Tag Archives: iPad

What’s in my bag?

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In the tech blogs I frequently visit one question keep resurfacing: what’s in your bag? I believe this question is a derivative of “what’s in your iPod” when the iPod was still at large (or the other way round). What’s in one’s iPod to a certain extent tells who one is, and what’s in one’s bag definitely tells more. So, what’s in my bag?

iPhone X
Well iPhone X isn’t technically in my bag; it’s in my pocket, for good reasons. A smartphone is the single most important device we carry with us. It holds the entire
Internet in our pockets. It’s worthwhile to spend on the best phone money can buy. So even a $10000 phone is a worthy purchase.

Before I laid my hands on iPhone X I had so many doubts about it. But once I started using it those doubts faded away. The notch was OK as long as you don’t use your phone in landscape mode; iPhone X’s even thicker than iPhone 5 but that’s ok. The OLED screen isn’t like those oversaturated Android screens at all. Overall it’s a really beautiful phone.

MacBook 12”
I’m kinda done with the iPad. Yes, Steve Jobs used to say the post PC era has come. But with Steve no longer leading the revolution, the iPad still feels less capable than their PC counterparts. The latest iPad Pro may beat the MacBook in benchmark tests, but the Mac still excels in real world multitasking performance. And I can testify MacBook runs Lighrtoom just fine; it even edits 4K video in FCP with not-too-shabby performance. I’m about to install Bootcamp and try running GTA V.

That doesn’t mean I’m content with the performance of the MacBook, which runs on an Intel i5 (rebranded from m5 but still being a m5) processor. I still keep my retina MacBook Pro (late 2013) which still runs exceptionally ably.

Shure SE535
It’s simply a pair of earphones with great sound quality. Shure released a separate bluetooth cable to attach the earbugs on and it works. I didn’t buy it because it doesn’t sound as good as a plug-in cable. But I’m definitely considering buying a lightning cable because it gives better sound than Apple’s lightning-to-3.5mm connector.

Accessories contained in a pouch
Carrying devices with you means carrying loads of adapters and chargers too. Such accessories should be contained in a pouch to 1) keep things tidy, 2) make it easier to switch bags, 3) prevent metal objects from making scratches on other devices.

Stain remover pen
This pen magically removes (or at least fades) stains on shirts. Don’t buy the Tide one though, it stinks.

Shoehorn
This adorable shoehorn from Muji is made of stainless steel. Really handy for those who hate to untie and tie shoelaces.

PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
If a car mechanic would carry a wrench with him, a dentist would definitely bring PPE with him. The most basic PPE a dentist should have are latex gloves, masks and alcohol gel. Gloves are useful for instance when you try to remove bird poo on your car and when eating crabs. Masks are necessary when you see contagious people on those inevitable train rides. Alcohol gel is for cleaning hands after laying my hands on products in Apple Store.

I also carry a flat plastic barrier in case I need to give emergency mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Olympus EM5 with 14/17/45mm lenses
When I have to bring a camera I bring my only camera, the Olympus EM5. If the event is single purpose I tend to bring only prime lenses for portability. The M43 system excels in having loads of good prime lenses of small sizes.

Billingham Hadley Pro
For the bag itself, I now usually carry a Billingham. It’s a camera bag, meaning it’s reasonably water-proof. The important point to note is that you should pick the FibreNyte material instead of canvas, so that the black colour stays black instead of fading into dark green like canvas does.

Into the future

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iPhone X went on sale earlier this month. I feel ashamed of myself that I wasn’t able to get it on the first day this time. Anyway iPhone X promises the future of smartphones. In fact “the future” has long been Apple’s selling point for its products. Whether such promise is fulfilled is a story for another time. But today I’m looking into the past.

You see, I’m tired of my old iPad Air 2. Earlier this year I praised it, but I’m afraid those viewpoints became obsolete as my computing needs changed. When I was a student, I required ultimate portability from a machine that can read PDFs. My old iPad 2, New iPad and later iPad Air 2 served that purpose so well. But at that time I already noticed something was missing: the word processing power and website rendition on the iPad still lagged behind that of a formal Mac. I just let go because reading ebooks was top priority.

But today my mobile computing needs changed. I need a machine to render websites accurately; I need precision in note-taking; I occasionally need serious photo editing on a portable machine. A top-configured MacBook Pro is only a portable machine at home, but it’s not a portable machine per se. A MacBook is.

