Category: Uncategorized

Hi there! I haven’t posted here or changed anything in forever! In fact it’s been so long that WordPress threw all the text through some updater thing and messed everything up so now there’s random “”s and “’”s everywhere. It’s like the text equivalent of moss growing or something. That’s what I get for not maintaining this blog I guess. I’m sorry. I can’t maintain everything I build all the time.

[EDIT: Ok at first I thought the original base theme, Blue Kino, was corrupted and not allowing me to make edits…but thinking about it, the new blocks editor for WordPress might be overriding some of the styling code editable on my side. Darnit. Well, sometimes you gotta abandon things >_< You did well, old friend.]

That said, I want to revive this thing. That means a full redesign and updates…but I may not be cleaning up all the text weirdness on the posts. I’ll definitely clean up the About page, 404 page, etc…but for everything else, you’ll have to deal with all of this.  I’m very sorry 🙂 . Maybe it’ll clean itself up automatically sometime, and maybe this paragraph will no longer make any sense. IDK.

After I redesign the blog, I will be trying to open this up a little to members of my family. This blog was originally supposed to be a family blog actually, but…I was the only one who posted, and…nobody else got to it, and I wanted to post a lot so…thats what ended up happening. Yes, nobody else has posted except for one person. Isn’t that funny. >_<

Now for quick reviews of everything that’s been happening…

It looks like the last time I posted here, Donald Trump was screwing everything up. Thankfully he’s gone now, and Biden is slowly putting the pieces back together. If DT ever gets elected again, I am going to laugh. While crying.

The discovery of AI large language models! They’re basically complex language/word databases with the natural ability to programmatically extract data from itself and respond to any input (these databases and similar ones are termed “neural networks”), and are usually conditioned (trained, with almost no human input), by feeding it a huge amount of text from the internet, to predict the next word in a piece of text. But magic happens when you condition them to follow instructions, because now you have an assistant that does not rely on manually programmed rules, and you can have it do anything, by just chatting to it in natural language! You just have to tell it to respond in a format normal computers can understand (like telling it to respond in JSON or Python), and then another component can read it and run the code! It’s kind of amazing, and I’m definitely going to be using these networks to help me with the redesign I’m doing. The progress in developing these things has been super fast, and is only going to get faster as these networks get better and start to be used in developing even better networks!

I’ve really been getting into VRChat. It’s a really neat social platform that you can access via desktop or VR! It’s really been helpful for me…it gets me over my introversion actually…

BUT, I have to admit I haven’t been playing it recently very often. It’s probably because VRChat decided mods were horrible, and so sliced the community in half by adding a wrapper that destroyed compatibility with mods without really giving a warning. I stopped playing much after that, expecting VRChat to slowly die a painful death (although I had confidence in the team, the more I looked at the freaking world news…). But nothing really seemed to be spiraling (further) out of control…so I’m trying to get back into it. But my brain got fogged up in the meantime. Don’t read the news blindly. Please >_<

So that’s what’s been going on! Kind of a lot. Again, sorry for not posting here in a while, and sorry for allowing WordPress to do whatever the heck it did to the text, I think it was a database format change. Probably.

The redesign I’m going for will be a skeuomorphic design, referencing real-world objects. It will be as light as possible to avoid overloading browsers. I think flat design is a little bad…it doesn’t allow the brain to use the tricks it’s learned in the real world to recognize the things it wants to do. It doesn’t feel as comfortable (to me anyway) to navigate flat UIs…of course you can color different elements easier so that they jump out…but your brain is almost forced to recognize them. It’s not what the brain was designed for…

It’s hard to articulate what feels wrong about flat design for me. I know that Steve Jobs had to work hard to get people to understand what he wanted. The previous design of this blog tried to do a lot with moving-when-hovered-over elements to kind of create a forced skeuomorphic approach while still using flat design (is that close to neumorphism?)…but I now think it was the wrong approach. It still forced the brain to consciously search for what it wanted to do, everything had basically the same style.

I know why flat design is so common…it’s easy: The background is white, buttons are black, don’t even mess with rounded corners that much, lines are dividers, some basic 4 or 5-color palette like you’re designing for a Game Boy system or whatever. Of course sometimes it’s more complex than that, but the overall style is still really simple, and sometimes it’s not even done well, so you have to really search the page to find what you’re looking for.

I don’t outright hate flat design. It’s a UI, it has functionality, so it works. Apple handles flat design the best (although the buttons without borders are um…) But skeuomorphism is better for the brain, in my opinion.

That’s it for now. See you guys later!

Tell me…are you satisfied with the latest television show?  You probably haven’t heard of it…

It involves the U.S. and its intense struggle with the rest of the world’s political powers.  A story of confusion: “Is our president mentally stable?”, contradictory information “He can’t pass a basic literacy test, but he became the most powerful man in our country.”, sex “Grab ’em by the [REDACTED]”, and maximum shock value at all times.

It’s some really good content.  Like, 5-star content.  Oh, and the real kicker?  It’s not even a TV show!  This is some REALLY good content.  Did I just say he can’t pass a basic literacy test?  Yeah, I did!  And it’s not a goddamn television show!  This is such good content, I could watch this all day!

