2025-01-27 05:42:34
I was perusing some past issues of ACM Interactions magazine, and I stumbled on an interview with Don Norman, a figure I’ve always admired and one of the main forces of inspiration for me to delve deeper in matters of usability, design, and human-machine interaction.
The interview, titled A conversation with Don Norman, appeared on Volume 2, Issue 2 of the magazine, published in April 1995. And of course it’s a very interesting conversation between Don Norman and John Rheinfrank, the magazine editor at the time. There’s really very little to add to the insights I’ve chosen to extrapolate. While discovering them, my two main reactions were either, How things have changed in 30 years (especially when Norman talks about his work and experience at Apple); or, 30 years have passed yet this is still true today. I’ll keep my observations at a minimum, because I want you to focus on Norman’s words more than mine.
Don Norman: […] John, you deserve much of the credit for making me try to understand that there are many forces that come to bear in designing. Now that I’ve been at Apple, I’ve changed my mind even more. There are no ‘dumb decisions.’ Everybody has a problem to solve. What makes for bad design is trying to solve problems in isolation, so that one particular force, like time or market or compatibility or usability, dominates. The Xerox Star is a good example of a product that was optimized based on intelligent, usability principles but was a failure for lots of reasons, one of which was it was so slow as to be barely functional.
John Rheinfrank: Then your experience at Apple is giving you a chance to play out the full spectrum of actions needed to make something both good and successful?
DN: […] At Apple Computer the merging of industrial design considerations with behavior design considerations is a very positive trend. In general, these two disciplines still tend to be somewhat separate and they talk different languages. When I was at the university, I assumed that design was essentially the behavioral analysis of tasks that people do and that was all that was required. Now that I’ve been at Apple, I’ve begun to realize how wrong that approach was. Design, even just the usability, let alone the aesthetics, requires a team of people with extremely different talents. You need somebody, for example, with a good visual design abilities and skills and someone who understands behavior. You need somebody who’s a good prototyper and someone who knows how to test and observe behavior. All of these skills turn out to be very different and it’s a very rare individual who has more than one or two of them. I’ve really come to appreciate the need for this kind of interdisciplinary design team. And the design team has to work closely with the marketing and engineering teams. An important factor for all the teams is the increasing need for a new product to work across international boundaries. So the number of people that have to be involved in a design is amazing.
Observation: This was 1995, so before Steve Jobs returned at Apple. But Jobs’s Apple seemed to approach design with this mixture of forces. The results often showed the power of these synergies at play behind the scenes. Today’s Apple perhaps still works that way within the walls of Apple Park, but often the results don’t seem to reflect synergetic forces between teams or across one design team — It’s more like, there were conflicts along the way, and an executive decision prevailed. (No, not like with Jobs, because he better understood design and engineering than current Apple executives).
JR: You just said that there may be some things about the computer industry, or any industry, that make it difficult to do good design. You said that design could only improve with industry restructuring. Can you say more?
DN: Let’s look at the personal computer, which had gotten itself into a most amazing state, one of increasing and seemingly never-ending complexity. There’s no way of getting out. Today’s personal computer has an operating system that is more complex than any of the big mainframes of a few years ago. It is so complex that the companies making the operating systems are no longer capable of really understanding them themselves. I won’t single out any one company; I believe this is true of Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, name your company — these operating systems are so complex they defy convention and they defy description or understanding. The machines themselves fill your desk and occupy more and more territory in your office. The displays are ever bigger, the software is ever more complex.
In addition, business has been pulled into the software subscription model. The way you make money in software is by getting people to buy the upgrade. You make more money in the upgrade than in the original item. Well, how do you sell somebody an upgrade? First, you have to convince them that it’s better than what they had before and better means it must do everything they had before plus more. That guarantees that it has to be more complicated, has to have more commands, have more instructions, be a bigger program, be more expensive, take up more memory — and probably be slower and less efficient.
DN: […] Now, how on earth do you move the software industry from here to there? The surety of the installed base really defeats us. For instance, Apple has 15,000,000 computers out there. We cannot bring out a product that would bring harm to those 15,000,000 customers. In addition, if we brought out a revolutionary new product, there’s the danger that people would say the old one is not being supported, so they’ll stop buying it. But they don’t trust this new one yet. “Apple might be right but meanwhile we better switch to a competitor.” This story is played out throughout the computer industry. It’s not just true of Apple. Look at Microsoft, which has an even worse problem, with a much larger installed base. It’s been a problem for many companies. I think the reason why a lot of companies don’t make the transition into new technologies is that they can’t get out of their installed base.
Mind you, the installed base insists upon the current technology. There’s a wonderful Harvard Business Review article on just this: Why don’t companies see the new technology coming? The answer is, they do. The best companies often are developing new technology. But look at the 8‑inch disk drive which has replaced the 14-inch Winchester drives. It was developed and checked with the most forward-looking customers, who said, “That will never work for us.” So the 8‑inch drive wasn’t pushed. Despite everything being done to analyze the market, in retrospect, the wrong decision was made. At the time, by the way, it was thought to be the correct decision.
It’s really hard to understand how you take a mature industry and change it. The model that seems to work is that young upstart companies do it. Change almost always seems to come from outside the circle of major players in the industry and not within. There are exceptions, of course, of which IBM is an interesting one. IBM was once the dominant force in mechanical calculating machines and young Thomas Watson, Jr., the upstart, thought that digital computers were the coming thing. Thomas Watson, Sr. thought this was an idiotic decision. But actually Junior managed to get the company to do create the transformation. It’s one of the better examples of change in technological direction, and it also was successful.
About Norman’s last remarks, see Wikipedia: “Watson became president of IBM in 1952 and was named as the company’s CEO shortly before the death of his father, Watson Sr., in 1956. Up to this time IBM was dedicated to electromechanical punched card systems for its commercial products. Watson Sr. had repeatedly rejected electronic computers as overpriced and unreliable, except for one-of-a-kind projects such as the IBM SSEC. Tom Jr. took the company in a new direction, hiring electrical engineers by the hundreds and putting them to work designing mainframe computers. Many of IBM’s technical experts also did not think computer products were practical since there were only about a dozen computers in the entire world at the time.”
JR: So it looks as though we have another transition to manage. It’s very strange that they call these devices ‘personal computers.’
DN: Yes. First of all they’re not personal and second, we don’t use them for computing. We’re using these things to get information, to build documents, to exchange ideas with other people. The cellular phone is actually a pretty powerful computer that is used for communication and collaboration.
Observation: This brief remark by Norman about mobile phones is rather amazing, considering that it was made back in 1995 when smartphones didn’t exist yet — the functions of what we now consider a smartphone were still split between mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Also the mention that these devices (personal computers) are not really personal still sounds especially relevant today, for different reasons. See for example this recent piece by Benj Edwards: The PC is Dead: It’s Time to Make Computing Personal Again.
JR: So in what direction do you think computer-interface design should go? Many companies are making moves to simplify entry and interaction (Packard Bell’s Navigator and Microsoft’s BOB). In the short term, how does this fit your vision?
