iPhone 6s Plus Thoughts

Well, it’s that time of year. New iPhones. Unlike last year, there is nothing obviously game changing or different about the new iPhones. Just a lot of solid improvements and reasons to upgrade. There is also a new color, Rose Pink, which I predict will be hugely popular. It looks sweet.

So, the question always comes down to, should you upgrade? Read on.

Some of you are still under the clutches of your carrier in an antiquated 2 year contract. Soon you shall be liberated. NEVER EVER sign another 2 year contract again. It’s going the way of the Dodo. Instead I recommend the following options in order if best to worst.

1. Buy the whole phone outright. You have to put the most $ up front, but you have the most control about what you do with said phone after one or two years. You can hand it down to someone, sell it to one of the many internet companies that will happily give you 40% of the new value after one year, or keep it for two.
2. Sign up for the new Apple Upgrade program. This is designed for people who want a new phone every year. Your payments are spread across two years and Apple Care is included. It works out to being cheaper than a similar carrier program because your Apple Care payments are spread out over two years. Oh, and you def want Apple Care. Also the phone is 100% unlocked. And the carrier is not involved. From their POV you have an unlocked off contract phone.
3. AT&T Next or the equivalent Verizon / TMobile / Sprint program. Similar to #2 but you still interface with the carrier to upgrade and return your phone at the end of one year. Lets face it. Dealing with a carrier is about as fun as tracking a lost USPS package. To be avoided if possible.
4. Two year contract. If you can get one. The carriers really don’t want you to have one any more so please purge the idea that you can get a new phone for a low 1 time price. It’s either full price or monthly now.

I went for Option 1.

Ok, so now that we have HOW TO BUY AN IPHONE out of the way, what’s the big deal?

Ok, so if you have an iPhone 5 or 5s (I won’t even entertain the idea that any of you are using a 4s) you should stop reading. Anything I talk about won’t matter because you are so back in the past on what’s new I can’t possibly describe what it’s like to go from one to the other. It won’t matter anyway because your iPhone 5 probably struggles to run iOS 8 and 9, and has lots of cracks and scratches in it. It’s secretly been crying to you for the past year to be upgraded.

If you have an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus the decision is a bit more complicated. Especially if you recently purchased it. Let me describe why I think you should consider upgrading. But to be honest if you don’t hell won’t freeze over.

Reasons to upgrade to the 6s

1. It is designed to run iOS 9. As we all know Apple makes a “best effort’ attempt to run the latest OS on last year’s hardware but it’s not always great. I can attest that iOS9 is a slow pig of an OS on my old iPhone 6 Plus. Maybe 9.1 will fix. Maybe not.
2. Speed - The 6s is nearly 50% faster. This alone is the reason to upgrade in my book. Imagine everything you rely on your phone for being 50% faster. I know, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
3. Ok, if that wasn’t enough.
4. 3D Touch. You’ve probably heard about this. As if we didn’t have enough ways to press, drag, pinch and lick our phones, we now have “press real hard”. Turns out this is a cool feature and will evolve to support a lot of interesting things. I look at this a bit like the scroll wheel on the mouse. Once we had that there was no going back. Can’t read web pages without it. 3D touch is a really delightful feature. I appreciate things like navigating back from apps to apps using force touch as well as press and hold on the keyboard to invoke text cursor movement.
5. Touch ID is fast - I love Touch ID. When I use an iPad that doesn’t have it I often find myself confused about why the device own’t unlock. Touch ID is nearly instant now and what a welcome improvement.
6. Updated hardware - new camera, smoother glass screen, less slippery phone. Nice touches. Especially the more slippery glass screen. Easier to move fingers.
7. Brand new fresh battery. I easly exhaust all the battery cycles in any phone in 1 year, so after 1 months I expect 20% of the battery capacity is spent. A new phone gets me back to manufacturer specs.
8. New features like Live Photos and 4K video. I’m not sure I’ll ever use these. Live Photo reminds me of Hyperlapes. I’ll use it twice if i can remember. And 4K video will bust my storage system so I’m not sure how excited I am. Maybe if I were a documentary filmmaker. But I’m not. I take videos of my kids.
9. New color - always moves some units and Rose Pink aka “Bros Gold” seems to popular with the men.

So, what’s wrong with the iPhone 6s? Well for one thing, I have noticed worse battery life. But I blame iOS 9 for this. I can almost get through 1 day with the 6s Plus where a year ago with the 6 Plus I could almost get 2. I have 256 apps though and many run in the background constantly, so probably not normal.

