Jabra Elite 25e Bluetooth headphones: A solid middle of the road headset with a few compromises

Sometimes I’m a bit of a late adopter when it comes to tech. My first smartphone was a Blackberry at a time when the iPhone 3GS was gaining steam. I held onto my old Windows XP desktop until it no longer could keep up with my day to day needs. Its replacement was a Windows 7 laptop I bought when Windows 8 was the latest hot mess.

Bluetooth headphones was one of those things I never was convinced would be a good experience when I first saw them. The idea seemed simple enough, but I was concerned about a loss in sound fidelity and dropped signals.

Hobbies will change your perceptions overnight. I like to jog, and the most cumbersome part about it is dealing with headphone wires. Do I tuck them into my clothes, or wrap it carefully around my body? It started becoming a bit of a headache.

The Geordi La Forge earset

So I started to flirt with the idea of using Bluetooth headphones. But where to start? Obviously, I need something that won’t be a burden when I work out. Something with a bit of water resistance, but won’t fall out of my ears while I’m moving.

I decided to try out the Jabra Elite 25e headphones. To be honest, they’re a bit of a mixed bag. But I don’t hate them, and they serve their purpose for their price range.

The headphones consist of two in-ear buds with a plastic-like suction cups. The buds have magnets to attach themselves to each other, and are connected to a base that I only can describe as some weird Star Trek-esque neckband. The neckband has a microphone as well as buttons for power and volume.

The in-ear buds fit snuggly. A little 90-degree twist places them firmly into your ears and keeps them there. In my half-hour jogging sessions, I never had the buds fall out. That’s perfect for workouts. Sound quality is solid as well. The voice quality comes out clear, and the bass is average for small in-ear buds. I was able to walk about 100 feet away from them before the sound started to get intermittent crackling.

The neckband is a bit of an issue. It stays around your neck well enough, but every once in a while it’ll shift a bit, requiring you to readjust them. It’s especially annoying if you’re wearing a hoodie or anything that could cover the neckband. It’ll happen less frequently as long as you keep it free of obstruction. The neckband needs a way to adjust it so it can fit a bit more snuggly on anyone’s neck.

An app to download an app

The weirdest part of using the headphones was the software, though. I thought I could just pair the headphones using normal Bluetooth conventions. Boy, was I wrong. Jabra apparently requires you to use their apps to connect it to the headphones properly. The apps are available for Android and iOS.

Now I say apps because Jabra has several that confused me at first. The two major ones are the Sound+ and the Jabra Assist. First I tried using the Sound+, but it’s not compatible with the model I have. OK, that’s annoying. I’ll try the Jabra Assist. I downloaded it, only to find that there was another app it wanted called JabraService. Then I started to notice that both Sound+ and Jabra Assist began to drain my phone’s normally long-lasting battery by about one-percent… per minute. That crossed a line, which led to an immediate uninstallation of both apps. The phone’s battery has been fine since their removal.

Whatever they were doing is violating a major no-no when it comes to modern technology. The headphones work fine with just the JabraService app, so I couldn’t figure out why there was a song and dance just to get it going. Anyone with a short attention span that expects their technology to just work might get frustrated with this experience and return them. It shouldn’t be like that, either. I bought a Sony wireless speaker for my laptop, and the pairing process was your normal smooth Bluetooth pairing. No extra software needed.

If you’re prepared to deal with a byzantine app experience and don’t mind not having something as sleek and sexy as Apple AirPods or the Beats equivalent, these aren’t that bad at $50 USD. Just be prepared to make a bit of compromises. The Jabra Elite 25e are a great starter pair that will get the job done. But if you need something a bit less cumbersome and are more fashionable, then these aren’t the headphones you’re looking for.

Microsoft Edge is all but dead. Why did it fail?

Microsoft decided not to continue developing the rendering engine behind its Edge browser. This came as a bit of a shock, even though the browser admittedly was having difficulty picking up a significant audience. Microsoft will continue Edge, but it’ll run Google’s open-source Chromium rendering engine behind the scenes instead.

So what did Microsoft do wrong to see its once dominant browser drop to an insignificant number, and be reduced to an ongoing joke? Well, a lot, really.

First things first: I don’t think the average user will care about this. They just want a browser that works, and won’t notice if it’s running EdgeHTML (Microsoft’s rendering engine for Edge) or Chromium. Other browsers gave up the ghost and switched to Chromium, most notably Opera, which gave up its Presto engine years ago.

For a web developer, Microsoft’s decision either has them shrugging their shoulders in apathy, or deeply concerned about having an already large tech company controlling the web market again. But more on this later.

So back to where Microsoft made some major missteps, and how there probably wasn’t anything they could have done to change this course.

Enterprise

Although Internet Explorer floundered in the consumer realm, enterprise still held onto it stubbornly. Internet Explorer gave IT departments the ability to lock down enterprise portals via Windows Group Policy Editor. There’s also a heavy amount of legacy web apps that work only on older versions of Internet Explorer (much to the chagrin of web developers trying to modernize them).

Instead of Microsoft continuing to improve Internet Explorer, they decided to abandon it in all but name, switching all their development efforts to Edge. There were several problems with this though that made enterprises unable to fully embrace it.

First of all, Edge is a Windows 10 exclusive. Anyone working for a Fortune 500, FTSE 100, or any large established company knows how hesitant they are to upgrade. And they have legitimate reasons not to do so. Adopting a new operating system not only cost time and money, but also involves retraining staff and hoping that existing portals and servers work with it.

Large companies didn’t upgrade to Windows 10, and were limited to Windows 7. This was fine in 2015, when Microsoft stopped supporting Internet Explorer, but several years has passed, and Internet Explorer became increasingly dated compared to Firefox and Chrome. Google saw an opportunity here, and began to offer tools that provided IT departments worldwide controls that functioned like Windows Group Policy Editor. Now when they switch to Windows 10, there’s little incentive for them to switch to Edge as well. Chrome already has all the tools IT needs: it runs on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and it renders everything online correctly compared to Internet Explorer. It’s almost as if Microsoft didn’t realize they still had customers that were dependent on Microsoft’s browser.