DN: The question really is, in what direction do I see our future computers moving? Microsoft has introduced BOB as a social interface, which they think is an important new direction. Let me respond to the direction and I’ll comment later on BOB. As I’ve said before, I believe our machines have just become too complex. When one machine does everything, it in some sense does nothing especially well, although its complexity increases. My Swiss Army knife is an example: It is very valuable because it does so many things, but it does none of the single things as well as a specialized knife or a screwdriver or a scissors. My Swiss Army knife also has so many tools I don’t think I ever open the correct one first. Whenever I try to get the knife, I always get the nail file and whenever I try to get the scissors, I get the awl, etc. It’s not a big deal but it’s only about six parts. Imagine a computer with hundreds or thousands of ‘parts.’ I think the correct solution is to create devices that fit the needs of people better, so that the device ‘looks like’ the task. By this I just mean that, if we become expert in the task, then the device just feels natural to us. So my goal is to minimize the need for instruction and assistance and guidance.
Microsoft had another problem. Their applications are indeed very complex and their model is based on the need to have multiple applications running to do, say, a person’s correspondence, communication, checkbook, finances. How did they deal with the complexity with which they were faced? There has been some very interesting social-science research done at Stanford University by Cliff Reeves and Byron Nash, which argues that people essentially treat anthropomorphically the objects with which they interact, that is they treat them as things with personalities. We kick our automobile and call it names. Responding to computers in fact has a tendency to go further because computers actually enter into dialogues with people, not very sociable dialogues, but dialogues nevertheless. So from their research, Reeves and Nash did some interesting analysis (somewhat controversial, by the way) in the social-science community about the social interactions between people and inanimate objects. That’s all very fine, and you can take that research and draw interesting conclusions from it. It’s a very big step, however, to take that research and say that, because people impart devices with personalities, you should therefore build a personality into a device. That was not supported by the research. There was no research, in fact, about how you should use these results in actual device construction.
Observation: The bit I emphasised in Norman’s response made me wonder. And made me think that maybe this is one of the reasons why most automated ‘AI’ assistants — Alexa, Siri, etc. — remain ineffectual ways to devise and implement human-machine interaction to this day. Perhaps it’s because we fundamentally want to always be the ones in charge in this kind of relationship, and do not like devices (or even abstract entities such as ‘AI’ chatbots) to radiate perceived personality traits that weren’t imparted by us. By the way, I hope we’ll keep holding on to that feeling, because, among others, it’s at the root of a healthy distrust towards this overhyped ‘artificial intelligence’.
It’s very difficult to decide what is the very best way of building something which has not been studied very well. I think where Microsoft went wrong was that, first of all, they had this hard problem and they tried to solve it by what I consider a patch, that is, adding an intelligent assistant to the problem. I think the proper way would have been to make the problem less complex in the first place so the assistance wouldn’t be needed. I also think they may have misread some of the research and tried to create a character with an extra cute personality.
In his response, Norman continues with another interesting remark (emphasis mine, again). Despite referring to a product we now know did not succeed — Microsoft BOB — I think he manages to succinctly nail the problem with digital assistants and offer a possible, radical workaround; though I seriously doubt tech companies today would want to engage in this level of rethinking, preferring to keep shoving ‘AI’ and digital assistants down our throats.
JR: It seems as if substantial changes in design will take a long time to develop. Will we have something good enough for the ten-year-old with ‘Nintendo thumb’ before he or she grows up?
DN: I think for a while things aren’t going to look very different. The personal computer paragon could be with us another decade. Maybe in a decade it will be over with. I’d like to hope it will be. But as long as it’s with us, there aren’t too many alternatives. We really haven’t thought of any better ways of getting stuff in or out besides pushing buttons, sound, voice, and video. Certainly we could do more with recognition of simple gestures; that’s been done for a very long time, but we don’t use gestures yet in front of our machines. I mean gestures like lifting my hand up in the air. We could, of course, have pen-based gestures as well and we could have a pen and a mouse and a joystick and touch-sensitive screens. Then there is speech input, which will be a long time in coming. Simple command recognition can be done today but to understand, that’s a long time away.
So in my opinion the real advance is going to be in making devices that fit the task. For instance, I really believe within five years most dictionaries will be electronic, within ten years even the pulp novel, the stuff you buy in the airport to read on the airplane, will have a reader. What you’ll do is go to the dispenser and instead of the best 25 best-selling books, it will have 1,000 or 2,000 books for browsing. When you find a book that you like, you’ll put in your credit card and the book will download to your book reader. The reader will be roughly the size of a paperback book today and look more like a book than a computer. The screen will be just as readable as a real book. Then look at any professional, say a design professional. You couldn’t really do your design without a pencil. Look how many pencils good artists will use. They may have 50 or 70 or 100 different kinds of drawing implements. We have to have at least that kind of fine-detail variation in the input style in the world of computers. I don’t think we’ll have the power that we have today with manual instruments until we reach that level. I think the only way to get that power, though, is to have task-specific devices. That’s the direction in which I see us moving.
Observation: There was, indeed, a time, when tech seemed to move in the direction envisaged by Norman, with devices designed for specific tasks. When Steve Jobs illustrated the ‘digital hub’ in the first half of the 2000s, the Mac was the central hub where we would process and work with materials coming from different, specialised devices: the digital camera, the camcorder, the MP3 player, the audio CD, the DVD, the sound-recording equipment. At the time, all these devices were the best at their designed tasks.
But then the iPhone came (and all the competing smartphones based on its model), and it turned this ‘digital hub’ inside out. Now you had a single device taking up the tasks of all those separate devices. Convenient, but also a return to the Swiss Army knife metaphor Don Norman was mentioning earlier in what I indicated as section №5: “My Swiss Army knife […] is very valuable because it does so many things, but it does none of the single things as well as a specialized knife or a screwdriver or scissors.”
If you think about it, the Swiss Army knife is also a good metaphor to explain a big part of the iPad’s identity crisis. A big smartphone, a small laptop, a smarter and more versatile graphic tablet, among other things; and yet, it tends to do better at the task it ‘looks more like’: a tablet you use with a stylus to make digital artworks.
After years of smartphone (and similar ‘everything bucket’ devices) fatigue, it seems that we may be moving again towards task-specific devices, with people rediscovering digicam photography, or listening to music via specialised tools like old iPods and even portable CDs and MiniDisc players. The e‑ink device market seems to be in good health, especially when it comes to e‑ink tablets for note-taking and drawing; products like the Supernote by Ratta or the BOOX line by Onyx; or the one that likely started the trend — the ReMarkable. I have recently purchased one of these tablets, the BOOX Go 10.3, and it’s way, way better than an iPad for taking notes, drawing, and of course reading books and documents for long stretches of time.
I hope we’ll keep moving in this direction, honestly, because this obsession for convenience, the insistence on eliminating any kind of friction and any little cognitive load, and wanting single devices that ‘do everything’ is what is making interfaces become more and more complex, and making tech companies come up with debatable solutions to make such interfaces less complex. See for instance how Apple’s operating systems have been simplified at the surface level to appear cleaner, but in doing so have removed a lot of UI affordances and discoverability, burying instead of solving all the complexity that these systems have inexorably accumulated over time.
