Author: Ken Laszlo

My favorite Mac utilities

My menu bar. From left to right Network Preferences, Time Machine, Sound Preferences, FruitJuice, Date & Time Preferences, User & Group Preferences, Spotlight, Bartender 3, Notification Center
My menu bar. From left to right Network Preferences, Time Machine, Sound Preferences, FruitJuice, Date & Time Preferences, User & Group Preferences, Spotlight, Bartender 3, Notification Center
My Bartender menu bar. From left to right, Greenshot, TripMode, BetterSnapTool, ChatMate For Facebook, GIF Keyboard, Amphetamine, Screens Connect, Night Owl, Tweetbot, Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, Bluetooth Preferences, 1Password, Airmail, Keyboard Preferences, Backblaze, Energy Saver Preferences, Siri, Display Preferences, Bartender, Notification Center
My Bartender menu bar. From left to right, Greenshot, TripMode, BetterSnapTool, ChatMate For Facebook, GIF Keyboard, Amphetamine, Screens Connect, Night Owl, Tweetbot, Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, Bluetooth Preferences, 1Password, Airmail, Keyboard Preferences, Backblaze, Energy Saver Preferences, Siri, Display Preferences, Bartender, Notification Center

 

Its been a while since I’ve written on here, and I’ve had a few friends lately ask about utilities I run on my Mac, so I thought I’d share some of my favorites. These aren’t all of them, but these are my favorites.

Bartender 3, $15
Bartender 3 is what make this list work. Bartender hides all of the utilities I run in the background, so that I don’t have to see them. ⌥+Space later, and all of the utilities running in the background are revealed.

Greenshot, $2
Greenshot is a great and easy utility for screenshots, and there is a Mac and Windows version, which is great is you a Mac at home and Windows at work, like me. I’ve got mine set up to bring up the screenshot crosshairs with F1, then send to screenshot to my clipboard. I even used it to take the screenshots used above!

Tripmode, $8
Tripmode is a utility to modulate data use when tethered to a smartphone. The Mac makes it very easy to connect to a smartphone for data when traveling, but none of the apps on your computer (like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc.) know that you’re on a network with a data cap. Tripmode solves this by allowing the user to determine which apps can use data, and these settings can be network-specific.

BetterSnapTool, $3
BetterSnapTool emulates the Windows 7 feature of snapping windows to one side of a screen. Although the Mac now has a native split screen mode, this wasn’t always the case, and BetterSnapTool brought this useful functionality to the Mac with lots of customization. I use it to simply split my screen for a moment, but if I’ll be using a split screen for a while, I’ll typically use the native Mac feature.

Amphetamine, Free
Ever need your laptop to finish something and not go to sleep. Well, Amphetamine will keep you awake.

Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, $10
I got this one from a great episode for ATP. Basically, if I’m using my laptop in “laptop” mode, I want great battery life and I’m unlikely to be doing anything computationally expensive. If I’m sitting at my desk and plugged in, I want my laptop to be as fast as possible. Turbo Boost Switcher Pro does this by enabling and disabling Turbo Boost, which pushes your CPU past its base clock speed at the expense of battery life, based on whether your computer is plugged in or not. Better battery life when using the battery, better functionality when on power. Marco Arment has a good post on this too.

Parallels, $80
Okay, Parallels isn’t really a utility, but I think its at least worth mentioning. Parallels is a Virtual Machine software, which means you can other operating systems within Parallels on your Mac. This is another indispensable app that I need from time to time, when I need to run a Windows specific application. Parallels gets an upgrade every year, and I’ve sort of put myself on an every-other year upgrade cycle. Those seem to have big benefits in how resource intensive Parallels can be.

CleanMyMac X, $40
CleanMyMac X will, hold on for this one, clean up your Mac. Dump your RAM, clean out Caches, empty your trash, etc., all in one fell swoop.

