Tag Archives: apple

The regrettable iPad death spiral… 

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My venerable old iPad Air was released and most likely purchased in November of 2013. For the last year or two I’ve been limping along with its pretty rotten battery and a few quirky, but mostly ignorable behavioral issues.

Apple stopped supporting this first generation Air back in 2019 and still it trundled along doing most of what I wanted from it. Without iOS updates and the associated app updates, I knew its days were numbered. That it kept going for three years with no upgrades or support is probably a testament to Apple having developed a pretty bulletproof bit of kit way back then.

Over the last couple of days, though, I’ve noticed a fair number of my go to apps have stopped working – or have started demanding that I upgrade to versions of iOS that my device doesn’t support. Every few days it looks like a new app becomes unusable. Even though the iPad itself keeps defying expectations by plugging along, it’s a vicious downwards spiral into the end of its service life.  

For the first time in nine years, I’m back in the market for a tablet. I should probably do some kind of market survey to figure out how the landscape there has changed in the last decade, but it feels more likely that I’ll just walk into the local Apple store and point at the shiny new version of what I already have. That original Air has been an absolute workhorse.  Hopefully the next one will last me as long.

Now the only real question is will I brave the mall during the week before Christmas or suffer through it sometime the week after the holiday. It’s a classic no-win situation, even if it is for a good cause.

New iPhone day…

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It’s new iPhone day here at Fortress Jeff. I won’t even speculate on how many this makes. It’s been a lot. 

I think now the yearly trade in has just become habit. If it’s fall, it must be time for a new phone – especially these last few years when Apple has gotten very slick with their trade in process. My new phone showed up. In a few days an empty box will arrive to send my old phone away and the whole thing is mostly seamless.

Just like that, Apple has convinced me to go ahead and lease a phone in perpetuity instead of just buying one outright and running it until the wheels fall off. It must be a pretty nice little monthly income stream for our friends in Cupertino. 

More power to them. Every year I get a slightly better camera and a little snappier performance and in exchange, Apple gets a gently used year old phone they can recondition and put back on the market. The added benefit to me is not needing to find an individual buyer, or work with a 3rd party reseller. Plus, no more needed to stand in line in all weather in hopes of snagging one of whatever limited number they send out to the local Apple Store on launch day.

Yes, it’s pissing money directly down the drain. Yes, I’m probably not using 1/10 of the ability of each increasingly powerful piece of electronics I carry around in my pocket. Both are completely valid arguments for why it doesn’t make sense to upgrade every 12 months. But here’s the thing… I don’t care.

Anyway, it’s new iPhone day, so if anyone needs me, I’ll be over here trying to figure out what basic functions I need to relearn because the developers tweaked some seemingly minor bit of software. Trying to make my new phone beave exactly like the old one is, of course, half the fun.

My after Christmas list…

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I couple of nights ago I noticed my iPad wasn’t holding a charge quite as well as it used to. The cover is pretty tatty and the aluminum housing is scratched and scraped. Every now and then it even stumbles trying to render a website. 

I didn’t think much about it until it popped up a notification that I was due for a software update. Poking around in settings (since I was there anyway), it dawned on me – probably not for the first time – that I was updating an almost 9-year-old piece of equipment.

I suppose that realizing that my venerable iPad Air crossed the pacific in 2013 made me a bit more forgiving of some of its latest foibles. With a little effort, I’m sure I could keep it limping along another few years, but I think maybe it really is time for an upgrade.

Yet another thing to be added to my after Christmas list. That should give me enough time to properly convince myself it’s a need and not just a want.

New phone day…

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It’s new iPhone delivery day. I’m fairly sure I’ve owned every “flagship” version of Apple’s now-venerable iPhone. The annual swap out is just kind of part of the tempo of the year now. The days when I felt compelled to get up early and stand in the dark to get one of the first out of the gate are pretty much finished. The era where new phones come with incredible new “must have” features seems to be over.

Still, I’m always just a little bit excited to get a new bit of hardware in my hands. I emphasize the hardware aspect because this morning, as I have for the last five or six upgrades, I spent some time completing a full backup of my old phone… so I could drop it wholesale into the new device. 