You’re probably SO tired of looking at Trump’s gold-plated name all over the airwaves and all over your own neighborhood.  I bet even your dog could speak his name if he tried.  I don’t care right now.

The way you get elected when you have the knowledge and where-with-all of a 5-year-old is to be really, REALLY lucky.  I have to praise the guy, yes, PRAISE him, for how he got here.  Very nice, dude.  And I also have to say, your content is good, for the fact that no one has demoted you yet.  Very well-constructed wobbling.  Yeah I said wobbling…he still acts like how I said in my last posts…changing opinions on a dime, making quick work of…any situation somehow…and making anyone who tries to emulate him to a tee start to question their own sanity.  Really good content.

…you want the other side of the coin?   I don’t have it, sorry.  It died when the video I linked got posted.

…rant over.  Now the point of this post:  Welcome to The Apprentice Series Z:  Donald Trump:  The Presidency

—

It’s not only luck that grants him access to that big white house.  He also follows a script.  That script is rewritten every time something changes, mind you, but it is a script, bent on making him look like your money-lined hero.

You know he likes to change his mind on a dime…and I know that’s not very script-like…but when he butts his way into the presidency looking like a 5-year-old got a grammy award…just…just bear with me.

This script is aimed at drama…actually, I don’t have to explain what the script looks like.  Please turn your attention towards The Apprentice, a drama series that consists of men and women groups doing jobs for Donald, and he picks the best people for the job.  Yes, he splits the group into specifically men and women, and yes, the women fight a lot and don’t seem to like to focus on anything, and the men look confident (of course there’s exceptions for both.  Drama isn’t drama without variety and unexpectedness).

Of course…you gotta scale the script.  A story about two groups doesn’t work for a highly complex country with a near-infinite number of smaller stories with an unthinkable number of potential outcomes.

Enter:  Drama cannons for years and everyone yelling like someone turned up the anger chemicals in their brains.

And before you provide the obvious logical conclusion:  “A guy who can’t pass a basic literacy test and can’t string two facts together without making a mess of things cannot possibly hope to follow a large and complex storyline including thousands of actors and plot points.”…is he president?  I’m sorry, I have to do it again, I have to praise him for how he’s managed to maintain, not just initiate, but MAINTAIN the endless drama cannons firing out of his butt…and it’s not like no one’s listening at all.  There’s reactions, firestorms, conspiracies, facts being posed as lies, lies being posed as facts, attacks, defense, advances, good theories, bad theories…literally everything there SHOULD be…but not a single final result, not a shift in behavior from Trump, not a group movement that had any effect, not a falloff, not even a drop of sweat on the brow of Donald Trump.

When you watch Donald Trump…you are watching a master.  And when you interact with him, you are now part of the main storyline…

At the time of the current episode, you are either good or bad, strong or weak.  But as soon as a point is raised or a meeting ended or a rally started or ended…that episode is over.  The next begins, and TWIST, you’re either the opposite of what you were before, or stronger…or weaker.  Or now in the background, as an extra that the audience is meant to forget.  Or FROM an extra to a main character that everyone loves or hates.  Or now a secondary character, and then from that to the lady’s lapdog, or from your own personal heaven provided to you from the greenback-lined savior of the universe, to your own personal hell, again, provided to you from that suit-wearing Satan of death.

You as an actor, having no knowledge of the script, might have their sanity, maybe react a little to that.  Drop down a peg…or fifty.

But to the rest…the people not part of the main story, who actually have breathing room…they’re watching the telly.

It’s just really good content.

[The midterm elections are coming up at the time of writing.  I hope everyone’s got their red pen out to cross out Mr. Drama DJ’s name.  And don’t you dare elect anyone like him again, or I will assume the Russians did it instead of you because there’s no goddamn way you’ll make this mistake again.]

[As for my Apple posts…I was busy with VRChat, a really good VR game I might post about.

Really quick points:

iOS 12 is definitely a reaction to the software audit a while ago, and it is damn good.  Apple seems to have listened…sort of.  Two important keyboard keys on iPads have switched.  Why did that happen?

The iPhone lineup is a little confusing in terms of names.  I’m not even sure Apple knows what the letters mean.

Still kinda puzzling over what Apple thinks of itself and its customers.  “Ecosystem” is the key word here, it seems.

—

Not sure what the next post will be, Apple or VRChat or something else.  And I will try not to make another post about the DJ again.  If I can help it…]

Sorry sorry!  I swear I have an opinion, I just was mulling over other things, and the fact that Apple is apparently switching up its opinion on iOS.  Yeah.

tvOS

—

Well…Apple did literally one thing.  The literal only thing they literally said was that tvOS is getting an Amazon app.  That’s literally it.  I really don’t get it.  I don’t think they know what to do with tvOS.

—–

watchOS 4

—

It gets a Siri watch face and a few little Toy Story watch faces.  Not like the Mickey and Minnie faces (where they stand in the middle and point to the numbers), but little GIF-like ones where they do a little animation against a black screen with a digital clock in the corner.  You can also now view apps in a list view.  Yes, with giant buttons compared to the small circular bubbles.  I wanna say they did that just to show that the customer isn’t always right.  That probably isn’t the reason, but giant list buttons on a 32mm screen doesn’t seem that sound.