Now I get why supporting Internet Explorer in the long run probably wouldn’t be a good thing. It had a lot of legacy code that could be exploited easily. But supporting it would have kept Internet Explorer alive in the enterprise world, rather than dying a slow death.

Consumer

On the consumer side, Edge failed mostly because it didn’t offer anything new that Chrome or Firefox didn’t do already. Not only that, but when it launched, it was an unfinished browser. Internet Explorer’s biggest problem was the lack of extension support. Edge didn’t support extensions until a year after it launched, and then only allowed selected extensions. Today Edge extensions hover around the hundreds, far fewer than extensions on Chrome and Firefox.

Microsoft marketed Edge as having a better battery life compared to Chrome and Firefox. But the battery gains were negligible. Eventually, Chrome launched with better battery support, and the negligible gains became microscopic.

Microsoft also touted the Cortana integrations. But the truth of the matter is most consumers see AI assistants as a gimmick as best, and a parlor trick on average. Your average consumer doesn’t care that Google Now doesn’t integrate with Chrome (at least on the desktop). Plus, Cortana eventually would have to use Bing to show results, which itself has a toxic branding (although it comes from being in a Catch-22 scenario of few users).

Why search for something online with Edge using Bing as its default, when you could just easily run the same query on Chrome and have it return a Google result? Sure, you can change your search engine in Edge, but the average consumer is just going to use what the browser provides. And they rather switch to their preferred browser that works as expected than learn to use another browser.

Mobile

Windows Phone was a failure. And I say that as a proud former owner of a Nokia Lumia 1020. Most of the web browser growth in the past decade came from iOS and Android. And consumers used the default browsers on their phones out of laziness. Microsoft tried their best to get Windows Phone established, but they launched too late, and never could make up the app gap once mobile developers settled into iOS and Android as their preferred platforms to support.

Had Windows Phone been around, it would have helped Edge adoption rates. With the exception of China, Chrome grew worldwide because it was packaged as a default browser in every Android device (although recent legislation from Europe might stem that growth). And Safari still has a sizeable chunk of the web browser market because Apple made Safari’s rendering engine the default. Yes, even your Chrome browser on iOS is just Safari with a coat of paint on it.

Plus Windows Phone would have made more sense for Edge’s long-term strategy. It would have given Windows users tighter integration with their desktop environment, much in the same way that Chrome and Safari talk to each other from desktop to mobile. And it would have helped consumers familiarize themselves with the brand in a way that desktop, with its freedom of choice, simply couldn’t.

Apathy

In the end, what cost Microsoft their dominance in the browser market was Microsoft not caring about browsers in the first place. Internet Explorer 6 was a terrible browser. When Firefox launched, it showed the world that web browsers didn’t have to suck. Microsoft never put enough energy into trying to be better than it, only making changes when they felt it was expedient. By the time Google launched Chrome, Microsoft was finally starting to figure out that they needed to put more energy into Internet Explorer.

But the damage was done. Chrome and Firefox updated faster, due to using an evergreen system not tied to the operating system itself. Internet Explorer only could update via major operating system upgrades. Eventually, Google began using its dominance in platforms like its eponymous search engine, Youtube, and Google Drive, to push Chrome down the throats of every person that visited them.

Users complained about Internet Explorer. They pointed out the issues it had. Some went beyond your typical online trolling and provided reasonable suggestions to fix it. Microsoft either ignored them or took a very long time to implement them. So users responded to Microsoft not caring by adopting another browser. Edge was too little, too late, and too confusing for anyone on both the consumer and enterprise realms to care about.

What does this mean in the long run?

Chromium already was the de-facto web standard, whether anyone wanted to admit that or not. With Microsoft eventually adopting Chromium to run Edge, it makes it something you can’t avoid.

For web developers, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good for web developers that don’t want to test for Internet Explorer or Edge. Now they’ll have one less browser to worry about. One less headache that might have them spending hours or even days trying to fix a simple problem.

It’s a bad thing in the long run, though, because now you have one company deciding how the web should look. And it’s starting to happen already. Google has sites that only work in Chrome, even if it’s only temporary. Google Earth is a prime example.

Chromium being open-sourced means that Microsoft can contribute to the code, and help to make improvements that Google wasn’t able to make. But in the end, Google controls the pull requests for Chromium, and can decide what they will and won’t accept.

And for lazy developers, there’s less of a reason to test cross-browser. If it works on Chromium, it most likely will work with WebKit (Safari’s web rendering engine), and that will cover close to 90-percent of the market. Why bother testing for browsers like Firefox, which remains the sole alternative browser engine? Developers can take advantage of Chromium specific tools that won’t work on Firefox, and get the desired results they want.

I don’t see how Firefox can compete in a browser world dominated by Google’s rendering engine. Firefox’s numbers already were falling worldwide, and its main source of revenue ironically comes from Google (it’s the default search engine). It doesn’t have the resources or the dollars to keep up with the juggernaut from Mountain View.

It wasn’t good when Microsoft dominated the market with Internet Explorer, and it won’t be good to have Chromium dominating either. The good thing about this, though, is that Chromium is open-source. Google has been very good at updating it, and if someone doesn’t like it, they can fork it and create a new browser. It’s not exactly like when Internet Explorer wasn’t updated for several years.

If you’re a fan of open-source software, it’s ironic to be lamenting the death of perhaps one of the most closed-source software to exist on Earth. But the lack of software diversity is something to worry about.

Fitbit Alta HR review: fitness tracker vs. smart watch comparison

15,000 steps. My fitbit’s vibrating to let me know I’ve achieved another milestone. Another vanity badge that I can parade around like a young boy scout. And you know what? It’s working. I want to see what the next milestone looks like. The next virtual badge to add to my collection of digital swag. Once you get sucked into achievement hunting, you begin to understand the magic of fitbit.

