Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision

One of my favorite means of indulging my nostalgic needs of late is to peruse old gaming magazines that I had read in high school and some of college, late 90’s to early 2000’s. This is easy enough thanks to sites like Retromags and the Internet Archive. The scan quality isn’t always great and there’s a few gaps here and there, but the fortunate part about what I was looking for most recently is that advertisements tend to repeat month to month. If you’re very lucky, what gets advertised eventually gets featured in the magazine proper.

I don’t consider myself an audiophile. I don’t know enough about speakers to know my studio monitors from my bookshelves from my ribbons from my… whatever the speakers I was looking for are, but I know enough to know what sounds good to me. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that with the possible exception of the iPhone, the internal speaker on any electronic device is bound to be terrible. If you’re lucky, it’s terrible in a way that makes it good. The speakers in my PSP would crackle a little when sound peaked, such as during an explosion or a crash of some vehicle, but I found something oddly satisfying and reassuring about it. I know charm is an overused term, but I can’t think of a more apt term for this particular flavor of the warm and fuzzies.

Sidenote: we had our N64 hooked up to a TV whose internal speakers weren’t shielded from the cathode ray tube. Before I understood anything I just said, I was convinced the screen flickering during loud parts or bass-heavy sounds was the awesome power of the artificial intelligence written into the game’s code. The system (and specifically Shadows of the Empire) was just too damn powerful for our meager little television set.

Maybe I don’t read enough magazines, but it always felt like the ads in videogame magazines were especially creative. They were bold, edgy, funny, clever, and memorable enough that I found myself looking back through those old issues for a set of Sony speakers I saw advertised in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. The ad was two pages, but it wasn’t a spread like you’d expect. The first page was a tall, narrow, black speaker with a few buttons and a green slit of an LCD. Its cord ran out from its back and to the right of the page. A few pages later, the second page showed the speaker’s mate, its own cord running in the opposite direction. The first page asks if you need a reason to get surround sound, advising you to keep flipping the pages. The second page observes that you’ve seen no shortage of reasons. A few more buzzwords about the quality of the speakers and an image of how the speakers are intended to be set up, with one on either side of a modestly-sized television. 

I think I was fascinated by these speakers, blandly branded the SA-VA7’s, because they didn’t fit any conventional models of audio setups I was superficially familiar with. It mentioned surround sound, but in my experience, surround sound required more than two speakers and they all had to be hooked up to a massive receiver under your VCR and/or DVD player. These looked more like the speakers you get for a PC, but they were so much bigger and imposing looking. Too insubstantial for the former and too over-engineered for the latter, I think the reason I didn’t inquire further into them was that I doubtless couldn’t afford them, be they a cheap surround system or an expensive PC speaker. Moreover, I already had a really nice stereo system that I’d gotten unexpectedly for Christmas, so they’d be redundant as well.

Sidenote: It’s worth pointing out here that I can be an exceptionally frugal person. My brother likes to tell this story about the time he asked me, “If you could have any car in the world, any at all, what would it be?” My response was a Geo Storm. He thought for a moment and explained that cost wasn’t an issue, that it could be any vehicle regardless of price. I stuck to my guns. In those decades since, my taste in cars has become more high roller than coupon-clipping, and I’ve also learned to distinguish between purchases and investments.

A few years later, something unexpected happened. The family computer, a Bondi-blue G3 iMac with a DVD drive, became my computer. This meant it wound up in my room on my desk, against the opposite wall of my TV, Playstation, and stereo. Obviously, hooking up my TV and Playstation to the stereo was easy and straightforward. If I wanted to hook my iMac to the stereo, I would have had to run a cord from my desk and across my floor to the entertainment center. Even if I wanted to deal with the tripping hazard, there’s the problem of the speakers being behind me while I’m at the iMac at my desk. In fact, they were behind me and to my left, so it was far from an ideal arrangement.

Along comes another issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly and with it the solution to my problem. If SA-VA7 was a bland name, these had the exact opposite problem. These had at least two names and from a brand that seemed to be in the process of restructuring, so there were two additional names. The full title of these little dynamos was the ScreenBeat Sound Station by SpectraVideo/Logic3. The apparatus consisted of two small speakers wired up to a subwoofer that was meant to sit on the floor (or on your desk if you wanted to the Jurassic Park thing with any cups of liquid you had). This made it what’s known as a “2.1” sound system, with the decimal referring to the subwoofer as that’s generally less something you hear and more something you feel. They retailed for about 70USD (I never found out what the SA-VA7’s cost) and their absolute best feature that stood out to me: they matched my iMac. 

It wasn’t a perfect color match, but close enough that, when I moved into my college dorm, my roommate’s dad asked if I was a computer science major. When I said I wasn’t, he asked about the tower I was setting up under my monitor. I explained that the monitor was the whole computer and the “tower” was just a speaker. That shows you how revolutionary the design of the iMac was; beige boxes were still the industry standard. The elaborate, Windows-based gaming rigs you see today were around, but they were almost rarer to see in the wild than an iMac. Simply put, it seemed like these speakers were made just for me.

A lot of time passed, I graduated college, the iMac was getting a bit long in the tooth in term of technology (and it was already admittedly a little bit underpowered for anything outside of video editing in Quicktime Pro, writing papers, making Powerpoint presentations, and simple 3D modeling in Poser), and Windows XP had fixed pretty much every complaint I ever had about previous offering from the House of Gates. So, the iMac went away and my proper PC tower became my monolith to all things media and productivity. The ScreenBeats had gone away somewhere in this timeframe, either before I graduated or just after, and I mostly stuck to using headphones if I was going to be immersed in whatever I needed the PC for.

A lot more time passed and the most elaborate sound system I had was a speaker bar for my TV and game consoles. If I was using a computer or a phone or a tablet, headphones were my default. They were also the default for when I listened to music as I was in an apartment and I didn’t want to be THAT neighbor blasting music through my speaker bar. Of course, I watched plenty of movies and played plenty of games through that speaker bar, but that just seemed different to me somehow, like it would be more forgivable or bearable than going through the entire Daft Punk discography. Also, my roommate has little to no concept of an indoor voice when she’s gaming on her PC and headphones were the best defense.

Toward the end of my time in that apartment, I was watching a YouTube video from a games reviewer named Caddicarus. This particular video was sponsored by a company called KOVE and the product on display was a cylindrical Bluetooth speaker that fit nicely into the cupholders of a car, likely hence its name of the Commuter. When I checked out the website, I saw KOVE had a new speaker on offer called the Commuter 2 (which they changed recently to a "K"), the sequel to the speaker I’d just seen. If you’re in the market for a Bluetooth speaker, KOVE is a little hard to recommend. I think they’re a drop-shipping operation. That is, KOVE is the branding middleman for a generic speaker you can probably find cheaper elsewhere under a different name. It’s also one of those sites that is running flash sales all the time, so it’s virtually impossible to pay the full advertised price for the speaker. I know there’s a name for this advertising tactic, but I can’t be bothered to look it up. Needless to say, the speaker was cheap despite being advertised on a massive sale, but like those iMac matchers from years ago, they had a little special something to them that intrigued me. I took the chance and got my 200USD speaker for a mere 64 (which is technically less than what I paid for the Sound Station if you consider inflation). 

