Marco Arment has been recently toying with the idea of switching from his current iPhone 6 to the uber-sized iPhone 6 Plus. He took it with him on a couple of trips to the British Isles, and this is what he thought about it:

Having used an iPhone 6 full-time from its launch until these 6 Plus experiments over the last few weeks, I can confidently say that neither phone is extremely well-designed. Both have nontrivial and completely avoidable flaws. But the 6 Plus has bigger advantages over the other phones, while the 6 seems to sit in a mediocre middle ground.

CGP Grey summarized the difference well in the aforelinked Hello Internet episode: “I am more and more convinced that the iPhone 6 is the phone for nobody; it’s the in-between phone that has all of the disadvantages of both [the 5S and 6 Plus]”.

It’s an interesting thought. I can definitely see the iPhone 6 as the odd man out, especially given that it’s already too big for my taste so in that regard, it doesn’t really hold a size advantage over the 6 Plus for me. I’m still happily using my iPhone 5S which size-wise, is pretty spot on for my needs but funnily enough, had I decided to upgrade to one of the two new iPhones, it probably would have been the 6 Plus. I mean, if you’re going big, you might as well go all the way and get the extra benefits that come with it, like the better camera and the awesome battery life.

But Marco is not the only one wondering about the 6 Plus. Stephen Hackett has also decided to switch after using the regular 6 for a few months, so it seems this perception is somewhat common, at least inside the tech circle.

For what it’s worth, and after trying the 6 Plus for two weeks, Jason Snell seems to disagree:

People with large hands (or who rely less on one-handed operation) might have a very different experience, but for me it was just too big a device, with not enough functional gain elsewhere. I’m back to the iPhone 6 now and not missing the big guy at all. I don’t disapprove of people who prefer the 6 Plus to the 6—and I know a bunch of my colleagues are definitely rethinking their choices—but I’m afraid I won’t be joining the club.

I have to say I’m leaning more towards Marco’s side on this one, but not by much. I honestly don’t like the idea of carrying a monstrously big phone in my pocket, which is why I decided to stick with my 5S for another year. Who knows, maybe the next generation will go back to featuring a 4-inch model and we’ll have three different sizes to choose from. If so, the smaller one is definitely where I’d feel most at home.

However, if we’re stuck with just the two bigger phones for the foreseeable future, any one of those will be a compromise in my book in terms of size. That said, camera performance is something I’ve come to value extremely highly in my years as an iPhone user and if the camera differences between both models continue to exist, the Plus will still offer a tiny bit more, which will probably be enough to win me over.

Kimberly Harrington:

If you’re thinking tweets, keep them upbeat and clever. But whatever you do, don’t start an “OH at the studio” account. Because what’s overheard is, quite frankly, a lot of bitching. A lot of pom-pom hat wearing four eyes complaining about how this isn’t “what they fucking signed up for.” My motto is “On Instagram they can’t hear you scream.” Unless you post videos. Don’t ever post videos.

Not sure what happened to your favorite Game of Thrones character? This infographic by Shelly Tan and Alberto Cuadra for The Washington Post contains pretty much everything you need to know ahead of the show’s season five premiere on April 12th.

Spoiler Alert, obviously.

This is starting to feel like International Interview Day:

Matt Gemmell:

I invite you to bring some balance back to your perception of the world around you, and to push past the historically male-centric gathering of voices. I started by simply following more women on Twitter, and making a conscious effort to amplify those women when the opportunity arose. The list of people I follow now has more female faces than male, and I can’t adequately tell you how much of a relief that is. You should find out for yourself, and maybe use that list as a starting point.

I love this idea. We really need to hear more female voices on the Internet, and it all starts with the people we actively choose to follow.

By the way, if you still haven’t subscribed to Matt’s weekly email newsletter, I don’t even know what to tell you. He’s downright killing it week in, week out.

While we’re on the subject, don’t miss this terrific 4-part interview with legendary American writer Kurt Vonnegut for The Paris Review. I don’t want to spoil it too much for you, so I’ll just say that among many interesting things, he talks at length about his experience as a soldier in World War II:

In the same boxcars that had brought up the troops that captured us—probably in the same boxcars that had delivered Jews and Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses and so on to the extermination camps. Rolling stock is rolling stock. British mosquito bombers attacked us at night a few times. I guess they thought we were strategic materials of some kind. They hit a car containing most of the officers from our battalion. Every time I say I hate officers, which I still do fairly frequently, I have to remind myself that practically none of the officers I served under survived. Christmas was in there somewhere.

Let this be a lesson to you: whatever you do in life, you do not want to piss off a great writer.

It’s been said before that New York City is street photography Mecca, and with good reason. Also, check out this interview with Sandler on Urban Times:

“I liked what a photograph could do. I was attracted to the idea of stopping time. I always liked films and I grew up in a family that was involved in television…very early television…. late 1940′s….But I always liked photography’s ability to stop time. Film doesn’t stop time, still photography does. That was the initial attraction to actually freeze a moment in time and make prose into poetry.….you have to add so much of your own interpretation to a still image. It becomes very much about the viewer, whereas film and video are much more literal, you see things happen through time, time is not stopped. That was the thing I liked about it, I thought and still think that photography is a very difficult and poetic medium.”

Lots of little gems sprinkled here and there, all through the interview. On a side note, Sandler started getting into photography when he was 31, the same age I am now. Who knows, maybe there’s still hope for me.

If you want to try a standing desk for work, Conor McClure has some solid advice for you:

I’m still not sold on the usefulness of standing mats. It’s easy to see why comfortability should be prioritized, but in reality, it doesn’t need to be; after all, your standing desk exists for better health. If going barefoot for long periods of time is uncomfortable, your goal should be to train that, not eliminate the discomfort with a mat. Put bluntly: if you can’t use your standing desk without a mat for support, you’re a wimp.

Agreed.

Jonathan Poritsky:

I don’t turn my phone completely off. I recognize that I could, but the fact is that there are things in this world that might be more important than the movie I’m in. I don’t think any notification that has gone off on my phone during a movie has ever more important than the movie itself, but when that day comes, do I really want to miss it? I’m talking about the big deal stuff: life and, more likely, death. I ignore the tiny buzzing in my pocket just fine.

Now, the exception to keeping my phone in my pocket is simple: if I ever get the dreaded double call, the phone will come partway, though never above the waist, out of my pocket to see who’s calling. If it’s nothing, it slips away out of sight. If it’s something then I spring into action out in the hallway. My loved ones know (as all loved ones really should) that the double call is reserved for emergencies only. I suppose I’d make a similar exception for something like ten texts in a row.

So how does this all play out if you have an Apple Watch?

Jonathan gets right one thing that I believe most people get wrong about the Apple Watch’s notification system: It’s not designed to make the notifications you don’t care about more tolerable, it’s designed to make the ones you don’t want to miss more accessible. There’s a profound difference between the two.

Richard J. Anderson pens a brilliant piece on the relationship between empathy and technology:

I wonder if it’s possibly that over a certain limit, perhaps Dunbar’s Number, the human capacity not only for stable relationships, but for empathy, decreases. The human mind is a hodgepodge of cognitive shortcuts that make it easy for us—all of us—to lump people into categories of who deserves, or doesn’t, our empathy and understanding. I can only speak for myself, with no research to draw on, but I know it’s incredibly difficult for me to empathize with a person who has ended up in the category I’ll call my “shit list.” It’s true that nobody thinks they’re stupid, and everybody has their reasons. That doesn’t mean that I understand. My inability to do so, or even try, for those on the outs with me, is a major shortcoming. My hope is that I share it with others, who seek to overcome.