Anyway, there you have it. Another year, another iPhone.

I expect near year’s iPhone 7 will be a more substantial upgrade. If not, well, short some Apple Stock.

Apple Watch - 60 days - 4 stars

After writing up my Apple Watch - First Impressions review, I was asked to revisit in 60 days. Well it’s been a bit more than 60 days and I’m still wearing it. Here are my updated thoughts. I should mention a few things though. My Apple Watch had a minor defect with the sapphire crystal. The coating applied to the crystal had some defects which appeared like scratches. I took the watch to the local Apple Store and they sent it back to Apple. I got a brand new replacement watch 5 days later. That experience was exceptional.

Apple Watch as a watch The Apple Watch is a superb watch. The build quality, the feel, the utility are there. I think of it like I do my previous watches and it does this job really well. You forget you are wearing a computer. On top of that it has a few features watches don't have: changing watch faces, user swappable bands.

Charging Not a problem. Not once have I gotten even close to the end of the battery. I end each day with about 50-60% battery life. Given all the noise about this pre-launch I'd say Apple more than exceeded expectations here.

Charging every night is also not a problem. I don’t sleep with my watch and never have. I got an inexpensive Spigen dock from Amazon and it feels natural to just slap the watch on the stand and go to bed. No problem.

For travel I got myself a Dodo case that charges my watch and phone in a nice stand.

Bands I ended up buying the watch with the leather band and like how it looks and feels. Since then I’ve aquired the sport band (black) and the milanese loop. The sport band is way more comfortable than I imagined. And the milanese loop looks incredible, and feels incredible. And I love that it is infinitely adjustable.

I find that I wear the sport band on the weekends and on my workout day. I then go back and forth between the two other bands.

The ability to change bands easily, and in less than 10 seconds is to me what makes this watch better than a watch. I think this is probably one of the best innovations Apple has delivered.

Experience The watch is not without its flaws. I expect these all to be addressed in the watchOS 2.0, but for now here are the big issues I encounter

• Launching apps is basically impossible using your finger. I find using Siri the fastest way to do this ("Siri launch Stocks") or setting up glances for my favorite apps
• Siri doesn’t talk back to you which kinda stinks
• Glances load slowly
• Apps load slowly, and sometimes don't load before the screen times out
• Watch and or Phone require reboots every few weeks when battery drain on phone gets excessive or notifications stop working
• Navigating glances is poor

Not a huge list. Now lets talk about the positives

• Siri, Calendar and iMessage and notifications are the heroes
• Being able to answer a call on the watch is surprising useful and delightful. I was in the garden the other day without my phone and was able to answer the call
• Changing watch faces is also quite awesome
• Setting an Alarm on the watch is better than the phone (the wake up ramp is better)
• The Activity stuff, while not critical to me, is nice to have. I like the progress report on standing and moving and find that I hit my 12 hour standing goal every day (I have a standing desk at work).
• Turn by Turn GPS navigation is super handy
• The sketch and send heartbeat stuff is mostly useless. No one sends me these any more and I don’t send them either.

Apps I thought I would list out what I think of as my go to apps on the watch

• Weathernerd - I love this app for weather and I get a daily alert each morning with the forecast relative to yesterday.
• Overcast - I started to use this after getting the watch for podcasts as Apple doesn’t have podcast support. I wish I had done this sooner. I use this Glance the most as well since it’s the fastest way to get in my car and start playing a podcast
• Todoist & Wunderlist - I have both. Not sure which one I’ll stick with long term.
• Reminders - no watch app but I love telling Siri “Remind me to research blah when I get home”. Killer feature
• Trello - we use this heavily for work and the apps + notifications are great
• Deliveries - my go to app on iOS and Mac for tracking delivery status
• Passbook - when traveling or paying at Starbucks this comes in very handy. Having gate information and boarding details on the wrist is great
• PowerPoint - presenting from your iPhone and using the watch for next and previous is kinda Ninja. Note that for this to work well you need to change the watch setting to resume to the last app when waking and not the watch face.
• Apple Pay - when it works… it’s awesome.

Final Thoughts I really like this watch, and see a bright future ahead. Apple has already announced a few nice features as part of Apple Watch 2.

