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Developer from the UK.
The company encourages those who have been holding out hope for a larger iMac to consider the Studio Display and Mac Studio or Mac Mini, which pair a 27-inch 5K screen with a separate computer, compared to the all-in-one design of the iMac.
The Verge – https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23947196/apple-no-27-inch-apple-silicon-imac
Apple in 2023 makes some questionable decisions but this is top of the list I think. I know so many people (myself included) who have owned a 27″ iMac, it was such a great “bang for the buck” buy for almost its entire run. The decision not to make another one is absolutely mind blowing.
I’m guessing it somewhat falls down to the fact they’ve backed themselves into a corner on price with how expensive everything else in the range has become.
Beau Miles quickly became one of my favourite content creators over the past couple of years, one of those “drop everything, there’s a new video” type.
This book goes hand in hand with his YouTube channel and gives further insights into some of the things he’s done in videos. I highly recommend going through his channel and watching…well everything because it’s great…before reading it.
I read the book as there was no audio book at the time, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t read it in his voice in my head. I’ve now purchased the audio book and plan on re-visiting it very soon!
I think by now everyone knows the story of Theranos but prior to reading this I had no idea who they were or what they did, boy was I in for a story!
I think I found this on Bill Gate’s reading list and from what I remember he called it a “page turner” and he absolutely was not wrong.
The audio book “Thicker Than Water” gets an honourable mention here too, it’s a great subsequent read from someone on the inside.
If you have an Apple Watch and you’re looking for something more than just the built in Workouts app then this is a game changer.
For me it gets the most use with walking and running, but it can handle pretty much any activity under the sun. I especially love it for running as I can put my interval schedules in and I’ll just get a tap on the wrist or a ping in my AirPods (connected to the watch) when it’s time to move on to the next interval.
It’s about £5 so not cheap (funny how we’ve become contempt with dropping £400 on a watch or £1000 on a phone and then deem £5 for an app “expensive” ????) but it is absolutely worth every penny.
I’ve spent the past few years re-building up my CD collection for various reasons, partly because there is something to owning your music in at least CD quality, partly because I built a 256GB iPod Video and a big factor has been some things randomly disappearing from streaming services.
In that same time I’ve also been looking for a way of playing everything, pointless having a collection if you can’t actually play it. This journey had reminded me just how bad iTunes had become over the last few years of it’s life, so that was out of the question. A few basic requirements of mine were; it needed to work cross-device and ideally I would like to manage the file structure of the music (i.e. not have the app doing it for me).
PlexAmp was the best solution by far, it meets both of the requirements and then some. A small catch is it requires a “Plex Pass” at £3/month but that’s absolutely worth it to support the development of Plex/PlexAmp. I’ve got a Plex server running on my old Mac Mini and all my Music is then stored on my Synology. I’ve got a funky (but working) way of getting music to my iPod and still having it work wit Last FM, which I’ll cover in another post at some point.
This is an easy one and it’s not even close. The last Angels and Airwaves album came out in 2014 so it’s safe to say this one was log awaited, but it absolutely did not disappoint.
A great mix of the classic AVA sound and with some modern twists. It’s tough, but I think “Losing my Mind” is my favourite….this week.
All being well, off to see them in March on tour, hyped!
Amy Shark nailed “the tricky second album” as this one is arguably even better than the first (which is fantastic).
C’MON features what might be Travis Barker’s most subdued drum track, but somehow it just works perfectly.
UK tour when?!
Honestly there’s not a whole lot this year that really stood out to me in the TV & Film category, obviously a lot of things have been on hold/delayed so it hardly comes as a surprise. I’ve recently enjoyed Hawkeye on Disney+, the Black Widow film was pretty good too but other than that, I can’t think of anything that really stood out to me.
I actually think this came out before this year but anyway, I watched it this year and really enjoyed it. Offers a great insight into General Magic ad a really interesting look back at technology development at the time, so much of the stuff we take for granted today and where it came from/started.
Happy new year everyone and here’s to a better 2022 ????
* more like my favourite things, but oh well
Another year (decade) over! I thought I’d put together a few of the things I enjoyed the most this past year.
This one is easy…too easy. I hinted at it in last years post but the music I was most excited for this year was the new Angels & Airwaves album along with the new blink-182 album, well, we kinda got that, or at least most of it. The two new Angels & Airwaves tracks have been on repeat ever since they came out and the new blink-182 album (Nine) has been in rotation as well.
Rebel Girl – Angels & Airwaves
Kiss & Tell – Angels & Airwaves
My favourite new discovery of the year has been a British band called Hot Milk, you can check them out here.
I also started using Last.fm (again) this year, so you can check out my listening habits here. Spoiler alert: It’s just blink-182 over and over.