The intriguing feature was the ability of the speaker to split into a stereo pair. It twisted in the middle with a bayonet-style locking system and this middle seam was actually angled in such a way that the two halves would rest with their drivers aimed slightly upward. 

Did I think this was an absolutely inspired piece of design? Very much so. Did I ever actually use it when I was writing on my iPad with my little keyboard and case that folded into a stand for the iPad? Maybe once. I mean, I wasn’t about to set this up in a coffee shop. An especially clicky mechanical keyboard? Yes, I’m THAT guy. Speakers? No, that’s just plain obnoxious. 

I ended up giving the speaker to my roommate. It wasn’t a hard decision because, despite the intriguingly cool design, the KOVE Commuter 2 had a crippling flaw: latency. If you were simply listening to music or an audiobook or a podcast, there was no issue. If, however, you were watching a video, you’d notice a bit of a gap between the lips flapping on the screen and the sounds hitting your ear. If you were using a music-making app like GarageBand or a digital instrument of some kind, forget it. It was at least a full beat behind, making it practically unusable. I have no idea why it has this problem; I don’t have this issue with Bluetooth headphones. My best guess is it’s something to do with the way the two speakers are tethered together, since you’re still only connecting one speaker to your source. It must simply be too much number crunching to receive the signal from the device and then beam the other channel to its mating half. Maybe this is why I’ve never seen another Bluetooth speaker like this one, why I don’t see this stereo splitting by other companies like SONOS or JBL.

As for replacing my KOVE, I came across a slender little number from Sony, the SRS-XB23. It didn’t split in two, but could still play a stereo signal through its two drivers, requiring you to place the speaker on its side for best results. I paid roughly less than the Commuter 2, it fills the room quite nicely, and there’s no latency when I’m watching something on my phone or making music.

A few weeks ago, I was thinking about those old SA-VA7’s from the magazine ad and did a little investigating. I found exactly one YouTube video of someone showing them off, along with some scattered pages in various audiophile databases. Overall, they don’t seem to have sold very well, which may be attributed to Sony marketing them to gamers to use with their Playstations. If gamers are going to hook up their consoles to a sound system, they’re probably just going to do what I did and use the one I had for music anyway. That was when an idea hit me. The SRS-XB23 may not have had the ability to split into two speakers, but there is a feature that plays right into the devious marketing of those bigger audio equipment companies like JBL or Bose: Stereo pairing.

It’s simple enough in principle. If you have two of the same model of Bluetooth speaker, you can pair them together so that one is the right channel and the other is the left channel. This is the “that’s where they get you” of the scheme. Why sell one speaker that does the work of two when you can have two speakers at twice the price? The SRS-XB23 had been out for a few years and was still available as New Old Stock on Amazon. In fact, I got it from the same third-party seller for about the same price.

Although simple enough in principle, actually setting up the stereo pair is a little bit tedious. For starters, I’ve already got one SRS-XB23 saved in my phone’s Bluetooth settings, so now there’s another identical speaker to add to the mix and I can’t just nickname them like some other devices. Secondly, you’ve got to pair the speakers with each other first, which means you have to turn off Bluetooth on the device you’re ultimately going to tether them to. Tedious may be a strong word, but it’s not very intuitive and certainly not discoverable without consulting an online guide. Once you’ve got the stereo pair sorted, each speaker conveniently announces whether it’s the left or right channel. Finally, you turn the Bluetooth back on your device and hope you pick the correct of the two identical speakers and you’re off to the races in stereo and with no noticeable latency.

Am I going to use this setup? No. I don’t do a lot of writing on my iPad anymore since I’ve got a recently upgraded desktop setup that I plan to get as much use out of as humanly possible. As for using them with my desktop (music coming from my iPhone and to the speakers) my monitor is too wide and my desk is too narrow to place them at each side as intended. Did I waste my money? I don’t think so. I’ll still use the stereo pairing on occasion. They sound great in tandem, plus I’ve got one as a backup given the first is almost 5 years old at this point and with semi-regular use. Most importantly, after 30-some years, I finally have (the option for) two tall, narrow Sony speakers on either side of a display.

The Correct Resolution of Paper

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, typically; I prefer CGPGrey’s idea of having themes. However, in 2025, almost as an afterthought, I vowed to go paperless for the year. This was partly spurred by having gotten some Mobiscribe e-ink tablets, one to use at work instead of notepads or composition books and one at home for reading (and a color one because it was a good deal and I was curious about the tech). I was planning on using them for Inktober, but decided against it as getting notes and drawings off of the devices is more than a little tedious for something I’m supposed to do daily 31 times in a row. In the end, with only about a half-dozen Post-It notes at work as the exception, I stuck to the resolution well beyond the 365 days. 

Reflecting on this, I had another thought of something I could do as a resolution for the year 2026. It occurred to me while playing a typing game called Glyphica. In the game, you occupy a central turret and fire at invaders coming at you from all sides. You select your target by typing the word that appears above them. The game is a lot of fun; reminds me of the quality time I spent with Typing of the Dead on Dreamcast, an  edutainment title that doubled my typing speed in the course of a few weeks. Though the games are very different in terms of presentation, the biggest difference is one of quality of life. In the decades between the two titles, we’ve gone from spellcheck being a luxury to the software going the extra step of not only correcting your errors without you asking, but even predicting what it is you’re trying to say in the first place. If I start typing a word like constitution, I only need to get about as far as “const” before the autocomplete shows me the rest of the word, at which point I need only press the tab key to finish what I started and move on to the next word. A hundred keystrokes can drop down to as low as sixty-five in this way. So, what, you may ask, is the problem? 

Between Glphyica and an online typing speed test called Monkeytype, it's occurred to me that I've amassed a sizable number of bad typing habits because autocorrect swoops in and fixes them, sometimes before I even notice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s convenient when it’s not trying to forcefully make me say an incorrect word, but I feel like this is offloading vital aspects of a skill I happen to be very proud of. Between that and autocomplete, the software is doing too much heavy lifting for my liking. 

My worst habit is something I like to call chording. It happens with especially short words such as "the", "to", and... well, "and." The problem is I hit all the keys at once and I end up with "teh", "ot", and "adn." I can't help but wonder if stenographers have this problem outside of the courtroom. Although chording has technically been with me since I first learned to type, autocorrect and autocomplete have made it substantially worse. Rather than typewriter keys jamming or the timing of my keystrokes being measured in imperceptible milliseconds, the software is able to work out that I'm writing "the" and not "teh" as "teh" isn't a word as far as I know, at least not one in English. 

