Author: Jason Dunn

Embracing Digital Storytelling: The Season Recap

We’re in the midst of a massive shift in the way entertainment is consumed; more “cord cutters” are making the switch every day, and the future of TV is changing. What still baffles me though is how so many content producers still confine their thinking to the way things used to be instead of the way they can be.

Case in point: last night season two of Daredevil was launched, and in typical disruptive fashion Netflix released all the episodes at once for binge watching. What was more interesting to me though was the four minute season one recap they started automatically playing when I hit play on episode one of season two. In four minutes I was reminded of all the major plot points of season one, and I can go into season two enjoying that context. It was wonderful! Continue reading Embracing Digital Storytelling: The Season Recap

A Mac User and His New iMac – Week Three

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted the last update in this series, but I’ve continued to make notes – let’s call it a “Mac Diary” – and I wanted to share my ongoing journey. Note the title change – I no longer feel like a Windows user sitting in front of a Mac, I feel like a Mac user now. My 2008 self might choke my 2016 self for writing that, but such is life. I think Jeff Bezos would be proud. 😉

I still have my Windows 10 laptop, and I still really like using Windows 10, but I can truly say I’m cross-platform now. Quad-platform I suppose, as I use Android phones and tablets, Windows computers, iOS tablets, and an OS X computer. I still have so much to learn about OS X, but I’m getting there. Onward with the explorations! Continue reading A Mac User and His New iMac – Week Three

When Technology Ship Dates Conflict With Your Vacation Dates

We all know that buying technology is about timing: the worst time to buy a piece of technology is right when the new version is about to come out. You’ll paralyze yourself if you keep waiting for the “next big thing” of course, but with products that refresh on a yearly cycle, unless the previous generation is being sold at significant cost savings, you want to get the new version to be one step further away from obsolescence. Sometimes though, the cycle of technology does not sync up with the cycle of our lives when it’s time to buy.

Case in point: off and on since 2002, I’ve been going to Mexico for vacation with my family (my ninth trip is happening next month). It’s a Dunn tradition, and given it’s usually the only vacation I take all year, I look forward to it with great anticipation. On January 23rd, 2012, I purchased a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 for my March Mexico vacation that year. A newer version of the Panasonic camera, the TS4, was announced on January 31st. I can’t recall if, four years ago, I knew that was coming or not, but I can tell you why I didn’t return it: many camera vendors announce in January but don’t start shipping until late March or early April. The first verified purchase review on Amazon was April 3rd 2012, but I couldn’t wait that long.

Continue reading When Technology Ship Dates Conflict With Your Vacation Dates

OS X Isn’t Immune to Apps Behaving Badly

UPDATE: I wanted to clarify that 1password is most definitely not a “bad app”, in this case it’s just an “app behaving badly”.

No matter what OS you’re using, a bad app will give you a headache. Based on my experience so far, OS X seems no better than Windows at dealing with apps that lose their minds. For the most part I’d say apps on OS X are quite stable – it took several weeks of using the computer daily before I saw apps start to misbehave. Two instances in particular stand out…

Continue reading OS X Isn’t Immune to Apps Behaving Badly

The Zolt Universal Laptop Charger: Is This The Ultimate Mobile Charger?

At AT&T I don’t travel for work as much as I used to for HTC, but when I do I usually bring my personal laptop with me – and that means two different power supplies. I use a Rocketfish universal charger for my HP work laptop (a rather chunky and heavy machine) and the Dell charger for my XPS 13. The Dell charger is small, but the Rocketfish charger is your typical brick. It has a USB port for charging though, which is a big improvement over your typical charger. Together, carrying the two chargers is a hassle, especially since I fly carry-on 95% of the time. I usually put both chargers in a carrying case inside my carry-on luggage.

In my quest for a new, lightweight universal charger I backed the FinSix Dart on Kickstarter back in April of 2014. After waiting 19 months (!?!), I gave up waiting and requested a refund. Props to FinSix for giving out refunds – many Kickstarter campaigns do not.

I then ordered a Zolt: it seemed better in every way. Getting it was a bit of a fiasco – they didn’t indicate there would be a wait on getting it, so I was expecting to receive it shortly after the November 19th launch date. The neglected to communicate that’s when pre-orders would start shipping. It was almost five weeks later, a day after I left to spend two weeks in Calgary that they informed me they were shipping the Zolt. I think it’s pretty foolish to surprise ship a product right at the holidays when so many people travel, but I give credit to their customer service team: they were able to re-direct the shipment and ship it out the day I got back. There was a bit of a delay, but I finally received it. I’ve had a couple of days now and here are my thoughts so far. Continue reading The Zolt Universal Laptop Charger: Is This The Ultimate Mobile Charger?

