The iPhone 5S - Target of Misguided Perpetual Disappointment

Apple has announced the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C, and they are almost exactly as the rumors and leaks predicted. As many Apple fans suggested before the announcement, the immediate tales of disappointment have begun flowing. This is as much of an annual tradition as the iPhone announcements themselves it seems.

Just one problem...

These "disappointing" updates to the iPhone continue to result in record setting sales and very happy customers.

Misguided Disappointment

I have a theory on what drives this misguided disappointment. Two main points:

1. Smartphones are a mature market, expecting Earth-shattering news at every release is wasted effort.
2. Tech bloggers' unwillingness to accept that a few highly refined, beautifully executed, and relevant features is as good (or better) than a myriad of gimmicky features.

Smartphones are Mature

The smartphone market has flourished, and parts of it are still growing fast. Case and point, performance:

However, the point remains that the market is maturing, and deltas between product generations aren't what they were the first few years. (At least not the ones that get tech bloggers' underpants all wadded up.) Every year I hear that the updates weren't enough, yet every year the sales are higher, the reviews are better, and the iPhone is the benchmark of the entire industry.

Features that Matter

Samsung has made a name for itself by releasing a wide variety of phones, many of which contain a set of features that span the entire usefulness spectrum, albeit heavily weighted toward the bottom end. This approach gives tech bloggers more to talk about, maybe that's the appeal.

Apple's approach is, always has been, and hopefully always will be, to add features that have been incredibly well thought out, expertly designed, highly refined, and very well implemented. As Jony Ive said in the promo video today:

"We believe technology is at its best and most empowering when it simply disappears." 

This is Apple's approach; it is so evident in everything they do. It has worked well for them in the past, and there is no sign of there being a change in that trend.

Closing Thoughts

I don't know if people are really disappointed, or if they just want the clicks. Either way I don't consider the perspective to be all that well thought out. This doesn't mean you have to love or want an iPhone, it doesn't even mean you need to like the iPhone (or Apple). It just means that we're all getting tired of folks hitting send on the "I'm disappointed with the new iPhone" message that they had composed and ready to send an hour before the announcement.

Reality of the Day-to-Day with the Pebble Smartwatch

The Pebble has gotten a TON of press, so I'm not going to rehash my whole product experience. I'm far too late to the game to pull that. Instead I want to share some of the unexpected things I've found from life with a Pebble.

1. Battery life is not as advertised. It isn't bad, but 3-4 days is no 7 days. However, with a charger as beautifully designed as this one, I genuinely don't mind at all.
2. Do Not Disturb Mode - Your iPhone might adhere to Do Not Disturb mode, but your Pebble won't.
3. Light as a feather - really threw me off at first, but I love it.
4. Forget using it to golf. One of the top features I was looking forward to was using it on the golf course. I'm going to say, "there is NO golf GPS support." Then someone will reply, "Yes there is, there is Free Caddie." Then I will reply, "Exactly, there is NO golf GPS support." 
5. RunKeeper is a keeper. I walk 1-3x per day, and RunKeeper support is wonderful while you're using it. I just wish I didn't have to disconnect/reconnect/reboot the app/reconnect again httpebble every time I was finished using RunKeeper.
6. Dis-Connectivity. Bluetooth connectivity between watch and phone is incredible, no issues there. However, if you use httpebble for anything (watch faces with data on them for example) you'll find it disconnects 5-15 times per day, 100% of the time after using RunKeeper.
7. Limited to 9 watch faces stored on the watch.
8. Soft plastic face scratches easily.

This only looks like a list of (mostly) complaints because the praise has already been given. This is a very cool watch, it was very fun to be part of the Kickstarter craziness, and I still chose to wear it ever day. I like my Pebble, but it hasn't changed my life like I expected it to. It is exactly what you'd expect, a first revision product from a new (ish) hardware company.

I have high hopes for the company and their future. They made a splash in the industry disproportionate to their size in the tech world. Perhaps most importantly, they put wearable technology onto front pages of papers across the nation and into conversations of people who I would never have expected.

Summer with a Nest Thermostat

A Colorado winter with the Nest thermostat was nothing short of wonderful. Check out my Living with Nest post from just a few weeks with Nest as the weather began to turn cold. Now, we're several months into a hot summer in the sunniest state in the U.S. and the Nest continues to impress.

There are two features that stand out to me - Airwave and Leafs - both serving as great complements to Auto Away, smartphone/tablet apps, informative monthly usage reports, and reliable intelligence.

Airwave

Nest's Airwave feature is one of their eco-friendly, yet user experience friendly, features. Simply put, Airwave saves energy by shutting off the air conditioning before the desired temperature is reached, but leaves the fan running to run air over the ice cold coils in the air conditioner and deliver the cold air into the house as if the AC was still running.

The cost of running the fan is nearly nonexistent compared to running the compressor, so the savings during this time is tremendous. AC is not an inexpensive way to stay comfortable, saving 10 minutes of running the compressor every time the AC runs on a hot day adds up very quickly.

Leafs

It has been repeatedly proven that using games, or Gamification, to motivate and inspire is extremely effective. The theory is simple - create a game-like scoring or reward system to show users a quantifiable result of their efforts. It works with weight loss, it works with achieving goals, and it works with making eco-friendly (perhaps more importantly, wallet-friendly) decisions about how to heat or cool your home.

Nest uses "Leafs" to do just this. Leafs show you when your Nest is set in such a way that it is using less and saving you more. Here is my Leaf summary from my last monthly report and the first time I was in the top 5%!

It is addicting. I enjoy seeing the tangible results of my decisions, and it is very inspiring to see that this is possible without sacrificing comfort. We like to keep the house comfortable, so achieving this didn't require putting ourselves out in any way.

It has been a lot of fun to have such an exciting piece of technology to play with. The apps are well written, stable, and intuitive. After almost a full year with the Nest, including both summer and winter, I can say with high confidence that this has been a great investment that I continue to recommend highly to family and friends.

2013 Internet Trends

Is it meant to be ironic that the "authority" of internet trends is hosted on a site that reminds me of the AOL era?

2013 slides are out. There are over 100, but worth scanning through them. There are some solid numbers on how serious of a market China is. It shows the iPad growth outpacing the iPhone by 3x.

I think the biggest surprise in there is the focus on sharing sound clips. Video and photo I understand, digital voice/VoIP/video calling I understand, but uploading audio content to SoundCloud seems somewhat insignificant next to those. I must not be a part of that/those demographic(s), I'll have to take their word on it.

i(ve)OS 7 - Bring it on!

Tim Cook confirmed the new look at D11 in the usual Apple (read: vague) way, but that's ok. Ive is nothing short of a genius, and he's heading this thing up. I say "bring on i(ve)OS 7!"

Jony Ive's iOS 7 Influence Will Be More Than Skin Deep - MacRumors

On Yahoo! Purchasing Astrid

I tried starting this with "Dear Yahoo!"... not only could I not live with "Dear" when addressing Yahoo!, even the exclamation point isn't sitting right with me. Maybe in the context of disappointment it is appropriate, but certainly not in the context of enthusiasm with which they intend.

Let me back up.

Yahoo! (ugh, "!") purchased the single best* shared to-do app 'Astrid' and has announced they're shutting it down in 90 days. Now Astrid (perhaps will honorably live for 90 days as Astrid! in my heart) wasn't without faults. There are the list counts that are usually wrong on shared lists, the UI isn't terribly attractive, and the weird Pac-Man Ghost-looking characters are juvenile, but I can forgive that. Astrid was by FAR our (my wife and my) first choice of shared to-do apps.

