iPhone – RAnt(hony)-ings

Lying Phones

I sent a random text to a random stranger. In response I get this message:

I’m driving with Do Not Disturb While Driving turned on. I’ll see your message when I get where I’m going.
(I’m not receiving notifications. If this is urgent, reply “urgent” to send a notification through with your original message.)

We’ve all seen this message a few times now from iPhone users, the not helpful at all lie from holier than though iZombies who can’t be bothered while they are driving. If this person is like the other people who do this, then it would be more accurate to say something like the following:

I’m ignoring distractions while driving. You should thank me for this because I am normally an example of short attention span theater. Unfortunately for you I will forget to check messages when I get where I am going. You can text again, but you will only get this annoying message again. You can try the mystical “urgent” reply if you want. Good luck with that.

You might try emailing me next, but my inbox has in excess of forty thousand unread messages in it and the chances of me seeing your insignificant note are somewhere between slim and none. Again, you can try marking the message urgent but there are probably ten thousand of those unread in my inbox. My apologies for the insult and inconvenience of attempting to get my attention.

If you would like to actually communicate with me you will need to call me. One call will not be enough because I won’t pick up the phone the first time and my voicemail inbox is full since it won’t let me store unnumbered messages the way my email inbox does. You will need to call at random times for at least two days in order to get my attention. Again, I apologize for the insult and inconvenience of this effort you have embarked on.

If you ever do get to talk to me be assured that it will make your day, for I am the golden radiance that makes the day worth living for all of the people who speak to me. Please be patient and surprise me with a phone call when I’m not talking to another supplicant of your standing. We do thank you for your patience and wish you good luck in your other endeavors for you will likely have none here.

Yeah. Something more like that.

(24 carat gold iPhone? Yeah, that’s a thing.)

iPhone Not Home

I will be incommunicado till next Thursday, from the look of it. Power switch went out on my phone. Replacement phone (twice the memory, half the price) is taking a slow boat. Internet access and phone conversations will be limited to desktop and laptop via Google or Skype until then.

I don’t know if I will survive the depravity.

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It got worse. This Android/Open Source lover has now been saddled with the burden of using an iPhone 4 for a week. Kill me now, please. I have returned to the years of chisels and stone tablets. The iPhone was the only extra phone in the house.

The good news is the Nexus may be revivable, so I may have a backup next time a phone goes kaput.

All kidding aside, I’d like to offer a heartfelt thanks to Eric Buck for the phone. This is the second time it has come in handy. The Wife is likely to be using it next. She drove over her iPhone a few times on her last movie location. She drove over it, an 18 wheeler hauling dirt drove over it, the three dump trucks also hauling roadbuilding materials drove over it, and it didn’t break. It has been a little special ever since.

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The iPhone is now a Googlish iPhone. I have forced it to accept Google apps that replace functions that Apple wants to handle for me.

Just create a Mac address. We know you want to.

It is suffering almost as much as I am. I take a vicious pleasure in this fact.

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Postscript

I took delivery of that last Nexus a few weeks later. It too ended up failing on me, and it did that a few months after my mother died. That caused a panic because I had been recording audio of mom for the last few months of her life, trying to get her to open up about her childhood. When I got that phone’s power switch fixed (the third Nexus to develop the exact same problem) just to get the audio off of the phone, I decided that it would also be the last Nexus I was buying. Google had already abandoned the Nexus brand and decided to call their new devices Pixels, and they priced them to be in the same market as iPhones.

I don’t buy iPhones because they are too expensive, so I don’t buy Google devices anymore. I was sad to see the last Nexus go. I’m not sure if I was sad that I didn’t have that device anymore, or sad that I couldn’t say I had a Nexus 6 anymore. It’s nice to have a humanoid android to help out around the house, even if that is just your imagination filling in the gaps.

Apple vs. the FBI

A backdoor is not required to address the immediate issue of this specific case. What this decision shows is a lack of understanding on the part of the judge, and an attempt to force Apple to do what the US government has tried to get Apple (and all other tech companies) do for the better part of 20 years. Make our data systems less secure in the name of national security. Ironically it is the government that is grandstanding on this issue, not Apple.

iPhone Conundrums

The class-action lawsuit alleges that Apple and AT&T had illegally exerted a monopoly by telling customers their iPhone contract was two years long when in actuality the companies’ exclusivity agreement was for an indefinite, undisclosed amount of time. That means even after iPhone customers’ two-year contracts have expired, they still don’t have the option of switching to another carrier because AT&T is still Apple’s only U.S. partner.
Gizmodo – Lawsuit Accusing Apple and AT&T of an iPhone Monopoly

Intentionally breaking third party applications for their phone hardware is what is going to get Apple in trouble, in the end. It’s what got Microsoft in trouble, intentionally breaking Netscape‘s ability run on updated Windows products (something that was reversed in later releases) so that Internet Exploder, urm, Explorer, would run unchallenged on Windows systems. This was SOP at Microsoft for many years.

