Alex Roddie reviews the first volume of my short stories, Minigrooves

March 13, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Et Cetera

Minigrooves ad

 

After reviewing Low Fidelity, the serialised science fiction novel I publish on Vantage Point magazine, Alex Roddie expressed further interest in my writing by reading and reviewing Volume 1 of Minigrooves, my short stories. The result was Book review and interview: Minigrooves by Riccardo Mori.

I really enjoyed Alex’s review. Maybe it’s because he’s a writer himself, and this makes him also a particularly perceptive reader, I don’t know, but this bit did strike a chord with me:

There’s a sense that the precise language was very carefully selected, and I loved how the word choice and the story often depended on each other to create a specific effect. It sits on the edge of poetry.

Why? Because if you consider that English is not my first language, receiving such praise from someone who not only is a native speaker, but also a writer and editor, is extremely encouraging. It means that all those years spent building and refining my writing and my language skills haven’t been wasted in the end.

It’s also encouraging given the considerable lack of feedback I’ve received for my more creative endeavours, Minigrooves in particular. If you’ve purchased the book, and have read at least a few stories, please don’t hesitate to let me know. If you think other people would like Minigrooves, please spread the word. With all the communication tools and social networks at our disposal, it’s not that much of an effort, really, and it could make a difference in ways you can’t imagine. If you’re willing to write a review of my stories, get in touch, I may provide you with a PDF of the book. I’m trying to make a living with my writing, and it’s impossibly hard. Any support you can give is hugely appreciated. Thank you! 

Relevant links

The new Retina MacBook

March 12, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

MacBook

On Monday 9, Apple introduced the new Retina MacBook. The unveiling blew me away. All the videos featured during the keynote were characterised by excellent animations and visualisations, and I loved how the MacBook Design video covered every little detail inside the new MacBook, and out. The phrase ‘a feat of engineering’ may be a bit overused today, but it’s quite apt to describe this new MacBook.

By now you all know about the design and the technology: the incredible thinness (only 13.1 mm at its thickest point) and lightness (920 grams)[1], the new, Apple-designed butterfly mechanism of the keys, the new trackpad with Force Touch, the single USB‑C type port that replaces every traditional port you’ve seen in MacBooks so far, the absurdly thin and bright Retina display, the unprecedented level of miniaturisation in a motherboard, the custom battery design, and so forth. If you don’t know about these things, scroll through the fantastic Design page on Apple’s website for a refresher.

There’s little to comment on these aspects: the MacBook is a beautiful machine, it perfectly showcases what Apple is capable of, it introduces intriguing technologies which undoubtedly will improve the user experience. Its presentation left me lusting for one, and since now Apple offers a choice of colour, I’d really love to get my hands on a Space Grey MacBook. Still…

Is this going to be my next Mac?

Many of the articles about the MacBook I’ve read so far, when it comes to giving readers advice, make a similar point as Kirk McElhearn’s in his The New MacBook May Not Be for Everyone, But it Might Be Right for You. Kirk concludes:

So, is the MacBook for you? If you see yourself in the above description, either wanting a second Mac, or only using your Mac for limited tasks, then, yes. It’s small, light, has a retina display, and very long battery life. However, if your laptop is on your desk, with several devices connected to it – especially an external display – then, no, it’s not for you.

It’s clear, solid advice. If someone asked me, I’d say the same. And yet, when I ask myself Is this going to be my next Mac?, I’m torn. Rationally, I should not be. I fit the ‘power user’ profile. I keep my current MacBook Pro in desktop configuration 90% of the time; it’s attached to a 23-inch external display, and its ports are often all occupied: one USB port for the keyboard, the other for the current external Time Machine hard drive, the FireWire 800 for another drive… you get the picture. I don’t use particularly resource-demanding software, but every now and then I’m in GarageBand or iMovie or Aperture, and I’m currently working on a small project in Final Cut Express which is mostly an excuse to learn to use this kind of software. I’m generally using regular-people-grade applications, with the necessary excursions into more sophisticated programs.

So, on the one hand, if I look at the software I use and how I use it, the new MacBook could probably be enough, and my eyes could finally use a nice Retina display. Given that my current MacBook Pro is a mid-2009 model with 8 GB of RAM and still has a hard drive, the 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.4 GHz), together with the 8 GB of (faster) RAM and 256 GB of flash memory is probably going to perform better even if it’s not the fastest chip currently available in an Apple laptop.

