Apple’s Q2 finances have come in. They have more money than God, apparently, so let us speak no more of it. The days of Apple being doomed to financial ruin are over, though there is something to scream about, I suppose: iPad numbers are flat to declining. But, this isn’t about market share, or profits, or even whether iPads are better than the tablet competition. It’s about whether tablets as a product—at least in mid 2015—are a worthwhile computing platform. Tablet sales, as a whole, are on the decline. Some say it’s because the refresh cycle for tablets is longer than it is for phones, and there may something to that, but I think it’s because the case for people to own a tablet hasn’t been fleshed out.

While folks like Federico Viticci can use the iPad as their primary computing device, he’s an outlier, and will be for a while to come. The problem is that the tablet as a form factor, is being squeezed from both sides: bigger smartphones that can do all the things a modern tablet can do, and thinner, lighter laptops that can do all the things a modern tablet can do—and more. [1] It’s an ignoble fate, but somewhat obvious in retrospect, for a device that was pitched as being in-between the smartphone and the PC.

The smartphone offers better portability than a tablet, even if you’re talking a 7“ tablet and a 5.5” (ugh) phablet, along with always-on connectivity baked in without an extra data plan. A laptop offers desktop class software, a real keyboard that might not run out of battery before the computer does, and a familiar user experience. I cannot overstate the importance of that last feature. Many the tablet success stories are about kids and the elderly, groups who have not had a lifetime of experience with the traditional PC UI, be it Mac or Windows. Tablet UIs are simpler, and often easier, but do not underestimate familiarity—and laziness. If I’m already at my personal computer, why don’t I do the thing I could do on it there, instead of grabbing a second device? Even my parents, who are of the age where an iPad would be a perfect computer for them, opt to use their MacBook Air instead. When I visited them for the holidays, their iPad had been relegated to playing streaming radio in the living room.

Until someone finds a specific use case where a tablet is a better tool for computing tasks, for most people, it’s doomed to languish in this narrowing gap. I bought my first (and, so far, only) iPad in 2013. While I’m using it now to write this essay, I don’t use it for much beyond the occasional bit of long-form mobile writing with an external keyboard, and reading RSS feeds and Instapaper in the mornings over breakfast. The iPad has never wormed its way into my computing life as a better tool for what I want to do, only a different one. I don’t travel much, but when I do, I often take my iPad, because it’s easier to travel with than my Giant 15" MacBook Pro of Doom—I keep that tethered to a giant display on my desk. If I could get by with a single-port MacBook as my primary computer, I could see my iPad going off to Gazelle for good, and not bothering to replace it.

The tablet is quickly becoming the computer of the gaps. Something needs to happen to break it free, but what that is, I don’t know. It has to take advantage of the form factor in a way that cannot be replicated on the smartphone, and do it better than a small, ultra-light laptop. Side-by-side apps won’t be enough. Haptic keyboards won’t be enough. Thin, light, and long battery life will only go so far unless someone has a reason to reach for their tablet over their personal computer. There’s reasons for some people, but not reason for everyone. Only time will tell in that regard.

Despite the slightly dismissive attitude in my previous essay on health and fitness, I do care about getting into shape and losing weight. I’ve enlisted technology to give me the first push (and second, and third…), based on my experience of shedding thirty pounds through calorie counting and increased movement. Never a fan of systematic exercise, my main approach is making sure I get in a good amount of walking, and trying to maintain a calorie deficit. Living in New York City, I do a lot of walking, so it’s not difficult to reach my 10,000 step goal. Being mindful about what I eat, on the other hand, that’s a lot harder.

I use the Jawbone UP Move to track my walking throughout the day. I know that fitness trackers aren’t accurate, and possibly not even effective. I don’t care. Having one, and getting a general sense of the amount I move in a day is motivating. I’ve dallied with using my smartphone and a Pebble for my fitness tracking, but both have issues that get in the way. The Pebble doesn’t work well as a fitness tracker at all, and I’d like the option to go for a walk and have it count without dragging my phone along. While I’ve tried using my smartphone to track sleep, that’s a recipe for me hitting snooze. Instead, I keep the phone in another room, and use my Jawbone UP Move, clipped to a dumbwatch, to track sleep. [1] And, after my iOS 8 HealthKit woes, I’ll stick with dedicated hardware for fitness tracking.