I’ve been using a fitbit Alta HR for a month to see what it’s like to use a dedicated fitness tracker over a smart watch. And it’s been a pleasant, if not bifurcated, experience.

One thing is for certain, a fitbit is not going to replace a smart watch. It is leagues behind a smart watch when it comes to basic functions. The notifications on the Alta HR are limited to texts with no notification shade to aggregate them. You’re stuck with several non-customizable pre-programmed watch faces. Don’t like it? Too bad.

And don’t bother trying to use your fitbit like some weird James Bond device. It won’t be a calculator, a remote for your phone, you can’t respond back to messages on it, you can’t get weather updates on it, and it won’t do searches.

It’s just here to do one thing, and one thing well: track your health. And it nails it out of the park.

One thing the fitbit Alta HR has over a smart watch like my Moto 360 Sport is automatic activity tracking. The fitbit will notice if you’ve been active for a brief amount of time and start logging your workout session. From a mundane walk to work to a full marathon, fitbit will log your heartrate, time spent exercising, calories burned, and more without human input.

Want to manually track your workout? If you have it paired with a smart phone (which you most likely do), you can start a workout session and get even more details, like a GPS map, map elevation information, and more.

To be fair to the Moto 360 Sport, it did automatically track you when you were moving. Plus the tracking on the Moto 360 Sport seemed more or less in line with what the fitbit was saying, so the sensors on the two devices will get you nice ballparks. But it didn’t have the ability to track your vitals unless you manually tracked a workout either through the built-in Moto Sport app or Google Fit.

Which brings up another thing a fitbit will do without asking: be your coach and motivator. Although I got notifications from the Moto 360 Sport when I would reach a milestone, it wasn’t nearly as in-depth as fitbit’s milestones and badges. It tracks daily steps and lifetime distances in addition to the daily active time goals. Fitbit will send alerts not only when you hit these milestones, but also will give you a summary of how you’ve been doing in either weekly or monthly reports.

And if having a digital coach isn’t enough to motivate you, then look to fitbit’s other options. They built up a sort of social media platform, where anyone with a fitbit account can sign up and find their friends that also bought fitbits. From that point, users can compare their friends’ stats with their own, and cheer or challenge them to keep them motivated.

A bit of a loner? No problem there. Fitbit has you covered. It has built-in challenges with solo adventuring in mind. If you wanted to make a day trip out of hiking at a national park or travelling through a city, you can see if there’s a solo adventure that you can track to get another achievement.

The Alta HR also will track your sleep, though be warned, it doesn’t give accurate results unless you’ve slept longer than three hours. It’ll keep track of your resting heartrate and give a ranking to let you know your progress. Plus you can log your food intake, weight, and the amount of water you drink.

Part of fitbit’s strength is having a comprehensive app available for Android, iOS, and Windows 10. They’re all polished, and unlike an Apple Watch or Android Wear, they can be used across all platforms without any restrictions or incompatibility.

The battery life is phenomenal on the Alta HR. They suggest seven days, and I believe it. After using an Android Wear device where I was lucky to get two days, this seems like a blessing.

If you’re looking to get a fitness tracker, this is the pinnacle of what you can expect. It’s light, water resistant, has a great battery life, works across all devices, and just works as intended.

But it’s not going to replace a smart watch. If you want a smart watch, go get one. Also keep in mind that once in the fitbit world, it’s difficult to take your data and migrate it to another platform. Fitbit built up a walled garden, and they don’t want anyone climbing the walls anytime soon.

MacBook Pro 2018 review: Controversy meets conformity

Apple has been tinkering with their MacBook as of late to usher them into the modern era. But even with all of the changes, Apple kept to a conservative design philosophy that shouldn’t shock most people, save for a very vocal minority.

I got the chance to use a 2018 MacBook Pro as a daily driver. It’s the 15.4 inch version with a 2880 by 1800 pixel display, an Intel UHD 630 GPU, a 2.9 GHz core i9 processor, and 16 gigs of RAM. It’s currently running High Sierra 10.13.6.

It weighs roughly four lbs., and feels comfortable to carry around in one hand or use on a lap. The high resolution screen makes sure everything is crisp and in focus.

On the surface, it looks like another run of the mill MacBook. But once you start playing around with it, you realize that there are some controversial changes.

The biggest one, in my opinion, is the keyboard. Apple chose to use the butterfly keyboard setup first pioneered on the MacBook 12-inch model. You know, the “I’m not a MacBook Air, but I’m totally a MacBook Air” replacement.

The keyboard just feels weird. But I will agree, it takes some getting used to. The key travel is too shallow, and it just doesn’t feel right if you’ve been typing on chiclet and mechanical keyboards your entire life.

It’s a design choice that only shaves off a millimeter of thickness. You have to wonder what Apple’s endgame is when it comes to practicality. The keyboards have had reports of dying due to dust getting in them, which Apple corrected by using membranes to keep out the dust. That’s a sign that they’re making too many compromises just for the sake of aesthetics.

The touchpad also borrows from the 12-inch MacBook. It’s comically huge, and feels very responsive. It also has the force touch ability, where a hard press on something like a word will make Mac OS do a dictionary lookup, among other things. This does get rather annoying after a while, but once you train yourself to anticipate it, you won’t accidentally trigger it.

The other big change is the inclusion of the touch bar. A weird gimmick designed to shut up those that want a touchscreen on a MacBook, the touch bar has received a lot of negative praise.

The touch bar is adaptive, and responds to any apps compatible with it. It replaces the function key row, which you can summon by holding the fn key. It also does auto correct suggestions if you’re typing, and brings up advance features like a scrubber on video editors.

I personally don’t see it as a bad thing. Not once did it get in my way. It always felt like an option, which is great, because more interface choices is better for consumers.

But I do think Apple should just bite the bullet and adopt a touchscreen for Mac OS. They have iPhones and iPads with touchscreens. Windows laptops have had touch screens for the longest time, and I much prefer a laptop with a touchscreen nowadays. Apple might be delaying adding one on a MacBook because they don’t want to cut into their iPad sales, which seems to be coming closer to being the MacBook’s successor in a decade.

