Early E-Paper Exposure, OR: Adoption Atrocities

We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books. -- Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

I can't find my copy of Salmon of Doubt, so I paid a penny shy of two dollars for the electronic version on Apple Books. I didn't bother looking up the Kindle version because buying books through Kindle on an iPad is a pain. Besides, I've read Salmon of Doubt cover to cover and at this point I'm only referencing it more than reading it. This highlights an advantage of ebooks over their paper predecessors: the ability to search the text with keywords. 

Sadly, another resource of Douglas Adams' wisdom and insight appears to have become lost media. His BBC Radio 4 series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future, which has an episode devoted to eBooks, cannot be listened to because it uses RealPlayer and nothing uses that anymore. At least, nothing I have uses RealPlayer anymore; according to their site, they've gone Windows only. 

Overall, he had a fairly complicated opinion about ePublishing. Many possibilities, but all depend on the execution. Adams left us in May of 2001, long before Amazon became the powerhouse we know it as today. At that time, eReaders were very niche devices only made by a handful of companies, the biggest of which was Sony. Strangely, though, none of the other electronics giants seemed at all interested in competing with Sony on this front. For all intents and purposes, it was them and Rocketbook. 

Sometime between 1997 and 2002, when I was working at a local Target's electronics counter, someone asked if we had any eReaders. His had packed up and, the way he made it sound, left his library completely inaccessible. I felt really bad for him. There was nothing we could do; I don't even think we had our PDA's stocked at that point, and no one was using any of those to read eBooks. I think about that guy every now and again, especially when Amazon releases a new Kindle or I see a review of some other eReader on YouTube. He was an early adopter, and unfortunately paid the worst possible price for it. Looking back, I would have assumed he could at least read the files on his desktop or laptop. Otherwise, how would he have gotten the books onto the reader? Nonetheless, it had to be frustrating. I hope the frustration is long behind him and he's happy with whatever eReader he's gotten for himself now. 

09 JUL 25 WED UPDATE: While writing a newer entry about Audible, I happened upon The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future there, presented in full and with an addendum from 2015 entitled Did Douglas Get It Right?. 

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? 

Bye-Bye, Bulby

"Computer? Make coffee, please.”
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
---The exchange that starts my day, everyday.

The big 3 of the smarthome/virtual assistant scene are Amazon, Apple, and Google. I’m team Alexa for 3 reasons.

1. I’m already an evil bastard Amazon Prime member 
2. The Echo’s sound awesome for their size and price. 
3. I can say “Computer” instead of “Alexa” because that’s all I’ve wanted since Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I know for a fact I’m not alone in this. 

Apple’s HomePod definitely wins in the Rule of Cool department in terms of design, and Google Assistant more than lives up to the “assistant” part of the name when it comes to schedules and reminders, so if you’re at all interested in a Smart Automation setup, do your homework and check out some reviews. Beyond the straight out of the box experience of a smart speaker, the third party realm of the ecosystem is more or less going to be the same for everybody. This is where we get items such as smart bulbs. Amazon does not produce their own smart bulbs and neither does Google. This leaves a wide range of options such as Philips and GE, as well as some lesser-known options like TP-Link. I’d heard of them because I recently upgraded my Wi-Fi to one of their routers. Pricewise, they blew the bigger guys out of the water, so I ordered two, one for the front door, and one for the side door.

Long story short, I never bothered taking the second one out of the box and the first one’s entire tenure as an illuminated doorman lasted about 2 days. If you need a little more than that to make a decision of your own on these gadgets (especially keeping in mind my experience was far from negative, simply disappointing), then read on.

The way the whole smart bulb setup used to work was that you had your bulbs and those bulbs needed a hub. The hub could either be built in to your existing smart speaker (like the second generation Amazon Echo) or would be a separate device entirely. It’s meant to act as a middleman between your smart setup and the bulbs themselves, which wouldn’t typically have much in the way of tech under the hood. As time went on, the importance of the hub was diminished and the bulbs took on more of the networking workload. Hubs are still recommended in some setups if you plan to coordinate a large number of bulbs, but if you’re not thinking too far past your front door, then these newer self-contained bulbs are the best of both worlds.