If I’m honest, I these upgrades are mostly just a matter of picking up a little bit of speed between clicks and a slightly better camera. I’m using the newest version of apps I’ve been using for years. I don’t know what the cool new apps are – and I mostly don’t care. This mini-computer I’ll carry around in my pocket is almost completely a platform for text messages, keeping to do lists, and taking (fairly) decent pictures of the critters to post on the “big three” social media platforms. Apollo ran on a system far less powerful, but I sheepishly confess I probably don’t use one tenth of what the thing is capable of doing. 

It turns out I’ve turned into that guy… The one who wants the latest toy because it’s the latest toy rather than anything to do with what it’s capable of doing. It feels like after all these years there must be some whiz bang function that would change my life if I only knew it existed. Maybe I should read a review or something. I probably should, but I think we all know what’s really going to happen. I’m going to go right back to using this fancy new phone the way I’ve used all its predecessors for half a decade.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Accessories. I’ve been using the same iPhone case manufacturer since sometime around the 3rd generation. It appears that sometime early this year, they’ve gone defunct. That means I have a new phone coming tomorrow and now have to go through the paces of finding someone else who makes as close an approximation as what I use to be able to get, because, let’s face it, I’m not going to be satisfied with the first two or three or dozen I try. They’ll probably all be fine cases in theory, but none of them will be exactly what I wanted.  Sigh. It’s going to be stupid and expensive and I don’t want to do it.

2. Vaccine. Reports this week are there’s a COVID-19 vaccine coming soon from Pfizer. Moderna seems to be hot on their heels with their own version. It looks like a footrace to see who will be first to market and able to make a supply chain work effectively. If your biggest concern is fighting back against the virus, this is all basically good news. My contrarian instinct, though, can’t help but remind me that the arrival of a vaccine is the beginning of the end of the golden age of working from home. Getting “back to normal” will inevitably sign the death knell of being home all day with the animals and give the upper hand back to bosses who value asses in chairs more than measurable productivity… and that’s not so much annoying as it is sad.

3. The Republican Party. Do I really need to even explain this one? As a (mostly) lifelong Republican, I’m embarrassed by the elected members of the party who are too cowed by the ebbing power of the president to say publicly that Donald Trump has not won reelection. The numbers tell the tale. I know that constituents will almost always rather hear sweet lies than hard truths and staying elected means not pissing off your base too badly. Even knowing that, I can’t quite get past the feeling that the Republican Party establishment is, perhaps as soon as the Georgia special election in January, going to be punished for its cowardice in a moment that begs them to tell truth to power.

On tracking the virus…

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I’ve written before about the decline of personal privacy. We slap RFID tags on our vehicles to make paying tolls marginally less painful. We carry around a mobile tracking device in our pockets. Many of us live with home security cameras that can see all but the most private moments.

The tech industry’s move towards developing apps that use our phone’s onboard GPS to track proximity to potentially infected people may sound like an altruistic use of technology to improve public health. Outside of saying they’re working on this “neat new thing,” not much is being said about the implications that come along with using such a personal tracker. Without knowing what, if any, legal safeguards will be in place, details of what beyond proximity is being collected, how long it will be stored, who will have access to it, how it will be used, and what control I will have over what’s collected, I have to say it’ll be pass from me. 

I’ve signed over some degree of privacy to big tech already because I value the services they provide. At its heart, though, my cell phone is nothing more than a tool. I have no intention of taking life guidance from it – or from Apple or Google or any of the other firms racing into this space. 

I won’t be wearing a tinfoil hat anytime soon, but I feel like sooner rather than later I’ll find my phone living in a Faraday bag except for moments when I need to use the damned thing.

Personal growth or something…

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I’ve got two months left on my current iPhone Upgrade Program replacement cycle. I could buy my way out of those last two months for about $60 and sign up Friday morning for a spanking new iPhone 11 in hopes of getting it on launch day. It’s tempting… and there was a time it would have been an absolute no brainer. I’d have been one of the first 50 through the door on release day to make sure I got the one I wanted.

The days of me wanting anything badly enough to stand in line in the middle of the night, though, seem to be well over. I still like new and shiny, but I prefer to acquire it during normal business hours. I guess you could call that personal growth or something.