On the other hand, the limited connectivity of the MacBook is a serious hindrance. If I could use the new MacBook in a desktop configuration and in combination with all of my current drives and peripherals, I wouldn’t hesitate to consider the purchase — it’d really be great to have such a versatile machine: extremely portable and easily expandable once in desktop configuration.

The tale I’m telling myself now is that I could use the MacBook as a second machine. I’d basically relegate the older MacBook Pro to the desk, with all its current external drives and connections, and turn to the Retina MacBook as a machine for day-to-day activities (especially when I need to leave my home office) and, above all, as the perfect writing environment. But then when I’m home I’d have to find a new workspace for the MacBook because it would make little sense to just go back to the older MacBook Pro sitting at my desk and leave the newer MacBook in my backpack… Did I mention I was torn?

Well, take all these musings at a hypothetical level, because at the moment I can’t afford any new Mac, not even the entry-level Mini. But if I had that money, I would be seriously undecided — my rational side would advise against buying it, choosing instead the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display; my emotional side would want the 12-inch MacBook, because… have you seen it!?

But let’s talk about price now.

The price is not right

Not in Europe, at least. Probably due to the current exchange rates and the always unwelcome VAT, in Europe the prices of the new MacBook become insanely inflated, in my opinion.

United States Europe
(ES, FR, DE)		 Europe
(IT, IE, PT)
MacBook (1.1 GHz, 256 GB storage) $1,299 €1,449 €1,499
MacBook (1.2 GHz, 512 GB storage) $1,599 €1,799 €1,829

 

(ES is Spain, FR is France, DE is Germany, IT is Italy, IE is Ireland and PT is Portugal)

There has always been a difference in price between the United States and Europe when it comes to Apple products (and many other products, of course), and the most common occurrence is finding the same price figure in different currencies (e.g. $799, €799). This common occurrence is what I’ve come to accept as ‘reasonable’ despite the inherent difference (in the above example, €799 are $842.70 at the current exchange rate). In recent times, however, the difference between prices in dollars and prices in euros for Apple products has been increasing. For instance, the entry-level 11-inch MacBook Air costs $899, and the best 13-inch MacBook Air costs $1,199; but where I live it’s €999 and €1,349 respectively (in Italy, Portugal and Ireland they cost even more — €1,029 and €1,379 respectively). 

This tendency, in my opinion, is even worse in the case of the new MacBook. The specific price tier of the MacBook, if considered in US dollars, places it in what I would call a ‘premium consumer’ range. But once translated into euros, it jumps to a higher tier. The €1,829 of the 1.2 GHz model, in particular, feels more like the price of a ‘pro’ Mac. For example, the base model of the mid-2012 15-inch MacBook Pro (non-Retina) cost €1,879 at the time of introduction. Or, if we want to compare it with a current Retina MacBook Pro, the 1.2 GHz MacBook costs more than the middle 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro (€1,699). In short, it feels overpriced for what it does — at least, it feels overpriced to me.

You could argue that the new MacBook, due to its design and technological breakthroughs, warrants the premium price tag, just as it happened in 2008 with the first MacBook Air. And I’m inclined to agree. The big difference, though, is that the first-generation MacBook Air was priced $1,799 when it was introduced. The premium feel was all there, up front. And its value correctly translated into €1,699. With the MacBook we have a machine which Apple values at $1,299 and $1,599, and on the European market is instead priced at €1,449/€1,499 and €1,799/€1,829 — that’s not the same perceived value as it was in the case of the first MacBook Air. Not only is it effectively more expensive, but it also feels more expensive than it should.

It’s ultimately this ‘inflated’ price what has cooled my enthusiasm the most as I was taking this new MacBook into consideration as my possible next Mac. 

Coda: What about the Air family?

