I need to think about something else in my life so let me catch up on gadget issues.<\/p>\n
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\u2022 I went to see Eddie Izzard on Monday night, and for the first time had a concrete use case for the Apple Watch – I would have loved to be able to see when the last train was leaving without pulling the phone out during the show. It wound up with me being the last one out (the rest of the gang split at the interval, because it was a long day and a long night and we\u2019re all pretty banged up) and catching a cab, but it would have been useful to at least know the light rail was done. Meanwhile, I read the Newt Gingrich review of the Apple Watch, and was intrigued – he came at it from the standpoint of the device as a travel aid, one with the boarding pass right on the arm (albeit needing to be rotated at a weird angle before it would scan) and not having to remove it through the metal detector and taxing the battery to its limits (probably because he forgot to put it in airplane mode on the flight). \u00a0All in all, it strikes me as being something more useful than my Pebble, which won\u2019t stay connected to the iPhone reliably and as for the Android…<\/p>\n
\u2022 Lollipop, so far, is a battery-killer. \u00a0It dropped 1% an hour just sitting on the bedside table overnight and took 16% battery to ride to work reading the RSS feeds and glancing at the weather a time or two. My understanding is that Android takes a few days to settle out, battery-wise, but at the same time it feels like the battery meter in L is all over the place – it looks like it\u2019s trying to show what percentage of the total battery each app has used, rather than what percent of the used-battery-time each is. \u00a0Traditionally, the screen is 50% or more of a healthy Android battery life; now, Yahoo Sports or Microsoft Outlook are way way WAY ahead. \u00a0And while Outlook is the best available mail client I\u2019ve found for the Moto X, it\u2019s kind of a showkiller on battery life. \u00a0If this Moto X is ever going to be anything but a novelty piece in my rotation, it needs to get through a full day\u2019s normal use (and it doesn\u2019t even have to play music routinely). Then again, Android\u2019s greatest improvement in battery usage has been \u201cmake the screen 6 inches and stick a 4000 mAh in it\u201d so maybe it just can\u2019t be done.<\/p>\n
* I kind of like the MacBook. I know it splits the difference between the 11\u201d and 13\u201d MacBook Air on size, and the lack of ports makes it patently unsuitable for serious business work (there\u2019s no viable way to make this a desktop workstation because to get a mouse, keyboard, network connection, display and power is too much to handle). But much like the 12\u201d PowerBook G4 of a decade ago, this is the blogger’s delight. If you can get used to the keyboard (and I\u2019ve more or less adapted; the size makes up for the lack of depth) then this two-pound laptop is perfect for banging out nonsense like this very post. Or the one which preceded it. I described it to my management as being \u201cthe iPad Pro\u201d which I still think is a fair assessment and not a dig in any way. There are niches for which the iPad Pro is the dream of perfection. Only thing is, the battery tends to sink pretty fast, which I put down to including a retina display – table stakes, sure, but you\u2019re making some compromises by throwing in a low-power processor and chipset and then turning around and asking it to drive 2304×1440.<\/p>\n
* I bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones off of meh.com – big Panasonics that were supposed to be the equivalent of Beats at 20% of the cost. They\u2019re not terrible – I like having something over my ears rather than in them for the first time in ages. But the Bluetooth connection to the iPhone is a little splotchy – the phone had better be in a clear line of sight for best results; front pocket is sketch and hip pocket is right out. And they don\u2019t have a way to activate Siri, which is less of a concern as I\u2019m not likely to be dictating into these. These are for clamping over my head and tuning out the world. Wish I\u2019d had them handy when I was goofed on Valium, Norco and hydromorphone a couple weeks ago, but that\u2019s a tale for another time, except to say that I had back pain treated with a drug that Ohio used for lethal injection until 2009. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.<\/p>\n
* It\u2019s time to start looking at cars again. \u00a0While I haven\u2019t delved in depth, the wife is keying on either the Golf SportWagen TDI or the Prius V, neither of which I find problematic (leaning Prius to be perfectly honest). \u00a0Thing is, this is the long-range car. \u00a0The car we buy after<\/em> this can probably be the electric option with a range under a hundred miles, and by that time, things should be very<\/em> interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I need to think about something else in my life so let me catch up on gadget issues. \u00a0 \u2022 I went to see Eddie Izzard on Monday night, and for the first time had a concrete use case for the Apple Watch – I would have loved to be able to see when the … <\/p>\n