johnmarshall4

[johnmarshall4]

Hi Tumblr, you're still alive?

Wow, it's been eight years since I posted to Tumblr. And I've been thinking back about my passion and focus on tech. Has anything really changed since then? Let's see.

Apple - I'm dug in even deeper than ever. I buy a new iPhone every couple of years - and they are pretty much the same. I still have an iPad and I still can't use it for anything serious - part Apple's fault and part App developers who just won't put the full feature set in their mobile apps. I love, just love my AirPods Pro - I take them more places than my wallet. I have an Apple Watch (which helps me buy things when I forget my wallet). I'm locked into nearly every Apple service now, Apple Music, Apple TV+, I dropped Dropbox (see what I did there?) for iCloud Drive etc. I've had Mac minis, MacBook Pros, a MacBook Air, HomePods, Apple TVs. The bottom line, I'm still a believer. Not everything they do is perfect, but they are probably the only brand I've owned that hasn't completely ticked me off and frustrated me over the years.

Let's see, what else is going on. We still don't have (affordable) flying cars, but EVs are cool. Still no wide spread VR. Xbox is incrementally better, but massively behind Sony in popularity now. Politics sucks. I still like to code, though I don't do it as much as I used to. And finally my long long love affair with Evernote has hit a rough patch these last view months. I'm still with it all day everyday, but I'm actively working on a plan B in case this relationship can't be salvaged.

[johnmarshall4]

Air Pods

The more I think about the design of the new Air Pods the more like it. Not necessarily the design itself, but the idea of it. It looks like something that Steve would have been involved with. I can imagine him walking down the hall, past marketing, past design, and going straight into the engineering department. I can see him waving a pair of tangled Ear Pods around in the air and then ceremoniously clipping off the wires before throwing them at the product manager and yelling "build me a pair of these without wires, or you're all fired!" It makes me smile.

[johnmarshall4]

No MBP announcement at WWDC 2016

I should have known once I saved up for a new MBP there wouldn't actually be any new model to buy. The rumors said March, then they said June. I'm not impressed with the quality of the rumor / leaks these days.

[johnmarshall4]

Has anyone seen my 'Comm"?

What do you call a mobile device that lets you access the web, run apps, take pictures, communicate over video / voice / text, make payments, track location, etc? Don’t tell me it is called a smart ‘phone’. A device like that has about as much in common with a telephone as my laptop does with a typewriter.

Maybe it’s just a mood, but I don’t actually feel like calling it my 'phone’ anymore. The problem is, I can’t come up with a good alternative. Maybe there is some thing I can lift from sci fi? Communicator? Comm? Terminal? Link? Anyone have any good ideas?

[johnmarshall4]

Ok, Amazon’s decision to stop selling Apple TV and Google’s chrome cast at first glance really looks like some sort of elementary school yard tantrum. On second look I think I’m just as confused as anyone, and just as curious to know what is really going on. That whole “it will confuse customers” nonsense is pure crap. I agree with the article that this is really all about Apple, and google was just thrown in there to make it look like a legit argument. Honestly though, most people I know buy apple products from, um, Apple. So I don’ know if this will really hurt anyone. I have two Apple TV’s and I bought them direct. But regardless of how juvenile this appears, if it eventually leads to Amazon Video on the Apple TV, then they have my vote. I love my Apple TV, but as a prime user it has been frustrating that Amazon’s service is not supported. If it turns out that the source of all this is Apple refusing to all Amazon to make and app for the new Apple TV, then they are the ones acting like a 5 year old. 

[johnmarshall4]

Filmic on the iPhone 6+

I hear good things about Filmic and I’ve tried over the years to use it / like it, but I never get good results. I have some filming to do with the 6+ today so I thought I’d run a few experiments with filmic before I go. Some observations:

I can’t figure out the difference between standard and cinematic stabilization. The manual doesn’t help, the web site doesn’t help. I ran my own experiments and I can’t really tell the difference. Also neither option appears to work as well as the built in camera app. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that although I can crank up the bitrate etc in Filmic, if I leave it on auto focus it hunts all the time, and that is really annoying. Sure I could fix the focus, but if I’m doing hand-held panning shots, that doesn’t do me any good. The built in app doesn't do that. 

