Category: the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs.

technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs. writing.

the old ways and the new.

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This is a picture of long-handing it on an iPad Pro. It seems excessive and wasteful to use a $1,000 tablet as an electronic legal pad, but I’m very much digging the advantages it has over paper.

You don’t have to drag around multiple notebooks, you have an endless supply of paper of whatever kind you want, you have pen tips of all kinds and inks in all colors, and everything you write is automatically backed up via iCloud and shared with the MacBook Pro on my desk. When I am done with the drafting phase, I can either print out the longhand, or export it to PDF or DOCX to split-screen it next to Scrivener and transcribe everything. (My handwriting doesn’t play well with the handwriting recognition programs out there, and I enjoy the on-the-fly revision inherent in transcription anyway.)

The iPad Pro also does Scrivener now, so it has become a full-blown Swiss Army knife of productivity hardware. I can type in Scrivener or Word, longhand in Notability, make sketches in Notes or Paper, and then bring it all together in Scrivener on the laptop. 

Before I got the iPad Pro, I used the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for the same job, and it does it almost as well. The pen is almost as good as the Apple Pencil, and the new handwriting features in Windows 10 are great. I would not be heartbroken if I had to switch back to the SP3. But the iPad Pro has a bit of an edge if all the rest of your gear is Apple stuff too because everything integrates just a little better.

I still enjoy writing on proper, actual paper with nice pens, but there is something to be said for being able to carry around as many notebooks and pens or pencils as you want in a single pound-and-a-half folio case, and have the peace of mind of instant backups and digitization. But for the final assembly of the Novel-Length Textual Product, I still go to Scrivener on the Mac, which has been my main writing software since Book 1.

gadgetry. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs.

honey, i shrunk the phone.

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Just before I went to Europe last year, I upgraded my phone from an iPhone 5 to a 6 Plus. Having read the reviews online (and having taken big swigs of the marketing Kool-Aid), I figured I could use the Plus to combine the jobs of both tablet and phone in one device.

After a year with Apple’s phablet, I have to conclude that rather than combining the best aspects of phone and tablet, it combines their drawbacks much more noticeably: it’s too big to make a convenient phone, and too small to make a decent tablet. I was constantly put off by the size when I used it as a phone–reaching icons on the other side of the screen was awkward, even with my big hands and Apple’s little home button double-tap sliding-of-the-screen trick. And when I tried to use it as a tablet substitute, the lack of screen real estate didn’t really let me use it efficiently. I also managed to bend it ever so slightly, enough that the phone would not sit level on a desk even face-down, and putting it into a protective case made a huge phone even larger and more cumbersome.

So I finally admitted defeat and traded the 6 Plus for an iPhone SE. My wife had the regular 6, so I was familiar with the size and handling, but it didn’t fit me all that well either. I think it’s Apple’s insistence on making the phones both very thin and round the corners at the same time, so the whole thing feels like a slick, skinny river stone. (Robin dropped hers on numerous occasions and had the screen replaced once.) And I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the smaller phone again. It’s much, much easier to use with one hand. And I find that I am now using the phone for phone jobs again, and don’t try to force it to be a tablet. If I need to dash out a text or a quick Tweet, I can do it on the phone. For anything else, I can get the iPad or laptop out, and get the job done more efficiently than trying to make it work on the not-quite-a-tablet iPhone 6 Plus.

Oh, and the Apple Watch really comes into its own when you use it with a smaller phone like the SE. With the Apple Watch’s ability to reply to texts or take quick hands-free calls, I can just about leave the phone in my pocket all day. If something pops up on the watch that requires a quick response, I use a canned reply or dictate one. And if it requires more than a sentence, I wait until I can get to the iPad or laptop, and no longer pry the phablet out of my pocket to peck out an email on it.

The phablet makes sense for some people, and I know that some of my friends dig theirs a lot. It didn’t work for me, because I generally use specialized devices for specific jobs and no longer try to do the technological Swiss Army Knife thing.

gadgetry. technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs. writing.

it’s a tablet! it’s a laptop! it’s a dessert topping!