This leads me straight into:

iOS 11

—

This is the reeeeaaallly interesting one.  They seem to have made this a productivity update, at least for the iPad, and what better thing to give the iPad then an actual dock…as in you can put 13 apps in it, yes, THIRTEEN, in addition to a space of three icons for your recent apps:  That’s 16 icons in one row in both portrait and landscape mode.  That’s Apple Watch home screen levels of tiny icons.

…sorry, I don’t know why I started off with a bash at iOS.  There’s a whole lot of good in this update:  Drag and drop, an actual file system app that includes iCloud drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and I think some others, a document scanner tool for Notes, and you can now run at least three apps at once, and you can save spaces of two apps at once, and you have a lot more controls you can access in Control Center, and can add and remove them at will–

–what?  You say this doesn’t sound simple?  …oh you’re right.  Hmm…

I have a theory.  As stated in this article, I think Apple is upping the bar on how much complexity it wants in iOS.  Yes, Apple is increasing complexity…in the name of not forcing you to abandon it at the slightest indication of having to do something awkward.  It is exactly how I put it in this post.  To quote: “Our lives require more complex features.  We cannot live as simply as we have before.  As things grow more complicated, we need more features to deal with them.  Apple is attempting to encompass ALL of our lives, while leaving us CONTROL over our lives.  That needs more than just two buttons for five things.”

I also said that the more features Apple creates, the worse the software will get, because maintaining more and more features means there’s more and more ways the software can clash with itself, and more and more things Apple has to maintain.

That’s a necessary evil, unless Apple can pull off something cool, which it has always tried to do in the past.  We’ll see.

I’ve been playing with the public beta on my iPad, and while some things are of course wonky and spastic, it still feels like iOS.  At the moment.  Although I’ve heard that the beta for iPhone is actually worse than the beta for iPad…which doesn’t make too much sense to me.

Also, the artificial intelligence updates in iOS are awesome!

—–

macOS High Sierra

—

This is mostly just smarts updates, and a new file storage method.  This one is a good update too.

The name is a little odd…like macOS is on drugs now.  Or something.

[Sorry I’m kinda skipping this one, macOS is about as un-Apple as you can get, and you can run Windows on it even.  So it’s really not worth talking about in terms of Apple’s simplicity or even in terms of a computer so much…though I do recommend this update.  People who like to browse sites will no longer have to deal with auto-playing videos…although I believe HTML5 ads can still take over your screen to promote AWESOME TANK GAME #5033!!!!!]

——

HomePod

—

Hey, it’s the rumored Siri speaker!

Hah, I don’t think Apple wanted it to be thought of as only a Siri speaker though.  It’s also a really smart regular speaker:  It detects where the walls are in the room and directs the sound to open parts of the room to create the best sound it can.

It sounds like a really rocking device. I bet it’s a bass blow to the more treble companies…why did I just devolve into puns that got worse the more I did them…

Also it looks like the head of a giant news-anchor microphone.  I think that was intentional.

——

iMac Pro

—

I like this.  It’s black, shiny, and powerful.  It has 18 cores(!) in its CPU.  And they demoed a virtual reality thing along with it that looked really cool too.  It’s a nice little computer.  Too bad nobody but people with a lot of money can get it.

——

ARkit

—

This is an API in iOS you can use to create nice-looking augmented reality apps.  That’s it, not even a demo AR app is packaged with iOS.  They showed a few examples of it in the keynote, and it does look really good, but I kinda wish they’d at least put some sort of AR thing in Maps so we could see it out of the box.  I need to find an app that uses it so I have more of an opinion.

——

Overall, a really interesting keynote.  iOS stole the show for me, I think it’s very interesting Apple is changing how it’s designing that software.

I’m really interested to see what Apple will do next.  And it’s legitimate interest this time, not just fanboy interest 😉

America…America, please.  Have you ever seen “The Apprentice”?  Did you not connect that blatant business tycoon persona to the fact that maybe Donald Trump would try to run the U.S. in the exact same way?

You know what, you probably didn’t, considering that no one in his right mind would think to run the U.S. the same way you ran that casino in Vegas, or that hotel in L.A., or the way you sold your own steaks.

Well, we haven’t seen those methods specifically…but did you hear him at the inauguration?  That was the most cookie-cutter speech I’ve ever heard.  Of course a president WANTS to give power back to the people.  Of course a president will SAY TO THE PEOPLE that the government has been reaping the rewards while the rest of the public suffers.  Of course a president will say that all offenses toward the American people stops with his inauguration.  He was extremely general.  And then he banned all the foreign people (except for people in Egypt and two other states who were the ones actually responsible for 9/11…sorry if that’s still a trigger word).

[Devil’s Advocate Approaches]

But don’t worry, Trump supporters…I’ve read the other side too.  Year after year, apparently, people have been voting less democratic and more republican.  And Trump is apparently securing our borders.  Yes, foreign people are responsible for some of the best companies and influences we’ve ever seen…but we might have to step back and look at what we’re actually doing to this country, and gauge if accepting so many immigrants really is the best thing to do.  And building a wall to separate Mexico and the U.S…could be considered overkill…but there are some bad people in it, and the state is right up against us…

[Devil’s Advocate Leaves]

But really I don’t think panicking the entire world and separating wives and husbands and cutting off our very methods of innovation and progress and therefore not thinking through anything is the way to be a president.