Screens Connect, Free (iOS counterpart is $20)
Screens is a great iOS app that I use to connect back to my Mac. Screens Connect is the Mac end that lets my access my Mac from my iPhone or iPad when I’m out and about.

1Password, $5/month for five accounts
I love 1Password. 1Password is a password storage app, which keeps track of all your passwords and will generate random passwords for all your accounts, on all of your devices. Theres a version of 1Password for every operating system. They even have a feature to inform you if a website where. you have an account is hacked! This is another one that is absolutely indispensable for me.

Backblaze, $50/machine/year
Back-ups are a part of any healthy digital life. Backblaze will back up as much as you can give it for $50 a year. This is mostly for a worst case scenario. If my laptop and my local backup were to fail, all my data is also stored at Backblaze.

Time Machine, Free
This is the only 1st party utility on this list, and it’s for a good reason. Time Machine is great, simple, and reliable back up solution for the Mac. At a minimum, you can plug in a hard drive and it’ll back up everything new. At its best, you can point it to a NAS and back up wirelessly every hour.

FruitJuice, $10
FruitJuice is just a handy utility to track battery health. It’ll send little push notifications asking you to unplug your laptop from time to time, and with updates for how much battery life you have. In addition, it tracks how many cycles your battery has, and its overall health.

Sister Cities


The Wonder Years are a band to grow up with. Every album has caught me at a specific point in life where you’ve learned more about life, and you’re not quite sure how to handle it. Their catalogue is basically just a diary of growing up, starting with a stereotypical “I want to get out of this town” pop-punk album, to an album about community, then the weight of becoming an adult, then social responsibility. Their most recent album Sister Cities is an album about grief and absence.

The lyrics to the album masterfully weave together metaphors across tracks to describe appreciation and longing for your loved ones while you’re grieving. The opener “Raining in Kyoto” sets the tone for the record lyrically – desparation and longing for your loved ones when you’re far away and grieving: “Raining in Kyoto. I’m starting to shake. They’ll hold your service tomorrow. I’m an ocean away.”

I’ve really grabbed on to how the album uses colors to set the scene and feeling. Its as though the lyrics describe those moments you tell yourself to take in the scenery and appreciate where you are, despite whatever is going. Thats a constant theme of this album: taking a moment away from grief to appreciate who is still there, but to still feel that grief. Its a fine line to walk, but this record does it skillfully.

This album isn’t as instantly accessible as Surburbia I’ve Given You All, and Now I’m Nothing, and thats okay. Sister Cities needs you to chew a bit and sink into what they songs are about. The album’s closer “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me” ties all of the metaphors through the record together, which gives the previous songs significantly more meaning, and begs you to listen again. While we’re having a rainy spring time in the Pacific Northwest, I think thats just what I’ll do.

The Intersecting Careers of Bring Me the Horizon and Underoath

underoath

I started listening to Underoath right around the time Define the Great Line came out. I followed them throughout that album cycle, through the next album cycle (Lost in the Sound of Separation), through the loss of their singer/drummer Aaron Gillespie, and into the album cycle for Ø (Disambiguation). I love all of those albums. I remember how they did the promotion of the first song released from Ø (Disambiguation), “Illuminator”. They published a single layer of audio of the song one day at a time for a week. What a great way to show off each of their parts.

I remember my disappointment when they announced their breakup in 2012. I remember being even more disappointed that their farewell tour was a paltry 9 dates on the east coast, only a year after I moved from Atlanta to Seattle.

Shortly after Underoath was over, a friend recommended Bring Me the Horizon. I had listened to one song by that band previously, “Diamonds Aren’t Forever”. That song was a little too heavy for me, as was the album it came from. However, the band had lost a guitarist, and gained a new member handling keys and samples – their arrangement was now nearly identical to what Underoath had been when they broke up. Bring Me The Horizon had just released “Shadow Moses” from the upcoming Sempiternal, and they had left behind the harsh vocals of their prior records for a more focused sound. BMTH had fallen squarely in the hole Underoath had vacated. Sempiternal felt like the Underoath album I wanted in 2013.