During the introduction of the new Retina MacBook, some people over Twitter shared their unanimous feeling that the MacBook Air is going to fade away eventually. The 12-inch MacBook is lighter than the lightest Air, and has a Retina display, and a comparable battery performance. It’s easy to imagine that the next step is to have Retina displays everywhere across the laptop families, and to return to a more simplified structure having MacBooks as the consumer line, and the MacBook Pros as the professional line. I still think Apple would need an affordable entry-level machine, though, maybe the only model without a Retina display. Here are a few possible scenarios:

  1. MacBook Air family goes away. MacBook family expands including a cheaper non-Retina 11-inch model (but at a better resolution than the current 11-inch MacBook Air) priced, say, at $999.
  2. MacBook Air family remains, but simplified: only one 11-inch and one 13-inch model configuration; the MacBook could remain as it is now (just one 12-inch model).
  3. MacBook Air family goes away. The MacBook remains as it is now, just a 12-inch model, but with more configurations to choose from and revised prices to extend to the lower end of the range. Imagine something like this:
    • 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor — 128 GB flash storage — $1,099 (or 4 GB RAM and $999)
    • 1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor — 256 GB flash storage — $1,299
    • 1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor — 512 GB flash storage — $1,599

I’m really guessing here, obviously. We’re entering a transitional phase now, and never before has the Apple laptop offering been so crowded. I believe a pruning is coming, though, and I find difficult to predict Apple’s next move here. Let’s say that going towards a ‘Retina everywhere’ approach for the MacBook families is a reasonable step; on the other hand there needs to be an entry-level crowd pleaser (and good seller), and the MacBook Air family is doing a great service to Apple in this regard, so… we’ll see.

 

  • 1. Just to give you an idea, my iPad 3 in its protective case, plus the Apple Wireless keyboard in the Incase Origami Workstation together weigh 1,325 grams. ↩

 

Time saved? I don’t think so

March 9, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

More than a few of the sources I follow has recently linked to this interesting article on TechCrunch by Matthew Panzarino: The Apple Watch Is Time, Saved, quoting this bit in particular:

After these discussions, it seems certain that the Apple Watch will shortly be the primary way you access your iPhone during the day.

People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.

One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.

The gist of the article seems to be that, thanks to the way interaction with the Apple Watch is designed, people will use their iPhones less, will pull them out of their pockets less frequently, thus regaining some of the attention that typically the iPhone takes away:

But the Apple Watch can return some of that attention and, more importantly, time back to you.

As I was glancing at my Twitter timeline earlier, someone retweeted this tweet by the excellent Luke Wroblewski. I’ll reproduce the image here:

Why the wrist matters - Wroblewski

This doesn’t refer to the Apple Watch in particular, but it’s a great image that explains very well the difference between the interaction with a smartphone and the interaction with a smartwatch. 

Only I don’t believe things are going to work out that way. Not with the Apple Watch. Forget about regaining attention. Maybe at first it’s really going to be as Panzarino says in his article. But just you wait when a lot of cool, engaging third-party apps become available for the Apple Watch. Here’s what I think people may end up doing:

  • Spend more time lost in their watch than anticipated, because that has become the new source of distraction.
  • Spend time interacting with their watch and their iPhone; maybe in a way that they indeed use the iPhone less, but the total amount of time spent on both devices will actually be greater than when they only had the iPhone.

I believe either of these scenarios to be more likely to happen than the ‘more connected to the people around you’ scenario, simply because a lot of people (and nerds in particular) tend to become hopeless addicts when it comes to these devices. Take this excerpt from the very piece by Panzarino:

The display is also very sharp and easily readable from your wrist. When your attention is on the Watch, you’re going to want to do more there than you think, rather than having to move over to your phone. This means that you may find yourself reading short articles and other content on your wrist. This could affect the way that publishers want to build their apps. They shouldn’t just be redirection machines that punt people to their phones; there is an opportunity to give people what they need now and let them get back to what they’re doing.

“You’re going to want to do more there than you think,” exactly, and many third-party apps that will eventually appear for the Apple Watch will cater to that need. I believe the Apple Watch may indeed be able to divert a part of people’s attention from their iPhone, but I don’t believe people will get less lost in their Watch than they usually do in their iPhone. And here I really, really hope to be proven wrong.

Thanks for your service, iPhone 4

March 7, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

iPhone 4

A couple more months, and it would have been four years. 

My philosophy of making the most of a piece of technology is admittedly influenced by my meagre budget, which is a constant lately; but even if I had more money, I probably wouldn’t upgrade the devices I use as soon as a new model is introduced. Avoiding unnecessary waste is something my family has taught me since I was little. 