The big ones are:

Nighstand mode - watch will tell time on its side all night. Unfortunately every dock maker out there now is thinking DAMMIT! This will require docs to be redesigned for the watch to lie on it’s side.

Native apps - today all apps are basically run through the phone. Apple’s apps are native (stocks, weather etc) and you can see the difference

New Watch Faces - I wish Apple would allow 3rd party apps to populate a watch face background like our OneDrive app does on Android Wear. This would be a killer feature for me.

HomeKit support - with my forthcoming Insteon Hub and Light switch, I cannot wait to say “Siri turn off the bedroom lights"

It’s clear to me that in 2-5 years, this will just become more and more incredible. I am really looking forward to the journey.

★★★★☆ Great. Worth purchasing.

Apple Watch - First Impressions

Well, the day has come. Apple launched a new product category, and I have been wearing my watch for over 24 hours. I’ll start by saying that I think this is a huge deal. Just getting here is a huge deal. This article is a must read if you want to know why. Every time Apple enters a new product category you can bet than in the next 5 years, they will push forward an incredible wave of innovation and change that will affect all of us in some way. This was true with many of their products in my lifetime. Macintosh, Laser Printers, PowerBook, CD-ROM, AirPort, PowerBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad and now Apple Watch.

I am not going to “rate” the watch in this review. Most of my friends have already started to wonder how long this thing will last on my wrist. I’m also wondering that. I’m optimistic, but I’ll commit to writing a follow-up article in 30-60 days once I’ve had the chance to fully experience it and see if it’s going to last in my life.

Watches For context. I I have always worn a watch since I was young. Most of my watches were Swatch as a kid, then Casio calculator at some point, then later in life I was fortunate to receive two gifts. A stainless steel Tag Heuer and then for my 30th birthday (and since then) I’ve been wearing a Rolex Air King (34mm case).

I’ve also tried a few wearables. The Original Pebble, Fitbit and Microsoft Band. Each of these has lasted about 1-3 months before i’ve abandoned them. I’ve always enjoyed wearing a stainless steel watch, the quality of the product and the way that’s felt on my wrist, and lets face it. We are early days here for wearables. Comparing an Apple Watch to a Pebble is like comparing a Motorola StarTAC to an iPhone.

Unboxing My watch was delivered Friday afternoon. My first observation unboxing it was that this was different than other Apple Products. It’s the first Apple product that is jewelry. I ordered the Apple Watch (not Sport) with the classic leather band. The box was heavy and rather large (compared to the Sport box which is more similar to a Swatch box). The box itself is about 2 pounds. It’s the size of a watch box that you’d get buying a high end luxury watch.

First impressions matter. Apple is telling me that this product is first and foremost a luxury product, then a gadget. Apple packaging is always top notch, and this takes it to a new level.

And I can say that I think the watch is rather handsome. I am very happy I went with the “large” watch. It does not feel large at all. Since it’s tall and narrow, it’s approx the same width as may rather small Rolex AirKing and feels no bigger. However, it weighs about half as much as my old watch, which feels rather great.

The leather band feels wonderful. I’m used to wearing stainless bands and so this is a nice change. I’m looking forward to trying other bands.

Setup Compared to other accessories, setup was rather easy. The longest part was loading all the Apps onto my phone. I have many apps on my iPhone (215 Apps) and 62 of them had watch versions (this is where I should mention that my team also built a Watch App!). Lets just acknowledge that this alone is incredible. Apple has such powerful impact in the developer world, and their APIs coupled with their ability to update their whole ecosystem with the latest OSes gives developers a big incentive to support their latest innovation.

That was all the setup really (besides pairing). Apple can obviously do things other cannot or have not figured out how to do, so pairing compared to a Pebble, Fitbit or generic bluetooth device was better.

I’ll admit that I din’t really know how to use this watch, so I watch some of the videos Apple provides in the Watch iOS App.

Experience I went to an event that evening, so I didn’t have time to do much else and had to experience the watch on the go.

This is a bit of stream of consciousness, but here is what I thought.