Grocery list? Astrid. To-Do list? Astrid. Weekend project list? Astrid. Home Depot, Costco, Target, Long Term Project Ideas, PetsMart? All Astrid. Tens if not a hundred or more items tracked, synced instantly, and wildly convenient. My wife can add something to the grocery list while I'm at the store, you can assign due dates, assign tasks, set reminders, there is a website you can log into and manage, the iPad app is good, the list goes on.

There is competition for Astrid, but none that even made a strong case. SimplyUs is simply miserable to use. Avocado is more aimed at messaging your partner, but has some shared list features. Cozi was uncomfortable to use at best. Toodledo is so hard on the eyes I'd hesitate about downloading it for free, never mind $2.99. I want to like Clear, but if you need a guide on how to use the UI, you failed at making a UI. If Remember The Milk has shared list capabilities they're buried, and that's about all I want this for. Any.Do is stunningly beautiful for a few to-do's that aren't shared, but anything more becomes cumbersome.

And Wunderlist... oh dear Wunderlist. A favorite of mine years ago was replaced by the native iOS Reminders app (for my personal, non-shared to-do list) comes to the rescue. I ditched them for sub-par sharing features and what seemed like a tried-too-hard-to-simplify UI. I decided to test drive each of these apps before stating that Astrid had no competition, and I'm glad I did. I'm happy to announce my wife and I will be switching to Wunderlist.

Ok, back to a now-less-overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

I can't blame the folks at Astrid. Turning down an offer from a big company like Yahoo! isn't something I can say I'd look forward to doing. I can, however, blame the folks at Yahoo! (Exclamation seems appropriate, this time.) I was hopeful when Marissa Mayer took over. I enjoyed the news of her firm positions on certain things. Now I'm thinking that she, along with the rest of Yahoo!, doesn't know where they fit in this world. They're struggling to find an identity online, a place where Google owns just about everything search or email related.

Marissa, this isn't the way to do it. I'll change my position if you re-launch Astrid in a new and better way, but if you integrate it with Yahoo! Mail in such a way that I've got to switch my services over to Yahoo! from Gmail, you have failed. If you don't re-launch Astrid in a new and kick ass way, and you've done nothing historically to make me believe you're capable of such a feat, then you have failed.

Yahoo! reminds me of a young teenager - struggling to figure out who they are while lashing out without thinking twice about taking others down with them in the process. Now if only there was a way to send them to their room to think about what they've done.

*Single Best title was awarded before re-trying all of the apps mentioned above. I've only had the new Wunderlist for a half hour or so, but they're giving Astrid a run for its money at least, if not besting it.

P.S. - Huge thanks to Wunderlist for improving your product and providing a superior experience! You've got 2 new customers, and I suspect many more to come.

An iPhone User's Trial Switch to Android

I have been intensely interested in trying out an Android phone ever since the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the operating system was released. It was at this point that Google started to hone in their user experience, a major iOS-ism that many reviews agreed was lacking from Android previously.

I'll pause here to state that this isn't bashing either mobile OS. This is nothing more than my experience, as a long (ish) time iPhone/iPad user, living with the Android operating system on a non-Google "flagship" phone. I also understand that my starting point for expectations was largely based on iOS, no matter how much I tried to avoid it. Consider this and understand that my stumbling outlined below isn't an anti-Android rant, rather it is simply a documentation of my hardships. I welcome any feedback on how I could avoid these types of issues.

I was presented with the unique opportunity to try out an LG Optimus G on the Sprint network here in the U.S., for free. This device is running Android ICS v4.1.2.

Key Features and Specs:

• Quad-Core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor
• 4G LTE connectivity
• 13MP rear camera (AT&T version has 8MP)
• Dimensions: 5.15" (H) x 2.82" (W) x 0.33" (D)
• Weight: 5.19 oz.
• Screen: 4.7" 768x1280 IPS+
• Battery: 2100 mAh
• Capacity: 32GB

My Experience

My experience was a mixed bag. I hoped to come away from this experience genuinely struggling to say what my next phone I purchase will be. I planned on capitalizing on the inter-app data sharing, tweaks/customizations, and widgets that Android had to offer. Most of all, I wanted to dispel any notion that fragmentation is an issue with high end devices. I wasn't entirely successful.

Quick disclaimer: I should mention that any speed issues I (appropriately) attribute to the Sprint network, not the device. This phone was very fast and responsive and was always as fast as the given network connectivity would allow me to be. After suffering with AT&T in the early iPhone days I have practice at separating the phone experience from the carrier's shortcomings.

Powerful, Useful, and Generally Awesome Things

There are some features that were extremely welcome, Apple would be wise to take some cues.

• Snoozing reminders and calendar events. No brainer here, it can be implemented cleanly and makes multitasking on the device (and in life) much more powerful.
• Faster dictation, types as you talk. The dictation didn't seem to be any more accurate (though, maybe a bit), but the fact that it types out as you speak makes the experience smooth and fast, much faster than iOS.
• More useful status bar. I don't think Apple should adopt this, but there are certainly times it is handy. I'd pay money for an icon in the status bar to show me when I'm muted on a call though. Alas neither OS fills that need (unless Android can and I missed it?).
• Closing a tab in a browser that was opened from clicking a link in another app closes the browser and returns me to where I clicked the link. This is a great feature, but wouldn't be needed if they solved the problem like iOS and uses web views within that app with the link. 
• Share menu. Powerful, but cluttered. I liked sharing more easily to Google+, my social network of choice. For the average user this menu is filled with a TON of apps, scrolling through them wasn't terribly pleasant. Again, not something I'd suspect or want Apple to borrow.
• Browsing and installing apps from the web. You can do this with iTunes, but that requires iTunes.
• All of your calendars sync for Google Calendar. If you've got pro sports teams, they sync. In iOS, those calendars do not sync, but most do. Really iOS is just missing pro sports team calendar syncing as far as I can tell.
• Although the stock (LG, not the stock Android) keyboard was fantastically miserable, I remedied this by installing SwiftKey. Both the Flow and standard input with SwiftKey were fast and fluid. SwiftKey's autocorrect was better than iOS by quite a bit, and I like the iOS autocorrect for the most part.
• Clear all notifications in a single tap. Astonishing iOS doesn't have this.
• Kill all open apps in a tap. Again, astonishing that iOS doesn't have this.
• Quick and responsive operating system. It was very clear I was using a phone with great hardware specs.
• Good camera. I didn't do thorough camera testing, but in the handful of indoor shots with the Optimus G and my iPhone 5 the LG fared very well, often better than the iPhone.