And I really made the most of my 16 GB iPhone 4. It has served me quite well over the years. It was introduced in June 2010, but I was still paying the iPhone 3G under the original two-year contract with my carrier, so I had to wait a bit. I eventually got it in April 2011, basically just when it was being discontinued. At the time, a few friends suggested I waited until September/October 2011 for the upcoming iPhone 4S. It was a sensible piece of advice, and I would have probably followed it if I had been using an iPhone 3GS. But my iPhone 3G, by 2011, was feeling old and a bit slow, and I really wanted to go Retina. In retrospect, iOS 4 had impacted the iPhone 3G’s performance more significantly than iOS 7 did later with the iPhone 4. 

Despite getting on the iPhone 4 bandwagon late compared to most people, I was extremely happy with my purchase. When you upgrade jumping a generation, the difference in features and performance is staggering. If you’ve been long-time iPhone users, try remembering how it was iOS 4.2.1 on an iPhone 3G, or the quality of the iPhone 3G’s 2‑megapixel camera (and responsiveness), compared to an iPhone 4 under the same iOS version, with a Retina display, a 5‑megapixel camera, 512 MB of RAM (the iPhone 3G had 128), and a CPU that was twice as fast.

The iPhone 4 is still a beautiful example of design, and it’s the iPhone model that has felt the most robust among the ones I have owned and tried out. I can attest to its robustness after a nasty fall that happened just three months after purchase. I was walking down the street, the iPhone in my jacket’s inner pocket, and listening to some music. I pulled out the iPhone to check something on Google Maps, the iPhone got tangled in the earphones’ cable, and in an attempt to free it, I dropped it. Until then, my policy with iPhones had always been ‘no case’, and with the iPhone 4 in particular, it was a pity to bury that design in a protective case, no matter how stylish. As I was helplessly watching my iPhone 4 fly towards the pavement, I obviously felt stupid for choosing not to protect it, and I was anticipating shattered glass everywhere, and a visit at the Apple Store to have it replaced. To my surprise, the iPhone got only some minor scuffs, mostly on the right side edge; both the front and back glass panels remained intact and basically scratch-free. But most of all, nothing had broken internally. I frantically checked Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, if cellular reception still worked, the state of the speaker and the microphone, the camera and its flash, everything that could stop working after such a fall. But all was well, and I was blown away. 

Okay, there’s probably some luck to add to the mix. Perhaps if the iPhone had fallen differently, the glass would have shattered, or the antennae would have stopped working, and other horrific scenarios. Yet I’m certain that the design of the internal components and the materials used in manufacturing the iPhone played a big role in my iPhone 4’s survival. I believe that any other smartphone of similar vintage would have taken a much worse beating after a fall like that.

These four years with the iPhone 4 have been great: I’ve shot thousands of photos and it has effectively been my main point-and-shoot digital camera. For more than a year (April 2011 to June 2012) it was my sole ebook reader, and during that time I’ve read more books than the two preceding years combined. Then I bought a third-generation iPad, and my ebook reading passed to its bigger screen.

The iPhone 4 will probably be the model where I’ve witnessed so much evolution in terms of software. On it I’ve used iOS 4, iOS 5, iOS 6 and iOS 7 — four different and important versions of the operating system. And speaking of iOS 7, unlike other people, I’ve never really had any problem with it. Sure, it may have caused the iPhone to feel a bit sluggish here and there, but a quite acceptable experience overall (I wrote about iOS 7 and the iPhone 4 in three previous articles: iOS 7 on the iPhone 4, iOS 7, battery life, and the iPhone 4, and iOS 7.1 and the iPhone 4 performance).

Speaking of battery life, this is another department where I must say I’m incredibly satisfied with my iPhone 4. During the four years I’ve used it daily, I never took particular precautions apart from the obvious checks on which parts of the system and/or which applications could impact negatively on battery life, but that’s it. I honestly don’t remember how much the battery lasted on a single charge when my iPhone 4 was new back in 2011. I guess it was approximately two days with light-medium usage. Lately it went down to one day and a half, again with light-medium usage, and from morning to evening on particularly intense days. Still a respectable performance, all things considered.

