This towering ginkgo tree is located within the walls of the Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple in the Zhongnan Mountains in China. Every autumn the green leaves on the 1,400-year-old tree turn bright yellow and fall into a golden heap on the temple grounds drawing tourists from the surrounding area.

Source: Colossal

The L16 from Light, pictured above, is all over the web this week. You can reserve one at a reduced price by putting $199 down by November 6th. It’s an Android based, slightly-bigger-than-phone sized camera that looks to replace DSLR cameras by utilizing an array of  cheaper and smaller cameras carefully orchestrated by software.

I’m a sucker for things like this in the gadget space, but I am having a hard time convincing myself to put down the money now for something I won’t get until Summer 2016. All this without an chance to try the device myself, or even have someone I trust with hands on experience vouch for it. The movie in the Core77 article provides a little additional information, but I think i will be debating this until the November 6th deadline.

I have been debating selling my whole Canon DSLR setup of late. I am not using it nearly as much as I used to. I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off with the smallest nearly equivalent camera.

Source: Game-Changing Product Design: Small L16 Camera Replaces an SLR and a Bag Full of Lenses - Core77

This looks like it could be delightful.

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.

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The newest Word. Notebooks are really nice looking, both the blue colorway pictured above, but also the black color way.  I ordered a pack of each, but I am starting to struggle with my talent for acquiring cool notebooks compared to my velocity with filling them up. Maybe I should start giving more away?

Smart looking new Baron Fig Confidant Notebooks with Work/Play theme were released this morning. I’ve filled up two of their regular Confidant notebooks in the course of my Bullet Journaling. Aside from some annoying fraying of the bookmark, which I think they are working on mitigating, I’ve really like them from a paper, looks and durability perspective. I ordered three of the new ones.

Similar to the Arts and Sciences Field Notes, but reversed, each spread has a “Work” page, which is dot grid, and a “Play” page, which is blank. I’m actually currently about halfway through a Sciences Field Notes right now.

Update: Brad over at the Pen Addict has had access to these, and has posted a review that’s worth reading.

I couldn’t agree more with 8 Things I Learned After a Month with the Apple Watch. If I were writing a similar article, I think I would have written about the same 8 items.  I need to get up and move around more.

Really nice line of black gear and kit from Ugmonk. I hopped right on this and ordered myself the “Plus Minus” shirt pictured below. I was/am a fan of the band of the same name, who are not related to this in any way.  There are a lot of t-shirts out there, but these are among the nicest designs, tasteful, yet still fun.

Source: Black Series | Ugmonk

On the whole, WWDC 2015 brought less news and less change than its two immediate predecessors. Apple is still on top of the world, but this year, it's about refining and polishing, not wide-reaching changes. - WWDC 2015 Debrief — 512 Pixels

I’m looking forward to the iPad enhancements, and to the watchOS (rhymes with nachos) with real apps etc.  I’m worried about the strain this puts on developers with limited resources at the same time.

How I would describe 2015 so far.

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I definitely love my Apple Watch. I ordered the Stainless Steel Apple Watch with a black sport band at 12:01 am on the night they went on sale, received it the very first day they shipped, and haven’t really taken it off, except for charging, since. I really like the black sport band, but have wanted to pick up more bands as well.  I see the sport band as a good every day band, and only really liked the black color. I wanted some variety, but found the other Apple options to not really be for me when I tried them on in store.  A few weeks ago, when the Monowear bands went up for pre-order, I placed an order for Monowear red nylon band.

I received the band while I was away at WWDC, and was pretty excited to try it out when I got home. I liked the red color as a contrast to the black band I have been wearing. I have to say that I am not disappointed in this band in any way.  I like it so much that I may be ordering additional bands from Monowear in the near future. Given the current dearth of third party bands that are available, and the premium construction, I don’t think the $59.99 price tag is unreasonable.

The band installed flawlessly on my watch, as easily as any of the Apple bands. Removing and re-installing my Apple Sport Band also proved to be a breeze.  I was definitely concerned about this the most of the various aspects of this purchase, and this band passed with flying colors.

The band itself is well made, and its metal matches the Apple Watch hardware color perfectly. This includes the three band loops, as well as the small pieces that attach the band to the watch body. I can’t find any flaws there at all. The nylon is what I would expect from a premium nylon watch band. It came out of the packaging a little stiff, and so will be a little itchy/scratchy the first few days until it’s fully broken in, but I think that’s to be expected.

Overall, this band is a good option for those seeking a red band, something Apple does not offer. I’d really like to try out their leather bands next, but may have to wait for my next paycheck to make that purchase. Keep in mind that I have only had/worn this band for about 36 hours, and my opinion may change with wear, but, for now, it’s a definite go ahead and buy rating.