Finally, we have the inclusion of four USB-C ports, with the exclusion of any USB-A ports. This is perhaps the one thing that has gotten the loudest criticism from the tech crowd, especially video editors. Truth be told, USB-C still is in pioneer territory, and trying to get current equipment to work with it usually means dongle heaven.

But I think adopting USB-C is a good thing. The only way it’ll receive more support is if more OEMs start switching over. This is the one feature that I’ll say Apple has had the courage to do.

But it was done aggressively on Apple’s part. My current daily driver, an HP Spectre x360, has two USB-C ports, and one USB-A. Plus it has an HDMI port and an SD card reader. The HP Spectre isn’t alone in giving users an option of both the old and the new.

Getting the new MacBook means revamping your accessories to make it work with your new laptop. And that means dongles. Of course, the smarter solution is to get a hub for it, but that’s only going to be useful if you have a desktop setup. If you’re on the go and need your MacBook to work with your equipment, you might find yourself making a lot of compromises.

I’m not affected by this, since my work requires just a laptop to do properly. But I understand the frustration video editors and others that use their MacBooks as a hub for their other equipment must be feeling.

Overall, I think the new MacBooks have been receiving more hate than they deserve. Truth be told, it’s going to be perfectly serviceable for the average Starbucks dweller using it to compose their blog and sign into Facebook. The battery life is great (I’m getting around 6 to 8 hours), it’s not too heavy, and frankly people like having a MacBook as a status symbol. That branding mindshare is something that even the higher end Windows laptops don’t have.

But the criticism from the vocal minority has some weight. Donglegate is a thing. The touch bar screams meeting half-way and not pleasing anyone. And the keyboard was changed only for the sake of looks, not functionality.

If you’re an Apple loyalist, then you won’t be disappointed. If you need to use a MacBook for work related reasons, and you’re on the fence, be prepared to make changes to work with this machine. If you’re willing to adapt to it, you’ll learn to love it. If you feel the changes are too radical, then you might want to pick up a 2015 MacBook while you can. Or maybe find a Windows laptop that meets your expectations.

 

Moto X4 review: A spiritual successor to the once great Nexus line

The Nexus line is dead. A shiny example of how to make an affordable quality Android phone, it didn’t really have a worthy successor to follow it.

Google dropped the reference devices in favor of its Pixel line. Though they are gorgeous phones, it’s clear from their efforts that they’re targeting disgruntled iPhone users that want an iPhone experience in an Android body.

Then there’s the OnePlus. Perhaps the best spiritual successor, they’re also in limited supply and not always readily available for those in need of a phone at this moment.

There are a smattering of other companies worthy of consideration. Motorola, who Google previously owned, kept a philosophy of building affordable Android phones with a clean interface with the Moto X line.

Motorola, now branded as Moto and owned by Lenovo, made the Moto X4, which is perhaps one of the best spiritual successors to the Nexus line.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with the Nexus line. Moto made the Nexus 6 phablet, my previous daily driver.

So, how does the Moto X4 compare to the Nexus 6?

Truth be told, my Nexus 6 didn’t age well. After using it for under three years, the phone became riddled with slowdown, weird camera bugs, and a battery issue that finally put the nail in its coffin.

When my Nexus 6 worked, it was an amazing phone. It was lightning fast, the screen was gorgeous, and I loved taking advantage of features like NFC, turning my phone into a way to pay for stuff.

The Moto X4 meets my expectations the Nexus 6 originally set. It’s slightly smaller than the Nexus 6, but the build quality is similar. Instead of a slippery metal case, the phone now has a slightly less slippery glass exterior.

It adds a fingerprint sensor, allowing easy access to open the phone. The sensor is good, but not as good as the sensor on my iPad. Luckily it’s quick enough to correct its mistakes.

The battery life is phenomenal. I get a day’s use out of it from casual activities like texting, checking the internet, and using Google Maps. The camera on it is OK at best. It snaps pictures in low light well enough, but it’s not as quick as the camera on an iDevice. The included camera software is way better than the Google Camera on the Nexus 6, though. The Google Camera was horribly basic, so that’s not much to write about.

Software-wise, the Moto X4 keeps itself as stock as possible. I wouldn’t even consider it to be a proper skin, since most Android skins drastically alter the overall aesthetics and add features designed to keep users in their walled garden.

The Moto X4’s skins is essentially stock Android with an addition of the Moto suite. The Moto suite adds a bunch of silly gimmicks to it, including twisting the phone twice to activate the camera. I turned off most of these, but I kept the feature to wave my hand in front of the phone to activate the glance screen. It feels satisfying to do, even though it’s very geeky.

The great thing about keeping its software stock is that the phone gets updates quicker than Samsung and Amazon would with their versions of Android. My Moto X4 shipped with 7.1.1 Nougat, and instantly updated to version 8.0 Oreo with a couple of security patches.

Android Oreo is great. Although it’s a gradual improvement compared to Nougat, its best feature is better permission controls for apps.

Everything else about the phone is standard fare for an Android device. And that’s not a bad thing. The real question is how the phone will hold up a couple of years from now. Whether it will continue to receive updates or not remains to be seen now that Lenovo is in the helm.

The Moto X line might not be the favorite child anymore. Lenovo seems to be promoting the Moto Z as the new flagship, and removed the X4’s Moto customization. And the Moto X4 has a hard time comparing itself to the OnePlus, Pixel, and other flagship lines when it comes to build quality.

But Moto really nailed it out of the park with this one. It’s an affordable phone with a good build quality, an OK camera that works great for the Instagram generation, and great quality of life features like NFC and a fingerprint sensor. For $350 USD (what I paid for it), you couldn’t ask for a better mid-range phone.

Google Home Mini review: Hey, Google Home, what is your purpose?

