Tech Diary | At Home with Tech

February 18, 2024

Best Way to Quickly Reset your Zoom Shot after You’ve been Kicked out of your Home Office

Here’s a trick that can help you instantly relocate your laptop to another Zoom-friendly location at home when you’ve been unexpectedly banished from your usual room.

By now, we’ve all identified our preferred Zoom meeting locations at home where you can stream yourself to your world. Beyond finding a quiet space that’s not in the middle of your family’s normal traffic patterns, there are other factors that can make a particular corner Zoom/Teams/Google Meet-friendly.

For me, being close to natural light near a window is important. That’s an easy way to properly illuminate your face. That said, it’s not too hard to power up a small battery-powered LED light or a ring light.

Setting up in front of a relatively organized and clutter-free background is always a best practice to demonstrate some visual order and professional look in your shot. You probably don’t want to show off an unmade bed with unfolded towels and underwear fresh from the dryer heaped on top. (Of course, simply use a virtual background for an easy fix.)

The Most Important Detail in a Good Zoom Shot
Fundamentally, the one detail to nail when generating a flattering Zoom shot is to simply position your laptop where its webcam is at the same level as your eyes.

Your webcam should point horizontally to your eyes. It shouldn’t be focused up your nose towards the ceiling. (This unflattering angle is what you’d normally get if you’re sitting at your desk with your laptop). So, you need to somehow elevate your laptop.

One way to MacGyver that is to stack a few hard-cover books and then carefully place your laptop on top.

Always Have a Backup Plan
Angles. Books. Windows. Backgrounds. Who knew we’d be simulating TV live shots from home a few years back? But we’ve adapted.

The only problem is life invariably happens, and you may suddenly find yourself temporarily displaced from your normal Zoom set up. Then you’ve got to wing it and quickly find a flat surface somewhere else in your home to move your laptop for your next Teams meeting in three minutes.

And that can be harder to find than you may think, considering your family’s needs competing for the same spaces. (The inherent challenges of multiple concurrent remote meetings.)

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just magically plop your laptop wherever you wanted, even if there’s nowhere to put it?
A portable floor laptop stand can do exactly that for you.

Portable Laptop Stand
It’s effectively an articulating standing tray that you can grab with one hand as you escape into another room with your laptop. Think of it as a tripod for your webcam and simultaneously a portable standing desk for your laptop.

Laptop stands are usually designed for presentations on stage or video/media production work, but why can’t you have the same access to this solution for home use?

Another superpower for this kind of stand is it will bring your laptop back to eye level wherever you go, because you can easily adjust its height. No more need to stack books.

And you can fold it up when you’re done.

Time to Choose
Buying one is simple. There are numerous choices online in the $40-$50 range. Some are more expensive, but I don’t think it needs it to be built like a tank to withstand abuse. I know I’ll treat it well at home. I just want it to be steady and not fall over. (That would be bad.)

Amazon has a variety of choices. Here are three options:

Neewer Deluxe Laptop Stand
$40.59
36”- 51” height
Amazon Basics Multi-Purpose Adjustable Portable Tripod Stand
$44.65
36”- 55” height
Samson LTS50 Laptop Stand
$49.83
30”- 47” height

I bought the Amazon Basics model, not because the Amazon Basics brand screams ‘best quality,’ but because it’s the tallest. So, when I choose to use it while standing, that would be best for my height.
And it works just fine. In fact, it’s plenty beefy at over 10lbs. You can use it for your laptop, portable projector or any other piece of tech that needs a pop-up surface.

The Importance of Maintaining Visual Communication
Of course, you could always choose another path that sidesteps this entire challenge. Just don’t turn on your webcam. I know many folks follow this practice.

But I’ve said it before… If you want to stay connected to your world from the comfort of your home, you’ve got to show up for your close up.

Always keep your webcam on.

And a portable laptop stand can help make that all the easier no matter which room you’ve been banished to!

February 11, 2024

How to Stop Apple Watch’s Haptic Feedback from Disrupting your World

Does your Apple Watch sometimes make you feel like your existence is fracturing? (Imagery generated by Adobe Firefly) Well, it could be time to cut back on all that haptic feedback from too many chatty apps on your iPhone. Here’s how.

It used to be all the annoying pings from my iPhone. They were so distracting. So, I shut it down and muted my digital companion. Sure, my iPhone would still perform its vibration dance. But that was an imperfect fix, as I would miss some alerts that were actually important.

I thought I had solved the problem when I bought my Apple Watch, strapped it on for the first time and gleamed as it took over as my digital-communications overlord.

Zapped and Trapped
With its haptic-vibration superpower, my Apple Watch could silently communicate with me as if we were neurally connected (all with a few secret taps to my wrist). Then, I could easily glance over at my Apple Watch’s face and almost imperceptibly consume the headline of whatever information one of my iPhone’s apps was sending me.

I no longer had to rudely pull out my iPhone from my pocket to discover what was going on in my world.

It was perfect. But years later, I woke up one morning while it was still dark, and I realized I was a perfect prisoner.

What was I doing? I had become a helpless mouse in a case, zapped by miniscule amounts of electricity through my wrist to pay attention to incoming messages.

Of course, there’s no actual electricity involved. But when that little buzz comes in, how important is it? How are you supposed to know?