Image Source: Nylon - Red Band with Chrome Loops — Monowear

Studio Neat recently introduced a new free app named Highball. I was just thinking last week that there didn’t seem to be a lot of good apps for storing cocktail recipes, surprising given how in vogue fancy cocktails seem to be at the moment. The price is right, and the app is responsive and well designed. It’s a natural extension of their Neat Ice Kit and Simple Syrup Kit products, both of which are on my future purchase list.

More interesting to me is the way they have implemented cocktail recipe sharing. You can either take a picture of the card some else has shared, which has an embedded QR code, (It’s small, but it’s still a QR code.) or you can enter a unique number that is assigned to that recipe in their database of recipes. Definitely a pretty elegant solution to a pretty thorny problem. Send me your recipes!

I was reading Lopp’s bulleted list of observations on watches, which is definitely worth your time, and this one stuck out to me.

“Interaction with a watch is measured in seconds and rarely minutes.”

This definitely implies that people are going to be using the wrist device for quick bursts, but not for any sustained time period.

Earlier this week, I read this article by Kevin Tofel that makes the case for Watch apps being “usable” in ten seconds or less.

I actually agree that the first generation of apps for these devices are more than likely going to be for small burst activities.  I think, however, that that will be because most people haven’t had access to a device prior to this first release of apps.  It may also be because of battery life, but that remains to be seen at the moment, I expect we will know more tomorrow.

I think that this device will, in the more long term, be used for longer things than people realize at the moment.  I keep imagining some addictive watch based game that people play. Think tamogotchi for your wrist (which I imagine someone has to be making the equivalent of somewhere at this very moment) and you have the general idea. I think that the limiting factor, aside from the aforementioned battery life concern, is that people will think of this like a watch until they don’t.

Last summer I switched from Chrome to Safari for the umpteenth time. I’ve made the switch back and forth several times over the years, but Safari has stuck with me for several months now. The primary reason why is the excellent cloud tabs feature. Being able to see what tabs are open on my other devices, and actually being able to close them remotely has been a huge quality of life improvement. The syncing between devices is flawless.

One thing I did miss in the transition was Momentum, which is the new tab replacement I was using for Chrome. I’d actually posted it here a while ago. As you can see from the screenshot above, they bring in gorgeous photography, an inspirational quote,and provide a todo feature, as well as a way to configure the new tab with frequently used links. I like the inspiring nature photography, and have flirted with regular use of the various utilities.

Recently, I am not sure exactly when, they introduced a Safari extension, so now I get to have my cloud tabs and my favorite new tab replacement.

via Macintosh Inspired Compact Desktop Computer By Curved/labs | HYPEBEAST.

The Starbucks Reserve Roastery Edition Field Notes look amazing. Only available from the one specific Starbucks location in Seattle. Through begging online, I managed to get someone to send me a couple of packs, apparently they are already out.

Tempted by this guy.

via Cool Material.

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.

Last night, the people who were among the select group of writers to receive review units of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were finally allowed to release their hands on reviews of the new devices.

Every year, I find this night a little overwhelming as I try to read and digest the opinions of a catalog of people who I trust, and, in some cases, revere, for their opinions on this stuff. This is kind of hilarious in that every previous year at this point I’ve already ordered my device.  This year, however, more than any other, I was reading these reviews hoping that I haven’t made the wrong decision in which device I ordered. Really for the first time in the iPhone’s history, there are two “top of the line” devices to choose from. Did I get it right?

I ordered an iPhone 6 Plus at 3:40 am ET last Friday, after 4o frustrating minutes of trying to order a phone while simultaneously reloading Twitter to see if others had been successful.  My reasoning behind choosing the iPhone 6 Plus was that I wanted the extra battery life, and that, given how much I value the pictures I take with the device, that the camera with optical stabilization would be something that I would want.

I had printed out the PDF of the devices, and cut them out. It did nag at me a little that the 6 Plus was the same size as my (work provided) Samsung Galaxy Note 3. When my order went through, the app informed me that my device would be shipping the first week in October. Unacceptable, but I went back to bed anyway.

The next morning, I found that there were iPhone 6, Space Gray, 128 Gb still available for store pickup at two of my local Apple stores with a 9/19 availability date. I cancelled my iPhone 6 Plus order, and placed one for an iPhone 6 for pick up. (I can’t pick mine up until Monday because I am out of town at a family wedding the next few days.) I’m hoping that I don’t spend much time in the next 12 months regretting that decision. My reasoning was that the iPhone 6 is still a good jump from the iPhone 5S I am using now in terms of size.  We’ll see.

Here’s some thoughts on a few reviews from around the web. I don’t intend this post to be a summary of the reviews, or a review of reviews, it’s mostly my reaction to each.