Everyone in the tech community is hyping smart home speakers as the next big thing. I don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong, the server based tech behind it is impressive. But in the end, they seem to be nothing more than novelties that don’t add any real benefit except to show how “21st century” our lives have become.

At their current price range, I get why they’re taking off. Both Amazon and Google have smart home speakers selling for $30 USD. They make a perfect stocking stuffer this holiday season.

I decided to buy a Google Home Mini to see what the hype was about. The main reasons are because I’m already knee deep in Google services, and the Google Home Mini integrates perfectly with my Chromecast.

Setting it up was fairly easy. Users are directed to the Google Home app on iOS or Android and walked through some basic steps, including training it to your voice.

This brought up my first annoyance with the Home Mini: You have to tweak its settings using the Home app. There isn’t a web page or corresponding app for Windows or Mac. Although this will be a minor inconvenience for some, I really wish Google would provide its services across all devices instead of turtling in the mobile world. I don’t see them doing this any time soon in the current tech climate.

Once users set it up with compatible apps, their Google Home Mini is ready to receive commands. I plugged it into my Pandora and Netflix accounts, and it worked as excpected. The cool part is using it with a paired Chromecast to show Youtube videos, Netflix videos, or photos from your Google Photos album. Users can stop, pause, and play a new video with easy voice commands.

Another neat feature is having Google Home Mini read the news for you, turning it into an on-demand radio. I imagine it probably can do the same with podcasts, but I have yet to set it up to do that.

But what’s the point?

The main problem is that the Google Home Mini just does things that any user can do with a smartphone or laptop. Sometimes using a device is quicker, since Google Home Mini sometimes either can’t understand what you’re saying, or doesn’t have the capacity to execute a specific command.

The main rub is that it still feels like you’re talking to a computer. And people don’t like talking to a computer. It’s the reason why there still is a stigma when you see someone talking to Siri or Cortana in the open.

The speaker’s voice sounds natural enough, but within an uncanny valley. The voice detection is fast, but using the keyword to activate it still feels awkward. And the demographic I feel this is supposed to help the most, baby-boomers and older, really don’t get the point of talking to it except as a parlor trick.

But there is a point.

Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft probably don’t really care that their smart home speakers aren’t where they should be now. These devices are merely gateways to collect data they need for the next generation. And the thing that will improve the next generation is more voice samples. Whichever company gets the most voice samples will have the better algorithm in the end.

Right now it looks like Amazon’s Echo has the lead. They were the first to define this device, letting everyone catch up to them. Google so far looks like they might be the only worthy competitor to the Echo for the time being. Apple delayed releasing their HomePod, which will sell at a premium. And Microsoft’s partnership with Harman Kardon isn’t getting the advertising, marketing or mindshare it deserves.

You’ll most likely be seeing smart home speakers everywhere within a couple of years. And if you’re like me, you probably won’t get it. I see the current generation of smart home speakers becoming the next Nintendo Wiis, gaining a large following due to gimmicky innovations, only to collect dust on a desk.

My (non-scientific) opinion on the top web browsers for desktops and mobile

As a web developer, a browser can either make or break your workflow. Each browser’s strengths and weaknesses can change whether a project is done in a reasonable amount of time or not. So what do I personally feel about the main browsers from a web developer’s perspective?

I won’t be including any of the Blink/WebKit derivatives, so Opera, Silk and others aren’t included. I also won’t discuss browsers like UC Browser and Opera Mini in detail, since they rely on server-side rendering and my experience with them is fairly limited.

Chrome

Google’s browser has become the de-facto browser worldwide. Even recalcitrant corporations have IT staffs providing 24/7 Chrome support.

Most likely you’re reading this on Chrome. It’s everywhere. I spend most of my time in Chrome, consuming media and working on personal and work projects.

Most people like to tout Chrome’s speed as a benefit, but I think that’s negligible nowadays. What makes Chrome my default browser is its unified cloud-based services coupled with strong Chrome exclusive tools you can’t get on other browsers.

Once you sign in with a Google account, your Chrome browsing history will sync across devices. This means that whether you’re on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, or a Chromebook, all of your preferences and history will be the same.

This isn’t exclusive to Chrome, but Google did it right the first time. Plus their level of support across devices is vast.

Chrome has features like built-in Chromecast support and one of the more accurate translators available. And Chrome gets an idea of your browsing history to give you better results and personalized information via Google Assistant.

But it’s this level of detail that also makes Chrome hard to recommend to everyone. Chrome is everywhere. Even in your browsing history. Though you can launch incognito mode on your browser, Chrome still is watching. If you’re concerned about your privacy, Chrome is the last browser I would recommend.

Chrome also has a bit of minor issues that pop up every once in a while that keep it from being the perfect browser. As of writing, there is a GPU bug on Windows where some pages won’t render properly unless the GPU acceleration is turned off. Most users can get by without having GPU acceleration on, but eventually they’ll run into a graphically intense site that needs the extra oomph, leading to an awkward toggling and resetting.

RAM is also a concern, but not to the extent of other issues. It’s true that Chrome will eat up a lot of RAM. But it tends to be smart about how much is too much before it reaches a cap. Still, machines with lower RAM tend not to run Chrome as well, especially when several tabs are open.

The biggest problem with Chrome is that it is everywhere. Being the dominant browser means that sometimes less disciplined web developers will focus on getting it right in Chrome before testing if the same features or layout work in other browsers. Chrome spoils web developers with some of the best development tools available. But that’s no reason not to see if their projects work on other web browsers.

Firefox

Mozilla’s browser is one of the oldest available and is a great kit that does one thing well: privacy. Firefox recently received a huge upgrade in November, giving it a significant speed boost and standardizing its dated extensions to a more modern format.

Firefox used to be the king of the roost until Chrome came along and sapped marketshare from its grasp. Nowadays its marketshare is fairly flat, and far from the numbers it commanded a mere decade ago.

Although some users have shied away from Firefox, there’s reason to come back. If you’re weary of Chrome’s constant vigilance, then Firefox’s minimal approach will come across as refreshing.

