As I pull the car into the Starbucks drive-thru, my husband says, ”Oh, sorry, I thought you said you wanted coffee.”

”Close enough,” I tell him, and order a grande coffee with cream. He orders a breakfast sandwich. It’s a Saturday morning and our family is headed to the beach for the day, about an hour and a half east of Portland.

That’s right: we live in Portland, Oregon, hipster capital of the Pacific Northwest, where you can find some of the best coffee in the country. And yet, sometimes, we go to Starbucks. My husband, Neven Mrgan, asked me to please leave his name out of this article.

In most cities, Starbucks is a perfectly acceptable place to go for coffee (or tea, if you’re into that sort of thing). But in Portland, it’s controversial. On the one hand, the company itself hails from Seattle, so it’s semi-local; it also strives to ethically source the coffee it serves. But on the other hand, it’s a massive chain, which is inherently uncool in this indie-loving, D.I.Y. city, and the coffee it serves isn’t great. Some of it barely even resembles coffee (cough ”S’mores Frappuccino” cough). But, on the whole, it’s fine.

Yes, coffee nerds: I think the coffee at Starbucks is fine. While Portland is home to a ridiculously high number of small-batch roasters and I prefer almost everything about the Stumptown that’s a few blocks from my house, I go there just about as often as I go to our local Starbucks. Now, let me drop some truth about why.

The magic of ordering ahead through iOS

I’ve been using the Starbucks app for a couple of years, because it’s well-designed, tracks my rewards (buy 12, get 1 free!), and lets me reload my card and pay via the app. Pretty cool. About six months ago, though, I also began using the ”order ahead” feature, which is still in beta; Portland is the test market.

So far, it’s been great. I can choose my Starbucks (yes, I have a few ”favorite” locations saved, including the one nearest our house), place my fully-customized order in advance, pay within the app, and then just pick up my coffee at the chosen location. I have two kids, a job, and too many hobbies, so this is incredibly handy.

While I love the Stumptown that’s down the street, I usually only treat myself to coffee there when I’m working (I work remotely, designing Mac and iOS software), or if I happen to be taking a leisurely stroll over the weekend.

Because here’s the thing: Stumptown, like a ridiculously high number of independent coffee shops in this town, serves great coffee. And great coffee takes time. There’s almost always a line. And if I’m in any kind of hurry, as I often am, I’m not likely to stand in it. Stumptown does have an honor-system collection can for self-serve drip coffee ($2 for a 12 oz. cup), but I rarely carry cash. So even if I just want a regular cup of coffee, not an exquisitely-crafted latte or a Chemex pour-over, I’m looking at standing around for 7-10 minutes to get it.

Since you’re reading this on iMore, you can also likely appreciate that tingle of nerd-pride I get when I walk into a Starbucks directly past the line of people waiting to order, asking for my coffee at the the pick-up counter and notifying the barista that I ordered via the app. I am insufferable.

Super Value Combo: Apple Watch and the Starbucks drive-thru

While the order-ahead feature is really great, I don’t always have the foresight to use it. That’s where the combination of the drive-thru and the the Apple Watch really shines.

The Apple Watch component of the Starbucks iOS app only shows you information about your account and recent purchases — like all third-party apps, it’s very limited for now. But you can use your Starbucks card via the Passbook app, and the result is almost exactly like using Apple Pay.

Instead of double-tapping the side button and then holding your Watch near the reader, though, the barista just scans the bar code on your watch face. You can even leave a tip via the app on your phone when you get a chance; I’ve done it up to an hour later. It’s super fast and really, really convenient.

I’m often driving around with one or both kids in the car, and being able to just pull through a drive-thru and pay with a scan of my wrist, without touching my wallet or even my phone, is amazing. The appeal of higher-quality coffee from Stumptown (or Coava or Water Avenue or Heart) drops substantially when I consider parking the car, extracting a four-year-old and an 11-month-old from car seats, and standing in line for ten minutes.

When it comes to convenience, the coffee is fine

So back to that Saturday, at the drive-thru: I get my coffee, Neven gets his sandwich — which he admits is ”actually pretty good” — a woman scans my watch, and just like that, we’re on our way to the beach. The coffee is fine.

Use Nearby Friends? If you don’t want Facebook for iPhone tracking your every move, you’re going to want to change your settings.

