I’ve moved onto a boat. A narrowboat that can be moved between villages, towns and cities around the UK.
Everything I own is on the boat. I don’t own a whole bunch, so the space isn’t a big issue for me. What’s interesting about it as a newcomer to living on water is having to reconsider everything about how to live in a modern society.
Water supplies, electricity, internet…which night do I put the rubbish out, and where?
For people familiar with the canals and rivers of the UK and particularly living aboard a narrowboat, nothing I post here will likely be notable. But for everyone else wondering about the basics, I’ll hopefully get to a few #boatlife posts as time goes on.
For now: please enjoy this photo taken as I steer my boat (and house!) down the tidal section of the Thames in central London. This isn’t what normal boat life looks like, but it was a very fun (yet daunting) way to leave London and head for the rest of the country.
This was a fun one, recording with Alie Ward in Los Angeles, covering all kinds of interesting circumstances that came up in my time running Emojipedia.
oh and as we recorded in person, Gremmie (🐶) did an excellent job producing / being fluffy.
It’s a two-part episode, and also features Jennifer Daniel (head of emoji at Google) and Keith Broni (editor in chief at Emojipedia) released in time for World Emoji Day. Enjoy!
A few clips can be found below.
Thanks to Alie for having me on, and all the dedicated Ologies listeners who got in touch after this was published.
I was on this week’s episode of Clockwise (“four tech topics, 30 minutes”) with Dan Moren, Mikah Sargent, and Abrar Al-Heeti. Here’s the rundown:
Whether we’d be comfortable in a driverless taxi, our thoughts on the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory regarding kids and social media, using Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on the iPad, and the last time technology blew us away.
For me, the last piece of technology that blew me away was the “Bold Glamour” filter on TikTok. It’s not that we haven’t had beauty filters improving over time, it’s just that seeing these next-level filters working in real time is something that is hard to describe.
…oh and a bonus topic from Mikah broke how my brain works:
Alternative title: How and why to install an eSIM to save money on data roaming fees when overseas. Especially useful if you have an iPhone 14 with no SIM Tray.
I’ll keep this brief. People travelling overseas often fall into two categories:
1. Pay whatever your phone carrier lots of $$ for data roaming 🤑💸 2. Buy a local SIM card at the airport or downtown after arriving 🤓🏙
The first is easy, but costly. The second is sensible, but can be time consuming.
There’s a much better option that now exists; and middle-ground that is easy enough, and cheap enough, that you should consider.
As of 2022, every new iPhone and lots of medium or high end Android phones support my new best friend:
3. eSIM. Buy data online, in-app, before even arriving at your overseas destination. Keep your SIM in the slot. No payment to my enemy (data roaming fees) 🤩🤳
There’s lots of ways to do this, but if you’re reading now from the departure lounge of an airport or train station and want to dive right in, here’s my recommendation:
Search the App Store or Google Play Store for the Airaloapp
Choose your data pack (1GB for $5 USD or 10GB for $18USD)
Follow instructions to install
Activate eSIM when you’ve arrived at your destination
I also get a $3 credit when you use this link, but that’s not why I’m recommending this to you. There are lots of ways to buy eSIMs (in other apps, or in stores using printed QR codes), but personally this is the best I’ve used so far.
If there’s apps or services you find easier or cheaper, do let me know!
Airalo accepts Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or regular credit card payment.
The best part of using an eSIM when travelling? You can leave your regular SIM in your phone, using it for phone calls (if you wish), iMessage, or any other service.
No more forcing your SIM behind your phone case so you don’t lose it when you get back home.
With Airalo’s signup referral credit, you can buy a 1GB pack for $2 USD to test the service out before committing to a larger purchase.
Eventually, every SIM will be an eSIM. But for now, they’re a great option for the efficient traveller, especially when your enemies are after you.
My notes on eSIM use using Airalo
📲 Installing an eSIM takes more steps than a physical SIM, especially as it’s a second line. While apps like Airalo give great instructions, this could be simplified in future.
💵 A rate of $18 USD for 10GB in most countries is much cheaper than many data roaming rates, but won’t beat a local SIM for value in some countries.
🇪🇺 UK residents, having recently lost much of their free EU roaming due to Brexit, still often get up to 20GB free EU roaming on some plans. However once that runs out, this is a nice way to top up.