Also, apparently even Trump supporters can’t wrap their minds around this.  Have you seen #alternatefacts?  This originated from a video in which  news reporters were talking about one of Trump’s press secretaries saying that the inauguration crowds were way bigger than they actually were.  Kellyanne Conway, not wanting to sound like an idiot I believe, denied that the secretary was lying, but termed the info an “alternative fact“.  Twitter, unsurprisingly, went nuts with it.

I don’t even know what that would mean if it was true…was the crowd both large and not large like the Schrödinger’s Cat idea?  That WOULD work with it…had it not been for the fact that the size of the crowd was being observed by people in the crowd and the cameras above, which in turn were being observed by people watching on TV.

Please note however, that if we do take Trump down…we have to go through a maximum of about twelve different (similar, but not exactly the same) presidents before the queue is exhausted…and then there isn’t even a process for re-electing anyone anyway so…I think I’ll just sit back and watch the fun.  And cringe.

And did I mention how horribly broken executive orders are?!  Even before half a week passed since the inauguration date, Trump was able to stop all incoming foreign people from specific states!!  It’s like a badly balanced video game!

Someone should take his Gameshark away…

One man…one position to fight for…

Changing political positions at the drop of a hat…keeping the entire country in panicked, confused suspense…

Donald Trump attempts to create his own country…will he succeed?

…

…sorry.

Jeez, Donald.  I have no idea what you’re up to.  No one does, and that’s the truth; I was not making up the panicked confused suspense thing…Donald Trump literally changes his mind at the flick of a switch.  Whenever something doesn’t look good for him, he reverses it.  And not enough people notice…or no one cares enough to take him down.  Yeah, remember kids, you can get away with not adhering to specific views, as long as enough drama is present to hide everything.  THAT is how you utilize the media, THAT is how you become popular and still be able to be an asshole, and THAT is how you prove that our country is run on nothing but “Hey something dramatic!  That’s cool, let’s shove it into the spotlight without looking at what it is!”

I’m saying this without dissing the people that actually voted for him…they do struggle with issues.  But then you remember that he changes his mind on a dime, and you still have a mess.

And he’s been doing this throughout the entire campaign!  This wasn’t even a “Hmm, I knew what I was doing during the primaries but now that I’m president what the hell do I do now” kinda thing.  This was Donald Trump wobbling around insulting Muslims and Mexicans in the same room as he’s in while he still climbs the ladder of government…and the public turns the other cheek.  Interestingly horrible, isn’t it?

Also, you CAN rip the baby from the womb on the last day.  Interesting phrase, right?  Donald Trump said that, and he didn’t really follow up with anything.   It was just a little more drama to go with his heaping helping of racism and idea-switching.

I think I’ve made Donald Trump sound horrible enough.  Now, if you’re smart, you’ll go and confirm all of this.  I think the internet is talking enough about this that you’ll be able to find all of the things I’ve talked about, and more.

I hope Trump U.S. Incorporated doesn’t become a reality.

Well….not everyone’s angry.  Those people are the lovers of Apple…and we all loved Apple at some point.  We loved all that innovation coming out of it like a well-oiled Future Machine.  Pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, enhancing our daily lives, eradicating the complicated, old way of life to make way for the new…those were the days, eh?

And now look at this.  Apple is freaking broken.  Pushing out crap that no one thought they wanted, stuffing their shit with gimmicky, awful features that no one in their right mind uses or cares about, pushing feature after feature at us like they forgot what they were doing.  They are changing, turning into Fat Pig Number Whatever.

They’re extorting money out of us, removing ports that we all need, changing the game, pushing new features as…as our needs change…pushing aside the past…like the headphone jack…to make way for new and more feature-rich ports…like the lightning port…or…doing the exact same thing they’ve been doing for years.

——

Feature Overload

—

First thing I need to get out of the way:  Our lives require more complex features.  We cannot live as simply as we have before.  As things grow more complicated, we need more features to deal with them.  Apple is attempting to encompass ALL of our lives, while leaving us CONTROL over our lives.  That needs more than just two buttons for five things.

And in keeping with this control…Apple added a news app to iOS, right?  Don’t want it?  You can remove it.  Like any other third-party app.  Apple isn’t trying to force you into every single thing they shove out.

——

“Gimmicky” features

—

If you’re a person that believes all the new features are gimmicky, you’ve probably run into an Apple fan who believes that the new features are “innovative” and have “never been done before”.

Well, the definition of gimmicky is “a cute tweak to a product, the purpose of which is to attract attention and nothing else”.

I have heard the Touch Bar described as “gimmicky”.  I’m sorry, WHAT?!  A bar that helps you use the program, i.e. Final Cut’s zooming feature, because Apple removed the zoom bar from the interface and without the Touch Bar you have to use the semi-useless Trackpad, is a GIMMICK?  You can use features while in fullscreen for some programs!  Is that a useless trick for attention, or a productivity enhancer??