Pressure Points

• My biggest complaint, hands down, is that headset controls don't work in a system wide fashion, or hardly at all for that matter. Per my understanding, you can buy headsets from a company, then use their music player app, and the headset works (play, pause, volume, issuing voice commands) within that particular app. This NEEDS to be a system wide thing. To pause music I have to press the lock button, enter a PIN, find the music app that's playing, open it, tap pause. Some offer play/pause functionality in the notification pull down, but that's not much better. Now consider how frustrating that is while walking the dog in the cold all bundled up with the phone tucked away. Not ok, I might have to seek therapy for how upsetting this is.
• Size... the phone was far too big. Single handed usage is entirely out of the question other than scrolling down a feed/website that is already open. Back button? Not going to happen. More on this later.
• Stock keyboard was terrible, so very terrible. (LG-ism, Android is not to blame here.)
• Non-fluid UI. Though improved, it is still far from iOS. Here's a nice breakdown of why. This wasn't as big of an issue as I thought it might be. It didn't feel like iOS, but it isn't iOS. Overall the system was very speedy and responsive, just not always fluid.
• When you're momentum scrolling, you tap to stop, right? Wrong. This selects whatever you tapped on to stop, very frustrating. You can work around this by tapping and dragging ever so slightly, but it is illogical to select whatever you tapped as you scrolled by at lightning speed.
• Error messaging isn't always informative. One error told me to update the profile, no indication of where or how this could be done. Not really a big deal 99% of the time though.
• Stock messaging/SMS app is unimpressive. Tap back once to hide the keyboard, tap back again to view all threads. This is frustrating. 3rd party SMS apps provide good work arounds, I used Chomp.
• Messages get marked as read when they shouldn't be (LG-ism). If the messaging app is open when the device is locked, unlocking the phone returns you to the home screen, this appears to be the same for any app (but I didn't test it in depth). This little nuance has the byproduct of marking any new SMS you got while the phone was locked as read when you unlock the device.
• Auto-brightness seemed more like front row tickets the backlight having a seizure. This was during indoor use in an office with overhead lighting, but I experienced this whether moving or not.
• Subtle visual indicators were something I didn't realize I was so accustom to. For instance, in the Gmail app I couldn't find the notification settings. When I learned I just had to tap my email address in settings, all was well, but it surprised me there was no visual indication that it was tappable. I found I was frequently tapping things that were labels and not tapping things that were tappable. I also missed the rubber band effect.
• Icon notification counts. The info is in the status bar, but those numbers are tiny. Not a big deal, but I missed them. 
• Gmail app crashed, a lot. Likely an LG-ism, but not okay.
• Full screen YouTube videos in the Chrome browser didn't trigger whatever the phone needs to understand it should leave the screen on. Let that sink in. On an Android device. With the Chrome browser. YouTube didn't work. If only a single company owned all of those....
• Notification settings aren't centralized. Some are in the OS settings, some in the apps. The stock apps weren't nearly as configurable as 3rd party, and in some cases not even as configurable as iOS.

Larger Screen Size - Good or Bad?

Not long ago I upgraded from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5, to this point that has been my large screen experience. I know, Galaxy Note owners are trying to catch a breath between laughs...

I'm an average sized guy. 5'11'. Hands aren't oddly large or oddly small. There was no question that I cannot use this phone entirely with one hand. I could sort of wiggle my hand and make it work at the expense of securely holding the device, but as I'm walking or on the go I use my devices one handed a ton. I also want to have a decent grip on the phone; I define a decent grip as the ability to invert my hand and overpower gravity's attempt to claim the device from my grip.

Most of the time I'd just bring in the second hand briefly to tap the back button or to click the URL bar up top, or to reach that "other" ~30% of the device that was otherwise off limits. It made me feel better about stretching to reach the back button in the top left of every iPhone 5 app, but made me realize it was doable. This 4.7" LG, for me, is just too big.

I expected to be frustrated with the extra size while it was in my pocket, but love it when I was using the device. I found the opposite. I had no qualm with the device size in my pocket, but when I was using it, I rarely found that I could do, see, or enjoy anything more with the extra screen real estate. The inability to one-hand the phone was too large of an issue for me to brush off, it was a real problem for me.

Here's an example of what I mean. Now I'm the first to admit that this example is sort of bias - the screen IS bigger despite the Gmail app on the LG (above) making poor use of the extra space as shown here. Watching a video is much bigger, and some content is just bigger, but not always. Not to mention seeing 8 tweets instead of 6 at once isn't a "feature" when I can only read one at a time.

Demonstration of my feeling that the screen size didn't really gain me anything.

Android-Only Features

There were things like inter-app data sharing, widgets, and customizability that are, at the core, against everything iOS is designed for. These are the things I expected to knock my socks off, to really show me the light that is the explosion of Android popularity, and to ultimately seal the deal that Android might just be for me.

Inter-app data sharing wasn't terribly useful. The best part was sharing to Google+, my social network of choice. I could see the same being true for any social network. Beyond that, there didn't seem to be anything iOS didn't offer, besides an extremely cluttered list of apps to chose from. In iOS, you can chose to process the file with any installed app that has alerted the OS that it can process said file type, so only the relevant apps are in the list. For Android, they're all there, all the time. What are some common use cases where this feature kicks some serious ass? I'm all ears!

Widgets were interesting. Weather was useful, though only a swipe closer to me than iOS has it. Email widgets were pretty helpful since the notifications show less of a preview of the message than iOS does. Twitter seemed to randomly update and show a couple of tweets from the semi-recent history randomly in your timeline. System usage is interesting, but more of a parlor trick. I found myself adding several, then removing most of them a few days later. I certainly haven't missed them since I've been back on iOS. Edit: I take this back, the antenna/feature toggles such as wifi and bluetooth were amazing, I can't believe iOS has these so buried in menus! What other widgets was I missing? What are the favorites?

Customizability was certainly available. It wasn't always straight forward, but I could change an awful lot of things. Had my corporate email not required a PIN (I later removed it for flexibility) the lock screen was capable of being more functional that most home screens, but what's the point of a lock screen at that point? The home screen could be anything, not just apps. Themes aren't of interest to me, or most anyone over 15. Changing default services was pretty cool, though I expected more of a system level way to do this. For instance, with messaging you just disable alerts for the system messaging app when using 3rd party, like Chomp. The Chomp app told me to do this, it wasn't automatic when I installed Chomp, nor was I even presented with the question if I'd like the system to do it for me.

I'm not calling these things duds. Quite the opposite, they gave me some very new and interesting toys to play with. The big difference is that I only found myself using them when I was playing, not when I was using my smartphone as a smartphone.

Google Play

I was a little bit surprised how daunting Google Play was at times. The names of apps and plugins are cryptic at times. Usually the app you're looking to download is straightforward, and at (or near) the top of the search results. However, there are a surprising number of search results that are named so similarly you second guess yourself about which to install. It gets better as you get used to it, but it is odd. Seeing a version of an app for certain phones, then a different version for other phones was something I didn't expect to see. I liked the explicit outline of the app's access to your phone, though the amount of access some apps unnecessarily had was troublesome.

Not Calling this Section Fragmentation

"Fragmentation" is over used, and usually when the term is mentioned, half the audience stops reading. So this section isn't called "Fragmentation".

I've spoken with users of true-Google devices about some of my pressure points, crashes, and things that bugged me about my Android experience. I was reassured on several of the frustrations that they weren't Android-isms, but were LG-isms. Point taken.

The iOS perspective here is that these LG-isms that greatly detract from the user experience simply shouldn't be allowed to exist. They're so fundamental and frustrating for anyone used to iOS stability (and trust me, I wasn't expecting iOS stability) these things are pain points. If the point of Android is to be open so nearly any hardware/software configuration is an option for customers, why is it that a flagship phone is allowed to exist with such a flawed user experience?

To me, this seems damning. Where does that put the non-flagship phones that account for the majority of Android activations? I'm almost scared to know.

