Month: February 2016

On upgrading older Mac minis ⇢

⌘ Permalink

Brian Stucki at Macminicolo:

Since we buy so many Mac mini parts, I’ve noticed some real trends over the years. When it comes to upgrading Mac minis, I think we’re in a pretty nice sweet spot right now. I think that most people don’t know the current opportunity so I thought I’d do some digging and get some of that data out.

Brian is right; upgrading an old Mac mini is cheaper than ever before, and these machines are definitely worth the investment.

I currently have three Mac minis in use. One is at home, hooked up to our TV. It serves a couple of big file volumes to the home network and runs iTunes 24/7 to feed the Apple TV. It’s a Mid 2011 machine with a 2.3 GHz Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. You’d never know it was five years old. I use this machine daily, and it rarely feels slow. Handbrake is the only time I wish I had more CPU at hand.

I have two machines at Macminicolo. The first is the machine that hosts the Relay FM live feed. It’s also a 2.3 GHz Mid 2011 model, but has 16 GB of RAM and a spinning hard drive. In addition to streaming audio for live podcasts to the web and our app, we use this machine to sync a ton of shared Dropbox folders back to one place for backup to Backblaze. If I interacted with it more, I’d put an SSD in it, but it feels plenty fast for the type of tasks it completes.

The most robust Mac mini in my growing army is a Late 2012 machine I just set up with Brian’s company. I’m using this machine for personal backups and a few little projects I’m tinkering with. It has the ever-coveted quad core i7 processor with a 256 GB SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

Here’s the thing: if I didn’t know which of these machines was fastest, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which was which. It’s amazing what an SSD and some RAM will do for these little computers.

While the current Mac mini retains the same form factor, it is far less upgradeable than the machines I’m using. The RAM is soldered to the board, which is ridiculous in a computer that’s form factor doesn’t justify it.

Telling the story of those who are voiceless ⇢

⌘ Permalink

I’ve written about my brother’s non-profit before. Operation Broken Silence is hard at work to end the genocide happening in Sudan. I believe in their work, and was honored to narrate their last documentary.

I’m helping them raise money to shoot their next film. These films allow Operation Broken Silence to tell the story of the people caught in this terrible situation. OBS provides food, medicine and education to the refugees who have fled the conflict.

OBS just launched a $3,000 matching campaign thanks to a generous sponsor, so your money can go twice as far. I’d love for you to go check it out.

Review: the Withings Activité Pop

⌘ Permalink

Back in December, I wrote this about my Apple Watch, after not having worn it very much in the weeks leading up the article:

The Apple Watch can do a lot of neat things, and I miss its fitness tracking, but so much of it just doesn’t fit my lifestyle anymore. It’s not super useful for work, apps are still miserably slow and at times, its an additional distraction.

Since then, I can count on one hand the times I’ve powered up the Watch to wear it, but as I mentioned, I have missed the fitness tracking way more than any of the other features.

So let’s talk about what I have been wearing instead: the Withings Activité Pop.

I picked one up — in “Shark Grey” — on Amazon about a month ago, and I’ve really come to enjoy wearing it.

(Can we all take a moment to realize how awkward photos of the human hand are when you crop out the fingers?)

At first glance, it looks like a normal — even plain — wrist watch. In grey at least, it’s an inoffensive watch with a basic face, white hands and a simple rubber strap. It’s very light weight, and a good bit thinner than the Apple Watch. While some may say it looks cheap, I like the simple design this watch brings to the table.

My first design quibble with the design is that crystal — the piece of glass that covers the watch face — is more convex than I’d prefer. As a result, weird reflections can be seen around the edges of the watch depending on the light. It’s by no means a deal breaker, but it can be a little distracting at times.

My second is that the Activité Pop doesn’t have a complication to show the date. Almost every watch I’ve ever owned has had this feature, and it’s annoying to look at my wrist while signing something just to have to dig out my phone to get the date right.

However, it’s way smarter than that Timex my dad gave me in high school.

The subdial is labeled 0-100 and is designed to show progress toward a daily step count goal. For example, if your goal is 5,000 steps and you’re at 2,500, the hand would be at the 50% mark. It’s a clever way to show a flexible goal on a device with no display.

The Activité Pop has a Bluetooth radio that it uses to sync this data back to the iPhone a few times a day. The Withings iPhone app is used to set the step goal, as well as administer other functions on the watch.

When setting a step goal, the app tries to be helpful, giving recommendations for what may make sense for the user. For example, currently, it tells me that on my best day, I clocked 6,500 steps, while a basketball game would earn me 5,000 steps or so. My current goal — 4,000 steps — is on the low side, and the app reminds me of that every so often.

