone 5 (which still had an 8‑megapixel sensor). So, when I finally acquired my ‘new’ iPhone 4S a month ago, I was curious to test these claims. 

Before proceeding with my (informal) observations, though, I wanted to know exactly how the iPhone 5 camera was different from the one in the iPhone 4S. After rewatching the iPhone 5 introduction from September 2012, here is a brief summary of what was added and changed in the camera of the iPhone 5:

  • The base specifications are the same as the iPhone 4S’s camera, but the system is 25% smaller. (The iPhone 5 is 7.6 mm thin versus the 9.3 mm of the iPhone 4S).
  • New dynamic low-light mode. Schiller: “When you’re in low-light situations, the ISP senses that and is able to combine multiple pixels together to give you up to two f‑stops greater performance in those scenarios. You really see the difference in your low-light pictures.”
  • Precision lens alignment.
  • Sapphire crystal cover protecting the lens.
  • Next-generation ISP, allowing enhancements such as:
    • Spatial noise reduction. Schiller: “It removes the noisy particles especially in low-light images; by looking at surrounding pixels we can determine where the noise is and help remove that.”
    • Smart filter: “It looks at the image before the ISP does its noise reduction and can figure out where there are areas that should be uniform colour like a blue sky, and other areas with textures you shouldn’t be doing noise reduction on.”
    • Better low-light performance.
    • Faster photo capture: 40% faster than the iPhone 4S.

iPhone 4S vs iPhone 5: comparing cameras

Of course, in broad daylight and in generally favourable lighting conditions, both phones have given me very nice results. Night photos are an interesting story, though. 

I want to emphasise that I’m not a professional photographer, but as a long-time enthusiast shooting both film and digital cameras/devices, I have enough experience to make certain assessments. Still, my aim here is to keep things casual, present a few captures and add a bit of informal commentary. 

Night photos, I was saying. Everyone has their way of evaluating camera performance when it comes to actually using it and forgetting about tech specs and benchmarks. For me, taking photos of the city at night is a good initial test to see how a camera or smartphone behaves. You can see how the camera system handles dark areas, highly contrasted areas (bright city lights against the night sky and next to dark corners), white balance, etc.

Here are three pictures I snapped a few nights ago with the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. I have attempted to keep the scenes framed as similarly as possible. Each photo was taken first with the iPhone 4S, then with the iPhone 5. For each photo I’ve kept my hands steady, let the phone focus, then took the photo. Of course, I used the built-in Camera app for both iPhones, with the exact same settings (Flash and HDR off), and of course in both cases there was no filter, no effects, no post-processing applied of any sort. 

Comparison 1

Comparison 01

As a general impression, what I’ve noticed in all the photos I took that night, is that the automatic white balance in both iPhones does a decent job at rendering the different colour temperatures of the various light sources. Another thing that will perhaps be more obvious in the following comparisons (here the scene is rather well-lit, so it’s less noticeable at first sight) is that the iPhone 5 tends to deliver ‘moodier’, more contrasty results, especially in darker areas of the photo; while the iPhone 4S returns a lighter result in those same areas, often preserving a little bit more detail. 

Taking the image as a whole, there isn’t a clear ‘winner’, because on the one hand, the iPhone 4S captures the scene more faithfully from a lighting perspective; on the other hand, the iPhone 5 processes the scene in a way that tends to give more pleasing results. Certain parts of the image have more contrast and appear sharper on the iPhone 5, and I presume it has to do with the way the iPhone 5 handles noise reduction.

But let’s look at a 100% crop of this photo:

Comparison crop 01

If we examine the area inside the ‘a’ frame, we’ll see that it’s lighter and slightly noisier on the iPhone 4S, but also less muddled. The ornamental railings are a bit more defined, as is the architectural element on the left, whereas the whole area is darker on the iPhone 5, and slightly more blotted due to the noise reduction process. So I’ll say that I prefer the iPhone 4S version for this area. 