Yes, it’s incapable in so many ways. There’s only one port; it doesn’t have a huge screen; it’s fanless so the CPU is doomed from the beginning. But on the other hand it has so much more advantages over the iPad: a bigger screen, a real keyboard, the ability to run Lightroom (Lightroom for iPad is a joke), a real file system, etc.. That’s the reason I decided to buy a 2017 MacBook four whole months after its release date. I badly need a real portable laptop now.

What about my old MBP then? I’m keeping it. It still has a terrific screen, and I bet its performance is still better than the MacBook’s (remember I need to edit 4K videos these days). By choosing a MacBook over an iPad Pro, I announce defeat in the transition into the future of computing. But who says I have given up entirely? Who says the Mac cannot be the future of computing?

Commenting the new iPad

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Apple’s new iPad is out. Before going any further we need to understand the structure of the iPad family. First there’s the iPad-iPad (including the original iPad, iPad 2, New iPad [Apple’s nomenclature disaster began after SJ died], iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and now simply iPad), then there’s iPad mini (which is all but abandoned), and finally iPad Pro, which tries to imagine the future of computing but failed. Well, I just wish to say I have no plan to upgrade my iPad at this moment. I think my iPad Air 2 is the best iPad ever.

iPad mini is too small to be useful. Period.

iPad Pro is a failure in that there’s a camera bulge at the back and it can’t lie flat on the table. SJ said there’s no need for a hard keyboard. The soft keyboard should be good enough. But if it wobbles on a table, how can you type (in SJ’s recommended way)? And then they invented the Smart Keyboard. When you have the Smart Keyboard on the iPad, the screen assumes a normal notebook angle. I remember Phil Schiller said the reason there’s no touch screen MacBook is that the ergonomics is just wrong. Well? iPad in a notebook angle suddenly have the right ergonomics?

This new $329 iPad is 1.4mm (one-fifth) thicker than iPad Air 2, and has a crappy sceeen (no optical lamination). Owners of this new iPad or the iPad Air may think the difference is tiny — only because they can’t admit they have a crap screen. I remember @EugeneY used to say (in 2001/2002) “you think Windows XP is unstable because you don’t have it”. Likewise you think you don’t need an Audi because you don’t have an Audi. You don’t have a good screen and a thin iPad so you think there’s no difference.

So to sum up, iPad Air 2 is still the best iPad ever because 1) it doesn’t have a camera bulge, 2) it has a good screen, 3) it is the thinnest iPad to date.

Footnote: Wow, this is probably the happiest blog post I’ve written for ages. I didn’t force myself to add a poetic touch and use good language in this article, hence the above crappy English. But it’s fun.

Tiniest things that upset me

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It is often said that we should let go of the trivial matters that cause sorrow and focus on the delightful moments in life. I’ve tried and gained some degree of success, but there are at least a few seemingly trivial things that upset me at this moment.

1. Apple products innovate less these days.
This wasn’t so obvious at first, but reading about Microsoft’s latest hardware event made me realize, reluctantly, that the tech company that innovates nowadays is Microsoft, not Apple.

For the past few years iPhone has been upgraded with boring new features: fingerprint sensors, better and better camera, 3D touch, fitness tracking, etc.. (Who fuxking care about their health?) They’re handy, but they’re not innovative. As for iPad, since its debut in 2010 it has dominated tablet sales, remaining to be the only real tablet that matters. But given the release of Windows 10 (which fixes the mess Microsoft created in the past few years, under Steve Ballmer), I can see that the future of computing is not towards the post-PC concept introduced by SJ, but the modern hybrid PC best demonstrated by Surface Pro.

This worries me: Apple is no longer the driving force of computing innovation. True I’m very impressed by the latest super thin MacBook — elimination of all but one port and fanless design, but that innovation is too little, too late.

2. Kai leaving DRTV
What is DRTV? It’s my fav YouTube channel on photography. It’s not known for being informative or accurate in its product reviews, nor the photography knowledges it introduces. It’s really just Kai’s showmanship that entertains. He has now left HK for England, doing some occasional reviews there. But given that Digitalrev is posting online recruitment for a new presenter, Kai’s leaving is all but confirmed. This again upsets me. It’s like ER/Desperate Housewives’ ending all over again.

3. Work sucks. No this isn’t tiny.