——

Software Instability

—

I admit, Apple haters:  Apple has indeed gone downhill with its quality in terms of software.  But it’s for a completely natural reason.  Remember how I said that Apple is trying to encompass all of your life while leaving you control?  The more features they have to make to achieve that, the more testing they have to do.  And they can’t just sit on their butts testing everything while the world sinks into a pit of “where the hell did they go they suck”, so they end up releasing things without the polish they used to have.

——

The Smart Battery Case Design

—

Uueh…this shouldn’t be limited to just the battery case, it should encompass all future products that people deem ugly.  Why?  Because they’re NEW, and Apple’s goal is to push aside the OLD, as in nothing will be familiar.  Products will challenge our perceptions because they don’t look like what we would describe as “slick”, and our definition of “slick” was built on the looks of OLD products.  As in, the 1986 versions of futuristic heavens where cars fly and everything is made of smooth steel.  As long as the battery case feels great in your hand and in your pocket…what does it matter how the hump looks?

——

USB-C

—

Well, Apple did it.  They’ve been doing it with the headphone jack…they removed a port we all need.  I mean EVERYTHING runs off USB!  It’s a freaking standard!  And now we have to buy these stupid little adapters that cost money and fill up our drawers and backpacks with tiny little boxes that are so small that tiny little chihuahua dogs can swallow them and we lose them and thy just make our workplaces look uglier and more ridiculous the more adapters we have and…

SHUT UP.

Think a little…think of what Apple’s been doing.  They were the first to remove the floppy drive, right?  Everyone probably went as nuts as you guys are now.  Floppy drives were as much a standard as USB is today.  Floppy disks were how you transferred information.  Businesses and families relied on it, it was the only thing they really trusted, just like USB today.  And Apple removed it.  They removed the only trusted method of information transfer…and I’m betting the exact same explosion of “WHAT THE HELL APPLE” happened then.

And look where it got us.  By abandoning floppy disks and drives, Apple forced the world to adopt new strategies for storing and transferring data.  And now, everything is much faster and better.

They’re doing the exact same thing again with USB-C.  USB without the C is not an all-in-one-port, but USB-C is.

Soon, we’ll abandon all the adapters…but we have to have them now in order to be compatible with the old USB-complient products.  Those old products will fade into obscurity, now that Apple has the ball.

——

Functional vs. Control

—

The last thing I will debunk is the notion that Apple continues to fill its products with non-functional junk.

……well, they DO fill their products with non-functional things…but it’s not necessarily junk.

I’m mostly talking about Live Photos.  Now THAT is the closest thing I can think of that really can feel like a gimmick a LOT of the time.  You press hard on a photo, and it shows you a few seconds before and after the photo was taken.  That only works on the iPhone, and only works right on iPhones that support 3D Touch, and it serves no real purpose productivity-wise, and it can grab people’s attention.  Gimmick heaven.

Yet…it doesn’t feel like a cheap trick.  Try this if you don’t believe me:  Get a dog to do something cute in front of the camera, and snap a Live Photo.  Now wait a day or two, then open the photo.  Yeah…there’s a dog there, it’s cute…but it’s just a photo.  Now play the Live part of it.  Now you can see the dog as it is, not a frozen image, but a jumping panting ball of cuteness.

Same with a party you went to and want to remember.  You may have forgotten to take a video, but you have lots of photos…and they’re Live ones, so you can still relive snippets of the party.  That’s not a cheap money-grabbing feature…that’s a completely non-functional, but well thought-out, life-enhancing feature.  You have more control over the moments of your life.

———–

So…there.  I’ve spelled out for you why this entire anger issue you all have is ridiculous.  Apple is doing the exact same thing they have been doing for ages, and they only reason they’re slipping a little bit is simply because they’re trying to encompass our life, just as they’ve been doing already.  I find it funny that we apparently hate change…and yet we push for innovation.  Which IS change.  The definition of innovation is “something RADICALLY DIFFERENT than what has been done before”.

That said….maybe there is a little smidgen of brain farts going on…after all, they did release the iPhone 7 without a USB-C charger…and then right after that released the Mac…that has nothing but USB-C ports…

Wow.  This is the most solid expression of Apple’s vision we’ve seen.  Wireless headphones that connect on removal from the case, and that automagically broadcasts to every device you have?  Sounds like a pretty simple tool.

And it seems to get lots of jobs done at once, having microphones that are (reportedly) sensitive enough but smart enough that you don’t have to shout to get yourself picked up.  So you can just have a pleasant chat with Siri or talk to your boy/girlfriend for hours as people stare at you wondering when you’re going to shut up……wait a tick.

It’s only got five hours of battery life?  No…no I know the CASE has twenty-four hours of–listen, the case itself has twenty-four hours of battery life, but the pods themselves only have five hours.  Yes, the case is a battery pack.  Yes you probably have to plug it in…yeah, I know it’s wireless–I mean the PODS are–I know that’s not Magical like it says on the website–SHUT UP!

I don’t blame you for yelling.  You can access Siri right from the pods, why the hell can’t you just leave them in all day and just blurt “Hey Siri” when you need something?  Is Siri supposed to be on battery?  Is this the future:  The Robotic Companion:  The only assistant you’ll ever need…if you remember to charge her?

