Opinions - Technology - Hardware

Smartphones

For now, I reluctantly have a smartphone (a 2020 iPhone SE, for those of you who wanted to know), but as soon as I move out of the house for university, I hope to switch to a flip phone and have an iPad or something of the sort for Instagram and all that (as much of an old Web enjoyer as I am, I still hop on Instagram for a few minutes from time to time). There is the matter of what I'd do at those places (thankfully few, in my experience) that require smartphones, like restaurants that make you use QR codes for menus, but I suppose that if I knew I was going out to one of those places, I could bring along my old smartphone in my bag or something.

Kindles and e-Books

Honestly, I'm kind of split on the e-Book vs paper book issue. I mean, it's nice to have physical books so I can gloat to everyone who comes over to my house about how smart I am hold the book in my hands and experience it and smell it and all. But on the other hand, I hate annotating a physical book (I don't know why, but it just irks me) but have no problem whatsoever with leaving all my snarky little comments in a Kindle book, plus Kindle books are much more convenient, though sometimes more expensive for some reason? But yeah, I'm 50/50 here.

Update 27/9/2022: I can't believe I forgot to mention reading in bed! I'm currently reading a long book (I really need to update my Now Reading!) and it's a paperbacka as well, so laying on my side whilst I read in bed is much harder than it is with a Kindle.

Zunes

An actual joke. Firstly, the first model's colours are questionable. Poo brown and flavourless, decade-old canned peas dark green? And the name they came up with for sharing songs with friends. Like what the hell? And though the interface was pretty good, that's about it. The Zune ecosystem in its entirety was absolute crap. Instead of Apple, who had people pay in actual currency amounts, Microsoft made you buy "Zune points" and then spend those. And of course, Microsoft's store only had about 10%, if that, of the music iTunes has and still has. There's so much more, but I've got to go listen to my iPod.

Chromebooks

For some people, an entirely Web-focused computer can do the job well, but for me it couldn't: one, because I cannot stand Google Drive, Google Docs, or any of that (I use the Apple iCloud, Pages and all of that stuff instead), two, because I need iTunes for my music and my iPod. Also, I don't use Chrome, I use Edge, so that wouldn't work out either, and I generally try to avoid giving Google as much of my personal information as I can.

Update 14/9/2022: After some reconsideration, I've decided that honestly, I might be okay with using a Chromebooks, if it was a nicer model (the Pixelbook Go seems nice, for example) and it was only a secondary computer, with another, such as an iMac, at home. Though at that point, it'd just save money to get a MacBook or something, which you could carry around everywhere. It's doable in theory, though. Also, I neglected to mention that I have used a Chromebook in the past: back when I was in grade six (which seems like ages ago!), our school gave us these cheap (and I mean cheap) Lenovo (N22, I think) Chromebooks for schoolwork. They were properly crap, and had all extensions beyond Grammarly and such disabled. Mine's keyboard kept breaking, so they eventually just gave me an HP instead, which worked moderately better. The Lenovo did have a little built-in handle, which was cool.

iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro

Wow, look at me, being all topical! (For reference, this was posted when the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro were new.) But yeah. I guess that dynamic island thing looks pretty cool, and I'm interested to see if that'll come to the new MacBooks that have the notch, but other than that, it's pretty underwhelming, as are most smartphone updates nowadays. If you recall from the top of this page, I'm not a fan of smartphones for the most part, but I do think that the first couple iPhones were pretty decent. But 1) they started becoming more and more underwhelming upgrades as the years go on, and 2) at some point they gained too much control over our lives, but that's neither here nor there. Honestly, given the EU regulations, I really thought they were going to switch to USB-C, but oh well. So yeah, very underwhelming, and just an excuse for Apple to make more and more people upgrade when they don't need to.

The 10th generation iPad

So as I'm writing this, this new iPad was just announced today. I'll start with the positives: I like the new colours! They're rather pretty, and the yellow and pink remind me of the 2012 iPod range. I also quite like the move to USB-C for charging, because, although I bemoan the removal of all other ports in favour of USB-C on computers, I do think it's the best option for charging. But that new port comes at a price, which gets me into the negatives.