My inner-nerd can't entirely agree with that position though. It wasn't Google that detracted from the experience, even if they enabled it. Blaming Google for LG's poor execution isn't fair, I just wish it weren't an issue to begin with.

What's Next?

I plan to root the device so that I can install Jelly Bean and attempt to get the most current and most pure-Google experience. I expect this will help with several of the software complaints I had, I hope it will anyway.

I welcome any input, too. Please leave comments about your switch or how you took advantage of Android awesomeness that just isn't possible on iOS. I'd love to hear about it!

Closing Thoughts

Andy Inhatko's recent piece on why he switched from iPhone to Android was inspiring, I suggest reading it. One huge difference from his experience is that this is my first hands-on (longer than 2 minutes) with the OS. To attempt to compare Android to iOS, where I'm extremely familiar, after anything less than a few months is probably painting myself as ignorant. What I hope to do here is document my initial experience and seek feedback on how to speed through the rest of the learning curve.

There's no getting around the fact that everyone uses their phone in their own unique way. These experiences are my own and, more than likely, these experiences only slightly overlap with your usage. Apple has chosen a one-size-fits-all approach where they (attempt to?) base their design and functionality on common ground. Android takes the opposite approach.

It is an interesting dichotomy, and I can't help but wonder how much (more than I'm aware) my current usage and expectations are biased due to the fact that I've been using iOS for so long and formed my habits on iOS, so that is how I expect a device to work. 

Choosing Sides in the iOS/Android Discussion... Don't

If you have read comments from a technology review or article in the last five years, or really just about any article, you'll see that most people think there is a war going on in tech - Apple vs. Google, iOS vs. Android, Closed vs. Open - call it what you want. There are people, myself included, who disagree.

Andy Ihnatko hit the nail on the head this week, several times in fact. He started on Tuesday when he published the first piece to his story 'Why I switched from iPhone to Android'. He continued on Wednesday when he published part two about customization and collaboration. To close, he cemented his place in tech journalism history (if you ask me) as intelligent and genuinely here for the technology with his conclusion published Thursday detailing the pros and the cons of the switch.

Andy, I want to thank you. I want to thank you as an iPhone owner, one who is very happy with my device. Your agnostic analysis of why Android became the right choice for you renewed my faith in technology journalism. It was a refreshing piece that focuses on how magnificent the technology of our time is and how it is the most exciting time in history to be alive (if you like tech that is).

For those who haven't read it, here's one of the several "disclaimers" (that are entirely necessary as demonstrated by the fact that even with them the comments went off into troll-land) that explain why both iOS and Android can be awesome and it isn't a black and white debate:

As I said at the very beginning, this isn’t the story of why Android is Way Totally So Much Better Than iOS. This is the story of this one dude who switched phones. Andy Ihnatko moving to Android isn’t a pivotal moment in the history of mobile computing. I just thought that a detailed piece of my observations, concerns, and experiences would be of interest to anybody who’s curious about Android. And given the revolutionary improvements in the platform over the past year, I thought it was timely.

When I assert the position that both mobile operating systems are incredible most responses I get are passive aggressive. "Well yeah, iOS is great for old people." or "Android is cool, but I just don't want to risk getting viruses." My favorite is when someone uses open or closed-ness as their argument for iOS or Android but isn't able to explain what open/closed means or how the respective OSes embody it. I'm not suggesting everyone needs to understand the intricacies of their mobile OS's philosophy; rather I'm highlighting how ridiculous the "war" has gotten and how entrenched so many people are in their opinions, often blindly.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and not everyone will give credit to the "other" OS for one reason or another. Unfortunately, if your opinion is such that only one OS can "win", you are wrong (hint: italics are sarcasm font.) Like Andy said, it isn't Apple OR Google, it is Apple AND Google.

I won't rehash the platform agnostic, pro-awesome-tech, stance because it has been done already. I cannot recommend highly enough that you read Andy's work - part one, part two, and part three.

If you agree that both companies are awesome, this guide to making Gmail on your iPhone/iPad work how you want it to work might help.

Determine the Ship Date of Your Pebble Kickstarter Order [Outdated]

UDPATE - This post is quite outdated due to some updates from the folks at Pebble. My attempt to re-estimate was lost in the Blogger auto-save world and I don't have time to redo it.

If you haven't heard, they announced at CES yesterday that Pebbles will start shipping on January 23, 2012. This is very welcome news for my fellow backers and I who have been following their story and updates closely since early April 2012.

Image from Pebble

Thanks to Kicktraq we can use the funding progress graph to determine an approximate ship date for your Pebble smart watch.

Image from Kicktraq

First you'll need to find the date that you backed the project, personally I did on 4/14/12. As far as I can tell, the only way to get this information is from the confirmation email they sent you. If you log into Amazon Payments, you get the 5/18/12 date since that is when the project finished the Kickstarter campaign and credit cards got charged - this isn't the date you backed the project.

[UPDATE] - Thank you to Brian Phillips for pointing out this tip on how to determine your backer date if you cannot find your email from Amazon Payments: "...sign into Kickstarter then go to My Backer History (drop down the menu under Me in the upper right corner), it will tell you what day you backed the project."

Now you'll need to figure out how much money was raised at the time you funded the project. There were 85,000 watches ordered with $10,266,844 raised. Naturally there are various factors we cannot account for - some people only backed a few dollars rather than buying watches, and some watches cost more than others, so this is an approximation.

It is crude math, but let's say the average watch cost $120.79 ($10,266,844/85,000) - a reasonable assumption if you ask me. They said they will be making 15,000 watches per week, and shipping starts on 1/23/13. It is safe to assume at least 30,000 watches will have been made at that point since they entered mass production around 1/9/12 or before - meaning at least 2 full weeks of full production before they start shipping.

This means that 35% of watches will be made when orders start to ship. So looking at the math, we see that if you ordered by 4/16/12, you are likely to be in the first batch of shipments. However, looking at this chart of backers by day, you see that backing as late as the 18th might still mean you're in the first shipment since that was the day they hit ~30,000 backers.

Image from Kicktraq

If you backed after the 16th (or 18th, depending how optimistic you are), you can assume that 15,000 new watches being made every week, resulting in these approximate shipping dates:

I used data from Kicktraq, and as you can see not all $10.2M or 85,000 are accounted for exactly, so there is an error margin here. However, this should give you a pretty good idea of when your order will ship. I will say that these dates seem a bit optimistic compared to the "6 to 8 weeks" Pebble stated would be required to fulfill all Kickstarter orders. I have absolutely no affiliation with Pebble, nor do I have any inside information. This is just an attempt to use publicly available information and numbers (huge thanks to Kicktraq) to put this together.

They will be shipping via USPS and will be contacting you approximately a week before your order ships.

I hope this help since I'm sure all of you fellow backers are as excited as I am about this!

Perceived Value: Why Apple and Costco Aren't So Different

The perception of value weighs strongly on consumers, a lot more than most people realize. It drives us at nearly all levels of consciousness because we inherently want valuable things. Now, keep in mind valuable isn't necessarily monetarily valuable, but can be measured in nearly any way.

We each have our own measure of value for everything in our lives, hence the famous saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure." So, why Apple and Costco? (P.S. those aren't the only two brands that do this.)

The main point is this - a large number of customers of these two companies have convinced themselves they're getting a good deal before they walk in the door.