While the step counter is nice, I’d like to see the subdial be even more flexible. The Apple Watch pushes users to stand once an hour, and it’d be nice to track that progress, or be able to open the app and move the hand every time I drink 8 ounces of water during the day.

The app is also used to set the time on the watch. It has you make adjustments to the hand placement in the app and then they move around — on their own — to the right location. It’s pretty wild. The watch will sync with the iPhone’s clock every so often, so it should stay correct when you change timezones.

The Activité Pop is powered by a standard watch battery (Withings says it’ll go 8 months between changes) so it can be worn to bed. Here’s a bit from the company’s marketing page:

Withings Activité Pop automatically detects when you are asleep. It keeps track of light and deep sleep stages, the number of times you wake up during the night and the total duration of sleep.

I can’t really speak to how accurate this data is compared to other systems like it, but it seems to capture data without any problems.

Additionally, the app allows users to set an alarm. At the given time, the watch will vibrate. I’ve found this to be virtually silent, and it hasn’t once bothered my wife if my alarms goes off before she wakes up.

The alarm isn’t perfect, however. Here’s a bit of copy from the
Alarms FAQ:

At this point, it is not possible to stop the alarm once it has started. Your Withings Activité will vibrate 12 times before stopping on its own.

We are aware that not being able to stop the alarm may be frustrating for some users. We are working on introducing a feature that would allow this.

Double-tapping the watch will cause the hands to spin around to show the time of the current alarm before returning to their previous position. If no alarm is set, they simply make lap around the face. It’s oddly satisfying to watch.

(Frustratingly, only one alarm can be set at once, so this sort of scenario isn’t possible using the Activité Pop.)

Despite its flaws, I’ve come to really like the Activité Pop, not only as a watch, but as a fitness tracker. It’s more or less a glorified Fitbit, and that’s fine with me. The longer the Apple Watch sits on my nightstand, the more I think that a a regular watch with just a little bit of technology is a better solution for me than a full-blown computer on my wrist.

RSS Sponsor: Blink: Better Affiliate Links ⇢

⌘ Permalink

Blink is a universal iOS app that helps you earn commissions from the iTunes affiliate program. Creating affiliate links on iOS is time-consuming and fiddly. Blink simplifies the process by saving your affiliate credentials and other preferences so they are always at your finger tips.

Blink converts existing App and iTunes Store URLs into affiliate links. If you don’t already have a link, Blink can search across Mac and iOS apps, film, TV, music, audiobooks, and iBooks all at once, making it easy to grab the link you want. Blink is fast and provides loads of detail on each item in its search results, which makes it great for writers researching an app or other media. Blink is even available from within other apps via an extension, so you can create links without interrupting the flow of your work.

Blink is available on the App Store for $4.99.

Apple publishes security FAQ ⇢

⌘ Permalink

Apple has published an FAQ tackling a lot of common questions and misconceptions surrounding this FBI thing. This bit jumped out at me:

Is it technically possible to do what the government has ordered?

Yes, it is certainly possible to create an entirely new operating system to undermine our security features as the government wants. But it’s something we believe is too dangerous to do. The only way to guarantee that such a powerful tool isn’t abused and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is to never create it.

The password reset ⇢

⌘ Permalink

John Gruber, breaking down the most recent detail in the San Bernardino case:

The FBI screwed this up by directing the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health to reset Farook’s Apple ID password. They did not, and apparently could not, change anything on the phone itself. But once they reset the Apple ID password, the phone could not back up to iCloud, because the phone needed to be updated with the newly-reset Apple ID password — and they could not do that because they can’t unlock the phone.

And then this, which is what’s been rattling around in my head:

The only possible explanations for this are incompetence or dishonesty on the part of the FBI. Incompetence, if they didn’t realize that resetting the Apple ID password could prevent the iPhone from backing up to iCloud. Dishonesty, if they directed the county to do this knowing the repercussions, with the goal of setting up this fight to force Apple to create a back door for them in iOS. I’m not sure which to believe at this point. I’d like to know exactly when this directive to reset the Apple ID password was given — ”in the hours after the attack” leaves a lot of wiggle room.

A look at Apple’s chipmaking division ⇢

⌘ Permalink

Bloomberg Businessweek has a great profile of Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president for hardware technologies:

Srouji runs what is probably the most important and least understood division inside the world’s most profitable company. Since 2010, when his team produced the A4 chip for the original iPad, Apple has immersed itself in the costly and complex science of silicon.

Six months of indie life

⌘ Permalink

I’ve been independent for just about six months now,[1] and I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how things are going.