For starters, it is way easier to turn off Firefox’s history and set the default search engine in Firefox than it is in Chrome. Firefox also supports extensions that provide deeper privacy and security protections, due to the way its architecture is structured.

Firefox’s extension support is on par with Chrome, minus a few Chrome exclusive ones. Its support for web standards is strong, meaning that unless web developers are using browser prefixes or weird hacks, most standards compliant code should work without fail. Its web developer tools are just as good as Chrome, sometimes better.

The only problem Firefox has is the ground it has to make up, especially in the mobile realm. Firefox released a survey showing what rigs their users have. Aside from a small sliver of Mac users, their core audience is on Windows desktops. Mobile was so small that it was lumped into the ‘other’ category with Linux users (most of whom have Firefox as a default with their distro).

I don’t think Firefox will make this ground up any time soon. It’s not the default browser on any Android device, and is locked out of being the default on iOS. Firefox OS died a while back and barely made a dent in the market.

Firefox also tends to suffer from being just good enough. The latest update made it a lot faster, but it doesn’t match the speed of Chrome, Edge, or Safari. Its web standards support also has the adverse effect of some developers sometimes skipping over it when testing, since everything just tends to work in Firefox effortlessly. It’s middle-child syndrome.

Overall, Firefox is a great browser for privacy conscious and regular users alike. If you’re sick of using Chrome or need to test out something, give it a shot.

Internet Explorer/Edge

Whoo-boy. Here comes the walking punchline. As much as the Internet Explorer jokes have been beaten to death, some of the hatred thrown at it is well deserved. It lags behind Chrome and Firefox in CSS and JavaScript support, and has caused many developers a headache or two making sure everything matches properly on it.

Microsoft got the message. They’ve stopped supporting Internet Explorer except for security patches, and now have moved their energy on to a forked version.

Microsoft Edge has a lot going for it. Extension support is great. More frequent updates are great. Trying to be more web standards compliant is great.

Edge isn’t perfect, though. As much as it tries to distance itself from Internet Explorer, it still is Internet Explorer. The developer tools are the same (minus some features like the document mode for testing pages in older versions of IE) which can throw a few people off their game if they’re accustomed to Chrome or Firefox’s setup. And even though Microsoft is trying its hardest to be standards compliant, Edge lags behind other major browsers when it comes to compatibility.

Microsoft has been getting more aggressive with trying to win back the mindshare they’ve lost with Internet Explorer. They launched mobile versions of Edge for Android and iOS. Curiously, they both don’t use Microsoft’s EdgeHTML rendering engine. While this isn’t a shock on iOS due to its strict policies, Microsoft choosing not to do this on Android sends a signal that Edge might not be their highest priority.

There are other signs showing Microsoft’s lack of commitment to Edge. Any office monkey knows how prevalent Internet Explorer is in the corporate world. Dropping support for it might be the right thing to do, but what Microsoft failed to do is make Edge a viable upgrade to the vast majority of Windows 7 users. As Internet Explorer becomes problematic to run due to its obsolescence, IT departments and casual users are switching to other browsers like Chrome in droves. They eventually will switch to Windows 10, but corporations most likely won’t see a reason to support Edge as they did with Internet Explorer. After all, Chrome supports great IT software, is evergreen, and has great extension support. Microsoft may need to go back to the drawing board and rethink this strategy.

Even with all of this, I still see promise in Edge. It has a lot of Quality of Life feature when using it with a touchscreen or pen. It runs reasonably fast on low powered machines. And although it’s stuck with updates through major Windows 10 patches for the time being, its update cycle is far better than its predecessor.

I also believe that browser diversity is a good thing. Firefox and Chrome became good mostly because of how bad Internet Explorer was. Edge exists because Microsoft needed to step up their game in the face of better competition. And not having a monoculture means better security and features for all web users.

Safari

Apple’s often ignored web browser is a mixed bag, to say the least. On the one hand, the engine it uses (WebKit) is open sourced, fairly decent and lead to greater things, including the Blink engine. On the other hand, Safari has a lot of shortcomings that I feel some Apple diehards don’t mention either because they’re not aware of them, or because it’s good enough by their standards.

Safari is the second most used web browser in the world after Chrome. Most of this is because of Safari mobile on iOS. Apple’s draconian policies means that Safari is the only game in town when it comes to using a web browser on an iPhone or iPad.

Oh, what’s that? You say you’re using Chrome on your iOS device? It’s not really Chrome. It’s just a Safari web wrapper with plug-ins to access Google’s services. It looks like Chrome, but scratching at the surface will reveal its Safari roots in no time.

On the desktop, Safari is a fairly competent browser. Competent on the same level as Microsoft Edge is. It renders the web well, and has features designed to take advantage of Apple’s services and hardware. Other than that, Safari’s got a lot of issues.

The developer tools are the first thing I don’t like. On the surface, the interface looks almost identical to Chrome (a legacy feature Google kept). But using them brings up some major concerns, like not being able to live-preview changes in dimensions like you can on Chrome, Firefox, and even Internet Explorer. Many features are buried in it, and its tools for testing on different devices shows an Apple-centric world at the expense of every other major device. There are also some major stability concerns when running it for an extended period of time.

Support-wise, Safari is below Firefox and Chrome overall, and teeters back and forth with Edge for last place. Safari supports extensions, but is far behind Chrome and Firefox in terms of support.

Safari, like Internet Explorer and Edge, only receives updates based on major OS updates. This has led to an all but stagnant release cycle for Apple’s browser. If you’re on MacOS, this isn’t a big deal. Chrome and Firefox are available. But iOS users are locked into an increasingly dated browser with little hopes of rapid improvement.

Some development shops have gotten around this by using Safari specific tools and prefixes to make sure their web projects look fine on iOS. This reeks of the old days of Internet Explorer 6.

To the web developer community’s credit, it hasn’t gotten that bad yet. Safari, unlike IE 6, supports better web standards than IE 6 ever could.

