Reading List and Speak Screen

21st Feb 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides

For some time now I’ve been a big proponent of the default iOS apps. By and large these apps are fairly basic, at least in comparison to specialist third party offerings (think Mail.app vs Spark Mail for example). Shortcomings like this, however, are easily overlooked because of the unparalleled integration many of these apps and services enjoy in comparison to their third party cousins.

I still use Mail.app, Calendar.app and Notes.app, for example, though I do still greatly enjoy third party apps to cover holes where integration with the OS isn’t as important. One such area is, or at least was a Read Later service. I’ve used Instapaper a lot in the past, but recently Pocket releases a killer new feature. This feature allows you to setup Pocket to read the articles you save there aloud to you. At first glance, this seemed like a feature I could really get behind. I’m a big podcast listener so I already enjoy a lot of audio content, so this felt like it would fit right into my way of consuming content. For all intents and purposes it does a good job. I’m not, however, using it anymore.

In keeping with my aim of staying first party when I’m able to, I did find it difficult to move away from Reading List which is, again, just so nicely integrated into the system.

The 233 words above, essentially, a largely redundant preamble just to, essentially say:

Hey, did you know you can replicate the Pocket ‘read aloud’ functionality within Reading List?

Allow me to, finally, cut to the chase. This isn’t a feature so much as it’s a simple utilisation of a fairly hidden away part of iOS. This utilises an Accessibility setting called ‘Speak Screen’. You can replicate Pockets Read Aloud service with Reading List by following these simple steps:

Firstly you’ll need to activate the ‘Speak Screen’ function by navigating to General > Accessibility > Speech and toggle on ‘Speak Screen’
Once activated, open up your Reading List and pick an article to open up.
Once this is done, press the button on the top right of the screen to turn on Reader Mode, which strips out most of the formatting and leaves you with a basic fact article.
Now, all you need to do is swipe down from the top of your device screen with two fingers to activate the iPhones own Read Aloud service. Upon doing so you will see a great little floating control panel that allows you to change the pace of the speech and pause it etc.

The nice thing about this UI item is that it collapses when not in use and floats on top of the screen, ready for you to tap when needed. The UI element allows you to pause, resume and change the speed of the narration. The audio playback also remains active across the device, in that you can close Safari and open another app whilst the narration continues in the background.

Don’t get me wrong, the feature on Pocket has obviously been designed with this specific use case in mind, so the voice itself it arguably better there but, for me at least, this is a far more flexible solution. You can utilise this on the fly as well, so you don’t need to send an article to Reading List, of course, prior to firing off the Speak Screen feature.

If you enjoy reading various articles, particularly long form, but often find yourself without time to actually read it, this is a really great option for when you’d usually tackle your podcast queue.

🔗 Christopher Tells You EVERYTHING You Need To Know About Working Off An iPad

12th Feb 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides

I don’t often share link posts here at The Dent, but a video came out today that I just had to share with you all.

YouTuber, Podcaster and all round awesome guy Christopher Lawley dropped a video he’s been working on for some time, that aims to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about working off an iPad. While this may sound like a bold claim, Christopher does indeed do a fantastic job of detailing some of the common, yet powerful use cases of an iPad, but he also unearths some real gems.

I consider myself a bit of an iPad Power user but there were things here that I didn’t know were possible, such as dragging an address bar to the side in Safari to open a split view (two Safari pages open on screen at once, not across two or more tabs). Whatever level of iPad user you consider yourself, I can almost guarantee there will be something in this video for you.

The thing that impressed me most of all about Christopher’s video, beyond the excellent production value, is that he was able to explain some, at times, complex operations in a very concise and easy to understand way. The beauty of the iPad, whether you’re using a ‘Pro’ device or not, is that you can use it for such a wide range of tasks. You can keep it very basic, if that fits your needs, or pull off some impressive productivity tricks. I don’t like the patronising term some bloggers and podcasters use to describe normal / non-techy users, but I do believe you could show Christopher’s video to the full spectrum of iPad users and all of them would both fully understand, and appreciate the excellent tips, advice and guidance. I would highly recommend you share this with anyone that uses an iPad from day to day, whatever their use case or level of skill.