Pros

• The Watch experience is great
• Battery life seems better than Apple claims. This is a surprise given battery life estimates usually fall short of daily claims
• The watch faces are cool, and I love having weather, calendar and sunrise / sunset always there
• The physical gestures work well. Raise your wrist to see the time or a recent notifications
• The haptic gestures are game changing
• Force Touch is game changing
• The notifications are brilliant, you glance to look and once you’ve seen one they are dismissed on the watch and the phone
• Glances (a special kind of app mode) can be useful
• Paying with Apple Pay is awesome

Cons

• App organization, layout and navigation is really poor. I don't even really understand this at all. My list of apps is a mess, and organizing them is worse than organizing apps on an iPhone which is already atrocious. Apple should spend some R&D here on organizing apps, or borrow from the Microsoft playbook for Windows Phone (the Start Screen and Live Tiles is better than any other phone experience).
• Apps take too long to load
• Glances can get stuck and never load. Glances are not really fast enough
• Apps are a bit immature
• Force touch isn’t well implemented
• The heartbeat and drawing features you can send others are cute, but not game changing. It’s sort of neat to know who has an Apple Watch and who doesn’t, but this isn’t a “blue vs green bubbles” feature yet.

Powerful Scenarios There are however, some very powerful wrist scenarios. One of the applications I use, Workflow, lets you basically build smart actions that stitch together features and functions across apps. This is very “geeky” but also demonstrates that these little phones and watches we have are infinitely flexible, just like computers.

I built a Workflow that I can use to get driving or walking directions to my next appointment.

1. Select “Directions to Next Appt - looks up calendar for next appointment

2. Asks which Appointment I want directions for

3. Tells me approx how long it will take

4. Launches the Maps app allowing me to chose Drive or Walk

5. Kicks off Navigation and Handoff to my phone allowing me to use either Watch or Phone (or both) for Navigation. Note the watch does turn by turn directions using visual and haptic gestures. 2 taps to go right and 3 to go left. I’ll get to haptic later, but this is the future of notifications.

Game Changing Capabilities The two biggest game changing capabilities that I see are Haptic Notifications and Physical Gestures.

Haptic Notifications you may never have heard this word haptic before. Many of you have vibration mode on your phones. Haptics take that further by applying different vibration levels and durations to communicate something.

Apple calls this the Taptic Engine.

It’s called the Taptic Engine, a linear actuator inside Apple Watch that produces haptic feedback. In less technical terms, it taps you on the wrist whenever you receive an alert or notification, or press down on the display. Combined with subtle audio cues from the specially engineered speaker driver, the Taptic Engine creates a discreet, sophisticated, and nuanced experience by engaging more of your senses. It also enables some entirely new, intimate ways for you to communicate with other Apple Watch wearers. You can get someone’s attention with a gentle tap. Or even send something as personal as your heartbeat.

And to me this is the piece of technology which will transform how we interact with technology and objects. The watch is just the first mainstream, quality, powerful experience that uses this. Gamers on Xbox have probably experienced this before via the controller, but hey, we are not all gamers.

Physical Gestures The Watch is the first product that I’ve used that is capable of doing this well. It seems to know when my eyes are locked on my wrist. Incredible. If I get a phone call I can cover my watch to silence it. If I press and hold on various screens different actions happen. Apple calls this Force Touch

In addition to recognizing touch, Apple Watch senses force, adding a new dimension to the user interface. Force Touch uses tiny electrodes around the flexible Retina display to distinguish between a light tap and a deep press, and trigger instant access to a range of contextually specific controls. With Force Touch, pressing firmly on the screen brings up additional controls in apps like Messages, Music, and Calendar. It also lets you select different watch faces, pause or end a workout, search an address in Maps, and more. Force Touch is the most significant new sensing capability since Multi‑Touch.

We may forget this, but Apple is the company that really made capacitive touch mainstream. Capacitive touch is essentially the screen on your iPhone or iPad. A piece of glass that works against your finger and does not require pressure or stylus. Many touch phones at the time did not employ Capacitive touch.

The Watch is employing two very novel ways of augmenting these existing forms of interaction such as Voice, Touch and physical dials.

When you think about it, the Watch employs a ton of input and feedback mechanisms. More than any device you have today. And it’s all packed into such a tiny package. Incredible.

Apps Ok, so lets talk about apps. This is probably the most underwhelming part of the Watch right now. But since Apple has created a platform that is married to the most sophisticated gestures and feedback, you can expect a lot of innovation.

The basic built in apps are great and provide decent enough experiences to call it a day.

My favorite apps are:

Siri - not really an app, but if you know how powerful Siri is, well, you have a virtual assistant on your wrist. “Where is my wife” is a command Siri can respond to me with, and provide the exact details of my Wife’s location. Same for “Notify me when Lora leaves work”.