One has to wonder if Safari still would be the second most popular web browser if it didn’t prevent the competition from having a fair playing field on iOS.

If you’re knee deep in Apple services, Safari makes a great companion. It works well with Apple’s hardware. And Cupertino has no reason to stop supporting it any time soon.

Web developers on MacOS most likely are using Chrome or Firefox to make their projects. The ones that have to test for Safari compatibility probably know where I’m coming from when I say using it as a developer tool can be frustrating at times.

Android Wear 2.0: Decoupling your smartwatch from your phone

The next version of Android Wear is a nice upgrade for those that can get it. Whether you can get it or not is a different story.

Android Wear 2.0 has been rolling out to supported devices over the past months. I recently got it on my Moto 360 Sport, and I have little issues with it so far.

Improvements all around

The biggest thing users will notice is the interface got a major overhaul. The Apple-white aesthetic gives way to a familiar old-school Android off-black.

The main screen accesses the watch faces. Normally, you’d have to gesture swipe to the right to access the watch’s apps, but now swiping in any direction will bring up a watch face selector. Users can peg their favorite watch faces to this new menu and switch them on the fly. Pressing down on certain watch faces brings up granular controls for changing the watch color or style.

Apps are now accessed using the watch crown. The apps menu now swipes clockwise from the bottom left, giving a satisfying dial feel when scanning the menu. Android Wear 2.0 added a new keyboard with swipe functions to search and type in apps. Some stock apps got a new coat of paint, including the alarm, contacts, messages, timer, weather, and Google feed.

Speaking of apps, users can download Android Wear apps without using a paired Android phone. The inclusion of the Google Play Store is a nice addition, even if the current repository is a bit thin.

Notifications are much richer now. They’re more unified and easier to interact with compared to the older method.

The settings menu got changed for the better. Before, users had to swipe through several sub-menus in the notification shade. Now the major settings like airplane mode, brightness, and do not disturb mode are on one page. The main settings has more granular control for things like notifications, Google hot word detection, and keyboard.

Performance wise, I haven’t noticed a difference between Android Wear 1.5 and 2.0. The watch hasn’t interfered with my workout routine, and the new timer and stopwatch only help to improve the experience. Battery life seems the same, roughly around two days.

The only issue I’m having so far with the watch is retraining myself to the new user experience. I’m accustomed to swiping to the right to access my Android Wear apps, and clicking the crown takes some getting used to. But this is a minor gripe.

Android in chains

It sucks to beat a dead horse, but the easiest way to get Android Wear 2.0 is to buy a watch with it preinstalled. Despite Google’s best efforts, getting up-to-date patches is a chore to do on an Android Wear device. Even though Google controls the Android Wear experience and doesn’t allow manufacturers to tinker with its vision, it’s the manufacturers that control when users receive updates.

It’s a shame. Android Wear 2.0 is a nice upgrade. And it’s a step in the right direction for an open-source platform.

Preparing for iOS 11: Using an iPad with a keyboard

The iPad is a solid device. But to me, it always felt like a toy designed for lighter tasks like Candy Crush and Facebook. That’s soon to change with the launch of iOS 11, which will make it easier for iPads to multitask, including a native file browser.

To truly become a power user on an iPad though, you’ll have to invest in a keyboard. The iPad Pro has its own custom keyboard, but for regular iPads, Bluetooth is the way to go.

Weirdly enough, one of the better Bluetooth keyboard makers is Microsoft. I picked up Microsoft’s Universal Mobile Keyboard in anticipation of iOS 11, and tested whether an iPad keyboard is a solid investment, or merely a fool’s dream.

The keyboard I’m using is an older version, complete with a folding case that doubles as the stand. Microsoft also makes a foldable version that it sells on its online store.

The keyboard feels solid to use and type on. The keys have a good travel depth and don’t feel clunky or cheap. It connects to its case with magnets, and similar to a Surface keyboard, can be attached and detached with a simple pull.

The keyboard is compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows 8 and above. It can pair with up to three devices, and can swap between the three via a switch in the upper right hand corner.

Several shortcuts work the same way you would expect on Mac OS X or Windows. Holding Cmd + Tab brings up a familiar task switcher, with the last eight apps queued. All of the Cmd combinations work, like Cmd + A to highlight all, Cmd + C to copy, and Cmd + V to paste. And if you get stuck, you can hold down the Cmd button to get a list of available Cmds. Unfortunately, holding the Cmd key in some apps won’t show anything at all.

This is the biggest flaw when using an iPad with a keyboard: Not every app recognizes it. Some apps give you extra control like Safari and the Microsoft Office suite. Meanwhile, apps like Reddit and YouTube just don’t realize that keyboards for iPads are a thing. Nothing works beyond typing in fields.

And that’s for apps with an iPad version. Some apps like Instagram aren’t iPad optimized and refuse to change their screen orientation from portrait to landscape. Not only do you get a lower resolution app, but one that is unusable with a keyboard.

Then there is the other major factor: no touchpad or mouse support. True, anyone can touch the screen to negate this. But it feels incomplete as a power user not to have a touchpad or mouse. Luckily, this isn’t a game breaking feature, but Apple should address it sooner than later.

Aside from that, I noticed a slight delay affecting my typing every so often that I only could imagine as interference from my smartwatch, due to it having its Bluetooth on.

After using this for a couple of days, including writing this blog entry on Microsoft Word, I feel that getting a keyboard for an iPad isn’t as silly as it seems. It makes an iPad a great backup device in case your laptop or desktop breaks down. Or it might make a handy daily driver, ready to take care of your office and productivity needs. Or maybe you don’t feel like lugging around a laptop on a long journey.

As for me, I’ll definitely be sticking with my laptop for the near future. The iPad isn’t there yet when it comes to higher level productivity like software development, photoshop, and video editing. Yes, software exists for this, but the experience is dwarfed by what you’ll get on a Mac or PC. Let’s see if iOS 11 changes this.

iPad 2017 review: Premium in an affordable package

Who is the iPad for? That question is hard to answer. But one thing is for certain: the iPad is a great device that can fill in the gaps a laptop and smartphone can’t cover.

