Every time I see Iron Man I think about his armor being heavily damaged in a fight and how long it could take to get him out of it. I’m claustrophobic. Not terribly so, but tight spaces don’t play well with me. When I was in a car accident a few years ago, the car flipped and landed on my side. My passenger was the first out, through his door that was pointing skyward. When he removed his seatbelt, he slid down onto me. My heart is skipping a beat right now thinking about it. For anyone with a phobia (not just a fear), you know what it’s like to have that irrational panic take over.
So this image came through my feeds this morning. The Hulkbuster armor from Avengers II. Not only is it a giant armor suit, Iron Man’s normal suit is worn while inside this. There goes my heart again. The hours necessary to get him out… Yeah, phobias suck.
Everyone’s biggest question since the Apple Watch was announced last Fall was battery life. During the keynote, Tim Cook said 18 hours. But we all know the asterisk beside that number. Luckily, Apple published a great resource with more details.
People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.
One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.
One of my biggest speculations is the change that the Apple Watch and similar smart watches will bring to culture. This article from TechCrunch is stellar, but says exactly what I have been thinking for months. With notifications on your wrist, less things will require your phone to come out of your pocket. A quick raise of your arm and you see what the notification is and you can get right back to life.
Marketing director Robbie Abed said that he couldn’t recall a single client request a smartwatch app before the Apple Watch debut, but some have “already decided” they want an app for Apple’s wearable, while others are asking whether it should form part of their marketing plans.
It makes sense. The only two smart watch platforms before the Apple Watch were Pebble and Android Wear. While Pebble had good sales, Android has not. It’s yet to be seen if the interest in the Apple Watch will be more than that of Pebble and Android Wear, but we’ll know shortly.
It's a shame this feature is rolling out first to brands, because photo sets like these would likely be a hit with average users. They're hugely popular on Tumblr, generated automatically by Facebook's News Feed, and have more recently been adopted by Twitter. And users are already hacking photo sets onto Instagram using third-party apps that group multiple photos into a single image.
That is a shame. I don’t know about other users, but I always feel bad when I rapid fire a few shots off on Instagram. My typical setup is that I shoot in Camera+ or Apple’s Camera app, edit in Camera+ sometime later, and then post to Instagram. This happened a few weeks back when we took Charlotte, my daughter, to the Shedd Aquarium. I’m not the type to stand there and post to Instagram while my family waits to move on to the next exhibit. No, I shoot a few dozen shots and then edit while my wife is in the bathroom or as we are walking to the car. To be able to post 4 shots as a set would be delightful without bombarding my followers.
[T]he iPhone maker was recently awarded a patent for a potentially useful feature that could help you avoid areas with weak cellular coverage when planning your trip with navigation in Maps.
The farmboy in me loves this. It was always something I pondered. How would Batman get around in the country? No skyscrapers works better for Superman. Everything works better for Superman.
I said last week that the new Pebble watch was functional, not pretty. Well, looks like they fixed that. This looks like it was designed by a company that understood watch design.