🛫 I recently visited Turkey and found the ability to buy an eSIM before even landing in the country to be useful. If you start running low on data, you can buy more before the current pack runs out. It is seamless.
🤷 For reasons unknown to me, Apple has a built-in interface to buy eSIM plans on iPad, but not iPhone. I have found Airalo much more reliable than Apple’s iPad option, and non-existent iPhone option.
👽 I haven’t tested Airalo on Android, but see no reason it shouldn’t work the same way.
🪧 You won’t recognise the name of any of these providers. The names and brands are made up, as best as I can tell, by Airalo.
🔄 Tapping any Airalo eSIM option will outline which network it will connect you to. For example, visitors to the UK will be assigned O2, but only on the 4G spectrum. This is normal, where carriers like to keep their latest-and-greatest networks for their own customers, not resellers of their network (known as MVNOs). As such, if you need a specific network for speed or coverage reasons, this might not suit you.
📶 You can leave both your physical SIM and eSIM active at the same time, and even get two status bars showing both lines. It’s the default option, having both lines active.
🪫 I did notice a small amount of additional battery drain from leaving both active. My decision was to simply disable my physical SIM while overseas (who needs phone calls anyway, right?)
————
Here’s how it looks when you have two active SIMs running at the same time. For instance, your SIM (or eSIM) from home open for SMS, and your local Airalo eSIM for data:
——–
Below is a guide to every step of the Airalo eSIM setup on iPhone.
Step by Step
For full context, here are the exact screens I encountered when buying and setting up my Airalo eSIM in Turkey for the first time, with 10GB data.
You’ll note that iOS provides options to choose which line to use for calls, iMessage, or data. The defaults effectively route data over the eSIM, and everything else
—
Step 1: Check out
—
Step 2: Order confirmation
—
Step 3: A button appears to install the eSIM after purchase
—
Step 4: a few pages of tips provided by Airalo
—
Step 5: More instructions reiterating the previous visual guide. Tap “Install eSIM” to continue and actually get this data on the road!
—
Step 6: iOS prompts the eSIM installation
—
Step 7: this screen seems a bit redundant and could be merged with the previous one.
—
Step 8: You could label your SIMS “home” and “away” or anything you’ll remember later on. This would likely be more important if you could install more than on eSIM at a time.
—
Step 9: Which number do you want to use for calls or messages? Defaults to your physical SIM, with it presumed you’ll use the eSIM just for the data
—
Step 10: the important step! You’ll want to use the eSIM for data. If setting up before you arrive in your destination, leave this on your normal SIM, and change in Settings once you land.
These eSIMs will only work in the country specified at purchase.
There’s not much more I can add here. eSIM is great for travel. Airalo is great. There’s likely going to be more good apps and ways to do this in future, but for now it’s my recommendation.
If you use this link to register your account, you will receive a $3 USD sign-up credit, or you can just type my referral code in the app: JEREMY0461. Or if you have a friend using Airalo, ask them for their referral code and they will get the $3 instead!
New emojis have been announced with a likely 2021 release. That’s before most people have the 2020 emojis, but such is the change to the schedule.
I went on The Morning Show to talk about it (the Australian TV show from Sydney, not the drama series on Apple TV+), and did an emoji quiz that I usually perform terribly at, but did surprisingly well for a change!
Incidentally, this is the first TV cross I’ve done from the boat. Plenty of radio has taken place, but TV I usually prefer wait til I can go in-studio to save any lag, but 2020 and all…
oh that’s cool Apple that you added all this stuff but WHERE IS MY EMOJI SEARCH
This year, people are going to have to come up with a new request, because emoji search is coming to iOS 14.
So what the heck took Apple so long?
Emoji search seems so obvious, did Apple just forget to implement it? Did they not know people wanted this?
Here I piece together the most likely reasons this took so long. It’s probably not just one, but a bit of each of them.
(Oh, and if you’re new to my rarely-update-blog here, you can usually find me over at Emojipedia.)
1. 🗓 Timing
The emoji keyboard first came to the iPhone twelve years ago in iPhone OS 2.2.
It took until 2011 for widespread access to this keyboard in iOS, and wasn’t until 2016 that it became clear that frequent emoji updates may be a real thing.
In the early years, there wasn’t much change in the emoji set. iOS 8.3 in 2015 nearly doubled the set, and by the following year it was clear that updates were coming consistently year-on-year.