The Work

As most nerds, I can’t really just work on one thing, so I divide my working time into three big categories.

Relay FM

Relay FM is the majority of my income and is what I spend the most time on. Being able to dedicate much more of my time and effort to the network has been huge. For example, our membership program had been on the to-do list for months before I had time to get it built out. It’s been a big success, and it’s really great to see our hosts be able to make more from their shows. Putting together the newsletter for our members is a real joy each month.

The two shows I co-host are firing on all cylinders. On Connected, we’re breaking free of the news cycle more often to discuss other topics, and I think its led to some amazing episodes. My other podcast — Liftoff — has come into its own. Our rhythm of covering space news, hosting interviews and working through explainer episodes is unique, and a lot of fun to work on with Jason.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been more involved in developing new shows, working harder on the business side of things and have been planning some very exciting stuff for later this year you’ll hear about soon.

512 Pixels

In terms of raw percentages, this site has seen the biggest increase in time and attention since August. It had been put aside to a degree when we launched Relay, and it’s been to be able to write more than I have in previous months.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve branched out a bit with the new YouTube channel. This is very experimental. I don’t have a ton of video experience, but I’m learning a lot as I go. I’ve got two videos done, and I’m proud of both of them. Feedback has been great, and I have another one in the works now.[2]

I’m not sure what the end game is with the videos quite yet. I’d like to make some income from them eventually, but for now, I’m still exploring.

Freelance

I’m continuing to do a little bit of freelance. I’m still helping manage The Sweet Setup, and I’m having a good time writing my monthly Apple History column over on iMore.

Out in the real world, I service a handful of clients’ technical needs, but it’s a small business that I’m not really looking to expand.

Life at Home

Adjusting to working at home has been the biggest challenge of the last six months. While I have an office I go to when I need to record, most days I work at home from a desk we set up in our bedroom.[3]

We have three kids, and my wife is currently homeschooling. Figuring out the ins and outs of being at home has been tricky some days. One reason I did this was to have more time with my family during the week, but if I’m just hanging out all day, I can’t pay the bills. While I can shut the door and put headphones in, that’s not always the right answer, either.

I think we’ve gotten better at knowing when I need to step away from work and get involved, but its still a little bit of a work in progress. If something crazy is going on, my wife will ask me to help wrangle the madness, and I’m happy to do so.

If I’m really swamped, I will pack up and head to the office to focus. It’s nice having another place to go when I need a change of scenery.

Finances

There is a lot of inherent weirdness in going independent and talking about money on the Internet. To sidestep all that, I will simply say this: things are good. Even with the additional burden of paying for our own insurance, our family’s finances are just as solid as they were when I had a 9–5 job. I’m not making what I was when I had all this stuff and a paycheck, but the graph is moving in the right direction.

The bulk of our income comes from Relay FM, with The Sweet Setup, 512 Pixels and iMore rounding things out.

I need 512 Pixels to be a bigger part of the pie. I’m pouring time into it, but the site doesn’t make enough money to justify the current effort, especially if I count the time spent shooting and editing video for the YouTube channel. That sidebar ad doesn’t pay much, and RSS sponsorships have slowed down, despite the site being more popular than ever. I’m going to keep investing time here because 512 is my first Internet love, but I’m keeping my eye on things.

Oh yeah, then there’s taxes. Woof.

The Future

It’s been a wild six months. I’m still working too many evenings and weekends, but it’s manageable. Not having anyone to answer is amazing, and I get to pick and choose what I work on most days. The freedom is worth the risk, and I’m already probably ruined for going back to a jobby job. Barring anything major happening to Relay or any other part of my business, there’s no end in sight.

Time to get back to work.

  1. I left my old agency the first week of August, but hung out part-time for several weeks wrapping up one last project.  ↩

  2. USPS seems to have eaten a recent purchase.  ↩

  3. I’d take a picture but its too messy right now to share, but the basic setup is pretty simple: my MacBook Pro sits in a BookArc, hooked up to an Apple Thunderbolt display sitting on a HiRise, paired with a Magic Keyboard and a Logitech Performance MX mouse. The desk itself and the cable management tray under it are both from Ikea.  ↩

It’s bigger than a single phone ⇢

⌘ Permalink

Marco Arment:

As we’ve learned from national hero Edward Snowden and, well, almost every other high-profile action taken by law enforcement recently, this most likely has very little to do with the specific crime or iPhone that the FBI is citing in this case.

It’s their excuse to establish precedent and permanent backdoors for themselves so they can illegally spy on anyone’s data whenever they please.

This is the most dangerous kind of slippery slope in today’s world: one that starts under the guise of security in the face of terrorism.