Or see for example how digital assistants have entered the picture in exactly the same way Microsoft came up with the idea of BOB in the 1990s. As Norman says, an intelligent assistant was added to the problem, becoming part of the problem instead of solving it. So we have complex user interfaces, but instead of working on how to make these interfaces more accessible, less convoluted, more discoverable, intuitive, and user friendly, tech companies have come up with the idea of the digital assistant as a shortcut. Too bad digital assistants have introduced yet another interface layer riddled with the usability and human-machine interaction issues we all know and experience on a daily basis. Imagine if we could remove this layer of awkwardness from our devices and had better-designed user interfaces that completely removed the need of a digital assistant.
[The full magazine article is available here.]
2025-01-20 19:29:12
Wil Shipley (via Michael Tsai):
Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users already have (or enter manually).
I wasn’t contacted about this.
I’ve pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app.
I closely follow Michael Tsai’s blog (and you should too, go add it to your feeds) but this bit of news somehow flew under my radar. That Delicious Library has to be retired is indeed the end of an era. The app had been going strong (and was a great example of good UI) for 20 years, and it’s sad to see great apps die just because someone at a Big Tech company decides to flip a switch.
I remember downloading a trial version of Delicious Library in late 2004 and at the time I really thought it was a nice solution for cataloguing my stuff. I ended up not using it, but the problem was me, not the app. I simply had too many things to catalogue. I could have turned the data entry into a daily habit — you know, scanning a bunch of items every day when I had some free time, and see my digitised library slowly grow and mirror my physical library — but twenty years ago I was far more impatient than I am now. The task seemed too daunting and I simply chickened out.
Fast forward to a few days ago, and I receive an email from Ding Yu, a reader of my blog whom I also know via X/Twitter. He’s a software developer based in Tokyo. And he’s had an idea:
I’m considering making a modern web version of the beloved Delicious Library, but I’m not sure this is something worth pursuing. I’ve put up my thoughts here: Recreating Delicious Library in 2025?
Prompted for feedback, I told him that I think it’s a very good idea. Despite not being a Delicious Library user myself, I’ve always thought it was a necessary application that would fit the cataloguing needs of a lot of people.
In writing my response to Ding, I also remembered my experience with Shelfari: I discovered it at the peak of its popularity, and I decided to give it a try. Maybe this time I would be more patient, so I started cataloguing my extensive book library. Things were going well enough, but since on the Internet we can’t have good things for too long, Shelfari was acquired by Amazon, shut down, and subsequently merged with Goodreads. Imagine my disappointment, after patiently uploading and curating data about almost 400 books…
In recalling that disappointment, the terrible feeling of having the rug pulled from under your feet after all that work, I think that a lot of Delicious Library users must feel the same right now, especially early adopters who have been using the app for twenty years, growing their extremely curated library of physical media. So I wrote back to Ding telling him that for these people, having an alternative Web app/service that could replicate most (or all) of Delicious Library’s functions could be nice and a welcome solution.
I also told Ding I would spread the word about his idea, so here I am. What do you think about it? If you’re interested, please go read his blog post, get in touch with him, and share your feedback. If you look at Ding’s past projects (outlined in the post), you’ll realise that he’s perfectly capable of coming up with a good product. And I understand his feelings and uncertainty when he writes, I really want to make this happen—it feels like something I’ve been working toward for years. But I’ve also built so many things that no one wanted before, so I’m not sure if this idea is worth pursuing. — I’ve been there. I know. So the more feedback he receives about this, the better.
2025-01-10 04:51:28
In Principles vs Pragmatism, Pete Moore writes:
It’s a mistake to judge others for their software choices, while still making exceptions for ourselves. Our hands aren’t exactly always clean. It would be akin to me blasting someone who is using HEY or Kagi, while disregarding my use of Apple products or occasionally ordering from Amazon. Case in point: I’ve seen discourse and uproar about Tim Cook donating $1M to Trump’s inauguration fund, while simultaneously ignoring others who are doing the same thing. No doubt it’s cringeworthy beyond words, and symptomatic of the larger, more pernicious issue of political lobbying and capitalist corruption.
Cook’s donation being cringeworthy is an understatement. I have made my tiny contribution to that discourse and uproar, by posting this on Mastodon a few days ago:
For me, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
No more money spent for an Apple product until there’s some clear sign of a change in stance and direction with Cook’s successor.
And I’m going to stand by that. I’m not ignoring the fact that Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are doing the same thing. I am actually not surprised about that. But I also largely don’t care about their businesses or products. I don’t use any product by Meta. I stopped being active on Instagram the day after Meta acquired it in April 2012. I’ve never had a Facebook account. I only order something from Amazon if there is no real alternative option. And so forth.
And for me, the issue here isn’t what others like Cook have done. The issue is that Cook didn’t act differently. He’s the CEO of the most valuable company in the world, a company that supposedly has thinking different in its DNA and culture. A company that certainly has all the resources to shoulder possible consequences from acting differently here.
Moore continues:
Are those who are lashing out at Tim because of their principles going to abandon Apple entirely, or does their pragmatism prevent them from doing so? I believe it would be naive and unwise to assume a change in leadership at Apple—or any of these other guilty parties—will prevent this from happening again. Spoiler alert: it won’t. This is the gaping wound that’s been allowed to fester and rot in our political systems.
We have to clarify what ‘abandoning Apple’ means. In my case, it’s not the same as rage-quitting, and that would be silly. Between current, older, and vintage models, I own about 40 Apple devices (Macs, iPhones, iPods, iPads, Newtons), purchased or acquired over the past 30 years or so. I’m not going to put them all in a crate and bring them to the recycler. Some of these devices hold sentimental value, and others were bought when Apple was overall a better company, innovation-wise and culture-wise. Plus, I study user interfaces. I want to keep having access to older versions of Mac OS/iOS/iPadOS to compare and contrast with the newer ones and analyse how they’re evolving (or not). I also need access to Apple devices for work reasons, though this requirement, over time, has become more relaxed.
Getting rid of all traces of Apple in my household as a reaction to Tim Cook donating $1M to Trump makes little sense and doesn’t really ‘boycott’ Apple in any meaningful way. However, as I said more succinctly in my Mastodon post, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back; I have been increasingly frustrated with Apple, their products, their design decisions, their software, their attitude towards third-party developers, their App Store policies, their attitude towards EU legislation’s requests, and in general with Cook’s direction over the years. This last gesture by Cook is something I find especially shameful considering the recipient of the donation and the ulterior motives behind it. So, my abandoning Apple is a process that’s starting now, by refusing to invest a single cent in an Apple product from now on, unless things were to dramatically change. And since, according to Moore, it would be naïve and unwise to assume they will, then okay, I will live with my principled decision.
I found Moore’s piece via Eric Schwarz, who comments:
Over the weekend, there have been a lot of words written about Apple CEO Tim Cook’s $1 million personal donation to the incoming administration’s inauguration fund and I think Moore nails a lot of aspects of how I’ve felt about it. It’s disgusting and we shouldn’t even be in a spot where it’s a necessity. However, while is something that will potentially benefit Apple and its shareholders, it also benefits employees and customers. Apple may get a special carve-out from the threat of tariffs and not have to raise prices.
Or Apple may get absolutely nothing out of it. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Everyone I’ve talked with about this disgusting donation these past days has pretty much reacted the same way: Steve Jobs wouldn’t have donated anything and would have stood by his decision.
