Tag Archives: iPhone

You’ve made good time

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It wasn’t a a question, but rather a statement, “You’ve made good time.”

We were on our way to holiday in Kelowna and our youngest daughter was spying on us. Well, not really spying, that suggests something clandestine and this was fully consensual. We share our locations with each other on our phones.

I think my daughter uses it on my wife and I more routinely than we do on her, and that’s perfectly ok with me. I tend to use it when I’m headed to bed and she’s not home yet, and sometimes when I’m the first one home from work and wondering where everyone else is?

I’ll sometime get texts from my daughter that say, “You’re still at work?”, and I know that again is more of a statement than a question… she checked my location before asking. Then the conversation moves to dinner plans or evening plans, and maybe even a request for a drive so that she doesn’t have to take her car somewhere that she may have drinks. Again this is perfectly fine with me.

I can see how this tool can be weaponized by a controlling parent or spouse, but in the hands of mutually respectful people it is really handy. It allows us to connect and feel connected, even when we are headed on holidays. And it changes the conversation from ‘Where are you?’ to the follow up questions that matter more.

Battery life

I just got the notification at work that I can update my phone. This comes just in time because my battery has been draining faster and faster, to the point where it didn’t even last until 2pm yesterday before needing to be charged. I seem to be very good at killing batteries. I know I tend to be a heavy user, but yesterday I didn’t use my phone a lot more than any other day, and in fact probably less. I don’t know why, but battery power loss has been a problem with every phone I’ve owned.

I think it’s not just my phone, I think it’s me. My mom has had difficulty wearing battery powered watches for years, they would just stop working after a few days of wearing them. I think I inherited this effect from her. I think there is something about the natural charge of my body’s working that is hard on batteries. Of course it could just be my heavy use or pattern of use that causes batteries to have shorter lives, but I really think there is something about me as well.

I’m somehow the problem. This isn’t a helpful belief, and quite frankly I’d like to be proven wrong… but my phone’s battery health is only down to 86% and yet it’s barely lasting past half a day.

The good news is that an update is coming. That said, this was already a replacement phone since the last update. Why did I need a replacement phone? The battery kept dying. It’s not the phone, it’s me.

Try again…

This is too funny not to share. I found a very old iPhone and plugged it in. Once charged, this was the message that came up on the screen:

“iPhone is disabled try again in 25,931,376 minutes”

That’s 49.3 years! What generation iPhone do you think will be available in early 2071? Not that it matters to me because I highly doubt I’ll be living to the ripe old age of 103.

How many times do you have to fail trying a password to get penalized that many minutes? Who wrote that program? So many questions… and not enough time! 😜

Dropped calls

I live in an old house, and rather than traditional drywall, we have plaster with wire mesh in it. This makes our house a bit like a Faraday cage. Some days when reception is bad, I have to find a spot that works and stay still to keep the call from fading in and out, and sometimes I even have to go outside.

But I notice it’s not just at home. I have bad zones in my school too, and will even tell someone I’m talking to on the phone, ‘You might lose me for a couple seconds as I walk through this hallway.’

My running joke is: iPhones are amazing, they can do so much, it’s too bad they don’t make good phones.

I do find it odd that I’m better off on a Zoom call or WhatsApp, streaming a video call on wifi, than I am making a simple phone call. As the world slowly moves towards global wifi, I think we might see an end to traditional phone calls. We’ll still carry phones with us (one way or another), we just won’t be tied to a phone network and locked into phone company contracts. And we won’t be dropping as many calls.

Beyond Rock Band

via Penang iBand does “Love Story” by Taylor Swift on youtube.com

Unlike Rock Band, you actually have to know how to play music to do what these guys are doing. Here is another group doing a Christmas concert with iPads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DJddb73OOQ

Or how about 1 guy putting all the pieces together himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYo5dCeBZYA

Garage Band comes free on Apple computers and the same ‘equipment’ would have cost about $20,000 and needed it’s own room when I was a kid. It’s just amazing what you can do these days if you have a musical or creative flare.

Taking this one step further. Have a look at what Eric Whitacre did using technology to connect “individuals alone, together.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyLX2cke-Lw

Rock band is fun, but making music is definitely beyond Rock Band!