You can find the video on Christopher’s YouTube channel or via the embed below:

Review – Memento

4th Feb 20194th Feb 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides

Over my many years of using iOS, I’ve worked my way through pretty much every To Do app on the market. So far, I think the only one I haven’t tried is Omnifocus because no one needs that much planning in their life. Please don’t email me …

When I try a new app or service, it usually lasts a few weeks, at most, before I start looking elsewhere. Throughout this time, however, one service has always been there, just hanging out in the background, ready to welcome me back with open arms. That service being Apple Reminders. Reminders is, of course, a default app on iOS, but it’s also an underlying framework that third party developers can also hook into and, essentially, create new front-end UIs for. For the last few months I’ve been using the fantastic GoodTask 3. GoodTask 3 sits on top of the Reminders framework and adds a whole slew of power user features. One of the things I’ve been loving about GoodTask 3 is the fact you can make your setup within the app as complicated, or as basic, as you need.

While the Reminders app itself has been quite stagnant for some time now, the third party app ecosystem that utilises the framework has been thriving. One such app, Reminder, was recently re-launched and re-branded to Memento, as part of their 3.0 update, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The app utilises a fairly unique UI for an iOS task manager app, but it will be very familiar to users of the iOS Home app. The Home apps interface has been critised by some over the years and, while I do like the look of it, it doesn’t deal with scale all that well. I currently have about 20 HomeKit accessories hooked up to the Home app, across Lights, Camera’s and Apple TVs etc. and it can get quite difficult to find what you’re looking for. This design within a To Do app, however, is pretty intriguing.

When you fire up the app for the first time you’re presented with a Permissions screen so the app can have access to the Reminders data / framework, notifications, location (both when in use and always), contacts and Siri. These are all standard things for an app of this kind to request access to, but this section is worth calling out here because it doesn’t just contain the toggle to approve or deny the request, but each section includes a short, yet detailed, description about why the app is asking for this access. This is definitely a practice I wish more apps would embrace.

Once you’ve approved, or denied, whatever areas you’re happy to, you’re presented with a clean UI with four tabs along the bottom. The first, Lists, looks very similar to the stock Reminders app in that it, as you’d imagine given the name, it displays the various Lists you have setup in Reminders. From here, you can choose your list and dive right in to see the reminder items contained within in. The main purpose of this view, however, is to create new lists, via the small + at the top of the page.

Next up, there’s a For You tab. This one provides the more traditional view of your reminder items, grouped up by day. This is the area that, to me, most closely mirrors the Home app interface, with each item occupying a small square under each day heading. You can see the task itself along with a tick box to complete the task, the date and time it’s due and also a colour-coded dot for the list it’s contained within. It’s all very simple, yet very intuitive and almost zen-like. This view is purely for viewing and completing tasks. You can’t actually create any here.

We then move onto the Reminders tab. This one is a bit of a combination of the first two tabs. You see a view of your various due tasks, with and without due dates, but they are now grouped under headings for each of your lists. This is the most information dense and functional screen within the app, and one I usually spend most of my time in. You can view, edit, complete and most importantly create new reminder items here. The plus symbol, used to create new tasks, is colour coded to the list colour, which is a small but aesthetically pleasing touch.

The final section will take you to the Settings section. This contains exactly what you’d expect, but there are a few areas worth calling out here. Firstly, the app has a robust Dark Mode, which you can activate here, along with the corresponding dark custom icon. You can not only configure the Dark Mode for the app, but you can also opt to turn on a similar effect for notifications and iMessage, which is a nice touch. Another important section here is the Time Presets section, which lets you define, you’ve guessed it, time presets! Here, you can set preset due times and give them names such as ‘This Evening’ for tasks you want to set to X time in the evening, or Next Week etc. This adds a lot of function and power to what is, generally speaking, a fairly light and simplistic experience. The final important area of the Settings tab is the Action area which lets you choose which actions you’d like to enable for each task. Some of the includes actions are ‘Complete’ to mark the task as done, and ‘Move to Tonight’ or ‘Snooze for X minutes’ etc.