Jony, no one cares about you, just let the engineers insert a better battery…I’m kidding…don’t shoot me…

——

Setup

—

This section only exists 1.  To praise the simple setup, and 2.  To point out that this is hilarious because everyone says you just can’t trust devices that connect without your say-so.  And here is Apple making a device that connects without your say-so.  At least (if you don’t do anything shady) both the iPhone and AirPods come from Apple, and at least Apple says it makes things secure, and if a company SAYS it makes things secure then they ARE secure, except when everyone jumps on them, then it’s most definitely NOT secure because logic just jumped in from the moon and covered everything in Perspective.  Or something.

Actually, technically the AirPods don’t do that.  The phone pops up a window that has a Continue button.  I bet you can turn off the screen and the AirPods disconnect.  The pods and the phone still have to do something together to get that to work though.

——

The Case

—

The case is wired.  It also might have some sort of sensor in it to detect when the pods are taken out.  Or the pods have a sensor to determine if they were taken out of the case.  I don’t really know.  Stay tuned for a teardown somewhere on the Internet where some dudes kill Jony Ive’s soul and rip his products to bits.  We’ll see if Apple Magic really exists.

——

The Pods

—

I’ll reiterate what I said at the beginning:  Why the hell can’t you just have a leisurely chat with Siri without worrying that a low battery will render her useless?  I know:  Because miniaturization hasn’t gotten that far.  Hah, didn’t expect that, did ya?  I’ll just make a quick point and move on:  We complain about Apple because why?  Because it’s supposed to be better?  Because it’s our big juicy fruit that’s supposed to make things better?  Because it’s our…big brother?  *wink*

I love that Apple managed to make them wireless, but the battery is just awful for the kind of use case a die-hard Apple fan would expect.  And by die-hard, I mean the kind of person who expects an Apple product to work like this:  “Hmm,  Siri, I wanna watch the game.  Siri, send Mail to John about our meeting, and tell him he has to be on time, and give him the details about the points I talked about with Tom in our last conversation.  Siri, make sure our room stays quiet for the next hour.”

As advertised, that die-hard Apple fan may run into a problem [I’m going to insert a story here as an experiment.  I’d like your feedback on these.]

———

The Apple fan touched his AirPods.  “Hey Siri, can you send mail to Tim?”

There was no answer.  “Siri?!  Siri?…”  The AirPods remained silent.

Wondering what was going on, the fan remembered that the AirPods ran on a battery…or, he read somewhere that they did.  He didn’t especially believe in that, he just thought…well, Apple wouldn’t screw its own customers…everything that came from Apple “just worked” after all.

He tried again, asking Siri to send mail, and…nothing.  Okay…what if they DID run on batteries?  What if they did?  Well then…

He shuddered.  Well then all the rumors were true…Apple really was just another company, and he had been lying to himself for all these years and…and…

He reached for his iPhone tentatively.  No…surely not.  His phone would show him that the AirPods would be connected, and everything would be fine.

He swiped up Control Center, swiped to the left…

Oh no.  The AirPlay menu was showing that the audio was being routed to the iPhone speaker…

He opened the menu and searched for the AirPods in the entry list…they weren’t there.

They ran on batteries.

The Apple fan sank to the ground, clutching his iPhone as if someone had insulted it.

———

I know that’s kind of an extreme example, but its a possibility.  It also ignores the fact that his iPhone runs on batteries too…

——

Conclusion

—

These things are really good.  And by any other company’s standards I would give them a full 10/10…but…since I’m seeing so many complaints, and since apparently Apple is “Big Brother“…I’ll have to give it a 5/10.  Sorry, Apple.

(To be honest though, based on how I use my headphones already, a solid 9/10 is in order.)

For as conceptually consistent a company as Apple wants us to believe it is, it sure can fall into turmoil sometimes.  And apparently that turmoil started when Steve Jobs left and Apple hasn’t recovered until now.

If you’re a Stiff and don’t believe that Apple sank into sludge, just look at how little purpose went into iOS 7-9.  And now look at iOS 10.  See the difference?  iOS 10 looks more complete then iOS 7-9 (and when a version of iOS looks more complete than 3 other versions that looked basically the same, you got a problem).

If you’re the other type of Stiff and don’t believe Apple has recovered, check out this post by Above Avalon.  The post details Apple’s perceived product model, and says that Apple now looks to be creating something called the Apple Experience—

Wait what?  Wasn’t it already aiming for that?  Wasn’t the point of Apple products to adapt to the user?  Looking at the product layout images on the article, we see some familiar models:  The Mac as the center, then each product supporting the other equally in a stool formation, then the phone as the center…

But then there’s this really odd self-adapting formation, where as the user places more or less importance on a particular product, the supports to other products get stronger or weaker.

…But shouldn’t Apple have been aiming for that anyway?  A product model that adapts to the user sounds like a very Apple way of dealing with things…

Um, well…Apple didn’t do it before.  So there was no experience.  “Experience” in quotes.  As in, in business terms, you couldn’t call it an “experience”…oh forget it.  They’re making an experience now.  They’re “Apple” now.  Before, they were “That company that looks like Apple but only had one guy running things that everyone believed was Apple and thought he was making an experience but now we know that he wasn’t”.  And then during iOS 7-9 (and maybe 6), they were “That company that looks like Apple but was actually a manifestation of the confusion between ‘UX/UI Simplicity’ and ‘Visual Simplicity’.

