As I continue to test my iPhone 5 battery life, I have encountered a few issues that have delayed and altered my results.

Abnormal iPhone usage

Part of the difficulty in testing any phone's battery life is how you want to remain somewhat consistent in it's usage. While my tests are purely anecdotal and have no scientific merit behind it, a day of abnormally high usage can throw off the numbers.

Since I don't have an iPhone 5 to designate for testing only, this becomes difficult when an emergency/urgent matter comes about.

LTE

Since initially finding out the baseline for my battery life using only apps that I viewed as essential, AT&T has deployed their LTE network over our region. Since I initially set LTE to "off" in the iOS settings, that normally wouldn't have been a problem. But the reason I set it to "off" was because of the fact that there was no LTE coverage. Now that it's available, that is an option that I will want to keep on all the time — and the baseline battery life should reflect this.

6.1

As I have continued to test out the battery life to find the culprit for most of the battery drain, something funny happened.

My battery life has skyrocketed.

To put it simply, my geofence and iCloud tests have surpassed my baseline numbers by a large margin — and this all happened around the time of the release of iOS 6.1. Whether iOS 6.1 has increased my battery life remains to be seen, but this is another example of how my current baseline is somewhat off.

Next Steps

I still wish to continue testing my iPhone battery just to see how I can better utilize my devices. Rene Ritchie at iMore has written a post on using his iPad mini as a "phone". While he did use it for calls via Skype, his intention was to delegate some of the tasks he would've normally done on his iPhone to the iPad mini.

Having carried around an iPad mini almost everywhere with me ever since purchasing it, it actually does feel nice for it to handle some of the former iPhone tasks (RSS reading, Instapaper, miscellaneous non-urgent tasks). This allows me to have my phone somewhat lean. To hint to one of my possible findings in this quest for battery life, that might be a factor.

So over the next few days, I am going to start my tests over. My previous goal of having each configuration for a week, while definitely more informative, turns out to be rather inconvenient for me. So I will be testing each configuration over a couple days only. However I will be doing more a few more tests after what I have found out recently. Here is what the tests will consist of:

Settings

The settings will be the same with exception to the LTE option being turned on.

• Wi-Fi on. No prompt for found networks.
• Bluetooth on.
• Hotspot on.
• LTE on.
• Vibrate off.
• Lock after 1 minute. Prompt for passcode after 5 minutes.
• Auto brightness off. Brightness backed off slightly.
• Battery percentage off (in order to prevent me from paying too much attention to it and influencing my usage).
• Location Services on.
• Notification Service on.

Tests

1. Base battery life
2. Geofencing
3. iCloud
4. Geofencing + iCloud
5. Geofencing + iCloud + Work Exchange email
6. Geofencing + iCloud + Work Exchange email + A ton of apps

Hopefully I can finish my tests before Apple or AT&T releases more updates.

If you're anything like me¹, you like to bring your snobby artisanal coffee experience with you on the road whether it's to work, out shopping, or to a relative's house that has a Black and Decker coffee maker. The problem is, many of the subtle nuances of coffee can be ruined depending on the travel mug you carry it in.

Backtrack

When I used to drink the gas station coffee ("Premium Roast", whatever that means), I had the mindset of most morning commuters.

I want that shit hot as hell — forever!

So I spent a lot of time and money looking for the best thermal vessel that I could find for my cup of brown gold.

I had settled on a Nissan Thermos Backpack bottle. That thing was great, kept the coffee hot throughout the day. But something was off — the coffee tasted really funky. As time went by, the funk increased tremendously.

Then when I started getting into brewing my coffee (at first, via French Press), it tasted worse than the gas station coffee. It tasted nothing like it did at home. I figured it was my Thermos, so I deep cleaned every single part of that sucker. No change.

So I bought more insulated travel mugs — metal, plastic, glass, ceramic. The glass would perform the best, but after some time, it would still give an off flavor.

So after a little research, I found out that the oils in brewed coffee tastes differently depending on the environment it stales in (hot or cold). When it stales in a hot environment, it can taste sour or bitter — depending on how you perceive those flavors. I also attribute it to the silicone gasket that seals the lid to the mug for insulation, as that can absorb oils and can be fairly difficult (if not, impossible) to fully clean.

In other words, It's like I kept my perfectly grilled porterhouse steak under a heat lamp in a humid environment — for hours.

In Search of Lightweight

So armed with my new found knowledge, I typically travelled with a glass tumbler without the lid. I didn't want the coffee to remain "hot as hell", I wanted it to cool down as naturally as it could. While this is what I commuted with for years, glass tends to be a little heavy and delicate.