Yes Microsoft dominates the software market currently, but I wonder how much longer this will be true; and how is Apple ever going to gain customer loyalty when they alienate whole sections of their user base by purposefully breaking their customers phones with software updates?

First you pay 200 dollars too much for the thing, and now it doesn’t work at all. Thanks Apple. Stick with Palm or LG or Nokia next time, lusers.

…And then the other shoe drops. So much for Apple’s control over their product base.

Hackers Claim to Revive ‘Bricked’ iPhones

It’s unclear, however, how permanent any “unbrick” fix will be, or whether changes to the hacks that allow modifications will survive the next Apple iPhone update.
PC World Magazine

I still say you should have bought a Palm.

2019 – While updating the links in this one I ran across the Gizmodo article I quoted from at the top. The lawsuit was granted class action status in 2010. As far as I can tell, the lawsuit is still ongoing twelve years later.

Spin the Apple

Steve Jobs has a mind control ray? It would explain a great many things.

Today’s papers are full of the announcements, all buying into Jobs’ “seven wonders of the world” line about the new touchscreen iPod. There’s no doubt it looks great but DO YOU REALLY NEED IT! And yes, I know you can say that about all technology but it’s a serious point where iPods are concerned.
Apple feeds off the hype that follows its announcements and I am surprised they still get away with it. I mean how often do you change your washing machine? Or you oven? Or your TV? Or your digital camera?
We buy those expecting them to last years but far too many people seem happy to splash out a couple of hundred quid or more on an iPod only to “trade up” six months later when Steve appears on a big screen presumably sending out some sort of psychic wave. I can’t think of any other explanation for the cultish behaviour that sees millions seemingly brainwashed into replacing a product that’s perfectly good for one that doesn’t really do anything different to what they hold in their hands.
techdigest.tv

I’ve never owned an iPod. Even though my first exposure to computers was on a Mac (the original) I’ve never had the need to own any of Steve Job’s new gizmo’s.

I’ve carried a Palm device since Handspring was formed which was years before Steve Jobs had his vision of the iPod. The first add-on I bought was a 64 meg MP3 player, which I used for several years as my only MP3 player. I’ve currently got a Treo 650 (which is two iterations behind the latest and greatest Palm device) and I have no need to upgrade to a newer Palm, much less a use a restricted MP3 player that doesn’t include a phone.

When I first decided to invest in Palm devices, I did so based on the concept of one device that performs the functions of several devices I might need to carry; phone, camera, data, music and video. The first Handspring with add-ons could live up to this expectation. The current Treo does it with nothing more than an SD card for additional memory.

The iPod is just a walkman that plays MP3s, and now it plays video. Nothing new there. The iPhone is just another cell phone with a really cool interface. Also nothing new. Palm was the innovator of handheld devices, Apple is just the copycat. They lost their cutting edge when they lost the Woz.

I don’t know who the next innovator will be, but it won’t be Apple. Perhaps Google has something up their sleeve? Ever heard of Archos? Who knows what the future holds; history, however, has shown that giant corporations do not produce innovations.

Postscript

Looking for a used Google Pixel as I update this. I miss my Nexus devices. I don’t miss Palm’s interface. Software is where Palm and Handspring failed, and why they don’t exist anymore. Job’s drive to simplify interfaces is about the only contribution he brought to computing, may he rest in peace. Apple staggers on without him, I don’t know how or why any longer. Dumbasses willing to spend too much for the illusion of privacy. That would be my bet.

No iPhone For Me

I’m glad Rankin took the time to write down his reasons for not buying an iPhone. I’ve been thinking I needed to do this, and it saves me the time. Frankly, I don’t know what the buzz is about. I’ve been carrying a Palm device for more than 5 years now. My first device was a Handspring Visor (still have it) and it had expansion cards for cell phones and mp3 players (still have those too) it predates the iPod, and cost half what the iPod does. My current device is a Treo 650, and it does everything the iPhone does for about half the price as well. Go figure.

Ten Reasons Why the iPhone is not myPhone