I have a severe case of technology ADD. When it comes to hardware, I sometimes impulse-buy shiny things just to try them out and see how they fit my workflow. Sometimes they look and work better on the store shelf or in the YouTube review than they do in actual real-world use, and sometimes they exceed even my rosy expectations.

Here, for example, are the two devices I’ve been using for work on the go. On the left is a 12″ MacBook, one of the new thin ones that came out this spring. On the right is the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft’s ambitious tablet that is marketed as a sort of hybrid device, a tablet that can also be a laptop replacement.

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I save all my work to two different cloud services, OneDrive and iCloud Drive, both of which are installed on both machines. Both devices are very close to each other in hardware specs, and they are marketed as competitors to each other. The MacBook has a CoreM CPU, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for storage. The Surface Pro 3 has a Core i5, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD. The Mac runs MacOS X, the Surface runs Windows 10 Professional, both full desktop operating systems. They are both under two pounds in weight. (Without its type cover, the SP3 is quite a bit lighter.) Once you add in the SP3’s keyboard cover (which is really an essential add-on), they are similarly priced.

Now, I’m a big fan of Apple hardware, and their laptops are without a doubt the best laptops on the market. They are meticulously designed, aesthetically pleasing, extremely well put together, and running a pretty bomb-proof OS. But when it comes to overall flexibility in day-to-day use, the Surface Pro 3 has it all over the MacBook. It’s a tablet by format, but it’s full-power hardware running a desktop OS, essentially an Ultrabook in slate form. Click on the keyboard cover, and it becomes a laptop (albeit one with inferior keyboard and trackpad compared to the Mac’s.) Take off the keyboard, and you have a tablet, with the OS automatically reconfiguring itself for tablet optimization. It also has a touch screen, and there’s an active pressure-sensitive pen stylus that can be used to draw and write on the screen (and the Surface’s e-ink implementation and palm print detection are the best I’ve tried on any device.) And you can click it into its docking station and use it as a desktop system with external mouse and keyboard. For sheer flexibility–the ability to use it in whatever way fits your workflow best, and switch modes on the fly as needed–there’s simply nothing out there that comes close to touching the Surface Pro 3.

To be sure, the MacBook makes a better laptop than the SP3 in laptop mode. The kickstand requires more real estate on an airplane tray or desk than the base of the MacBook, the keyboard isn’t quite as stable or nice to type on, and using the SP3 directly on your lap isn’t as natural and stable as doing the same with the MacBook. But the MacBook can’t be used in tablet mode at all, and it has neither touch screen nor stylus. And as a tablet, the iPad makes a better one for media consumption because it’s lighter and has longer battery life, but the SP3 blows the iPad away when it comes to processing power and connectivity. (You can run Photoshop or Scrivener on this thing, and play some Diablo III or World of Warcraft when you’re done.)

Which one is more fun to use? As a laptop, the MacBook is really hard to beat, but that’s the only way you can use it. The fun with the SP3 comes from being able to do more with it. I can have it in its dock and use it as a desktop system. I can sit at the table with it in laptop mode, type away at an email, then pick it up and take off the keyboard as I hand the whole thing to Robin so she can read the reply. I can sketch or take handwritten notes on it as it’s propped up against the steering wheel while I wait for the kids to get out of school. Or I can sit in the recliner and read news or flip out the kickstand to get some more work done if I feel like it. They set out to design a tablet that can capably serve as the One Device That Does It All, and I have to say that after owning and using one for a good while, they are pretty damn close with the Surface Pro 3. It’s not going to be a solution for everyone, but I really enjoy using mine, and it works very well for me.

castle frostbite. gadgetry. new hampshah. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs. weather.

winter boots for the grand marnier.

We moved to Castle Frostbite in December of 2007. The Castle has a driveway that is dog-legged and at a 5-percent incline that increases to nine or ten percent at the very top of the driveway, in the least convenient spot possible.

I’ve been driving Grand Caravans since before we moved up here, and those are front wheel drive only. Every year when our driveway gets its permanent winter layer of snow and ice, I’ve had frequent issues with making the driveway run from bottom to top, even with new winter tires, and I’ve had to park at the bottom of the driveway a lot.

