The Apple Sheep

With all the chrome bashing that's been going on of late, It got me wondering and a bit jealous cause I was missing out on the aforementioned Chrome bashing. Does it really matter what browser you use? I mean they all fundamentally do the same thing, It turns all the ones and zeros of the internet into things that you can actually read on your screen. But as is turns out a whole lot of things have to happen for your favourite website to be displayed to you, In the shady back alleys of code that our browsers run on, It turns out that each browser does things a little bit differently. So what are our options? The Three main browsers that we'll be taking a look at today will be Safari, Firefox and Chrome.  Safari Safari is the browser that comes with your iPhone or iPad or your Mac as we are discussing in this case. It's a fast fluid responsive modern browser. It's my browser on choice. Safari a few things going for it. First off it's a first pa...

So a few a year or so ago I talked about the consequences of using a Huawei phone here  and more than a year later things aren't all that different. Recently Huawei was accused of being a security threat by the United States and has asked all American companies to not do business with Huawei. So that means that Huawei is now cut off from Intel, Qualcomm and most importantly Android. Now this might seem harsh at first glance. The US is unfairly targeting a law abiding company just for the fact that it is Chinese. But a closer look reveals much more.  How China Does Business Unlike in the west and much of the world. China does not have a protections for intellectual property. That means that no ones protecting your idea from being ripped off by someone else and then being brought to market. In most of the world if someone violates a patent you can sue...

Around this time last year I wrote the  iOS 12 wish list , And to my surprise most of my prayers were answered, and iOS 12 has been wonderful for the last 5 months or so. But now we're coming up on another WWDC, Yes its still 5 months away but that hasn't stopped the rumour mill from speculating what the next version of iOS will be.Here are a few features that I'd like to see on the next version of iOS. A New Look For iOS 13 Ever since iOS 7 iOS has looked the same more or less, With its flat icons and punchy colours. I feel that the time for a refresh is long overdue. Don't get me wrong it looks great but, Its stale and I fresh new coat of paint can go wonders in making iOS 13 feel radically different. Apple has their work cut out for them if they do decide to go down this route. Finding a new design aesthetic isn't the most easiest thing in the world. Wh...

Its no secret that Apple has had a hard past few months, With iPhone sales on stagnating and a handful of lawsuits, Its safe to say that Apple has seen better days. Apple in it's defence has tried to boost iPhone sales over the past few months, from offering  heavy discounts to for the iPhone XR. But the era of yearly smartphone upgrades are over. No more can you expect customers to pony up egregious amounts of money on a yearly basis. The smartphone in general has become a tool, Most people need it to do maybe 5-6 basic tasks and if a phone does that well they're happy with it. Compounding the problem Apple makes really good products, Their phones last a long time, The iPhone 6 or 6s can still be your daily driver in 2019 no issues, Like I said they do the job that most people want them to do. So its no surprise that people are holding onto their phones for a much longer time  tha...

To say that Google is the king of web searches would be an under statement, Most of us who have been on the internet at least once have been on Google. hw many other websites can claim such a feat? Google being Google has capitalised on its market dominance. From being a website Google is almost THE internet. But all of this is predicated on one thing, Google's Ad Business bringing in the money. The BackStory Google did start out as a search engine, but once it gained some traction Google was quick to branch out, not putting its proverbial eggs in one basket I presume. From its acquisition of Youtube and Android Google cemented itself as the one stop shop to get everything on the internet. With time most of Google's services exploded from YouTube to Gmail to Drive to Google Photos you get the idea. Google was good at making services. Google had us hooked on it's...

iOS has long been guilty of being terrible with files, You had third party file managers that promised to give you a great files experience. But most of them fell pitifully short, some did almost come close to being good but none came close to the flexibility and power that a file explorer on Android, Windows or MacOS could ever hope to give you.That all changed with the introduction of the files app on iOS 11. Why Bother With A Files App? Apple has been talking about  replacing the PC with an iPad for quite a while now and to truly replace a PC you need a few desktop features on iOS which is primarily a mobile OS. Ask anyone and they'll tell you that the ability to manipulate files is one of the most basic things that you'd expect a computer to do. After all one of the first GUI apps was a file explorer. So it makes sense to bring over the file explorer to iOS. But you just can't port finder over...

There's a saying as old as time itself, "Its about quality not quantity" this couldn't be more true for Apple. By no stretch of the imagination does Apple dominate the smartphone market. In fact it just got passed by Huawei as the worlds second largest phone manufacturer. With such a small market share, You'd think that Apple would be at the mercy of much larger and just as established OEMs. But as with many things in the tech world Apple enjoys an advantageous position in the market and that lets them do a few things that most if not all other OEMs can't do at scale. From making a chinless phone by bending an OLED display to making $150 dollar wireless headphones that would have most likely failed had another company made them.This vantage point given to Apple by its grip on software and hardware and it's almost cult like following has made it a force to be reckoned with.I mean they're about to sell their 2 billionth iPhone , With such a huge ...

It's that time of the year the new iPhones have dropped and our subscription boxes have been filled with reviews, camera comparisons and a whole host of other tech related videos. One of the genres of tech videos that I enjoy the most is the real world speed test in which two of the hottest new phones are pitted against each other. With them having to blaze through the same set of apps that you might expect the average Joe to sue over the course of his day. After all seeing how a phone handles the apps that you use almost daily would be a great way of telling how fast and responsive it is? Thats the intuitive answer it feels right but unfortunately thats not the case. Speed Tests Are Inherently Flawed   The problems with the so called "Real World" test beings with the very moniker itself. How do you define the phrase "Real World Test"? There is ...