Costco

At Costco you go in with a list of 10 things, but when you see the mega-pack of toothpaste you realize you're getting low and figure this has to be a good deal, sold. Ever think that the environment and decor wasn't just a warehouse because it is cheaper than a standard retail store? When you walk in and see the vast sea of products, the 100 TV boxes, and the 30 foot tall shelves full of the item you're buying, how could you not be getting a good deal since they bought THAT many of one item for a single store?

In reality, you usually are getting a good deal. Not always, but rarely do the masses comparison shop Costco like they do at Best Buy (I call Best Buy the Tech Titanic). Recently, I found that Christmas lights were 1.8x the price for 1/2 the length strands for LED bulbs at Costco, they were selling like crazy none-the-less.

The warehouse look isn't the only thing. They put a ton of effort into doing the research for you, so when you go, there is ONE ketchup option to chose. Can you imagine if the grocery store only had one option? The perception of value is different - the grocery store provides value through a wide selection and reasonable quantity options. Costco provides value through bulk pricing and making your choice easy so you don't even have to stop the cart to buy ketchup, you merely slow down as you throw out your back picking up a gallon or two.

The point with Costco is that they hit the nail on the head for making their customers understand the value they provide. Most anyone at Costco walks in the door expecting to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars and will even laugh when they get to check out and cheer "I did it for less than $400!" (I actually heard that once). The value they're getting isn't being measured by dollars first, so damn the expense, put it on the famous Costco AmEx!

Apple

Albeit an entirely different industry (I'm not sure if Apple has any plans for iKetchup, but I somehow doubt it), Apple is very much the same way with how their products are perceived.

Side note: Apple is a polarizing topic, and many people have blindly 100% dismissed Apple products as a bad deal no matter what, just like some have blindly 100% accepted their products as a good deal no matter what. These are closed minded people and most of them fall under the "troll" category.

Apple demonstrates their value through their famous product introductions (among other ways). The demonstrations are simple, clean, well documented by the press, and like their products, they are polished... freakishly well polished. Apple demonstrates their value through simplicity. Their products have changed the way society views buttons, they have reshaped industrial design as we know it, and to date there really isn't another product that is mistaken for an Apple product (crappy Chinese knock offs do not count). Apple demonstrates their value through ubiquity. Their products are understood, most anyone can navigate one (even if they never have before), their accessory market is larger than any other by a long shot. Recently they changed their dock connector, so that is a small (but totally necessary) setback for their accessory market, but they've been establishing that market with 10 years of compatibility, that's huge.

So when people are quick to point out why Apple products are expensive and they start comparing technical specs, they've already missed the point by a long shot. That person measures value differently than Apple and Apple has no interest in marketing to them. Tech specs simply aren't what matters to Apple. As Matt Drance points out (highlighted by John Gruber), "It's no coincidence that the 'Tech Specs' link atop apple.com/iphone is dead last."

Does that make people who measure tech specs wrong? No. I think tech specs have their place, and as a geek I have a deep appreciation for them. However, Apple has done a good job of showing why the product experience is more valuable than the tech specs for their products, and that is just something not everyone will agree on. No worries.

What this means is that just like Costco, people walk into an Apple store expecting to spend money because money isn't the most important thing in how they're determining the value of the products. Their perceived value of Apple products is just higher than other products. It is a reason why their product margins are higher than competition. The people who don't understand why people pay what they pay are the people who either don't know enough to understand that perception of value, they're too closed minded to accept it, or they genuinely don't put value in what Apple does.

It is a very interesting phenomenon, but is nothing new and not unique to Apple in any way. The way Apple could become unique is if they are able to survive the life-cycle that every other company in history has fallen victim to. Only time will tell.

Understanding When "4G" isn't 4G

Not All "4G" is Equal

Most carriers are lying to you. I find it a bit insulting, here is what you need to know to make informed decisions about 4G.

The term "4G" is overused, abused, and throughly misleading... thanks to the carriers. Real 4G networks are Long Term Evolution (commonly referred to as LTE) and WiMax (which Sprint is repurposing for prepaid 4G service only). Fake 4G, referred to by most geeks as 3.5G, is HSPA+ and is almost entirely what AT&T and entirely what T-Mobile rely on and call "4G".

You probably recognize "LTE" from Verizon commercials, that is because they're the only carrier that isn't lying to you about their 4G coverage. Here's what I mean... (iPhone 4S users, there's a section specially for you below.)

AT&T

AT&T claims to have the "largest 4G network." This conveniently avoids defining what they mean by "4G" because their coverage isn't actually 4G, it is 3.5G or HSPA+. Here are the coverage maps to compare AT&T vs. Verizon on their 4G LTE coverage.

AT&T 4G LTE Coverage

Verizon 4G LTE Coverage

It is worth mentioning that the places where AT&T has LTE coverage, it is very fast and reportedly satisfactory, same as Verizon.

T-Mobile

The lies don't stop there, T-Mobile has no 4G LTE coverage to speak of, they plan to start building it in 2013.

T-Mobile tries to sell their "4G" network (actually 3.5G) by comparing to other carriers. There's just one problem, they aren't comparing apples to apples. In this head-to-head with Verizon, they compare the Samsung Galaxy SII (T-Mobile) to the iPhone 4S (Verizon). They cover themselves legally by noting this in the fine print, but who reads that? The iPhone 4S on Verizon is a 3G device ONLY. There is no LTE support on the iPhone 4S, and Verizon doesn't have an HSPA+ network (which the iPhone 4S does support if the network does). They compare 3.5G HSPA+ to 3G CDMA, there is no relevant comparison to be made. I call bullshit.

iPhone 4S Users, What You Need to Know

I get the confused questions quite frequently with the iPhone 4S regarding 3G/4G support. The iPhone 4S supports HSPA+, which AT&T has and calls 4G. Verizon doesn't have an HSPA+ network, so Verizon iPhone 4S owners never see "4G" in their status bar. However, AT&T iPhone 4S owners do frequently see "4G" in their status bar. I hope the above article helps to clarify why that is. The iPhone 4S does not support 4G LTE, so when your iPhone 4S reads "4G" it is really 3.5G.

Closing Comments

HSPA+ isn't a bad technology and it doesn't result in slow crummy internet connections. It is quite the opposite in fact. I have no qualm with HSPA+ and I like that AT&T customers have that to fall back on before falling back yet again onto 3G. I just dislike the lack of clarity and false inflation of terms to try to sell you things that aren't accurate.

The argument on the flip side of the coin is that HSPA+ speeds are closer to 4G than to 3G, this is true. I saw HSPA+ called "3.75G" rather than 3.5G, and that might be a more accurate term.

What it all comes down to is understanding the network you rely on all day every day. This can save you money and will hopefully save you from the dreaded (biased as hell) salesmen at the carrier's stores.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/counter-arguments in the comments.

Understanding When "4G" isn't 4G

Not All "4G" is Equal

Most carriers are lying to you. I find it a bit insulting, here is what you need to know to make informed decisions about 4G.

The term "4G" is overused, abused, and throughly misleading... thanks to the carriers. Real 4G networks are Long Term Evolution (commonly referred to as LTE) and WiMax (which Sprint is repurposing for prepaid 4G service only). Fake 4G, referred to by most geeks as 3.5G, is HSPA+ and is almost entirely what AT&T and entirely what T-Mobile rely on and call "4G".