Because TP-Link is a third party, you need their proprietary app in order to set up the bulb before you tether it to your smart speaker. This sounds tedious, but it’s because these smart bulbs are meant to fit in and play nice with whatever virtual assistant camp you’re flying a flag for. The downside to this is that while Amazon, Google, and Apple have massive development teams devoted exclusively to producing apps for their products, even the likes of Philips and GE don’t hold a candle to those guys. To be fair to TP-Link, as their bread and butter is networking devices, they’ve got the skills to pay the bills and their app is far more polished than most others I’ve come across. It was still far from perfect, bringing to mind the following words of wisdom, “Simple does not mean easy.”

First, you download the TP-Link app and create an account with Kasa, their smarthome subdivision. To their credit, this is the extent of the tedium; it’s one more username and password to keep track of, but since I can tie it to the account I opened when I got my Wi-Fi, it all worked out. Once in the app, you plug the bulb in and turn it on. It blinks 3 times to tell you it’s ready to be found and connected to the app. Now, the app does not connect directly to the bulb at this point. Without getting into the nitty-gritty technical details, the bulb produces its own Wi-Fi signal (as opposed to a Bluetooth signal like a pair of headphones or a game controller). You have to exit the app and open your settings, going to your Wi-Fi settings, and selecting the bulb as your network rather than your home Wi-Fi. Once that’s done, you go back to the Kasa app where you may well see it insisting it’s trying to connect with the bulb. I mean, I didn’t even click on the button that said, “ready to connect.” but I guess the app knows what it’s doing. At least, it acted like it knew what it was doing. It took two attempts to get the bulb connected to the app via the phone.

This is where I have to admit to messing up as I misunderstood exactly what this process was meant to achieve. 

The short and sweet version of what this graphic is attempting to explain is that you are using your phone to tell the bulb to talk to your router so you can talk to it through your smart speaker. My mistake was telling the bulb to talk to itself. It was an honest mistake, and a simple enough fix, but nonetheless a little embarrassing. It’s rather like mixing up “right” as in the direction and “right” as in correct when you’re giving someone directions. Simple also does not mean obvious.

The rest of the setup was utterly painless. I went into the Alexa app, told it to look for a bulb made by TP-Link, and since it was already connected to the Wi-Fi, it welcomed it to the tribe with open arms, a mighty feast, and much dancing and celebrating. I could tell Alexa to let their be light, and light there would be. This arrangement worked… for about a day.

Despite the new Wi-Fi router fixing all of the problems I was having with the previous router (now a pile of plastic rubble via an Office Space reenactment), there are still limits to its reach. Sadly, outside the front door is just on the edge of the signal strength. The bulb would easily disconnect from the network and would not be able to consistently reconnect. I had a suspicion of running into this problem, but it was still disappointing. I had considered dusting off my old Wi-Fi extender previously used to solve the range issue that was one of several of the old router’s growing list of problems. However, that felt like a lot more steps than I wanted to bother with for something that was supposed to be more convenient. It would have been another hoop to jump through and, most importantly, another point of failure. Extenders/Boosters don’t guarantee a strong connection nor a particularly stable one, to say nothing of the latency issue. I had that problem with my television, wherein Alexa would tell me the device was unresponsive, but in actuality it was working just fine and it simply hadn’t given the thumbs up to coming online when Alexa gave it the go ahead.

The moral of the story is rather than try to supplement a weak router with an add-on, just take the plunge and make the investment. Some of the most tech-savvy people I know only upgrade their Wi-Fi setup when they absolutely have to because the higher-end ones are generally future-proof as a rule, or at least more future-resistant than most gadgetry.

Speaking of proof of living in the future, the return process was one of the most painless returns of anything I’ve ever gone through, almost downright celebratory. Say what you will about Amazon (I’m likely right there with you on most of it), they do go out of their way to make returns as straightforward as possible, which is truly an achievement for what is fundamentally a mail-order retail company. I opted for the drop-off option, a deal they have worked out with Kohl’s and UPS. I opted for Kohl’s as they carry Alexa-friendly stuff and often have some decent sales going on.