Notifications - not really an app either, but with the 200+ apps I have they are pretty chatty and noisy. Being able to quickly glance to see if I should bother looking at my phone is nice. Also nicer is when I get a phone call or text from my wife I can know that right away.

Messaging - coupled with Siri I can reply to most messages as well as author. Messaging is the #1 app I use on my iPhone. I suspect it will be the #1 app I end up using on my Watch.

Calendar - I go from meeting to meeting and having this on my wrist is killer

Passbook - I love Passbook. Every time I fly it’s the most convenient way to get through security and board the plane. It’s a bit cumbersome to manage a phone and luggage and 2 kids, so I expect this will simplify this among other things like paying at Starbucks (till they offer Apple Pay).

Handoff - not really an app, but a capability of Apple’s devices. The nice thing here is that Apple knows which device is “active”, In other words, if I am using my phone, notifications arrive there and aren’t duplicated on my watch (or Mac). Similarly if my watch is active, it is the primary notification endpoint. If I am using a Mac, Watch and iPhone Apple introduces a small delay to give me time to act on a notification before it’s broadcast to the other devices. I’m not sure anyone has noticed or written about this subtle behavior. Why would you? It’s intelligent and something that’s incredibly hard to do technically. Believe me you’d notice if this tech did not exist. In a world where I get calendar notifications on my wrist, I should not need to see duplicate reminders any where else. Today I get 1x notification per PC or device.

In terms of currently useful 3rd party apps, there are a few cool ones that I’ve made into Glances (you have a limit of 20 glances).

Weather Nerd - [$3.99 iTunes] one of the great thing about Apple product launches are some of the new apps you’ll discover. Apple has a great habit of show-casing and promoting apps that take advantage of their latest products, and this is no exception. I was looking for a weather app that was better than the stock Apple one and ran across this app. Brilliant. This is the best app on Apple Watch.

Here is their glance:

And their app:

Some other Glances I like are the New York Times and my Alarm company’s app, Alarm.com

Finally, this brings back some memories (Calcbot)

Oh, and of course the Watch App. After all, this thing is a Watch.

In closing… I am very excited about this category for Apple. They have delivered something that exceeds what I would expect of a v1 product. You can bet that the next few years will change a lot about how we experience technology in our lives.

Time will tell if this is a lasting v1 product experience. I’m optimistic.

1Password - 5 stars

Hi readers! We are coming up on my 1 year anniversary of the OmarKnows newsletter! Thanks for coming along for the ride. This past week I wrote an article on how I do my email (and manage to have zero message in my inbox all the time). I won't be publishing this to the newsletter since it's not a review, but more of a "How To". If you are interested, feel free to read it here.

If your idea of managing passwords is one of the following:

1. Memorize a few and use them for all your logins
2. Write them all down
3. Something other than using a password manager

You MUST take action and do something about this. At the very least you need to do the following: Protect the password of your email account by using Two-Factor authentication. Outlook.com, Gmail, Yahoo, and any credible email provider supports this (if you are still using AOL, you should really do something about that). Your email password is your most important password. It's the keys to the kingdom. If someone can crack your email, they can reset and take over any other login you have.

Here is a common password that I used to use many years ago for everything....

Try yours out. You'll be shocked.

So, what do you do?

Well, I have 449 logins. Each one is different. Why is this important? Well if a website gets hacked, I only have to change one password. If you use the same password everywhere, then you have a lot of work to do.

Each of my passwords is at least 24 characters of random gibberish (if possible).

Here is an example:

ZXgKLc9yPaTntVQeXUzGKNxa6

What does a Password Manager help you do?

1. Capture your existing logins - this will be your first step, login normally for a few months and build up a list of all the websites that you use.
2. Create secure passwords for every new login - for new websites, create secure passwords
3. Lets you update / change all existing logins to be secure - once you feel that you've captured all your passwords from step 1, then go and change them all. This will take a few hours but is worth it.
4. Fills in all your passwords across web and mobile - a convenience of a password manager is that you can carry your passwords with you on your phone, and protect them with Touch ID or a secure PIN
5. Protects all your passwords behind one very strong password and in many cases a second factor of authentication - no point in using a password manager if your password to unlock it is not strong. So take the time to invest in one strong password and memorize it.

Which Password Manager to use?

There are a few Password Managers out there. I have used the following in my life:

• RoboForm - I don't recommend
• LastPass - I would give 4 stars
• Dashlane - I would give 2-3 stars
• 1Password - 5 stars

They are all better than nothing, so it doesn't much matter which one you use.

