Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Also Apple TV. Watches go to v10.

iPhones are getting a couple of interesting features that I like. One is the ability to share Air Tag tracking, that'll be nice. And a live phone message transcription feature which will allow you to pick up the phone call while the message is being left if you want! Just like the old answering machines used to let you do.

Some other notable updates:
--Maps let you download segments where you know you'll be outside of cell coverage
--iPhone 14 and 15 can tie AAA Roadside Service into the Emergency SOS satellite coverage
--Improved crash detection for the iPhone 14

My Mom never understood how cell phone voice mail worked. She'd leave a message and it was along the lines of "Wayne? Are you there?" Sorry, Mom. Once you were at that stage, no, I wasn't there.

I am a bit nervous that they might yet again screw up how hearing aids work. A previous version of iOS, I think it was 13, was an utter nightmare! It was never fixed, though it was slightly improved over the course of the year. I eventually gave up and went to my iPhone 8 as it had the previous iOS on it. Finally the next version of iOS started playing well with my hearing aids again.

Makes you wonder how well they test these things.

Myself, I'm not updating devices - yet. I'll wait until they get to .1 or .2, I've been burned before and John Scalzi's new book, Starter Villain, dropped last night and I'm not going to lose the chance to continue reading it. I can wait a couple of weeks to download all these.

This link describes what appears to be all the changes:
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/18/apple-releases-ios-17/

MacOS will get a new release very soon.

It's called Lenstag, and I don't know if there's an Android Store version. Basically it lets you inventory your equipment in your system so your serial numbers are logged in case of theft. In addition to this, it maintains new and used prices! For example, it's saying that my Lumix DMC-LX7 is worth $280 used! I'm quite happy with that price, I'm hoping to buy a replacement while in Phoenix next week and sell this one to offset the cost of the new one, and knowing that price will help move the LX7.

Could be very handy if you went to insure your gear: if you registered everything, you'd have a list of all your equipment with serial numbers and new prices in one place.

The program also lets you transfer ownership of equipment when you sell items, which is cool. And you can report items as stolen! And apparently, it will inspect metadata on posted photos and watch for serial numbers of your equipment turning up, presumably in conjunction with things reported as stolen. It didn't list any photos as having been taken with my equipment, but none of it has been reported stolen, so I'm not sure about that feature.

I bring this up as I just received an email from the creator, who has added a new feature: online camera manuals! Not available for all equipment, only most: my LX7 is not there, it's still a cool feature.

The program is free, there's also a Pro version that has instant registration of your equipment for a $20 annual fee.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lenstag/id759999902?mt=8

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....

Maybe that was midnight Cupertino time, I don't know. Regardless, both of our iPads are too old, as is my wife's iPhone 4S. That leaves my iPhone 6 as the only device that can run it, and since I'm about to head for Phoenix and I won't have my iMac with me for a system restore should something glitch, I think I'll hold off a bit. For that matter, the new MacOS is supposed to drop in a couple of days, and I won't be upgrading to that until I get back from Phoenix, so I'll probably just do a device upgrade frenzy when I get back.

Some of the features in iOS 11 are pretty cool. I like the 'press the power key 5 times to disable the fingerprint reader', definitely cool. It doesn't materially affect me as I don't use the fingerprint reader to unlock my phone, but that's OK. And they've apparently made the reverse video mode more intelligent for not reversing images, which is good. I really wish they had an override for web pages and such so you could force white letters on black background, for example. That's what I love about Ars Technica and hate about most others, I find white on black to be much easier on my eyes.

But I DO NOT like updating my phone apps over WiFi (as I wrote about last week), I thought loading apps through iTunes was easy and one-stop syncing. They've just increased the hassle and it's likely to increase the time between me doing updates from daily to weekly or monthly or whenever. Which increases potential security vulnerabilities, which ticks me off. iTunes should be a framework that supports plug-ins, then all they'd have to do is write a plug-in that reads the app store for just iPhone/iPad/Watch apps, and re-casts them in to the iTunes framework. It's still just one app store, it just looks like two.

Twits.

GET OFF MY LAWN! Kids these days.