The next Bring Me the Horizon album That’s the Spirit was good as well. The band had continued to grow and began seeing some main stream success as they had moved even further away from the metal side of their influences for more of a main stream hard rock band (See: “Follow You”). Hell, they even opened for Justin Bieber at a few dates.

Which brings me to the new Underoath album, Erase Me, which is their first album since the band reunited for a hand full of anniversary tours for Define the Great Line. Erase Me is a solid album – I’m on my third way through it now – but the first thing that occurs to me is how much it reminds me of That’s the Spirit. The album is easily the most main stream metal Underoath has ever been. Thats not a bad thing in this case – it just is, in fact, the case. Songs like “Rapture” and “ihateit” could easily be played on a modern rock radio station, and that would be a first for Underoath. Given how much success Bring Me the Horizon has had going in this musical direction coming from a similar musical place as Underoath, I really hope this album carries Underoath to some big places. I’d love to see those guys rocking into their 60’s

New Music

The Fever 333

I’ve been checking out this new EP from The Fever 333. The singer is former of another great band, letlive., and Travis Barker, of blink–182, plays drums on a few songs. They’re sort of a mix of the singers former band, letlive., Run the Jewels, and Rage Against The Machine. This band has crazy energy.

 

 

Now, Now

On the total opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve gotten into this new song by Now, Now and their last album, Threads. This is another must check out band. The new song AZ is great fun.

 

A Short Update

Things have been busy for me lately, so I haven’t had much to say or write about. I’ll note a few thoughts I’ve had lately though:

  1. Meditation helps me get my head right.
  2. Not being on twitter all the time is good. Most times the minute-to-minute of politics makes me feel nihilistic.
  3. The new Dashboard Confessional album is good.
  4. The new Pianos Become The Teeth album is better.
  5. The new Justin Timberlake album is not.
  6. The Queer Eye reboot on Netflix is great, and makes me miss ATL.
  7. Atlanta Monster is great. I think I went to high school with the host.
  8. Do By Friday is hilarious.

2017 Favorite Albums

2017 was a good music year. Here are some of my favorite records from the year, quasi-ordered by how much I liked them:


The Menzingers, After the Party

Confession: I once left The Menzingers/mewithoutyou coheadlining tour after mewithoutyou played and missed The Menzingers. Prior to this album, I never “got” The Menzingers. I thought they were over rated. Boy, was I wrong. This has everything I love in an album – its fun, its punk, its heavy, its emotional, its catchy, its clever. The album starts with “Tellin’ Lies” and an awesome little guitar lick into a killer lyric: “Everything is terrible when buying marijuana makes you feel like a criminal”, and “Lookers” is an all-time top 10 song for me. “Like a wedding ring that never fit right” absolutely kills me every times I listen to it. This one is not leaving the rotation soon.


Manchester Orchestra, A Black Mile to the Surface

My relationship with this band goes back pretty far – I once saw Manchester Orchestra for free in Atlanta’s Virginia Highlands at about 2 in the afternoon, and I’ve loved everything they’ve put out over the years. Consequently, I knew I had to lower my expectations about this album pretty hard. I didn’t need to – this might be their best effort to date, and oh boy, is this album emotionally heavy. I had to turn it off for the first few months it was out because it was affecting me a bit too much. I can’t even bother to list off some of my favorite songs or lyrics off this album – its all good. It’s a well thought out and balanced album, and highlights Andy’s songwriting skills. I’m glad these guys are getting some radio attention for this record – I’ve heard “The Gold” on the radio and the gym several times now. They’ve been at it for well over a decade and deserve all the success in the world.


