Let’s talk about tech, baby…

Over the past year, I’ve upgraded several of my personal tech items, things I use every day. Sometimes they come up in later posts, but one came up only after the fact. I decided to review where this is all at, and what I think about everything now I’ve actually used it.

First, a bit of preface: I’ve been replacing my everyday tech in order to get ready for retirement in a couple years, since it’ll be prudent to watch my money carefully. By replacing everything now, I should be able to stagger future upgrades, especially since some of these recent replacements will be good for many, many years to come.

Here are all the things I upgraded, in the order they arrived.

Mac Mini – February, 2021: I bought this (photo in the original post) mainly because I no longer needed the portability of my MacBook Pro (MBP), and because I was frustrated by the MBP’s limitations, especially, not enough internal storage space, but also the lack of ports to connect things I often need, such as, a slot for a MicroSD storage card (like a camera uses), or to plug in my external keyboard. I needed to buy a dock, commonly called a dongle (which annoys me*), in order to fix both problems.

When I bought my Mac Mini, I upgraded it, something I couldn’t do with my MacBook Pro (if I’d been more patient, and ordered it directly from Apple, I could’ve, and I might not have needed the Mac Mini, at least, not so soon). However, the Mac Mini has the same problem: Far too few ports to plug devices into, so I had to get a dock for that, too. All Apple computers currently have a major anti-consumer flaw: Memory and internal storage are soldered onto the motherboard and cannot be upgraded later. However, as various countries and the European Union look to pass “right to repair” legislation, Apple is starting to take some tentative steps toward not treating their customers with quite so much contempt. We’ll see.

In any event, the Mac Mini is truly awesome: It’s fast, responsive (not necessarily the same thing) and silent, all of which are very good things. My MBP was, at the time I bought it, the same (though not as quiet), however, the Mac Mini with Apple Silicon M1 Processor is dramatically faster. My only complaint is what I’ve already noted: Not enough ports and no ability to change the RAM or internal storage. I did have to upgrade some of my software to run properly, but that's not about Apple itself, exactly, except that the upgraded software was better able to take advantage of the M1 chip.

This machine will last me for several years. The various new Mac models that have come out over the past year are nice, and they’re technically faster, but not dramatically, in my opinion, and what I have is fine for my current needs.

I thought about selling my MacBook Pro, but they tend to get about half what I paid for it, so I’m leaning toward keeping it and using it when I travel around New Zealand, as I plan to do when the plague eases. That way I can blog or edit video or whatever wherever I am.

Apple TV 4K: This is a device to stream content over the Internet. I bought it on March 17 last year, and never mentioned it at the time (a picture I took for a post I never wrote is at left). I have, however, referred to it since then, just last week, and only in passing.

I bought it partly because I had a free trial subscription to Apple TV+ (Apple’s own streaming service—what it is with so many companies appending a “+” to their streaming service’s name?!) because I bought the Mac Mini, but mostly because I anticipated there would come a time when the Android box would no longer work and I’d need other ways to access streaming services (which was what last week’s post was talking about).

I like the Apple TV except for three things: It cannot stream Freeview (there’s no aerial port), and it has no web browser, so it can’t stream those former video music TV channels (I tried that on the Android Box, and it couldn't connect). The third thing is that the remote it came with is, without any exaggeration whatsoever, the worst Apple product I’ve ever used. Not long after I bought my Apple TV, the company announced it was releasing a new remote that fixed my major complaint (the damn trackpad), but I’d have to buy the new one separately. I did that last week, and I’ll talk about all that in an upcoming post. The important thing for now is that, as I said, I do like the Apple TV, and also that I can view all the streaming services I watch, including YouTube and, er, um, Disney+ (another damn “+”!).

An iPhone 13 Pro: I bought this in In January of this year (photo in the original post) to replace my iPhone 7. I like it a lot. The camera is really good, though I haven’t yet had all that much opportunity to use it much (that damn plague again…). The phone is fast, has excellent battery life, and is much, much faster at downloading updates than any of my older phones ever were. In other words, it just works.

