Monthly Archives: September 2020

Eight Years of I: My Thoughts On Apple’s Recent Updates

Posted on by John

On this day way back in 2012, I posted my first ever iPhone status to Facebook. It was error-riddled, but still I was proud to have mastered use of the touch screen enough to do so. Did auto-correct exist then? I don’t know, but perhaps even if it did I hadn’t learned to use it as I’d only owned the device for a couple of days.

Who could have known in those days that the iPhone, and really all aspects of Apple would take me in as they have. As an aside: what does the letter “i” even stand for as Apple uses it? Internet? Information? In any event, they seem to be deprecating it as time goes on, which makes sense as the company matures.

As I note eight years of Apple products, I thought it would be fun to look at my favorite and least favorite aspects of them. First, there’s my trusty iPhone (now I’m up to the 8 as I have been since this time in 2018). I upgraded it to iOS 14, and it’s still mostly working fine. On-screen typing seems a bit laggy, but I can still do it. This is not a huge deal anyway, since I now have the Mantis Display, which is also working considerably better under 14. So I do most of my typing on this keyboard anyway.

I also notice cosmetic changes, like the fact that it describes Facebook photos better with VoiceOver on, although the 8 does not gain full access to the newest accessibility features like image and text recognition because of its slower processor. I have thus been bouncing back and forth on whether to acquire the iPhone SE 2020, as I suspect that whatever else comes the 8 will be just about unable to handle anyway. But I am glad I have held out now, as rumor has it that the new iPhone 12 might re-introduce some form of Touch ID. If they do, we’ll see how much the phone goes for and consider it.

The biggest, and happiest, change I’ve gotten from the Apple updates Has been to the Apple Watch. My issue with this watch has been the inconsistent vibration to check time that one initiates via a double tap. If your finger didn’t hit the watch quite right, or sometimes if the system just got confused as double tap is an extremely common gesture in VoiceOver anyway, the time would be spoken aloud. This meant that if, say, I opted to check time during a meeting, I was rolling the dice and might end up ruffling feathers, especially at work. So what they seem to have done to fix this, and it took me a while and a whole lot of frustration to figure it out at first, is to make it where you first activate the watch with a single tap, then perform whichever gesture you wish. This, along with speeding up the haptic output, has made the response a lot more consistent and thus has decreased the amount of aggravation I might give my coworkers as I keep needling that clock toward the end of the day. And even more than that, I now have access to Volume Control right from the VoiceOver Rotor, meaning that if I’m in a situation where I really don’t want it to speak I can easily turn the watch down without needing the phone as before.

And that’s about the heart of it, from my perspective. The major Mac update hasn’t launched yet, at least I don’t think it has as I rarely turn on that machine anymore these days other than to edit and post these entries. But I’m satisfied with the fairly small but important improvements I have noticed. The watch vibration thing is especially useful to me, as it even allows me to check the time without reinserting the hearing aids or disturbing my wife. Without knowledge of the time, the night can seem to drag and I feel uncertain as to whether I’ve overshot my wake time, even though she has the alarm there and will let me know.

Anyhow, Apple has continued to enhance the power and usefulness of these products to those with disabilities over these 8 years, and I look forward to however many more they have as a relevant tech company.

Despite Panthers Loss, My Birthday Hits The Spots

Posted on by John

As one of my sisters says, happy life day to me! It was yesterday, and despite it, like everything else these days, being in the middle of a pandemic, I had a wonderful time. The fun thing about birthdays is that one gets to feel special, even if you know that millions of others actually share the day with you. My family and friends definitely made me feel special and helped me enjoy exiting what was, by all accounts, the most stressful year I’ve ever experienced.

The day started early for me, shortly after 8 AM. I came in and read a little, taking time periodically to view the Facebook and other posts as they streamed in. Then sleep claimed me around 10:30, and I stayed there for about 45 minutes until my wife announced breakfast time.

Then at 1, I opted to watch my Carolina Panthers (NFL) take on the Las Vegas Raiders. First, as a long-suffering Charlotte Hornets fan I hate the idea of teams moving, as I feel the NBA snatched ours away just as they were becoming respectable and has since given us a poor facsimile as replacement. And the Raiders? They’d already left Oakland once and returned to the city, only to leave it again.