I like using Facebook to share what we want, when we want, and it’s fair game. But many of us don’t fancy a social network tracking our every move, even privately. If you use Facebook’s Nearby Friends feature, however, you may be at risk of just that. If you’d prefer not to have a personal map of every place you’ve been accessible via your Facebook account, here’s how to change your settings and put the social network back in its place.

Whenever I update Facebook, I do a quick sweep through the account section of the Facebook for iPhone app. I was doing this yesterday, and came across a setting under Location that I hadn’t remembered seeing. The setting has been there since April 2014’s introduction of the Nearby Friends feature, but it was news to me — probably because I never enabled it.)

Regardless, this option gives Facebook the ability to monitor and record your location on a constant basis, and it’s turned on by default after you enable Nearby Friends. Creeped out yet? I certainly was.

Thankfully, Facebook has not tracked anything about my location because I turned off location services entirely for the Facebook app. (You can do this from the Settings app, under Privacy > Location Services.) The same couldn’t be said for many of my friends and family members: It had tracked and recorded their every move without their knowledge for several months, producing highly-detailed maps for each day. Even though these maps are only viewable when you’re logged in as yourself on Facebook, it presents scary scenarios for those who might have a significant other or friend’s login credentials.

If you want to make sure that Facebook never uses your location for new features, completely disabling location services for the app is the way to go. If you aren’t sure how to do it, you can find directions below, as well as some tips on how I keep the Facebook app permanently in check:

• How to stop Facebook from making your iPhone run like crap

If you don’t want to completely disable location services for Facebook, however, you don’t have to. (You may still want to be able to use the check-in feature, for example.) Instead, follow these steps just to disable background recording:

How to stop Facebook for iPhone from constantly tracking your location

1. Launch the Facebook app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on More in the bottom navigation.
3. Tap on Account Settings.

   

4. Tap on Location.
5. Turn Off the option for Location History.

   

Here are the latest Mac gaming releases, hot off the digital presses!

Want to know which new Mac games are worth a look this week? Here are my five picks to check out if you’re looking for something new and exciting: Read on for high-stakes narrative adventures, pumping rhythms, and fast-paced strategy.

1. Sunset

This Tales of Tales’ first-person narrative is set in the 1970s and told from the perspective of Angela, a black university grad who ends up stuck housekeeping for a wealthy client in South America. The game is a meditative exploration of Angela’s struggle to acclimate to her current circumstances, her memories of her previous life, and her thoughts on activism and the social upheaval happening in the city below her.

• $19.99 – Order now

2. Audiosurf 2

Audiosurf’s sequel has, at last, exited its lengthy early access beta phase. This rhythm game allows you to import your own music library, after which it will build a racing-themed rhythm track based on your songs’ climaxes and cool-downs. New to Audiosurf 2 is a ”surfing” mode that allows players to intentionally distort bits and pieces of songs as they play.

• $14.99 – Order now

3. Catlateral Damage

Have you ever wanted to just throw all of your possessions on the floor? Humans don’t ordinarily have any opportunity to engage in such cathartic (… cat-hartic?) destructions of physical property — not without having to worry about cleaning it up, paying for damages, and issuing apologies. Boring! Catlateral Damage lets you embrace your inner destructive animal without the consequences: Rack up points by using your kitty paws to slam all of your owners’ prized possessions onto the floor as fast as possible.

• $9.99 – Order now

4. Ninja Pizza Girl

Like most teens, 16-year-old Gemma has a cruddy food service job: dropping off pizzas for her dad’s delivery service. But Gemma lives in a gritty cyberpunk dystopia. In spite of this 2D platformer’s futuristic surroundings, Gemma’s worst enemies are still the same as they would be today: She has to avoid other teenagers, dodging their hurtful insults so she can complete her pizza route in peace.

• $12.99 – Order now

5. Interloper

Real-time strategy games can be an overwhelming time-sink: So much to learn, so many overwhelming bits and pieces, so much time required to learn and to play. Not so with Interloper, a rapid-fire strategy game that will scratch your crafting itch without stacking up a huge learning curve. Matches last only a few minutes, so if you’re too busy — or too overwhelmed — to try Civilization or StarCraft, Interloper could hit that sweet spot.

• $11.99 – Order now

What else is out there?

Spot any other great Mac titles released this week? Fill any of my gaps below in the comments.