Jonathan Markevich

Category: iPhone

  • iOS 13 + Regular Game Controllers

    I have hated the MFi program for game controllers for a long time now.  Cheap and expensive controllers for a handful of games.  There was no valid tech reason for Apple to restrict their OS to their own protocol for this!  It was a blatant cash grab. Thankfully, that has changed in iOS 13.  Now…

  • Clown Sized Phone

    Despite my earlier misgivings, I got a biggie size phone – the iPhone 8 Plus.  After lots of research and analysis, I realized an error in my previous logic.  I said: It loses the magic of convenience that is so important to me in the iPhone. That seems now to be a matter of perspective.…

  • The Best eBook Reader, Again

    I came to the realization a few years ago that the eBook reader Marvin was hands down, the best ePub reader for me.  Very flexible, configurable and some (still) unique features made it well worth the price. That was, as I mentioned, a few years ago and I started to get a little frustrated with…

  • Swype and iOS keyboards

    I have experimented with replacement keyboards on Android from time to time.  Though I had SwiftKey installed for a year, I mostly used it as a regular keyboard. So it wasn’t a real thrill for me when Apple announced third-party keyboards on iOS 8.   I found the iOS keyboard quite good, the design was really…

  • Freemium Free

    It began with an outright refusal to pay extra to play more of a game. Freemium games are now dead to me. I should define more early what I mean. In this context I don’t mean a full game or app with add-ins, like extra levels or “pro” functionality. I figure each level is very…

  • BIG PHONES

    Apple’s done it.  “They’ve kneeled to the pressure from Android”.  Haven’t they?  Let me think. One day to a few hours before the event I saw a fair number of tweets where people expressed that they didn’t really want a bigger phone.  The iPhone 5 size is wonderfully compact and ideal for daily use (but lets talk about…

  • WWDC 2014

    Apple had their WWDC keynote today, and announced, well, everything. Their user experience is converging like I couldn’t have imagined before.  Continuity lets you transfer your work from mobile to desktop just by being close to your Mac.  You can answer your phone from your computer. Mavericks looks awesome, despite my worry about flattening things.…

  • iPad multitasking

    I have no idea if this rumor has any substance to it, but it makes me wonder. I have long wanted a way to view, for example, a document alongside a stopwatch, which is a very simplistic use case, I know. Or a Bible app alongside an ePub reader. If they do this, I can…

  • Kindle

    This morning I got an email from Amazon, they are now syncing side loaded documents to their cloud service alongside Amazon-purchased books. I loaded the kindle apps on my iOS devices again and sure enough, the one test book I had uploaded showed up. With a little bit of arguing I got annotations to sync.…

  • Another eBook reader option

    So, while I like Google Play Books, I would like another option with a little better library management.  It has to have good syncing so iBooks is definitely out. I did a search and came across a Wikipedia article on comparing iOS book readers.  There are a lot more than I thought!  The one that…