This year, I finally decided to spring for a set of these puppies:

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Those are Finnish Nokian-brand studded snow tires. As you can see, they have little tungsten carbide studs set into the treads, for bite on icy surfaces.

Those things are purest, darkest magic. My FWD minivan trucks up that icy incline now at least as well as Robin’s 4WD Jeep Cherokee. I don’t know why I didn’t try those out earlier…oh, wait, I do: they’re twice the price of regular snow tires. But man, are they ever worth the extra coin. Not only does the car have traction on ice like it’s asphalt in summer, but it stops much better on iffy surfaces as well. I haven’t spun a tire since I got the Nokians. TWO ENTHUSIASTIC THUMBS UP from the Munchkin Wrangler Gear Whore Labs.  AAAAA++++ WOULD SHELL OUT HALF A MORTGAGE PAYMENT AGAIN.

capitalism. gadgetry. technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs.

new paperless typewriter.

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That’s the new word-banger-outer here in the Castle Frostbite Novel Factory, a 13″ MacBook Pro with Retina display. (I usually work longhand and then transcribe stuff every chapter or so, but the current deadline means that I have to skip a step and write straight on the computer.)

I had a MacBook Air last year, but I sold it to a friend. It was a perfectly cromulent machine, and shared many of the great properties of its successor, but it was a little too thin for me. In particular, the keyboard on the Air is slightly but noticeably more shallow than that on the Pro because there’s less vertical space for key travel, and with my typing style, I tendedtomissthespacebaralot. The new one doesn’t have that issue for me, and it has that fabulous Retina display.

I keep using Mac portables because they offer me a few things that Windows laptops (even the nicest ones) don’t:

  • I like the design and the hardware, especially the great keyboards, and the glass trackpad is simply the best in the industry by a fair margin. The friction is just right, it’s easy to clean off, and all the gestures just work. I’ve never used a Windows laptop with a trackpad that comes even close to those on the MacBook Pros and Airs.
  • I run Scrivener, and the Mac version of Scrivener is one version number ahead of the Windows version. It’s not a great feature disparity, but enough to make me pony up the Mac premium. (For example, Mac Scrivener lets you write toward a deadline and keeps a running word count that calculates your daily quota to meet that deadline. Small thing, but something I use all the time.)
  • Macs hold their value better and have a longer usable service life. I replace PCs in about half the time I get out of my Macs.
  • I think Mac OS X is still better than Windows, and it won’t run on anything but a Mac,of course. In addition, I can run both MacOS and Windows on a MacBook Pro via Boot Camp, which makes it more flexible than a Windows laptop.

I have to say that this MacBook Pro is seriously the nicest piece of computing hardware I’ve ever owned. The Retina screen is just pin-sharp, and there’s a major difference in quality between it and a non-retina display. Text looks like it’s been painted on with an ink brush, no visible pixellation at all in any resolution. Combine that with the far better text anti-aliasing of MacOS vs. that of Windows, and there’s simply no comparison when it comes to the way text looks on screen. When you spend hours and hours looking at words on a screen, stuff like that becomes a compelling factor for purchasing decisions.

The battery life is insane. Apple specifies “over 9 hours” for the battery, but with the brightness dialed down to 50-60% and just word processing going on, it routinely clocks 11-12 hours. That’s nuts for a pro-level machine with a Core i5. It’s just the perfect blend of power, portability, endurance, screen size, and hardware build quality, and I’m quite glad I decided to pick one up.

(Quick hardware census from the Super-Secret Writing Retreat: two of us with MacBook Pros, and five with Windows laptops of various brands. Two of those five PCs were Lenovo ThinkPads, which are really nice machines and probably the brand I would buy if I couldn’t get my hands on a MacBook Pro. Great keyboards, and they managed to retain that distinctive “bento box” square black design from the IBM days.)

The hard drive in the background is a LaCie Porsche Design 2TB USB 3.0 for TimeMachine backups and media stuff. Thunderbolt drives are a smidgen faster, but two to three times as expensive, and I don’t need the extra little bit of speed for incremental TimeMachine backups.

So there you have it: I’m not an Apple fanboi. I am an informed consumer with particular preferences.

capitalism. technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs.

in which I incur the wrath of steve’s ghost.