I’ve had plenty of instances where I swore off businesses for one reason or another, but if you keep writing them off for every little thing, you’ll run out of options. Bad customer service? Sure. Disrespect of your time and patronage? Fine. Institutional values that don’t align with your own? Okay. […]
Except this isn’t ‘a little thing’, at least for me. It’s the cherry on top of the shit cake.
I’ve stood by my principles and choices even when doing so had made my tech life a bit more difficult or increased friction in my workflows. I’m not completely inflexible, and I’m the kind of person who very rarely makes rash decisions. I tend to give people a second chance. In a technology context, I similarly tend to give companies, products, and services a second chance except in cases of major screw-ups that ended up impacting me severely. But when I’ve really had enough of something, it’s unlikely that I’ll reconsider.
I think it’s increasingly important to have principles and to stand by them in a tech landscape that has never been as insidious as it is now. The only way to stand up to big tech companies is to refuse to be complacent, to refuse to play their games. We always tend to focus on how tech has made a lot of things better or easier, but we never really stop and consider the hefty price we have been paying in return.
Moore ends his piece with this:
The choice between principles and pragmatism often means being content living within the grey area between them.
More and more often, I feel that for many people ‘pragmatism’ means essentially ‘convenience’. Why bother taking a stand? — they rationalise, — It’s not going to change anything and I will have made my life harder for nothing. Tech companies, and every other entity that wields some kind of power over us, know this well. That’s why today only legislation seem to have enough power to make certain things change in the tech world. A lot of people like to spout about Voting with our wallet, but then they rarely act on their words.
Before you think I’m acting all holier-than-thou on this: I’m not judging anybody, and if you’re fine with what Cook did — or if you aren’t, but stopping supporting Apple feels too much or is unfeasible for a dozen reasons — I totally understand. The people I do have a problem with, however, are those who keep whining about how Big Tech is increasingly shaping and controlling our lives, but effectively do nothing to oppose that trend, and always choose convenience while telling themselves they’re being pragmatic. By constantly choosing the path of least resistance, doesn’t this ‘pragmatism’ eventually morph into acquiescence?
If I publicise my stance and my decisions, it’s not out of a desire to virtue-signal, but to manifest my unrest and disagreement, hopefully in a meaningful way. I’m still on team Principles even if it’s clear we’re losing the battle, and I really wish more people joined our team. But in the end I do what I do because it matters to me, because it means something to me and my conscience.
Eric Schwarz:
If you’re mad at Tim Cook, that’s also fine, but what’s the alternative? Microsoft or Google products? Building your own computer and phone with open source tools and hoping it works as well?
Well, it can be done. It takes patience and a healthy amount of tech-savvy, but it’s not impossible. There was a time when I thought, I don’t think I’ll ever touch Linux — it’s too ‘this’, and not enough ‘that’, and so forth. There is some friction, there is some workflow re-evaluation, some habits may change, but ultimately it’s a bit like those games that hit you hard in their first levels, but as you familiarise with their mechanics, you get more proficient.
But to respond to Eric more directly: Google or Microsoft aren’t necessarily better alternatives, but again, the crux of the matter here isn’t whether these and other big tech companies have donated money to Trump and how much. The matter is, quite simply, that Tim Cook did. Am I naïve and an idealist in thinking that he could have acted differently? Perhaps. That doesn’t change how I feel about it — disgusted and disappointed.
Schwarz closes his commentary with this:
Politics are a disgusting game, probably even more now, but anyone who is tasked with running one of the largest companies has to unfortunately play a little.
Should they, though? One thing is having to comply with, say, international laws, and with what foreign governments require (e.g. China, Russia, the EU, etc.). Another thing is participating in this nauseating show of bringing offerings to the loose cannon who is now again U.S. president, in the hope that he shall be benevolent in return; all this while forgetting he is, indeed, a loose cannon.
2025-01-01 01:15:53
Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:
The latest installment in the story of how bootable Mac backups will eventually disappear started with a blog post by Shirt Pocket Software’s Dave Nanian. In it, he explained why SuperDuper could no longer make bootable duplicates on M‑series Macs running under macOS 15.2 Sequoia, blaming Apple’s asr (Apple Software Restore) utility. This tool is the only way to create a bootable backup. […]
First, I confirmed that the problem was real but limited to M‑series Macs. On my Intel-based 27-inch iMac, SuperDuper had no problem completing a backup, and I was easily able to boot my iMac from that backup.
He then tried two other similar tools, ChronoSync and Carbon Copy Cloner, to no avail.
Regardless of whether asr caused these problems, such uncertainty is problematic when it comes to backups. I feel terrible for Shirt Pocket Software, Econ Technologies, and Bombich Software because they’re trying to provide a longstanding feature that users want—bootable backups—and they’re entirely at the mercy of Apple’s asr tool to do so. As we’ll see, Apple has relatively little interest in supporting bootable backups.
This gradual move away from bootable backups is part of Apple’s Mac OS lockdown procedure, as I’d like to call it. It’s all disguised as providing users with hardened security for their Macs, while effectively limiting their choices when it comes to managing machines they purchased and own.
I’ll be quoting a lot in this piece, so bear with me.
From Apple’s perspective, allowing system files to be copied inherently introduces opportunities for attackers to modify system components. Since macOS 10.15 Catalina, the separate system volume is immutable, locked, and validated using cryptography—what Apple calls the “signed system volume.” Any method that allows it to be copied onto a bootable drive must preserve the same verification to ensure nothing has changed.
As I was reading this paragraph, I was thinking of all the typical regular users of Apple computers who use their Macs at home or in their home office or studio, and how real, how reasonably likely, could be the threat of a hacker penetrating their Macs and modifying their systems. But sure, I’ll concede that this security measure — locking and encrypting the system volume — is sound. Particularly useful against a type of computer user who invariably annoyed me back in a previous life when I used to freelance as IT support: the user who tinkered a bit too much with their production machine (or with their only machine) without really knowing what they were doing, but attempting it anyway because “my tech-savvy friend told me I could try this to optimise this stuff”, or because “I read on the Internet that I could speed up downloading files from websites with this [shady] utility”, or because “someone said in a forum that with this Terminal command you could double your free memory”. And so forth. You’ve certainly met this kind of user more than once in your life. They’re their computer’s worst enemy. Protecting all the critical components of the operating system against this type of user is a good idea. Their Macs will never get as messed up as some Macs I had to laboriously un-mess back in the era of Classic Mac OS and older Mac OS X versions.
Back to Engst:
To mitigate this move away from easily making bootable backups, Apple has invested a lot of effort into macOS Recovery and Migration Assistant. It is now trivial and streamlined to boot a Mac into macOS Recovery, install macOS, and restore user files using Migration Assistant. With a separate system volume, a reinstallation just creates a new, secured, immutable volume and then copies your user files to the data volume. Because Apple controls every part of that process, there’s no worry about the security of the system being compromised.
Uh, no, it’s not that trivial. I only have anecdata, but several people in my circle of friends and acquaintances have told me their experience with Migration Assistant — especially with recent Macs — hasn’t been smooth at all, citing freezes and failure to transfer all the expected data. And it’s not as fast as having a bootable cloned disk at hand in case of catastrophic failures. Well, in case of a catastrophic failure, like your Mac’s internal SSD dying, you obviously can’t transfer anything. Unless you have some backup lying around, you’re done.
