Apple Watch, First Thoughts

As promised, I will now give my initial thoughts on the Apple Watch that Apple announced a few days ago. First let me just say that if you haven't gone and watched the video of the Watch it is worth it just so you can see the bands snap closed. Apple has such a great way of presenting a product, if they made a garbage can it would have a cooler video than most luxury cars.

It is beautiful
A lot of people have said and are going to say, "its just strapping a screen onto your wrist." And that is true, in many ways it is, but only Apple could take that concept from nerdy to fashionable. All smartwatches, beyond basic fitness trackers, are going to be a screen on you wrist, but nobody has made one that looks so nice as Apple's does.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Pebble Steel and I am totally convinced that it is the best looking smartwatch on the market right now, but let's face it, it isn't 14 karat gold. That being said I will not be throwing my Pebble out any time soon.

The bands
It is a testament to Apple's design prowess that the bands on the Watch are one of the things I am most impressed with. I was telling some friends the other day; leave it to Apple to take an experience as bad as changing your watch band and make it fun.

The bands will be easily switched by pressing a release on the bottom of the Watch, no need to go to jeweler to remove pins. This will mean people can easily have multiple bands to switch out, but it also has a more practical purpose for some people, namely left-handers. The switchable bands me that left-handers, most of whom wear their watches on the right hand, can easily swap out the two sides of the band to orient the watch correctly on their wrist with the crown the correct spot for left-handed operation.

Turn off the Thunder, There's no Lightning: Saving Battery on the iPad mini

So I found myself with the iPad mini in hand, well on the way to leaving my laptop at home, or so I thought. My lightning cable unfortunately did not arrive thanks to that trusty government agency, the postal service. This is a most unfortunate incident for any nerd to be in possession of a new piece of hardware he has been dieing to try and no way to charge it. Fortunately the good people at Gazelle had the presence of mind to put some charge in the device before shipping it. It arrived with approximately 81% charge. Well I was then faced with the choice of how to use that 81%. I have opted not to leave my Josie (my MacBook) home just yet in order to make the 81% last as long as possible, hopefully long enough for the P.O. to perform their all important service.

But of course I don't want the lightning cable to arrive and me still have 80% charge on the mini, I want to do things with it. So I have used all the battery saving tricks I know to get the mini to last as long as possible so that I can use it, but not to heavily. Here's what I did, most people already probably know these tricks, but they might help some of you out.

• Turn off the volume, sound requires power and that comes from the battery, so if you don't need to hear it, turn it off.
• Turn down the brightness, the screen is the big juice hog and the brighter it is the more it will use.
• Turn on Airplane mode, if you can do your work without using the mini's radios all the better, they use battery to send out those signals.
• If you have to have WiFi on, turn off location services, nobody needs to know you are eating at Jimmy John's while you are in a battery crisis.
• Turn off bluetooth, even if you need the WiFi on you probably aren't using bluetooth, so make sure it is off.
• Turn off push notifications for any apps you don't need, if they have to be checking the internet in the background all the time that's going to suck battery.

And that's it folks, my iPad mini is currently at 54% after 5 days of some use each day, hopefully we can make it until the lightning strikes.