You probably recognize "LTE" from Verizon commercials, that is because they're the only carrier that isn't lying to you about their 4G coverage. Here's what I mean... (iPhone 4S users, there's a section specially for you below.)

AT&T

AT&T claims to have the "largest 4G network." This conveniently avoids defining what they mean by "4G" because their coverage isn't actually 4G, it is 3.5G or HSPA+. Here are the coverage maps to compare AT&T vs. Verizon on their 4G LTE coverage.

AT&T 4G LTE Coverage

Verizon 4G LTE Coverage

It is worth mentioning that the places where AT&T has LTE coverage, it is very fast and reportedly satisfactory, same as Verizon.

T-Mobile

The lies don't stop there, T-Mobile has no 4G LTE coverage to speak of, they plan to start building it in 2013.

T-Mobile tries to sell their "4G" network (actually 3.5G) by comparing to other carriers. There's just one problem, they aren't comparing apples to apples. In this head-to-head with Verizon, they compare the Samsung Galaxy SII (T-Mobile) to the iPhone 4S (Verizon). They cover themselves legally by noting this in the fine print, but who reads that? The iPhone 4S on Verizon is a 3G device ONLY. There is no LTE support on the iPhone 4S, and Verizon doesn't have an HSPA+ network (which the iPhone 4S does support if the network does). They compare 3.5G HSPA+ to 3G CDMA, there is no relevant comparison to be made. I call bullshit.

iPhone 4S Users, What You Need to Know

I get the confused questions quite frequently with the iPhone 4S regarding 3G/4G support. The iPhone 4S supports HSPA+, which AT&T has and calls 4G. Verizon doesn't have an HSPA+ network, so Verizon iPhone 4S owners never see "4G" in their status bar. However, AT&T iPhone 4S owners do frequently see "4G" in their status bar. I hope the above article helps to clarify why that is. The iPhone 4S does not support 4G LTE, so when your iPhone 4S reads "4G" it is really 3.5G.

Closing Comments

HSPA+ isn't a bad technology and it doesn't result in slow crummy internet connections. It is quite the opposite in fact. I have no qualm with HSPA+ and I like that AT&T customers have that to fall back on before falling back yet again onto 3G. I just dislike the lack of clarity and false inflation of terms to try to sell you things that aren't accurate.

The argument on the flip side of the coin is that HSPA+ speeds are closer to 4G than to 3G, this is true. I saw HSPA+ called "3.75G" rather than 3.5G, and that might be a more accurate term.

What it all comes down to is understanding the network you rely on all day every day. This can save you money and will hopefully save you from the dreaded (biased as hell) salesmen at the carrier's stores.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/counter-arguments in the comments.

Living with the Nest 2.0 Thermostat

The Nest is a profound re-imagination of an otherwise stale and uninteresting technology - your home's thermostat. You might not be able to picture yourself getting excited about a thermostat, and for a perfectly good reason, but that's about to change. What you're about to see is a brilliant, intuitive, beautifully designed piece of hardware that makes your controlling your home's temperature fun, smart, and interesting - oh and there's an app! Here's their promo video:

Starting to see why this might be fun? Here's what I mean when I say it is beautifully designed.

Source: Nest.com

The learning thermostat.

I have had the Nest 2.0 for 2 weeks now, so I'm only getting started. This has without question been one of my favorite new toys. Nest 2.0 is pictured above and is 20% slimmer than 1.0. They both run the same 3.0 software and have similar feature sets, though the 2.0 is compatible with more systems. Nest has 4 sensors and connects to your home WiFi network to always be accessible via any computer or smartphone. The first week or so you'll want to program your Nest when you expect to see a change. You can set up a schedule and even still you may make manual changes here and there. You'll notice it starts to get smarter as you use it. 

Nest understands that your life isn't clockwork, your Monday schedule last week might not be your Monday schedule this week. Yet when an unexpected snow storm hits next Monday and you forgot to set the schedule to warm up right before you get home, you won't even need to use the app to do it because it is aware of the weather and will do it for you.

Talking with people who have had the first generation Nest for a year, they say they haven't touched or programmed their thermostat in months even as they transition between seasons, they are just always comfortable. One of those houses was even a more dynamic house with a few people living there and roommates moving in and out periodically, Nest figured it all out.

Nest is smart, eerily smart.

Nest knows the weather outside, it knows when you're home or away, and it knows what temperature keeps your family comfortable and when. It knows the difference between you being home yet asleep and you being away, though I haven't done extensive testing to "trick" it. It did figure out when we left for the weekend after only 1 week of ownership. A big perk for us is that it doesn't misunderstand your dog's motion as thinking you've gotten home. 

Like other smarter thermostats it will inform you when your filter needs to be changed too. Yet unlike many thermostats there is attention to detail and efficiency everywhere you look. As a great example, when you run your AC and your house reaches the desired temperature, it shuts off. What about all the cold air still in the system though? The Nest understands when your home is nearing the desired temperature and shuts off the AC but continues to pump the cool air. This can save you as much as 20%* of your AC run time, that is extraordinary!

*Source: Nest.com

Green.

Nest is designed to keep you comfortable, but also to keep you informed and help you make greener choices. This translates to money in your pocket and feeling good that you've done something good for the planet.

When you're setting your system (or it sets itself) to a temperature that requires less heating or cooling to achieve, you see a small green leaf on the display. It sounds tiny, but it is really powerful feedback. If you were leaving for the afternoon and lowered your heat to say 65 but noticed a leaf when you accidentally went past it to 63, wouldn't you leave it at 63? I have found that just a couple of degrees has made me "greener" nearly every single day.

From the app or web app you can monitor your usage to see when your system is running, what the resulting temperature is, and how that related to the weather outside that day. We just bought our house so we don't have previous years of data to compare bills to, but I know with our previous stagnant single temperature setup we are saving a significant amount of money with our new Nest without question.

The critics.

There are critics of the Nest that claim the Nest is no (or hardly) better than a standard programmable thermostat. Is Nest a programmable thermostat? Well yes, in the same way that a Bentley is a car. (Insert a joke about the cost here!) The Nest is much smarter than any other thermostat, it is much more accessible than most other thermostats (and even thermostats that have apps to control them pale in comparison with app quality and functionality), and frankly it is designed by folks who care. A thermostat doesn't have to be a hideous white brick on your wall.

Cost.

Naturally the biggest drawback here is cost. The Nest 2.0 costs $249 and can be purchased at Amazon.com**, Nest.com, or others. High end programmable thermostats are $150 to $200, and even a decent lower end one is going to cost you $80. The efficiency savings, the convenience of control on-the-go, the beautiful design, and the extremely powerful data it gives you about your system usage, all more than make up for that price.

**At the time of writing Amazon appears to be out of stock and claiming it is $289 and only available through 3rd party retailers, I know this isn't true since that's where I got mine.


I cannot recommend this product more highly. I love my Nest and it was worth every penny. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments. Since I've only had it a short time, I might have forgotten to elaborate on a particular subject, please feel free to let me know and I'll add to my review!

Harmony Between Your iPhone and Gmail, Google Cal, etc.

It seems like just about every single article says either Apple or Google has a great product for one reason or another. I emphasize the "or" because the topic seems to be getting as polarized as politics. I can't imagine my daily life without the stunning simplicity, convenience, and technological bliss that is the marriage of Apple and Google products. I wanted to put together this guide to help out friends, family, and anyone else who wants the same.