Getting Cut on the Bleeding Edge: the Samsung 950 PRO NMVe M.2 SSD & the Dell XPS 13

One of the unfortunate side-effects of not being a “full time tech geek” any longer is that I’m not quite up to speed on certain aspects of technology.  Back when I was a full-time tech writer, I spent every waking minute reading about tech, reviewing tech, testing tech…you get the idea. Since joining the corporate world I still use tech of course, but my immersion is in very specific slices of it; since joining AT&T I know far more about WordPress than I did two years ago for instance.

When I ordered my Dell XPS 13 (early 2015 edition) in May of this year, I purposefully bought it with a 256 GB drive knowing I’d be upgrading to 512 GB within a few months. Dell charged a huge premium for the 512 GB drive (like all OEMs do). I’d been reading about forthcoming NVMe drives since 2014, promising great performance gains because they finally broke away from the legacy AHCI standard. We’re talking over 2x less latency, much deeper queue depth, etc. So with great anticipation I pre-ordered the Samsung 950 PRO, one of the first commercially-available NMVe M.2 drives.

Continue reading Getting Cut on the Bleeding Edge: the Samsung 950 PRO NMVe M.2 SSD & the Dell XPS 13

A Windows User and His New iMac – Day Fourteen

After this post I’ll be switching to a weekly format as my explorations wind down (or become less public at any rate).

  • Airdrop is really interesting. On my iPad I turned it on, then on the iMac I searched for Airdrop in Spotlight. The first result was the Extensions panel as part of System Preferences, which didn’t help. Then I remembered that Airdrop was on the left Favourites panel in Finder. Sure enough, there was my iPad, and it was ridiculously easy to transfer a few JPEGs and MP4 files. So fast, and so, so much better than what I have to do on my Windows machine with a cable and iTunes. This is a very tangible example of how Apple’s ecosystem works better the more Apple stuff you have. They could of course enable iTunes to act as a Airdrop bridge on Windows, but they won’t.

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  • I transferred a .MTS file (a type of video file) over to the iPad, and got this interesting prompt (above) saying I needed an app from the app store to open it, or I could put the file in iCloud. I selected the app option, and I’ve been staring at the app store loading for over a minute. I don’t think it worked. Interestingly, my iMac said that my iPad “declined my request.” I tried again twice more, and the “Get App” button never worked. Looks like I’ll just use Handbrake to transcode to MP4 to go this route. It would be slick if Apple did a transcode to supported formats when you did the Airdrop…

Continue reading A Windows User and His New iMac – Day Fourteen

A Windows User and His New iMac – Days Twelve & Thirteen

Another two days, another series of discoveries and questions. Yay for cheap(ish) RAM!

  • My new RAM arrived, so I was able to do the upgrade to 32 GB. This time, it worked! I didn’t want to unplug all the cables from the iMac, so after removing the power cable I performed the RAM upgrade with the iMac vertical. It was slightly tricky, but Apple put in strong guide-rails so once I got them in there a gentle push was all that was needed. When I hit the power button the first time, nothing happened. Oh, I forgot to plug the power back in. #PEBKAC Power in, power on, I mutter “Please boot…please boot….YES!”. OS X boots up, 32 GB of RAM installed. I wonder though, will it make the iMac feel any different?

5K-iMac-RAM-Upgrade-32GB

Continue reading A Windows User and His New iMac – Days Twelve & Thirteen

A Windows User and His New iMac – Days Ten & Eleven

I spent time time pondering the insanely great 5K display, and figuring out how hot – really hot – Apple lets this Skylake CPU get.

  • I’m intrigued by the way Web sites are delivering content for ultra-high resolution screens as part of a push for not only mobile responsive, but mobile adaptive (meaning not only does the layout change based on screen resolution, but different page assets are delivered). I was shocked at the clarity of this image of Samuel L. Jackson on the iMac display. Digging in, I find it’s a huge (for the web) 2200 x 1467 pixel image. That’s 3.2 megapixels! It’s 193 KB, so a bit hefty, but on a desktop or laptop, it’s fine. At 10.5 inches across on my iMac display, that’s a 252 PPI image. No wonder it looks so insanely good!
  • I thought at first that I couldn’t edit appointments in Calendar that were created via Exchange, because I kept looking for an edit button. Turns out I just tap what I want to change and change it. My brain evidently expects things to be more complicated than they are. 🙂
  • Looks like not all apps can do split-screen on a virtual desktop? I tried to put bbEdit and Word 2016 beside easy other and got the little “No you can’t” icon. I wonder if there’s a way to know before hand, or if you’re supposed to just try it and see what works?

Continue reading A Windows User and His New iMac – Days Ten & Eleven

5K iMac Unboxing

I meant to publish this video sooner, but I was busy with my daily iMac updates…this is my shortest unboxing video. 🙂