Published on October 18, 2020

I wrote a short post about some of my impressions of the Hey email service after a few months of use. While the post was relatively well received I felt like I may have been unduly negative about Hey, and wanted to add a little more detail to perhaps balance the discussion somewhat.

One of the risks with my concerted efforts to post more, with less planning, is that I tend to start a post with a clear goal of what I’m trying to put across, which ultimately gets watered down, or plain forgotten, as I ramble on. This post, so far, is the perfect example …

Back to the point, there are a handful of features that I think Hey really get right. Despite my reservations or negativity put across in the last post I am currently using Hey, to give it more of a go, because of some very key reasons, which I’ll highlight here.

Published on October 12, 2020

So many of the larger tech podcasts I listen to no longer ‘spark joy’ so I’m going to have a full clear out and start fresh I think.

I don’t remember the last time I heard a bit of information I care about on a podcast first, it’s generally regurgitation of facts I’ve already read about, or opinions that are repeated by the same small group across a multitude of places. You can usually guess exactly what (often negative) opinion these people will have without even hearing it.

Some more relaxing, and fun, podcasts I enjoy include:

• FilmSack - FilmSack was one of the first podcasts I ever listened to. I’ve listened to every single episode since. The premise of the show is to find some generally bad / iconic / cult films to watch as a community and the hosts just talk about it. It’s a simple premise, but it’s fun, funny, and downright joy inducing.
• Triforce - Lewis, Sips, and PyrionFlax from The YogsCast talking about nothing in particular. A relaxing and funny ride.
• The Late Night Alternative With Iain Lee and Katherine Boyle - This is currently a daily Twitch show, having recently moved over from traditional radio. Great hosts with conversations ranging from the inane to mental health and drug addiction. A really unique take on the late night chat idea.
• Simon’s Peculiar Portions - Just give it a listen.
• Core - Another Frogpants show, this time focused on videos games across a wide spectrum.
• PAL KEYS - I’ve been a Pal Keys / Daryl Baxter fan for some time now. Daryl always gets some fantastic guests from the world, and surrounding ecosystem of video games for a good chat. I’m yet to hear a bad show, or discover a bad guest.
• Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen - While this is clearly a bit of a cash in on Michael Cohen’s part, it’s also a fascinating listen into some of the insanity within Trump’s inner circle. It’s only two episodes in and I’m already pretty hooked.

While I’ll still be dipping in and out of more tech focused podcasts, I think there’s a need to step back a bit and focus on content that’s adding more to my life than frustration and negativity. The tech podcasting market is a busy, some may say saturated, market and so many of them feel like shows are being put out just because they have to. A lot of the passion has gone and it’s a simple business transaction. I can understand that. We all have to live and have bills to pay, but with limits time in the day, especially while I’m not having to commute about 5 hours a day, shows like that don’t have a place in my queue. Hopefully I can find more, smaller, shows and creators to start investing my time and ad clicks on beyond the list above.

Published on October 08, 2020

Image courtesy of Tom’s Guide

A few days ago, the PlayStation team took to YouTube to share a tear down video of the new PlayStation 5. This struck me as a bit odd but, after wathcing it, I can see why they did it now.

The PlayStation 5 was touted as having expandable storage, and an ability to position the device either vertically or hoizontally. This video not only shows you a, quite fascinating, look inside the hardware, but it details just how you would go about expanding the storage. The relevant part of the video can be seen below:

Yep, that’s right, the folks at Sony are showing customers how to crack their brand new PS5’s open and to expand the storage. A screwdriver’s even required to enable the ability to lay the PS5 on its side.

In true console wars fashion, the Xbox community were quick to troll their competition:

Here’s how to expand the storage on next-gen consoles. pic.twitter.com/HOslBRmESC

— Xbox News (@_XboxNews) October 7, 2020

Every product designer must, at some point, experience a conflict between form and function. Love it or loathe it, PS5 is certainly a pretty unique design. Because of this, however, they’re expecting users to bust open their consoles to expand the storage. The Xbox, on the other hand, features a pretty dull looking monolithic tower design, however this affords it an ability to change it’s orientation simply and storage can be increased by just slotting in a new storage card. On the face of it, the two companies have taken the opposite approach to each other when it comes to design. Sony opted for form, Microsoft function.