In today’s installment of the Munchkin Wrangler Gear Whore Labs reviews, I will share with you my opinion of the Microsoft Surface.

I have a new review policy in place. All items I review in this spot—books, toys, gear, whatever—are paid for by my own cash, not provided to me by someone else. And I don’t review anything until I’ve had a chance to use it on a regular basis for at least a month, preferably two, so the starry-eyed new toy phase doesn’t taint the review.

So two months ago, I decided to take advantage of the deep discount on the Surface tablets right before the new version came out, and purchased a Surface RT 32GB. I’ve been using it every day since then, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, especially compared to the iPad (of which we own four at last count—an iPad 3, an original iPad, a WiFi iPad mini, and an LTE iPad mini.) I’ve been a big iPad fan ever since Robin brought home that original model three years ago, which still serves very well as a beater unit for the kids. Robin and I both also own iPhones (hers a 4S and mine a 5), and I also have a MacBook Air, so we’re quite heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem.

That said, <DRAMATIC DRUMROLL>, I’ve come to the conclusion that (for me, at least) the Microsoft Surface is a better tablet than the iPad.

<insert the shocked, sharp collective drawing-in of breath in the audience>

I thought it was neat in the store, which is why I decided to risk $349 on it, seeing how I could have returned it within 30 days anyway if I ended up hating it. But I really didn’t appreciate its strong points until I used it regularly for a few weeks.

The main selling point for me that the Surface RT comes with a full version of Microsoft Office 2013. Love it or hate it, Office is pretty much the standard in the publishing industry, and after hitting a few bumps during the hot-and-heavy editing phases of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE, I decided that I needed a cheap-ish mobile system for edits on the run that was 100% compatible with the .DOCX files I get marked up by my editors. The Surface has proven just the right pick for the job—lightweight, reasonably cheap, long battery life, flexible to use, and very compatible. But there’s a lot more to like about the thing, especially when compared to the iPad, and particularly when it comes to productivity use.

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That’s the Surface, clad in a leatherette case, with a Logitech illuminated Bluetooth keyboard behind it. I use the Surface without the keyboard 90% of the time and only need the BT ‘board for longer typing jobs, which is why I didn’t see the need for buying either the Touch or Type Covers that Microsoft sells along with the Surface.

The hardware is extremely well thought-out. You can tell that the people who came up with the design didn’t just want to do a “me too” iPad clone, but rather went their own way. Some of the hardware features I really like:

–Built-in kickstand. Simple concept that makes a great difference. The stand is built into the back of the unit and flips out in far less time than it takes for any case origami.

–Sturdy construction. The case and screen feel like you’d have to drop a car battery on them to do any damage. It’s as pleasant to hold and use as the iPad, only in a different, more industrial sort of way.

–Full-sized USB port. Not only can I plug in USB peripherals, I can plug in anything that works on my Windows 8 desktop system. External mice, keyboards, hard drives, DVD drives, memory sticks, WiFi dongles…it all works. If the device has a driver in the Windows driver database, it works on the Surface. That is sort of a Big Deal.

–Wide-aspect screen. Seems weird for a tablet at first, but now the iPad screen looks too tall and square to me. It’s much like back when we switched from 4:3 aspect LCDs to 16:9 widescreens for our desktops. After you’re used to the wide aspect, the other aspect ratio just looks all wrong. Movies play without letterboxing, and text takes up narrower and easier to read columns in portrait mode. (Interestingly, I use the iPad almost exclusively in portrait mode, and the Surface almost exclusively in landscape mode.)

–SDHC memory card slot. Unlimited, infinitely expandable storage! I expanded the internal 32GB with a 64GB SDHC card. So handy to just be able to copy, say, a movie from the desktop to the Surface via SDHC card without having through that Convert-‘n-Sync-via-iTunes routine on the iPad.

The Surface beats my MacBook Air in battery life and portability while allowing pretty much the same capabilities at least as far as I use both devices. It runs Office natively, lasts eight hours on the battery, can use any USB PC peripheral I have around the house, and can use ubiquitous SDHC cards for internal storage expansion and file transfer. All that for $349? Sign me up.