Daring Fireball - The iPhones 6 by John Gruber

This review made me feel a little better about my decision to go with the iPhone 6, particularly this part, where he makes his recommendations.

 If you simply want a bigger iPhone, get the 4.7-inch iPhone 6. That’s what it feels like: a bigger iPhone.

After seven years, it is hard, really hard, to get to used to the new side placement of the sleep/wake button.

MacWorld - iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus review: Bigger is in fact better (in the right hands) by Jason Snell

That’s one heck of a line wrapping title. Jason does a great job of putting this set of device releases in the context of the history of iPhone releases at the beginning of the review. He seems to feel almost exactly the same way that Gruber does about the 6 Plus.

That being said, the iPhone 6 Plus is unlike any iPhone before it. Not quite a phone, not yet an iPad, it’s a tweener of a device that’s going to be fantastic for some people and completely wrong for others.

Reachability isn’t the most elegant concept I’ve seen Apple develop, but it does make the size of these phones more manageable when you’re using only one hand.

On a side note, Jason Snell has left MacWorld, and has a new site, Six Colors.  There are some interesting deeper insights about the screens and display technology in his first article on that site, iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus: A tale of scale. Looking forward to seeing what else he does with his newfound freedom.

The Verge - iPhone 6 Review by David Pierce,  iPhone 6 Plus Review by Nilay Patel

First, I think that it was a curious decision to do these as two separate reviews by two different writers. The two reviews above got this right, in my opinion. A single review for both makes for better reading, and they are so similar in so many ways, that this style of review is more efficient for the reader.

The iPhone 6 review does a good job of putting this phone, and it’s size, in the context of the larger market, fairly comparing it to the Android devices that the Daring Fireballs and MacWorlds would typically not mention.  This review has the nicest product photography and better screen shots than any other review I have looked at for these phones as well. It talks more about iOS 8 than the previous two as well, mentioning Spotlight for instance.

I’m particularly smitten with Spotlight, which now includes the App Store, web, local, and other search results as you type. It’s become my go-to way to find anything; it’s much faster than opening Safari or dealing with Siri, which can be fantastically useful but remains hard of hearing.

The iPhone 6 plus review did cause me some regret. Particularly this section on battery.

Huge phones get to have huge batteries, and the iPhone 6 Plus is a huge phone with a huge battery: I consistently got about two days of battery life from the 6 Plus in regular daily use — slightly more than the day and a half we got from the iPhone 6

I would be doing The Verge a disservice if I didn’t mention how well done the video reviews are. Both are excellent, and I found myself wondering why some of the other publications/sites don’t do this, as it’s way more revealing about a product like the iPhone than a written review with some screenshots.  I especially  enjoyed the shot of the reviewer walking by the line at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan, walking past the people waiting in line for the iPhone 6 while talking on the iPhone 6.  Funny.

New York Times - Review and Video: With Big New iPhones, It’s the iOS 8 Software Inside That Counts by Molly Wood

This one is another combo written review and video review in a single page. The written review sticks to the basics, and really steers clear of making a recommendation, as I think you would expect from a more mainstream media review.

The video review is excellent, and seeing the phones in her hands was great. It made me realize just how huge the iPhone 6 Plus is going to be for people with smaller hands. (Which I don’t have.) The video review has a lot more flavor and opinion to it, and I wish that had come through more in the written review.

Neither review impacted my possible buyer’s remorse.

I’m pushing this post out, but plan on adding additional reviews today as time allows.  There are a lot of reviews. - RO 11:44 AM ET

The rewards include a custom printed Bullet Journal notebook, which seems like an interesting idea, albeit a little antithetical to the overall idea of Bullet Journal in the first place. Of course, I was in the moment I saw the Kickstarter, and have backed the project at the two notebook tier.

I feel like I owe Ryder a debt of gratitude because Bullet Journal has been so useful for me, and I am interested in seeing more ideas from other people on how I can evolve my Bullet Journal style. (The best thing for me would be neater handwriting, I need to work on that.) It’s definitely a very accessible system, so it adapts well to a variety of needs, and varying levels of note taking skill. If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s your chance.

Fall 2014 Field Notes, sort of revealed. Can’t wait to get my subscription package. FIELD NOTES COLORS: UNEXPOSED EDITION.

I've gone a little office supply, pen and notebook crazy over the last year. It really started when I stated using Bullet Journal.  One of the favorite items that I have bought during that time was a Hobonichi Planner Book. It's one of those products that is obviously a labor of love for the people who craft it, and there are numerous delightful details.  Next year's book goes on sale on September 1st, and if you are at all interested in this sort of thing, I recommend reading this really well done overview post over at Pen*Paper*Ink*Letter.  It includes some great images of the product, covers, and packaging.