Now, the area inside the ‘b’ frame is intriguing, because we can notice how the iPhone 5 does a better job at delivering the fine details of the cornice — you can see its various layers — while the iPhone 4S’s camera returns a less defined, less sharp area. Note, however, how the two iPhones deliver essentially the same result for the illuminated parts of the tower between the clock and the upper part of the ‘b’ frame. 

Comparison 2

Comparison 02

Here it’s more apparent how the iPhone 5 camera returns darker shadows and gives the photo a more contrasty look. This is especially noticeable in the stark shadows under some of the windows, and in the horizontal lines in the lower part of the building. Again, by looking at how the whole scene was rendered, I’d say that the iPhone 5 version looks slightly ‘prettier’, at least to my eyes. The restaurant signs (‘VIENA’ and ‘¡Hola Valencia!’) are sharper on the iPhone 5 version, as are the backlit ads on the newsstand on the right.

But this 100% crop is interesting as well:

Comparison crop 02

It turns out that when you examine the scene more closely, the iPhone 4S camera is hands down the better at preserving detail. If you compare the area inside the ‘a’ frame, you can clearly see more details in the capital’s ornaments in the iPhone 4S photo, while the iPhone 5 renders the capital’s details with less accuracy (again, I assume due to the noise reduction filter). The area is simply darker and a lot gets lost in the shadows.

The window inside the ‘b’ frame shows again how things are a little bit clearer and defined in the iPhone 4S crop, while the iPhone 5 crop is darker and harder to make out (especially the area surrounding the window pane on the right). The ornamentation just above the window is also blurrier in the iPhone 5 crop.

Comparison 3

Comparison 03

Something peculiar happened with this capture: in the previous two examples, and in several other night shots I took in the same session, the iPhone 4S would on average be slower than the iPhone 5 both at focussing and at taking the picture. In this case the opposite happened. The iPhone 4S captured the scene right away, while the iPhone 5 struggled with the focus. The one on the right is the third and better shot I managed to get with the iPhone 5, and if you look at the right dome of the building in the background, you’ll see it’s still out of focus.

This is another picture where the iPhone 4S did a noticeably better job than the iPhone 5 at capturing the scene. Superficially, the iPhone 5 photo just looks moodier and more contrasty, but the loss of detail is visible in various spots in the foreground. Let’s have a look at a 100% crop of part of the first scooter and bike on the left:

Comparison crop 03

The first thing you see is just how the iPhone 5 failed at focussing properly[1]. Just look at the area inside the frame, at how blurry the rear of the bike, the trunk luggage box, and the licence plate are compared to the iPhone 4S crop, where you’re able to actually read the licence plate. 

The scooter in the foreground isn’t much better, either. The suspension spring is clearly more detailed in the iPhone 4S crop; the chrome parts are better defined and shinier; the shadow under the scooter is just a dark stain in the iPhone 5 crop, while in the iPhone 4S crop you can still make out some of the veins of the marble floor. In general, the darker areas in the photo (and in this crop) have better detail in the image captured by the iPhone 4S than the one captured by the iPhone 5.

Notes

I admit I was the first to be blown away by the iPhone 4S results, especially because in certain situations it seemed that the 4S had more trouble locking focus than the iPhone 5, and I had to be more patient if I wanted to take a good shot. When the photo walk was over, I came away with this first impression about the two cameras — that the iPhone 5 camera was ‘quick & dirty’, while the iPhone 4S’s was ‘slow & accurate’.

In case you were wondering: no, these aren’t just three cherry-picked accidents; I took more than 20 photos with each phone during my walk, and the results I have not included here were pretty much similar, so for brevity’s sake I selected the examples that I felt stood out the most. Yes, I didn’t just shoot once and included a photo. Especially in the third case, I shot the scene a few times until I decided I couldn’t get a better capture than the one I have presented here.