I spent a week with Apple’s new entry level iPad refresh for 2017. This is the first Apple device I bought for myself since my OG iPod Classic from 2007.

Even though it’s an entry level device, it’s gorgeous. The iPad’s hi-resolution screen displays crisp, vibrant images, and the one pound chassis feels both light and sturdy. Apple fans know the drill.

Setting up Touch ID took a few minutes, but it was worth it. It always works. I only wished my HP Spectre x360’s Windows Hello Facial Recognition worked this efficiently.

The iPad’s battery life is incredible. Its battery went from 89-percent to 25-percent within the first day of using it. Most of my activity during this period included web-surfing, watching videos, and communicating with friends and loved ones. The sound is rich for such a petite device, even though the stereo speakers are located at the bottom of the iPad.

And its performance is nothing short of phenomenal for a $330 USD device. I don’t remember the iPad stuttering or freezing while using it. Plus it has a headphone jack. Who can complain about that?

iOS 10 again

Using the iPad also meant familiarizing myself with iOS again to anticipate its nuances and quirks. Aside from using a friend’s iPhone or helping someone with minor settings, I haven’t formally used iOS on a serious level.

The 2017 iPad comes with iOS 10, and I’m happy to see that it’s made huge improvements over what I remember last. I love the new widgets on iOS’s lockscreen. They work similar to the live-tiles on Windows 8 and 10, giving information at a glance while keeping the aesthetics intact. They’re not as powerful as Android’s widgets, but they’re just more pleasant to use.

The notification shade works like its Android and Windows Phone counterparts. Swiping up from the bottom brings up an action center with shortcuts for brightness, night-mode and Bluetooth. A quick swipe down in the screen’s body will trigger spotlight, which works as great in iOS as it does on MacOS. Android doesn’t have anything similar to spotlight, even though it has much tighter Google Search integration.

The split screen mode in iOS works way better than the Android implementation on Marshmallow. The split screen emulates the look and feel of its MacOS counterpart, with the ability to swap in compatible apps in a tray. The split screen isn’t as powerful as the Windows 10 implementation, but it’s great to use nonetheless.

Plus there are some great touch gestures on the iPad, including multi finger swipes to open the multitask window and go back to the home screen.

And the home screen is where my love for iOS turns back to mere lust. I know the saying goes that if it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it, but iOS’s home screen leaves a lot to be desired. It’s just a row of icons. Sure, you can rearrange them, remove them, and place icons inside of each other to create folders. But it is in serious need of an organized tray like what’s in Android and Windows 10. I feel disorganized when looking at the iPad’s home screen. I know it’s a style choice that millions have little issues over, but it does bother me, and I’m certain it bothers others.

And then there’s the keyboard. This isn’t as big of an issue since Apple allows third party keyboards. But the Apple Keyboard sure likes to force its way back even when it’s no longer the default. It made some improvements with predictive text, but it still feels a generation behind Google’s and Microsoft’s keyboards, especially with a lack of swipe and no emoji prediction. In spite of it, I got used to the stock keyboard.

This is another minor gripe: the universal settings. I’m used to the way Windows and Android works, where the app settings are contained in the program you’re using. The settings do work well, though, once you get past the fact that you have to check this highly centralized location and scroll through a list of directories before finding the app you want to tweak.

First Class Software

Needless to say, the app experience on iOS is pleasant. There are a few exceptions on the iPad, though, due to the apps not scaling properly on a larger display. Instagram comes to mind. The weird thing is the Windows 10 Instagram app scales beautifully, so I imagine they’re going to make an iPad version soon enough.

Some of the stock apps that came with the iPad are a treat to use. The News app is great. Apple’s design philosophy works well with a print format. The camera is super responsive, though it could use more pro-features to take advantage of non-optimal light situations. Don’t take pictures on an iPad though, unless you have to.

And Safari surprisingly wasn’t completely terrible to use. It even supports extensions, something Chrome mobile for Android doesn’t do. A native Ad-Block Plus extension without rooting or weird tricks? Yes, please.

Of course, not everything was perfect. I synced the iPad with iTunes, and it destroyed my music’s metadata. I’ll have to rely on third party support for my music for the time being.

The stock photos app could use a bit more polish. It doesn’t show photos in reverse chronological order, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to change it. Plus it could really use the ability to look at photos on the cloud, like on Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive.

And for some reason, the iPad didn’t include some basic apps, including calculator, weather, and stocks. Luckily there are great third party alternatives to replace them that scale well on an iPad’s screen.

But the weirdest things were the quirky behaviors iOS did every once in a while. For some reason, I had to sign back into my Apple account several times, even though I made sure I was logged in. And I encountered a weird bug that made my iPad logged off the wifi every once in a while it was on a guest network. My Android phone didn’t have any issues with the guest network’s wifi, though.

Jack of all trades

The iPad is in a weird spot. The tablet market has plateaued, much like the desktop market. Now you have smartphones getting bigger, and laptops incorporating features tablets used to claim, like touch screens and portability. Tablets seem irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

But after using the iPad, I get why this device sold so well. And I see why Apple fans have a hard time giving up their iDevices. Cupertino spent a lot of time crafting the look and feel of this device to the point that you have to hold and use it for a bit to just get it.

The iPad now occupies the third spot in my unholy trinity of smart devices, next to my laptop and smartphone. It can’t replace my laptop, which I need for work related reasons. And it can’t replace my smartphone. But what it does well is cover the weaknesses of one device over the other based on use case.

The iPad is far better for casual use than my smartphone is. And when I don’t need to do serious work, but need to have a larger screen on me to demonstrate or review something, the iPad’s lighter footprint, phenomenal battery, and ease of use makes it better to carry around than my laptop.

If you don’t need to do extensive photoshopping, video-editing, programming, server hosting, or triple-A gaming, then using an iPad as a daily driver seems like a reasonable choice. I know I’m going to continue using mine.