The Maine, Lovely, Little Lonely

About three years ago, someone deep inside The Maine’s headquarters must have flipped the switch to turn the band from a good pop band to an incredible pop band. That is particularly highlighted in their latest tour, “Modern Nostalgia”, where the band played their latest two albums in full each night, American Candy and Lovely, Little, Lonely. The Maine must know those two records stand a head above their previous works. If American Candy is the sugar high, Lovely, Little, Lonely is the crash. Songs like “Black Butterflied and Deja Vu”, and “Taxi” are emotionally devastating, but those catchy chorus’s almost make you forget that: “I lose my voice when I look at you / can’t make a noise though I’m trying to / tell you all the right words / waiting for the right words” and “In the back seat, when you ask me ‘Is the sadness everlasting?, I pulled you closer, looked at you, and said ‘Love, I think it is’”. In contrast, songs like “The Sound of Reverie” put the eternal optimism of pop music to the forefront. The interspersed short tracks “Lovely”, “Little”, and “Lonely” really bring the entire album together and contribute to how coherent the record is. Let’s hope they don’t flip that switch again.


Circa Survive, The Amulet

I don’t think this album is going to win over any non-believers for Circa Survive. I do think that if you’re a Circa Survive fan, you’re going to love this album. This band still has everything I love about them – they’re a weird sort of ambient punk you just want to dance to and The Amulet shows all of it off. It’s a very consistent album, yet not repetitive. I always find albums that straddle that fence to be particularly impressive. The guitars are just as spacious as ever, and this may be Anthony Greens best vocal performance to date – he sounds just incredible. “At Night It Gets Worse” is the highlight of this album for me, although the whole thing it great.


Paramore, After Laughter

This record is much darker than the upbeat music and artwork would leave you believe. Hayley feels confused and disillusioned throughout the record, and that really comes through in songs like “Fake Happy”. In 20 years from now, we’ll be looking back on Paramore like people look back on Bowie – every album cycle has its own aesthetic. They’re true artists and really care about what they’re doing.


Knuckle Puck, Shapeshifter

Knuckle Puck took me by surprise with their previous album “Copacetic”. This album took me a little while to love the way I instantly loved Copacetic, but proves to be a worthy successor. Shapeshifter is deceptively accessible the first time or two around, but will really grow on you over time, despite some thinly veiled metaphors (i.e. “Double Helix”). Everyone can relate and sing along to songs like “Want Me Around” or “Nervous Passenger”. The former is a standout for this album and the bands career: “Afraid to call and see what’s good, or is it simply understood that there’s a reason you don’t want me around”, and “They say that time heals everything, but what if time is everything?” I’m looking forward to spinning this album again in the spring.


The National, Sleep Well Beast

I was asked to describe The National to someone recently, and I responded half-jokingly by saying “they’re probably Radiohead’s favorite pop band”. The National aren’t exactly a pop band, but they are catchy and are just tinged with some interesting timing and mixing Radiohead are famous for – just not as weird as Radiohead can be. The guitar riff in “The System Sleeps in Total Darkness” stands out not for its technical prowess, but rather the hours they clearly put into getting that sound. “Sleep Well Beast” is a worthwhile follow up to the monumental “Trouble Will Find Me”, and has satisfied my itch for some grown-man Dad rock.


Foo Fighters, Concrete and Gold

This album’s name is awful, but the album itself is fantastic. The albums opening track “T-Shirt” is juvenile and anthemic, calling back to Queen both during the name drop, and when the harmonies come in, “I don’t want to be Queen, I just want to keep my T-Shirt clean.” “Run” feels like another attempt at a song like “Rope” from Wasting Light. “The Sky is a Neighborhood” and “Sunday Rain” stand out as unique songs within the bands catalogue, with drummer Taylor Hawkins singing the latter. This album has moments like that reveal how Dave Grohl and company are just playing with us – they’re wielding Rock and Roll itself like a master swordsman wields his weapon.


John Mayer, The Search for Everything

Along the lines of how bad of an album title Concrete and gold is, The Search for Everything may be worse. The album cover for this record may be worse still. The roll of for this album was awful – I feel like no one noticed the “Waves” of songs John released. All in all, I don’t know that I’ve been more disappointed in the release of some really fantastic songs. “Still Feel Like Your Man”, “Moving On and Getting Over”, and “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me” should be staples at future Mayer concerts, and highlight how he continues to be a master songwriter.


