Remember when people claimed Java would replace all computer languages? Maybe you remember when tech pundits told us that network computers would replace Windows PC? Or what about those who said that netbooks would replace laptops? Why some people consider the tech world to be a place where technologies always get replaced with another one? I tend to view the tech world as a space where several waves hitting the shores. Not everything disappears with each wave, and most of the time, technologies keep adding up.

What will replace the iPhone, you might ask? For me, nothing will replace the iPhone. But, according to Kelly Evans, the iPhone is going away. I don’t think her article will age well. Is she really thinking that a vast majority of people will wear goggles and stop buying smartphones? Really? Is she serious, or am I missing something in her writing?

As much as I despise articles who pretend to predict a product failure on day one, I hate articles who predict success of an unannounced product like Apple’s AR headset.

I should create a Craft document where I store those articles with a date attached to them, like five years from now, and get back to them to see how well the prediction came to be.

Here is an update following yesterday’s post about getting caught by COVID. I thought that I had been infected because of my symptoms. We all did a quick test after posting my article. The results came up positive for one of my friends, but everyone else was negative, including me. It could be false negatives, but I highly doubt it, except if we didn’t do the test correctly.

How am I feeling 24 hours later? I had a not-so-good night with a sour throat. It was like if I had a fever, my body felt heavy. That’s a strange feeling. We still have two quick tests on hand, which we’ll probably use before going back home today. We’ll probably go to a clinic to get a PCR test, but long lines of people are waiting to get tested, which is discouraging. I should probably just declare myself as positive.

The thing about COVID is that not everything is clear-cut, far from it. There is a lot of confusion, especially in this fifth wave with Omicron. We didn’t really know what to do with a single test coming out as positive. We spent the last week together, with the Omicron variant, It’s pretty sure we would become infected. My friends thought of leaving early but changed their minds because we all had very mild symptoms because we were all fully vaccinated. So we didn’t feel the need to panic or worry too much.

Our holiday vacation is ending on a sour note, to say the least. 😒

After close to two years of relentless fight to protect myself from COVID-19, after following all the government’s sanitary rules and telling others how it is important to get vaccinated, It appears that the virus won over me.

We had this “get together week” planned for a long time, with friends. We were six. Everyone limited their contacts to the minimum in the week before, in accordance to the rules in place at the time. Yet, the virus got in. One of my friend got infected probably following a quick visit to their family for a gift exchange. They stayed half an hour then left. It was enough, apparently to get infected. So they came to this vacation week with us, without knowing they would bring the virus with them. I’m not angry. I’m resigned.

I’m not feeling that bad as I write and publish this post. I have very few secretions, but I feel my lung irritated and I cough sometimes. No fever. No out-of-ordinary fatigue. My sleep is unaffected. It’s seems to be in line with people who got two vaccines. I’m hoping this will stay that way for the coming days.

Now, I’ll have to tell my kids that I got it in a social gathering that I asked them well too often not to do with their friends. That’s the hardest part. Guilt. 🤦🏻‍♂️

The real cost of Crypto. We need to stop buying into this shit and fast. Why is it so hard to think about these “side effects” when creating new technologies? I recently wrote about not getting into Crypto, NFTs, web3 because I’m probably just getting old. I know just enough to understand the costs of the technology behind and how bad it is for the planet.

First day of holiday vacations. I’m not into Christmas at all this year. It’s the kind of day where I should work on my many writing projects or even do some photo processing! Yet, I feel in a lethargic state. I’m barely able to finish my newsletter. I’m unable to organize myself. Reading seems the best option. Or Netflix. I feel guilty for doing nothing useful. At least, I was able to express myself on this. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

So, YouTube will remove the dislike button soon from its platform. In one of his recent video, the popular YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, expresses his dissatisfaction about Google’s decision. His view echos mine. I’m not a big consumer of YouTube content, but when I do spend time there, I want to spend it on good quality content. The like / dislike ratio is an important indicator for me, and I suspect it is for many people.

We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.

I think the content creators should play a bigger role in all this: let them decide. The same way a blogger can turn off the comment section at the end of each blog post, people’s reactions on each video could be turned off by the author’s decision. In fact, I would argue that the ultimate decision to allow likes and dislikes should be held by the content creators. Simple as that. Make it an opt-in or opt-out default, but put the decision in creator’s hands. I would go as far as saying that the counters could stay private to the author if he or she decides so.

