Good morning! Goodbye, and thanks for all the fishing and for listening to me raving about coffee most mornings. (Hooray for coffee! It lowers the risk of premature death! On death!)
What I’ve Learned Writing This Newsletter…
Okay! So, first of all, The Daily Authority will go on, and long may it reign. (From what I’ve seen, there’s a list of new faces from AA’s news and features team ready to tackle the daily tech newsletter from different angles, so expect a lively newsletter in the offing. And yes, that’s my face; goodbye taking a 2019 TCL Plex!) Here are some goodbye notes from me! A few things I’ve been thinking about have come together while thinking about the tech space in general.
Waiting for the next generation:
It’s always so tempting to wait for the next thing. The next generation smartphone with the next-gen chipset, the next laptop with a next-gen CPU, the next game console, the next update for TVs… waiting for the next-gen is a habit. The newer one is always more exciting, with 10% more speed, 8% better efficiency, and 16% harder glass… the truth is it’s mostly overhyped, and the older one is just as good and available now. It’s rarely worth upgrading from one gen to another. But we always do it: we are always convinced that the next big thing will be worth it. IThewait is usually only worth it if it’s big, like the first major revamp of a MacBook Pro in years.
Buying advice:
Never buy the base model of anything – always upgrade to the next level for more RAM and mtorage. Why? The key here is that companies send devices to reviewers for thorough testing and, before you ask, with respected publications, it’s a fair, honest review process. But the catch is that the company rarely sends reviewers the base-spec device. It is always the middle or top-level device. The basic machine is just there to help people say, “It starts at $499”, but you want to go to the next level to get a device with a longer lifespan.
Sustainability:
This one is difficult, and I’ve struggled with it hn the newsletter. TNew things arealways comingg out, which is not good for the environment. Doing the right thing, hanging on to a device a little longer, or buying something like a Fairphone is a good feeling. But you’ll inevitably see numbers like “1.43 billion smartphones were sold in 2021,” and it narrows your choice. I have no answer here. We probably need to buy less stuff, and holding on to our old thing a little longer is about all you can do.
Finally, inside baseball in a newsletter:
Many people ask about writing a newsletter and how to make it work, and my answer is consistency. Just being there is the first step. Best day to report a newsletter: Monda, maybe? And that’s because Sunday is the best day to read online. The cadence of the internet is to publish longer, more thoughtful pieces on a Sunday. So you’re probably best off being outside and gardening on Sundays, but if you’ve got time in the afternoon or evening, the best long things and features come online.
To round up
Asus ROG Phone 6 images and specs appear online: We know about it before its July 5 launch (Android Authority). George RR Martin Confirms Rumors: “Yes, There’s a Jon Snow Show in Development.” It sounds cold, but Game Of Thrones also fell so hard after its last season that it’ll be interesting to see if it pans out (georgerrmartin.com). What could be more fun than a rare alignment of five planets in 2022? That, with Venus joining a crescent! Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all together in the early morning sky in the same order as their respective orbits, which is handy.
Space.com has a good guide to what you’ll see if you make it past dawn. And with Venus approaching a slice of the moon Sunday morning, the night sky gets even more fun. NASA has you cove, too, posing you t owardpointsoutheastern or southeastern sky, depending on your latitude/longitude. “Planetary conjunctions have traditionally been more the stuff of astrology than serious astronomy,” said Mitzi Adams, a NASA astronomer, and researcher in a blog on the same topic earlier in May, “but they never impress during observations, especially when the gas giants are involved.”