Published on October 06, 2020

I’ve had quite an off and on relationship with Hey since I signed up for it just prior to its public release. It’s inarguably an interesting take on email, and email management. It’s well designed, is being iterated on fairly well and it’s pretty fun to use.

On the other hand, your emails are tied to a single service / app¹, features I’m not very interested in are going to be a big focus for a while (Hey for Work) and, for me at least, I ended up managing my email more not less. There are a few reasons why this was the case. First of all, I’ve been nervous that I’ve been missing something coming into one of the three areas, so I ended up checking the Imbox, Feed and Paper Trail on every visit. Further more, if you use the service as you’re guided to, by leaving your email to flow, you will soon have an app filled with utter junk. This is all part of the design ethos, and I understand it, but over time valid emails in a search, for example, will be diluted by the tut you’ve left festering in the bowels of your Hey mailboxes.

Published on October 04, 2020

(Photo by Thought Catalogue)

Despite barely posting to my blog for months, I’m still weirdly precious about what I post there. I always feel like I should only post longer form posts or something that I’ve over thought.

People like @ljpuk and @mattbirchler produce excellent content, every single day, and clearly feel comfortable just going with the flow and posting about what’s on their minds. This isn’t to say their pieces aren’t well thought out, they clearly are, but I also like the fluid nature of their blogging style. Mixing up themes, format and in Matt’s case even medium.

My little blog isn’t going to get popular, and frankly I wouldn’t want the pressure of it being so. Because of this, it’s completely unnecessary for me to be so protective of the kind of content I share here. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this in the past, but I’m once again going to make a concerted effort to just post. I’m not going to over think it, I’m not going to convince myself no one is interested in reading it. This may well be the case, but I’m going to blog about everything and anything that interests me. If anyone ends up coming along for the ride, then all the better.

I’ll blog like no one’s watching, because chances are they won’t be. And that’s just fine.

Published on September 29, 2020

Ever since we were first introduced to iOS 14 back in June, I was excited about the prospect of Widgets in iOS. Since even the early days of the beta I’ve been struggling to get a setup I like with them, however, and that was before so many excellent third party widgets were released.

My main issue hasn’t been that I don’t like the widgets, or that there aren’t enough of them, it’s simply an issue of trying to include too much at once. I’ve disliked the iOS homescreen for some years now, so I’ve embraced the new flexibility this affords, but perhaps to a fault. Much as I tend to do with the Apple Watch, I’ve tried to populate my homescreen with widgets (or Complications with regards to the Watch) that cover every situation.

With the Apple Watch, I now have the ability to create some Shortcuts which can automatically switch my face, and in turn the connected Complications at different times of the day. This has lead to a Bed / nighttime face, a Work face, and an Evening & Weekend face.

Published on September 14, 2020

A few months ago, in the peak of the Covid-19 lockdown, I built a gaming PC. This went surprisingly well and didn’t explode the first time I turned it on, which quite frankly was more than I could have hoped for given my lack of talent with these types of things.

The issue with this, however, is that it’s presence in my home office has completely killed any free time I have in the evenings and I now spend most of this time streaming badly. My blog has taken a serious hit, and my podcast has gone the way of the Dodo.

I want to blog more, but the lure of pure unadulterated relaxation playing some games badly has been too great. That’s why, today, I thought I’d try a little experiment. I’ve always found streaming anything difficult because I just didn’t know what to say for an hour or so. With no one watching, I had no chat to talk to either. When I lamented this fact on Twitter a few people suggested just talking about the things I used to do on my short podcast. I dismissed it at the time, but thought I’d now give it a try. So, to that end, meet version 0.1 of The Dent Podcast / VODcast:

As you can see, and hear from listening to it, this is most definitely a 0.1 release. The audio is poor, coming from my headset only, among other issues, but I thought I’d get it out there and see if there’s even any interest in something like this. So, please, I’d love to hear any thoughts you have. I’m under no illusion, however this will be few peoples cup of tea, but it’s a fun experiment to play around with.