Not too many standout additions this year. I’ve been getting more and more into using “Things” as my to-do app of choice, it’s a high buy-in price but well worth it if you can stay committed.
The other main app that I’m surprised I’ve stuck so well to is You Need a Budget! This time last year I made the conscious decision to track every single penny going in an out of my accounts, and that’s exactly what I’ve done for the last 12 months and counting. Whether you’re in financial difficulty, I think using a budgeting tool (there are loads, spend a little while and find one that works for you) is an essential tool, really helps deal with unexpected surprises (I’m looking at you cars).
This isn’t really a “best of”, actually, it’s quite the opposite, but can we just give a quick shout out to the new YouTube app on the Apple TV for possibly being one of the worst user experiences I’ve seen in a long time? Apple provide these native video playback controls that work with their remote really well (no matter what you think of the actual remote) but YouTube have successfully used none of that, and it’s the worst. The irony is when the 4th generation Apple TV launched, the YouTube app was great! Used the native video controls etc. and just worked….why fix something that isn’t broken ????♀️
Toy Story 4. Enough said. Easily my favourite movie of the year. I was a little worried about how they were going to carry on after the ending of the 3rd film, but it ended up very well done and super fun to watch, and oh boy that animation, just wow.
Favourite TV series of the year has to go to Stranger Things 3. After the no so good season 2, season 3 absolutely knocked it out of the park. The storyline was great, the visual effects were great and the soundtrack was outstanding.
Honourable mention to the latest season of Orange is the new black, they really pulled it back together with the last season.
Another great year for our show over at MunchTech.tv, record numbers and I think we’ve really stepped up the quality of the show this year. We’re also approaching 10 years this January, which is nuts. Super excited for the things we have planned for that episode.
I’m running out of wall space. This year I’ve spent more time than ever in the shed learning so much about the process of making guitars. Still working on the second one, but the first one you can see the process here, here and here.
The colours might not be to everyone’s taste, but I’m a fan. The first one is a Surf Green Tom DeLonge Stratocaster and the current work in progress is a Hot Pink Mark Hoppus bass – more on that soon.
So here’s to 2020 and the decade beyond, Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone!
Came across this fascinating blog post from Fraser Speirs who is a recently promoted head teacher at a school in the States, Fraser is making the Switch from Apple to the Chromebook (specifically, the Pixelbook) and he lays out some of the reasons why. I’ve highlighted some of my favourite points below, but I highly recommend you check out the full article here.
…although I could make a strong case that every change made to multitasking in iOS 11 worsened the experience in every way.
Bingo! I 100% agree with him here. This way of thinking seems to go completely against the usual grain if thinking in the tech/iPad user community, most people welcomed the changes made in iOS 11/12 with open arms and whilst yes, it was a step in the right direction, it definitely made a lot of stuff more difficult for me. For example, to open an app in split screen you’d simply have to select it from a list of all apps (this did need to be improved, the list made a terrible use of space) but now (and someone please correct me if I’m doing it wrong) you seem to only be able to choose from an app in the dock which is a pain in the ass!
It seems that as laptops get more tablet-y, tablets are getting more like laptops
Another spot on quote, and it was highlighted so much with this years iPads Pros. The prices are now competing with laptops (I.e. going the wrong way) and we are adding these hideous keyboard cases, basically making them a touchscreen laptop.
One other thing that hurts to say but I believe is true is this: ChromeOS is getting better faster than iOS on iPad.
I think this is an observation even the biggest Apple fans have been making recently. Apples schedule is all over the shop at the moment, not that they’ve ever been predicable, but we are now left guessing year-to-year whether we are going to get a new Mac mini or a new MacBook etc.
I think 2019 will be a very interesting year for software on the iPad, it’s like Apple has laid the groundwork with the Pro hardware in 2018 and the only thing holding it back now is iOS, which still feels like a larger version of the iPhone software.
The new version of Snapchat sucks. There, I said it. Now you probably haven’t been able to visit any tech news site in the past few weeks without seeing something about the new version of Snapchat, but I’ve been wondering what all the fuss was about, and this week I was graced with the presence of the new update!
I wasn’t an avid user of Snapchat before, a few snaps here and there directly between friends and I would occasionly scroll through the stories feed but oh boy does the new update ruin all of that. Upon first open I was definitely a bit taken aback by how little had changed (upon initial impression) but the more and more I’ve used it over the past week, the more and more I’ve realised how much less content I’ve been watching. I still use it for sending Snaps directly to friends but I don’t think I’ve watched a single story since! I still don’t understand why some stories are on the left and some are on the right?
Despite peoples best efforts, the update is more than likely here to stay.
/rant
