What’s the best traffic app for your phone? WCCO-TV’s Liz Collin posed that question to me.
Quick answer: Google Maps.
Longer answer: It’s complicated, but there are good options for various usage scenarios and device types. If you use an Apple Watch with your iPhone, for instance, Apple Maps is a no-brainer.
Liz interviewed me in my home office, with an Apple Macintosh 128K just over my right shoulder, and Speed Racer over my left shoulder.
I recently marked a minor but memorable professional milestone: I wrote my 100th article for TidBITS, the venerable email newsletter and website focused on all things Apple.
I kind of stumbled into becoming a sometime TidBITS contributor in 2009. The role became formalized in 2015, when the editors added me to the masthead.
This is a big deal: A journalist with a passion for tech and especially Apple tech getting paid to write about it on a regular basis. I’m very, very lucky.
I am grateful to Adam Engst, Tonya Engst and Josh Centers for this opportunity — and for the friendship and professional camaraderie they and the other members of TidBITS team have shown me.
On to 200!
Friends of mine once again seized on the occasion of my birthday to get creative on Facebook.
Their handiwork (typically of a nerdy nature, since they know me so well) was among dozens and dozens of Facebook greetings from friends, acquaintances and professional colleagues, which made mi cumpleaños all the more awesome.
Warming up to the Apple Watch took me a while.
When the first version of the smartwatch came out in 2015, I delighted in having an Apple-branded product on my wrist. When the novelty wore off, though, I realized the gizmo wasn’t useful to me in any life-changing way, and ended up leaving it on its desktop charger most of the time.
Apple’s initial, largely ineffectual stabs at a smartwatch operating system were part of the problem, but it kept iterating to make its watchOS better and better. An increased emphasis on fitness was a good move (pardon the pun).
Over time, I discovered more and more uses for the Apple Watch, some fitness-related, others not. I detailed this in a recent Pioneer Press column.
And that was before Apple released the groundbreaking Series 4 version of the watch, along with a vastly improved version 5 of watchOS.
Today's Joy of Tech comic!