So I started searching around for something that was:

• Durable
• Lightweight
• Able to let the coffee cool

What I ended up finding was the Keepcup.

Keepcup

The Keepcup is a "barista standard" travel mug made of BPA-free plastic. The "barista standard" term means that it fits under the portafilter of commercial espresso machines while available in the standard coffee shop volumes (4 oz, 8oz, 12 oz, and 16oz). Their goal was to reduce the amount of paper cups being disposed on a daily basis. While I like the idea of reducing paper waste, I honestly don't care about it being "barista standard" as I planned to use this myself and not in a shop.

However, what sold me was how the reviews all stated that this was not a thermal mug. It has the same heat retention qualities as a paper cup.

If you order from the site, you can customize your cup in all sorts of colors. Using my creative prowess, I ordered a pre-designed cup on Amazon.

Build

Upon receiving the cup, the first thing I noticed besides the color was the weight. This is definitely a lightweight cup. The plastic cup portion of the cup had thin walls and has a rubber "band" around the cup not only give you the option of permanently marking your drink order (if you were to use it in a coffee shop), but also to serve as the cardboard sleeve to help you handle the hot cup.

The lid features a sliding "cap" to help plug up the drinking hole in order to provide it with a splash-proof feature. Upon opening the cap, there is a tiny intake hole that opens up, yet remains hidden.

Under the lid, there is no silicon valve whatsoever which proves that there is no heat-retaining quality to this cup. The lid also "slips" on to the cup just like a plastic lid goes onto a paper cup. Even after a couple weeks of use, I sometimes wonder if I put the cap on evenly.

Experience

After several weeks of use, I must say that this cup performs greatly. Like what others have said, this cup allows the coffee to lower in temperature which didn't color the flavor of the coffee in a bad way. The flavors have been consistent from cup after cup.

I've even put the cup through the greatest test of all — leave left over coffee in there for several hours. In most cups, that will forever taint the scent of the cup which will also alter the aromatics you experience while drinking from it. The leftover oils didn't seem to latch onto the cup too much, and whatever scent was left was mostly removed by a simple wash with dish soap.

As wine, whisky, and whiskey drinkers will know, having your nose in the cup greatly enhances the flavor due to the aromatics. While having a lid on this cup mutes some of the more subtle flavors, the experience is still a favorable one.

Go To Cup

This cup has replaced my glass tumbler as my go to travel mug. While there are certainly limitations to this cup in terms of heat retention, that is a quality that I have already resigned to having knowing that it is impossible to have fresh and hot coffee without brewing on the spot. I plan on buying several more of these cups to have around, since accidentally leaving it in my office forced me to drive back there at night to pick it up. That should just about sum up how much I enjoy this cup.

However when the weather warms up and it's time to switch my morning cup of joe with its iced brewed counterpart, I imagine switching back to the glass tumbler in order to have the insulation.

You can go ahead and order and customize your Keepcup from their website — or if you want to help contribute to the site, you can purchase it on Amazon.

Logitech now lists an Ultrathin Keyboard Case for the iPad mini. For those who may not know, I did a lot of the heavy lifting of the CSS, Python setup, and writing for this site using a full-sized Retina iPad and a Logitech Keyboard Case.

However after switching to the iPad mini, I've been using my MacBook Air a lot more for the site as the on-screen keyboard on the mini was too small for me to type in a traditional manner. Unlike the ZAGGkeys Mini 9, the new Logitech keyboard case is just as wide as the iPad mini (like the ZAGGkeys Mini 7). That leads me to be skeptical about the typing experience this keyboard would give as I expect the layout to still be cramped. Nonetheless, I'm still looking forward to this — hopefully as the catalyst to writing more on the mini.

➔ Logitech

Daniel Jalkut has just posted an awesome script that will import Reminders.app tasks into OmniFocus. Furthermore, setting the script up with crontab (as Daniel has), or Lingon, you could automate the script to run at custom intervals.

➔ Bit Splitting

Mat Smith of Engadget posts a link to Japanese news site Asahi on the end of life for Sony's MiniDisc format.

I absolutely loved the MiniDisc player. It was the weird digital-but-feels-analog player that was the my first step into the portable media world.

Sure there were portable CD players, but this is the first player that involved digital music files (even though you had to run them through this horrible Sony app in order to convert and transfer them to the actual MiniDisc).

Despite owning a G3 and G4 iBook back then, I still didn't want to put all my eggs in Apple's basket. So I held out on getting an iPod. But with the release of the iPod Video (5th generation), the MiniDisc eventually was benched.

So as I look at it, this was one of the last non-Apple consumer electronic devices that I owned before going all in with Cupertino.

➔ Engadget

As I sat with enormous envy while the OmniFocus 2 announcement was being made, there was one feature that floored me.