The time presets, along with the Actions, give Memento just enough power user features for me, personally, whilst still maintaining a nice, simple and almost relaxing to do app experience. This is a fine line to tread and one that GoodTask 3 can often cross, leaning more on the complex side, for many first time users. For me, I’m still in the experimental phase with Memento and I’m currently unsure if this will end up being my replacement for GoodTask which is, to be honest, not an app I’ve been actively trying to replace. I’ve been very happy with GoodTask, but I’m enjoying the breath of fresh air Memento brings. Once again, the joy of using the Reminders framework is that I have the luxury of switching up my app, every day if I wished, without losing any of my tasks or setup which really takes the headache out of an addiction for trying new apps.

While I am, generally speaking, very impressed with this lightweight app, there is just one area I would like to see improvements on. The app does feature 3D Touch functionality, but the widget that appears when you do this, and which you see when you swipe across from the homescreen, is a little strange. When the widget is active, but minmised, you get a basic view that gives you a total count of location based tasks, overdue tasks and upcoming tasks. This isn’t a hugely helpful view. If you hit ‘show more’ you do, however, see the more familiar Home app style view of up to 9 upcoming tasks which you can mark off directly from within the app. This widget would be far more helpful if you could also add tasks here as well.

Seeing as the app relies on the Reminders framework, Siri integration is great within the app. You can use the standard Siri phrasing to add new reminders which will instantly show within the app, which is an underrated but great aspect of using Reminders as your back-end. Memento allows you to tie the app into Shortcuts as well. It’s nice to see apps continue to take advantage of this aspect of iOS 12.

If the Reminders functionality is enough for your To Do needs, but you’re a bit tired of the dated and bland look of the Reminders app proper, I would definitely recommend giving Memento a try. I’m certainly enjoying using it and will continue to experiment with it over the coming weeks and months.

🎙 22: Does Apple Have a Hive Mind?

1st Feb 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides

In this weeks podcast I had to vent a little of my aggravation about the recent news about the FaceTime bug on iOS and why I think those reporting on this need to put things into perspective a little.

Some of the more click-bait heavy publications had a field day with the news, as you’d expect, but even some of the (usually) more level headed podcasts I enjoy have taken some very odd stances on this particular ‘issue’.

You can find links to the show below:

You can also find a direct link on the podcast page.

📱 Review – iPhone Smart Battery Case

1st Feb 20191st Feb 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides ~ Leave a comment

I tried to resist. I really did. A few days ago, however, I caved and picked up the iPhone XS Max Smart Battery case and I wanted to share a few thoughts. For those interested, I chose the black one, because I’m not an animal.

If you want the TL;DR for this review, let me just say that the case is no longer on my iPhone. If, however, you want a little more information, read on!

First things first, as you have probably worked out yourself from pictures, the Smart Battery case is pretty darn ugly. Unlike many people, I don’t actually mind the hump design where the battery itself is housed. I can see what they were going with there, but there’s more to the case that makes it a little ugly than that. I really love the sleek design of the current generation iPhones, with its bezel-less screen and thin, yet sturdy frame. This case, in one fell swoop, takes all of this pleasant aesthetic away.

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Image courtesy of InputMag.dk

The case is, understandably, thick at the back. This is, of course, to be expected. The frame on the other hand, around the band of the phone, adds some considerable bezel-like areas to the screen as is raised a lot more than the Apple Leather cases that I would usually use. There is also a lip at the bottom of the case, absent from the standard cases. This is due to, I imagine, the charging port and to enhance the grip of a heavy case. This bottom lip adds an issue you’ll often see in third party cases, in that it restricts the swipe up from the bottom motion that’s now requires to navigate the X range of devices. This is not ideal.