At least that’s what the article implies to me.  If you want to tag it as “Apple was doing Apple by waiting and doing the necessary evil of pissing everyone off and ruining the world”, be my guest.

In fact here’s several reactions to this article (with no particular theme):

—-

-Steve Jobs was an idiot and wasn’t actually designing an experience?!

-Why would you do any other formation other than the self-adapting one?  That’s the most Apple!

-So Apple DID suck, but now we’re all safe!

-Apple still sucks because they don’t know what they’re doing!!

-The Apple Watch or iWatch or Watch or whatever can’t fit into the self-adapting one because it’s slow as hell and I haven’t seen watchOS 3 yet!

-WINDOWS/ANDROID/UBUNTU/LINUX/XIAO MI/ANYTHING-ELSE IS BETTER APPLE SUCKS.

—-

Pick your favorite.

But what I personally think, based on what Above Avalon said, is that we’re getting stock Apple now (no “stock Android” reference intended).  Because stock Apple obviously didn’t exist when Steve was alive.  Or at any other point other than now.

Or maybe this was just Apple Inc. and the cult is an illusion and anything Apple does is just your average company behavior.  Yeah, say that to an Apple fan and see how far you get.

—-

Before I end this post, I want to make a note:  There’s been some confusion over whether Apple is a functionally divided company or not.  I still find references to “Apple’s functionally divided system”, but everyone I talk to gives good reasons as to why Apple can’t be functionally divided, and I wonder.  But this “self-adapting product model” seems to require the mindset of “Every product needs to do everything so the user can have any of our products and still be able to use them as if they had any other combination of products”, which implies a functionally divided company so every product receives the same level of care as any other.  The reason why the products appear lopsided right now is because they appear to have just figured this out.  My diagnosis of the interval between when Steve died and now, is that after he died, Apple fell into a fight between Jony (who was appointed iOS software design lead), and everyone else.  The fight then devolved into confusion as people temporarily lost sight of what Apple was aiming for.  This lasted through iOS 8 and 9.  And now, they finally got their feet back under them and are coming back with iOS 10.

That’s my theory.

[This post is mostly about iOS…because for some reason Apple focused on it.  And it, FOCUSED, on it.  Read on.]

Um…the title basically says it all.  Besides some, yes, UI and user experience improvements that make everything a whole lot better…why did it take so long for any of this to happen?  There’s so much stuff here, artificial intelligence, more opening up, watchOS actually living up to what company it came from…

And yes, ACTUALL artificial intelligence, not just followup questions for Siri or tracking what apps you use when.

—-

———

The User Interface/Experience

—-

Word of advice:  Tell your fans you’re working on stuff like this, rather than just going “Oh, incremental update!  We’re Apple and we’re innovative but we have our head stuck in a bucket!”

The UI is now a sort of “translucent plastic card” model, so almost everything works off of looking like a bunch of cards that you slide around.  It feels like Google’s material design, but not exactly restricted to physical/scaling movements.  It’s also smoother…I guess…

Sorry.  I’m a little annoyed.  iOS 7-9 had nothing except people complaining that Jony had no idea what he was doing, and apparently he was being some sort of Godzilla and not allowing anything to change or whatever, and now suddenly it’s UX and AI and APPLE.  I’m getting ahead of myself, but I don’t really care.  Oh, Jony, what the hell did you do?  Did you get fired?  I guess not, since it didn’t make the news.  My dad had already assumed that Apple had completely lost it.  Did Apple plan this?  I’ll shut up now.

…Oh yeah, CONSISTENCY!  WHY NOW??

———

The Photos app

—-

Word of advice:  This is not UI, but it still makes everything better.

This is where the bulk of the artificial intelligence work went.  iOS can now scan each photo in search of objects, face, and scene data, but that’s not all.

It can compile groups of photos and videos into one long video called a Memory.  It edits, adds transitions, and adds music.  It creates a story, it can selectively pick out your best photos, and your best clips from your videos.  It does all this automatically.  You do absolutely nothing.  You can pick the mood and the length, and it can re-edit the entire video automatically.

Of course this is completely similar to Google’s Auto Awesome feature, except for the Mood and Length sliders.

It does it all on device…unless Apple’s lying (and if you want a downer, talk to my dad about iOS.  That is all.)

———

Everything else

—-

Word of advice:  You’re slow, Apple.

I watched a 50 Hidden Features of iOS 10 video.  I found a >RESTRICTED BY TOS< in the Notes app.  And yes, I got excited and downloaded it, and yes, I’m a registered developer, and no, I might not use that account properly, but yes, I will try as hard as I can to keep these betas secret, at least until Apple releases the Public Betas.

I’m assuming I can show people things that were shown in the keynote, because everyone and their dog watches those, but as for things not shown in the keynote, I’m not allowed to show, and I will respect that.  As much as I can.