On the software side, the two main apps in my quiver are Jawbone UP [2], and MyFitnessPal. There’s no app that does everything I want in one package, so I stick with both. MyFitnessPal is where I log my food, my weight, and get my calorie burn estimates. Jawbone UP handles my activity, and by linking my Jawbone account with MyFitnessPal, it’s able to pull my meal data in and score it for its Smart Coach feature. Two slices of dollar pizza from the store around the corner from the office might be under my calorie goal, but it won’t be a healthy lunch. MyFitnessPal keeps me honest, UP keeps me eating right.

That’s the heart of my digital fitness system in two apps and a dongle, but there’s a little more to it. I also use Jawbone’s UP Coffee to log my caffeine consumption—useful for seeing if having too much coffee during the day affects my sleep. (It does.) I also use the excellent FitPort as a replacement dashboard for Health.App. It’s much easier on the eyes, and easier to understand. The hard part is making sure all the data is in sync.

And that’s where things get frustrating. Since iOS 8 was released, I’ve struggled to find ways to keep all the health data I’m collecting together in a way that’s useful. I don’t plan to run any analysis on it, I just want to  see trends. After fighting with various apps and app settings—including turning off my phone’s ability to write step data to Health.app—I seem to have found a way to keep everything in order, especially since Jawbone’s fixed their HealthKit bugs in a recent update to their tracking apps. But Jawbone UP doesn’t synchronize all the data it has on me to HealthKit. For that, I rely on Health Sync for Jawbone UP by Jaiyo. This app synchronizes my active calories, BMI, and other useful data with HealthKit, giving me a better picture of my progress. I just wish I didn’t have to spend an extra $2 on an app to do what the Jawbone UP apps should do out of the box. That someone is selling an app to fill the hole in Jawbone’s HealthKit sync is a sign that someone’s laying down on the job over there.

The last app in my portfolio is FitStar, which provides short video workouts. FitStar syncs with Jawbone UP, so when I do a workout, it logs the calories burned and adds a workout to my daily activity. It’s a great app, and Federico Viticci uses it as part of his regimen. Unfortunately, I’m inconsistent at doing the workouts… or to put it more accurately, I’m very consistent at not doing the workouts. I just need to make time in my day and do it, and stop worrying about my downstairs neighbor who probably has more important things to complain about than me doing jumping jacks.

And that’s the thing: none of these apps and tools will drop the pounds for me. They’re aids to mindfulness and pushes to activity that I need if I value my long-term health. This is all a work in progress, and I can see any aspect of my tracking and fitness system being disrupted if I get, say, a smartwatch with top-notch OS-level integration, heart rate monitoring, and its own fitness tracking application. That seems a long way off, however. The weakest link in all of this is still the human one, and I’m working on that.

I’m fat. Not so fat that I would need two seats on an airplane, unless we’re talking RyanAir, but I weigh about 200 pounds and I’m 5’8″. In other words, I’m built like a hobbit. My BMI has hovered around 30 to 31, so I’m borderline obese by that criteria. Could be worse—just a few years ago I was over 230, and would get winded bending over to tie my shoes. I dropped the pounds by calorie counting for the most part, but I’ve been stuck at 200 for a while. I’ve also been heavy all my life, in a family whose body types range from heavy to very heavy. My mother even underwent gastric bypass surgery several years ago to deal with her weight. (It’s helped a lot.)

As someone who’s been trying, though maybe not as hard as he could be, to shed pounds, I see a lot about food and diet flying around these Internets. I see even more of it at my day job in medical journalism, with diet articles running through my inbox several times a week. Thankfully, the kind of diet articles I work with are ones that approach it from a scientific and medical standpoint, so it’s not as annoying. Still, the volume of talk about food, and what one should eat, and shouldn’t eat, almost has me annoyed enough to just drink three glasses of Soylent a day so I don’t have to think about it—if a supply of Soylent wasn’t back-ordered for the next decade.

