Chris Hannah

In the past few weeks, two apps I use a lot on my phone have changed the layout of their tab bars. It sounds like something that you couldn't get annoyed about, but here I am. I'm sure this annoyance happens to other people, and to other apps that I don't use, but the two that are bugging me today are Instagram and YouTube.

Instagram

Okay, so putting aside the fact that Instagram seems to change their interface weekly, with the option to create a new post or story being moved all around the interface. They clearly do this only for a few users, as a lot of people I know haven't seen any kind of change. But at least for me, every week there's at least one thing that's moved.

For now, I'll focus on the tab bar. Although, who knows, it might even change tomorrow.

So what I have now is five items, Home, Discover, Reels, Shop, and Profile. I get that they want to push Reels as a feature (even though I think it's terrible), and yes you can buy things on Instagram now (I also think this is bad). But why do these items need to fill up 40% of the tab bar?

I liked having the Activity item in the tab bar before, but you could argue that regularly checking your likes, comments, and follows isn't that healthy. So moving that away from the tab bar, and adding just a tiny bit of friction may be helpful for some people.

But what about the most important part of Instagram, posting photos? Surely that deserves to be the most prominent action in the UI. Rather, it's (currently) in the top left, at least for me, and only when you are on the Home screen. Weirdly, if you are on your profile you also have a button in the same place, but this is just to open a list allowing you to create a post, story, highlight, IGTV video, or Reel. Why there needs to be 5 content options is beyond me.

YouTube

This change isn't as drastic as what Instagram is doing, but it still messes with my muscle memory a lot.

The change here is the addition of the Create button in the centre. Although pressing this doesn't actually take you to the upload interface. Instead, you get a boring list interface like the Create option on Instagram. But here you only have two options, to upload a video, or to start a live stream.^[1]

It's sort of the opposite of Instagram, where the changes there are to make you view Reels and use the shopping feature. But in the YouTube app, they seem to want you to create more.

I would argue that the opposite is how people use these platforms. Sure, a lot of people upload videos to YouTube, and maybe some people like to watch Reels and shop on Instagram. But at least in my mind, YouTube is the app where the majority of people would be consuming content, and Instagram is the place where you are more likely to be sharing content. Also seeing as the phone app is the only place where you can post images, since there is no iPad app (which I think is totally idiotic), and you can't upload anything on the web interface.

Most of the time when apps change their UI, the annoyance is purely down to muscle memory and having to readjust to a new layout. But these changes just seem to be stupid to me. They seem to be geared towards attracting desired behaviour like shopping or starting live streams, rather than showcasing features that users do more often.

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1. These two options are also totally pointless for me. Seeing as I don't upload videos, and if I try to start a live stream I get told I'm not actually eligible to stream from a mobile device. ↩︎

Cal Newport:

I don’t normally spend much time reading information online, so I definitely noticed this morning the unusual degree to which I was distracted by breaking election news. This points to an interesting question that I’ve seen discussed in some articles in recent days: what’s the best way to keep getting things done on truly distracting days?My answer: don’t.

Cal Newport is the author of many books relating to reducing distractions and focussing on deep work. So when the above question is posed to him. you may expect a very long and informational response. But instead, he has a very quick, and somewhat surprising answer.

But his short answer, along with his reasoning afterwards, resonate with me quite a lot. Mainly that not every day needs to be a day where you knock loads of things off your to-do list. Some times you need a rest, you need to focus your mind on something different, or maybe you just have something else you need to deal with.

Sometimes I go through patches where I want to be "productive" all through the day, every day of the week. But very soon, I realise that is just isn't sustainable. What is sustainable though, is allowing yourself to rest, have fun, and not feel like you always have to be achieving something. Because when you do choose to get to work, you go at it full of energy, and ready to really dive into your work.

Over on the Tifo Football channel on YouTube, Ben Jacobs investigated whether different football kits can have an affect on the game.

It's just a short video, at just over 7 minutes, but he certainly goes into a lot more detail than I imagined. I thought it would just be statistics from the top performing football teams over the years, and then trying to spot a pattern with the kit colours.

He does touch on stats like red being the best performing shirt colour in the Premier League, but that's most likely due to the fact that the three biggest clubs in the UK wear red (Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal). But the section that interested me the most was the goalkeeper shirt colour, and that apparently red is also the best colour in that regard. But in that case it seems to be backed up information, rather than just consequential statistics.

From BBC News:

The dad spent multiple months putting this together. I can imagine it taking quite a lot of effort, with the planning and construction. And it looks like it's been done really well, the detail on the shop fronts are really good.

But as impressive as it is, it stil didn't stop me thinking that the child will probably get bored of it soon, or possibly even outgrow it, seeing as it looks like a tight space.

All I'm saying is, as much as this is a cool idea, I'm not doing it for any future kids I have!

I just spent a week in Lanzarote, and since I had just received my iPhone 12 before I left, I decided to leave my real camera at home and force myself to use the iPhone.

There were over 200 shots, and after reviewing them, checking the composotions, and giving them a little touch up in Lightroom, I was left with 24 photos that I was really happy with. I've uploaded them all to Flickr, so you can check out the full album.

