SAMATIC

GETTING IN TOUCH

Write to maxwell.commer@gmail.com. It is read by the person who made the machine, and every message gets an answer.

SETTING IT UP

Samatic comes in two halves and you need both. Install it on your iPhone and on your Apple TV. The iPhone is the clicker — it holds the tray of photographs and works the controls. The Apple TV is the projector and the screen.

Put both on the same Wi-Fi network and open the app on each. The phone finds the television by itself; the lead hanging off the bottom of the clicker shows whether it is plugged in. If the plug is lying loose, tap it to try again.

The first time you open it, the phone asks to read your photo library and to find devices on your local network. Both are needed: without the first there is nothing to put in a tray, and without the second there is no projector to send it to.

WORKING IT

Nothing on the machine is labelled with what it does, and that is the whole idea — you find out by touching it, and it always answers. If you want it spelled out:

Tap the tray label, the paper strip beside the counter, to load an album. Throw the sliding switch across the top to bring the lamp up. Press FOR to advance a slide and REV to go back. Hold the FOCUS rocker to rack the picture soft or sharp. The small switch under the rocker runs the tray on a timer.

The leaflet is the sheet of paper tucked under the machine at the bottom right, with the corner turned down. Pull the corner and it comes out: the three adjustments, the service record and the small print are all printed on it. Push it back down and it goes away.

IF SOMETHING IS WRONG

The plug will not stay in. Both devices have to be on the same network, and the phone needs permission to find devices on it — Settings, then Samatic, then Local Network.

There are no albums to choose from. Samatic needs permission to read your photographs — Settings, then Samatic, then Photos. It shows the albums you have made; a library with no albums in it has nothing to offer, which is a photo library thing rather than a Samatic thing.

A slide takes a moment to arrive. A photograph kept only in iCloud has to come down to the phone before it can be sent to the television. It is quicker the second time round.

The machine is silent. The sound and the vibration each have a box on the leaflet, and the projector’s own noise — the blower, the lamp, the gate — comes out of the television rather than the phone.

YOUR INFORMATION

Nothing about you is collected. The full account is on the privacy policy. To remove everything Samatic has ever written down, delete the app: the three adjustments and the three figures on the service record are kept on your phone and nowhere else, and they go with it.