I walk in and as I’m walking past the front checkout lanes, one of the cashiers follows up her obligatory “Hello” with, “Do you have an Amazon return?”

It caught me off guard for a moment before I answered in the affirmative. I was then directed to follow the signs toward the back of the store and take a—

Right, not a left towards their customer service area. That caught me off guard too. I followed the signs and came to a small counter where I think some memory foam pillows used to be. By the way, after I was directed on where to go at the front of the store, the cashier immediately got on a walkie-talkie and foretold my arrival. Nice touch. I pulled up the QR code on my phone, had it scanned, and was then handed a confirmation slip with a 25% off in-store coupon. The nice lady behind the counter even mentioned a sale on band shirts, having taken notice of my Pink Floyd tee. Again, nice touch. Unfortunately, there were no sales on smart devices and the coupon expressly restricted electronics anyway, but I’ve still got to give props for the holding the hassle and rolling out the red rug. As I walked out while reading the coupon’s fine print, I thought, “I should return stuff to Amazon more often.”

The cherry on top came in a text about 30 minutes later informing me my purchase had been refunded. I was expecting a few days (as they say 4-5 hours from the time it’s received, not necessarily indicating being dropped off as such a time), but already I’m looking at what it’s going to:

This is a smart plug. Specifically, it’s the one my electric kettle is plugged into, the one I tell to start my coffee making routine in the morning. I could plug in a proper coffee maker, possibly a smart one that would negate the need for the plug, but I don’t have one. I like to change it up between a typical drip cone and a French press. Even my grinder is manual, because that’s how I roll, by dammit. Plus, my roommate prefers tea. I have a handful of these plugs with other devices plugged into them, and I’ve gotten so much mileage out of them they’re almost impossible not to recommend. They’re a little more expensive than the 3rd party plugs, but there’s no middleman to the setup and depending on when you go shopping, you can find them bundled with speakers or other devices. I only wish they also had a USB plug in addition to the main outlet so as to power on smaller, lower-power devices, especially those of the homemade/DIY variety, what’s known in the tech field as the “Internet of Things.”

Finally, if you’re still set on having a smart bulb or two or three or more, I’d like to suggest an alternative:

This is a smart switch. It replaces your normal wall switch and effectively turns any bulb into a smart bulb, just a lamp plugged into a smart plug would technically be.

Whichever virtual home and hopefully non-homicidal HAL-9000 you go with, please do remember to say please and thank you, even if all you want is the lights off or the coffee started. If nothing else, they'll remember that in the uprising. 

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.

The Great (IN)Famous Texting Experiment

A factoid is commonly used to mean any sort of brief, concise piece of news or information, supposedly because "trivia" is too on the nose. Its practical definition is a little more ominous, that its a piece of speculation or unfounded assertion that gets repeated and spread around so much its simply taken as fact despite a lack of authentication. 

My favorite example is a piece of information that goes something like this, "We only remember 40% of what we hear, 30% of what we read, 60% of what we see..." and so on and so on, the overall lesson or advice being that teachers and educators should engage with their students on a more "visually interesting" level. In fact, I first heard this string of statistics in a Powerpoint class. The truth is there's absolutely nothing to back up these statistics. Trying to find anything resembling a source is akin to tracking the origin of that joke you heard that one time from that one coworker or neighbor who seems to pull such things from the air itself. 

While writing an entry about feature creep in our tiny pocket computers (that just so happen to have tiny telephones in them somewhere) we're all hopelessly addicted to, I remembered something I thought I'd heard somewhere that I used to tell people back when I worked for a cell carrier. I worked in that customer service job from around 2006-2008. By the time I was "promoted to customer" the iPhone was still firmly in the grasp of AT&T, one of the most significant events in the history of telecommunications since the birth of the Baby Bells or the launch of Telstar 1. Google had been developing Android for years prior, but this one insignificant marketing tactic was the chocolate to their peanut butter. Still, smartphones, however accessible Apple had set out to make them, were still extremely niche at this point. Our bestselling phone was the Motorola Razr. We were on the verge of introducing unlimited minutes as a widespread offering, and unless you got a special little add-on bundle to your bill, every single text and picture message you sent and received would cost you. To be nickeled and dimed on this would have been an improvement as the real cost was closer to a quarter a pop. We offered various tiers, a few hundred for a few dollars, a thousand for a few dollars more, and unlimited for a fistful of dollars. 