There’s nothing that I actively dislike, but: It took awhile for me to get used to because it’s so different from what I’d used in the past. For example, scrolling back to the home screen is counterintuitive, and I had no idea how to close open Apps (theoretically, I don’t need to, but I do, anyway). I also couldn’t figure out how to turn off the torch (flashlight) which I’d accidentally turned on (and I didn’t know how I’d accidentally turned it on…), so I’d tell Siri to turn it off. Since then, I’ve Googled things I couldn’t figure out how to do (like how to access the control for the torch), and none of those things were obvious or intuitive, in my opinion.

My biggest dislike is that there’s no home button or fingerprint scanner. Instead, it uses facial recognition, and that can be—interesting. It can’t recognise my face when I’m wearing a mask (no surprise, really), but sometimes it can’t recognise me when I have reading glasses on, while other times it instantly unlocks when I’m wearing those same reading glasses. Sometimes it struggles to recognise me even when I’m not wearing glasses. That unpredictable inconsistency is bloody annoying: I’d MUCH rather have a fingerprint scanner. I can't turn that function off, though, because I have some Apps that need that level of security to use the App, and the alternative would be to enter the App password each time—and that can't possibly end well.

I bought a new iPad (9th Gen): I bought this at the end of February to replace the 2013 iPad Air (First Gen) that Nigel handed me up (photo in the original post). That old iPad was nearing the end of its service life (the newest iPadOS wasn’t compatible, for example, and Apps were often no longer working). I really, really like the new iPad. Like the iPhone I bought the previous month, it’s fast, responsive, has great battery life, and updates quickly. Unlike the iPhone, it uses a home button and fingerprint recognition, which I much prefer. The new iPad is lighter than the old one, and the screen and sound are both much better.

When I bought the new Apple TV remote, I also bought a case for the iPad to protect it, and an Apple Pencil (First Gen):

The case said it has “military-grade protection”, a statement which gave me so many questions. The pencil is a stylus that actual artists use to draw actual pictures on actual iPads (whoops, sorry: I got carried away with my actualisation there). I’ve only experimented with the pencil a little bit so far, but it’s been absolutely brilliant at translating my chicken-scratch handwriting into editable “typed” text. I could’ve bought a cheaper pencil from another company, but I knew for sure this one would work. I didn’t “need” it, but I never claimed I did: I just wanted it. The case was reasonably priced, as such things go, and I decided to get that rather than a keyboard because I never used the one with the old iPad (which, in case you’re wondering, is part of a case that won’t fit my new iPad). The new case also has a special compartment to hold the Apple Pencil, which is part of the reason I bought both, actually.

I didn’t buy the latest iPad with Apple Silicon chips in them because they’re significantly more expensive that the 9th Gen model I bought, and the iPadOS isn’t yet fully able to take advantage of the new chip. Buying the less expensive 9th Gen model meant I could get larger internal storage which is useful (not the least because I’m lazy about deleting Apps I no longer want).

As for the old iPad, it really has no market value anymore, since the iPadOS can no longer be upgraded (and it's slower, the screen isn't as good, etc). On the other hand, it IS working, so I'm going to delete most of the Apps on it and use it as a digital photo frame (I found a stand that Nigel got for some device that will be perfect to hold it). Because all my Apple devices play with each other, I can set up a folder with photos for the old iPad to use in a slideshow. That's the plan, anyway.

And that’s where things are at: My upgrades are done for now, though I know I’ll be adding new tech for other reasons—that’s just part of me and my everyday life, and it always has been. All of this will be stuff I’ll be talking about in the future, unless I forget again, which may be likely. Right now, though, that's my talk about tech, and all the good things and the bad things that may be. Right now, though, it’s time to go make some dinner. I’m thinking maybe eggs; for some reason, I have a taste for something seasoned with salt and pepper.

*The word “dongle” was originally used primarily for small devices that had to be plugged into a computer port in order to run software—a kind of physical anti-piracy protection device. They were extremely annoying. The modern usage to mean a bunch of ports is borrowed from the earlier usage, but it jettisons the “big brother” overtones of the original usage. Sometimes, I’m a language purist, and the modern use of the word just feels wrong to me.