If you've ever seen that brain teaser where the words in a paragraph all have their respective letters out of order (yet it's still readable because your brain unscrambles it from context clues), that's more or less what my typing feels like to me at this point. It's like I know words as clusters of letters rather than sequences of them. My muscle memory has contracted to the point where it's folded in on itself. My speed has been relatively consistent, but my accuracy has taken a massive hit, and that's no good to anybody ecepxt vrey wreid poelpe who lkie tshoe arfoneemtoiend barin tseaers. 

This has led me to the decision to disable autocorrect and autocomplete on my Mac. Spellcheck gets to stay, inadvertent brain teaser construction be damned. A red line appearing under a word I just typed doesn't bother me. That's instant feedback on a mistake I made and it's on me to fix it. It's gently saving me time, not doing the work for me. It's what The Oatmeal would call an administrative task and not a creative one. When I give what I've written a once-over, it's highlighted the areas that need my attention first. It's working ex post facto rather than trying to get ahead of me like far too many "smart features." Those assume what you're going to do next. Sometimes they're right, but other times I want to write construction or constriction or consternation or even constituent rather than constitution. 

As for my iPhone, predictive text (which is essentially autocomplete) remains enabled on my keyboard of choice, Microslop's SwiftKey, the only Microslop product I use willingly and with any consistency. The reason for keeping this feature enabled is simple. It's a small and cramped keyboard and I need all the help I can get. It's like Lewis Carroll's Nyctograph, a specific tool for a specific job. In his case, it was writing in the dark and without getting out of bed. In my case, it's when I need to write something and either can't get to one of my full-sized mechanical keyboards when I want to or, like Mr. Carroll, I can't be bothered to get out of bed or off the couch at the moment. 

The jury had been out on the iPad since it's a notable difference in screen real estate, but I don't always have one of my Bluetooth keyboards along with me and the on-screen keyboard still has all the same problems as the iPhone. 

As for the paper resolution, that has stuck around as far as taking notes at work goes, though Post-It notes will no longer give me pangs of guilt on the rare occasions I have to use them. For everything else, I do want to start doing more traditional art instead of my usual vector works. I'm even going to try using a fountain pen after either losing or breaking the first one I tried. I don't remember which fate befell it, which is why I'm happy to have discovered that disposable fountain pens exist. In fact, some artists recommend them over their more expensive brethren. 

Welcome to 2026, everybody. 

Mac mini-er

OR:

Pint-Sized Port Problems 

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t think I ever have been. Something I did learn recently from YouTuber and podcaster CGPGrey was that instead of a specific goal, try having a theme for the year. For this year, I decided it would be the year of upgrades. It sounds like an excuse to spend money, but bear in mind I make a very strong distinciton between a purchase and an investment. After all, the keyword is “upgrade.” For starters, I upgraded my iPad because I wanted more storage. I bought a new bed. I got some furniture. The biggest investment has been a water softener. I also had to get a new toilet, but that was more spur of the moment, though nonetheless qualifies as an investment. 
Now, I’m debating how much farther to take my upgrades. Specifically, I’m looking down from the monitor and right above my keyboard to the very device I’m using to write this. I have a 2018 Intel-based Mac mini that I bought as a housewarming gift to myself in April of 2020. It only began showing its age this year while I was working on Inktober. I decided to work entirely in SketchUp for this year, work on my shot composition and 3D modeling skills rather than ink and paper. During that time, I realized just how slow and cumbersome a task as simple as rotating the camera can be for the little gray box. Simply put, six years is a lifetime for a desktop in this climate, especially considering the massive paradigm shift Apple took by abandoning Intel processors in favor of something homegrown. That homegrown solution is now on its 4th iteration with the M4 processor. 

My first Apple Silicon device was my new iPad Air, which features an M1 processor. Even though it’s an Air and not a Pro, it runs circles around my old 10.5-inch Pro’s A10X Fusion chip, so I’m very interested to see what it’s like on a desktop. 
I wasn’t expecting Apple to announce a new Mac mini anytime soon. I’d already scoped out a new mini and even a Studio in case I was really dead-set on future-proofing myself. It’s about a thousand dollar difference between the two and double the RAM (the mini caps out at 32GB while the Studio has 64). 

As for the new M4-based Mac mini, I find myself rather ambivalent. For perspective, I’ve been an unapologetic fanboy of the mini ever since its debut in 2005. The only reason I didn’t get one is because I had it in my head that I wanted to play some PC games, so I settled for a Compaq Presario. Comparing the two, the mini looked positively space-aged. It was hard to believe a full desktop was in that little 7.7”x7.7” chassis. Sure, small form factor PC’s weren’t especially rare, but they were typically marketed towards business applications, not general consumers. It’s puzzling to me how much criticism the mini would get in later iterations for not making very many drastic hardware changes. On the whole, before the M1-based minis, the biggest shift in hardware specs came with the removal of the optical disc drive. Even with the Apple Silicon upgrade, it was still the same 7.7 inch square. For my money, I was still impressed. 

Speaking of removing hardware, I should get to what’s got me so ambivalent about the newest M4 Mac mini. In reducing the chassis size from 7.7 inches to 5, a few notable compromises had to be made. Key among these is the complete and utter absence of USB-A ports. The classic, bulky rectangle that had exploded onto the scene in the early 2000’s has now been completely replaced by USB-C. I’m bothered by this because my keyboard and mouse setup is still firmly in camp USB-A. Technically, Apple has only gotten rid of one port, as the M4 mini has 3 USB-C ports in the back and 2 in the front. Previous models had 4 USB-C ports and 2 USB-A ports in the back. 

Some of you may be saying, “but they make adapters” and that’s where I have to give Apple a lot of credit for how they implemented the new ports. They're vertical instead of horizontal. On my current mini, virtually every port is occupied, including all four USB-C ports. The last USB-C port, though, is a bit of an odd duck because of a convoluted workaround needed to let me use one of my favorite peripherals. My 3D mouse that I use to move the camera in SketchUp has a wireless dongle. It’s USB-A. As there are only 2 USB-A ports on the mini and both are occupied by a keyboard and mouse, I had to get an adapter to let me plug it into a USB-C port. You’d think, “Okay, problem solved. What’s wrong?” What’s wrong is that the adapter is too wide to actually fit on the back of the mini thanks to the other devices plugged into them. This led me to kill two birds with one stone. I bought a hub that rests under my mini, plugs into that last USB-C port, and gives me 4 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port, and two memory card slots. The 3D mouse’s dongle is plugged into the adapter and into that one USB-C port.

“Okay…” You’re starting to ask, “If it’s got four USB-A ports, why not plug the dongle into one of those?” And that’s a good question. I tried doing that at first, but my 3D mouse has a problem. Sometimes, the mini forgets that it’s plugged in and if I start up SketchUp, it doesn’t wake up and give me a leg up on my 3D modeling game. So, I have to unplug the dongle and plug it back in berfore I can use it. Unfortunately, Satechi, the company that made the USB hub, made the USB-A ports really, really tight, so un/plugging it requires a very firm commitment from the user. Meanwhile, un/plugging the USB-C port is super easy. 