My personal preference and favorite password manager is 1Password. Here is why:

• They have native 5 star applications for Mac, PC, iPhone, Android
• Their apps are beautiful, well crafted, updated often
• If you are on a Mac / iPhone their product is really well integrated into many other applications making mobile sign in much easier
• All the passwords are store in a single file, making it very portable
• Sharing passwords among a couple is easy. I have my password file and my wife has her password file. You can easily switch between them in the app.
• You can share a password over iMessage, email, or within the 1Password app. This is hugely important to us since we share certain passwords like Netflix, Amazon, etc

However, I have many friends who use and love LastPass, and it's also excellent. It's a big geeky and the user experience could use a lot of improvement.

I used Dashlane for a few months, as an experiment. My biggest issue with Dashlane was that it's full of bugs. The Windows Application is a real piece of junk, and their browser extensions stop working all the time. But they have a great user experience.

It's obvious to me that the folks at 1Password take a lot of pride in their software. They act and behave like a small family who cares deeply about education of their product, crafting their experience, and supporting the customer. For this reason their product costs money to get to all the features you'll use. I honestly just paid them as much as I could and got the bundle on Mac/PC/Mobile. For $69.99 you can get the complete bundle.

Once you use 1Password you can then start storing things like:

• Driver's licenses
• Passwords
• Frequent Flyer numbers
• Software serial numbers
• Credit Cards
• Bank Accounts
• Social Security Numbers
• Passports

In short, the most important information in your life.

1Password is a piece of software that I simply cannot live without. And you shouldn't either.

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Logitech Ultrathin Magnetic Clip-On Keyboard Cover - 4 stars

My wife hasn’t really ever traveled with a laptop. She does however wish she could do some light work (editing word docs, presentations, and doing some email). A few months ago we decided to get her an iPad Air (before the Air 2 came out). Since she can run Microsoft Office, Remote Desktop and email on her iPad it turned out to be a great light travel companion. What was missing though was some kind of a keyboard.

There are dozens of bluetooth keyboards out there. They come in all shapes and sizes. I was looking for something that wouldn’t make the iPad look like a crazy laptop, or add a lot of bulk. That’s when I noticed the Logitech Magnetic Clip-On Series.

This keyboard comes in two models and two colors to match the iPad.

• Logitech Ultrathin Magnetic Clip-On Keyboard Cover for iPad Air 2, Silver
• Logitech Ultrathin Magnetic Clip-On Keyboard Cover for iPad Air 2, Space Gray
• Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad Air, White
• Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad Air, Space Grey

Basically, there is a model for the iPad Air 2 and for the iPad Air (original). The difference is that the iPad Air model has a built in rechargeable battery that last 3 months and the iPad Air 2 model has non rechargeable batteries that last 2 years. I don’t really understand why they differentiate that way, but they do.

The cases have some great features though. They magnetically attach to the iPad, they automatically wake/sleep when you want to use them, and they have a nice flexibile stand that allows you to tilt the iPad a bit.

Keyboard support on the iPad is pretty good actually. You can do a lot from the keyboard such as switch apps, search, cut, copy, paste, control media, volume, take a photo etc. Application support for keyboards is still nascient. Apple’s apps all do a great job, and you’ll find some third party apps do and some don’t support keyboards.

This keyboard is by no means a full size keyboard designed for hours of typing. But it’s a remarkable portable keyboard that’s perfect for what my wife needs.

The iPad Air 2 version gets mixed reviews on Amazon. Honestly, I think people have pretty whacked expectations of what a small keyboard like this should be able to do. Personally, I find this keyboard to be minimalist and great for light typing. On a vacation, it’s a great balance of form and function.

Therefore I give it 4 stars. Why not 5? Well it’s not perfect. The magnetic latch is a bit frustrating at times, and the tilt mechanism is a bit funky.

★★★★☆ Great. Worth purchasing.

For me personally, I have another keyboard to review, the Logitech Key-To-Go which is awesome.