(In a totally unrelated incident, I got "Sir'd" last week! I was sitting in a barber shop waiting for my guy to finish with his current client, and the other guys started talking about horror movies. I'm not a big horror movie fan, so I didn't participate until later. Now, this barber shop is an actual barber shop, not a hair salon, run by 30-somethings with tattoos up to their necks and possibly beyond, smoking their e-cigs and playing that reissued Nintendo Classic that came out last year when they're slow. I don't really care. So what if they're young. I piped up about some movie, I don't remember what, throwing in my $0.002 worth, and this one barber later comes over and apologizes, saying that he didn't know that he had an older gentleman in the shop and they wouldn't have been talking like that if they'd known! Yes, dude, I'm 55, and some day you'll be there, too, if you're lucky. Maybe I'm moving towards the far side of middle-age, but trust me, though I am growing older I definitely have not remotely grown up. In my headspace I'm still a 30-something, though my body constantly reminds me that I am not. I laughed at him, reassured him that I was not offended, then told them a pretty grizzly story about a quietly spectacular suicide that happened while I was working for the police department. The crime lab was in the basement as was computer services, and the car that this guy offed himself in was so pungent that finally I told my boss that I'm taking off for the day. The fire department later used that car as burn practice.

I'll go in to no further details, unless people want it, in which case I'll put it in a new post under a cut.)

by Billy Kimball April 26, 2010

· Too salty.
· Time-travel app does not automatically adjust for Julian calendar.
· When used as tanning bed, battery life is limited.
· Not rhino-proof.
· Salesperson in Apple Store not wearing ironic “jazzman” hat.
· Not available in soothing Harvest Gold color.
· Strange odor coming from husband while using iPad.
· For $499, I was expecting a few more sequins.
· No USB port for whatever it is that they do.
· The iBookstore ichthyology section includes almost nothing on lampreys.
· When used as murder weapon, oleophobic coating does not completely eliminate incriminating fingerprints.
· Copying document files requires installation of forty-dollar iCarbonCopy app.
· Virtual cupholder does not actually hold cups.
· Unwilling to buy anything from Apple ever since Steve Jobs killed my parents.
· Insufficient media coverage.
· Original iPad was good enough for Grandpa and it’s good enough for me.
· Upscaling makes porn unexpectedly upsetting.
· After owning a Kindle for three weeks, I have become deeply loyal to the brand.
· The virtual keyboard is too %&@#! hard to use.
· New York Herald Tribune not available online anyway.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/26/100426ta_talk_kimball

In short:

1. Tablets Are Niche Devices
2. Full OSes Were Always There, Yet Those Who Complained That The iPad Doesn't Have One Still Never Bought One
3. High-End Hardware Specs Sometimes Don't Matter
4. Interface, Interface, Interface
5. Lack Of Tablet Apps

If I had the money, I'd buy an iPad. Its features really appeal to me, even though all it is is a supersized iPod Touch. That's fine. I don't need a full-feature slate, I want it for what it is: an information appliance. I have laptop and desktop computers for full computing.

The thing that I really hope to see the iPad cause is a paradigm shift. Bill Gates said that the iPad is nice, but it needs a keyboard. He wants it to be made in Microsoft's image, with a full copy of Windows 7 on it. Well, guess what. People have made slate computers with full-blown Windows operating systems on them, and they suck.

So here's my replies to each point:
1. Yup. A stable, dedicated information appliance is what I want. Emphasis on the stable part.
2. Full OS. Don't need it. See the stability reference.
3. If you slim down the OS, you don't need high-end hardware specs.
4. Interface. iPad/iPhone interface is quite usable, thenkyewveddymuch.
5. Lots of apps available on iTunes App Store. And I'm sure the iPad will be jailbroken in short order and people will be able to load all sorts of apps on it.

It's a good article, mainly a criticism of what tablets were and how to fix them. Fix number one: don't cram a full Windows OS into it without a fundamental overhaul of the user interface.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/tablet-islate-ipad-netbook-notebook,9929.html

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/03/20/191237/5-Reasons-Tablets-Suck-and-You-Wont-Buy-One?art_pos=8