I know the post is long, but this is as exhaustive of a summary and guide as I've seen on the internet. I hope it helps to better your experience of iOS and Google products working in a wonderful harmony!

My Devices & Services

• iPhone 4S & iPad 2 (same setup for both is recommended)
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• All contacts are in Gmail

Setup

Account Types on the iPhone

This isn't as simple as adding a Gmail type account to your iOS device, this is the primary reason that most people aren't enjoying this setup.

Add a new Exchange account by selecting Settings (app) > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account...

Fill out your Email, Password, and add any description you like (mine is just "Gmail").

Press Next, there will be more to fill out. Note that your email address is your username @ your domain, so you should either leave the "Domain" blank and have your full email address as your username, or do what I do below. It shouldn't technically matter which way you chose.

Press Done.

Settings

Here are the rest of my settings for the account:

• Sync Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders. 
• Mail - This is a true sync (using the IMAP protocol), so if you delete on your iPhone you Archive it in Gmail. The exact contents of the Inbox on your phone will represent the Inbox on the server. This gets rid of the old-school concept of downloading a message off the server where the message is literally removed from the server (this technology was known as POP3). The question I get most often is how to actually delete an email - you must select Move To... then the Trash folder, just as you would move it to any other folder.
• Please note: You will need to enable IMAP access in your Gmail Settings, last I checked this is disabled be default. It is simple to do, please follow this guide.
• Contacts - Gmail keeps the golden master copy of my contacts list. I keep nothing local on the phone. This makes my life a breeze when I jump back to Gmail.com. I can also easily edit large groups of contacts on the web. iCloud has similar offerings, I just prefer Gmail so it'd be silly not to have my contacts in the same place. P.S. I suggest populating the contact's birthday, this way it'll show up on your calendar!
• Calendars - Calendars run my life. Anything I am doing or my wife is doing had better be in the calendar or I likely won't show up. I do as much event management on my phone as on the computer, it's nice to have it instantly sync both ways.
• Reminders - I'm a bit weird here. I LOVE reminders and use them constantly. I don't like Gmail's implementation of reminders (it isn't as nice of a user interface or as functionally laid out as iCloud), so even though I sync them, I actually strictly use iCloud for my reminders. 99% of the time I use my iPhone to manage Reminders, but on my work PC I also use iCloud.com. Of course the iPad has the same native app that the iPhone has, and Macs running OS X 10.8 or later (Mountain Lion) have the same Reminders app there as well.
• Oddly enough, you can create a new shared reminders list from the iCloud.com app or the Mac's native app, but you cannot create a new shared reminders list from an iOS device. You can edit and manage items on those shared lists though, so at most this is the slightest of "inconveniences" if you can even call it that.

Mail

• Mail Days to Sync - This is a tricky one for some. I suggest you personally subscribe to the "Inbox Zero" lifestyle where you don't keep email in your inbox. Tools like Gmail's labels and plugins like Boomerang just make it too easy and there's no reason to keep email around in the inbox. This doesn't mean getting rid of email, on the contrary I keep every single email that isn't junk or a daily mailer from LivingSocial or Groupon type sites. If you keep a relatively empty inbox I suggest syncing all mail in your Inbox. Consider a change in practice if you've never archived anything or have thousands of emails in your inbox.
• Mail Folders to Push - This setting selects which folders (Inbox is technically a folder) will by synced to the server. This means every email in that folder on the server will also be on your phone. I recommend only Inbox (default) for 99% of folks out there. However, some of you have advanced setups where you've got secondary accounts set up that automatically get labeled and archived (neat Gmail magic, if you don't know what I mean I've done a blog post that talks about it). For those power users you might want to push your other "Inboxes" as well.
• Keep in mind that even if you only check Inbox you can still see the entire folder hierarchy structure you have in place. You can also go into those folders and download their contents to view or manage emails. The difference is that those folders won't be actively synced and if you open them that will initiate a download of that folder's contents from the server at that time.

Note: These settings apply only to this particular account.

Note: The rest of the settings I'll cover apply to all accounts, not just your newly setup Gmail account. There are exceptions like Push/Pull, you can have a different account not setup for Pull. If you want additional details just ask in the comments and I'll get back to you usually within a few hours.

• Fetch New Data - Push. Push. Push. Enough said. If you want pull, set it up as a Gmail type account, I don't see any reason to do this for your iPhone. The "Gmail" account type for iOS doesn't support Push, this is why I suggest setting it up as an Exchange account. With that being said, what is Push and what is "Pull"?
• Push - Any folder you selected for "Mail Folders to Push" above will have emails "pushed" to your phone instantly when that email is received. Often I'll even see it come through on my phone a second or two before I see it in my inbox on gmail.com.
• Benefits (no cons if you ask me):
1. Emails show up instantly.
2. Your phone only gets email when there is new email to be grabbed. This saves battery life and network traffic.
• Pull - Every X minutes (this amount of time is adjustable) your phone will go and check the server for any new email (or changes to folder contents of any kind) for every folder you selected for "Mail Folders to Push" in the previous step. 
• Cons (no benefits if you ask me):
1. There is a delay between when you get an email and when your phone gets an email. This delay is the time between receiving the email and the next time your phone goes to check for emails. On the iPhone the minimum "Pull" time is 15 minutes, the maximum is just any time you open your Mail app. This means that new emails won't ever be delivered to your phone until you open the Mail app - I cannot imagine why someone would do this.
2. This uses more network traffic because whether or not you have a new email it has to go and check the server for emails.
3. This decreases battery life because it checks the server every X minutes 24/7.
• Show - This determines how many emails will be shown in a synced folder (i.e. Inbox). I show 200 emails (default) since I never get anywhere near that number in my Inbox anyway. If you've got a full inbox and see performance issues, consider lowering this. I have no idea if you'd ever see performance issues though. The max is 1,000. You can show more by tapping "Show More..." if you've hit this limit but the folder contains more items.
• Show To/CC Label - This will show or hide the To/CC icon that will appear on a message in a folder to indicate whether you are on the To or the CC of an email. It requires very little real estate on the screen and can be very handy if you're often on larger email threads (mostly a work account thing for me, but this setting applies to all email accounts on the phone).
• Ask Before Deleting - When you tap the trash icon, this will confirm by asking you if you're sure you want to delete the message. As we discussed, for an Exchange Gmail account (what we just setup) this actually means archive and not delete. I'm anal about handling and filing away email. Since deleting is just archiving, so this is total overkill, but I do it anyway.
• Load Remote Images - This option enables/disables emails downloading remote images from the server. Many coupon emails or emails from websites use HTML which is a simplified website right there in your email. Rather than attaching all those images, they host them on a remote server so that the email they send you is much smaller. Personally, I want my email to look as good and natural as possible. I am not worried about data quotas or anything, so I have this on. If you're traveling abroad or near your data quota for the month consider disabling it.
• Organize By Thread - This option allows your phone to group emails from a conversation together. It greatly cleans up your folders and is much more visually appealing. Enable this. Right now, I'll wait. You may as well use carrier pigeons if you disable this option. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating to entertain myself; please let me know if and why you don't use this in the comments.

