C Changes

2.1

tl;dr Don’t over charge your device batteries by using chargers that are too powerful. You will degrade the health of your battery and waste energy.

🌟 Feature

So Apple finally changed the Lightning port to be a USB-C port. This is mostly good news! It means there will probably be less e-waste going forward, and of course there’s the fact that you can use the same cables to charge everything you have.

BUT! I need you to be careful. This is my personal appeal to you and your devices’ batteries.

While all USB-C cables may look alike, they will not charge the same way. There are three variables I need you to think about to save you money.

Power output
1. The amount of power transferred along your charging cable will vary depending on the power source it is plugged into. Generally, the larger the power brick/power source, the more watts it supplies your device. So a laptop charger draws more power from your wall than, say, an iPhone charger.
Type of cable
1. Data: Not all USB-C cables transfer data the same. Some, like Thunderbolt cables (which have a lightning bolt icon that differentiates them), are excellent for data transfer and can be used for displaying via DisplayPort. Some cables are only USB 2.0 as opposed to the more modern 3.0+, which also have faster data transfer speeds.
2. Power: Not all USB-C cables transfer power the same, either. While all USB-C cables must be able to carry 20V according to the protocol, not all cables go higher than that. The spec to look for here is 3A/5A. 3A cables can do basic stuff like charge phones and tablets and transfer info. 5A cables can carry more volts along them, allowing them to charge more power hungry devices like pro laptops, monitors, and some gaming devices.
Your device’s charging capability.
1. Have you ever tried plugging a laptop charger into a smaller device like an iPad or headphones? What you’ll find happens is that, yes, the device seems to charge faster, but it also gets very hot. What is happening here is that your device is drawing more power than it can physically convert to battery life, and that extra energy gets dissipated as heat. Two primary reasons for caution: 1. Overheating your battery is a surefire way to degrade its overall performance. 2. You are wasting energy.

So, what should you do to adhere to Alex Schneidman’s Rules for Battery Preservation?

Make sure that if you are charging your phone via a cable that you use the appropriate wall brick and cable. You can find out how much power your device can take by googling things like “DEVICE NAME tech specs” or “DEVICE NAME charging speeds.” For iPhones, I do not suggest using a charger listed higher than 35W, and even that might be pushing it for the regular non-Pro models. The cables themselves, whether they are first or third party, you probably won’t have to worry about too much, despite the caution I give about them above.

If you are worried about data transfer, as in the case of using an external SSD/HDD, check the compatibility and data transfer speed specs to make sure you are using the right cable.

Overall, the best advice I can give you is to continue using the cables and wall plugs provided with the device you purchase. It might defeat the utopian purpose of having “the same” cable for everything, but at least this way you will do right by your phone’s battery.

You can also always charge wirelessly. I do it almost exclusively now.

📚 Reading list

Oddly enough I had not seen this incredible Veritasium video that explains how lightbulbs lead to the first transistors before I wrote the piece a couple weeks ago about how computers work. He explains it way better than I did:

⚡️ Lightning

Even after writing last week about the small iterative changes being made to the newest iPhones, I went out and preordered one. It’ll be my first time using the extra big one. I’m excited and scared.
There will be enormous amounts of new consumer tech news in the next month or so as every company under the sun prepares for an inflation rattled holiday season. Meta, Samsung, Google, some car companies, OpenAI, they’ll all prob have new things to chit chat about by the end of October-ish.
Bose finally announced the successor to the QuietComfort 700 over ear ANC headphones. They are called the Bose QuietComfort Ultras and they are $429. When it was rumored that they were going to be announced, I held off on a serious headphones purchase, but now I think I will wait even more. $429 is insane, and the $130 Sony pair I picked up are doing the job just fine.
I’m sure I’ll write about this again, but there is a massive antitrust lawsuit happening in our federal government right now. Google v. US. If Google wins it’s basically status quo. If US wins, Google may need to split up the company.

📕 Glossary

USB
- Universal Serial Bus is an industry standard for physical inputs and outputs. A bunch of companies over the last couple decades basically meet and decide on a standard and then the tech industry adopts it. As technology changes and improves, so to does the USB standard, which is how we have arrived at USB 3.0 and USB-C connectors.

📱 Home Screen

Welcome back to Home Screen. This week my friend Cammy has sent in her incredibly clean home screen.

My initial impressions:

I like widgets, but I hate that you can’t choose to show/hide the widget titles. There are accessibility reasons Apple would rather keep those words there, but I just think it would calm so much of the experience down if they let us do that.
I love how clean this is. No background, not a lot of notifs, not a ton of apps, and the widgets mostly share a similar aesthetic.
Love not having your email on your main page. When I was in college and I needed my emails to validate my existence, they would sit on my front page, but now I don’t need my shipping confirmations that easily accessible.
Having both FaceTime and Phone on the front page feels redundant to me, but I’m not gunna sit here and judge.
Lots of Google happening here. Careful with your privacy permissions everyone.

From Cammy:

walk me through your widgets

the moon. calming reminder that the whole world doesn't exist in my phone and is a piece of knowledge I like knowing but would never know if it wasn't in front of my face walking distance - reminder that the whole world doesn't exist in my phone and is a low-shame way to remind me to move my body
google photos - my photos of my beloveds
phone - I love to call
facetime - I love to facetime even more. god I love to facetime.
messages - sadly a must
reminders - honestly not a fan of it and this experience has caused me to reflect and delete it, too visually busy and not functional
Spotify - I am a visual bitch and really find joy in seeing what I've been listening too. It's also much more likely to make me open it if I see something there that I want to keep listening too, than the usual icon. I also have it in my little bar because I needed another app there so the odd number wouldn't drive me crazy, it's very benign/not stress inducing and sometimes I want quicker access than scrolling back to main.
nyt games - #stopthescroll #crosswordsareback - I do unfortunately need something kind of fun and scroll-esque on my home screen and I'm trying to channel more of that energy into noodling on word games throughout the day
I live on youtube these days
NYT Cooking - trying to keep it top of mind
Kindle - same as nyt games

how do you feel about notif badge icons?

I HATE notification badges. they're so stressful but would never ever respond to anyone without them as I've gotten really bad at texting in the last few years. Very open to better solutions.

anything else?

My general vibe is trying to keep it not stressful (no work, only leisure) but also practical so I don't immediately scroll away from it and it defeats the point. Trying to keep scroll alternatives and things that remind me of the world outside of my phone while also keeping the big ways I stay connected to people eg phone/facetime/texts

The bottom bar is just stuff I frequently need quick access to and use all day everyday

☎️ Answers

“Can you make it so that links open in a new tab?”

Thanks Alex M for calling this out for me. I thought it was the default that they would, but I guess I know what happens when I assume. Links should be opening new tabs going forward.

That’s all for this week! Thanks!

2.1