Anyway, the game was interesting. A stadium with no fans presented an unusual listening experience, but truthfully I got used to it after a while and just enjoyed the announcer’s cadence and the game’s momentum. And the Panthers did a pretty good job seizing that momentum down the stretch. With Teddy Bridgewater, our new quarterback, it looked like we would pull off a decent comeback and top the Raiders after all. But after the Raiders popped it into the end zone to retake the lead 34-30, we failed to convert a critical 4th down play (I’d say because we didn’t give it to our all-world running back Christian McCaffrey, but to be fair he may not have gotten the needed half yard either). There was no more magic in the bottle after that, so we went down. I’m not too concerned yet, though the Panthers have started so many seasons this way that one can only guess how things will go moving forward.

That disappointment finished, I scrambled upstairs to have dinner with my wife and two of her sisters. She and I chose Olive Garden, and each of the sisters picked different restaurants. As we enjoyed lively conversation around the table, we rocked out to Michael Jackson’s Bad album, well the B side anyway. Remember the concept of turning records, or for that matter tapes, over to complete listening? Seems antuquated in the era of streaming, but it also kind of makes you really listen to a singer’s artistry more. For this reason and one of just having that older, better sound, we are starting to collect vinyl records. We now have, in addition to Mike, Lauryn Hill and one of Bruno Mars’ albums. It’s a cool throwback.

After my delicious meal of spaghetti with meat sauce and Italian sausage, served with a house salad, they sang Happy Birthday as I turned red. Then we sank our teeth into some chocolate cake from Publix. And later I had one of my true favorites, butter pecan ice cream.

The only other thing I did, a really important thing, is to have a nice phone conversation with my mom. If this year has emphasized nothing else, it has highlighted the need to try and stay connected to those we love and let those who need to know of our love for them. None of us knows just how much longer we’l be here. I need to do a better job of remembering this within the scope of my ever-crazier life.

And that was about all for my celebration of turning 41. I am tremendously thankful to still be here and in relatively good health. I have so much to reflect on, most of it already written in previous entries. Now I look forward to finding my new place, and this might sound crazy to say as a 41-year-old man, as an adult; as I really feel like I am only now finishing growing up. Here’s to many more for me, I hope?

Local Reporter Writes Interesting Novel

Posted on by John

Given that today is Labor Day, one that many (though I’m aware not all) of us have off, I thought it would be fun to highlight a book that examines another career: that of news reporting. Few other professions result in us feeling that we “know” a person more than that of one who covers events big and small and brings them into our living rooms via TV and internet-connected screens.

So as it happened, I came across a book by Amanda Lamb, a crime reporter for WRAL News. The story, called Dead Last, follows Maddie Arnette, who had also been a crime reporter but moved into features reporting where she profiles silly animal stories after her husband’s death.

As it opens, Maddie just happens to see a woman collapse onto the ground while running the Oak City Marathon. I should note that the story takes place in the North Carolina Triangle, though the towns are given fictional names. Anyone from this area will enjoy pondering which real towns most closely fit the descriptions given.

Maddie’s story becomes a lot more complicated as she entangles herself with the woman, Suzanne, after visiting her in the hospital. It turns out that Suzanne is afraid for her life as she fears her husband, who is a well-liked doctor but may also have a dark side, is attempting to kill her. Maddie feels that she should not become involved, especially as serious questions arise about the veracity of Suzanne’s story, but her own background with domestic violence (she lost a mother to it) compels er to at least assist Suzanne in discerning the truth.

I liked many elements in this story, but my favorite parts involved what life was like as a news reporter. Maddie makes one statement that floored me, as it hit so specifically close to home. I’m paraphrasing here, as finding the exact quote in the audiobook (narrated by the author as it were) would be difficult: Sometimes I feel like being a reporter is like being an assembly line worker, packing sticks into a box and throwing them onto a conveyor belt. Well anyone who has followed this blog knows that this is exactly what I do, box sticks and throw them onto a belt. So that thought made me chuckle.

I also laughed at the references to 70’s-era detective shows that we see in her inside cop friend, and as previously noted at the names given to the book’s towns. For example, Oak city? Well Raleigh, our state capital, is also known as the city of oaks.

These moments of levity aside, the book tackles serious topics in a way that really makes one think. How do we decide whom and when to believe as potentially dangerous situations unfold. How do we define friendship, and what happens when we feel we and our profession might be used in ways we don’t want.

Lamb has written nine books, mostly about true crime, but this is her first novel. She says, as the subtitle “A Maddie Arnette Novel” indicates, that this will be part of a series with the second book in editing and the third already underway. So we can look forward to more of this deeply introspective and powerful character. The entire story is told from her first-person point of view, lending a depth to it that might not have come otherwise. I would recommend checking it out, and especially Lamb’s audio narration as she of course knows how and why Maddie responds in certain ways. I mean how many other news reporters do you know who have written novels too?
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