Speaking of Satechi, I guess I’m waiting to see how they handle the new mini’s design. If they make a hub that works like my current one, I may go for the new mini after all. They’ve got their work cut out for them. For one, on the old Mac minis, the only vent is on the back. The new mini has a vent on the bottom, so any hub would have to work around them. Additionally, instead of the power button being on the back right corner of the chassis, it’s on the bottom left rear corner. 

Without a hub, I'll just have to take stock of exactly what I need to keep plugged in. Maybe that can be part of next year's theme. 

Everything Pro is New Again

Top: iPhone charger. Left: iPad Pro 10.5" (2nd Gen.) charger. Right: iPad Air (5th Gen.) charger.

After much shopping around and even deeper thought, I decided a few days ago to upgrade the iPad Pro I've had since late 2017 early instead of waiting until after October. This was when B&H (where I was getting the iPad from) was closed for Passover and Apple had just announced its upcoming iPad event on the 7th of May. 

I had my sights on an iPad Pro, my thought process being that after Apple would announce its new range of allegedly expensive iPad Pros, people would be snatching up existing models like it was a run on the bank. Granted, this iPad Pro, with its full terabyte hard drive, was going to carry a significant cost. Put simply, though, if the rumors are true, this terabyte model would have cost the same as a baseline new iPad Pro with maybe 128GB of storage. 

The more I thought about it, though, and the more I looked around at other iPad models, I came to the realization it may not be as good of an investment as I was previously thinking. My current iPad Pro has 64GB of storage, and in the 7 or so years I've and it, I've taken up 41GB of it. Most of this consists of drawing applications. I have a few games, but I think the largest file size on any of them is 2GB (and there's less than a half-dozen in total). Overall, I'm very deliberate and intentional with how I use my iPad. It's a drawing device, not a communication device like my iPhone, and not a multimedia workhorse like my Mac mini. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket, another reason I decided against splurging on a higher-end iPad Pro. If I really needed something for, say, editing videos or 3D modeling, I'd just upgrade my Mac mini, which I may well do at the end of this year depending on how I feel when the time comes. I prefer a mouse to a stylus when it comes to 3D modeling, anyway. 

Then there's how the iPad range has evolved from 2017 when my second generation iPad Pro was the fresh face in the crowd. At that time, only the Pro series offered support for the Apple Pencil. After using a number of third party styluses over the years, I can say with certainty that the Pencil is the best of them, and it made the iPad Pro worth its asking price. Now, all of the iPads offer Pencil support. I'm still waiting for, at the very least, Pencil support on an iPhone Pro model, but that may well never happen. I wouldn't want a Pro line iPhone anyway. Pro has become a very flimsy word with Apple. When the iPad Pros were new, you got Pro features, such as the aforementioned Pencil. Nowadays, a Pro iPad still has a number of "exclusive" features, but one of those features is storage space, which makes the whole offering feel a little bit... unbecoming, for lack of a more tactful term. Like I said, my iPad Pro is 64GB, which was the lowest amount of storage available at that time. I wasn't bothered by this as it not only kept the price down, but I was only going to be using it for drawing anyway, and as a rule, drawing apps aren't very resource intensive. However, even being careful with what I put on the tablet, I knew this wasn't going to be sustainable, that I'd eventually run out of space. 

With my iPhones, I have a rule to double my storage with each upgrade, as I'm way less choosy about does or doesn't get installed on it. My current iPhone, a 12 mini, has 256GB of storage (I don't remember my previous iPhone 7's storage. I only think it was 128). Many iPhones go higher than that (512GB) before we have to start adding Pro or Max to their numbers. As for iPads, any model that's not a Pro only has 2 sizes available, 64GB and 256GB. I was worried this would fill up quickly, but then I remembered those posts on social media that compare just how much a billion is compared to even a million. They usually use grains of rice or counting seconds, but you get the idea. 

Taking that as a starting point, I made a graph to put into perspective just how much 256GB is compared to my current 64GB, and how much my 41GB after 7 years to build up actually was in the grand scheme of things. 

The iPad Air is a strange entry in the iPad series. I'm not even sure Apple knows exactly what it's supposed to represent. When it first launched, its claim to fame was being thinner and lighter and more powerful than other models of iPad. This was long before the Pro series came out and the price of the standard, adjective-less iPad was going down into the budget-friendly range. Against its more premium Pro compatriots, I suppose you could say it's the premium device without the premium price. It still has Pencil support and the display is actually slightly bigger than my 10.5" Pro model. Supposedly it's not as bright, but it's by a factor so small and in a unit of measure so poorly understood, I wouldn't have known if it hadn't told me. Speaking of the display, the other trade-off is that it's not as smooth and flowing as a Pro model. I'll save you the block of technobabble and just say that the screen of an iPad Pro refreshes at a rate of 120hz (pictures a second) and so animations look smoother than a typical refresh rate of 60hz, which is what other iPads and most displays you've seen in the wild have on offer. 

To put this in perspective, and at the risk of gushing about iPads, even the very worst iPad screen is better than most high-end premium Android-based tablets. Samsung has some models that come close, and the Surface lineup from Microsoft is a damn good competitor, but dollar for dollar, the displays on iPads are leagues above everyone else. Android tablets can be had for pretty cheap, but the display is always the biggest corner that gets cut, especially in the overall resolution. 

For perspective on that, a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite has a total resolution of 2000 by 1200 pixels and goes for about 250USD. A current (10th generation), adjective-less iPad has a total resolution of 2360 by 1640 in roughly the same size screen as the Galaxy tablet, and starts at around 330USD. That's fairly close and it's taken a long time to get to this point. There's other differences to consider, and I don't pretend for an instant this is a perfect 1:1 comparison, so take the numbers with a grain of salt. The point is, in terms of a digital drawing experience, there's fewer compromises on the iPad and you do get your money's worth if you're willing to pay that little bit extra. 

I've only had my iPad Air for a day as of this writing, and I honestly can't tell the difference in displays between it and my old Pro. I wouldn't care anyway. Similarly, I don't care that the camera's not as good as a current Pro offering because I don't take pictures or shoot video with my tablet anyway, except maybe to snag a quick reference for while I'm drawing, and I'm just as likely to grab my phone and use Airdrop to send it over. 

As for the 7th, I'll certainly watch and see what Apple's got on offer. I'm bound to use up 256GB eventually. 

(Un)Lucky Number 7: Putting It All On Green

I couldn't find a good way to transition to this from my earlier part about finding out one of my cables went bad, so I decided to make it a separate entry. 