This episode sees me chat about my thoughts on the upcoming Apple non-iPhone event tomorrow, 15th September.

Published on September 13, 2020

We’re now just a few days away from Apple’s traditional September event, but unlike many years before it, it sounds like we won’t see the release of the latest iPhone. Instead we’ll likely see a new iPad or two, along with the latest Apple Watch iteration, but is that it? I have an out there predication that we may be introduced to something that’s been an open secret for some time, namely Apple Glass.

Published on August 03, 2020 Back in February I wrote a short post about a tiny change to Apple Books made in iOS 13.4. Well, 6 months later and I’m back with some further tiny changes to Apple Books that no one notices or cares about news for you. I love the Apple Books app, and I use it daily. Many of the book prices are comparable to the likes of Amazon / Kindle, and I just love the look and feel of the app, along with the tracking features introduced with iOS 13.

Published on June 15, 2020

Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a completely different answer to the age old question of: ‘Can you get real work done on an iPad?’ I’m not here to answer that question for you, but I have moved my own use case for my beloved iPad Pro to the next level recently, and I wanted to share a few thoughts about the software, and hardware, that has helped me along the way.

Published on April 24, 2020

I’ve been tweeting and posting quite a bit recently about my Apple based setups, so when an online friend of mine¹ shared his [recent post](http://ipadguild.com/the-best-apple-setups-for-500-1000-2500-and-5000) about a setup challenge I was very intrigued.

The premise of his challenge is simple, you have to come up with your ultimate Apple product based setups at four different price points, namely $500, $1,000, $2,500 and, finally, $5,000. The rules, as defined by Chris are:

• You cannot use any other items, if you have a Mac Pro lying around your home, I don’t care.
• The prices are based off Apple’s website.

Sounds simple enough, right? For my purposes, just because I want to, I’m going to be using the U.K. site prices, because they’re inclusive of tax, which isn’t true for the U.S. one, as far as I know. The great British Pound doesn’t stretch quite as far as the dollar, so this could be interesting.

I should just mention that, so as not to tait my views, I’ve not read Chris’ post as yet, further than the ’rules’ section at least.

So, without further ado, here goes!

Published on April 22, 2020

The 2020 iPads Pro were introduced on 24th March, but for many people, including myself, ‘new keyboard day’ came just under one month later, when Apple released the intriguing new iPad Pro Magic Keyboard.

As I’ve alluded to in the past, including in my recent piece about my current iPad Pro setup, I’ve long pined for a ‘docked’ iPad Pro experience and I’ve achieved that goal, to a certain extent. Obtaining a true laptop, experience, however has been a little lacking.

A year or so ago I bought the Brydge Pro keyboard, which I used with my 2018 iPad for some months, but the device never really stuck. While it looked fantastic, the keys were extremely sticky and I found it really killed a major USP of the iPad, namely it’s portability. While it wasn’t all that heavy, really, and it could be removed from the device fairly easily, it still wasn’t ideal. It was clear from the little connecting clips that there was a tangible, finite amount of times you could reliably add and remove the iPad from the keyboard. With the Brydge out of the picture, I relied on the truly excellent Apple Smart Keyboard Folio case, for my ‘iPad as a laptop’ needs. All in all it’s been performing an admiral job, and the Smart Keyboard Folio remained my favourite keyboard to use with my device. Until today that is.

Published on April 09, 2020 I’ve explained previously that I’m a big iPad user and, until recently, I thought it impossible to fall in love with it even more. Then Apple released iPadOS 13.4 and everything changed, again … The full trackpad / mouse support added in this point release has added a feature I’ve wanted for many years now, and the implementation of it has really blown me away. This is not a simple re-hashing of the system currently in place on macOS.

Published on April 04, 2020 If you read my Magic Keyboard for iPad first impressions post you’d know that I’m pretty smitten with it. While I did mention a few shortcomings after my first day, I’ve gone on to use it extensively, every day since, and I’m in love with it now more than ever. Over this short period of time, however, I’ve noticed, what I think, is one of the devices biggest failings. The material.