The new UI? No.

Forecast on OS X? No.

iPad-esque Reviews? No.

The new popup Inspector panel!

YES! The separated Inspector window in the current version of OmniFocus has always been such a pain.

Life is good.

Image courtesy of The Omni Group

➔ The Omni Group

I've always been an advocate for carrying an iPhone without a case. In my opinion, there isn't a case in existence that won't sully the beauty of the phone.

However, Twelve South's SurfacePad for the iPhone actually made me pause for a second.

Dumb name choice, though. I think of two things immediately — Microsoft Surface and iPad. It made sense for their MacBook leather cover overlays, but not for the iPhone.

➔ Twelve South

Fans of the Aeropress are probably aware of the wildly popular inverted method — a method in which you deviate from the original instructions and brew your coffee in an inverted manner.

While this does produce a nice, full bodied cup of joe, I personally haven't been able to bring out the subtle qualities of each bean. In other words, brewing a Sidama tasted no different from a Guatemalan — and those who are aware of those beans will know that they are very different in terms of flavor. If I'm going to spend the time and money to purchase a coffee based on the subtle notes it will produce, then of course I want to experience those notes in every brew method that I use.

In a previous post, I spoke about my non-inverted Aeropress recipe which brought out a lot of the subtle notes of coffee — especially the African beans. While that was an acceptable recipe, it paled in comparison to what I can produce out of a Hario V60.

Then I stumbled upon this recipe from Heart Roasters in Portland, Oregon. Like the last recipe I used, this does not involve using an inverted method. A lot of the coffee forums have commented on the Heart Roasters formula stating that they are able to produce a fruity cup (which is what I'm aiming for with Sidamo beans).

So I purchased some dry-processed Sidamo Ardi beans from a local roaster and tried the aforementioned Heart Roasters Aeropress recipe.

Wow.

That was the first time I was able to pull out that many notes from a coffee using the Aeropress. On the flavor profile listed on the bag, one of the flavors to look for was Fruity Pebbles².

I could definitely taste the Fruity Pebbles.

So I figured that maybe this coffee was a "fruit bomb"³, as fellow coffee and beverage geeks would call it. So this morning, I brewed the same beans using the Hario V60 using the recipe which I typically use. The resulting flavor was definitely more intense than the Aeropress in terms of fruit — almost a little too intense, actually. I attribute this to the wild flavors that dry-processing the coffee berries can produce.

Despite being outperformed (in my opinion) by the Hario V60, the Heart Roasters Aeropress recipe is definitely a keeper as I was able to produce the flavors that the coffee farmers, roasters, and me as the brewer, intended on experiencing. In fact, this will probably be my go-to — until I decide to tinker again.

A Note About Inverted Aeropress Recipes

As I mentioned above, I haven't had much success using inverted Aeropress recipes. While it does produce good coffee, I only say that because it's not bad. To many people, that may be what they're interested in drinking. To quote a buddy of mine, "You can't tell somebody what type of coffee to like". There is no universal right or wrong¹ as it all depends on each person's palatte.

I've read in numerous places how having the rubber end of the plunger exposed to hot water for a prolonged amount of time might actually be producing some off-flavors. In the inverted technique, the water and the coffee (along with its oils) are literally sitting on the rubber plunger throughout the entire brew time. While I had much more success using it the non-inverted manner where the rubber plunger never really touches the coffee and water (albeit not the traditional way as instructed by the manual), I keep trying to convince myself that the rubber plunger is not to blame.

At the World Aeropress Championships, many of the winning recipes call for the inverted technique. Maybe they're using new ones where rancid coffee oils haven't had time to collect on the rubber plunger? Who knows? However, a few of the newer recipes don't involve the inverted technique, so perhaps that might mean something.

But if you're having difficulty nailing an Aeropress recipe, try search for ones that do not involve the inverted technique.

Brad Dowdy has written a review on the Pilot Murex, a.k.a. my new "holy grail" fountain pen. It's a beautiful pen that lays down a beautiful line. It also has a very sleek, futuristically retro feel look to it. However, if you follow the links on Brad's post, you will understand why I'm in tears.

Why must the things I like be so expensive?

➔ Pen Addict

Federico Viticci goes over, in his usual fashion, his automation techniques using the new version of Drafts.

I have been pretty vocal in the past about how I did not use Drafts as it never served a purpose for me (unlike Scratch which I use constantly). However, I have always kept an eye on Drafts as I knew one day I would be probably go back on my word¹.

Well, with the most recent update, with Viticci's review, and the lack of a Scratch iPad app, Drafts becomes a lot harder to ignore.

➔ MacStories