Why Am I Tied to a Laptop? - DTNS WEEKLY TECH UPDATE 06/15/2017

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This week I take a few moments to explain why it is I cling to my laptop when a tablet would be so much lighter and easier to carry around. 

CLOSER LOOK - Years ago when I got my first laptop, I was overjoyed. Suddenly I could do all the things I did on my desktop on the couch, in the dining room, in a conference room, etc. The freedom got even bigger when I put my first WiFi adapter in my old ThinkPad and liberated myself to get the Internet wherever I wanted to go.

So when tablets came along it might be logical to think that a touchscreen with a keyboard case would liberate me even more, especially if there was a data connection built in.

But that hasn’t been for me.

Trust me I have friends who swear by the iPad as the only device they need most days. One writer friend of mine says he can do everything he needs on an iPad without having to lug around a tablet. He can’t quite understand why I’m still tied down to a laptop.

I’ve tried to explain it before too, so here’s my next attempt.

Multiple windows. This is something slowly getting better on both Android and iOS, but the ability to have multiple windows and tabs and swap between them quickly with a mouse click is essential to my work style. The current state of switching between apps by using a button and only having one or two windows active on a screen at a time is way too tedious for me.

Cut and paste. CTRL-C and CTRL-V are two other essentials to my productivity. A quick swipe of the mouse to highlight a keyboard shortcut, a tap of the mouse and another keyboard tap and I’m swapping text around like a madman. On a tablet I can do the shortcuts most of the time, but the text selection is tedious as well and tries to be smart usually making me take twice as long to highlight the bit I want. And the window swapping is not there for this

Less Functional Sites and Apps. I often find myself in situations where I want to do something on my tablet but the app or website gives me a mobile-friendly view that doesn’t have the function I need. So I get up and sit down at my laptop. One example is my fantasy baseball team. I can change my lineup in the app, but if I want to see the stats I use to evaluate how to change my lineup I need the desktop version of the website.

Typing. I am so not a fan of the new Mac keyboards but they’re usable. The Microsoft laptop keyboards are good and the Thinkpad keyboards are my preference. With tablets you’re stuck with narrow keyboards that I find hard to type on. Logitech’s IPad Pro keyboard case is the only one I feel at all comfortable using. And onscreen keyboards plus autocorrect are the cause of 98% of my typos.

Lack of customization and wide app support. This doesn’t come up as often as the others but every so often I run into an app that just isn’t available for the iPad. Or worse, used to be available but is no longer being made or supported. Granted this happens in the laptop world too just not as often in my experience.

So what about you? Are you a tablet pro? Got some tips for helping an old laptop-lubber like me get better use out of my tablet? Or would you like to join my curmudgeonly outlook on tablet life? Let me know in the comments on the Patreon post! 

NEWS RECAP

According to a representative of Uber's board, after a seven hour meeting the board unanimously voted to adopt the recommendations of Eric Holder's investigation into toxic company culture. Results of the investigation were released to employees on June 13th with recommendations including rewriting Uber’s cultural values, reducing alcohol use at work events, and prohibiting intimate relationships between employees and their bosses. A separate probe by Perkins Coe LLP is reviewing 215 HR claims and is still ongoing. Uber's Emil Michael sent an email to employees Monday announcing his departure and Uber named David Richter as the new SVP of Business. The promotion still leaves Uber with vacancies at COO, CFO, and CMO. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will take a leave of absence and did not set a time for his return. Bloomberg reports that on his return the Uber board will remove some of his duties and appoint an independent chair to limit his influence.

And finally Uber board member David Bonderman resigned from the board after making a disparaging remark about the effect of adding additional female board members. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/uber-ceo-to-take-leave-diminished-role-after-workplace-scandals https://www.recode.net/2017/6/12/15786456/uber-emil-michael-replacement-david-richter-culture-crisishttps://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-chief-business-officer-emil-michael-to-resignmonday-1497197701 

--- https://www.recode.net/2017/6/11/15779756/uber-board-holder-report-susan-fowler-sexual-harassment 

--- http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-board-ceo-idUSKBN19205S 

SoftBank announced plans to acquire Boston Dynamics and Tokyo-based Schaft from Alphabet. Schaft specializes in bipedal robot designs, and Boston Dynamics specializes in robots mimicking animal and human movement, and terrifying you on YouTube. Due to military contracts, Boston Dynamics will likely require regulatory approval from the  Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States prior to the acquisition. https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/08/softbank-boston-dynamics-alphabet-google-robots-schaft/ 