A handful of my coworkers had mentioned recently "going green" as in trading their apples for androids. I can certainly understand the frustrations people have with their iPhones, be it the dreaded "Apple tax" or the toy-like interface. Seriously, when I had to send in my Xperia Z Ultra to get fixed, and I got a 5C to use in the potentially 6-8 week meanwhile, I laughed when I first swiped through the menu. For starters, the screen was absurdly small compared to my Sony Phablet, which was as much a digital sketchbook as it was a phone. Then there was the notable lack of widgets. Apple has finally fixed this, though I almost hesitate to call it a fix as they weren't anywhere near as useful as they could have been on my Android. Maybe I simply didn't have the kind of workflow that benefitted from some of them, but nonetheless the "icons-only" screen that rolled out in front of me felt like a step down and backwards. On the whole, the sole saving grace of the 5C was the camera. I could certainly take photos and shoot video with my Android, but somehow it always felt more than a little bit unpolished, like it was an afterthought in the design. This was especially annoying because this was a Sony product. I'd used Sony camcorders back in high school and college, to say nothing of all the other Sony products I'd owned like various TV's or my minidisc or certainly all of my Playstation stuff. 

In fact, when the Z came back from getting its battery fixed, I kept the 5C around to use as a camera, though mostly for around the house whenever the cats did something cute or I wanted to shoot a video for my YouTube channel. A few months of that arrangement later, and I inadvertently warmed up to the idea of the iPhone being a permanent fixture. I was about to go on a trip to see family, and I didn't want to bother with bringing two cables/chargers, so I "temporarily" activated the 5C again and left the Xperia at home. As the saying goes, I went Mac and never looked back. Given my favorite feature about the Ultra was its screen, it only made sense to phase it out. I'd migrated all of my drawing workflows to my iPad, so a phone with a big screen was rather unnecessary. The 5C was so lightweight in the same bag as the iPad compared to the Z I moved it to my pocket because it was possible I'd forget to pack it in the morning. 

The 5C eventually got traded in for the SE, and that's still one of my favorite iPhones. That got traded for the 7 I currently have now, and that's been an unremarkable upgrade despite my initial hype when the 7 was first announced. Of course, it's been a few years since then, and I'm far more impressed with the newest version of the SE, as I previously wrote about.

Here's my perspective, apart from them being easily by far the best cameras I've ever owned (that don't have interchangeable lenses or true optical zooms), what I like best about my iPhones is how they play nice with my iPad. They also play nice with my Mac mini. Airdrop alone has been a legitimate lifesaver. Forget those Apple stickers you get with every purchase, where's my Airdrop sticker? 

(Un)Lucky Number 7

 I woke up this morning to find my iPhone 7 had not actually charged in the night like it was supposed to. Thinking the cable and become dislodged from the outlet, I checked both ends and found everything was where it should be. Upon unplugging the lightning connector from my phone and plugging it back in, I got greeted with the dreaded "accessory may not be supported" message, that lightning bolt icon flashing over the battery ever so fleetingly. Restarting the phone did nothing for it. I thought maybe I'd tripped over the cable at some point in the night and finally caused some internal fault in its braided beauty. That didn't seem to be the problem, however as I plugged in my iPad and didn't even get the "not charging" message I used to get when I plugged it into anything less than 2 amps. To further add to the confusion, I took the iPhone into my office where my iPad's charger is and plugged it in. Charged like it should. 

Here's the results of my ensuing mix-and-match experiment. There's probably a better way to organize these data, but I can't think of one right now, especially since there turned out to be a time factor involved (that is, what would once work suddenly wouldn't). 

Not noted here is the turnover. One of my favorite features about the lightning connector is being reversible. However, when I plugged Cable 1 into the iPhone charger, it first showed as working with the iPad. Then, I turned it around and that got me the "not supported" message. Turning it back around to the "working" side now suddenly didn't work at all, "not supported" message and all. So, I guess it's just an intermittent cable that finally bit it. 

For further background, both Cable 1 and Cable 2 are third party. Cable 2 is a shorter cable that was provided by my cell carrier. Cable 1 came in a 3-pack from Amazon. Both are also braided, which isn't always a mark of higher quality, but certainly helps on the durability front, which often leads to cables failing. 

Two Great Techs That Tech Great Together (part one)

This was going to be a single entry, but it ran a bit longer than I meant it to, and the flow got lost along the way. That other half is an impression of the recently-released Microsoft Surface Duo. I bring this up because I want to make clear that I do in fact consider ink and paper to be technology. I'm even going to be that hoity-toity type and stake the claim ink and paper is the most important technological breakthrough in human history. Simply put, we found a way to make words easily-transferrable from person to person across time and space. If that's not a breakthrough, I don't know what is. 

I forgot my wallet today at breakfast. Fortunately, I was with my roommate and the place is practically down the street from us, so I was there and back again inside of 5 minutes. My French toast had just arrived and my coffee was still hot. When it came time to pay at the register, I noticed the tap symbol on their card reader and asked if they took Apple Pay. They did not. From what I understand, it's some kind of opt-in feature on card readers and most restaurants simply don't bother. By contrast, the place we used to go to for breakfast before the pandemic claimed they took Apple Pay, but it never worked. 

Over my life, I've had many different types of wallet. The one I probably had the longest was a chain wallet. They're sometimes called skater's wallets, but the first time I had ever seen one, it was labeled as a trucker's wallet. It was a good, sturdy little number whose only serious issue was its button closures as they would bite off the corners of the cards placed in it, including my driver's license. The chain was useful for keys when I was still working retail at the electronics counter. I even had a convenient little pen on a carabiner. Overall, it was secure, durable, and versatile to the point it almost made up for eating cards. 

The wallet I had immediately after that one was an old neoprene case for my MiniDisc player. It was a bit bulky, but at least if I had to put it in my back pocket, I could sit down without feeling like I was sitting on a brick. That's probably the best example of something being repurposed as a wallet this side of an Altoids tin. Some time later, I remembered a cigarette case my brother had given me and my fellow groomsman. I didn't smoke, neither did he, nor did most of his friends, but they're just about the size of a credit card, and the little straps or springy paddles used to hold the cigarettes in place was a decent way of keeping cash folded. I gathered a small assortment of those, but rather than a daily driver, they ended up being storage for rarely-used cards or business cards I'd gathered over the years. A Gerber knife served as a money clip for a few years before I got sick of the clip scratching up the cards. It was a bad situation; either you had the numbers of your cards partially visible, or you wound up erasing the signature off the back (along with those 3-4 little numbers you need to verify your purchases). 

Fortunately, when it's holstered, it doesn't look like a knife, meaning far less nervous looks when I reach for my wallet to pay for something upon hearing the total. 

I don't carry cash with me anymore. If I ever do have cash, it's because someone's given it to me. The last time I had cash, I ended up making some Girl Scouts very, very happy. I feel embarrassed asking if their parents have one of those card reader add-ons for their phones. I've been seeing those more often at fairs, conventions, swap meets, and the like, but I imagine it may create some liabilities for the Girl Scouts if parents are effectively becoming the middlemen in the transaction as opposed to the cashbox being the intermediary. 

Sidenote: I don't buy into the whole conspiranoid narrative about a cashless society. For all intents and purposes, we've been living in a cashless society since the 1960s when the Gold Standard was phased out by Nixon. Call me paranoid, but the only reason I can see for anyone to insist on cash in this day and age is not wanting a paper trail. Maybe I'm simply not enough of a thorn in the government's side to be worried about waking up an unperson with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. You say Doubleplusgood, I say Viddy Well. 

