A few times a year these kinds of posts start to appear. Around the time of installing new iOS updates, or getting a new phone, users start to think about what’s on their phone, and new people start to look for apps to use. Here are some of my favourite apps that are my first installs on any new phone.
Pocketcasts I go backwards and forwards on podcast apps, but one that remains my favourite is Pocketcasts.
Every iPhone release time everyone starts focusing on the cameras in them. Loads of people go for photo walks and get great shots “with just a smartphone” and even more people start to question the role of a dedicated camera.
That’s because for more than 10 years the smartphone has cannibalised the point and shoot camera market. The reason Apple worked so hard on the original iPhone was because they knew people didn’t want to carry around a phone, iPod and camera, and even perhaps a PDA — and that is still true today.
My shiny thing arrived on Friday. The new iPhone 12 Pro was delivered really early in the morning, and within minutes started to fill me with the feelings that I knew it would. It feels pretty much the same as the last one, and also the one before that, bringing such tiny updates that if they hadn’t changed the edges to flat ones you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference.
I write to you at the end of a horrible two weeks. Even in this position of privilege I have, my eyes have been opened simply by the fact I am not allowed to leave my house. In fact, if you read this on the day it is published, it is my last day inside, and I am just a few hours away from being able to leave the walls of my home — and what a privilege that will feel like.
It’s been three years since I used a Pixel device. Not since the first version was I even motivated to pick one up and try it out. They all excelled in specific areas, but always suffered from some frankly jaw-dropping issues or hardware omissions — and when they somewhat sorted it all out with the Pixel 4 they wanted to charge premium prices and not deliver on the premium part.
After using as many phones as I have over the last 12 months you begin to see things a little differently to just swopping your sim out once a year. While it’s easy to get complacent and just move to the next phone, I simply can’t do that and have to give each phone at least a couple of weeks try whatever my initial feelings are. Some I love and then fall away from quickly like the Galaxy Fold 2, some I love all the way through like the Note 20 Ultra, and some leave me perplexed from the very start.
One of the proximal causes of the COVID-19 issues here in the UK has been a dramatic reduction in my podcast listening. I no longer have any commute to speak of, and even though I have tried to listen in my home office I just can’t get into it.
The few I am listening to are, as Andy would put it, ones that spark joy in me, or that are too interesting to not listen to.
Matt Birchler wrote:
the iPhone 11 Pro has had by far the best camera I’ve ever used in a phone, and yes I do include the Pixel in that statement.
I whole heartedly agree with that statement. Android Cameras sometimes get very close (The Note 20 Ultra being the best) but for some reason the iPhone gets better shots that are much easier to achieve. It’s not faultless but it’s just so easy to use that you want to take photos with it.
I have only written very briefly about my rapid adoption of Roam Research to dump all of my stuff into. In depth words are hard for me to sum up, I struggle to even bring together an outline of how I use it, simply because it is so flexible and powerful. I use it for everything from meeting notes to journalling, I put almost everything that I think about in here to form my second brain.