The iPhone 15 Pro in titanium is quite likely the most beautiful iPhone yet. I'd rank it higher than the iPhone 5 or 5s myself.
You’ve read all the ink there is to spill about the iPhone 15 Pro at this point. It’s quite likely the best iPhone release in years, with a soft titanium build and smooth edge making for the most holdable iPhone ever. The cameras are the best ever, even being named the best smartphone camera of 2023 by MKBHD. It’s also reasonable to think USB-C will eliminate an extra cable or two in your bag. (Though I’m currently in that odd no man’s land where my wife still has a Lightning-enabled iPhone that requires that extra cable anyway.)
I have nothing to add to the conversation other than my own photography. I found some nice light one afternoon, threw up a soft white background, and shot a few photos like I shot a few years back of the iPad. Nothing too particularly special today — just had some fun with the camera again over the Christmas holiday.
All photos were shot with the Leica Q2 and edited in Lightroom.
I'm a huge fan of the proportions in the "notch region" at the top of the iPhone. The regular-sized iPhone 15 Pro has the perfect proportions of any iPhone available. In my most humble opinion, of course.I continue to be annoyed tremendously by that extra cellular line built into the rail. It completely ruins the symmetry here.You'll note the finger oils around each of the buttons on the left rail. Titanium seems to hold those fingerprints pretty strongly, even after a wipe.The cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro are bigger and more capable than ever.
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Apple fanboy giveaway numero uno: You remember exactly where you were when you opened your first Mac, your first iPad, and your first iPhone. Bonus points if you remember the wallpaper when you fired up the device the first time.
I figured a dash of nostalgia would do me well, so I went back and found the first wallpapers that had an impression on me.
Here are my current Lock and Home Screens:
My first iPhone was an iPhone 4 and these little clownfish were not the default wallpaper on that iPhone. But these clownfish certainly had their spell on me — it was this clownfish wallpaper strewn across all iPhone marketing for those first few years and which engrained the dream of an iPhone in my hand one day.
Now, I was both old enough and stupid enough to buy a first generation iPad. I will never forget both the day Steve announced that device while sitting on a couch and the day I had a chance to unbox it. It really wasn’t a comfortable device to hold and use, but this wallpaper stamped its impression on my heart.
The clownfish wallpaper had a little more fanfare in iOS 16/17 on the latest iPhones, but you can also find this original iPad wallpaper in the current versions of iPadOS as well.
My first Mac was a 2009 15-inch Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro pre-installed with OS X Snow Leopard. I loved that purple starscape. But it was the little 2012 11-inch MacBook Air that captured my heart more than any Mac I’ve ever used. I fell in love with the 11-inch Air in OS X Lion and Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion’s starscape took that little 64GB 11-inch Air to the next level.
It's almost like Standby Mode was built for the Ugmonk Magsafe iPhone Stand.
It’s likely too late to talk about Standby Mode now that iOS 17 has been out for a few months. But the beauty of writing a thousand words or less means I can throw out a quip and not regret it.
I hadn’t had a chance to play with Standby Mode until the last few weeks. I attempted using it on my nightstand at night, but any movement would fire up the red-on-black-themed display. That theme is great for dark environments, but I still prefer pitch black at night. The result was Standby Mode being put on standby until I had a proper desk stand for use during the day.
Last week, that stand came and I finally had a chance to put Standby Mode to proper use.
Side note:The Ugmonk Gather Desk Organizer is fantastic. The organizer comes with a magnetic baseplate, note tray, pen tray, and MagSafe iPhone stand, perfect for Standby Mode throughout the day. I’ll talk more about the desk organizer in the future.
You can create widget stacks in Standby Mode, just like the iOS and iPadOS Home Screen, and so I’ve created two different widget stacks:
The Clock widget stacked on top of a Spark mail widget noting the number of new emails in my inbox. I’ve also toyed with adding a Fantastical schedule widget to this stack, though this hasn’t stuck for me.
A few different Carrot Weather widgets for tracking hourly and weekly forecasts and the local radar.
I’m impressed with a couple things in Standby Mode.
Perhaps Standby Mode’s best feature is how well it eliminates distraction. If you have the iPhone sitting on a charger vertically, by default you’ll see your Lock Screen complete with your notifications and Lock Screen widgets. Anytime a new notification comes in, the screen lights up to let you know something arrived. In Standby Mode, notifications show up on-screen, but disappear after a few moments and return to your custom widget stacks. Nothing stays on-screen notifying you missed something.
In a way, Standby Mode is like a “Focus Mode 0.5” — it’s like a focus mode, but with full notification settings that appear when they come in then stay hidden until you physically go looking for them.
I also appreciate the onboard machine learning to know when to switch between widgets in custom widget stacks. Last week, I noticed it started to snow in the window behind me, and almost immediately Standby Mode flipped the weather widget stack to Carrot Weather’s radar widget showing the direction of the coming snowstorm. This was the best example I’ve seen yet of smart rotations in widget stacks.
Standby Mode isn’t perfect, though. My one main hiccup is the “Now Playing” screen. We have a HomePod mini in the office which plays throughout the day. The rest of our staff don’t tend to turn on the HomePod themselves, so I’ll often fire up the music from my desk. I really enjoying controlling playback from my iPhone in Standby Mode. But there are numerous times where the Now Playing button simply doesn’t appear, or the iPhone thinks the music is paused while it’s still playing. This probably isn’t a Standby Mode hiccup, but I notice it when in Standby Mode for sure.
Standby Mode is awesome and I love having it available as a Focus Mode 0.5 or Focus Mode mini, popping up notifications or notifying me of an incoming phone call, only to put those notifications hidden away until I actually grab my phone and go looking. I’ve noticed a near immediate impact to my productivity since using Standby Mode each day and noticed at least an extra one or two flow states each working day.