Brand New, Science Fiction

Okay, there’s no reason to beat around this bush: Jesse Lacey did some fucked up stuff. What he did is indefensible, and those he victimized deserve to be heard. I am doing my best to separate the art from the artist with Brand New. Brand New is my favorite band and Jesse Lacey is not Brand New. Although, to be honest, I’m not finding it as hard to separate him from this album as I am with Deja Entendu – your mileage may vary. That said:

If the Foo Fighters are wielding Rock and Roll, Brand New are wielding their own legacy on this album (albeit that has been blindsided by the Lacey accusations, but I digress). I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated an album more or for longer than I have for this. It had been over seven years since they had released Daisy when Science Fiction was mailed on CDs to a few hundred un-expecting fans as a single track – the most “Brand New” way to release their final album. This album really is a return to form for the band. It hits the sweet spot between the sing-song’ed-ness of Deja with the tenor and timbre of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. The album has some classic verbose Brand New lines, like “It lit me up like a rag soaked in gasoline in the neck of a bottle breaking right at my feet” on “Lit Me Up” and some great simple lines like “Well, I guess that thats just depression, no sense in fighting it now” on “Can’t Get It Out”. Every song on this album is important, and each has its place on the album and in Brand New’s legacy – its almost impossible to think that they achieved the expectations everyone had for this album.

Other honorable mentions:

New Found Glory, Makes Me Sick – I love this band. I always will. They’re fun.

The Wonder Years, Burst and Decay – I wrote about this release a few months back. Its still great. They’re great, and teasing for a 2018 release. Hooray!

AFI, AFI (The Blood Album) – This is the best AFI record since Winter Underground.

Finally, my 2017 Spotify Wrap up:

Thoughts on Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

Now that I’ve had some time to let the latest installment in the Star Wars saga to sink in, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the movie. Overall, I loved this movie. I think most of the criticism of the movie places the bar unattainably high. The two criteria for a good Star Wars movie are:

1) Making it fun for the general audience, while not abandoning the overall feel of the previous movies.

2) Ensuring the movie will captivate children, like the original trilogy did for my generation of fans, while not burdening the movie with vapid slapstick characters to get a cheap laugh (e.g. Jar-jar Binks, and to a lesser extent, Ewoks).

Rian Johnson, Kathaleen Kennedy, and company nailed these.

Regarding point (1): if your heart didn’t drop when (a) Poe Dameron turns on a time to get behind those tie fighters in the first scene, (b) when Vice Admiral Holdo sends her cruiser through Snoke’s ship, and (c) when it’s revealed that Luke is only an apparition in the final fight scene against Kylo Ren, you are truly lost. I accidentally said “cool” out loud in the theater during that moment with Poe.

Regarding point (2): They put a lot into this movie to sell the franchise to the next generation. That can be further bifurcated into things to captivate children today, and things to build the Star Wars universe for more films (thanks Disney!).

Clearly, all the cute and funny animals are there to sell plush toys to children. Disney is going to make bank on Porg merchandise in perpetuity, and things like that are going to make kids lifelong fans of the franchise. With the exception of the Vulptex (the Crystal Foxes), none of them really drive the plot forward, but none of them have enough screen time to really affect how I feel about the movie either (unlike Jar-jar). Thats a fine line, and I think the movie did a great job with it.

The other thing that I love seeing in these movies is the diverse cast. Disney is obviously pushing this to provide everyone (kids especially) with their own surrogate in these movies to empathize and relate to. This is true both in the main cast (e.g. Ray, Poe, Finn, and Rose) as well as with all the kids in the Fathier stables on Canto Bight. I love to think about how this is going to build lifelong Star Wars fans.