This is Holst. Everyone assumes he's named for a holster. He isn't, though that does tend to be a common nickname when we just don't know what to do with him sometimes. 

This is my current wallet. I bought it from the Rooster Teeth website a little over 2 years ago and it's been great. I only have 3 cards in it including my driver's license. I like how lightweight it is, even if it does occasionally mean leaving it in my other pants. 

Instagram has been a surprisingly big influence on nearly all of my major purchases of late.

Lately I've been seeing advertisements for something called the Sketch Wallet. It was a very successful crowdfunding campaign that's surprisingly still going strong this long after the campaign ended. The typical story with crowdfunded projects is once the initial production run of the bright, shiny object is sold out, the creators have scattered to the winds and moved on to other bright, shiny projects. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; clearly whatever niche needed to be filled has been left a happy customer. Those who were on the fence or wanted to wait and see missed the bus and simply have to wait for another one. Such is life. 

I doubt those lukewarm would-be customers would have to wait especially long, if at all, since there's nothing all that special about the idea of this wallet. It is essentially a travel journal. You could find its cousin in any office supply or stationary store as it's simply a small notebook with a leather (or fabric) cover that just so happens to have a slot or two for some cards and maybe cash. 5 minutes of searching could probably land you a half-dozen DIY patterns to breathe new life into that old purse or those the legs from your cut-offs if you were feeling adventurous. Speaking of adventure, try looking up "passport covers," though the real adventure may be trying to find a notebook that fits the standard 125x88mm size.   

What the guys behind Sketch Wallet have done to stand out from the crowd is appeal to artists. As I said, pocket (refillable) notebooks are nothing new. Similarly, pocket sketchbooks are nothing new, but applying the "it's also a wallet" label is admittedly a not-too-well-worn path to tread. That said, I'm going to try and read all of your minds and guess your impressions of this product thus far. 

"It's too big and bulky to be a wallet and too small and insubstantial to be a sketchbook." 

Was I right? 

Credit where credit is due, it is abundantly clear that the crew behind the Sketch Wallet knows their audience. They're not simply appealing to artists to stand out from similar products, but because they understand those products don't quite tick all the right boxes that artists may need in a small, refillable sketchbook. For starters, travel journals are typically for writing, an informal iteration of the classic reporter's notebook, or a less ephemeral take on Post-It notes. The Sketch Wallet, by contrast, offers their refills in a small variety of styles, including blank (obviously), dotted (the minimalist's graph paper), and tan-toned. 

There are currently three sizes of wallet. The smallest size has pages about the size of an index card folded in half, distinctly rectangular. The medium wallet (arguably the most popular given most of the available options are sold out) is almost square. This was the marketing blurb that convinced me without question these dudes were on the level: 

"great for Instagram"

Albeit pickings are slim on their happy medium, the refills are still readily available and even without the cover are a decent value. They come in packs of 3 with 60 pages (30 sheets) apiece for around 10USD. For comparison, the Moleskine Cahier style notebook also comes in packs of 3 for around the same price, though offering 80 pages (40 sheets), the major difference being not square and not offering any sort of toned paper option. We could entertain a healthy debate about which is the better value. However, just like the awful truth about your precious, precious cash is that the value is in the eye of the beholder. Indispensable to you is redundant to me is intriguing to her is useless to him. 

I've been a card-carrying member of the man-purse club since at least November of 2017 as I take my iPad with me everywhere. Along with the iPad is at least one Moleskine notebook (typically graph paper). This is completely, 100% normal for me. 

The patch does serve a distinctly practical purpose. It covers up an old employer's logo.

A term that often gets brought up with many new gadgets and life hacks and the like is "A solution looking for a problem." it's one we hear more and more, but it also seems to be losing some of its stigma. As our avenues for communication spread and grow, direct feedback and specialized manufacturing allows for a more tailored end user experience. While I have little to no use for a less-than-agreeably-sized sketchbook pulling double duty as a wallet for my shrinking library of embossed plastic and laminated paper, it's obvious there are people out there who have been waiting their whole lives for this little gizmo. 

Speaking of which:

Next time, Gadget... Next time.

Hold Your Tongue While Saying Apple (an apology)

I haven’t owned an Apple-based desktop since at least 2005 when I abandoned the Bondi Blue iMac my parents bought in 1999 and went with me to college, shifting gears to a Compaq Presario as it was all I could afford. I knew of OSX and was thoroughly impressed by it, using it on occasion for some classes, but I felt that Windows XP had offered me the best of both worlds, a wider library of software (Windows) coupled with a streamlined and no-nonsense user interface (OSX). This was my standard for a few years until for reasons I don’t quite recall the full details of, I wanted to give Linux a try, namely Linux Mint. While impractical in practice and certainly a bad decision in the moment, the passage of time has healed those wounds and left me overall appreciative of the experience, scars and all. 

I briefly returned to Windows XP with a Toshiba laptop which got a fair bit of use out of before handing it off to a friend no stranger to computer troubles as a backup device. I didn’t miss it as Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra found its way into my heart as my daily driver. Its large, high resolution screen made for a thoroughly satisfying drawing experience, migrating me fully from traditional to digital art far more effectively than many previous gateways I gave a fair shot in the past. My favorite drawing app was Zenbrush, and when its major upgrade was going to become an iPad exclusive, I knew I was going to have to go back to Apple. While my impressions of the early iPads was far from positive, I’m happy to say I was proven wrong on most counts as it became a choice tool among a number of digital artists for its convenience and relatively affordable price point. As such, I’ve been drawing on iPads (a mini and a Pro) for some 4-5 years and I have practically no desire to draw on anything else. 

For the most part, this has worked out beautifully. Then, I tried my hand at vector artwork, and as I learned from Ash Vickers of Megacynics fame, vector art is done with a mouse. I also started doing more CAD and 3D work as part of my job and it began to creep over into my non-work workflow. This is another art form that benefits from a mouse rather than a stylus and touch gestures, though some prefer it to the bar of soap. 

A few of my art friends were in love with all things Microsoft Surface and I nearly joined in, seeing it as once again the best of both worlds, a touch screen drawing interface (iPad) with a full desktop environment to run a host of apps (Microsoft). In the end, I decided that it was the latter half of that equation I needed most of all, and therefore finally settled on a new Mac Mini. I’d wanted one for years and now presented itself as the best time to invest. 

It arrived within the week and within an hour, I was regretting my purchase, to the point of attempting to get a return going. Unfortunately, B&H’s normally very generous return policy stops at computers, which they only seem to sell through grit teeth and clenched fists given their primary business is photography, with all these “digital” stuff par for the course in keeping up with the almighty Amazon. The source of my frustration was with the performance of the two applications I’d intended to use most, Sketchup and Inkscape. The performance of Sketchup (particularly Sketchup Viewer) wasn’t that big of a deal as the CAD program proper worked just fine and as well as my desktop at work (which has largely similar specifications to my Mac Mini). It was still perfectly usable, simply not ideal. As for Inkscape, I was dumbfounded at how poorly it ran for such a lightweight drawing program. Whatever shape I wanted to draw was so far behind where my cursor was I could count a full Mississippi, and for something that’s not running “by wire” so to speak in a browser, that’s simply unacceptable. I was furious. I refused to believe this was as good as the machine worked given what I’d seen others use them for, including editing 4K video in Final Cut Pro. 