Oh, and there’s another fun thing that happens when your Mac’s internal SSD is toast: you can’t boot from an external drive. I completely forgot about this. Engst references this great 2021 article by Glenn Fleishman: An M1 Mac Can’t Boot from an External Drive if its Internal Drive is Dead.
But why would Apple do this? — asks Fleishman in that article, and his answer is, To increase security. And, maybe, to reduce its tech support costs. “Security, again,” I repeat out loud, rolling my eyes.
Look, I’m not arguing against security; I’m not downplaying possible security risks, especially in today’s world, which is certainly worse than the world of two decades ago; I’m not even arguing that this is all security theatre, because it’s not. I’m simply arguing that this degree of security-driven Mac OS lockdown is overkill and it’s certainly been implemented by Apple to make their lives easier, not the end users’.
There are many interesting comments to Engst’s article. An example of users having more limited choices is provided by reader Michael Schmitt:
But still… let’s say you have an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro which came with Ventura (like mine), and is currently on Sonoma (like mine). Your internal SSD dies, so you take it to the Apple Store and get it replaced.
A week later you have your computer back, but it is on Sequoia. You want it to be on Sonoma. What to do?
The problem is that macOS Recovery doesn’t let you pick which macOS version it will install. On Intel Macs you have limited options: macOS computer came with, macOS it is currently on, or most recent macOS. None of those will work.
On Apple Silicon, as far as I can tell, you have no choice at all. So if it installs Sequoia, you’re stuck, because the macOS installer won’t let you downgrade. You can’t even use it to installer a lower version of macOS on an external drive(*).
(*) Another reader, down in the thread, notes that it is technically possible to perform such a downgrade, but it’s not exactly an intuitive, ‘Mac-like’ procedure.
Note that this can happen (and has happened to a friend of mine) even if you take the Mac to the Apple Store for other motherboard issues and not just because the internal SSD has died. In my friend’s case, his MacBook had developed power issues. I don’t know whether it was an intermittent failure at powering up, a failure in detecting a connected power cable (so the battery couldn’t be charged either), or both, but they performed a motherboard replacement and he found himself with a fresh installation of what was the latest Mac OS version at the time. And he was, I think, two versions behind because a couple of software applications he relied upon either weren’t working well or at all under the latest Mac OS.
Back when my iMac G3 broke down in 2001 (analogue board failure), the repair shop told me I could have my Mac back in 2–3 weeks, a downtime I simply could not afford. So they put the iMac’s hard drive in an external FireWire enclosure, and I was able to continue working by connecting the drive to my iBook G3 SE straight away. My downtime that day was about 2 hours (the time it took me to bring the iMac to the shop and return home).
Reader ‘trilo’ writes the comment that resonates with me the most:
The past few posts from Michael and Doug explain the issue perfectly. It has made what used to be quick and easy, extremely hard or impossible.
Having a securely locked OS is a great concept but it clearly comes with significant consequences. Bricking a machine is unacceptable for people who need their machines to make a living and where time is critical. There are dozens of times over the past 10 years where booting from a clone kept our production running and deadlines met, and there’s now circumstances where this can’t happen.
For mine the biggest concern of Michael Schmitt’s scenario is the statement “A week later you have your computer back”. From past experience I’d be very surprised if it only took a week.
As for OS versions, some people simply prefer to run older versions of an OS whether it be for practical reasons or personal choice. Forced upgrades aren’t cool.
Finally, I realise no amount of complaining or explaining will change Apple’s mind — but it doesn’t mean it’s not a bone-headed decision done for Apple’s convenience rather than the users’.
In a reply to ‘trilo’, reader Doug Miller says:
My last ten to fifteen years of computer use on Macs have been the most stable of my life — they are the most reliable they have ever been for me… Generally the only times my Macs restart are when OS upgrades get delivered (there are also restarts of course for the desktops when we have power outages). I’m reminded a bit of the Louis CK “everything is amazing and nobody is happy” sometimes.
I’ll also note that I once did Mac cloned backups and I always found issues — every time I booted the clone to check if it was ok, things were just a bit messed up. The boot took longer; performance was poorer. Dropbox required authentication (that’s just the one app/service that I remember having issues — there may have been more.) It generally worked, but it didn’t “just work”.
I’ll say this: ever since SSD technology matured, it has increased stability and reliability exponentially, both in my newer and older Macs. It’s too bad that this stability on the hardware side is paired with a worsened experience on the operating system software side. For a UI enthusiast and long-time Mac user such as myself, watching Mac OS gradually become a shell of its former self — more locked down, more simplified and iOS-ified — is a painful spectacle. Have I had any problem with my M2 Pro Mac mini running Ventura since I purchased it in June 2023? No. Not an issue, and not a crippling bug either. That’s great, don’t get me wrong. But also: am I happy every time I interact with this Mac OS? No. Not as happy as when I switch to another of my Macs running older Mac OS versions like High Sierra, Mojave, El Capitan, Snow Leopard, Tiger. I use this Mac mainly for work. But it feels just like when I used a Windows PC for work. I tolerate it, I can work with it; but the fun is elsewhere.
Oh, and unlike Miller I never had an issue with bootable cloned drives in the past. There was one occasion when SuperDuper threw an error when the cloning process was finished, so I asked Dave Nanian for clarifications, but in practice everything went smoothly and the cloning was successful. All the contents of my 2017 iMac 4K were copied on an external SSD, and I’ve been using that SSD as main volume ever since (that iMac still came with a spinning hard drive, and I didn’t want to open the computer to replace the HD with the SSD, preferring to leave the hard drive inside and use it as a data backup volume).
‘trilo’ replies to Doug Miller, and in their reply there’s another bit where we strongly agree, and it’s that last paragraph:
My work is deadline driven publishing and Apple has removed the safety net we enjoyed. Maybe the Apple market is now just Instagram and tiktok viewers but some of us still do real work where we can’t afford hours, days or weeks without a functional machine.
I’d like the choice to do it. I’m happy to shoulder the risks — just don’t prevent me from doing it. Some users don’t want to be dictated to by the lowest common denominator.
I’m sure it’s technically possible to provide the option of making bootable cloned volumes in an easy, user-comprehensible fashion while preserving a layer of underlying security, but I’m also sure it would be more work for Apple behind the scenes. It’s more cost-effective for Apple to follow the principle that the fewer moving parts, the fewer the chances of a machine breaking down. To the point that Macs are basically black boxes.
Whatever your opinion on this whole matter, there’s an unescapable fact — recovering from a serious hardware failure or data loss used to be faster and simpler than it is now. Did it involve a lesser degree of security? Theoretically, yes. In practice, we accepted the security trade-off of being able to use a quicker, more ‘open’ procedure to get back on track instead of having to jump through largely overkill security hoops that ultimately create a lot of friction and encumbrance for the end user. A user who’s simply dealing with data loss or hardware failures, with reasonably near-zero risk that ‘some attacker’ may target their machine or information.
As a coda to all this, there’s one last observation I’d like to make. In Engst’s comments, in Fleishman’s afore-linked article, and in the comments to Engst’s piece, it is repeatedly pointed out that the internal SSDs in today’s Macs are extremely reliable, making the actual need for bootable backups rather redundant and irrelevant. And while I don’t necessarily disagree with this, such reliability has led to a fascinating side effect: people don’t make backups of their data like they used to.