Part of the problem is that I like food too much. That’s not why I’m overweight—well not the only reason why I’m overweight. It’s also why I’m unwilling to commit to any sort of elimination diet (e.g. Paleo/Keto/Vegetarian/etc.) unless a physician orders me to as a matter of life or death. I grew up not on Saturday Morning Cartoons, but Saturday Morning PBS Cooking shows. The Frugal Gourmet and Yan Can Cook hold dear places in my youthful memories, as does cooking out of a children’s cookbook with my Mom. Even now, I actively enjoy cooking, whether something as simple as a weeknight thrown-together stir-fry, or a Sunday roast chicken. (And I make a mean roast chicken.) I don’t want to give up what I enjoy, if I don’t have to.

I don’t want to say that if you find eating by a certain elimination diet works for you to not do it. That way lies madness. And certainly if your doctor tells you to cut something out, I won’t tell you they’re wrong. That way lies madness, too. It just frustrates me when I see so many people suggesting so many different diets that I immediately check out. I have the same problem when trying to settle on an exercise plan. (I still don’t have one besides “walk a lot.”) I have a copy of Staring Strength, considered to be the book for people who want to begin weight training, and I begin to smell toast partway through the first chapter. Best I’ve managed is Couch-to–5K, or the bodyweight exercise routines in FitStar, because they explain what to do in small words and pretty pictures in the case of FitStar.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the nutrition and diet talk that flies through my daily life, it’s that we don’t really know anything about what makes for a proper diet. We’re slowly figuring it out, but we still don’t know. The sheer diversity of human beings on this planet, the biomes they live in, the food supplies available to them, and the adaptability of the human digestive system means that a diet that works great for someone could put someone else in the hospital. From my own experience, I’ve tried doing the Paleo thing, and I spent those three days constantly hungry until I gave up and shoved some bread down my gaping maw.

We have all this technology to track what we do—I’ve walked nearly 16,000 steps today, as of time of writing—but very little to give us guidance on what we need to do to reach our health and fitness goals. Then again, we barely have a scientific understanding of fitness and nutrition, so it’s a leap to think the computers in our pockets and on our wrists will have that understanding too. It’s also easy for someone who claims to have it figured out approaches the topic with a holier-than-thou attitude that “counting calories will help you lose weight, but it won’t make you healthy” or some other platitude that misses the point of what we’re trying to do. At least we’re thinking about it.

Ultimately, the foods we choose to eat, and the number on the scale in the morning doesn’t make one more, or less moral. Much like the nerd entitlement attitude around fancy gizmos and gadgets, the attitude around health and fitness, from the people who found a system that works is often the opposite of constructive. There’s a key difference in that there’s aspects of health and fitness that are achievable for everyone, even those who can’t afford a personal trainer, gym membership, or organically grown kale—or have time to fit in a full fitness regimen around working full-time and taking care of their family.

Dropping the attitude is the first step to making that happen. Second is calming down, and coming to terms with the fact that while we have some of the facts, we don’t know enough to be prescribing a single diet and exercise plan for everyone. Finally, it’s accepting that not everyone has the desire to be at peak physical fitness. Support and understanding are more useful than body shaming and lifestyle prescriptivism. I don’t desire to be Adonis, I just want to drop my spare tire and, hopefully, live a little longer. That’s not a bad goal to have.

Last night, I put my Pebble in a drawer for good, or at least until the 3.0 firmware comes out. Yes, I said that I’d stopped using my Pebble back in March, but I came back to use the Pebble as a fitness tracker along with its smartwatch functionality. With the Jawbone UP watch face and Morpheuz for sleep tracking, I replicated the functionality of my clip-on fitness tracker, and had one less thing to worry about losing. While it wasn’t perfect, it was functional enough, and I got all the benefits of notification triage on my wrist to boot.