The only physical sign of my iPhone 4’s age has been the home button, getting progressively unreliable and alternating days of decent responsiveness to days in which I thought I had to push it all the way through the iPhone’s back to elicit a response. If I hadn’t upgraded, I’d have got it fixed. 

Finally, I must add that I’m not completely decommissioning this iPhone. Since I have two numbers (a Spanish SIM and an Italian one), this iPhone 4 will become my secondary phone with the Italian SIM. In the next days I’ll configure it properly to work as such, reviewing the apps installed, eliminating a few of those that take up too much space, or are redundant, or make the phone feel too sluggish (many photo apps, for example), that sort of thing.

In the meanwhile, thanks for your service, iPhone 4. It has been quite a good run indeed.

→ Kill the wireless contract

March 1, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

In her piece for the Wall Street Journal, Kill the Wireless Contract! Buy Your Own Phone, Joanna Stern writes:

I am an idiot. I signed a two-year contract to get my iPhone 6.

Without much thought, I did what most Americans do every two years: I agreed to be locked in by a multibillion-dollar wireless company. With pricey contracts and confusing add-ons, they make it incredibly hard to leave, let alone take our phones with us. I deserve to walk around with “Property of Verizon” stamped on my forehead.

We sign on the dotted line because we presume it will save us money on that new shiny phone and our monthly service. But here’s the thing they don’t want us to know: Neither is necessarily true anymore.

My experience (I’m in Europe) corroborates this. When I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 4 in 2011, I left a two-year contract with one carrier, Movistar, to start another two-year contract with a different carrier, Orange. At the time it seemed a better deal, and I paid €140 for my 16 GB iPhone 4 when unlocked it would have cost me €599. But to be able to pay such a low price for the handset, I had to sign a 18-month contract where I would pay €42 per month to have in return a bunch of free texts, 500 MB of mobile data traffic and (if I remember well) some discount on national calls, or something like that. 

Of course, those €42 did not include VAT, so I basically ended up paying €50 per month, an amount which started to skyrocket every time I phoned my parents and friends in Italy (I live in Spain), because international calls and texts were not among the included expenses in that contract profile. To give you an idea of the craziness, a half-hour call to my mother would cost me roughly €20. A single text was something like 60 cents before VAT, so a couple of such calls and a bunch of texts would make for €100 (or more) monthly phone bills. Eighteen months like this… do the math. I naturally tried to limit international usage, but still, over the contract period, I more than paid for the cost of the handset. The last cherry on the cake was having to pay €10 to have the iPhone unlocked by the carrier once the 18-month contract period was over. 

Finally, in February 2013, I decided to leave this absurd two-year lock-in model, and since then I’ve been a happy customer of a local carrier (a MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator) called Pepephone (the site’s in Spanish). The name may sound funny to an English speaker — I think it’s based on the company’s mascot, Pepe, who sorts of represents the man of the street, the ‘regular Joe’ — but hey, I’ve been enjoying a great customer service, low rates, and very good coverage. At the moment I pay a €6.90 monthly flat rate for 1.2 GB mobile data traffic (VAT included), and in the two years I’ve been a customer the highest phone bill was less than €20. (Yes, making international calls and sending texts to phones outside Spain is still comparatively expensive, but not like it was with the previous carriers.) Oh, and this company has the great habit of not raising prices whenever it upgrades the service or its offerings. For instance, all Pepephone customers are currently in the process of being upgraded to LTE, and when it happens, we’ll still be paying the same as now. 

If you do switch to one of the smaller guys and you don’t like it — guess what! You can just get up and leave. That’s the real freedom. They’ll never dangle a contract under your nose. You can set up an auto-renewing monthly plan and cancel any time.

Exactly. My contract with Pepephone implicitly auto-renews, but I’m free to go whenever I want if I don’t like the service or if I find a better alternative (so far I haven’t); there are no strings attached. 

But apart from praising this company in particular, the point here is that — as Joanna Stern explains in the article — life is better outside the lock-in mechanism of two-year carrier contracts. I’ve been ‘free’ since 2013 and I’m certainly not turning back. Sure, having to pay upfront the full price of an unlocked phone is hard, especially when the budget is tight or when there’s no budget at all. In my case, this has meant holding on to my iPhone 4 for a much longer period, and not upgrading to the latest and shiniest devices, but the amount of money saved in the process is indeed significant, and that’s what matters.