Oh hey what’s up wow it is after 2. Hello. Good afternoon. Howdy. How are you?

I forgot to write today. I have been distracted with my new Android phone. I bought a Galaxy Z Fold 7, a foldable, and so far I love it. No complaints. Okay that is a lie. And I have complaints. But considering I have never used Android in my life, I am doing okay. I mean, it took me ten minutes to figure out how to turn the thing on, it took me more than a day to figure out how to go back in the browser. I still can’t find a mail app that lets me only look at unread mail across multiple mail accounts simultaneously.

BUT. I am mostly doing good? And I mostly love it? I love the fold-out giant screen. Rumor has it Apple will make one of these in a year or two but I am sick of waiting, you’re not the boss of my desires, Tim Apple. Plus Sergei and Larry didn’t give Trump a giant golden special boy plaque. Of course, they are selling AI to make weapons or some shit. We are fucked everywhere we go. I will talk about these faustian bargains when I talk about my new music streaming paradigm, though, so we’ll put that aside from now and focus on the nerdery. And that was really only part of my calculations. Mostly I just wanted to feel something in these dark days, capitalism as an opiate.

And I was pissed at how shitty the iOS keyboard is. This giant keyboard? Split in two, the perfect size? Amazing. So great. So great.

The screen is gorgeous and huge and I love it. It is especially amazing for Instagram, but it’s also amazing for any reading app, given that I am, you know, blind. It’s just fantastic. So big.

The facial recognition is slower, but it lets you turn on facial recognition, fingerprint, and passcode all at the same time, unlike Apple which, you know, is cheap.

Despite taking 10 minutes to figure out how to turn the thing on, there is a shocking amount between the two platforms that’s the same, instantly intuitive. Makes you a) realize how much these two companies have been copying each other forever, and b) how thankful I am for standardization — very pleased that my Apple MagSafe chargers all work with this thing.

There are some funny little things where Google also lets you tint your app icons like Apple does, but like a third of the apps just don’t tint, because Google’s not as persnickety about app store approvals. Pros and cons, I suppose.

The screen is just so awesome. I am so into it. Did I already say that?

I am, and remain, a dedicated Apple Notes and Reminders user, and because I will still be using a Mac, I do not intend to leave that ecosystem. But I have this mostly worked out now. In a separate browser from my main browsing browser, I logged into my iCloud account, navigated to my notes section, and added that page to my home screen. Ditto for Reminders. So I am using both of those in Firefox (Chrome didn’t do it quite right) browser instances. And it took about an hour for the whole thing to churn and load up for some reason, but now it is…. responsive enough. It’ll serve.

I kinda wish they made Safari for Android.

Ironically, I remain a committed non-Google Search user, because it sucks, but I got Kagi working pretty well on all my browsers. No major problems there.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

We are listening today to my “all the good” playlist. It is currently playing “One Life Stand” by Hot Chip. The noteworthy part is we are playing this through our Android phone to our HomePod Minis, so that is pretty awesome. I was worried about that part. Getting the two to play nice together was kind of a pain but it seems to be doing it pretty well now, thanks to a $6 open-source project. Which, yeah, I definitely missed that world.

Turning off the Google and Samsung AIs was kinda a bitch, and unlike other app categories, you can’t have NO default AI platform in your system prefs. So I chose Gemini and disabled it. The AI is mostly missing. In some apps there is a spammy Gemini button that does nothing. But I like that. I can pretend I murdered Gemini.

I actually like the Samsung calendar app better than the Google one, but that’s just because they took the time to make it look freakin awesome in the giant folded-out screen.

Passwords are a bitch. I am using the Apple Passwords app now, which obviously does not have an Android version (though it should. Apple should make all their apps for Android. Google does the opposite. Losers.) And I am using three different browsers on the phone, like i do on my desktop, so relying on Google’s not gonna worse. I used to use iPassword until it enshittified and tried to start making me pay monthly for it.

So now I am using the Samsung password app and you know what? It’s fine. It’s fine! I can access my passwords on the phone from iCloud in a pinch, copy em over, save em in Samsung going forward. Password changes are gonna be a bitch, though. Keeping two password apps in sync. Not ideal. We’ll figure it out.

The camera is not bad at all. All of these pics today are from the main camera on the Z Fold 7. I am still using Dropbox rather than Google to sync them to my Macs, so no major change there.

Home automation is a nightmare I am not sure how that’s gonna go. Gotta migrate my Apple Home to Threads n shit I do not feel comfortable doing this from another state and without watching a detailed Youtube tutorial, but I also am still wearing an Apple Watch, so it is not particularly pressing.

So now I am tediously going through my old iPhone and looking at each app and trying to decide if I need it, and getting myself all logged in now to make it a bit simpler. Banking apps, restaurant and delivery apps, airlines and transit apps, shopping apps, so man apps our life is ruled by apps we used to be real humans and wash our clothes in a freezing lake and die young.

Maybe I’ll go back if there’s a foldable iPhone, but… I dunno. I wouldn’t say Apple has an ease-of-use advantage over android at this point; they are both miserable exercises in endlessly scrolling, weirdly organized settings submenus. Where Apple shines is in little UI details. You only have to tap in a text box in iOS to paste, whereas you gotta hold it down on Android. When using a text-replacement, you gotta type the text replacement then confirm it in the keyboard, rather than just typing the text replacement and having it swap automatically. The animations organizing the home screen are a little chunkier. But I don’t really care about any of that.

Jane is playing a cozy game about unpacking. The woman unpacks a room, then eventually grows on to a new life stage, moves, unpacks again. She has been through a breakup. She is having a kid now. Jane is enraptured. Emma got to go to Garment District today I am jealous. But not so jealous I could tear myself away from this new dopamine drip.

We have decided we’re probably going home Friday instead of Saturday. Jane wisely said she missed home but loved it here. The curse of ever living in two places. I feel ya, Jane.

Still not ready to go back to normal playlists — this phone was the last piece of the puzzle, though. Hopefully soon. But last night I watched this documentary about the 2013 Solid Sound and it was… oddly heartwarming. What a bunch of earnest nerdy people and musicians.

Be careful out there. Love you.