When it comes to iOS 12 the promised performance improvements has been one of the biggest reasons for people to upgrade from iOS 11. With the mess that  iOS 11 was for some users, iOS 12 has been a breath of fresh air. But there has been one feature that more or less flew under the radar but has proven itself to be immensely useful. Siri Shortcuts On  iOS 12 Now if you don't know what Siri Shortcuts are then you'd find yourself much more at home here . Now that you're in the know lets get on with the show. The first aspect of Siri Shortcuts that I am fascinated by is how polished it is for a generation one product. Remember this is like the 2011 Siri or the 2016 version of portrait mode. Back when they both came out they were more gimmicky than of actual value. But with time they have grown into the useful products that they are today(Yes even you Siri). The app i...

Its September and like every year like clockwork Apple has come out with new iPhones and would it be an iPhone launch without some controversy. The iPhone X had the notch and the iPhone 7 didn't have a headphone jack . In true Apple fashion this year's iPhones have stirred up controversy, Well one of them. Apple released the iPhone XS , the XS Max and the iPhone XR. With the two S models being the premium pricey phones that we've come to expect. The real wild card was the iPhone XR but in my personal opinion it is the best possible phone that we could have expected. Why I'm Okay With The Display Most in the tech industry upon knowing about the pixel density of the iPhone XR instantly compared it to the iPhone 4 from 2010. Yes on paper they both have the exact same specs. But paper rarely tells the whole story. While the pixels per inch have stayed the same the underlying ...

One of the great joys of owning an iPhone are the software updates. They can give your ageing phone new skills, they make your phone more secure and it just looks a lot more different than what it used to in most cases. Software for the most part is great but often times it often requires third party developers putting in massive amounts of time to redesign their apps for the new OS. When iOS 11 dropped Apple made it mandatory for all app developers to support the new iPhone X display on their apps. The same thing happened when the iPhone 5 debuted, Developers had to redesign their apps to run on a 4 inch display. This has often been time consuming, In fact the success of most of what Apple does depends on how much third parties have adopted it. Just imagine what the touchbar could have been had third parties actively redesigned their apps to support it. More oft...

If you've heard anything about the Google Pixel over the past 2 years, It's that the Google Pixel has one of the best smartphone cameras out there period. Ever since the original Pixel back in 2016 people have been raving about how good the pictures are, one the Pixel line up. Admittedly it is impressive how much Google has been able to accomplish with the single camera on their phones.The thing to remember is that the hardware isn't that special, I imagine the sensors used in the Google Pixel are your run of the mill flagship grade image sensors. Where Google sprinkles some pixie dust on your images is in the software. Google works wonders on your image with it's amazing software and lets be real here its Google were talking about so its probably some form of AI. Google's amazing software and it's own Visual Core  chips have produced some amazing shots. Looks like Apple just decided to steal...

These days it seems like it's almost every other day when a new company gets into the melee that is the video streaming industry. The giants who once disrupted the existing hierarchy are in danger of now being disrupted themselves. With the addition of ' ads ' to Netflix, Netflix has become the thing it sought to destroy like some macabre tale of old. Don't get me wrong Netflix is hugely successful in what they do. They pull in billions of dollars each year. Now Apple wants a slice of that pie. Why Services? If you've been paying attention to Apple's earnings call over the past few years. You'd be surprised to see that Apple's services sector has been it's services sector. Now services includes everything from the App Store to Apple Music and it has been bringing in serious cash. At a time when Spotify and Deezer are both  losing money Apple's services sector looks to be going strong. Now i...

Never has it been so easy for me to find photos of an unreleased phone. Never. Thanks to these extensive leaks, We've lowered our expectations of what to expect from the pixel lineup. but since my last article about the Pixel  a lot of things have changed and unfortunately not for the better. Now sure the phone looks horrendous but if you look past the looks the Pixel still has some gaping holes. Still No Exclusives! My biggest gripe with the Pixel isn't it's price but it's lack of features. Sure it might be a good spec-ed phone but it's nothing eye-catching. I know I'm repeating my self from my last article but 6 months later those points still remain valid. Despite the massive amount of leaks we've had for the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3Xl we've yet to see a revolutionary new feature that will set it apart from the  competition. In fact I'm going to argue that this time arou...

We rarely talk about politics here and frankly why would we? Politics is messy divisive and just pits us against each other. Tech brings us closer together in the sense that it lets you talk to your family thousands of miles away and in the sense that the release of a new phone or a graphics card is cause for celebration for millions of people. But recently Donald Trump's tirade against Google got me thinking. How much regulation is too much. For the uninformed here's the long and short of it. Donald Trump Accused Google of bias as most of the news reports that pop up when you search for Donald Trump were negative. Now there are technical and other reasons for the so called "bias" The Atlantic goes in depth on that issue . After all Google does feature articles and sites that the general public is interested in and trusts higher on their search results. But this brings up a more existential question as far...

Before one can tackle the question of if Apples working on a brand-new cheaper iPhone that isn't the 6.1 inch LCD iPhone , We must ask why? Over the past year Apple has been in uncharted territory when it comes to pricing their iPhones. With maxed out versions blowing past the $1000 mark Apple's sales show no sign of slowing down, Infact investors are so confident in Apple that the company just passed $1 trillion in market valuations . So why would a company enjoying such success even try to make a budget or cheaper iPhone. This is even more perplexing when you consider the fact that were talking about Apple, A company that most of the public views as a company that's looking for the next cash grab. Yes Apple has been having stellar sales. Thanks in no small part to the insatiable smartphone demand in the North American and Chinese markets. Well 10 years after the first ...