I'm a Christian, a designer, and a gadget fan who lives in Cheltenham, UK.

This is my blog, a creative outlet to mess around and play with as well as a place that logs my thoughts and inspirations.

Tag: Apple

How Apple Saved My Life ›

If you do only one thing on the inter­net today, please watch this video by James Rath. In a world where so often tech­nol­o­gy can make us feel dis­con­nect­ed and absent from those around us, it’s impor­tant to see things from the oth­er end some­thing. In the case of James Rath it’s incred­i­ble to see how much tech­nol­o­gy has influ­enced his life in such a pos­i­tive way.

Airfoil 5.5: Now Playing on Chromecast! ›

One of my favourite Mac util­i­ties has just been updat­ed to add some excel­lent func­tion­al­i­ty. Air­foil now sup­ports Chrome­cast and it works very well.
I’ve nev­er under­stood why Air­Play from an iOS device only allows you to send audio to one speak­er at a time, Air­foil is the per­fect way to fix that. My Mac­Book Pro is nor­mal­ly on and so I Air­Play to Air­foils sis­ter app Air­foil Satel­lite and then using the iOS Satel­lite app send the audio to what ever speak­ers I want. Since I have a Chrome­cast in my lit­tle stu­dio I can now eas­i­ly send Apple Music to my speak­ers with­out faffing around with cables. I put it to good use this morn­ing stream­ing to both my stu­dio speak­ers and kitchen speak­ers while I moved between the two rooms.

App Store 2.0 ›

News broke last night of some changes to the App Store. Chief among them was the avail­abil­i­ty of sub­scrip­tion pric­ing to all types of apps. Many peo­ple seem to see it as a pos­i­tive for devel­op­ers, and I agree to some extent, but it all depends how those sub­scrip­tions will be used.
This quote from The Verge’s cov­er­age of the news is exact­ly what I’m con­cerned about.

Tsid­don says his com­pa­ny makes around $10 mil­lion a year from its pre­mi­um apps, which are sold for a one-time pur­chase fee of $3.99 or $4.99. Lightricks has sold 8 mil­lion app down­loads to date. Tsid­don hasn’t ful­ly com­mit­ted to a sub­scrip­tion mod­el yet, only say­ing that he’s “excit­ed to exper­i­ment with the busi­ness mod­el,” but based on back-of-the-enve­lope math he believes if his com­pa­ny saw 4 mil­lion down­loads while charg­ing a $4 month­ly sub­scrip­tion fee, he could make 10 times his cur­rent annu­al revenue. 

If devel­op­ers start to shift to pric­ing like this, I and many oth­ers, will stop using their apps. I sim­ply can not afford, and even if I could I would not be able to jus­ti­fy, pay­ing $4 a month to use an app. Espe­cial­ly when it’s mul­ti­plied by the 12 inde­pen­dent apps on my iPhone home­screen. That’s not sustainable.

UK Developing Digital Driving License Stored in Apple Wallet App ›

This morn­ing the CEO of the UK Dri­ving License Author­i­ty post­ed a pro­to­type on Twit­ter of a dig­i­tal ver­sion of the UK dri­ving license in Apple Wal­let. It had­n’t even crossed my mind that this would be on their radar, but it’s cer­tain­ly some­thing I could get on board with. I real­ly don’t like car­ry­ing my wal­let around with me and Apple Pay is one of the big fac­tors dri­ving my desire to upgrade my iPhone (the fact it seems to be dying is the oth­er) and hav­ing my dri­ving license in the wal­let would a great step to being able to leave my wal­let at home.

I’m Done with MacBooks ›

When I read this post from Khoi Vinh I found myself nod­ding along in agree­ment. This part in par­tic­u­lar struck a chord,

When I think about where I’m most pro­duc­tive with OS X, it’s always at my desk, where I have a huge mon­i­tor (on my iMac, at home) or even two Cin­e­ma Dis­plays (at work) 

I upgrad­ed my Mac near­ly a year ago and had a long debate about whether to get an iMac or a Mac­Book Pro. The iMac was appeal­ing for so many rea­sons, but I could­n’t quite bring myself to give up the flex­i­bil­i­ty my Mac­Book offers. How­ev­er there’s no deny­ing that I’m most pro­duc­tive at my desk with a larg­er screen, and since upgrad­ing my iPad 2 to an iPad Air 2 I’m using that for more work leav­ing me more focused when I’m on my Mac as well.
In the future I can cer­tain­ly see myself mov­ing to an iMac over the Mac­Book Pro and maybe, if bud­get affords it, and iPad Pro. Espe­cial­ly as it’s capa­bil­i­ties grow and allow for more and more work to be accom­plished on it.

The Week in Links

After a brief break last week, I was on a mini-hol­i­day, The Week in links is back with it’s 26th edi­tion. This weeks take a look at how we work and think, how the design of the web is pushed a bit more. And then some furter thoughts on Apple Watch, head­phones, cam­eras, and the often spec­u­lat­ed Apple Car.

Life After Cancer: How the iPhone Helped Me Achieve a Healthier Lifestyle ›

I’ve had this arti­cle from Fed­eri­co Vitic­ci in my Instapa­per queue for along time and final­ly got a chance to read it over the week­end. Despite it’s age I want­ed to share it just in case any­one else is like me and has had it saved to read for a long time.

First up, kudos to Fred­eri­co for mak­ing the changes to his life he has and not slip­ping back into old habits. Sec­ond, the idea of using my iPhone to track ele­ments of my life has always con­nect­ed with me (I like stats!). Sev­er­al times I’ve tried it with MyFit­ness­Pal and Sleep Cycle but they’ve nev­er stuck for some rea­son, but see­ing the moti­va­tion behind Frederico’s meth­ods has struck a chord with me. I’m not recov­er­ing from a severe phys­i­cal ill­ness but I am recov­er­ing from a men­tal one and there’s def­i­nite­ly a con­nec­tion between my men­tal well being and how I feel in my body. Pos­i­tive atti­tudes in one area of my life fil­ter through into oth­er areas and it’s with this in mind that I’ve decid­ed to have anoth­er go at putting that Health app to good use. My thanks to Fred­eri­co for high­light­ing some apps I’d nev­er come across that are much more pleas­ant to use than ones I’ve tried previously.
Here’s to anoth­er attempt at track­ing some stats about my life and to liv­ing more healthily.

How to properly use “Likes” in Apple Music ›

First, let me tell you one of my big prob­lems, or sources of con­fu­sion, with likes on stream­ing ser­vices. Let’s say I’m lis­ten­ing to a Met­al sta­tion and a great song comes on, but I con­sid­er it to be Rock. Do I like it? I enjoy the song, but I’m afraid if I like it, more Rock songs will come on the Met­al sta­tion, dilut­ing it.

If, like me, you’ve been try­ing to suss out what the heart does in the new Apple Music, this piece from Jim Dal­rym­ple might just help. Although I still can’t suss why the heart does­n’t change state when a new song comes on when lis­ten­ing to Beats1.

The Week in Links

This weeks edi­tion of The Week in Links cov­ers a rande of top­ics. There’s the usu­al dose of Apple things, some thoughts from Shawn Blanc on focus and cre­ativ­i­ty, an obit­u­ary to one of the great­est type design­ers of all time, a mov­ing video from Israel and a mov­ing sto­ry from the Welsh valleys.
With the edi­tion also falling on Father’s Day it would be remiss not to men­tion my Dad. So just a quick note to him to say thanks for being my Dad, you sup­port me, you help me and you guide me and as well as being my Dad you’re also a great friend. Have a beer on me tonight!