I mentioned earlier that I usually use an Apple Leather case for my phone. I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve really got used to the feel of it. I’ve always avoided the silicone ones, because I had assumed they’d be almost sticky and hard to get out of your pocket. The Smart Battery case utilises this same material and it’s actually the opposite to what I expected. It feels almost difficult to keep from slipping from your hand. This is, I would assume, due to the disable extra weight of the device thanks to its little battery backpack it’s carrying around. Don’t even get me started on the lint and fluff the case picks up. A couple of days into ownership and it looks a bit of a state already!

So, aesthetically, it’s no Mona Lisa. That being said, however, this devices gives you one of the few examples of where Apple has opted for Function over Form and it certainly is functional. On my completely unscientific test, the battery case added over 14 hours of standby time. I took the device and phone off charge at about 11pm, so bear in mind a chunk of that time included the phone resting completely idol. I don’t, however, get all that much sleep so this only would have accounted for about 4 hours.

It really was pretty incredible getting to about 3pm I’m the afternoon and still having a phone at 100% charge. The hardware also integrates with the iPhone seamlessly and displays the charging level of both the phone and the battery case when you connect to a charger, and in the battery widget, which is a lovely touch. The battery icon is permanently green, because it’s essentially being charged by the battery case. This is such a tiny point, but I found it a little distracting seeing the charging icon on the battery all day.

In terms of delivering what you want, a large boost to battery life, you can’t fault this case. The looks are not important, in the grand scheme of things, because I believe the point is to just use the case as and when you need a boost, rather than it being your main case. This being said, however, the way you have to fold the top section down a bit to yank the phone in and out doesn’t strike me as being very good for the silicone and even after pulling it out just once it feels a little worn.

All in all, I’d say I’d you really need an extra boost of life in your phone, you’d get no better quality and integration than Apple’s own case, though I wouldn’t recommend using it every day. Unless you like your phone feeling like a brick phone from the 80s that is. Each to their own, however. Given the price, I can’t justify the case sitting in my drawer for the majority of the year so it will be going back to Apple, but I will consider picking one up again should the need for longer battery life become more frequent for me.

🎮 My Wizard of Oz Moment

21st Jan 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides

If you’ve listened to the latest episode of the podcast you would have heard that I’ve been on a bit of a gaming kick recently, more so than I have for a while. I mentioned there that a lot of my time is spent on the Nintendo Switch, despite also owning a screaming fast Xbox One X, so I took a bit of time out to try and understand what the draw is of the Switch, and Nintendo in general.

From an early age, my life was full of adventure and wonder. By the time I had hit my early teen years I had already been on an epic quest to save a princess, I’d visited the stars and even raced a hovercar in the year 2560 at breakneck speeds. Life was good and the future was truly bright. I could do anything.

Role forward another twenty years or so, to early 2019, and the bright future I had been promised was nowhere to be seen. The colourful splendor of my youth had dissipated, only to be replaced with a heavy grey sheen of despair. My life was no longer full of honourable quests and laughing with friends. It was full of monotonous tasks such as the daily commute and a repetitive need to bang my head against a brick wall, metaphorically speaking of course. My life had become a monochromatic reflection of its former glory. Don’t get me wrong, I have a loving family, a good job and my health, but there is an aspect of my life that was in dire need of some colour. I needed a ‘Wizard of Oz’ moment, in that my life, like Dorothy’s, will change from a dull sepia to vivid life and colour.

Very recently I finally had my ‘Wizard of Oz’ moment. My life, once devoid of hope and luminosity, once again exploded into colour. What I am trying to say, via the use of some very convoluted metaphors, is that Shuntaro Furukawa and his company Nintendo were back in my life, thanks to the purchase of the Nintendo Switch. I had owned the Wii U (and Wii) prior to this, but the Wii U just didn’t grab my imagination like the Switch did, and continues to do.