At E3, Microsoft officially unveiled the Xbox One X, previously code named Project Scorpio. Using a liquid cooled custom AMD APU and 12GB of GDDR5 memory, the Xbox One X is capable of 6 teraflops of graphical computation, supporting 4k resolution at 60 frames per second. The console also includes an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive and 1TB of storage, notable retaining an HDMI-in connector, but losing a dedicated Kinect port. All Xbox One accessories will work with the console. The Xbox One X goes on sale worldwide November 7th for $499. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/11/15774918/microsoft-xbox-one-x-release-date-price-new-console-announced-e3-2017 

Microsoft also announced that backward compatibility for original Xbox console games will be coming to Xbox One consoles later this year. Support will need to be added on a per game basis, but original discs and Xbox live purchases will work once supported. https://www.polygon.com/e3/2017/6/11/15779810/xbox-backwards-compatibility-microsoft-e3 

Tim Cook told Bloomberg that Apple is “focusing on autonomous systems” for cars, saying that Apple sees it as the “mother of all AI projects.” Apple still doesn’t know what it will do with the technology product-wise. Cook also said Apple sees autonomous cars, ride-sharing and electrification as the three vectors for change in the auto industry. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15790076/apple-self-driving-cars-autonomous-tim-cook 

Microsoft Windows build 16215 arrived for Windows Insiders on the Fast Ring Thursday with changes that will arrive to everyone in the Fall Creators Update. Action Center now has a separate section for apps. You can pin websites to the taskbar using the Edge browser.  Cortana can create reminders from photos, say of a concert poster, and a lasso feature to make a reminder out of whatever’s circled. The handwriting panel gets more gestures, better editing, emoji, and automatic handwriting detection. A dictation option is among the many on-screen keyboard improvements. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/8/15766154/microsoft-windows-10-fall-creators-update-features-stylus-improvements 

Microsoft also announced that Skype for Linux version 4.3 will stop working July 1st. Linux users will need to use the Skye Beta which lacks screen sharing and some of the advanced video and audio controls. http://opensourceforu.com/2017/06/microsoft-retire-skype-linux-app-july-1/ 

Bloomberg’s sources say Amazon has made inquiries into acquiring Slack, the business-oriented chat and collaboration client. Slack could be valued at up to $9 billion according to Bloomberg. It was last valued at $3.8 billion during a round of funding last year. Slack has 5 million daily active users, 1.5 million who pay for the service and would fit in Amazon’s enterprise offerings like Chime it’s video conferencing service. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-15/messaging-startup-slack-said-to-draw-interest-from-amazon-com 

Twitter has launched a redesign across its apps and websites. Profile icons are now round, typography is more consistent, and titles like “In case you missed it” are now bold. The reply icon has changed to a conversation bubble. IOS users will have web links open in Safari Viewer preserving logins and ad blocking. Changes come today to all platforms including Tweetdeck. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/15/twitter-tweaks-its-design-again-in-an-attempt-to-woo-newcomers/ 

SiriusXM announced it will invest $480 million in Pandora. SiriusXM will get three seats on a nine-person Pandroa board including the Chairmanship. Pandora is itself selling Ticketfly to Eventbrite for $200 million. Pandora acquired Ticketfly for $450 million. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/09/pandora-raises-480m-from-siriusxm-sells-ticketfly-to-eventbrite-for-200m/ 

Spotify released financial filings that show revenue grew 50% to $3.3 billion last year and that Spotify has agreed to pay music labels more than $2 billion in minimum payments over the next two years. Spotify recently signed new deals with Universal Music Group and independent label representative Merlin. Spotify also reported an operating loss of $390 million last year  and a gross profit of $502 million. At the end of 2016 Spotify had 126 million users both paid and free worldwide. https://www.recode.net/2017/6/15/15807382/spotify-revenue-2016-financials-guarantee-payment-universal-merlin 

Bloomberg’s sources with direct knowledge of a US investigation say Russian attackers compromised election-related computer systems in 39 states during the summer and autumn of 2016. The President used a secure messaging channel sometimes called a cyber red phone to show Russia evidence of the intrusions. The first attacks were discovered in Illinois in July 2016 in the state’s voter database. That discovery helped uncover other attacks and intrusions. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-13/russian-breach-of-39-states-threatens-future-u-s-elections 

Charles Thacker, a lead hardware designer on the Xerox Alto died Monday at Age 74. The 1973 Alto had a windowed graphical user interface, a mouse and ethernet well before such features were common. Thacker was considered a master at designing logic boards. https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/charles-thacker-key-designer-of-the-xerox-alto-dies-at-74/ 

Microsoft has fixed three remaining vulnerabilities uncovered in the leak of alleged NSA tools. Microsoft had previously said it would not release the fixes as it only affected older unsupported versions of Windows like XP and Server 2003. Microsoft clarified the patches were a rare move and not a departure from standard policies. http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-reverses-course-patches-three-remaining-nsa-exploits-targeting-windows-xp/