What went wrong was very simple. We never made enough money.

I really like(d) Vesper, but it never stuck for me. I was a day one user, mainly because I am huge fan of all three of these guys, and also consider their QA lead an internet friend.

I don’t know what they could have done differently, especially with only three of them, I do think that, for their core audience, there are three platforms that matter:

1. mobile/iOS
2. Desktop Mac
3. Web

Only Brent, Dave and John know for sure, but from my outsider’s view, this was a part time job for all three of them. I suspect that if even one of them had made this more of a full time job, it might have generated perspective and possibly drive to succeed. Just guessing on that bit, and I could be completely wrong.

I’m currently using Apple Notes as my primary phone/tablet/desktop text tool. iCloud sync has worked great for me.

Up until a week ago, my main carry phone was an iPhone 6. I replaced it with an iPhone 6s Plus, which arrived on launch day, but, due to some work travel, I have only had it since Sunday, for five days. Here are some high level observations from those five days of using this new device.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the new device itself, especially the obvious hardware improvements. Having said that, and I have had every iPhone to date, this was the least smooth transition from one phone to another on the software side. I am still working on getting my new phone to the place my old phone already was. This is not intended to be a comprehensive review, I don’t have the patience or time these days to do that.

This phone feels ridiculously fast, faster than my iPad Air 2 even.

The battery life seems a little worse than my couple of months old iPhone 6 Plus.

My initial observation was that this phone is heavier than the existing iPhone 6 Plus, but still comfortable to me for extended use and carry. I purchased an Apple silicone case, I have been very happy with the 2014 silicone case that my work iPhone 6 Plus is in. I am a little disappointed in the 2015 silicone case, it’s got a smoother finish, and feels less grippy in your hand. As a result, I feel the phone slipping in my hand a little when I am not expecting it. I may end up getting another case that has a better tactile feel to it.

I’m a huge fan of Touch ID, and it’s significantly faster with the new phone for both Apple Pay and unlocking the device. It’s so fast, in fact, that I am sometimes accidentally unlocking the device when I wanted to wake the phone up to see the time.

3D Touch seems to have a ton of potential. It turns out that I am a “hard presser” to begin with, and so my long touches are often being interpreted as a 3D Touch. Once I understood the pressure differential, mainly while I was re-organizing my home screen, things locked into place, and now I have the hang of it. It will take even longer for me to get into the routine of thinking to use it.

The camera is noticeably better, and was one of my main reasons for upgrading the phone. Focus is faster, and low light photos look better to me. I am not sure that I am that enchanted with Live Photos, but that may just be that I haven’t taken many yet. Since a lot of what I do with my pictures is sharing via Instagram and Facebook, I am not sure I will use Live Photos much until they are supported on those platforms.

So now a few words about the transition from my iPhone 6 to this new phone, which has not been a good experience. First, I was a part of the iOS 9 public beta this Summer. Not the developer releases, but the public beta. I did this because I thought it would mean a smoother landing when everything came out this fall. I was wrong. They rolled the people in the iOS 9 public beta right onto 9.1. Once you have backed up on 9.1, you can’t restore onto 9. So I had to start with my last good backup from earlier this Summer. I understand what running a beta means, that there may be sharp edges. I think someone at Apple should have thought through the customer experience before just rolling everyone on to 9.1.

The transition between phones for Watch is terrible. You have to un-pair your watch from the phone, deleting everything off the watch, then re-pair it with your new phone, finally restoring from whatever your last backup was, and losing some data pretty much no matter what you do. So much room for improvement here.

Finally, I have relied on the Health app and Activity app as my primary activity and fitness trackers for the last few months. Shame on me for not looking into this more, but that data does not get backed up via iCloud backup. You can back it up by doing an encrypted iTunes backup, which I will now be forced to switch to. There is a way to migrate this data using two third party apps, and I am going to spend the time to try and do that this weekend. Very disappointing from a user experience standpoint though, seems like they are making the customer do too much work. I wouldn’t expect to have to manually migrate this data myself.

Update: It seems that Health and Activity data is in the iCloud backup after all, but some folks, myself included, are having issues with getting it to the new devices.

I’ve only had my iPhone 6 for about twenty four hours, but here’s some of my first impressions. I upgraded from an iPhone 5S. This is not intended to be a full review, nor do I intend to do one. It’s also not a review of iOS 8, you should read this one if you want that. I went for the iPhone 6 Space Gray, 128 Gb. My carrier is AT&T.

First, the software and data transition between phones was the easiest one I have ever done. I had upgraded my 5S to iOS 8 last week, and did a lot of purging beforehand to make sure my backup was as small as possible. Having said that, I was up and running pretty quickly, and most everything just works today. iCloud keychain, and iCloud backups, have taken this process lightyears ahead of the “old days.”

It’s a fistful of phone for me, but not too big by any means. I can reach all areas of the screen. Your mileage may vary based on your hand size and dexterity, but I am totally comfortable with the size of the phone.

That screen! Wow. The colors, the resolution, it looks amazing. Feels like a substantial upgrade from the 5S screen to me. Not just the size, but also the quality.

The Sleep/Wake button location change to the side of the device went against my muscle memory for the first few hours of use, but today it seems like I’m well on my way to getting used to this change.