Published on March 19, 2020 I’ve never been what you’d call a prolific writer on The Dent, but given the current events the world’s going through at the moment I’ve felt even less inclined to post than before. Who wants to hear about how much I love trackpad support in iPadOS 13.4, or what I think about that sweet new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro? Well, likely no more than has ever wanted to listen to me.

Published on March 19, 2020 I’ve posted many times on Twitter about all of the various configurations I use my iPad in. Far too many times for many, I’m sure! When it comes to my iPad Pro, however, I may just have a new favourite setup … The latest developer beta of iOS 13.4 introduced full trackpad support, which will be available to everyone next week. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, so a video has got to be worth at least 2,000.

Published on March 03, 2020 I recently had my one year anniversary of being self-employed (I’m a contractor). Among the many things I had to learn as part of the transition from permenant employment to contracting was budgeting and setting limits on how much both I, and my family, spend on certain things. While, after a year, I feel I’m getting quite good at this now, I’ve recently come across a new app, released today, that would have made this transition far easier.

Published on February 11, 2020 I’ve been a big fan of the AirPods since they launched and, being a self confessed Apple fan boy I could resist the AirPods Pro when they launched last year. I’d never tried headphones / earbuds with noise cancelling technology in them before, so I was really blown away with their performance, despite having a few reservations in relation to their overall comfort levels. Fast forward a few weeks, however, and I noticed the performance of the noise cancellation and Transparency starting to wane.

Published on February 10, 2020 Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 13.4 a few days ago and Apple blogs were quick to share the usual in-depth deep dives into what changes it would bring. These changes are pretty small, but from what I can tell they’ve all missed some equally small changes to Apple Books also. Here’s a quick comparison between Apple Books in iOS 13.3 and iOS 13.4 developer beta 1: Can you spot the differences?

Published on February 02, 2020 A few days ago, John Gruber and Matt Birchler had a bit of back and forth about the iPad and it’s intuitiveness as a device. Both sides of the argument had some valid points, but I knew which side of the fence I sat. One line in particular struck a cord with me, from Matt’s original post on the subject: As I have to say in every one of these pieces, I’m not arguing that macOS is trash, nor am I arguing that iPad software is perfect and needs no refinement.

Published on January 01, 2020 Greg Morris, writing on his blog gr36.com: I don’t need an iPad to be a working machine any longer; I need it to fill a gap of reading blog posts, my pocket feed and watching videos when I want to relax. So the iPad returns to its starting position. Nestled in among other Apple devices, and one I use to consume. Waiting its turn amongst threes Macs and an iPhone.

Published on December 26, 2019 I’ve been using the built in iOS Reading List feature for some time now, but only today I discovered a very useful feature that I wanted to share with you. After a quick Google search, it seems this isn’t a new feature so please indulge me if this is common knowledge. Once you’ve read, or at least navigated to the end of an article you’ve saved into Reading List, it will automatically jump to the next item in your reading list.

Published on November 22, 2019 Back in February, I wrote a review for the, then new, iPhone Smart Battery Case for the iPhone XS. While I had mixed feelings about the case, I summarised my feelings thusly: All in all, I’d say if 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.

Published on November 08, 2019 Trying to eat the right thing, and improve my health has been a constant battle for me over the years. As with many things in my life, I often turn to technology to help me through. To this end, I’ve tried a lot of food tracking apps over the years, however none have ever stuck with me for more than a day or two. The issue with most food tracking apps is that you already have to be very familiar and au fait with the food you’re eating.

Published on November 04, 2019 To you all U.S. sports fans out there, no I’m not refering to Adobe Photoshop for iPad the Most Valuable Player. I am, instead, refering to the term ‘Minimum Viable Product’. With Photoshop and many other hugely ambitious projects / releases from large companies, there seems to be a lack of basic understanding for how these kind of things work. It seems to be a growing trend recently, when a big new software release comes out, that people have extremely high and unrealistic expectations on what it may be.