Jonathan Markevich

Category: Apple

  • Apple Watch

    I, like others, was drooling when Apple introduced their new wearable.  They made the competition look horrendous.  (As a side note, when I first saw the Galaxy Gear S in pictures, I was excited – it too looked great, and not Android… until I saw the actual size.  It’s absurd.) They pitched this at everyone.…

  • 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…

  • Another Running Game…

    Or so I thought. Rayman Jungle Run (Canadian store, YMMV) was made free over the year-end holiday season. I grabbed it, though my iOS game collection is a little too bloated at the moment… And I am so glad I did. It has all of the zany atmosphere and inventive puzzle-solving aspects of the newer…

  • iPhone 5s and 5c

    Finally no longer rumor, the two above phones have been announced, release is imminent. I’m not sure of what to think… I am going to get one, without a doubt, and there are clear improvements over the iPhone 5.  I have this nagging feeling that they could have added something else, though I’m not sure…

  • Google Play Books redux

    I gave a quick review of Google Play Books when it first came out with user uploads.  (tl;dr version: meh.) It turns out that the iOS version is the weakest of their representations.  As foolish as that is, I should have known.  Now that I have tried the Android version, I see some significant advantages.…

  • Office for iPhone

    So Microsoft finally released Office for iPhone.  Even two years ago I would have cared, but I can’t get excited enough to investigate it beyond skimming a few announcement pages. Maybe it’s related to the fact that recently I have been so disgusted with Word for Mac beachballing when I try to do something complicated…