What I would like to see in the iPhone 6S Plus

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p data-preserve-html-node=”true”>After purchasing an iPhone 6 last year, I settled into owning a 4.7-inch phone. There were things I didn’t like, but overall, I was pretty happy with the device.

Then everything was ruined when I switched to a loaner iPhone 6 Plus for a couple of weeks. I ended up buying one, and I haven’t looked back.

There are compromises when it comes to having such a large phone. It’s bulky in some pockets, and I look like I’m holding a piece of pizza next to my face when I’m talking on it, but the improved screen, battery life and camera make it worth it for me.

If I upgrade phones this fall,[1] I will stick to the 5.5-inch form factor, assuming there’s an iPhone 6S Plus offered.

Usually when it comes to thinking about what upcoming iPhone hardware should have, I come up empty-handed, but as the 6 Plus is such a unique device, I have a pretty concrete list of things I want to see in the next revision.

More RAM

Despite its increased screen resolution over the iPhone 6, the 6 Plus ships with the same 1 GB of RAM as its little brother. Any 6 Plus owner will attest that this leads to some stuttering and sluggishness at times. I’ve experienced audio tearing and apps crashing under load. It’s not awesome. It makes the 6 Plus look half-assed, and it makes me sad.

As someone who also owns an iPad Air 2, I’ve seen what iOS can do with more breathing room. If all the iPhone 6S Plus brings is more RAM, it’d be an improvement to 2014’s model.

Flush Camera Lens

While there was a lot of eye-rolling when Apple first showed the camera lens poking out of the back of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, I think most users have gotten used to it by now. If in a case, the bump basically goes away, meaning many users won’t ever have noticed, more than likely.

However, most of the time, my iPhone is naked. I find it annoying that my iPhone can’t lay flat on its back, as it makes the vibrate motor seem way louder than it actually is.

While the vibrate motor in this phone seems harsher than past generations, the fact that phone is propped up in one corner makes the whole thing move when it goes off. When on a nightstand or table, a text message or email notification makes such a loud noise it’s annoying. The point of an iPhone in silent mode is to be discrete, and a giant BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ is anything but. I’ve gotten in the habit of sitting my iPhone glass down, especially if there’s someone sleeping in the room. I’d love to be able to leave it screen-up, but unless the back is flat again in the future, I don’t see it happening.

Louder Speaker

While the vibrate motor is too loud, the speaker in the iPhone 6 Plus is too quiet. I often listen to podcast as I work around the house or in my workshop, with my phone jammed in my pocket. I bet I’m not alone in that use case.

While I know I can’t expect MacBook Pro-levels of sound out of this thing, the iPad Air 2 and the 12-inch MacBook both ship with impressive speakers. I’d love to see some of that get miniaturized and put in future iPhones.

  1. Haha, who am I kidding?  ↩

Windows 95 hysteria ⇢

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I grew up in a PC household, and didn’t use a Mac with any regularity until my sophomore year of high school.

The first computer I ever used was my dad’s NEC laptop, running Windows 3.1. A few years later, my parents bought a Gateway PC running Windows 95, which blew my mind as a 9 year old kid.

What I remember most is being impressed was the user interface. It was much easier to use than Window 3.1, with the Start menu leading the way to a new, more organized world.

I wasn’t aware of the massive marketing push behind the OS, obviously. While I’ve read some about it in the years since, this article really is wild.

How to fix a stuck Time Machine backup

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I hit a wall yesterday with my MacBook Pro.

(My tweeting went downhill from there.)

In short, Time Machine would start, but get stuck after just a few moments. Sometimes, it would stall on Preparing Backup… and other times, it’d get a couple of hundred megabytes done (out of several gigabytes it needed to do) then stop.

I turned tried turning Time Machine off and rebooting, but had no luck. No matter what I did, the backup wouldn’t complete.

I did some Googling, and came across a trick I had forgotten about: nuking the .inProgress file from orbit.

This file lives on the Time Machine drive, and is used a temporary cache as files are copied. Sometimes, it get corrupted, halting any further backups. Here’s how to get rid of it and keep the backups flowing.

RSS Sponsor: Claye — The Weirdest Album You’ll Hear All Year ⇢

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Claye is an independent experimental pop album about the last thirty seconds of your life. It was created similarly to the way that many of your favorite apps were made: just one guy alone in his apartment with some computers and a copy of OmniFocus, trying to make something great.

If you’ve never heard Claye before—you probably haven’t—I’d suggest listening to these songs to start:

  1. Butter
  2. Weird
  3. Mouse Trappe

Once you’ve got the hang of it, give the whole album a try from start to finish. You can listen to Claye on Apple Music, Spotify, or buy it directly from the musician himself.

Be sure to stay in touch with Dylan—he made Claye—by following him on Twitter (@dylanseeger), and by signing up for shockingly brief email alerts for new releases.

Most importantly, give Claye a try. It’s weird, but I think you’ll like it.

iPods continue to fade into history ⇢

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Mark Gurman:

Typically reserved for accessories like Apple Watch bands, headphones, and iPhone cases, Apple Store accessory walls will now be home to the recently-updated iPod line. Apple products, ranging from iPods to iPads to Macs, have typically been stored in the back of Apple Stores and brought to a customer upon the point of sale. Now, when a customer wants to buy an iPod, she or he can simply pull it off a shelf without needing to wait for the product to be brought from the back room.

This isn’t a surprising move, of course. I was in our local Apple Store last week and noticed that the iPod table was not only still somewhat prominent in the store, but that no one was near it. After being booted from Apple.com’s navigation, it was only a matter of time before the product line would lose its place in the stores as well.

Connected 53: Go Down the Pole and Run to the Fire ⇢

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This week’s show was a special one:

This week, Stephen and Myke are joined by David Sparks to talk about Relay FM’s first anniversary, the MacBook and the Apple Music Festival.

My thanks to these sponsors:

  • lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
  • TextExpander 5, from Smile: Type more with less effort.
  • Igloo: An intranet you’ll actually like, free for up to 10 people.

Podcasts aren’t an overnight success ⇢

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Romain Dillet at TechCrunch:

When Myke Hurley and Stephen Hackett launched Relay FM, they expected to build a small independent network of weekly tech podcasts. Just a year later, Relay FM features 16 different shows and delivers 1.5 million downloads every month. Building this loyal audience was an overnight success six years in the making.

If you want to learn a lot about our podcast network and how we run our company, this article is for you. What a day!