Apple Pay in the UK.

WWDC quick verdict: WatchOS 2 = what? Music, Maps = Meh. El Capitan, iOS 9 and Pay = yay. blog.mindrocketnow.com 

I couldn't let WWDC go past without making comment. For personal impact, it was a mixed bag. Apple Music is distinctly meh - it's just too expensive. Maybe when DD2 gets into music properly, we'll invest in a family account just to keep her legal, but the sad truth is that we don't listen to enough music to make it valuable. In fact, I'm considering cancelling my iTunes Match subscription.  

WatchOS 2 - yawn. There still aren't any compelling watch apps, so still no reason for me to buy one, so I really couldn't care less. 

Apple Maps with transit directions - sigh. Apple is so late to this particular party, that I'm going to stick with Google Waze and Google Maps just to make a point. 

OSX El Capitan is a silly name but is the first of the big announcements that made me pay attention. Under the hood changes may not bring any application changes of meaning, but it does mean that my 7 year-old MacBook will be fit for purpose for another year. I got a new Lenovo laptop with my new job. I prefer my MacBook. That's amazing engineering, and so amazing value from Apple. 

iOS 9 is also revolutionary for the same reason. It'll run on the iPhone 4S up to my 6+, and will realise battery improvements for each. My phone could even gain an extra hour, which means I don't need to charge it overnight any more (it gets charged by the car whilst doing SatNav duty just enough to keep it going until the next commute). DW still needs to have a charger wherever she sits as one of her multiple iDevices will be on red beans. I don't need a single charger in the house. 

Apple Pay makes me most excited, because it's the beginning of much more secure online transactions. It's not the bulging wallet effect that I'm worried about, but the fact that now my credit card will only be known by my bank, Apple, and me. The fewer people that know the secret of my credit card number, the more securely it'll be kept, and the safer my money will be.

My iPhone has saved me money?

I’ve calculated that my life is 50% simpler because I own a smartphone. blog.mindrocketnow.com

So I’m one of the people that cannot leave their smartphone alone for more than 6.5 minutes. However, rather than feeling guilty, I think this is a sign of my savvy consumer insight. I did some rough accounting, and using my smartphone has saved me money:

Gadget	Incremental cost on iPhone	Non-iPhone equivalent	Cost of equivalent
Address book	£0 Contacts app	Collins A5	£9.99
Alarm clock	Free app	Casio TQ140	£4.75
Album	£9.99/m Spotify premium	Amazon CD	£4.99 ea.
Babysitting	£4.99 Minecraft app	Local teenager	£8/h
Bike computer	£0 Runkeeper app	Velo Champion 16	£24.99
Boarding pass	£0 Passbook app	Printed at airport	£0
Book	£4.99 Kindle book ea.	Amazon paperback	£5.99 ea.
Calculator	£0 Calculator app	Casio FX-83GT	£11.99
Calendar	£0 Calendar app	Filofax	£7.50
Camera	£0 Camera app	Nikon Coolpix L31	£58
Comic	$69 p.a. Marvel Unlimited	Comic book store comic	£3.99 ea.
Digital music player	£0 Music app	Sony Walkman NWZE585	£84.99
Game	Marvel Puzzle Quest £14.99 in-app purchase	Lego Marvel Avengers for Wii U	£30.99
International call	£0 over wi-fi	BT standard tariff to India	40p/min
Map	£0 Google maps	AtoZ London	£5.99
Movie	£0 Amazon Fire TV app	Amazon blu-ray	£10.99 ea.
Newspaper	£0 Feedly app	The Times	£1.20/d
Radio	£0 Podcasts app	Roberts Radio Revival Mini	£160
Sat nav	£0 Waze app	TomTom Start 25M UK maps	£119.99
Telephone	£28.32/m tariff + £480 for the phone	Line rental + BT 1000 DECT phone	£16.70/m + £19.99
TV box set	£0 Now TV app	Additional NowTV box + subs	£10 + £6.99/m
Weather forecast	£0 Yahoo! Weather app	Watson W8682-mkII	£59.95
Annual Total	£1064.58		£2264.22

Yikes! My gadget habit costs me over a grand per year. At least it’s 50% cheaper using my iPhone than with replacements.

Some of my favourite activities turn out to be free activities that I find better to do on my smartphone; activities like browsing, checking email, or borrowing books from the library. Others are activities that would cost real money in meatspace, are now free using an app, like a second screen movie viewing vs. buying a blu-ray.

Very rarely is there an activity that is cheaper in meatspace than online. The only example I can think of is buying digital media. It’s still cheaper to by real CDs and books, and movies than downloading, unless you buy a subscription.

What I find most interesting about this list, is that there are over 20 activities that I now do with this single device, that I would find valuable enough to pay for. In other words, if I didn’t have my smartphone, I would’ve happily bought a bevvy of additional gadgets. My smartphone is revolutionary because it simplifies my life.

Time to spring clean your passwords.

Persistent personal information is bad, when you aren’t the one in charge. blog.mindrocketnow.com

I use a combination of disposable email addresses from Yahoo! And individually-created passwords by 1Password for managing my online accounts. This enables me to have a unique user name and password for each account, so if one gets compromised it doesn’t affect any other account. Best of all, I don’t have to remember the 400+ username/password combinations that I use – all I have to do is to remember the 1Password password, and the application automatically fills in the unique per-site password.

Using a unique per-site username and password combination is the minimum security you should employ, and using a password manager makes it too easy not to. Password managers such as 1Password are also beginning to support one-time passwords meaning your credentials are only valid per-visit, so even more secure. Definitely don’t tick the “remember me” option on web sites, don’t use Facebook Connect or Google OpenAuth. And think twice about the details you store on their site for convenience – credit cards, addresses, perhaps ID numbers. It’s probably better to enter these details each time you need them.

And definitely don’t record your passwords by saving your emails. Dashlane (a reputable password manager maker) has released a useful little tool that checks your inbox to see if your password is sitting there in plain sight. It doesn’t check the rest of your mailbox, but you don’t file them away, do you?

I’ve been using this disposable email + password manager solution for a while now, since 2010. 1Password also comes with an analysis of password history, and I’ve just realised that I haven’t changed some of my passwords for over 5 years! Even though the passwords may be strong, even though the emails may be unique, it’s still not a good idea to keep the information the same for a long time. Just because you can store this securely, doesn’t mean the web site will. So time to do some password spring cleaning, methinks – delete those old accounts I no longer use, and freshen up those I use the most.