This isn’t much of an excuse so much as to reframe our minds. It feels like emojis have been huge and growing in number forever but we’re talking more likely 4-5 years here.
2. 🙅 Apple just isn’t good at search
Search isn’t Apple’s forte. Siri and App Store search come to mind as examples that you just don’t have faith when you say or type a phrase, that you’ll get a great result.
You might, but you wouldn’t want to bet your life on it.
It seems reasonable that Apple knows its strengths, and has avoided doing emoji search until it could do a decent job.
Apple has emoji search on the Mac. It’s existed for years. And it has gotten worseover time.
Something happened in 2016 which caused the previously inflexible-yet-consistent emoji search to broaden and accept more terms, but with far less pleasing results.
The good news? Emoji search in macOS Big Sur has improved. It’s also decent in iOS 14 beta.
It felt like in 2016-2019, Apple’s macOS emoji search was either too complex and buggy to fix, and now replaced. Or it has finally been improved.
Whether these tweaks are implemented by hand (by checking the most common search phrases and fixing accordingly), or by natural language processing improvements, I’m not sure.
3. 🔡 Emoji Auto-Suggest
Apple has had emoji auto-suggest for a number of years on iOS.
You start typing a word, and an emoji might be suggested in the list of options. This works relatively well for a small set of results.
Issues with auto-suggest-as-emoji-search:
If you’re already on the emoji keyboard and can’t find an emoji, you need to get back out of the emoji keyboard to try auto-suggest
Only three results are shown at a time. If you have a big group of results like all green emojis, three isn’t enough
If you don’t like the auto-suggest options you have to delete the word you just typed. Or you end up with a random word in your text.
Was emoji auto-suggest intended as the solution, so emoji search wasn’t needed at all? Did this delay the search feature? Maybe, but not necessarily.
Perhaps it was just a good place to get some data on what people are emoji searching for.
4. 😳 Public shaming
The first version of emoji auto-suggest on iOS only suggested one emoji. Damon Beres at Mashable noted the issue this presented, when searching for some terms.
Why should CEO show a man and not a woman?
Having only one auto-suggest option was always short-sighted, as it’s lose-lose no matter which gender is shown.
Apple rectified this in a subsequent release, by showing up to three choices.
Given the public and media interest in emoji, I doubt Apple wanted to roll out emoji search on iOS that was either buggy (ala Mac emoji search until now) or suggested bias (like the CEO auto-suggest option used to).
It’s one thing having bad search results on a relatively hidden feature on the Mac. It’s another to have them on a marquee feature of iOS.
Thankfully the emoji search results on iOS 14 beta are decent. Though they don’t make a particular point of which gender is shown first - it varies considerably, with no specific logic that is clear.
One failing here: you cannot press-and-hold any search result emoji to choose a different skin tone. The same limitation applies to the emoji auto-suggest feature.
5. UI Weirdness
One minor issue that may have deterred Apple from implementing emoji search earlier: it’s sometimes weird having a keyboard shown on screen that doesn’t actually type into your app.
If you accidentally find your way into the emoji search field, there is a new button in the lower-right hand corner to escape back to regular text entry. Or just tap where you want to type.
This same issue exists with third-party keyboards and iMessage apps like any GIF search. It seemed weirder at first, but now I think most users are familiar with a search-within-keyboard option.
As far as I can tell, there is no option to turn the emoji bar off.
Final notes
This is beta software, so I’m not going to review the specific functionality, but my initial notes are:
✅ Emoji search on iOS seems good, shows what an average user would expect.
💻 Compared to Catalina, the Big Sur results are much better. Every issue I raise in this earlier article has been addressed. A general test of other terms seems to show results that are universally better.
🤷 Sometimes the same search shows different results, I don’t know why
🔄 The search results are different to emoji auto-suggest. Typing ‘woman’ suggests 👩 in the auto-suggest bar, but gives a whole bunch of types of women in the search results, well ahead of the base ‘woman’ emoji.
🇬🇧 I performed my tests in English. I’m not sure how the iPhone emoji search performs in other languages.
Are you running iOS 14 beta and have you noticed any major emoji search issues? I’d be interested to know.
As far as I can tell, what Apple has implemented so far with iOS emoji search passes the ‘good enough to not notice anything special going on’ test.