Every once in a while, I conduct private surveys and polls with a fair amount of volunteers. Statistically, the sample isn’t very large (we’re talking 100–120 people), but it’s diverse enough to have a modicum of relevance for me. My volunteers are people with varying degrees of tech expertise (from none to a lot), different age ranges, different jobs and incomes, and hail from different countries within and outside the EU.
A few months ago, I had the idea of writing a piece about how we’re doing backups today, so I sent out a few questions via email to my volunteers. I wanted to know which platform they were using, which backup solutions they had in place (if any), and whether their backup strategy had significantly changed in recent times.
I received 106 replies, 75 from Mac users. Of these Mac users, only 11 are still actively, routinely backing up their data. Of the remaining 64, 21 told me they’ve never backed up anything. In the remaining group of 43 users, a few of them relied solely on Time Machine backups (without even verifying them), but the majority was simply using some cloud service (Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive) to save selected critical data and nothing else. After a few follow-up enquiries, an interesting trend emerged: every person in my sample who was using an Apple Silicon Mac didn’t bother with any particular backup solution, and a lot of them specifically told me that they had stopped bothering with backups since Apple stopped including spinning hard drives in their computers, and especially since transitioning to the Apple Silicon architecture. They told me the reliable hardware makes them feel secure enough to skip backups altogether. Some of them keep a few important documents in iCloud, but they haven’t even bothered purchasing more iCloud storage for that.
A couple of responses were fascinating, and they were along the lines of, “My Mac feels like an iPad now, and I certainly don’t spend time backing up my iPad. If something happens, I just do a restore”. I don’t know what kind of ‘restore’ they’re thinking of, but I perfectly got the overall attitude.
(By the way, of the 31 Windows users who submitted their replies, the vast majority used OneDrive as main backup solution, while 5 people told me they relied on local NAS solutions to preserve their data. Even among them, SSDs inside their main computers meant a general sense of increased reliability and security).
I ended up not writing that article about backup strategies, but the information I collected with my survey had got me thinking. Now, maybe these results don’t align with your personal experience, but I’m curious to know whether you, too, have relaxed or entirely neglected your backup practices since switching to SSD-powered machines and specifically Apple Silicon Macs.
All this to me feels like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, having faster and more reliable storage technologies is very welcome, as catastrophic data losses become less frequent and less likely. On the other hand, people getting progressively careless about backup strategies, to the point of ditching them entirely, is a bit worrying. Sure, disasters are less likely to strike, but when they do strike, it’s going to hit harder than before. SSDs are not infallible, neither are they everlasting. Also, in my experience, SSD failures can happen without warning and be immediately, entirely devastating. Hard drive failures can be gradual and not utterly destructive straight away. A hard drive can start failing but still remain operational long enough to allow you to make an emergency backup in case you’re caught unawares (as it happened to me in 2006 with my 12-inch PowerBook G4’s drive — I was able to copy everything on a second drive with only 0.3% of data corruption before the drive failed completely). An SSD just fails and there’s basically nothing you can do about it.
So, while SSD failures are still way less common than hard drive failures, I’d still call this almost unconditional reliance on them a false sense of security. And no, of course I’m not saying it’s Apple’s fault — I’ve been criticising the company more and more often, but I’m not a moron. Yet, it’s somehow ironic to see a more secure, locked-down Mac OS, and users feeling so much safer that they’re willing to forgo backup solutions almost entirely. Thank goodness I’m not doing IT support anymore.
As for software and security, thankfully it’s still possible to run any application you want on Mac OS, but it’s increasingly clear to me how Apple would prefer an iOS/iPadOS scenario, where the only apps you can install and execute would come from the App Store, and only from the App Store. For now, we simply have to deal with additional mouse clicks and granting permissions to apps that aren’t from the App Store or from ‘Identified developers’. But I routinely find myself wondering how long this software freedom will last before Apple initiates another lockdown.
I assume it’s because at the moment Apple still fears the inevitable backlash from users (and especially power users), but I’m starting to wonder how much of a backlash it will really be after a few Mac OS cycles. Judging by the utter lack of interest from regular users when it comes to UI-related matters — and I’ve noticed that every time I’ve raised some issues regarding Mac OS’s worsened user interface and first-party apps. Judging by the fact that an increasing number of Apple users are utterly unfazed by atrocious design choices like putting notches on iPhone and MacBook displays, or by Apple’s almost complete disregard of their own Human Interface Guidelines in their own operating system, I’m afraid that when Apple decides to pull the ‘App Store only’ card for Mac OS apps, most users will just accept that with a shrug and move on. In case something like this eventually materialises, my hope is that the European Commission will regulate against such practice and will save Mac OS from its dumbed-down, locked-down fate.
2024-12-06 22:02:02
First and foremost: if you haven’t read my previous piece, Switching to Android? it’s better if you do so before proceeding.
In that post I wrote:
Digital entrenchment is silly, and it’s wiser to have a more open-minded approach. Big tech companies aren’t your friends or even allies. ‘Rooting’ for one is naïve and cringe.
Unsurprisingly, 90% of the feedback emails I got about my post were from digitally entrenched people and Apple fans. I explained clearly enough what this transition means for me and the way it’s going to play out, but still the majority of comments assumed I’m going to ditch all my Apple stuff and do a hard switch.
I don’t have the time and the patience to write back to each of these people explaining what I have already said in my piece, so my general, public reply is simply, re-read the damn article.
Some other feedback I received, while not being openly hostile, insinuated that I’m going to regret the switch, suggesting that using an Android device is like tinkering with volatile machinery, while the iPhone and iOS ‘just work’.
Finally, a small percentage of readers and followers either welcomed me ‘to the other side’ or manifested genuine interest in my platform transition. Some gave me a few tips. And some, like Peter and Jeffrey pointed me to Asus’s Zenfone line as one good example of current compact Android phones. I actually remember looking into Asus and OnePlus as possible brands to consider when I started pondering Android as an ‘exit strategy’ some time ago; I even remember a very positive review of the Zenfone 9 by Marques Brownlee, but I hadn’t realised how relatively compact Asus’s phones are. The Zenfone 10’s dimensions are fairly similar to the iPhone SE 3’s, for instance.
Back to those foreseeing I’ll have a hard time adapting to an Android device because, unlike the iPhone, it involves more ‘tinkering’, let me give you a brief update about that.
I still haven’t removed my SIM card from the iPhone and put it in my Nothing Phone 2a. I’ve been busy these days, and the only things I had time to do were keeping an eye on the 2a’s battery life, searching for Android counterparts of the apps I use most on iOS, and enjoying the Nothing Watch Pro 2 smartwatch. So far, what I can tell you is this:
I’ve monitored battery life on the Nothing Phone 2a rather closely these days while using it as a secondary device at home and out and about. My phone usage could be considered ‘light to moderate’ by today’s standards. The 2a consistently lasts two full days, sometimes a little more. I charged it to 100% one morning at 10 AM, and it was about 20% at 11 PM of the following day. By turning on Battery Saver (Android’s Low Power mode), I managed to make it last until 9:30 AM of the third day. It’s a respectable performance. My iPhone SE 3 can last one day and a morning if I’m careful, which isn’t bad either considering that I’ve been using it for about one year and a half now. Sure, the Nothing Phone 2a is much newer, has a bigger battery (5,000 mAh versus the 2,018 mAh of the iPhone SE 3), but of course it has a much bigger and brighter display, and I’ve been keeping its Always-on Display feature turned on for the most part of the day.