Tile - 4 stars

In our household, we've had our locks replaced almost every year. It's nuts. But we have around 8 sets of keys, we give them to the baby sitter on the weekends, visitors who stay with us and every so often we lose a set of keys. We look for hours and never find them. One year our son grabbed the keys, played with them and then left them somewhere. Our inquisition into where they were proved unsuccessful and then a few days later we found them in an art supplies box. Fun. There is a solution to this problem and it's called Tile. I purchased a Tile about a year ago and it recently arrived. I quickly paired it with my phone, and was sold. I immediately ordered another 4 pack to attach to all our household keys. In fact, last night I could not find my car keys and I wish I had the tile on. I eventually found them but it took me a few minutes of searching.

This is Tile [$25 @ Amazon, or $70 for 4 pack]

It's a small piece of white plastic with a battery and Bluetooth radio. You install an App on your phone, pair your Tile, and then give it a name and purpose.

Then you can launch your Tile app and it will show you where all your Tiles are. If you have multiple phone in your household, it can utilize their phones to locate items too.

The best feature in my mind is that you can issue a "locate" signal and the Tile makes some noise!

There are some interesting uses for this device:

1. Keys
2. Purses
3. Remote Control
4. Luggage

For us, the most useful application is simply keys.

I purchased the 4 pack a few weeks ago and it arrived yesterday. I'd recommend getting the 4 pack given the price per item is $17.50 vs $25 for one.

Any downsides?

I can think of two downsides.

1. You need to have this app running on your phone, and using Bluetooth. Regardless of how battery friendly Bluetooth 4.0 is, you are still giving up some battery life. This is not a problem on my epicly awesome iPhone 6 Plus which lasts 2 days.
2. The battery life of the Tile is about a year as far as I've read. That's a fairly expensive replacement cost if you have a few of these. In our case though, it's cheaper than having our locks re-keyed. Tile says they are working on a renewal / replacement program.

For these two reasons I give it 4 stars.

★★★★☆ Great. Worth purchasing.

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Amazon Fire TV Stick

Over the years I have owned a number of alternative devices to paying for cable and using a horrid cable box. First there was the Apple TV and I've now owned every version of the Apple TV. The Apple TV is a great product with a few exceptions. I chose Amazon for my Video purchases long ago due to their commitment to cross platform and cross device and would prefer that my purchases are playable on my XBox and other devices. Especially now that Amazon pretty much owns the kid's tablet device market. Both our kids have Kindle Fire HDX (last year's model) loaded with Amazon's Kid's Free Time App giving us some peace of mind. If you are in the market for a kid's tablet I'd look at the "Kids Edition" which is basically a Fire HD 7 with a 2 year warranty against all the damage your kids might do. It's downright silly to get an iPad for your kids given that they cost a lot of money and require a lot of work to lock them down making them virtually useless for anyone else to use.

Anyway, back to the topic I'm writing about. A few months ago I purchased an Amazon Fire TV.

I wasn't using it much when I first got it as there wasn't any HBO content. There is now some via Amazon Prime, but word is that the HBO app will land by the end of the year.

Besides that issue, the device is pretty awesome. The most innovative feature is the voice remote. You can speak to it like Siri and not have to navigate around to watch stuff. Unlike Amazon on the XBox you can rent and purchase items directly on the device. And there is a Kid's Free Time app as well, similar to the Kindle Tablets.

Any downsides to this device? Not really. It competes in a crowded space with Roku, Apple, and Google's Chromecast (although that's not really a comparison).

And the biggest difference between this and the Chromecast? It doesn't require a phone, tablet or PC to operate. Chromecast is only for "casting" content from your device. Fire TV Stick is standalone meaning you can turn on your TV and play stuff without anything else. This alone makes the Chromecast a bit of a joke now as the Fire TV Stick also has the same "casting" features.

The device uses bluetooth for the remote, so if you have a custom remote setup, you'll need one of the newer Harmony Remotes that support bluetooth.

Enter the Fire TV Stick

A few weeks back Amazon did something unthinkable.... no, not launch a phone. That was a bit of a disaster for them. They did something that's closer to home and their strenghts. They took most of the functionality in the Fire TV (priced at $99) and removed some of the high end gaming features (which are really not what you'd buy this device for anyway) and packaged it up in a miniature stick like the Google Chromecast. Oh, and it's $39.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick.

This thing is pretty tiny. It plugs directly into the back of your TV. That's honestly pretty neat since you don't have to worry about running cables, or anything else. You just need power for the USB cable, and that's it.

When you plug it in for the first time, it will spend about 30 min downloading an update. And then it will be automatically configured for your Amazon account (just like the kindle).

