Easy-Open
My sister-in-law’s mother is a Latin American native. She has always been astonished by the conveniences we have in the states, and I crack up every time she takes a packaged product in her hands and says, “Everything in America is easy-open!”
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that matter most. Like a perfectly brewed cup of coffee in the morning. Or getting greeted with enthusiasm by an over-the-top cute puppy on an afternoon walk. Or an evening phone call from an old friend who just wanted to say they were thinking about you. Or anything that is “easy-open.”
iOS 13
When Apple previewed iOS 13 at WWDC 2019 this week, there were some amazing new and/or updated features announced. Dark Mode, Sign In with Apple, new and improved (finally) Maps, Apple Arcade, Cycle Tracking for women (no, it’s not a biking app), using Find My to locate lost AirPods—among many other things. But I couldn’t help smiling, closing my eyes, making a fist and dragging my arm downwards as I uttered “Yesssss…” (with a slight lisp a la Kip from Napoleon Dynamite) when it was announced that iOS 13 would be able to send unknown callers straight to voicemail.
Woo Hoo! I never answer calls from unknown numbers, and the amount I receive is steadily increasing. I’m tired of having to grab my phone to hit the side button a dozen or more times a day. Yeah, it’s a little thing, but it’s big for me.
Then there are the changes to text editing. The new cut, copy and paste gestures. The ability to select text just by tapping and swiping. Being able to select sentences and paragraphs by triple‑ or quadruple‑tapping. Thank you! I am so tired of trying to drag that little bar around—it’s overly frustrating at times. Again, it’s a big little thing for me.
And the last of the smallest things in iOS 13 that oddly brings me great joy is Siri’s new Indian English voice. Yeah, I know it sounds silly, but just like Dark Mode is easy on my eyes, Indian English is easy on my ears. Though I’m not of Indian descent myself, I have spent enough time there to have developed a love for the vocal phonology and its cadence—it’s very comforting to me. I imagine I will be far less annoyed when Siri intentionally and repeatedly misinterprets what I’m saying. (Sometimes I feel like Siri is baiting me…) A little thing that feels big to me? Yesssss…
I’d be interested in hearing what you are most looking forward to in iOS 13. Are there little things that may be big for you, or am I the only one? Or heck, maybe there are big things that you could care less about? Either way, let us know!
As for me, I’m also hoping that with the promised improvements to Face ID, my iPhone will be a bit more “easy-open.”
Deeper Dive: Dissecting Apple’s WWDC 2019 Keynote Address
“Everything in America is easy open!”
Here’s a person who has never shopped Harbor Freight, NAPA, or the accessories counters at Best Buy or WalMart. :-)
Unknown callers straight to voicemail is one I have wanted a long time.
Now, on the Mac, a way to stop repeating GIFs.
I have my email preferences set to NOT load remote content, so all I had to do was close the email and reopen it, but that doesn’t always work to stop the GIF. I should be able to just CTRL-Click it and use a contextual menu to stop the GIF.
I love that you picked up on that! Years ago, there was a Safari extension called Deanimator that would do the trick.