Of course it’s not so much growth that’s going to keep me from walking in to the local Apple Store sometime around the end of October and swapping out the 10 for the 11… and another year of renting the latest iPhone. Even if all they did was make the camera even better, it’s worth the price of admission as far as I’m concerned. Even if it’s not also worth the $60 premium to buy my way into the upgrade on release weekend.

All things in Xs…

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I’ve been uncharacteristically patient in waiting until reaching (just) my one year anniversary with the iPhone X. The phone is a workhorse that in truth is far more pocket computer/communications device than any average user could ever need. Workhorse though it is, my trusty X is no longer the flagship of Apple’s iPhone fleet.

With my eligibility for an upgrade confirmed, I’ll be off tomorrow to slip by my very favorite retailer and hand off my trusty phone for its slightly newer, sexier younger sibling. Apple was kind enough to email me a confirmation of the order which means it should be a fairly painless visit – well under 10 minutes awash in the great American retail habitat.

I’ll give the marketing and sales department great credit. The know their target audience and continue too come up with new and interesting ways to help us feed the madness. I mean if you can convince me that going to a mall on Saturday is worth doing you should consider a career selling ice in the arctic.

There are some things for which I am willing to gladly suffer the indignity of being inevitably surrounded by people. The Xs just happens to be one of those things. I’ll be very happy to bring her home tomorrow.

The virtue of ApplePay…

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This morning, as usual, I picked up my building ID, two sets of keys, my pocket knife, watch, and a few other odds and ends I carry with me every day​. The morning progressed as usual right up until the point I stopped to fill up the Jeep’s fuel tank. That’s when I discovered my wallet wasn’t among the items of kit that I had stuffed into my pockets on the way out the door.

As they saying goes, you really don’t miss something (or realize how often you need it) until it’s gone. Instead of the day progressing normally, there was no fuel, no breakfast bagel, no stop for a mid-day doughnut, no pausing on the way home to pick up fresh greens for the tortoise, and no stop at the last chance liquor store for my Wednesday powerball ticket. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of infuriating, but the simple act of leaving behind a small piece of leather with a few pieces of plastic and a bit of green paper inside certainly has the the effect of being an outsized pain in the ass.

I’ve never really given much thought to the virtue of ApplePay, but it’s safe to say I have a new healthy interest in adopting a payment method that involves something I don’t leave the room, let along the house, without having on my person.

Almost a fiasco…

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Saturday morning I discovered that my local Apple Store had in stock availability of their new flagship, iPhone X. I wouldn’t usually venture anywhere near a mall two days after Thanksgiving, but the desire for new and shiny tech got the better of me. Stunningly, I arrived five minutes after the mall opened and parked within 20 yards of the door. It seems that their “holiday hours” are poorly advertised and almost no one realized they were opening an hour early. Fine by me.

I was an AT&T cellular customer since back in the mists of time when they were known as Cingular. I was generally a satisfied customer, too – until I moved to Fortress Jeff, which is located in a black hole of their coverage map. I could make and receive calls over wifi, but when wifi was down, my cell was pretty much an expensive paperweight. Unacceptable. With this change of phone, I wanted to make the jump to Verizon, who neighbors promised had at least a bar or two of coverage even the local power and cable is out. It happens more often than you’d imagine out here at the end of the transmission line.

Without going into details, I’ll just say that AT&T, Verizon, and Apple corporate policies all threw up roadblocks to converting from the Apple Upgrade Program under AT&T to the same program under Verizon. The guy I was working with, though, was an absolute bulldog and took the problems first to the floor manager, who was as confounded as we were. The floor manager then elevated the issues through two layers of management “in the back.” Finally they decided there was actually no way to get from Point A to Point B using existing policy and procedures. That’s they point where one of them decided “we’re going to break the rules” to make the sale.

I can’t say for sure if any rules were broken, but if the number of Apple employees standing around looking concerned while they fiddled with various entries on their tablet is any sign, they were certainly doing something unusual. In the end it took six people and almost an hour to make the sale.

It wasn’t quick and it wasn’t seamless, but in the end I walked away with exactly what I wanted. I appreciate that level of tenacity when the easy answer was “we can’t.” I appreciate it even more when I’ve got two bars of service when the wifi’s off. Well done, Apple. It’s a wonderful lesson for other business out there that customer services really, truly doesn’t have to suck.