Being in Lanzarote, the focus of my shots are all relating to water. Whether if it was the sea caves of Los Hervideros, the beaches around Playa Blanca, or the black sand of Playa de Janubio.

A lot of the time I was focussing on getting portrait-oriented shots that would be suitable for phone wallpapers. And a lot of the time this was caputring the transition of the waves hitting the sand, or the combination of the sand, rocks, sea, and then the blue sky. At the same time, there were some really nice landscapes that I tried to capture as well.

From the final 24 photos, I've picked out 9 that I'd like to feature here on the blog. I hope you like them. And if you want to see the other 15, you can view the full album on Flickr.

I came across an interesting blog post today, where Matt Brunt set up an integration between IFTTT and Monzo (a UK bank) to help save money. So that every single time he tweeted, 20p would be transferred into a separate pot on his Monzo account, which itself would be locked away until just before the PS5 release date.

As soon as I read the article, I was instantly struck with ideas on how I could make use of a similar integration.

My Situation

Personally, I don't have a big problem with being able to save money. I have a structure to my savings, and I'm very strict with myself to make sure I separate a portion of my wage every time I am paid.

What I do have a problem with is choosing when to spend money. I mean to say I have so much money I don't know what to do with it. I wish. But in general, I have a problem associating value to a purchase. For example, I purchased an iPhone 12 not long ago, but I probably wouldn't spend over £15 on a t-shirt, or even £60 on a pair of shoes. Whereas there are a lot of people that see enough value in a pair of shoes to spend quite a lot of money on them.

I tend to place a higher value on computers, whether it be a smartphone, tablet, or real computer. The main reason is that it's what I'm interested in. But I also use these products as tools in my life, and also to get work done. I use these products to develop apps, write for this blog, and the usual stuff like gaming and social media.

You'd think I'd be fine spending money on new iPhones, iPads, and Macs. But instead, the "normal" part of me usually decides that a new device probably isn't worth it, since a lot of times the current device can cope with what I'll end up doing on it. It's the reason why I own an iPad Pro 10.5", even though I've been wanting a 12.9" pro ever since they were available. I must admit, I was close to buying the model that came out earlier this year, but it didn't seem like a big enough update to force my hand.

But I still have that constant thought in my head that I need that 12.9" iPad Pro, and especially the new Magic Keyboard. Although to be fair, I don't need it, no-one needs an iPad. I want it, for quite a few reasons, but that's not relevant here (I've already dragged this out too far anyway). Let's now get to the point.

The Goal

There would be no point of all this fuss if I didn't have some kind of goal, or to be specific, an amount of money I want to save. So the goal I'm setting myself is enough to buy a 12.9" iPad Pro (I guess that should be obvious by now). The model I want will be around £1000 I reckon, so that will be my target.

Alongside the iPad, I will also want the Magic Keyboard to do my writing on. But I'll leave that as a secondary goal to do after if this one goes well.

My Theory

In the article by Matt Brunt, he set up an automation as a fun way to put some money away. But I've also seen other people in the past use it as a punishment, where they track some performance metric, and if they don't hit it then some money gets donated to charity (or somewhere else). Or others that use it for saving may use an environmental action to trigger the saving, something like every time it rains, a tiny bit of money is saved for a future holiday.

I have a theory that this automated saving technique could be used as an incentive, rather than something negative. Instead of punishing bad behaviour by putting money away, I plan on rewarding good behaviour by allocating money towards something I want to buy.

In this case, the reward will be buying an iPad Pro for myself, and the behaviour I want to use as the trigger will be publishing blog posts.

To me, this seems like a perfect fit. I want to get myself into a habit where I'm writing at a good pace, and regularly publishing to my blog. And I'd really love to eventually be doing that on the big iPad. So while I'm building up a habit, I'm also going to use this experiment as a way to prove to myself that I do actually want to write "long-term" and it's not just an occasional hobby.

The Automation

For the automation, I'll be using a combination of the blogs RSS feed, IFTTT, and a specific pot in Monzo with an associated goal (Which has a cool image that I built using Robb Knight's tool, and is the featured image of this post).

It's a pretty simple process. Whenever there's a new item in my blogs RSS feed, money will be transferred into my pot in Monzo. Eventually, I'll hit the target, I'll order the iPad, and all my life's worries will go away (I think this is how it works?).

I've chosen the amount to be £1 per blog post, so it's pretty easy to calculate how many I'll need to publish before hitting my goal. 1000.

I had an idea on somehow basing the amount on the length of the post, or if it's a simple link post, but I think if I add to complex I probably won't ever complete it.

Anyway, this post will serve as the first out of 1000, and will fortunately/unfortunately cost me £1. Which means I've now got to go and write and publish another 999! Wish me luck.

Greg Morris, writing about the Pixel 5:

Something changed with the Pixel 5. Amid a pandemic Google began to focus on what they could do to bring a device together, and perhaps what their customers wanted. So instead of weird and wonderful new developments they absolutely promise to develop, they took half a step back. Creating a device that leans on tried and tested hardware, not the bleeding edge. Just reliable specs, done well and priced at a point that Google felt it can complete.