Speaking of Always-on Display, I like that it’s not a simple toggle. You can set it so that it’s active only during a certain time of the day, which makes sense as you probably don’t glance at your phone during the night when you’re sleeping.
I still haven’t explored in depth the various things you can do with Nothing’s Glyph interface, but I’ve found the Glyph timer to be rather useful (you set a timer, then flip the phone, and as time passes, the illuminated portion of the ‘glyph’ on the back of the phone recedes, so you can see at a glance roughly how much time is left). Features like the volume indicator or music visualisation aren’t strictly useful or groundbreaking, but are fun to use, and represent the tasteful whimsy side of Nothing’s overall sober and minimalistic æsthetic.
When it comes to camera performance, it’s something that typically doesn’t concern me very much, since I prefer using real cameras to take photos and treat smartphone cameras as tools for instant photography of secondary importance. And coming from the ‘generally okay’ single camera array of the iPhone SE 3, Nothing Phone 2a’s dual camera array and front facing camera are noticeably better, especially in worse lighting conditions. Granted, pro iPhones and flagship Android headsets of the likes of Google, Samsung, OnePlus, etc. certainly outclass the 2a’s cameras, but for my limited needs they’re much more than enough.
One little cool detail when using the 2a’s camera (something the iPhone doesn’t have, as far as I know) is that if there’s some dirt on the lens(es), the phone gives you a warning in the camera app.
I’m positively impressed by the Nothing Phone 2a’s fingerprint sensor. It uses an in-screen optical scanner, so, instead of being a pseudo-button outside the display like the iPhone’s Home button, it’s a circular area inside the display and right at the bottom where your finger expects it. And it works remarkably well. The detection rate is much better than on the iPhone and, equally importantly, I get asked to use my passcode to unlock the phone less frequently than on the iPhone; which is perhaps the only thing that truly annoys me of Touch ID, because it seems to happen so randomly and often at the most inopportune times (you’re in a shop paying for something with the iPhone, there are people in queue behind you, and instead of the Apple Pay interaction, you get prompted to unlock the iPhone with your passcode first).
The fingerprint sensor’s haptics are also good. The virtual ‘click’ when the phone recognises your fingerprint is positive and satisfying, and for a split second you’re left with the impression that you’re actually digging your thumb into the display.
The haptic feedback in general really surprised me. Especially when typing with the virtual keyboard. It’s stronger than on the iPhone, and it gives the keyboard a pleasantly tactile feel as you type; which, in my case, also leads to making next to no typing errors.
This little smartwatch has perhaps surprised me even more positively than the phone. Nothing claims an 11-day battery life. With normal usage, in my informal tests I’d say it’s closer to 7–8 days actually, but it’s still impressive given that this is a traditional smartwatch with an AMOLED display (and a rather bright one at that). My Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid smartwatch has a freakishly long battery life (one month average) because it’s a hybrid smartwatch with real watch hands and an e‑ink display behind them. But the Watch Pro 2 — for being what it is — is very good compared with similar WearOS-based smartwatches.
What never ceases to amaze me is that it’s a feature-packed smartwatch (it has a step counter, a heart rate monitor, a blood oxygen monitor, it even has GPS), it is well built and looks and feels premium overall, and it only costs $/€69.
As I mentioned in my previous piece, its companion CMF Watch app is well designed and pleasant to use. Data with the smartwatch is exchanged frequently and seamlessly, and the watchface gallery offers a lot of tasteful watchfaces, both in analogue and digital styles, with varying amount of information. Some faces offer further customisation once installed on the watch — for example if a face features a battery meter by default, you can choose to change it into a calorie or activity meter.
You also have the option of creating a customised watch face. The layouts are pretty basic, but you can spice things up by using a recently-introduced ‘AI’ tool that can create custom face backgrounds by mixing and matching choices you specify. In general, I’d say that the watchface gallery offered by Nothing is a good middle ground between the somewhat limited choices you have on the Apple Watch, and the dizzying selection provided by apps like Facer.
I don’t know if this is a consequence of playing with new devices after favouring one platform and one type of smartphone for so long, but this experience with the Nothing ecosystem feels refreshingly good and appears to have — at least for now — put a stop to a long period of tech fatigue and lack of enthusiasm. It’s not easy to explain why exactly. Nothing’s hardware and software aren’t especially groundbreaking. They’re well designed, decently built, and without doubt reflect a distinct personality and vision emanating from within the company and its founder and CEO Carl Pei.
If this reminds you of a certain company that used to make machines which were both powerful and whimsy, paired with good software and a solid UI and UX foundation, that’s exactly it; that’s the je ne sais quoi element I’m talking about. Not only do this phone and this watch just work, they’re also just nice.
2024-11-27 08:47:33
Last week, for my birthday, my wife got me a Nothing Phone (2a). No, it wasn’t an attempt on her part to turn me into an Android user (she uses an iPhone herself); two weeks earlier she asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and since I had recently shown her just how I liked the design of Nothing’s products and Nothing as a company, she said something like, Maybe you’d like a Nothing phone?
“I’d love to have a Nothing Phone (2), but I also like the (2a), and it’s even more affordable”, I replied. We had a deal.
The phone arrived via courier exactly on the day of my birthday; she got me the phone, an additional screen protector, and the transparent Nothing phone case. The unboxing was quick and fun.
I’m glad I chose the Milk colour variant. I think it makes the peculiar design of the phone’s back stand out more. It gives more of a ‘space age’ NASA vibe than the Black variant.
Also, as I was checking something on Amazon, I noticed they were already offering Black Friday deals, so as a little birthday gift to myself I purchased the Nothing CMF Watch Pro 2 (in orange). This smartwatch, already quite affordable at €69, was on sale at €55. I couldn’t resist.
So I have had the Nothing Phone (2a) for a week and the Watch Pro 2 for four days now. The general impression is that both these devices really punch above their weight. They may not be made of ‘premium’ materials, but neither feels cheap, either. Every time I look at the Watch Pro 2, and every time I consider just how seamless it was to pair with the phone, and to use the very good companion app, it boggles the mind that this is a €70 accessory.
Same with the (2a). It has a great display, decent cameras, great performance and responsiveness, and a long-lasting battery. One reviewer on the Nothing UK site said it well: It feels like a flagship, handles like an iPhone, but with a great battery life and a splash of personality. It also has two things I wish Apple gave to at least one iPhone model: a simple punch-hole front camera, and a fingerprint sensor using an in-screen optical scanner. These two features allow the (2a) to have a truly ‘all-screen’ experience — where the display doesn’t have an intrusive black area at the top like the notch or dynamic island on the iPhone — and I still can use a fingerprint reader to unlock the phone biometrically without being forced to enable an authentication method I don’t like. (By the way, the (2a) also features Face Unlock, in case you were wondering).
It’s still too early to write a proper review of this device, but first impressions do matter, and the (2a) so far has impressed me. My current smartphone is an iPhone SE 3, so the bump in performance when using the (2a) was expected. But sheer performance isn’t everything. There’s the UI too. And I really, really like what Nothing is doing with their Nothing OS. Visually, we can consider their apps and UI to be flat, minimalist design. But it’s done with intent, it’s mostly cohesive, and I feel it has the right balance between starkness/austerity and fun/whimsy to appear charming rather than bland. It certainly is distinctive.