Disney and Kathaleen Kennedy also did a great job fitting this Episode within their larger Star Wars cinematic universe, and creating new forks for future movies. For instance, the first scene with the MG–100 StarFortress bombers where Paige Tico (Rose’s sister) falls down the ladder to build suspense to her eventual death, felt very much related to Rogue One. Further, even one of the lesser plots of the movie, Rose and Finn’s adventure on Canto Bight, felt like a clear fork into an eventual arms-dealing Star Wars film, as the franchise begins to explore parts of the star war unrelated to the Jedi and Skywalkers.

Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.

I loved how this film back-handed Episode VII and the (rightful) criticism it was too similar to Episode IV. From the first moment when Luke threw Ray’s lightsaber over the cliff, I should have known the ominous “This will not go like you think” line from Luke in the trailer was to be taken seriously. Rian was masterfully toying with us – I thought for sure Rey was going to have to lift his X-Wing out of the ocean like Yoda did on Dagobah. Further, I think most of the media speculation surrounding this movie focused on Supreme Leader Snoke’s origin, and the identity of Rey’s parents. Clearly, Rian Johnson did not agree. Snokes death really sealed that as if Rian was saying “It doesn’t matter who Snoke is, focus on Kylo and Rey”.

One of my favorite moments in the film was the “mirror scene” with Rey in the cave on Ahch-to. This was obviously meant to mirror (pun intended, clearly – good job Rian) the scene in Episode 5 when Luke goes down into the cave on Dagobah. There, Luke fights then decapitates an apparition of Darth Vader, revealing his face is behind Vader’s mask. In Episode 5, this foreshadows Lukes relationship to Vader and is a metaphor for the classic Father-Son struggle – wanting to fight the transformation of a son into his father. Here, it is so strikingly similar that Rey finds herself in the mirror in the dark side cave, but instead plays off of Rian’s message that the identity of Reys parents don’t matter. Rey matters. Brilliant.

My one criticism of the movie is that basically none of the jokes landed for me. I didn’t care for the “Do you talk or do I?” bit from Poe in Episode VII, and I didn’t care for the prank phone call to General Hux in this movie either. Jokes like that feel too contemporary. The ship-is-actually-an-iron gag falls into this category too. That felt like it should have been in Spaceballs. I don’t think they’re going to affect how most people will feel about the movie in 20 years, but I don’t think they’re going to get any funnier in time and that they’re going to date the movie a little too much instead.

Some other general thoughts:

1) The fight scene in Snoke’s throne room rivals the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Darth Maul for the best fight scene in the franchise.

2) I really hope Captain Phasma isn’t dead. The general consensus is she is, and thats obviously bad because her and Finn’s story arc would be a total dud. I think the blaster bouncing off her revealed how strong her armor is, and that she will survive the fire she fell into. I think we’ll see her without her armor in Episode IX, probably missing an eye.

3) Lukes arc from Episode IV through VIII has some strong echos of Anakin’s arc in the prequels. Starting training several years into life, when they understood love and loss, lead both characters major flaw to be their hubris. In Anakin’s case this leads to him thinking he can save Padme from death in child birth, and ultimately to his life as Darth Vader. In Lukes case, its that he can train a new generation of Jedi, leading to the metaphorical birth of Kylo Ren.

4) Crazy old Luke on that island felt a whole lot like crazy old Yoda on Dagobah.

5) I loved the Yoda in this movie. He looked much more like Episode V Yoda than Episode II Yoda.

Yes, your phone is slower, chemistry is to blame, and lets kill the camera bump.

A11

 

The rumor that Apple throttles old iPhones was somewhat confirmed following some clever Redditers measuring iPhone 6s Geekbench scores. Many tech sites have picked up this story this week, like TechCrunch, The Verge, Daring Fireball, and Vector, so I won’t get too caught up on summarizing this story. Apple, for its part, says this started with iOS 10 and iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SEs, to avoid random shut downs and safety concerns a la the Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 Fiasco. No company wants this kind of advertising on a government website:

 

Clearly, Apple could have handled this better. Users should have input in how their device operates, even if it is just being notified their device is being throttled for safety concerns.

