Kyle Wilkinson Blog – A late look back at 2020 and looking forward.

What an exciting and different year 2020 was, we saw the world go into a national lockdown, we saw the revolution of working out and working at home and we saw the UK and US argue with who could embarrass themselves the most. In this post I’m going to be talking about my personal highlights of 2020. I understand it’s a little later than usual in fact we are currently halfway through the month. Curious why feel free to read my other blog post released today too here called “COVID-19 and your mental health.”

The best of Apple

Despite being in lockdown across the world Apple once again didn’t disappoint. On March the 10th I spoke about how I had doubts WWDC 2020 would go ahead in its usual fashion. https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/wwdc-2020-will-it-happen as we know now it obviously didn’t go ahead instead in 2020, we got treated to 4 special event videos. A lot of people including myself actually preferred this polished format to the stage presentations that we are used too. It will be very interesting to see if when everything does go back to normal if Apple will carry on with this format or go back to the keynotes.

In 2020 we got to see the release of iOS 14 which included the totally overdue widgets on your home screen. A major redesign in macOS since OS X and of course the start of Apple’s custom ARM chips with the M1 chip to start us off. In terms of hardware we got to see 4 new iPhones. The 12, 12 Mini, 12 Pro & 12 Pro Max all of which come with a new design which is much easier to hold in your hand. TWO new Apple watches, the series 6 and the lighter and cheaper SE. I wrote a review on the iPhone 12 Pro and the Apple Watch Series 6 which you can check out here if you still don’t know much. https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/iphone-12-pro-review https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/review-apple-watch-series-6

Personally, I think it’s been a great year for Apple. They certainly haven’t suffered finically and with more and more people working from home I think it’s more important than ever for them to look at their iPad and MacBook line-ups. We also got too see a new service launch called Fitness+ and we got to see Apple TV+ go for its first year. You can read my review on its first year here: https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/celebrating-1-year-of-apple-tv

The best of my blog

2020 might have looked small on paper for my blog, however I think personally it’s been a great success. In 2020 I saw 11% growth in new users, 23% growth in total users and 66% growth in sessions. This in my opinion is great progress and I look forward to writing more and more in 2021 as well as producing some more content off my blog. I first of want to thank you all for reading and supporting my blog.

I’m going to talk about three of my most popular blog posts from last year and first that is this one:

Self-Isolating? Workout from home with just your iPhone

https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/self-isolating-keep-fit-with-just-your-iphone

At the start of the pandemic it was becoming clear that spending more and more time at home was going to become the new normal. So I wrote all about how using just your iPhone you could still workout. This was using some free apps as well as some paid ones but this also gave me the idea for my next most popular posts.

REVIEW: Strava Summit

https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/review-strava-summit

In April I tested for a whole month what exactly it’s like to be a premium user of Strava. Hoping you were getting more for your money then that special tick next to your name. Along the way I wrote about everything I did and took screenshots of all the best bits and one month later wrote a review on the whole thing as well as these two additional posts you can check out too. https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/strava-vs-apple-watch-workout https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/good-bad-points-of-strava-summit-a-60-second-read

Since I wrote this post Strava have completely changed the way premium works and they’ve actually took a way a lot of the free features and made them part of the paid plans.

iPhone 12 Pro – A review

https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/iphone-12-pro-review

The third most popular post from 2020 was my review on the iPhone 12 Pro. I looked at everything from comparing the packaging to the iPhone 11 packaging too testing that gorgeous camera in a day trip to Bournemouth.

The best of my Activity journal

In January 2020 I wrote my first piece in my activity journal. https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/post/january-2020-apple-watch-fitness-journal This was an idea I had where it would help me get fitter and more in to running by sharing my journey. In 2020 I ran the most I have ever ran. Ever. I never thought I’d be able to run a half-marathon let alone complete two. Obviously because of the pandemic I did have more time on my hands but I’m not going to let 2021 become the year where it’s less.

In 2020 I’m gutted to say I missed off my target of achieving every Apple Watch Activity challenge literally missed it in the 11th month. I was gutted. In December I obviously didn’t run as much in fact I only ran once at the beginning of the month. This is why there was no December journal blog post. I also missed off my target of running 500 miles in 2020 by just 26 Miles. 2021 I will achieve it, hopefully later on in the year we will all get to go to parkruns again and I look forward to travelling to new ones as last year I might have been able to get my 50th parkrun if it wasn’t for the pandemic.

2021 and beyond.

Now let’s talk about this year, this year I am thinking positive but also thinking big. I’ve got many little projects planned. Including a book which I started writing 2 years ago. I’m hoping to get that finished this year and be ready to publish early 2022. Normally I don’t share my plans for the year but feel like it will be good to share this year so this in a nutshell is SOME of my plans.

- Continuing with weekly blog posts which are largely based on Apple but also talking about parkrun and Niantic and other cool tech related stuff. All including my personal views on the topic whilst staying as unbiased as possible.

- Continuing with Monthly Activity Journal posts which are largely focused on Apple watch usage.

- Kyle Wilkinson YouTube to be relaunched under a new name. Old content to be upscaled to 4K and slowly re-released by April 2021. New content to be created starting September 2021.

- Kyle Wilkinson Blog – The Podcast, Will return around WWDC season. Number of episodes are undecided as of yet.

- Kyle Wilkinson Blog will be redesigned at some point in 2021

- Kyle Wilkinson Online will also be redesigned to be more simplistic and less cluttered

- One linear multimedia product to be released on KWO.

I’m going to keep my short survey available till the end of January, it’s only 5 questions long and I would really appreciate it if you could fill it in. It’s all anonymous I don’t ask for any personal information and should only take a minute to fill in. If you can it’s here: https://www.kylewilkinsononline.com/kyle-s-blog-survey-2021 Thanks for reading and even though it’s a little late I wish you all a happy new year and all the best for 2021.

Kyle Wilkinson