Then it stopped working. The Jawbone UP Pebble app isn’t known for being the most reliable piece of software, but having a day where it erronously reported 12,000 steps from a little after midnight when I was sound asleep was a bad sign. Another day, I forgot to reactivate the Pebble’s tracker after waking up and quitting Morpheus, losing step counts. As the numbers on my wrist became increasingly divergent from to the numbers in the App, I decided to go back to the clip-on tracker. This was the first nail in the Pebble’s coffin.

I kept using Morpheuz to track sleep, especially since I like having the Pebble vibrate to wake me. Then, the iOS 8.3 update broke the already fairly janky method by which Morpheuz syncs sleep data with HealthKit, by way of the Smartwatch Pro iOS app. Since my Jawbone UP Move tracks sleep too, I went back to using it for that too. I could have clipped it on to my Pebble’s watch band—I had before—but I hated the whole idea of clipping a fitness tracker to a fitness tracker to make up for the other’s software failings. The Pebble had to go.

Before I made the final decision, I spent some time trying to find a new role for my Pebble beyond just notifications. I tore through the Pebble App store and searched for guides to the best Pebble apps for iOS… only to give up, rip the device from my wrist, run a factory reset, shut it off, and shove it into a drawer. I might pull it back out once the new Timeline interface is available, but it would be more for curiosity’s sake than any interest in using the Pebble full-time again.

Back in March, I finished up my original Pebble experiment with the following conclusion:

The goal of my experiment was to see if my skepticism on smartwatches was justified. That such a limited device was enough to prove me wrong is success enough. Itís a shame the Pebble doesnít succeed for me as an iOS user, but thatís the risk I took.

I’m still glad that I tried the Pebble. There’s a ton of potential in the smartwatch form factor that I didn’t even think about before trying one. That alone was worth $99, plus a couple bucks for a replacement strap. When I can afford an Apple Watch, I’ll pick one up with no hesitation, and I’m eyeing the possibility of Android Wear coming to iOS, I might try a LG G Watch for a while in a similar experiment. So much of the doubt about smartwatches from otherwise really smart people comes from the difficulty of understanding it without using it first. If you’re not dead set on being a skeptic, the orignal Pebble is a good way to find out if you’re right.

There’s a joke I see bandied about online that amounts to: “How do you perform live electronic music? You push ‘play.’”

Having friends who make and perform various forms of electronic music for a living, this joke always rubs me the wrong way. Sure, you have people who whose live set is based around taking a laptop on stage, pressing play, and then either dancing around, singing karaoke, or both. I think these acts are both the exception, and utterly boring. I’ve seen live electronic music shows that are some of the most compelling, exciting, and visual shows of my life. [1]

The joke also plays up a dismissive attitude towards electronic music that has plagued it since its rise in the 1970s as not being “real” music, and—simultaneously—putting “real musicians” out of work. The act of creating electronic music is as much composition as playing: the artist must create the sounds, arrange them, or at least establish the parameters for the machines to generate them. Even 100% generative electronic music has a human element, in that someone must create the algorhithms that generate the music.

For me, it’s the sounds that make all the difference. I’ve been fascinated by electronic sound, probably from the first time I heard “Lucky Man” by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on classic rock radio, and it’s epic Moog solo. Sure, you can use a synth to recreate the sound of real instruments, but I feel like that’s a waste. It’s the strange, alien sounds of synthesizers that attract me more than their ability to recreate something else. With a single instrument, you can create stunning beauty or harsh noise in a single note—or both at the same time.

The best electronic music to my ear is the the sort that straddles the human/mechanical divide, with rich melodies and voices contrasted against rigid, mechanical rhythms. Something about the juxtaposition speaks to me. It’s a metaphor, in a way, for the symbiotic human relationship to technology. The music is stronger with both human and technological aspects, much as so many of our other creative endeavors are.

And, of course, a lot of it you can shake your butt to. That’s never a bad thing.