But that’s the rub. Final Cut Pro is made in-house by Apple. It’s developed from the ground up to work on their machines and their machines alone. For as demanding as it is in terms of hardware, it’s equally optimized to make the most of it. Inkscape is multi-platform and open source, giving its users the resources necessary to compile their own version for their particular favorite flavor of Linux. The team behind it is essentially working on the program out of the goodness of their hearts (and maybe to stick it to Adobe’s domination of the market with their Illustrator package). The point is just because a program is a lightweight in the system requirements market doesn’t mean it’s suited to the platform it’s ported to. I’d made an Instagram post showing Inkscape in relative inaction and intended to put this all in a blog entry to serve as an open letter to Apple in hopes they could give me some advice or offer some options to make the most out of my mistake. I slept on it and tried the next day to see if Inkscape was an inkling of what was in store for trying other apps. While I had no plans to use it, I downloaded Autodesk Sketchbook and performed the same basic test I did with Inkscape. 

The results were astonishing. 

Needless to say, I felt very silly. I had completely dismissed a perfectly capable of machine as near-useless on the power of testing two apps, one of which was simply not coded well in the first place. At the same time, I’m obviously relieved this computer is going to work out, albeit with a few different software options to make up for Inkscape running like molasses having an existential crisis in winter. Still, there was all the work I’d put into my write-up up until this point. I didn’t want that to simply end up in a bin, especially since most of what I had to say about the overall user experience is still valid. I definitely feel that OSX has fallen behind the times and is a branch of the Apple tree the kitchen of Cook would just as soon see wither away as their phone and tablet sales have been far more lucrative to them. For my money, there’s still plenty of gas in the tank until we swap out the old fossil fuel system for something more solar in nature. If you ask most Apple users their favorite part about being part of the full Jobs, Wozniak, Ive, & Cook experience is the ecosystem, the synergy shared across the range of devices. Microsoft tried to have this with their own mobile phone system before letting that dream fly out the window, and Google has made a good effort of it between their Chromebooks, Pixels, and dealings with Samsung’s Galaxy lineup. While I don’t think Apple’s approach to all-inclusivity is a paragon of perfection, it’s still leagues above its kin. The Surface line is catching up with their upcoming offers of a dual-screen phone, but I’m happy in camp Cook for the time being. 

Until then, maybe there’s an off-chance someone at Apple can look upon this long-winded journal of a former Mac user who came back to the fold having only spent serious quality time with OS 9 some 15 years ago. It’s not a typical blog entry, but a dedicated page that can only be accessed with the following link. 

Here it is, in all its mostly finished glory.

Make of its meanderings what you may. 

My Not Quite Office Setup

When the Apple Pencil debuted, there was a quiet debate in the community as to how Steve Jobs would have felt about it. The starting point for this discussion was a talk he gave about the iPhone, in particular how frustrating he found the idea of a stylus. 

The counterpoint to this is that Jobs’ issue with the stylus was how it was used as a workaround for a bad user interface, that of a scaled-down desktop OS rather than something dedicated and befitting the medium. This is the reason for the whole tile-based, gesture-controlled philosophy of iOS and, by extension, Android. This was definitely a risk, and not a well-received one at the time. 

As a card-carrying member of that initial camp envisioning the iPad as an OSX-enabled touchscreen-enabled laptop akin to some of the tablet computers HP had out at the time, I remember being legitimately annoyed at how the iPad was just going to be a giant iPhone. I’ve spoken before about this disconnect between people like myself who seek more productivity-focused devices and the average consumer who simply want to watch videos and read emails. In my defense, I wasn’t totally wrong about the target market and the initial capabilities of the iPad. Between the price and the size of the app store on launch, it was an over-engineered e-reader, a digital picture frame with a battery, anything but a productivity-focused piece of hardware. It had creative potential, no doubt, but it felt like it had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from that casual market who saw it as having their toy taken away to be a mere tool. 

While I stand by my initial criticisms, I’m happy to have since been proven wrong. I’ve been drawing on an iPad for about 4 years now and I frankly don’t want to draw on anything else. As for other types of productivity, that’s been a little more trying. I recently purchased a new Bluetooth keyboard that’s gotten me writing more. I also recently learned that newer versions of iOS have added mouse support, allowing me to unbag my Lofree Maus and use it to... well, that’s still in a trial phase. 

Mouse support is actually something that’s been present in iOS for some time, as part of the accessibility setup for people with mobility issues. With the recent release, it’s now more discoverable to people who wouldn’t have otherwise given the accessibility part of the menu the time of day. The cursor appears as a dot which seamlessly morphs into the more familiar vertical line cursor we’re used to seeing in word processing apps, and if you’re not happy with only the single click nature of an Apple mouse, you can customize the buttons for other functions. Windows users know mice have a left and right click (as well as a center click and scroll, but we’ll get to that in a moment), one being for selecting, the other being for a kind of context-sensitive menu. Fortunately, iOS has this, though it’s not activated by default. It takes a little getting used to as it’s not quite the same as right click on Windows, but the added versatility is welcomed. The scroll wheel seems to be reversed depending on the application and has a bit of lag on it, but I think that’s just another session of rummaging in the menu away from working as it should. Then there’s middle click, and we hit a very big wall. 

Not every Windows mouse has this, typically the more gimmicky or stylized ones, and chances are even if you’re aware of it, you can count the instances in which you’ve needed it on one hand. If you work in 3D at all, whether it’s full modeling or simply viewing models, you know how essential middle click is to that workflow. If you’re going to do any kind of CAD work, you need that middle click. That’s why if I were going to do more CAD work at home, I’d likely spring for something in the Surface line. I can certainly do some 3D work on my iPad and even use my Pencil for some of the more complex features, but this is only good in a pinch. I’m certainly not going to be asking our IT department to take my desktop back. 

In the end, I think the “is it a computer yet?” approach to iPad functionality is the wrong mindset. The computers I grew up with are not the computers used today. The very fact that I use “computer” to refer to a desktop or notebook (remember when we called them laptops?) itself is an arbitrary choice, as even pocket calculators are computers, yet we don’t criticize them for not allowing us to read email. 

You Can't Go Home Row Again

If you've been following my written exploits and conquests for any length of time that approaches or even precedes the 2008 mark, you're aware I have an obsession with keyboards. It's not so much one of fascination so much as utter frustration and an insatiable urge to overcome various obstacles such as availability. I once described in great detail the process of using the virtual keyboard of a Playstation Portable (PSP), which is probably best described as a cross of T9 Predictive Text and the original arcade version of Missile Command that used a bowling ball instead of a cue ball to move its cursor. I also expressed an early love of Twitter, which is still my absolute favorite social media platform, warts and all. I love its immediacy and conciseness (for better or for worse), and I especially loved the fact that this whole operation existed before smartphones took off, and what few "smart" devices existed had itty-bitty physical keyboards that even hardcore console gamers found exhausting.