What Greg does here in this review is what I think more reviewers should do. And that is to describe the device on a way that people can understand and relate to. For example, instead of simply pointing out the size of the battery, Greg noted that “8 hours screen on time is achievable, and some of my more leisurely days this week I got almost two days of use”. That’s the type of information that is helpful to people when researching what phone to buy.

I think too many times people (including myself) look at the raw technical specs of a phone and simply compare them like a game of Top Trumps, and forget the context around them, or even the usability of them.

Since the iPhones are more cameras than anything else nowadays, I always value a photography focussed review more than a generic one looking at the phone as a whole. One person that always steps up to fill that need is Austin Mann, he's an incredible photographer, and always comes up with great reviews of the latest iPhones.

And he's now just dropped his review of the iPhone 12 Pro:

Hello from Glacier National park, MT!

I’ve been exploring this area, based out of our Airstream, testing the camera of the new iPhone 12 Pro in all kinds of conditions from bright and sunny to dark and snowy. (And all very cold!)

As always, Apple delivered a presentation with a punch and a lot of the focus was on the camera, especially the iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera. (Spoiler alert: that review will be coming in a few weeks and I can’t wait to see what the hardware in that thing can do.)

My driving question remains:

How will this new tech make our pictures and videos better?

The iPhone 12 Pro’s upgrades really rely on software, whereas the iPhone 12 Pro Max gets all the software upgrades and a major hardware upgrade. With the iPhone 12 Pro in hand this week, a lot of my focus has been on Ultra Wide Night mode, LiDAR autofocus, and exploring new capabilities in the software.

I must admit, I was excited when I saw his review was up, but then I saw it was focussed on the 12 Pro, wheras I have personally gone for the standard 12. So I was getting ready to regret not going for the Pro, but seeing as he focussed on the Wide and Ultra Wide lenses, I think it also served as a very good iPhone 12 review too.

I'm coming from an iPhone XS, so I never got to experience the camera of the iPhone 11 generation, and I keep hearing how good it was. And now Austin has proved the 12 can go even further. One thing that really surprised me was how good Night Mode is.

The 12 Pro Max will be an even more capable device, and I look forward to seeing Austin's review on that when it comes out. But one thing looks certain, the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have fantastic cameras.

Read his full review.

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Photo credit: Austin Mann "Shot on iPhone 12 Pro w/ Ultra Wide in Night mode (on tripod). Apple Photos “Noir” filter applied."

Jason Kottke, writing at Kottke.org:

The winning photographs in the 2020 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest have been announced by the Natural History Museum in London. Photos above by Shanyuan Li, Weiwei Zeng, and Greg du Toit.

I love to see photography contents, especially wildlife and nature ones, because there's always absolutely great photos. But my problem is keeping track of the various competitions. So it's lucky that I read Kottke.org, since it seems like he rarely misses any!

Anyway, this years Wildlife Photographer of the Year photos were amazing as always.

When I look at wildlife photos I'm always struck by thinking how hard each of them would have been to capture. I like nature photography, mainly because of the focus on composition and lighting. But throwing animals in the mix must makee it infinitely more difficult.

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(Featured image: The Spider’s Supper by Jaime Culebras, one of the photos from the competition which was awarded a "Highly Commended" status)

Joe Cieplinski, on how the latest iPhone lineup allowed him to choose a capable but smaller model this time round:

For at least a few hours, I was truly torn about which phone to get.But in the end, how could I not get the mini? There are exactly two sacrifices you make when getting this phone vs the new Pro: Battery life and camera. Everything else—from 5G, to the new Ceramic Shield glass, to the A14 Bionic, to FaceID, to OLED, to MagSafe—is pretty much the same.The iPhone 12 Pro is basically 100% aimed at photographers and videographers at this point. While I’ve never needed to get a Pro, this year I finally don’t even want to get a Pro. It took me a few hours to realize that, but now that I have, I can’t wait to get my hands on the mini.

While I wasn't looking for a smaller iPhone, I was hoping to get a "normal" sized model, that wasn't hamstrung too much by not being the biggest.

I also wanted a real colour this time, not a boring light grey or dark blue (or green like last years Pro models). But a bright colour, and those are typically only available on the non-Pro models, so you normally have to balance this choice against the tradeoffs of not getting a Pro model.

Everyones priorities when buying an iPhone will be different, and obviously not everyone will have a clear choice on which model is best for them. But this years lineup seems to be a very good fit for a lot of people.

Because, if you want a smaller iPhone, the 12 Mini is a very capable device, if you want something colourful, then the 12 is also very capable. And of course if you really want the best photography capabilities, you can go for the Pro or even Pro Max models. And that's if you want the best photography capabilities, the 12 Mini and 12 still have very good cameras.

The one extra model that I think would be good (Although, 5 models at once doesn't seem like an Apple thing to do), is a "normal" big iPhone. So in this case it would just be a 12 Max. Because I don't think wanting a big phone necessarily mean you need the Pro features.