This story ultimately brings me to the following: What can Apple and other device makers do to meet device lifetime expectations? Device makers are not done innovating with phones – every year they perform some new task that requires more power. This problem will not go away any time soon, and is not exclusive to Apple. The solution needs to be broad enough to encompass all lithium-ion powered devices, i.e. phones, tablets, wearables, et cetera.

Hardware and software innovation need be pushed to mitigate lithium-ion battery degradation. This needs to be the priority – no one should count on a breakthrough in battery technology. Let’s be clear about this – it is a good thing that Apple is working on increasing the usability of their devices over many years, and coming up with creative ways to work around current limitations of lithium-ion battery lifetimes. They should just be more transparent about it.

Clever hardware advancements can be used to be lighter on batteries – including low-power antennas, like Bluetooth 4.2, and low-power processors. I’d wager that the inclusion of low-power cores in the A10 and A11 on the iPhone 7 and 8/X families, respectively, was forward-thinking on Apple’s part to prolong the lifetime of these devices relative to the iPhone 6 family. It’s worth noting that Motorola did something similar ~4 years back with the Moto X, too. Designing dual low-power and high-power components that a device can intelligently switch between for specific usages is a good idea. Being a company that designs software, hardware, and the silicon is a huge advantage when trying to tackle this sort of problem.

Replacing built-in batteries in phones needs to be easier, cheaper, and less painful. Sending a phone somewhere for battery replacement and being phoneless for any amount of time is not acceptable for most people, and battery cases are inelegant. With this respect, Apple has an obvious advantage with their network of retail stores – other manufacturers need to innovate a great solution. Similarly, devices need to be transparent with users and communicate to them that there is a problem and replacing the battery is a good solution, e.g. “I’m slow and bad now because my battery is bad – please replace it.” The last sentence in Apples statement regarding adding the throttling feature is particularly worrying:

We’ve now extended [this] feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add.

They need to be clear about what/when devices are added to this list, in addition to individual devices notifying users there is a problem. For instance, is this sort of throttling feature going to happen to Apple Watches or Airpods? iPad? Many users may prefer replacing a dead battery for $50-$100 over replacing the device entirely.

Lastly, and hear me out here, device makers could just make devices larger for larger batteries, especially with phones. This would negatively impact the weight of phones, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about the weight of their phone. Since the industry decided to remove replaceable batteries and toward built-in batteries, phone makers have done a terrible job ensuring phone batteries are large enough for the average 2 year replacement cycle. Part of the argument for building the battery into the phone was that removing the hinges and latches to secure the battery can be used to expand the battery. Over time though, it feels like that gain has been lost by phones becoming increasingly thin, and taxing those smaller batteries more with increasing pixels and computational needs.

Building larger phones is a tough sell, but I know just where to put the larger battery: get rid of the camera bump by making phones thicker and filling it with a battery. Hell, Apple has nearly already admitted this is a reasonable option by selling battery cases for their iPhone 6 family of phones – just make the phone thicker and be done with it. Case in point: iPhone X Its thin, light, beautiful, covered with pixels, but has an obnoxiously large camera bump. The obvious need for increased battery capacity seems like a good reason to kill the bump by making the body of the phone flush with that bump instead of pushing for thinner phones by measuring at the thinnest part of the phone.

or fuck it, let just have replaceable batteries with hinges and latches again.

—————————————————-
The post above this line was written on 12/23/17, I was delayed posting it due to the holiday. On 12/28/17, Apple announced that for 2018 they would reduce the cost of replacing phone batteries from $79 to $29 and include additional info for users in future releases of iOS following backlash of this scandal. This is a good response. I don’t think they’ll actually get rid of the camera bump until the camera can be as thin as the remainder of the phone, but we can all dream, can’t we?