Well, I shouldn't have upgraded my iPhone to iOS 11

[thewayne]

They broke the podcast player. Now it will play one podcast episode, regardless of how many episodes are under that title, and then stop. NOT good when you're solo driving 500 miles. And a day or two ago they released the first patch as they badly broke email for MS Exchange users, but they didn't fix the podcast app.

I worked out a partial alternative of using my iPad Mini, which is still running iOS 10.x, but it's not really practical as it only has 16 gig of memory and has LOTS of programs and books, and there's only so many things that I can easily delete.

For me, iOS 11 has otherwise been OK and I haven't otherwise experienced any trouble.

Then I had a thought. Why not hit a pawn shop and see about getting a used iPod Touch?

So I did. And they had one. Except it wasn't an iPod Touch: it was an iPhone 3GS. With 16 gig of memory. For $20!

It suits my needs perfectly, even if it is limited to iOS 6.x. It plays podcasts correctly. I turned off the cellular, I'd leave it in airplane mode except it needs Bluetooth on to properly connect to my car. It doesn't need any programs or data, so I don't bother linking it to my iCloud account, thus it has pretty much the full 16 gig of memory available for podcasts. I'll have my iPhone 6S for music for my trip home Friday, and I'll have my (sort of) new iPhone 3GS for listening to podcasts for the drive.

And for $20!

When I get home, I hope to do a restore to get my iPhone 6S back to iOS 10, but it's possible that Apple has already deleted the encryption keys and I'm stuck. They do that a couple of weeks after a new iOS is released. We'll find out Friday night.

The dangerous thing is the pawn shop has a 64 gig iPad 3 with T-Mobile cellular for $125! I've been thinking about getting a full-size iPad for some time now, mainly to get more memory: I'll freely admit that it's pretty stupid getting an iOS device with only 16 gig of memory, the OS just takes too much of it for it to be useful. I'm VERY torn on whether or not to get it. I shouldn't, but the odds of me finding another deal like that are very low.

And it now occurs to me that I could return the 3GS, which would drop the price on the iPad to $105, restore my Mini to the new iPad and go back to using my Mini as a podcast player until Apple gets around to fixing the podcast app....

Comments

[bibliofile]

It's funny how the old tech continues to be useful -- and useable -- far longer than originally expected. Not every thing every time, but still. I think one family wore out at least one GameBoy, between three kids over a good part of two decades. I shop at thrift stores, but I keep forgetting about pawn shops.

Thanks, your post reminded me to check my friend's old iPhone that I use as an iPod Touch. Fortunately, it topped out the OS back at 9.something, so it's safe from the iOS 11 problems. (We figured out a fair price by checking a few buyback sites. Luckily for me it was on Verizon & not AT&T.)

[thewayne]

Many years ago when I lived in Phoenix, I crawled through pawn shops on a somewhat regular basis looking for weird movies and music CDs.  My best find was a CD that I heard about on NPR called Stay Awake: covers of famous Disney songs by (then) modern singers.  Sinead O'Conner singing Stay Awake, Ringo Starr/When You Wish Upon A Star, Los Lobos/Man Cub, etc.  Amazing album.  We have one pawn shop in the area that I live in now, and it's not really that interesting. My 3GS is an AT&T, I think all of the 3 series were AT&T originally, but I don't remember the specifics.  Doesn't really matter, it's never going to be activated for cell use. (famous last words)  We use Verizon, which has the best 'out in the sticks' network coverage for our purposes.  I don't like them, but Alltel died, so what choice do we have.  And now with Sprint and T-Mobile merging (T-Sprintabile?), our main choices will be down to three. I went back to look at that iPad, but it looks like it sold.  They had an iPad 4 with 32 gig for $150, but it was hard-locked and would require time with my laptop to unlock and re-init, which I was not favorably disposed to mess with, so I passed on it.  I can be happy with my $20 podcast player and my old iPad Mini 2.

[silveradept]

Hooray for continuing to get tech that works, no thanks to Apple.

[thewayne]

It is pretty cool for 5-8 year old tech.  In a funny way, pretty much any modern smart phone or tablet can have an indefinite life used for taking notes, a music/podcast player, ebook reader, game-playing device, etc.  Doesn't matter if the OS or cellular standards pass it by.  Turn off the cell radio and use it as a WiFi/BT device.  And this 3GS was probably less expensive than an iPod Touch.  I would have never considered buying an old iPhone for this purpose until I mistakenly grabbed the device and found it was actually a phone!

At home I have a 16 gig iPod Touch, I bought it as a replacement for my Palm Pilot.  And it works, except the cable socket is kind of worn out.  Maybe some day I'll try and replace the socket, I should check with iFixit and see if that part is available, or if it's integral to the main circuit board. I think I can also turn off both the WiFi and BT on the 3GS as I sync it with my computer via the USB cable, so it's kind of invulnerable to external infiltration, and since it isn't connected to my iCloud account, it contains zero personal information, just podcasts.  It almost meets the definition of an unhackable computer: sitting alone in a room, no network connection, powered off, unplugged from AC mains.