Overall, the iPhone 5 was a faster performer — quicker at focussing, quicker at taking a shot after another. Its CPU gives it an undeniable speed advantage over the 4S, so that when it comes to take a quick shot of something I’d otherwise miss, my choice would be the iPhone 5, no doubt. But when there’s no rush and I just want to capture a nice night city scene? There’s no question I’d choose the iPhone 4S any day. With photos taken in daylight, both phones are equally good choices, and in this case it becomes a matter of personal taste: the iPhone 5 tends to deliver more contrasty looks and saturated colours, so if you prefer vibrant results out of the box, you’ll want the iPhone 5. 

One last fun comparison

How about an indoor capture, with plenty of artificial light, different surfaces with different colours and textures? The following day I was at the university library, and I also had with me the iPhone 4 and the fourth-generation iPod touch. So here’s the same scene captured with all four devices:

Comparison 04

The very first thing you notice is how the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 return warmer colours when compared with the iPhone 4 and the iPod touch 4. The iPhone 5 is the best at picking up certain details in selected areas of the image, but you really have to squint, because the iPhone 4S is a strong contender here. As for colour accuracy, the iPhone 4S is the best at rendering the ceiling. The other devices all deliver darker results that don’t really correspond to the real thing. 

But here’s the kicker: the iPhone 4 is the best at rendering the colour of the floor. Both the 4S and 5 give too warm results, while the iPod touch 4 paints the floor with too cold a hue. And the iPhone 4 is again the best at rendering the white of the semi-transparent glass separators of the table on the left and the white of the table surface. The same elements in the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 captures are too warm. The iPod touch 4, like the iPhone 4, gets this particular white right, but since its camera is only 0.7 megapixels, there’s loss of detail in the highlights.

Speaking of the iPod touch 4: I added it to the mix just for fun, but given how limited its camera is[2], I honestly expected far worse results compared to the other three iPhones. Sure, once you look closer you can’t miss the general softness and lack of fine detail (look at the books in the three shelves visible on the right, for example), but again, I’ve seen far worse photos taken by older smartphones and feature phones with 1- or even 2‑megapixel cameras. And colours are decent, all in all.

Conclusion

I know, I’ve currently written more than 2,500 words to talk about a camera comparison between two iPhones — the 4S and 5 — that are now more than 7 and 6 years old, respectively. But my casual, informal tests could be of use to someone who maybe wants a still usable smartphone with acceptable specs, and has next to no budget for it. If you’re that someone, I’d recommend the iPhone 5 because it’s generally more capable than the 4S, it runs iOS 10.3.3 much better than how the iPhone 4S runs iOS 9.3.5. But if what you’re looking for is a vintage, bare-bones solution for a few basic tasks yet with a respectable camera, the iPhone 4S is a nice device for the very little money you’ll pay for it today.

Another thing I wanted to demonstrate with this article is that just because these iPhones don’t have ‘bionic’ processors providing ‘computational photography’, that doesn’t mean they can’t take good photos. My examples above are taken in difficult, complex lighting conditions, so they may not be really striking at first glance, but when there’s plenty of natural light, both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 deliver stunning results for their age and technical specifications.

And last but not least: to those who told me the iPhone 4S’s camera was generally better than the iPhone 5’s — you were right, and I’m sorry for my initial scepticism.

 

  • 1. Could this be human error? I tend to exclude it, firstly because with all the other photos taken during this session the iPhone 5 didn’t have much problems at focussing. Secondly, I was shooting undisturbed and I wasn’t in any particular rush: my hands were steady. Thirdly, this iPhone 5 has been my daily driver from March 2015 to November 2018, I have taken thousands of photos with it, and I know how to handle it in difficult light conditions. ↩︎
  • 2. So limited that if you check its tech specs on Apple’s website using the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine, you’ll notice they never mention megapixels, only that the back camera delivers Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960×720). But images at 960×720 resolution means they’re taken with a 0.7‑megapixel camera. ↩︎

 

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. ↩︎