One thing that could be a point of alarm…they changed the way you get into the phone.  Instead of swiping to the right, you press the home button.  I guess that’s more in line with the Home screen build-in animation, but…I wonder if it would cause someone to instinctively throw their phone against the wall the first time they see that.

———

watchOS

—-

Well, at least Apple finally thought.  Uh—I mean they finally did something—they finally made the apps launch instantly—um, they finally……gave Jony Ive a white egg……or whatever……

*shrug* It’s a better watch now.  It has a dock so you can access your favorite apps.  You activate it by pressing the side button.  So now it does four things.  Hey, they’re at least TRYING to try.  Not that the Apple Watch was intuitive to begin with.

———

tvOS

—-

This was the only place where Apple mentioned a Dark Mode in the keynote.  The reason?  Eddy Cue pressed a button that made a high pitched whine that freaked out his dog and caused it to eat that part of the script.  Or in layman’s terms:  I have no clue.

Apple’s making a new version of the Remote app to control it.  Beyond that I don’t remember.

———

macOS

—-

Yes, it isn’t called OS X anymore.  Instead Apple made the name fall in line with everything else.  There’s a joke here, but Bozoma ate it.

Siri integration!  And she kind of serves the same purpose as Spotlight!  [Also I just realized, now Spotlight can be construed as a way to type to Siri…kind of.]

Also, space management.  As in, the Mac uploads old files that you don’t use as often to the cloud and deletes them from the hard disk.  Which is why I won’t be downloading the developer preview for the Mac…that will almost literally be playing with fire.  Or a time bomb.  Or both.

———

One more thing…

—-

There was a one more thing.  And it was weird.  It was the weirdest and yet most refreshing (in a way) thing I’ve seen from Apple.  Wanna know what it was?

It was the iOS 10 marketing video that wasn’t shown in the iOS 10 section because apparently no one noticed that no one wrote it into the section because no one said no or no one said yes and WHAT THE F—

Every time you blurt about Apple products being glitchy or slow or not doing what you want, Jony Ive sheds a tear.  He and his team work their asses into the smallest cracks in the ground to get Apple’s products to gel with the human condition; to get every single Apple product to adapt to your lifestyle so you don’t have to learn how to adapt to your life…you’ll be able to just deal with it in the fastest way possible.  That’s really the goal of any tech product…and Apple knows this.  Everyone knows this, except every single bloated money-grubbing stupid-[REDACTED].

Well…that’s not entirely true.  Be warned, this is going to be an attack on Apple.  I hate doing that.  [I already tired to write a post like this and I just couldn’t do it.  I never deleted it from Drafts because I was wrestling with myself.]

——

Look at the iPad 2.  No, not the iPad Air 2, the second-generation iPad.  Yes, THAT.  I still have one.  It still supports the current OS.  Lemme repeat that:  The second iPad that Apple’s ever released supports iOS 9.3.2, when it came with iOS 4.2.1.  That is 6 iOS versions.

It’s as slow if not slower than my android phone.  Apps sometimes take more than three seconds to start.  The keyboard often lags so much, I can finish typing two or three short words before the keyboard registers the first keystroke, and then it replays the past keystrokes as it catches up to what I’m doing.  The Notification Center almost never responds instantly when I swipe from the status bar.  And it’s been like that since iOS 7.  It’s usable though, which is why I still have it.  I don’t really want to pay that much money for a new one.

So why the holy hell is it that slow, when Apple believes in doing everything the fastest way possible?  Even simplicity gets into that issue, as when a button doesn’t instantly respond, you’re left with an arbitrary waiting period where your left wondering “Did I miss the tap target or something?”!  Same for the Apple Watch.  Same for any interface lag that ever invaded any device.  And yes, even my 6s stutters occasionally.

You might just chalk that up to “Eh, it happens.  Hardware slows up as its software improves.  There’s no way around it.”

You might also chalk it up to “Apple obviously doesn’t care about speed or simplicity.  The borderless buttons ensure everyone remains confused about what buttons are, and the continued support and unacceptable speed of the iPad 2 proves that speed is not a concern at Apple.”

Both of those are complete and utter bull anus.  At least it is if the people at Apple actually remember how to innovate hard and solve problems.  And I admit…it’s extremely difficult to tell if they actually remember.  There’s tons of information saying that they continue to think and solve numerous problems by hacking at them relentlessly until the universe gives up.  But there’s also tons of information saying that as soon as Steve Jobs died, they all turned 16 years old, donned business suits, and said “We got a shiny ship to sail, lets make some money.”

——

I have a way to interpret all this.  And it violates the Rules of Simplicity as stated in this book.

My theory is that Apple literally has too much to do.  They have to keep up with too many things:  Their product lines are too big.  And to cope with that, they have to hire a lot of companies and people.  This increases the number of people working on stuff, and, as the book says, that’s one way to let the evil Complexity into your clean garden of Simplicity.

So yes, they might have to deal with a lot of things…but someone had to continue to compile OS files for the iPad 2.  Someone had to have noticed “Hey…the user experience on this iPad really sucks.”  Why didn’t they?

Well…maybe the Simplicity Garden is crumbling.  Maybe they are devolving into Generic Money-Hogging Technology Company #54837.

We’ll see.