To me, one of the best rewarding indicator is the one that shows how far users are watching videos. They may agree or disagree, but as soon as they watch most of it, anything else is irrelevant.

I wonder if this decision by YouTube better serves their interests. I mean, without any ratio indicator, users have no choice but to start to play the video to decide if it is worth the time. This simple change makes people spend more time on the platform. Or is it the other way around and users will instead look at the comments to get a better idea of the video quality? I doubt it, as reading takes too much time to decide. People are busy, their attention span is short, a quick glance at the like dislike ratio is the way to go.

Once the decision to let people react to a video is made, then the platform could finally make it available only if the user watch “most of” the video. That no rocket science. There are probably other tricks that could be played to better control what’s going on in user’s reactions. But at this stage, it seems closer to be only implementation details.

As for the creator’s mental health issue, again, I would argue that if they tend to rely too much on the likes to feel rewarded, they could turn off the option. That’s something that could help others in dealing with this.

Glass, a photo sharing service, didn’t provide a like button from day one and doesn’t plan to add one. Is it good? Well, it depends. One thing is clear, from the comments I’m seeing posted by others, I have to ask myself: what is the difference between getting dozens of “I love it” or hitting the “like” button? Not much.

Photo credit: Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

The other day I was looking at my iPhone battery consumption only to find out that the Exposure notifications feature was consuming close to 10% of the power on a 24 hours period. It’s not the first that I see Exposure Notifications to take so much juice out of my iPhone battery. I’m not alone, apparently, according to a Google search with the “exposure notifications battery drain” keywords.

The question is simple: considering that I’m fully vaccinated, considering the state of the pandemic here in Canada, considering that hardly any people actually enter their test results if found positive, why should I continue to care about having this turned on? I think I could turn it off.

We went to the movies yesterday night. The first time in two years. “No Time To Die” was good. As much as other types of business has evolved in this time frame, buying tickets, bad quality lighting, flaky sound systems are still part of my usual subpar experience at the movies. No wonder why this is a dying business.

I’m on my way back home from a weekend in the Niagara Falls region. I put my iPhone 13 Pro to the test. I’m quite happy with my experience. Most of my photos are in ProRAW format. I’m not sure how I’ll process them: with Pixelmator? Lightroom CC? If the latter, the import process is putting me on the break instead of a more integrated experience with Pixelmator.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

This podcast episode from MacStories featuring Viticci triggered quite a few reactions. Why? Because of these two sentences in the first moments of the episode talking about the iPad mini:

“You wouldn’t want to read/or watch a review by someone who is not a professional reviewer. It wouldn’t be enjoyable.”

Yep. Viticci said that. In “The value of a non-reviewer’s perspective” from Mere Civilian:

”I agree, a review from a person who does not write for a living may not be enjoyable. However, I strongly disagree with the first sentence. “

What? Really? Then, I read this reaction from Lee Peterson on his blog:

”MacStories posts some great stuff but not everyone wants to read long articles, some like smaller easy to digest articles from independent writers, I like to think I do that here. I get to the point and try to respect my audiences time, does that make my opinion invalid or not enjoyable?”

And here is my response. Viticci comments make him look full of himself. Period. I’m happy for him if he can live from writing reviews. I would rather read review from real end-users because the point is to get comments and observations from real use case scenarios. Sure, I like reviews from Marques Brownlee because he has well-balanced and critical point of views on a lot of stuff. It also touches the subject of what makes someone a blogger or a writer. If you write constantly, then you are a writer. Are you Shakespeare? Probably not. There is a starting point for everyone. Some will fall along the road, others will thrive. I tend to think of reviews by professionnel reviewers as synthetic reviews, where there is a lot of speed and feed talk. At some point, we want to go beyond that and have comments coming from experience. So, sure, I’d like to read comments from pilots about the real usefulness of the iPad mini. They are the one who can make a judgment on the subject.

Last year I wrote “I’m not an audiophile, but here are my thoughts on Apple’s AirPods Max” which is not of “review” but a collection of observations. I concluded with this:

”So, do I like the sound quality of my AirPods Max? Yes. Do they sound better than my Bose QC25? Yes. By a wide margin compared with the price difference with my Bose Q25? No. But, hey, they are wireless, convenient, comfier, have transparency mode, spatial audio and they fit within Apple’s walled garden.”

Is there any value in this? I think so. Should Viticci care? Certainly not. I do have genuine thoughts and opinions, and this is my ultimate right to share them with the world for exactly what they are: thoughts and observations. Nothing more, nothing less.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash