I’ve been using Kristin’s old iPhone 5 for a number of days now and have been very impressed with my ability to adapt quickly.
Since a lot of my opinions and preconceptions about iOS were probably firmed up around the iPhone 3GS/4 era, it’s clear that a lot of helpful adjustments have been made that make switching into the ecosystem, especially for an Android head like myself, not really a big deal.
The ability to run Chrome (even though it’s just a skinned Mobile Safari) has been invaluable to keep the bookmarks synced. I gleefully disabled the vast majority of iCloud (I only see Notes, Wallet, Keychain, Find My iPhone, and the bare minimum of iCloud Drive enabled), especially the Photos stuff. After spending a few hours agonizing over iCloud Photos for Kristin’s 6S+ setup, I’d be happy to never see iCloud Photos again.
The “Back”/“Home” concept clearly still differs from Android in a pretty much not-good way for me, but clearly recent-ish improvements to iOS have sprinkled breadcrumbs throughout the navigation at tough spots. The double-press on the Home button also has gotten me out of jams without having to go through the home screen and hope it remembers my place in the other app.
I’m not using iTunes to sync music; rather, I’ve just installed Google Play Music and have relegated the built-in music functionality to my “Extras” folder on the last page of the home screen. All my MP3s are synced into Google Play Music, so I can download anything to the device whenever I want.
I’ve yet to sync with iTunes on the laptop. I imagine the first and only time I will do this is to make a local backup of the phone when I (probably) purchase my 6S. Especially since I’m not syncing media with iTunes, there’s really no reason to plug the phone into a computer unless I’m about to wipe it.
My apps are all solid, maybe a little better than the Android versions but not by much. I thought I might switch podcast clients but didn’t end up wanting to after trying out the competition.
Funnily enough, I will deeply miss Android’s alarm management features, which were deceivingly advanced and clever in terms of snoozing, deferring, temporarily suppressing, etc. I am too chicken to use a third-party alarm app, so I’ll just have to be more mindful of the alarm setup at bedtime.
I already appreciate the quality of the camera vs. my Motorola. iMessage is handy.
I miss my Android webcam monitor program, but as long as we retain that on the Android baby monitor tablet we’re fine. Amazing there isn’t a top-notch option in the App Store.
I somewhat miss the Intents setup in Android, where you can set the default app for nearly everything. It’s annoying that the “Siri Screen” railroads you into Apple Maps and Safari and Apple News without allowing changes to the defaults.
I am shocked how much faster this aging, 2.5 year old phone is compared to my relatively new Motorola. Much faster than my flagship X of about the same age as the iPhone.
It’s a little disappointing that the Wallet features are so spartan in terms of adding loyalty accounts. Looks like I’ll need to use Android to add loyalty cards, then go to a Google webpage from my phone and import them into Wallet. Since Android is also in the process of screwing up its loyalty card management, this could all just be a futile effort in a few months’ time.
Now I’m scratching my head about when to make the jump to the 6S, if at all. I want the old phone as a work e-mail drone (SIM-free), so it’s not like it will go to waste. But with TouchID and Apple Pay being the only major draws besides the bigger screen, it’s actually hard to go drop the cash to make the upgrade. I’m going to make sure the Clock app doesn’t drive me nuts with the alarms and then maybe make the jump in the next weeks or months.
I plugged in my Moto G last night for a bump charge prior to leaving to the grocery store. It was honking at me at 12%, which is nothing to be alarmed about, and I wanted to make sure the Our Groceries list and podcasts could both survive the HEB trip. I walked back to the phone about an hour later and it said “1% Remaining, Charging”, which - as an experienced, seasoned Android user - prompted me to get very mad, blame the charge cable, but then suspect the OS instead. I rebooted the phone to discover I actually had over 70% of charge. I don’t know if the phone would have gone into crisis shutdown had I not discovered it at that point, or what.
My network connections, since the belated Stagefright update from Moto, constantly report error state (overlaid exclamation mark and no report of TX/RX status). Forums confirm the issue with no resolution at last check.
I’m due to get Marshmallow at some point (probably comfortably into next year, now that we’re General T’so Moto post-divestment). I expect solutions and new problems to come from this. And probably hampered performance.
Google Wallet is sorta-changing into Google Pay, and my loyalty accounts (the only reason I really ever even try to use Wallet) are going to Pay, but I apparently can’t use Pay unless I set up a device PIN, which is an awful thought for me. I haven’t confirmed this (maybe loyalty works sans PIN?), and the auto-update rollout I’ve been expecting hasn’t happened. Don’t know if I want it to happen.
I agree and admit that I own a marginal phone in the Android universe, which basically means I don’t have a Samsung flagship or a good Nexus. Moto is losing my confidence at this point as they shank new Moto X users on updates, and I find the much-anticipated Nexus 5 updates this year to be uninspiring. I appreciate a lot of what Samsung is doing but feel far away from ever taking the plunge into TouchWiz, despite its meteoric rise from ick over the past few flagships.
Then those damn iPhone 6S commercials come on, and I’m just thinking: Touch ID, Apple Pay, 3D Touch, things working, volume buttons on headsets working, real customer support for software updates, first-tier app support, a non-potato camera, all that stuff. Plus finally being able to pay cash or payments on an iPhone without a carrier lock. And the ability to hand my phone over to Claire without counting 3, 2, 1, and then helping her dismiss yet another random means she discovered of replacing her activity with the Google Now display, or pulling down the shade, or deleting my photos.
My table stakes for a phone platform swap are Google Play Music All Access (check), Pocket (check), Our Groceries (check), and Pocket Casts (check). I would like bookmark syncing with Chrome (pretty much check), a decent IP cam viewer (check-ish, not as good as my Android app), Google Play Newsstand (check), and a couple of other things that probably have better support in iOS (Sonos, for example).
In the end I think I’d be out about $10 to replace my investment in the Play Store ecosystem, and this cash would go to the developers of my favorite, essential apps (Pocket Casts, Our Groceries), apps I would buy multiple times over to reflect the value I derive from them.
It’s a thought. My purchase of the G was to get me a non-broken phone and figure things out later. I wonder if I’m at that point now.
I finished Mad Men last night, which (spoilers) pretty much ended with the whimper I predicted. I put Mad Men in a special group of what I would call “vibe shows,” which I find to be difficult to continue interestingly past a few seasons. Being that it was a vibe show and a period piece, all the more difficult. It was fun to watch their set and costume designers gradually transition to the early-70s look, with Sterling growing the ridiculous mustache and the clothes slowly changing. The descent to a Siddhartha-style ramble-to-enlightenment worked suitably for me, although I would probably recommend reading Siddhartha over investing in all the ups-and-downs of the series to get to that end point.
Don essentially discovered that he didn’t like being Don, and we had a bit of a death-of-self moment on the way to an all-in-on-the-cliche literal Buddhist enlightenment. Sterling found a sort of pseudo-nirvana by calibrating his hedonism in the realism of his life stage, which maybe would have been the fate I would have preferred for Don. Or perhaps this was really to show us that this was the fate for Don if he had continued on in his previous oscillations, but instead he shed it all off to go “Om” by the seashore.
The final sequence was a classic Mad Men final sequence, really showing that the intelligence of the writers and producers so far outstripped the manifested intelligence of the plot. By abutting the “buy the world a Coke” commercial to Don’s meditation, with the Coke commercial pleading Coke as the “real thing” amid a faux-hippie backdrop, it was probably the most scathing judgment of the advertising industry they could conceive.
Edit: All of this is incorrect, Don uses his enlightenment experience to go back to the agency and make the Coke add. I hate this.
All the sub-major and minor characters just piddled into a linear extrapolation of the last few seasons, which really backed up my perception that these folks were just never really more than caricatures. Pete’s conversion from irritating scumbag to irritating reformed scumbag was the most satisfying of the lot, while Betty’s terminal lung cancer (they had to do it to somebody after all that smoking) prevented them from ever needing to do anything with her character. Sally gave up adventure to take care of the family (why, thematically?), the boys have essentially no consequence (and never did), Coop’s dead, Joan does her business hustle thing, Peggy finds love in a probably ten minute sequence that is the bouillon cube reduction of chick flick soup, shadow-Don disappears into a big company. Don’s second ex-wife reportedly returns to Canada, where I presume there’s no acting work, so why’s she there? Maybe I dozed.
Anyway, they just couldn’t really osmose their smarts at a high enough concentration to make it work for me, but I’m glad I saw it through.
/spoilers
Backlog is on my mind now, as I’m trying to get my podcast playlist calibrated to neither pile nor exhaust under normal steady conditions. I’ve found that commuting is so greatly helped by intelligent or humorous conversation rather than radio rattle, or even music shuffling, that this is of considerable value to me.
I feel I should enshrine my current list, as it’s so hard to discover these things, at least outside the iTunes sphere:
Mad Dogs & Englishmen: The National Review guys I really like
The Moth: People telling true stories in front of live audiences
The Truth: Cool and weird (especially last episode) reimagining of radio drama for the modern era
GLoP Culture: On my bubble list for deletion, chance to hear Goldberg from National Review and Podhoretz from Commentary talk about current events
Cato Daily Podcast: I let these pile up to about 50-60 unlistened and then listen to them all at 1.6x-2.0x speed for rapid-fire libertarianism
This American Life: This is kind of the good-tasting vegetable of my menu, I never look forward to it but almost always enjoy the NPR narration format and content
Stuff You Should Know: Pretty good explanatory topics most of the time (seems to be getting more obscure and less interesting recently), unlistenable for me at anything but 1.8x speed now that I’m used to it
Here Be Monsters: On the bad side of my bubble list, I feel like it’s indie This American Life
Top Four: Mid bubble list, a sort of misguided early-stage talk podcast where an internet-famous couple talks about their favorite stuff (but rarely actually develop a true top-4 list)
Analog(ue): I can’t understand why I listen to this, but it’s a podcast company head talking to a (podcast celebrity) friend, mostly about podcasting and life, and I like it
Reconcilable Differences: John Siracusa (Ars Technica) and Merlin Mann talk for a really long time about random things
Accidental Tech Podcast: Definitely on the bubble, I like these guys (each person is on at least one other podcast I listen to) but struggle with why I’m investing so much time in Apple-related news
Hardcore History: The best
Serial: Adnan totally did it, but I still don’t know how
Robot or Not: I love a 55 second podcast with a quick yes/no answer
You Look Nice Today: This is basically over, but it’s mostly really funny and nice to just hear guys talk about funny stuff that’s not topical
I have odd corners of my music library reserved for bands that manage to succeed in a sub-genre that I otherwise don’t really like. My prime example is Straylight Run, which was an emo band (I know!) that had a very emo song called “Existentialism on Prom Night” (I know!) that just struck a chord with me. And about half of the rest of the album is listenable! Part of my continued affection for them came from the oddest coincidence: I was taking a break from my capstone project or some other wretched thing while listening to the album, and I turned the page on the William Gibson novel Neuromancer to the chapter/book named “The Straylight Run”, which was just too weird to pass up. I can also play the song on my guitar with minimal practice, so it’s basically canonized for me at this point. Maybe I’ve told this story three times before.
They also had a piano, and this was kind of The Fray’s era, so that was important.
I also love The Silversun Pickups, and not just in a respect-of-coincidence way. Kristin and I can normally agree or reach understanding on most music preferences, but this one I just can’t give up trying to break down her resistance. The breathy, feminine-sounding lead singer, the noisy-wall-of-sound, the nonstop distortion, the incoherent-ish forgettable lyrics, all anathema to her.
I think it’s really that they’ve implemented something that, in my view, has solid lyrical (anti-lyrical?) roots in the semi-pop hard-ish alternative rock era (post-Nirvana, talking Bush here mainly), kind of candy-coated in emo influence, and a manifestation of what I understand to be called shoegaze. I purchased an album called Souvlaki from a shoegaze band called Slowdive back when you had to buy music to figure out if you liked it. Can’t say it worked for me, so back to my odd corners theory.
So if you see us both driving down the road, line-in from my phone active, me saying “Just listen to the bridge! Unh! Yeah!” with Claire trying to talk over the music, you’ll know I’m back futilely proselytizing SSPU.
Random flashback! encountered while doing a keyword search to see if I’ve ever talked about shoegaze on the blog! Not my finest work there.
By no means do I wish to discourage them from continuing in the effort to build a vast library of humorous metadata, but the artist summaries “provided by artist representative” on Google Play Music are just hilarious.
Silversun Pickups is among the most dynamic and creative rock bands of the contemporary era, hailed far and wide for their inimitable merging of ethereal melodies and pure sonic force.
They really try to fool you with that Tylenol + Codeine prescription. I suspect it is a coordinated effort between the doctor, insurer, and pharmacy, getting that “controlled substance” tone with you as they dispense what amounts to a few Extra Strength tabs with a flavor blasting of codeine.
I pinched what I believe are two nerves in my back two nights ago dozing off to season 6 of Star Trek TNG (in my defense, a particularly sleepy season), which prompted me to avail myself of some T+C picked up on Kyle’s birthday, back before it was actually Kyle’s birthday. It didn’t really help. What did help was lying on a more supportive surface and watching yet more ST:TNG, which I suppose constitutes more addictive behavior than the T+C would ever prompt.
I’m thinking about plunging headfirst into The Original Series after I get through Season 7, then I might actually up the ante and go for a Deep Space 9 run. Always felt like DS9 was a sort of nerd Rubicon to cross, but hey, I’ve got nobody left to impress.
