An equal-opportunity ranter.

[captainsblog]

The other day, I used this space to rip Amazon a new one. I guess the next place to go in the Pantheon of Puter, alphabetically anyway, is Apple.

There's a new iPhone 6 on the way. Yay! It'd be nice, though, if they did a better job supporting my poor old 4. It's had a software update stuck in it for months, if not years, which I can never install. Every time I try, I get this:



In turn, "Usage Settings" tells me I'm down under a gig on the phone itself, but that I have over 4 gig available on the cloud- but I can't move music to the cloud without buying an extra storage plan.  So I'm stuck.

I did move a lot of music to somebody else's cloud- yes, Amazon's. I don't like their physical shipping and receiving department, but every book and record I order from them shows up instantly on my tablet or phone, respectively.  So I do have room to add new music and podcasts to the phone that I hadn't had recently- except Apple is getting slow in delivering them.  Over the weekend, This American Life posted a link to an interesting story about local politics in a New York school district: I thought it was about a local imbroglio, but it's actually about one closer to New York City. Still, I wanted to hear it. Wasn't available Sunday; not available Monday (when the Store says it's uploaded), and, at least as far as my iTunes is concerned, not available now.  I was able to get it from the TAL site, but it had to be manually playlisted and downloaded into the phone, and it doesn't have the +15, -15 and pausing functions you get when iTunes downloads it as a podcast. But I was driving and got to hear it all in a shot, so no harm no foul- except for the inconvenience of it all.

Music, you say? I'd read about the free download U2 began offering last week, and just for giggles I decided to try it.  A click on the Store button showed a banner advertising the "gift"- but clicking it said I'd already "purchased" it and the download link didn't work.  It wasn't in my library, on my phone or even on Eleanor's computer (we share a single iTunes account), and it took a side trip to CNET to figure out how to get the bloody thing.

I know, First World Problems. And that these are all free and I should be lucky to have them. (Some people, indeed, are bitching about Apple auto-downloading the U2 album to their devices without even being asked and they've now had to post instructions on how to get rid of it.)  Still, I'm finding the actual technology coming from Cupertino isn't quite up to the cachet they've got us all imagining about it.

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

With all respect, just how long do you think an iPhone should last? The iPhone 4 is over 4 years old. That's four generations.

You can always store your music on your (shudder) PC, but it sounds like you didn't get much memory with this phone.

This is a not a technology problem, it's a management problem. Specifically, the management of your expectations, which are not aligned with reality. The life expectancy of a laptop or desktop is 3 to 5 years, if you set it up with a bunch of memory to begin with. Frankly, I start looking to upgrade after 3 years.

The life expectancy of a smartphone is 2 to 3 years. Sorry, but obsolescence is fast on these devices. Tablets have about the same.

In general, memory can't be added, so buy as much as you can up front.

In particular, iCloud is particularly nice. It's seamless. However, if you prefer Google, I'd suggest a Google phone. The release date of the Nexus 6 is still a secret, but it probably won't be long. Just bear in mind that you'll be repeating this exercise in two years.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I've only had mine for a bit over two years (the contract was up at the end of May), and they're still happy to take my money every month to use it and insure it. It just seems silly that they have shut the door to any kind of temporary storage expansion so you can download a new software version, which, once it's on, won't need that 3.8 gig anymore.

I suppose I could back up the phone, do a complete reset on it, download the update and then restore everything from the backup- but that's exactly the kind of thing I know I'd do wrong and wind up with hours of recovery work. Or I could just buy the new phone, I know. (I won't get a 6, but if I can keep my unlimited data grandfathered on a 5, that might be the thing to do.)

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I don't do insurance on small technology. I do insurance to protect against catastrophic loss. It would be painful if my phone died, but chances are it would have died because I dropped it in the sink or on the hard bricks of the street, and neither of those instances are covered. Like I said, it would hurt, but it wouldn't be catastrophic.

Any software patches or new operating systems must live on the system on which they're to be installed. Sorry, that's just the way it is. You really wouldn't like the Very Bad Things that could happen otherwise.

Your data isn't really unlimited, by the bye.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I can't wait to hear what you think of the iPhone 6. I loved my 4 and used it til it could not be used anymore, then upgraded to the 5s, which is marvelous. I kinda don't know how I ever functioned without it. hahahaha

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Oops. I didn't mean the 6 was on its way to me. If I change anything at this point, I'll go with a jailbroken 5.

It probably is time: the new LJ app has never worked on this phone, and others take longer to load every time because they try to "configure" to something that likely isn't there.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Also, FWIW, I have almost no use for my iPhone 4 now. I was using it to stream the radio through TuneIn and baseball games through MLB, but both apps upgraded and won't play on the 4 now. Ditto spotify. So my old phone is essentially useless, except as an ipod. Which.... I don't have music anymore because I use and pay for Spotify to have it all on the go. So, useless. It's a pisser, but what can you do.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

If you can find a way to get the iOS 7 update on there, do. It got my LJ app working again (not that I can figure out how to use the damn thing now) and it was fairly easy to get back the tunes I deleted (just on the phone, not in iTunes on the computer) once the new OS downloaded and installed itself.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

I'll try it again. It didn't work the last time I tried, but I'll give it another shot!