Since its release at the start of 2017, the system has seemingly exploded. Initially, at least, it was unlikely to be anyones primary console, but it lends itself to be a perfect secondary one. It feels like this has been a major contributing factor to the sales phenomenon the Switch has turned out to be. The flexibility of it’s use-case, as a home console or mobile device ticks so many boxes, and can easily be justified as a companion to an Xbox, not a replacement.

I’ve been a big fan of my Xbox (of various generations) over the years, and again continue to enjoy it, but after hour 500 in Destiny, having torn through thousands upon thousands of repetitive monsters, the grey drabness I mentioned above really started to sink in. I started to miss the colour, energy and pure joy that is a Nintendo console and it’s enviable pile of fantastic IPs.

I recalled my fondest gaming memories, such as playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game that remains one of my favourite of all time, and of endless multiplayer matches of Goldeneye and Street Fighter 2 with my brother. The list went on and on, with a single, very important link (pun intended) binding my happy memories together. That link being, of course, Nintendo.

My hunger for new Nintendo hardware was not hampered by the lackluster Wii U. The device felt cheap, it didn’t work well and the game catalog ended up being attrocious, but the console did act as yet another example of Nintendo not resting on its laurels and not following the crowd. It was something different, unique and it turns out it formed the very core foundation of what would become the Nintendo Switch.

When I started to see some of the announcement videos, as the launch date approached, I was both very nervous they could actually pull of what was promised this time, still tainted by the Wii U, but also completely on board. if anyone deserves my trust and loyalty when it comes to gaming, it’s Nintendo. It turns out this trust paid off, big time.

The console, as is the hallmark for Nintendo, took past design cues, both those that were successful, and those less so, and evolved the Wii U design into something that both looks, and feels, leaps and bounds ahead of what came before it. The console felt mature, yet maintained so many of the nice, family friendly characteristics that make Nintendo Nintendo, from the quirky dual controllers that can pop up for a quick 2 player action, to the smart colours and designs.

The strength of Nintendo’s past offerings has always sat with their first party games featuring Link, Mario, Kirby et al. This hasn’t changed with the Switch, but something that even Nintendo didn’t bank on, I’d imagine, is the incredibly strong third party support from incredible feats of engineering with ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 2, to unbelievable support from the indie community. Games such as The Messenger and Celeste are some of my favourite games on the system. While these are not Switch exclusives, they do feel so incredibly at home on the dynamic little console.

The point of this short article was not to review the Switch, it’s a bit late for that at this point. It was more to share a thought that gamers need to start remembering what it is that drew them towards the hobby in the first place. I can appreciate that we’re a diverse race, and we all have different ideas of what is fun and enjoyable. If the best graphics and realism are key for you, then by all means keep buying the Playstation 4’s and XBox One’s of this world. If, however, you yearn for a return to pure, and unadulterated fun in your life, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by not picking yourself up a Switch and jumping into some of the most relaxing, empowering and enjoyable gaming experiences available today. I defy you to fire up Mario Kart 8 and not feel a massive grin crawl across your face …

I will always have an affinity to Nintendo, but systems like the Switch not only cement this for me and bring that much needed colour back into my life, but it will no doubt turn a whole new generation of young gamers onto the fun, lighthearted side of gaming that is needed now, more than ever.

🎙 21: Getting My Game Face On!

20th Jan 2019 ~ Andy Nicolaides ~ 1 Comment

So far, 2019 is shaping up to be the year of gaming here at Dent Towers. Join me on this weeks podcast while I take you through some gaming aspirations for the coming months.

I briefly discuss the new Dent Gaming channel, where you can find me on an occasional stream and clearing out my Switch backlog.

As I mention on the show this week, I’m considering adding a bit more Gaming related reviews, news, stories, and thoughts onto The Dent. If you have any thoughts on this, be they positive or negative, please do get in touch and let me know.

You can find links to the show below:

You can also find a direct link on the podcast page.