A common story I'd often hear from customers, especially parents with kids old enough to be trusted with their own lines, was how they first grumbled and groaned at texting, calling it a step back and the like. Given the Razr, along with most phones that we weren't calling "dumb" yet, only had a standard telephone keypad with which to write out your 140-ish character message, it's understandable. T9 and other types of predictive text systems were fair (some almost looked forward to see what goofs and typos it would come up with), but hardly practical. Strangely, despite this, the usage of texting kept going up, and those parents who had rolled their eyes and even shaken their fists at the idea of having any texting on their plans were almost happy to have to upgrade to the full unlimited plan. Sure, nobody liked paying more for something already fairly pricey, but at the very least the appeal was recognized, if not fully embraced. 

This did not surprise me, and not simply because of my own addictive personality and a lifetime of clicking buttons to make things happen on a screen. It didn't surprise me because I had heard somewhere, from someone, at some point, about how Nokia, that Finnish phone maker some people still think is Japanese most likely because John Turtoro made a bad career move for a big paycheck and semi-steady work, had proven there was almost an inherent need for texting in a social structure. 

The story goes like this: Nokia hand-picked a small, tightly-knit local village near their main offices for a grand experiment. Everyone in town was issued a cell phone and given a fairly reasonable plan to go along with it. There was a catch, however. The phones could only send and receive text messages. All voice functionality was disabled at the software level. Landlines were also disabled as part of the deal. That reasonable plan was for unlimited texting, so there was no penalty whatsoever for being able to send and receive hundreds or thousands of text messages throughout the month. Naturally, there was much grumbling and groaning, eye rolls, and possibly one or two shaken fists, but I suppose nobody had anything better to do because nobody opted out and the rest of the experiment went off without a hitch.

At the end of the month, Nokia send out a notification to all users that the voice features would be turned back on, landlines would be restored, and as a bonus everyone could keep the phones for another month before they had to find carriers to get plans through. The final twist to the story, if it can be called that, is that although the ability to make and receive voice calls was back in business, the usage of texting had not changed in the slightest. In tracking people's usage of the texting feature (how many per day, to whom, etc.) went up within the first week, and stayed there. There may have been a slight decline when the voice functionality came back, but there was no great exchange or abandonment. Nokia had effectively proven that texting was not a novelty that would come and go, but was in fact here to stay. 

This next part may shock you, but I have found absolutely no truth to this anecdote. It's possible I'm missing something. Maybe the story has simply faded into the background radiation of the web. More likely, the story is semi-true, that a group of people were offered texting plans at no added charge, their habits monitored for a short time, and the data still showing that as it was available to them and didn't carry any added cost (or a nominal one at best) it proved itself useful, practical, and possibly even a necessity. Focus groups aren't anything extraordinary, and neither are public betas. 

Just as the "factoid" about information retention is meant to encourage teachers and educators to be more creative and hands-on with their students (therefore the lack of credibility to the story is tacitly forgiven because it does more good than harm, so the reasoning may go), the takeaway from this story about Nokia and texting is that people don't know what they want. The common scenario is people will ask for X, but their real desire is for Y. For example, people in a survey may insist they prefer a rich, dark roast to their coffee, but a cursory glance at their spending habits shows a preference for milky, weak brews loaded with cream and sugar. There's no deception, simply a disconnect between expectations and reality. The opposite of this scenario is that people will insist to never indulging X, preferring Y over it every single time, only to practically forget about Y once X is readily available and easily accessible. People would moan about texting, calling it useless or even mocking it as primitive, only to wind up using it more than their voice. 

It's almost ironic that we've gone back to writing letters to each other. How much daylight is there between sending someone a brief text message and sending a telegram? The only real difference is there's no longer a middle man. 