Left: Nothing Phone (2a) lock screen, with the characteristic fluted glass effect applied to the wallpaper image. Right: Nothing OS Weather app.
Ever since I started talking about the Nothing Phone (2a) and the Watch Pro 2 on social media, a few have reached out asking me the predictable question — So, are you switching to Android? and the answer is: That’s happening, let me explain.
You see, with me and my kind of constant multi-platform curiosity, things are never black or white. While my main computing platform remains the Mac, I do own and use Windows PCs of various vintages, and even a ThinkPad with a Linux distro on it. While my main smartphone has been the iPhone since 2008, over time I have acquired and enjoyed Android phones, Symbian, Windows Phone, and MeeGo devices. My primary tablet is an iPad, but I also have an older Surface Pro, and I prefer reading ebooks on Kindle devices. Especially since the mid-2010s, I’ve always had a secondary device from another platform. Ecosystems are convenient, but they also trap you. And these aren’t the times to limit ourselves to just one platform, one ecosystem. Digital entrenchment is silly, and it’s wiser to have a more open-minded approach. Big tech companies aren’t your friends or even allies. ‘Rooting’ for one is naïve and cringe.
In the end, for me, ‘switching’ to Android doesn’t mean going all-in on it, ditching my iPhones and iOS and obliterating any other platform. Currently, and more mundanely, it means taking out the SIM card from my iPhone SE and putting it in the Nothing Phone (2a). It’s a literal switch, not a move. It’s a switch between my primary and secondary platforms.
After 16 years of iPhones, I’m feeling a bit fatigued, to be honest. When Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017, it was the first time I actively disliked the device’s design. Every iPhone that has come after has kept doubling down on that absurd design decision that started as a notch and has become a slightly-reduced notch (that’s how I see the Dynamic Island, sorry). This has severely reduced the appeal of the iPhone for me. (And of MacBooks too since they received the notch treatment).
I’ve also preferred Touch ID as a method of biometric authentication, and it’s also the method I prefer in user-interaction workflows. Paying with my iPhone is faster, and authenticating by placing my finger on the sensor feels more like a purposeful gesture than just glancing at the device. Face ID still feels too abstract and feedback-less for me. Clicking the Home button to quit an app feels less error-prone than a swipe. Having a Home button means I can swipe to scroll inside an app without worrying that I may accidentally quit it or switch to another with a miscalculated swipe.
And I still maintain that all the gestures to invoke Notification Centre, Control Centre, and the multitasking UI are better implemented on the traditional, pre-iPhone X design with the Home button.
But Apple has moved away from it. If it weren’t for the iPhone SE line, I would have already looked elsewhere. And given that it’s highly likely that the iPhone SE 4 will embrace the newer, notched design, it does really feel like the end of the line for me as an iPhone user.
And if I’m finding the iPhone hardware design increasingly off-putting, on the software side things aren’t getting better either. I still have a couple of devices on iOS 12, and I can’t really tell the difference between iOS versions after that one. Yes, on iOS 18 you can finally customise your iPhone screen the way you want. That and Apple Intelligence are what’s going to make this iOS version somewhat distinctive. That’s not something I find especially appealing or groundbreaking.
To be perfectly clear, while I find iOS increasingly stagnant and underwhelming as a platform, that doesn’t necessarily mean I find Android to be more innovative or attractive. But we have indeed reached a point of close similarity and feature parity. Yes, there are better-designed third-party apps on iOS; but most of the ones I keep returning to have equally good Android counterparts. One thing I’ve always loved about iOS, especially in the App Store golden era, has been the sheer amount of good-quality camera and photo editing apps. But I won’t miss those, as I’ll be taking my iPhone SE with me as a secondary device anyway.
There are, however, a couple of things in this personal transition (that’s how I prefer to call it, rather than a switch) from my iPhone to the Nothing Phone and the Android platform that make me feel a little bit hesitant:
Firstly, from a mere hardware standpoint, there’s no way around it: the Nothing Phone (2a) is decidedly bigger and bulkier than the iPhone SE 3. Here are their respective dimensions:
| iPhone SE 3 | Nothing Phone (2a) | |
|---|---|---|
| Display | 4.7 inches | 6.7 inches |
| Height | 138.4 mm | 161.74 mm |
| Width | 67.3 mm | 76.32 mm |
| Depth | 7.3 mm | 8.55 mm |
| Weight | 144 grams | 190 grams |
In other words, size-wise, the (2a) sits roughly between an iPhone 15 Pro Max and an iPhone 16 Pro Max, while being fractionally thicker. But since it’s made of lighter materials, it’s a bit lighter (31 grams less than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, 37 grams less than the 16 Pro Max). Still, it’s a big phone — made even slightly bigger when enclosed in its protective case. I’ve been complaining for a while now that smartphones are getting more and more cumbersome and that Apple is happily following the trend. I really like the more compact size of the iPhone SE 3, which by now I can operate almost one-handed.
However, at least at the moment, if you’re looking to upgrade your smartphone, good luck finding one with the iPhone SE’s size. It seems that the only viable option to get a decently specced compact smartphone is to get a horizontally foldable device like the Motorola Razr or the Samsung Z Flip. Even if I liked the design of the current iPhones, and decided to get the regular iPhone 16, for example, it would still be a big phone for my hands.
So, if I have no choice but to get accustomed to a big phone, at least I now have one with an interesting and distinctive design and without those huge, unwieldy, and awful camera arrays a lot of other Android phones and the pro iPhones have.
Secondly and more importantly, there’s the privacy angle. Despite my growing disenchantment with Apple and my continued criticisms, privacy is something where Apple undeniably excels at. While I couldn’t wait to set up Apple Pay to easily pay with my iPhone when my bank finally decided to make their services available through Apple Pay, I’m still torn about enabling Google Pay on the Nothing Phone.
As for the rest, I don’t think this transition is going to be particularly rocky. I’m still at the first stages, where I’m familiarising with the new smartphone and looking for familiar apps in the Play Store. I’ve already found all the essentials, and now I’m mostly looking for ‘nice to have’ apps (I strongly encourage the Android power users in my audience to reach out with suggestions for great apps, especially in the photo and RSS feed reader categories).
All in all, choosing the Nothing brand at the moment feels right; the company seems like a little Apple in the Android universe, back when Apple was the underdog and not the giant it is today. There’s a strong sense of community, and the people at Nothing seem rather open, both in discussing their hardware and software design ideas, and in taking customer feedback into consideration. I think they’re doing a good job at presenting the brand identity and philosophy via their YouTube channel. They’re certainly being successful at making their customers (and me now) not feel like just another bunch of Android users, if you know what I mean.
That’s it for now. I plan to keep you all posted about this personal transition as it unfolds, and to speak more at length about the Nothing Phone (2a), the Watch Pro 2, and Nothing OS (especially after the big upcoming update to version 3.0) in the following weeks. Meanwhile, I really welcome any kind of feedback from iPhone users who switched to Android in recent times. I’d love to know more about your experience and if you have thoughts you want to share. Check my Contact page for ways to get in touch.