• Always BCC Myself - If enabled, this will BCC you on every email you send from your device. I do this for work where we don't use gmail and sent messages don't appear in line with other messages like Gmail shows. Most people shouldn't do this.
• Increase Quote Level - This will increase the quote level a forwarded email; you've seen all the bars on the left side of an email that's been forwarded 25 times? Yeah, that. If you forward a lot of emails, don't do this because it is really annoying to the rest of us. 'On' is default and I've just never changed it. I'm not a frequent forwarder.
• Signature - This is your email signature that will appear at the bottom of emails you compose. New in iOS 6 you can have multiple signatures, unique to an email account! Note that by default this will have "-Sent from my iPhone" (or iPad or iPod Touch) when you first get the device. This being the default signature is why you see it so often, it isn't people being smug, they just haven't changed it.
• Default Account - Select what default account you want for sending a new email. When you have work & personal email, be careful here. When replying to an email, it'll reply with whatever the original was sent to, so this only applies to new emails.

Contacts

• Sort Order - This is the order that the contacts are sorted in your phone, not the way the names are viewed/displayed. "Last, First" makes the most sense to me, but I have every contact in there with a full name. If you have contacts like "Mom" and "Dad" (yes, my parents and my wife are all in there with their full names, yes I have taken "heat" for that) you might want to change this.
• Display Order - This is the way contacts are displayed on your phone. "First,Last" is more natural, but may be counterintuitive since you may not sort that way.
• My Info - I highly recommend everyone has themselves in their contact book with every piece of information you're willing to share, there are some good reasons.
• Siri - Siri uses this to route you home or to work and to remember connections like who your spouse/parents/siblings is/are.
• Bump/Contact Sharing - When you meet someone new you can use Bump or a similar "business card" sharing app to send someone your info. When you control the info in the business card it is up to you to have your contact represented professionally in their phone. Maybe it is just me, but I have a great appreciation for a well organized, nicely filled out contact card with a high resolution contact photo in my phone.
• Default Account - This is the account where any new contact you create will go unless you specify otherwise. Like I said, I keep all my personal contacts in Gmail, so naturally that's my default.
• There has been confusion on how to create a contact in a certain group. To do this you need to go into your Address Book, then into the group you want to add a contact in, then press the + to add them. If you create them in the "All Contacts" area of the Address Book, they will be added to your default account.
• Import SIM Contacts - Essentially this will import contacts from your SIM card to your local contacts on your iPhone (only AT&T and T-Mobile have those in the US for 3G and earlier networks, LTE uses a SIM card now too). Older phones used to store contacts here so they could be brought with you as you went to a new phone. When you import them here, they'll be added to your iPhone local contacts, not to your default account - I am pretty sure (not 100%). I haven't had to deal with this, if you need help here please ask in the comments and I can do some poking around to see how to solve problems that you might have with it.

Calendars

• New Invitation Alerts - PAY ATTENTION TO THIS ONE! This is a hidden gem if you ask me. By default this is on, I dislike that. What this does is play the alert tone that otherwise plays to alert you of a calendar event that's about to start, but it plays when a person sends you an invite regardless of when the event is for. I don't want an alert at midnight when someone sends me a lunch invitation for a month from now. I don't like this being enabled by default, particularly because I work with folks overseas who send invites in the middle of my night quite frequently.
• Time Zone Support - This one is tricky, in general it is best to have it turned on and to be aware of how it works, but use this information to determine what is best for you.
• This will make sure calendar invitations are handled properly when you send them to or get them from a time zone other than your own. If you do this often, I suggest enabling it.
• If this is enabled, and if you're planning an event in a different time zone and have an event at 2PM in that time zone then you will need to add it to your calendar for whatever time that is in the time zone you're currently in. This can be counterintuitive at first, but ultimately makes sense. If this is something you do often and your calendar is primarily just for your events (not for meetings with others), then you might want to consider disabling this. Unfortunately you cannot have 1 setting for 1 account (i.e. Work) and a different setting for another account (i.e. Personal).
• Sync - This option selects how long into the past to sync changes to an event. It doesn't clear events from your calendar that are older than this amount of time, but if you change something older than this, the change will not be synced to the server (Google Calendar). Similarly if you change an event on the Google Calendar website it won't sync the change to your phone. I've found 1 month back is more than sufficient, I see no reason to change the default here.
• Default Calendar - Make sure you've got this set how you want it if you have work and personal stuff on here. You don't want to send your boss a meeting invite from your Gmail account! Every time you create an event you can choose which calendar to put it on, this option just determine what the default is. I suggest making it whichever calendar you schedule more appointments on from your phone.
• Siri - As far as I have noticed Siri will only schedule on your default calendar, but  I haven't tried making Siri schedule work meetings for me so that might not be accurate.
• Shared Calendar Alerts - If enabled, this will alert you when there is a change to a calendar event on a shared calendar. If you share a calendar with a spouse this could be handy to know if something like your evening plans are how an hour earlier and you need to leave work early. Similar to New Invitation Alerts though, this could be annoying if you share a calendar with someone who is in a different time zone or is making changes while you sleep (and you don't use the new iOS 6 feature Do Not Disturb, which I suggest you do).

Alright, that epic novel sums up just about every detail of making my favorite email service (Gmail) play nicely with one of the world's most popular brands of phones (iPhones, and any iOS device really). Thank you to Heather (my sister) for the suggested topic of this post. I wish I would have kept track of the frequency of her tech help request iMessages before this was posted so that I can compare to them afterward :).

I know this is a long post, but there are a lot of people out there who use Gmail on an iPhone and are putting up with nuances that they don't realize they have full control over. Please share this with those people, it really is true that you can find harmony with both Google and Apple products together!

Apple's Oct. 23, 2012 Media Event Expectations

I wanted to quickly summarize my expectations for the media event that Apple just announced.

iPad Mini [Confidence: High]

Perhaps most importantly I think we will see an iPad Mini, this will likely be the "main attraction" of the event.

• 7.85" display [Confidence: High]
• A5, same as iPad 2 [Confidence: High]
• 16GB, 32GB, 64GB capacities [Confidence: High]
• 64GB capacity [Confidence: Low] Edit: Given the new stats on the size of apps increasing and the fact that 8GB really is just too small, I'm adjusting my estimate to match the standard iPad capacity line up.
• 3G/4G connectivity [Confidence: High]
• $349 starting price [Confidence: Medium] Update: Gruber makes a great point for how unsurprising a $249 starting price would be. I personally think that's the sweet spot to wow people on price, I just have a hard time being confident we'll see that.
• Smart covers [Confidence: High]

Education [Confidence: High]

I suspect there will be a key focus on education throughout. I'd even go as far as to say I somewhat expect some educational pricing options on the new iPad Mini, though I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it. I expect an update on their textbook initiatives, and hopefully some innovative new way to really push into the money-deprived public schools with these new devices.

13" Retina MacBook Pro [Confidence: High]

I fully expect MacRumors.com's coverage to be accurate.

• Starting price: $1699 [Confidence: High] Update: Previous value was a typo, I had looked at the wrong starting prices for the 15" model by accident. Oops! Sorry :)

Updated iMac & Mac Mini [Confidence: High]

Again I agree with MacRumors.com's coverage, and I fully expect an updated (and much thinner) iMac and updated Mac Mini to be revealed. There could be room for some education announcement in this sector too, maybe the previous generation iMac with strong educational discounts? The education pricing here is just a total guess, either way we'll see new iMacs and Mac Mini's.

• Prices likely to remain unchanged.