When we first got e-mail in our home, the few people I knew who had e-mail addresses (which is a social phenomenon worthy of its own entry someday) often read like fully hand-written letters, lengthy and detailed, as though we were secretly afraid that our teachers were going to look over our shoulders and slap a grade on it. In time, we learned we didn't have to be brief. Next thing we knew, we were e-mailing our cousins thusly:

"When's the Packer game?"

"4:30 our time."

"Cool."

The Right to Peaceably Accessorize

OR: 

Petition for an Undressing of Grievances.

The upcoming iPhone 12 will supposedly not come with a charger, referring specifically to the little white wall wart that converts AC power down to 5V at around 1A. Some people are a little troubled by this. I wouldn't expect anything else, but I have to wonder if it's just change in general that bugs these people so much and not the specific changes themselves. As a wise one once said, some people simply love to complain, even if they get exactly what they want. 

I had an iMac. My family bought it in 1999 and it went with me through college. There was a hullabaloo around its release over the lack of a floppy disk drive. I may have even been laughed at a little for having an external floppy disk drive, like I'd been suckered into buying extra what should have been included. The irony is that I don't think I ever once used that floppy drive. I didn't have a flash drive yet and wouldn't until about 2005. Given I was in film, floppy disks were useless to me; nearly all the games I played (all 2 of them) were either downloaded from a website (imagine that) or came on CD-ROM. The only "disk" media I ever used during those 5 years was the Zip disk from Iomega. Each chunky cartridge took 100MB and were fairly inexpensive compared to what I was spending on video tapes. The most awkward using the damn thing got was when I had to leave my Zip drive with one of my professors because she didn't have one of her own to see my project. I call it awkward because I gave her one that needed an external power source so I could briefly declutter my desk and use the other Zip drive that was USB powered. Yes, I had 2 Zip drives while the floppy drive gathered dust. Speaking of awkward cable management and third party accessories... 

1. Wireless Charging

I have an iPhone 7. It does not have wireless charging capabilities. That came along with the 8. I'm not bothered by this. I do sometimes worry about the cable port wearing out from repeated un/pluggings, but in my experience, that happens around the exact same time the phone is ready to be retired and I'm eligible for an upgrade regardless. If I absolutely get desperate for a wireless charging solution, I have a battery case that charges through a Qi pad. Speaking of Qi chargers, Apple still does not produce their own version of it, with their website listing third party companies like Mophie or Belkin. It's rather odd when you think about it that Apple wouldn't offer you their won't take on something from the word go. People accused them of trying to corner you into buying their wireless earbuds when they took the headphone jack off of the iPhone 7 and beyond, yet wireless headphones and earbuds had been out for long before then and were perfectly capable of working with your iPhone. As nefarious deeds and Machiavellian machinations go, there's more malice behind leaving grocery carts out in the middle of the parking lot. 

2. Pack-in Accessories 

All the complaints over the years about the included earbuds with iPhones, but now that an equally overpriced accessory is being axed, it's a problem? The wall adapter on its own typically runs around 20USD, with the bulkier iPad version going for more (and all to deliver an extra amp or two). Here's the dirty little secret nobody at Apple likes to talk about: you do not have to use their charge adapters. The reason they recommend them, or the reason why any company will recommend a certain brand (their own or not) of batteries or cables or chargers or whatever other accessory you can think of, is because of their Quality Assurance as much as their desire to keep you in their little circle of corporate synergy. When their products are tested, it's not worth the effort to seek out and try every single third party version of something. It's more efficient to try what they know will work and slap a "for best results" addendum on their literature or support articles. If this sounds scuzzy or scummy, I won't disagree, though I would offer that they could just as easily keep their connections and hardware specs to themselves and actively go around shutting down every third party enterprise under the sun. This is why we get a "for best results" rather than "One of us! One of us!" It's not about taking the lesser of two evils, but rather a deep understanding on the part of Apple, Samsung, and whoever else is still in business regarding the customer/manufacturer relationship. 