It worked, without any obvious issues, with my car kit and other accessories, except for my Elevation Dock, which it doesn’t fit in. (Anyone want to buy an Elevation Dock for their 5S or 5C?)

I went for the Apple Leather Case (Black) because I used the same/similar case from Apple on my iPhone 5S. I’m not disappointed in any way, it feels great. I think that most people will want a case for this phone, it’s very smooth and rounded, and I think, easier to drop than the last four iPhones.

I haven’t taken many pictures yet, but the pictures I took to test looked markedly better than similar shots with my iPhone 5S.

I’m very enthusiastic about this device. It seems better in all the right ways.  It’s not really worse in any way that I have found after a day.

This post on MacRumors, iPhone 6: Everything We Know is a great comprehensive wrap up of the current conjecture about the all but confirmed larger screen iPhone we expect to see in late 2014.  I don’t really have much to add, but the image above, from the article, really did grab my attention.  (The image is from MacRumors, not me.)

In no particular order, here are five products/sites/services that I really enjoyed having/using this year. I could have written about more, but I’m lazy.

Feedbin

I am an RSS apex consumer, subscribing to about 500 sites' RSS feeds. I was in a complete panic earlier this year when Google Reader was going away. NetNewsWire and Reeder, synced with Google Reader, were mainstays of my way of staying informed. I used them every day, and rarely declared RSS bankruptcy. Feedbin saved my ass in 2013.

With Google Reader going away, there were a few choices out there, but most of them were free services. That’s not what I wanted to use though. I wanted something that I could pay an honest fee for, that probably wouldn’t be co-opted by other business motives, and I evaluated the options out there and picked Feedbin.

This service hasn’t disappointed me one bit. It’s been consistently improved throughout the year, and client support for it is fantastic. Best of all, their web app, through one of those updates, supports many of the keyboard commands from the legacy RSS reader I used for so long. I read my feeds on every device I carry using this service, using Reeder on iOS, Press on Android, and the Feedbin Web interface on desktop. (Press is awesome, and probably the best RSS Reader app on any platform in my opinion.)

Cool Hunting T-Tech by Tumi Backpack

I own a lot of gear bags because I carry a lot of gear on a daily basis, and I am always looking for the perfect system for carrying things. At work, we support a lot of devices, and I need to have a few with me wherever I am to make sure that I can cover the support from where I happen to be.

I should probably do a post about what’s in my bag when I head out to CES next week. On top of that, I usually carry a camera system of some kind, and then a myriad of chargers etc. Suffice it say, this bag is really really nice, well made, and can hold a lot of stuff. There are a lot of great bags out there, but this has been my mainstay since the day I got it in the first half of 2013. Since it’s made by Tumi, I know that I can count on it. I have had some Tumi luggage for as long as fifteen years under a lot of travel, and it’s held up remarkably well. If you need to carry a lot of stuff, and like the backpack form factor, I highly recommend this bag.

Unfortunately, it seems to be sold out at this point. I’ll be watching Cool Hunting for future product releases, they have great taste and attention to detail.

Apple TV

Not new to this year, but this small device has really become the center of our living room in 2013. It already had a strong lineup of content, and AirPlay from our various iOS devices (my wife and I both have iPhones and iPads) has become a stock way we listen to music. Having a device at the center of our living room that is synced with our ever growing library of content in iTunes helps a lot. Integration with Flickr means that there’s a scrolling slideshow of my most recent Flickr posts happening while we’re listening to music.

I think, however, that there was a major shift that occurred in our home over the summer. This shift was caused by two things. June 19th, 2013, HBO Go came to Apple TV. We have DirecTV, and this meant it was like someone had bought us the boxed set of every single HBO show. The second event was Orange is the New Black coming to Netflix in July. Long time fans of Weeds, we loved this show produced by the same team, and we binge watched until they were all gone. Can’t wait until there are more, but we’re currently binging through Breaking Bad. We’re not going to be canceling our DirecTV service any time soon, but more and more, we’re watching stuff via this device. When we’re not watching, this device is what’s powering other living room entertainment.

Evernote Smart Notebooks

As evidenced by my post a couple of days ago, Evernote Smart Notebooks, in the linked configuration, have been a staple of my productivity regimen in 2013. They come with a three month extension to your Evernote Pro service. At the rate I use them, this means I won’t be paying discretely for Evernote any time soon. It’s that simple. I don’t really use the stickers, but I do take a picture of every page. Just works. I was already hooked on Evernote long before these appeared.

The Wirecutter

It’s rare that I trust a site’s advice completely, but The Wirecutter has earned that trust. Their exhaustive work in specific product categories has led to well informed purchases time and again throughout 2013. They are relentless in keeping their site and reviews up to date. I read through their deals very carefully. Some notable example purchases are our WiFi Router, the pens I use, and the cards in my cameras. I highly recommend that you check at The Wirecutter before any consumer electronic or personal technology related purchase. Here’s their guide on how to use their site.

The previous generation Glif has been a constant part of my iPhone photo setup with a small tripod and the headphones as an off phone shutter release.  Of course I ordered the new, adjustable Studio Neat — Glif today when it was released.  It’s a nice combination of stand and tripod adaptor, and now it will work with all my phones.