dymmas

I sold my mini 5 a few months ago in anticipation of this one. I picked it up Friday.

it is everything I expected but…not a huge amount more; and, in some ways, a bit less.

Despite loving the great-looking new form factor I can’t help but feel the rounded edges of the previous design suited one-hand holding better.

Relocating Touch ID to the side actually makes it harder as there is no visual indication as to where the button is (apart from the hard-to-see front camera).

No Smart connector means there will never be a cute little keyboard similar to the ones for the Pros.

And finally….the space between the icon grid and the bezels is huge! One more column of icons could easily fit each side.

I’m a little underwhelmed but given the lockdown we are currently in (Melbourne) Apple have said you have until the stores open up for returns, so much longer than the usual two weeks. Hopefully more tinkering will get me used to these shortcomings!

I couldn't disagree more. The pre-recorded demos are so much better. They cram in so much more information and we have no annoying woooooos and endless applause that tended to happen after every sentence during a live keynote...

Actually the more I engage with the Apple Classical app the more it acts as a foil to the Music app. It's just light years better.

The full titles and not truncating is the main difference. It's not limited by two lines as Apple Music is. I can see the full title of each song.

Browse is also light years better. Objective breakdowns of Composers, Periods, Instruments (!) etc, rather than like in Apple Music, which is a presentation of genres and playlists I have no interest in (nor have any control over what is presented).

Oh what I would give to be able to navigate my phone / watch with actual physical buttons. It would make my device interactions so much more targeted and purposeful.

it would also mitigate the phone / watch becoming almost unusable when the screen has the slightest film of moisture on it. Even a sweaty sleeve makes my Apple Watch behave frustratingly unpredictably.

Apple’s approach is really interesting.

I measure my BP once a day. If I get an average higher than normal reading, I tend to focus on physiological approaches to mitigating it (losing weight, reducing alcohol and sodium consumption, exercising etc).

What this approach does not tell me is hypertensive episodes during the day. This is where Apple’s approach - focusing on trends - could be very powerful. 

I take a BP measurement at the same point in time every day, which tells me what my blood pressure is at that point in time in the day. Trends over time are simply what the reading is at that point in time in the day (first thing in the morning before coffee - a point in time when I am very relaxed). It doesn’t tell me over the course of the day when I might be experiencing hypertension.

Constant measurement, as Apple’s approach, can tell you in what situations and circumstances in the day you might experience hypertension. You can then bring in methods in those situations to reduce the hypertension (such as breathing, hydrating, guided relaxation etc).

Although it may not give you a precisely accurate reading, it doesn’t really matter when trends are the focus.

Please - rewrite this article to reflect the Pencil situation. This is not the 3rd generation in the Apple Pencil line.

I was incredulous reading the specs of this new Pencil and considering buying three or four ‘old’ Pencils with wireless charging for future proofing, until I read the comments, which clarified things.

tht said:

rax_mark said:

Yeah, cause that's what people want to do make Excel spreadsheets using pinch gestures while wearing a heavy headset.

PowerPoint is cool though.

If you want to write documents or perform some text heavy workflow, just use a wireless keyboard and mouse with the VP. There are a lot of really good ones on the market. Really, there are a lot of really good keyboards and mice on the market. Wish I had the time and money to try more of them.

Still a lot of questions of the level of complexity applications will have. Will be curious to see if Apple puts FCP and LP onto it. Wish Terminal and Xcode comes with it too.

Potential too for interesting virtual overlays when using the VP with a keyboard. I can imagine instantly toggling back and forth between the qwerty layout and a layout of specific app shortcuts for example.