Here's another dirty little secret about electronics manufacturing: Many of the devices you own contain components made by only a handful of companies. Like the accessory paradigm we just talked about, there's nothing overtly shadowy or sketchy about this arrangement; it's very efficient and keeps the price of these devices down. Can you imagine if Microsoft's Surface team had to mine and smelt their own iron, gold, copper, tin, neodymium, and a whole host of other raw materials to get that magnesium-shelled slab into your lap? We passed the point when aluminum was more valuable than gold decades ago, and I doubt anyone has a desire to go back to that way of life. 

3. First Rodeos

Carrying on from the second point, when you do a trade-in for a new device (which you should do, or consider donating to a charity such as Music & Memory), you're rarely if ever asked to hand in your cables, charge adapters, and other accessories. This is because there's virtually nothing of value to salvage out of what essentially amount to strands of rubber-encased copper and possibly a few magnets. Even in terms of value as scrap, that device you're turning back in is worth far more than that cable you plugged into it every night. For starters, if you took even semi-decent care of that device and it maybe only has a few scratches or at worst a cracked screen, that device can be refurbished and sold again to users who maybe don't need all those hot new features. Music & Memory, for example, use these devices as music players for Alzheimer's patients. Many of those older "dumb phones" are repurposed as emergency call devices for the elderly since you don't need a SIM card to call 911. Couple that with them being lighter and smaller than those glass slabs, they're practically set and forget until needed. 

As for those cables and adapters and such, let's have some fun. If you still have a drawer full of your old devices (Kindles, iPads, etc.) that you haven't yet donated or traded in, I'd like you to go to that drawer now and take out all the cables. In fact, go and gather all the USB and power cables you've got and put them in one place. Let's face it, you probably need to organize these things anyway. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have more than one. I doubt the most mental minimalist has only the single USB cable and power adapter that came with their phone. At best, you may only have one of those little wall warts that take on the Herculean task of throttling 120 volts of alternating current into a direct 5. It's fascinating how well USB has lived up to the Universal part of its name in the last 10 years alone. Your local convenience store probably has a bin of adapters to let you plug your phone into the cigarette lighter socket of your car (another astonishingly universal standard). 

While the general consensus is that a wire is a wire is a wire, it's true that not all cables are created equal (those pesky third parties). Some are only capable of delivering a certain amount of power compared to others, others are absolutely rubbish at power but great for data transfer (and vice versa), and the overall length of the cable can affect how efficiently it charges your device. You likely have that one wire in that pile we've assembled that you keep around for reasons you don't remember if only because, despite being a USB cable like all the others, it only seems to work with certain devices. I'm sorry to say I don't have any better idea of what's going on there than you do. 

Fortunately, it's easy enough to do some simple bench tests to see which ones can cut the mustard and which ones belong in the bin (I mean, what else are you going to be doing today?). If you want to be extra super-especially doubly sure you're getting all the data you need to make these decisions, you can purchase a cable tester for a few dollars and put it next to that battery tester you never use (the one that's in the drawer with all the cables and Kindles and such). 

Here's one in action:

The tricky part of this test will be those wall adapters. We mentioned amperage before, and if you're not familiar with what that is, the important takeaway is it determines how quickly power is transferred over the cable. Bear in mind, though, that higher amps is not always best. For something like a tablet, it's essential, lest your charging times take longer than overnight. For phones, while it will charge them quickly, there's the added downside of degrading your phone's battery over time, shortening its operational lifespan. As for how to find out what amps your wall adapter is capable of outputting, they're typically printed on the casing. Most are legible enough, but others may give you some grief. 

Can you read that? Neither can I. 

The best course of action would be not to bother with them, or at best relegate them to charging those devices you don't need in any big hurry. It's also worth mentioning that while your computer's built-in USB ports are perfectly capable of charging your devices, they rarely output more than one amp. Again, that's good enough for a phone, but a tablet will take longer and may not actually reach the full 100% no matter how long you let it sit. 

For the record, I don't buy Apple's PR spin about environmental considerations when it comes to not including wall adapters with their devices. Put simply, it's one less thing for them to make en masse, you likely didn't need another one anyway, and if you don't already have a small accumulation of alternatives then now is the perfect time to change that. 