They couldn't just add support for the second generation Apple Pencil, and so we have a USB-C to Lightning dongle you have to buy. And of course, there's no more headphone jack. The base level iPad is, at least for me, basically just a content consumption device to play games, watch YouTube, etc., and for that, it'd be better to have a headphone jack. But oh well. And really, if you look at this iPad, it's basically just a worse version of the iPad Air, which is a worse version of the iPad Pro. And it's $450! So yeah, not the best update. I think that if I ever get a new iPad, I'll get the 9th generation.

The iPad Pro

I mean, I suppose it's not entirely pointless, because there must be some odd Venn diagram of people who need pro workloads like editing photos and videos, but refuse to use an actual computer for that workload. But still, I don't really see the point. Even with the base model 10th gen iPad, with the keyboard and pencil, it gets into refurbished MacBook territory so with the Pro, it's well into new MacBook territory. I mean, I suppose typing up a paper and surfing the Web would be fine with an iPad with a keyboard (though I have my doubts about how good the keyboard would be), but Apple's pro apps like Final Cut aren't even on the iPad Pro, and I believe Adobe Premiere and Photoshop aren't either, so at least in my opinion, there isn't really a point to the iPad Pro. If you need those pro apps, you'd be better served with a Mac, and if you just need basic tasks, you can get a used or refurbished computer, a base-model iPad, or even a Chromebook.

And I feel like using a trackpad on an iPad is just a sad compromise, since it doesn't have a normal cursor and instead has that weird shape thing that conforms to the shape, since iOSiPadOS is designed for touch. Honestly, the whole thing is just kinda confusing to me. Though I suppose I might not be the target audience.

2024 Update: "All-new design" (or whatever they said) indeed. Another new model that's barely changed passed off as some great innovation. Honestly, I can't remember the last actual innovation they made---probably Apple silicon. Anyways, they made some big deal about this being the thinnest Apple product ever (even thinner than the last generation of my late, lamented iPod nano) even though in something as big as an 11 or 13-inch honking iPad, that makes little difference. The thing about the nano being so thin is that that was to make sure it was always pocketable, even in the pathetic pockets on women's jeans and all. Whereas in small pockets a few millimetres might conceivably make some notable difference, I can't really imagine any common situation in which a massive iPad being that much thinner would allow it to be more portable---if a pocket in a bag is big enough to hold an 11-inch tablet, it's probably big enough to hold a "thick" tablet (that's still very thin, and will probably just be thrown in a protective case anyways if the owner knows what they're doing, which would negate the extreme thinness.) But I digress. It's just silly!

USB-C

I like the whole standardization thing and using one port for everything, but, of course, the backwards compatibility sucks butt. If I have to plug a dongle into my computer to do the most basic of tasks like reading files off of a pen drive or syncing an iPod, that's when it's not nice anymore. Why couldn't everything have standardized on a new version of USB-A? Or maybe a connector that's reversible and all like USB-C, but is backwards compatible with USB-A. I mean, there's probably some techy reason, but yeah. The dongle life still sucks in 2022, and I wish modern computers still had USB-A, or at least came with a USB-C to USB-A dongle, instead of having to buy one separately. At least computers still have the headphone jack, I guess. (Update 2024/05/27: many don't! Which is ridiculous, quite frankly. What's the device you're most likely to do work on requiring audio? Your computer! I guess people use phones moreso for video and audio, but still. A computer is supposed to be the most versatile device in your digital life! For a $1000+ laptop to not include a headphone jack is ridiculous---looking at you, Dell! Even Apple still has headphone jacks on their laptops, and even added more ports!)

Dell

I've never had a proper good experience with a Dell computer. My mum had one that she used for 10 years, but it slowed down a tonne by the end, though that's probably due to a lack of defragging, or something like that. My school laptop, however, in seventh grade was beyond just that---it was a crapshow. The keyboard didn't work well, and it was a spinning hard drive on freaking Windows 10, and it was just kind of crap. The keyboard was cramped and poor quality. I don't plan to buy a Dell again.