So, you HAVE to look.

A Mission for John Connor
My Apple Watch had been perfectly serving up its endless flow of vibration-proclamations onto my left wrist, like a Terminator that can’t be stopped. What’s a human to do? Apparently, I had passively adapted to the onslaught and adjusted into an overwhelmed numbness.

Finally, in this moment of pre-dawn pitch black, I decided I needed to take back control and reduce the data stream. I had to pair back the haptic feedback to what mattered most.

The fix came down to prioritizing which apps were allowed to use haptic feedback.

Yeah, you can do that
Yes, it’s in the menu settings
Human suffering no longer required

The only twist is you don’t access Skynet through your Apple Watch. You go in through your iPhone.

I embodied my inner John Connor from “The Terminator” movies and got to work.

How to Adjust Apple Watch’s Haptic Feedback Settings
Here are the steps to gain back haptic control.

On your iPhone that’s linked to your Apple Watch, go to the ‘Watch’ app
Tap Notifications
Go into each listed app and adjust as needed
Also scroll down to “Mirror iPhone Alerts from”
Deselect the ones that don’t need haptic access to your wrist

When I began this review, I immediately saw that so many apps had default access to my wrist. Access granted? Nope.

You can also globally turn off Haptic Alerts under Sounds & Haptics, but I think that’s an extreme move (swinging the vibration-pendulum too far in the other direction).

Free Yourself
Ultimately, this is just another example that demonstrates if you want control over your life, you’ve got to put in the work. (And it’s not really that hard).

There’s nothing inherently wrong with your apps trying to reach out and tap you. I think we all just need to actively manage that process.

The default haptic settings are, at best, a starting point. At their worst, they can become a real ball and chain for your day.

Even if you set it, you should never forget it.

Time to break free!

February 4, 2024

Will Apple Vision Pro Give Us the Future We Expected?

Is Apple’s spatial computing launch leading us to this vision of tomorrow? (Thanks to Adobe Firefly’s generative AI for helping me to visualize.)

No, I’m not running out to buy an Apple Vision Pro. Not yet. Not this year. Not at this price point. Yet I couldn’t be more excited about it. Yes, of course I really crave this mixed-reality headset. And I know that eventually, I’ll be wearing one. And that makes me so happy.

Believing this likelihood helps me reaffirm the possibility that we’ll make it to the promised future one day. Sometimes it still feels so 20th century.

1980, 1999 and 2001 are foundational science fiction dates that reality couldn’t live up to. We don’t have flying cars or undersea cities yet. Electric cars aren’t quite mainstream. We’re even having a hard time getting ourselves back to the moon without crashing.

Sure, I know that remarkable technological innovations do permeate throughout humanity every year. I sometimes just don’t feel it so much on a Monday morning.

Apple Changed my Life
You can say what you want about Apple as a marketing machine and its amazing ability to create an uncontrollable Pavlovian response for each of its new product lines. But its past shiny gear from the future did revolutionize how we computerized and accessorized.

Apple delivered big time.

Now, my Apple tech feels quite normal, and I’ve forgotten that I once existed without my Mac Studio, iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple Watch, iPad and AirPods.

I couldn’t imagine how to live without these devices, unless I chose to be off grid and banish myself to a tech-free isolation. (Luddites may form a line on the left to debate me on this.)

I need my Apple gear.

The Era of Spatial Computing Begins
Will the Vision Pro eventually become a must-have device too? Well, that’s the question today. The entire VR/AR category has been struggling to go mainstream for years. Maybe rebranding it to ‘spatial computing’ will help. (hmmm)

The Vision Pro won’t benefit quite as much from the FOMO factor. It doesn’t seem so portable to easily transport around for others to see you wearing (even though an Apple commercial demonstrates a happy woman wearing one on a plane).

It’s probably going to be a while until I’m surrounded by an army of Apple Vision Pros on a city street the same way I once experienced hundreds of AirPods orbiting and taunting me while I walked to work.

Thousands of people moving together on the streets of New York City, wearing Apple Vision Pros and experiencing augmented reality.

Now, that’s a vision of the future.

Affordability is Relative
I know today’s Apple Vision Pro is not perfect. It’s version 1. But the reviews I’ve read all agree it’s a huge leap forward compared to past headsets.

Of course, it is. That’s what Apple usually does.

And I know Vision Pro is only going to get better, and hopefully less expensive than its current $3,499 starting cost. Apple isn’t exactly known for dropping its prices, other than creating parallel products with older tech (iPhone SE).

On the other hand, how many thousands of dollars did many of us fork out for those early plasma HDTVs?

And remember that Apple Vision Pro is also a complete standalone computer… not just a mixed-reality headset.

Still, the price point is undeniably a limiting factor. And Apple must know this.

The Future has Arrived
I couldn’t be more excited about a product that I’m not buying, and I expect that I’m not alone.

I’m sure that Tim Cook has a plan to make Apple Vision Pro the next iPhone. And something tells me that V1 is all part of a long-term plan to draft me into the Vision Pro ecosystem.

It’s just a matter of time until I’ll be wearing the future on my face.

Borg Barrett is ready to be assimilated. No resistance from me.

And I’ll be smiling.

Category: Tech Diary

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