Andy Rubin’s Essential Plan

Andy Rubin, the co-founder of a little phone operating system called Android, believes he has the answer(s) the mobile world has been looking for. At the code conference this past week, the Essential Phone was announced alongside a slew of other products and services. Rubin referenced his involvement in the creation of Android, and his disappointment in how it’s evolved to offer little freedom and opportunities to users. It’s not explicitly clear how the Essential Phone fixes this. Though, Rubin does appear to be attempting to create a new ecosystem of connected devices which will be centered by a personal assistant of some kind. The phone of course will also run this assistant, as well as a product called the Essential Home, which is very similar to Amazon’s echo or Google Home. The Home device is honestly stunning. It’s “essentially” (sorry) just a circular screen, on a slight angle which will fit in nicely in any modern kitchen or bedroom.

I am very excited to see where Essential takes these new ideas, they have an all star team of designers, and staff members, who can hopefully make something that can be delivered on time, and as a complete product.

Review everything: Starbucks Reserve in Vancouver

For those not familiar, Starbucks Reserve is a sort of ‘Black Label’ off shoot of the universality recognized coffee brand. At a Starbucks Reserve location you can expect to find knowledgeable staff, interesting brew methods, fancy treats, exotic roasts and high prices. I stopped by the new Reserve location on Main and 14th in Vancouver, BC the other day and here is my experience.

 

When I first walked into the store I could immediately tell this was going to be a very different experience to a regular ‘Starbs’ run. Being the first Reserve location in Western Canada, and having only opened a few days prior, the store was packed and the energy was high. I finally made it up to the counter after a long line and was able to order my coffee. I originally intended to try a single pour over cup of the daily special (1 of 3) Malawi beans. However, I was easily persuaded to move up to a full chemex brew, suddenly my morning coffee was costing me the minimum hourly wage in BC. As I found myself a seat in the crowded cafe, a barista dressed all in black (a status symbol for Starbucks staff) came over, shook my hand and introduced himself. He offered me a glass of sparkling water, and walked me through the process my $10 coffee beans were about to go through. A few minutes later, my ‘personal’ barista returned with the freshly ground beans for me to smell, and approve. A nice touch. A chemex brew is not the most sophisticated or visually impressive brew method, especially compared to the vortexing bright colors of the siphon brewers dotting the bar, but I have to admit, the small carafe brought to me about 15 minutes after walking into the store was some of the best black coffee I have ever had. The carafe ended up providing about 5 refills of the slightly small (maybe 8-10oz) cup given to me on wooden platter.

 

Starbucks Reserve in Vancouver, BC

I came prepared for a long day of work at the cafe, and I settled into some video editing nursing my carafe of delicious bean water. About an hour into this work period, another staff member came around and offered me some banana bread. I, as many would assumed this was a small taster, but no, I was given a half of an entire slice of loaf that is sold at the front for about $3. I’m not making money here, but again, nice touch.

 

An hour or so later, and I was beginning to feel guilty about using the wifi and taking a seat for so long, so I went up to the counter to order another expensive drink. This time, I decided to try an espresso drink in order to trial the ‘extremely rare’ espresso machine at this location. A cappuccino and an old fashioned donut were ordered, and I went back to my seat to work while I waited. As I was editing video, I had my headphones on and evidently did not hear my name called, thinking something was amiss I went up to the bar to enquire. The barista informed me that he had been calling my name, and I fully expected to just receive a cold cappuccino and a donut in a bag, but no. The barista for some reason apologized to me, for my own mistake, and offered me a free drink on my next visit (a $4 credit). Nice touch once more.

So let’s wrap up.

The Good:

This feels like a legitimate foray into high end coffee. As someone who is really into coffee, but is ashamed of my habit of getting Starbucks because of its convenience, this is a great way to get me to give my hard earned money to the coffee behemoth.

The Bad:

Price and availability. There is only one reserve store in western Canada, and only a handful in North America. Yes this is part of its charm, but also deters some people and takes away the chance for familiarity. And yes, it’s damn expensive. Like really, really expensive even for Starbucks. Don’t expect to spend less than $5 for any espresso drink.

The Verdict:

I will definitely be going back. I found the location to offer a great work space, outstanding service and delicious coffee. The money to time ratio here ended up evening out. Well done Starbucks.