My work here is done. APPLE APOLOGIST... AWAY!

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. 

When To Hold 'Em, When to Fold 'Em

So, we've had two major developments in consumer technology, both having to do with flexible displays. The first of these is the delay of the Samsung Galaxy Fold phones, following a number of review units breaking. Some of these incidents were due to user error, namely the removal of what appeared to be a screen protector from the display. Others seemed to be simple wear-and-tear in a relatively short amount of time. First iteration gremlins aside, the device does not seem to be offering what users expected in terms of form and function. Marques Brownlee in particular noted the clumsiness of the hinge and how more often than not it simply felt like he had two small phones in his pocket rather than one large one. He did give the device a little credit when he addressed viewer concerns of the "crease" in the middle of the display only being noticeable in certain lighting conditions and/or whenever users are actively looking for it. 

The hype over the folding phones, the various proof-of-concepts teased last year and a few prototypes for hands-on demos from the likes of Huawei, is completely underwhelming to me. I have absolutely zero use for a folding display. I'm hard-pressed to think of an instance in which the thought occurred, "If only I could fold up this display and tuck it away." That's not entirely fair, though. If one of my Moleskines could bend and give like a softcover when I don't need it and lay flat as a hardcover when I do, that would be pretty cool. Trouble is, that's not what the Fold, nor any other folding display phone, is offering. What it's offering is to open and close like a book, but display as a single page. Contrast this with two devices, the Nintendo DS and the Sony Tablet P, and suddenly the Galaxy Fold becomes a solution looking for a problem, a step down from a novelty. The DS had more than a few titles that had the user hold the DS on its side, with the left and right screens displaying pages like a book. The Tablet P never quite made the most of its dual displays, but that was more of a software issue (Android) than a hardware problem. 

Still, I'm not being fair. As I said, I have no use for a folding display. I'm clearly not the target audience for a device like this. It all speaks to a fundamental disconnect between how I see tablets, and how the general public sees them. I think my brother put it best when we were talking about the original iPad back in the day. I was expecting a productivity machine, a touchscreen Macbook, not an oversized iPhone. From this perspective, the iPad is terrible, a step back, borderline insulting to the creative spirit of Apple users. However, as a consumption device, a means for appreciating various media, it's a Victorinox-style music player, television, and e-book reader. Time has blurred this line, with no shortage of productivity apps along with all the fun stuff. The iPad is still far from being the laptop replacement Apple wants us to believe it is, but it can certainly hold its own against a Chromebook. It's still my choice platform for making digital art. From that perspective, the Galaxy Fold is terrible. I can just see it folding up in my hand as I push down with my stylus just a little too hard, or my lines across the middle not being nearly as straight as they could be, little hiccups interrupting smooth pen strokes. 

I haven't yet found a single Fold review in which anyone attempts to use Autodesk Sketchbook or Medibang. Between that and Samsung not enabling the S-Pen for it, I'm thinking it's either so extraordinarily unremarkable it's irrelevant, or my visions are prophetic. The simple fact is that carrying around an iPad Pro just about everywhere is something I resigned myself to. It's no more of a hassle or headache or added bit of bulk than when I carried around an 8 x 5 sketchbook everywhere. 

Speaking of carrying something around everywhere with little to no hassle, the second recent development may have its own share of issues, but I'm far more optimistic about it than the Fold. The Nubia Alpha is easily the smartest use of a flexible display I've seen thus far, its focus being less on folding and more on wrapping. It's not trying to put a bigger thing in a smaller package. It's doing something entirely different. It's invented a new form of screen real estate, expanding the clock face onto the rest of the band. It rather reminds me of Sony's little-known "smart wristband" the Wena, which lets you keep your existing watch while delegating the smart features to a tiny display in the band. 



Remember what I said about wanting to be able to roll and bend a Moleskine softcover yet have it lay flat when I needed to draw or write in it? Well, the Alpha isn't trying to be that for me. It doesn't have to, and I would never ask that of it. It's not exactly on any wishlists of mine right now (I'm no early adopter and my FitBit works just fine), but I'm watching this far more closely than any other flexible display out there.