Interesting side note. Amazon is really really pushy about using their own supplied usb plug and cable for this device. They are so picky about it that the device complained when I started it up that I was not using the supplied cable and plug. In fact I was use an Amazon plug (5W) that came with the Kindle Fire HDX. But that was not acceptable. There must be some kind of software/hardware based detection which I find rather curious.

The device comes with a small remote, not the same voice remote as the Fire TV. You can purchase that separately for $29.99.

Given a choice between lots of devices out there to stream TV content, my choice hands down is the Fire TV or Fire TV Stick for the following reasons:

1. It's an open ecosystem. Anyone can write an app without any restrictions. Not true for Apple TV or even Xbox.
2. It's cheap. The cost to having streaming is lower than anything else out there
3. It's a standalone device.
4. It's backed by Amazon. Unlike the Fire Phone, this product is core to what they do. Sell you content. And they are dammed good at it. It's not a "hobby" for them.
5. It's got most of the apps you'd want to stream (minus the HBO issue).
6. It's easy to integrate into any TV environment. If you have a TV on the wall and can run any cables, you can use this.

You might ask why not a Roku? Seriously? When you have a choice to buy Amazon branded entertainment hardware over a company no one has ever heard of, the choice is pretty clear. Watching Amazon content (and even Netflix content) will be superior on this device. After all, this thing just runs Android apps anyway.

So, what's the final verdict?

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Unfortunately this device is either so popular or they were afraid of making too many, and it's back ordered till Jan 15th. I got mine last week because I order everything like this within minutes of the announcement. It's always easy to cancel your order if you change your mind, but there is no skipping the line if you wait.

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Microsoft Band

Over the past few years I've owned a number of smart bands or watches or whatever you'd call them. It started with my Casio Calculator watch. I've owned a Microsoft Spot watch, a few Fitbits and a Pebble Watch. I think it's only a matter of time till we are all wearing some kind of stand alone device that is collecting body telemetry (heart rate, steps, sleep), developing insights from that data (in the cloud) and also notifying you of information. Today we all check out phones constantly when they buzz, and this modality will seem silly in 5 years. I few days ago I picked up the Microsoft Band [$199 @ the Microsoft Store]. I was honestly surprised when it was announced. I didn't know Microsoft was making such a device. Color me impressed that this was mostly kept a secret up till the launch.

What is it?

The Microsoft band is somewhere between a Pebble Smartwatch and a Fitbit in terms of functionality. You wear it on your wrist like a watch, and the only comfortable way I can wear it is with the screen facing down.

I've used it for a few days now and the main features I like are:

• Watch - you can turn the time on so that it's on all the time. I assume this is responsible for my terrible battery life (about 24 hours)
• Notification - when your phone buzzes, you can also have this information sent to your Band so you can glance and see what's up
• Calendar reminders - I love this as I can find what conf room I need to go to without using my Phone
• Color screen - the screen is awesome, and color unlike many of the other solutions out there
• Useful apps - Weather, Stocks, Starbucks
• Body Telemetry - I like seeing how many steps I've walked, and I also enjoy seeing my heart rate. It's just cool to know what's going on there
• Clasp - the clasp mechanism is like the band on a watch. It's adjustable while its on which is neat.
• Notifications are reliable - unlike the Pebble, this thing is rock solid.
• Everything else - I don't run, or use much else like calories burned, GPS etc.

What I dislike:

• Comfort - it really need a curved band. The flat screen is rather ridgid. Although I'll admit that after a few days I've gotten used to it
• Battery life - It claims 48 hours. That's probably true if you disable the notifications and watch features I enabled

Here you can see the tile layout and weather app

There is quite a lot of customization!

Why did you get it?

It's a neat toy. I'm not a fitness person per se, but if you are (and have a Fitbit) and were considering the new Surge, this seems like the same capabilities, except available today.

My prior experience with the Pebble ended with me selling the Pebble on eBay. That's the same thing that will happen with the Microsoft Band after a few months. This technology is changing so fast, that this device will appear ridiculous in 2-3 years. Just look at an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 and you'll know what I mean. Not to mention that the Apple Watch launch is around the corner.

But... I want to experience this journey, like I have all the others. Mainly for the perspective on how technology like this grew up. The Microsoft Band is a decent click stop on that path.

How has it made your life better?

It hasn't. I mean, I enjoy playing with neat toys and it's cool to see Microsoft going after this nascent market.

Are you going to keep it?

Till I get the Apple Watch

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