It’s time for my annual blog post about my goals for the year, this one contains another twist on things I am not going to do the normal monthly goals. Not that I don’t have goals that I could break down monthly, but this year I want to switch this blog into something else.

This year I plan to start writing more about tech, apps, my side work hobbies, and maybe even some about my day job work as well (hint its basically the same as my personal side projects as well 🤷‍♂️).

Here are some of the topics I plan to talk about:

• Switching to iPad as my only mobile workstation.
• Kernel iPad App.
• Kernel Watch App Overhaul.
• Universal Links.
• Build out a website for my Church
• Building tvOS app(s) (have at least 2 I may do this year)
• Building an entire app from an iPad (maybe, we’ll see)
• Writing about new apps I want to make this year (have like 3 in my head already)
• Swift UI
• General Apple Watch and iPad Topics
• Tech and App Reviews – Which will tie in with my YouTube account.

These are just a few that quickly came to mind. Hope this interests you and if so, feel free to hit me up on twitter or wherever you find me.

Obtain 1.3 went live in the App Store yesterday with the added ability to select different options for the watch complications.

Every complication is now supported and has at least a couple options to choose from. My favorite is still the Bezel complication you can now have the date and time displayed. Which I understand can be a little odd for a weight tracking app, but lets be real not everyone wants to scream it on the hills that they are trying to lose weight, so why not have the option to just see a small graph indicating your progress and the rest be relative information for you daily life.

This update a lot of fun, but also took me a little longer to get done. I hope you all enjoy it, if there is another complication option you’d like to see, please let me know. And if you haven’t yet be sure to download and check out the app

You hear so many people (well tech nerds at least) about how the AirPod are their favorited Apple product in years and although they are great they are also so frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong I love my AirPod I’m on my second pair (first pairs batteries started to give out) and have had a pair since day 2. I’ve carried them with me almost every day since them and use them multiple days a week if not everyday some weeks.

My biggest issue comes with using them with multiple devices and connecting. They constantly connect and disconnect when initially switching devices and getting them to reconnect seems like this awful dance of going into Bluetooth setting sometimes turning it off, sometimes restarting the entire device and then if all else fails removing them altogether doing s hard reset on the AirPods and repairing hem and forgetting to reset the tap button until after I trigger Siri accidentally.

Maybe I am alone in this, I know it’s way better then regular Bluetooth, but I have high hopes that version 2, whenever it comes out will be better at this along with whatever other features Apple decides to crams in there.

Simple. It solves the debate once and for all. The S is always capital. It just uses smaller font when ever possible. 🤯

Gonna be trying out Marsedit’s 4 beta. I loved this app back in the day, when I blogged more regularly so hoping it can get me back into the swing of things.

So the big announcement is about 12 hours away. And one of my main concerns is not the price, but the durability of the watch itself.

I have been wearing a smart device (mostly fitness) of some sort since 2011 with the first Jawbone UP.

Ignore the first UP, it had major issues. I have had the other 2 iterations, a Nike FuelBand, Fitbit Flex & Force, and the Pebble Steel.

One thing that all of these devices have in common is they all broke on me and had to be replaced multiple times (other than the recalled force, only had it for a couple weeks). I am not an extremely active person. I’m a computer programmer that spends most of his time in front of a computer, yet I have had all these issues with these wearable devices.

I believe that if anyone can get something right the first time it would be Apple, but I still worry about the durability of a daily device that is covered in glass and worn on my wrist.  I guess only time will tell, but I am personally hoping that there will be an AppleCare option for it.

Device kill count:

• UP – too many to remember
• Nike FuelBand – 3
• Fitbit Flex – 2 bands
• Pebble Steel – 4

I am awful when it comes to buying iPhone cases. I usually buy at 10-20 each year to try and find one that I can live with, only to end up with nothing on my phone most of the time. So I figured I would write a little blog post that I can update every time I buy a new case.

Leather Case from Apple

I love the feel of this case I had the leather case for my 5s and really liked it too. I did however, decide to take it back to Apple. I actually wished the bottom of the case was inclosed like the 5s version, it always made it feel less like a case and more part of the phone. Also the lip on the sides were just a little too much for my taste and I missed the great feel of the swiping the curved glass.

Feather Shine

My main reason in buying this case was that it didn’t obstruct the swiping feel. I went with the shine because I hate the feel of the soft-touch cases. This case lasted a whole 2 minutes on my phone. I don’t know what is up over at incipio, but this is the cheapest case I have ever used. it felt like a 2 dollar case.

Leather Case from Apple Again

So I really don’t feel safe not having a case on my iPhone. So I broke down and bought another leather case for now. I was pleasantly surprised that the sides on this one don’t stick out as much on this one compared to the last. Still miss the curved glass feel, but rather have a protected iPhone then one that could get broken a little easier.

Yesterday, I took off my beloved UP24 band for a day to test out the new UP for Pebble app. Sadly I won’t be replacing my UP24 just yet.

Morning

Started my morning off on the treadmill. Sadly, the Pebble version of the UP doesn’t allow you to set a workout mode to track individual workouts, but the iOS app did allow me to do it afterwards.

The pebble worked great on the treadmill the step count seemed to be very accurate compared to what I expected the UP band to be reporting.

Afternoon

This is when something went wrong, All of a sudden the steps on my watch were about 1300 steps behind

Evening

Finishing up the day at about 2,000 steps behind what the app is showing.

Impression

I really enjoyed just wearing one device on my wrists. Currently I wear my UP24 band on my left wrist and my pebble on my left, it was nice not having to do that, but the fact that the watch app doesn’t stay in sync with the app is very frustrating.

This is just the first version I am sure Jawbone will be hard at work to make this experience better and offer more feature like the sleep and workout tracking. If you don’t have a UP band and have a Pebble I still recommend take a look at the app even at this state it’s still nice to have.

My Setup

Jawbone now has two UP apps(blue and purple). I used the blue app that requires the band the purple is setup to get data from HealthKit and I didn’t want to have the steps from the M8 chip on my phone interfering with my step count.

So I was looking into why my iPad didn’t have any free spacing this morning and after deleting a few apps. turning off iCloud removing all my Messages and Photos. I still had 4.53GBs of other space being used.

So I did some searching to what all accounted for this “other” space and on the list was safari’s history and cookie data. So I gave that a shot and it was apparently storing over 3GBs of data on my iPad.

So if you trying to free up some space on your device don’t forget safari!

So I was looking into why my iPad didn’t have any free spacing this morning and after deleting a few apps. turning off iCloud removing all my Messages and Photos. I still had 4.53GBs of other space being used.

So I did some searching to what all accounted for this “other” space and on the list was safari’s history and cookie data. So I gave that a shot and it was apparently storing over 3GBs of data on my iPad.

So if you trying to free up some space on your device don’t forget safari!