60 Frames: So I thought if I’m going to spend some time shooting, and I have to use my phone, I might as well crank things up to the Max. I tried setting Filmic to 60 frames, 48 kHz uncompressed audio, 1080P, and 50 m/bit. I shot a sample and compared it to the built in camera app at 60 frames. Guess what? On the 6+ it is exactly the same quality. By that I mean it ignored the audio and bitrate settings and shot the same as built in, 44Khz AAC Audio, 26 mbit/s. Oh, but with more auto focus hunting. So, at least on the 6+ there really isn’t any advantage here for 60 frame 1080p.

What good is this App?

[johnmarshall4]

iCloud Photos Cache

I can’t be the only one trying to figure this out. How cool is it that you can have access to all of your photos on your phone without having to take up all of that space? That is the promise of iCloud Photo’s optimize space option. Apple is supposed to be Smart about freeing up the image cache when you start running out of space. But they don’t give you anyway to manually trigger this cleaning. At least not that I can find. So what are you supposed to do when you’d like some extra space for installing something or downloading something but there isn’t enough? Can’t they give me some way to manually start the cleaning process? Or perhaps set the max size limit for this cache? Or at least explain when and how this process works? Like do I have to run the photos app in order for it to see that I’m running out of space? Or does it do this in the background? What are the limits trigger this cleaning? As you can see I’m getting a little frustrated. I can’t find anyone else on the net asking this question.

[johnmarshall4]

Smart guys with beards...

[johnmarshall4]

What is up with Dropbox?

I'm not sure i understand the direction they are going the just announced that coming soon you will be able to create office docs from your phone. Wow just what I was waiting for. Not! It seems they are hard to be Google disc. No thanks i already have on of those.

[johnmarshall4]

More rumors about the alleged iPad Pro. 

I’m hoping that any USB-C connector is a secondary port, otherwise I don’t know what we would connect it to on the computer end. The idea bout force touch is interesting, but not clear if they are also talking about the haptic feedback or not. Adding NFC only makes since when using the device as a point of sale terminal, unless I’m missing something. As for the bluetooth stylus, I really hope that is not true. The combination of a bluetooth stylus and force touch might sound appealing, but it would still be a far cry from the kind of precision you get from an active stylus. My fingers are still crossed on that one.

[johnmarshall4]

I was pretty excited to get iCloud photos set up so I could start syncing, sharing and editing on all my devices and macs. I have been having a good time cleaning up old photos on my iPad when I have a few moments to spare. But the honeymoon period has worn off...

[johnmarshall4]

Video Users: Beware of the drag and drop. As I start to incorporate the new Photos app into my workflow I'm learning a bunch of stuff the hard way. Here are a few things to know when dealing with video. A few years back iMovie and the older Final Cut ...

[johnmarshall4]

New Force Trackpad drag behavior

I was at the Apple store playing with the new Macbook and Macbook Pro and I found behavior I had not read about.

Normally if you press the trackpad to drag you have to keep it pressed during the whole drag. This can be awkward as it creates more friction on your finger. With the new force trackpad there are two new behaviors to make this easier:

If you 'force' press on a window title you can release the pressure and drag the window around as long as you don't lift your finger off the trackpad.

If you 'normal' press, and start to drag the window, you can then release the pressure and continue to drag until you lift your finger.

The subtle difference between the two is that with a normal press you have to start moving the window before you can release pressure. With the force press you don't. Either way it makes dragging stuff around a lot easier.

[johnmarshall4]

Thoughts on the MS Surface 3

Here are some random thoughts on the upcoming Surface 3 tablet from Microsoft

A tablet that runs full Windows (x86) for the price of an iPad

A switch to a more reasonable 3:2 aspect ratio

Support for an Active, pressure sensitive stylus

That last point should really hit home for Apple. Supporting a proper pen for artists and creatives should really be higher on their list if they really want to sell the iPad as a tool used for creation and not just consumption.

[johnmarshall4]

The 13" pro is still a pretty awesome machine. A very good trade off of size vs performance

[johnmarshall4]

Apple may name this year's iPhone upgrade the "iPhone 7," instead of the "iPhone 6s," because the addition of Force Touch input will represent such a significant change to the user interface, according to one well-connected insider.

More rumors about Force Touch on the iPhone. This time they are saying that it won't actually use pressure sensors but rather measure your touch by the size of the finger contact area. If that is true then there really wouldn’t be any reason not to put it on all iPhones / iPads / iPods.