Why Instagram’s redesign is a good sign

If you routinely keep you apps up to date, you may have noticed that the familiar brown/rainbow camera logo is gone, replaced by a bright orange, purple gradient with a white camera in the middle. The Instagram spin off apps such as Layout, Hyperlapse and Boomerang have also seen updates, keeping a red/orange theme throughout. The Instagram app itself has seen significant updates sporting a clean black and white look all around. Though I’m not sure how I feel about the new logo’s the in app redesign is a great sign from a huge app like Instagram, obviously owned by Facebook, because it means that they aren’t afraid to change things up once in a while. Hopefully moving forward we see more changes like these to apps like twitter or even the built in Apple apps, which are reaching the point in time when the app is growing a bit boring, and the design bland.

Alexa, the future controller of your smarter home

The “Smart home” is quickly becoming the next big platform for the tech world, connecting appliances to our phones and to each other is just the beginning. The smart home as an idea has been around for years, in pop culture, science fiction and the like. But in the past five or so years it has become a tangible and practical area of development, you can walk into a best buy today and buy anything from a door that you can unlock anywhere in the world, to a toaster that’ll tell you when its popped. Now that last one may be a bit humorous but its not far form the truth, with WIFI chips becoming cheaper and smaller, everything is getting connected. So, you may ask, “Why don’t I (the consumer) have a connected toaster” well it’s for the same reason that ten years ago, only the rich and geeky had smartphones, for a more modern example take the smart watch, a smart home sounds great in theory but actually setting one up requires money spent, time dedicated and change of habits. It’s just too complicated.

That’s where Alexa comes in, Alexa was going to be to Fire devices (Amazon’s mobile division) what Siri is to iOS devices. An ever present virtual assistant to aid in scheduling, communicating and everyday tasks. However, as you may know, the Fire Phone, Amazon’s first and so far only attempt at the phone industry, absolutely flopped, Alexa seemed to be dead with it. But of course that would be a rather boring end to this editorial. Alexa was resuscitated in the form of a black cylindrical tower of microphones, a speaker and a cloud ready platform.

The Echo was marketed mainly to Amazon Prime subscribers as a virtual assistant in a speaker, at first you could ask Alexa simple fact based questions, set timers, play music from a very limited array of sources (Prime music and Pandora at first), as well as order from Amazon with your voice. None of this was revolutionary however one of the major selling point was the price, $99 for prime members at launch, for well, a speaker you could talk to. However, the biggest selling point for the Echo was the promise of more ‘Skills’ to be added soon. To date arguably the most important skill that the Echo has received is IFTTT (If This Than That), with IFTTT, Alexa started to be able to control your home, more lately services like Nest, Hue, Insteon, Samsung SmartThings and WeMo, Alexa has become to many, the easiest and most efficient way to control the connected home. Simply saying “Alexa, turn off the lights” will switch off the the connected Philips hue lights, very futuristic.

Many news outlets have eluded to the possibility of an Echo competitor from Apple, it makes sense right? Siri undoubtedly would be a great fit in a speaker, however currently Siri can’t interact with the home the way Alexa can, which to me makes it almost useless. Because Amazon is opening its platform to developers and really isn’t a competitor to any of the companies making smart home gadgets, there is no reason for them to avoid the Echo, a huge bonus for Amazon. With more skills being added every week, the Amazon Echo is the perfect control centre for the future of the smart, connected home. 

Snapchat, an editorial

In 2016 the online social world is more over saturated than ever before. Facebook passed one billion average monthly users, twitter is said to be in decline but is still the network of choice for the rich and famous to share their ill-thought-out quips in 140 characters or less. And it seems every week there’s a new app or website that teens and tweens use throwing privacy out the window. Snapchat has long been one of these apps just waiting to be bought out or left behind, but lately (2015ish) Snapchat has become one of the most popular social networks not only for regular users, but for businesses, news outlets, and giant corporations alike. From McDonalds to CNN to Comedy Central, it seems everyone’s on Snapchat.