(Yes, I know you can get budget Windows laptops for the same money, but those don’t run cool and silent for eight hours on one charge, and they don’t come pre-loaded with Office 2013 either.)

I’ve come to equally appreciate the software, which is Windows 8.1 RT. It’s visually and functionally the same as 8.1 on the desktop, with the exception that it can’t run Windows legacy apps. (Its more expensive cousin, the Surface Pro, can do that, but more on that later.) The much-maligned new Metro interface of Windows 8 makes little sense on a keyboard-and-mouse driven system, but on a touchscreen, it’s very good. In many respects, it makes iOS look a bit dated in comparison. The touch gestures come so naturally after a while that I get annoyed whenever I pick up my iPad these days and try to do the Windows 8 swipe gestures. It’s much easier to task-switch in Windows 8 (swipe in from the left; pick from the list of open apps) than in iOS (double-click the home button, flick-scroll through your list of open apps). Closing an app in Win 8? Swipe down from the top of the screen, flick it down off the bottom of the screen. Closing an app in iOS? Double-click the home button, flick-scroll through your open apps until you find the one you want to close, flick it up off the screen to close. After using both operating systems for two months side-by-side, I’ve come to prefer the Win 8 gestures.

And Internet Explorer on Windows RT? Full Flash support. Everything plays in the browser without codec issues.

Oh, and how about multi-tasking? Here’s the Surface running two apps side by side in split-screen mode:

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That’s Internet Explorer on the left, Word 2013 in desktop mode on the right. I can write stuff up and have the research and reference material right next to my work. No big deal on a desktop system, but not an option on the iPad.

And not only can you split the screen, you can adjust the split:

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Word 2013 on the left, Twitter on the right. You can make one or the other minimize and give the remaining app the full screen back just by pushing that divider over all the way to the left or right. For productivity, it makes a huge difference, and it’s definitely the feature I miss most when I use the iPad.

For media consumption, the iPad is still the top dog, and the application variety is much greater for iOS. For getting stuff done, however, the Surface runs circles around the iPad.

Are there things I don’t like? Of course there are. No device is perfect. Stuff I dislike about the Surface:

–The magnetic power plug is way too hard to line up and connect. On my MacBook Air, it snaps in when you just move the plug into the vicinity of the jack. On the Surface, you have to line the plug up very carefully and rock it into place, and the feeble magnet only pulls it into place when you’re just about all the way into the socket already anyway. NEEDS REDESIGN.

–The app variety is paltry compared to Apple’s iOS, which had a two-year head start. But it has Office 2013, which is a big advantage for us publishing types.

–There aren’t very many accessories available for the Surface. I had to get a leatherette case off Amazon because none of the local big-box stores carry a damn thing for the Surface other than the (too expensive) Microsoft Touch and Type covers.

–It’s too easy to leave lying around, say, in the bathroom, where your wife may come across it, play with it, and want her own.

Yep…Robin looked at the Surface RT for a little while, and when I told her that the Pro version would run all her legacy Windows apps, she went out and got a Surface Pro 2 for herself. Now she has a tablet that runs Scrivener, Office, and World of Warcraft, with the same portability as her iPad 3, and with the ability to use her specialized PC peripherals. (She plays with one of those mega-multibutton mice because she can’t use both mouse and keyboard simultaneously due to physical restrictions.)

Now, I’m not slamming the iPad here, which is a fine device and still the top dog when it comes to media consumption and general variety and quality of apps. But for us, the Surface has proven a surprisingly capable machine with its own set of strong points that the iPad can’t match. It fits my day-to-day needs for mobile computing so well that I’ve barely touched the iPad or the MacBook Air since I got the Surface. I have to give credit to Microsoft for coming up with something decidedly different from the iPad and even *GASP* innovating along the way. I’m happy with the RT over the Pro right now because it runs cooler and more quietly with longer battery life and quicker startups, but it’s already filling almost all my day-to-day computing needs as it is.

Now I need to come up with some star system that isn’t bullshit. Whatever the scale, however, I’m leaning toward giving the Surface a really good rating on that scale. It’s not perfect, but it’s really good, and it works for me.