Sony Mylo (short for My Life Online) 2006-2010

I have to explain another strand of the slightly sinister origins of this obsession. When I was a kid, I marveled at watching people type, and all without looking at the keys. It was like a superpower to me. How could people possibly remember all those buttons? By the time I took a proper typing class in middle school, I ended up taking to it pretty quickly. I wasn't especially fast (that came later) 
Glossing over a few key details of what came next (because I'm very ashamed of this display of my more spiteful and condescending side), now that I was more adept at mastering the home row and even special keys of the typical typing interface, I became exceedingly frustrated when I'd watch people struggle to put together simple sentences. I even once had a job in a computer lab while at college, and nearly stormed out on my first day as I watched in agony as our department head (who insisted on being an IT expert) entered some of my personal information by HUNTING AND PECKING... SLOWLY... AND STILL NEEDING TO HIT BACKSPACE MORE THAN ANY OTHER KEY! GAH! 

via GIPHY

I said nothing since part of me thought it was some sort of empathy test, given this particular computer lab was reserved for disabled students who often have mobile or cognitive differences. Regardless and for lack of a better term, something in me broke. The Moonwatcher in my mind got sick of huddling in the dark wondering where the sun went at night and decided to take a tapir's thigh bone to the situation. I resolved to find the smallest, most uncooperative keyboard I could find, and find out how fast I could type on it, so nobody else would have any excuse. 

Speaking of supremely insensitive arrogance, here’s a fun fact for you about the late Harlan Ellison. He never wrote on a computer for the entirety of his career. In his later years, he practically hoarded manual typewriters (specifically Olympias), to the point of having a fridge full of ink ribbons. He said he taught himself how to type, and it does show. He hunts and pecks with his two pointers, insisting that putting literal foot-pounds of force behind his keystrokes was what gave his writing its edge. Given his body of work, who am I to call bullshit on his methodology? 

None of this in any way should excuse legitimately bad keyboard designs, and they are out there en masse. If I push a key and nothing happens, that's a bad keyboard design. It's why I've always hated laptop keyboards, often referred to as "chiclets" due to the shape the keys have to be in order to maximize space. You'll certainly find no shortage of blog entries and YouTube videos from computer enthusiasts ranking and ranting about their least favorite keyboards, especially those who were fresh on the scene of the "bedroom coder" era of microcomputers. Here's a few frequent entries:

By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

By Daniel Ryde, Skövde, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

By Tocchet22, CC BY-SA 4.0

By Evan-Amos - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

You'd think with this back catalog that it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy to find similarly awful keyboards in this day and age, but sadly this is not the case. To be fair, computers like the ZX-Spectrum and Odyssey 2 never intended people to write on their keyboards. Their target demographic was novice programmers, who typically only have to write a few command phrases and maybe a full sentence here or there. Trying to use home row or touch type wasn't simply difficult, but almost counterproductive. That's what frustrates me about laptop keyboards as they are fundamentally meant for portable productivity. 

All this leads me to the last few weeks, during which time I've found myself using one of the most unlikely keyboards I'd ever consider and not only getting used to it, but legitimately questioning my whole approach to typing. 

Tactile feedback? Sounds like violent criticism.

My 10.5-inch iPad Pro isn't exactly the right size for full and proper touch-typing like the 12.9-inch version might allow, but in addition to the light touch technique I'll get into in a moment, there's the Swiftkey method, which a friend of mine likened to dancing (which is still one of the most beautiful descriptions I've heard for something as mundane as typing). 

This isn't available in the default keyboard of an iPad or iPhone, and which Android devices pack it in involves a fair bit of guesswork and even hearsay. Fortunately, Swiftkey is available across all platforms. The gimmick is to run your finger (or a stylus) from key to key, creating a kind of constellation the software decrypts into full words. It's a simple enough idea, and fans of Palm Pilots likely recognized it as the next logical step of graffiti. 

If this is starting to sound like comparing apples to oranges, it may well be. A synergistic mix of not-quite-hunt-and-peck (as you can’t rest your fingers on the keys which are already too close together for that) and finger skating hieroglyphic star charts seems like a convoluted solution to a simple problem, though I’d invite you take a pen and paper, put them next to your keyboard, and count the number of “pieces” in each kit. 
It’s rather like that ageless phenomenon of previous generations resenting the current ones for how much easier daily life can be in certain areas. I’ve never used a fully manual typewriter, only an electric. It would rattle my desk with each keystroke to the point where a full paragraph would send something on my upper shelf tumbling below and startling me. It was a beast, but I loved it. I don’t think I could go back to it anymore (paper is precious), and with a manual I’d probably complain about it hurting my hands and fingers. Even the keyboard on my Apple IIsi offered a serviceable typing experience. Since then, with the exception of the keyboard for the Sega Dreamcast classic Typing of the Dead (doubled my typing speed in 2 weeks), it’s been a succession of awful keyboards. The worst keyboard was the one built into an old HP Chromebook I set up in my kitchen. It already had an external monitor because the screen was horrendous, so plugging in a keyboard was a no-brainer. That’s when I found the Logitech G413 Carbon on sale at Target. 

Although part of Logitech’s G series of gamer-focused peripherals, the Carbon is by far the most understated of the bunch. On the whole, the only thing that gives it away as a keyboard targeted at PC gamers besides the red-and-black color scheme is its price tag, which is notably lower than its mechani-kin but eclipses your average office space offerings. Chances are, unless you’re a gamer or require a particular set of ergonomics or at most are a serious typing enthusiast, I’m going to speculate the most money you’ve ever spent on a computer keyboard was around 20USD. Against that, the Carbon’s 60-80ish appears more than a little exorbitant. Bear in mind that because these use mechanical switches instead of rubbery sheets of bubble wrap and are targeted at gamers, even this entry-level model is built like a tank. It’s an investment that pays for itself faster than you think. 

I tried for one of those USB-Lightning adapters meant for connecting digital cameras or external hard drives, but for the life of me I could not get it to work with the Carbon. I was all set to resign myself to using a different Logitech keyboard, one I’d been using for some years with my Xperia smartphone. It was a laptop-styled keyboard, but it was convenient, especially its case which folded out into a stand for a tablet. So, I stuck with it. It served me well for many years, but time hasn’t been kind to it. It’s actually warped slightly now, so the “n” and the adjacent keys (including the space bar) work intermittently. It doesn’t help the Carbon basically spoiled me and now I need to find a bluetooth mechanical keyboard that is mechanical but isn’t a Kickstarter which isn’t going to be ready right away if at all (backed out of one a few months ago and learned everyone’s still waiting), isn’t stupidly expensive, but... 

Oh, hello.