But why, why is it so popular? Well to understand that you’ll first have to understand our culture as a whole. Attention spans are at an all time low, most people would rather watch a 5-minute video than a 22-minute TV Show, along the same lines a ‘snap’ maxes out at 10 seconds, after that *poof* its gone. It’s because of this self destruction Snapchat was until more recently synonymous with dubious photography (do I need to sound it out?), but with the release of a feature called ‘Stories’ and ‘Discover’ Snapchat has become an extremely valuable social network. Stories allows users to share photos or videos to all their friends (not followers) at once, with the same 10 second limit, however when more than one picture or video is added throughout a day the story becomes longer allowing a tour guide style overview of someone’s day. Discover is the more commerce oriented feature, allowing some companies to create pictures and videos (or animations etc.) which the user can swipe through. When they come across one that catches their attention they can swipe up to read the story, watch the video or whatever else the company in question has created.

So what does the future hold for Snapchat? In my opinion it’s more or less here to stay. When Snapchat reportedly turned down an 3 billion dollar offer, Facebook attempted to make a Snapchat competitor named Slingshot but to no avail. And they weren’t the only ones, countless ‘competitors’ (rip-offs) can be found through the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, none of which have come close to toppling the instant photo sharing Goliath that is Snapchat. Sure popularity will slow as is the way with social media platforms, but like Facebook, I see a future for Snapchat where a large number of users stick around for the long run. Vive le Snap.

Making sense of the Wind Mobile-Shaw deal

Wind Mobile is one of the most prominent competitors to the big three Cell providers in Canada (Bell, Rogers, Telus and their subsidiaries). Offering plans with unlimited data, calling and texting for low prices (~$45) Wind has grown to almost a million customers nationwide. Shaw on the other hand has been growing slowly but steadily as of late, and in an attempt to further their standing in the telecommunications world has looked into building their own cell network. After Shaw’s first attempt in 2011 became too expensive, they sold their infrastructure to Rogers and moved on for the time being. Just today it was announced that Shaw has decided to purchase an already established cell company, namely Wind Mobile. The price is reportedly around 1.6 Billion dollars CAD, and will likely be completed by third quarter of 2016. Shaw reps have stated that the model of more for less, which has made Wind popular will be staying around, and the plan to create an LTE infrastructure by 2017 is still in place. Here’s hoping this deal can help drive cell plan prices in Canada down for all carriers.

IPhone 6/6s Battery case

In a surprising announcement, Apple has released a Battery case for the iPhone 6 and 6s (not the plus’). If you have ever used, or seen a mophie case (or similar) this case will be extremely familiar. The case itself is slightly taller than your average phone case to accommodate an internal lightning port as well as the lightning port used for charging the case. The case goes for 99$ and for that price you get around 1900 mAh of juice. For comparison the Mophie case for the same price has around 2800 mAh, the iPhone 6 has an internal battery of 1800 mAh meaning with Apple’s case, you will barely get a full charge. Another issue is the inability to save power for later, as soon as the case and phone are connected, the phone starts charging. Meaning your phone will always be close to 100%, but if you were planning on charging fully later in the day, think again. And finally let’s talk design, this case is ugly.

It looks like the standard Apple iPhone case had a tiny external battery strapped to it, which i guess is essentially the case. And there is one small, but important design flaw, the LED indicator for the case is INSIDE the case, meaning it is completely useless whenever there is a phone connected. So here’s my solution. Instead of making a beautiful, extremely thin phone, with a battery life so bad, you need to make a case (covering the design of the phone) with a thick addition to it, make a slightly thicker phone that can last a day+.

Apple pay in Canada

As of today Apple pay is officially supported across Canada but there’s s catch. The only card supported is from American express due to issues between Canadian banks and Apple. Stay tuned for more info soon.

Blackberry’s Vienna will be their second Android phone

Despite recent statements, it looks like Blackberry will indeed be making a second foray into the Android world with the code named Vienna smartphone. Early renders of the device feature an always present keyboard which is in contrast to the slide up keyboard on the current Venice (sigh, Priv). It also looks like the Vienna will come in a variety of colours like green, red, navy blue, silver, again in contrast to the Priv’s solitary black. A few key points to make the Vienna a success for Blackberry will be finding a  way to bring the price down to the 400-500$ range and ensuring swift updates to the latest version of Android, with these few things fixed, I could see the Vienna being a large part of Blackberry sticking around for a few more years.

Credit to Crackberry for the photo

Apple music on Android

The day is finally here ladies and gentlemen, Apple Music is officially available on the Google play store. Download now and try for yourself!