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2025-10-01

New Things

I bought a couple of new things recently that probably deserve a bit of a mention here.

iPhone 17

I finally traded in my beloved iPhone 13 mini. I鈥檝e had it for four years, which is the longest I鈥檝e ever kept a phone. It was truly an amazing device, but the battery life was suffering and the 17 is just too good of a value.

I considered a Pro, but it鈥檚 a $300 price jump that brings with it an extra camera and a larger battery. Considering the battery upgrade from the 13 mini would be massive to any new phone, it was really just the camera as a meaningful boost. And that just wasn鈥檛 worth $300 to me.

So far I like it. The bigger screen is nicer (and 120 Hz is amazing), even if it makes the phone kind of awkward to hold. I will miss the size of the mini the most. The camera is very nice, too, and I find myself using the 2x mode a lot. I know the quality isn鈥檛 perfect, but it seems as good as my mini, and anyway I have a proper camera for when I really care about quality.

Protoarc EM01

Sadly, my Logitech MX Ergo started acting wonky. In the last month, the left button switch seems to sometimes let go and re-engage during a drag, causing all sorts of chaos. Logitech recently bumped all of their prices up (fucking tariffs) so a new one costs $120.

For something I use every day, I would spend that, but it would suck to pay more for basically the same thing that I bought 7 years ago. So I looked for alternatives and came up with the Protoarc EM01.

It鈥檚 a very nice trackball and was less than half of the price of the Ergo. Some notes:

  • Silent click buttons are weird and will take some getting used to.
  • The Ergo came with an extra wedge to increase the angle that the device sits at which I鈥檝e always used. There鈥檚 no such thing for the EM01 and as such it sits much flatter than I鈥檓 used to (even when it鈥檚 tilted). I鈥檒l either get used to it or find my own wedge.
  • Logitech鈥檚 terrible Options software let me remap the DPI mode button to Mission Control in macOS. I鈥檓 using SteerMouse for the EM01 but the DPI buttons (two of them) are not re-mappable, which sucks. I鈥檓 using a chord instead for that purpose (left and right buttons at the same time) and it does work, but will take some getting used to.
  • USB-C charging is nice.