Clawing for Attention

I understand the need for every app, especially the news ones, to claw for attention. I think the worst offenders do so and have sponsored/suggested ads peppered in through their content.

The Yahoo! Newsroom app is the worst of all the ones I have. Once I open it, I think I get 20-25 notifications within two or three days of news it believes I want to look at. Some of it is just the Yahoo! content, a good deal being videos. I’ve never been a fan of video news. Television news is fine, but video news in general has been iffy for me. Newsy has been an exception, though I haven’t quite given them as much attention as I had in the past.

Another offender is LinkedIn. They don’t do notifications quite as often, but they like to randomly have their badge light up just so anal-retentive people like me who want it gone can open the app. That then starts the cycle, because once one opens the app, more notifications come in. Pinterest too.

But it’s all free, so I really shouldn’t complain, right? Or turn off the notifications and badges? But then I might miss something.

Remember When?

I remember there was a time when I wanted to re-experience something so badly, but I had to wait for it (media-wise). In high school, I'd seen an episode of Animaniacs where The Brain had a song for the various parts of the human brain. I'd told my Anatomy and Physiology teacher, Mrs Getz, about it and she'd wanted me to bring it in.

Yet, it took the episode forever to cycle though and repeat!

I did end up promising I'd make her a copy, but yet never ended up doing so. I have a VHS tape that may still have it.

Early in iOS Game Center history there was a game called Flight Control Rocket, and I'd always wanted the Shop theme. No one had it, though, and it's just today with the screen record feature and YouTube that I now have it. I just need to strip out the audio and voilà. Another game, DragonVale, I'd had a similar want with some of the Hallowe'en music.

Now I have the set.

Imagine, now all of this is so easy. The only restriction is what tools you have to make it possible.

The future is nigh.

iOS 11, Day 1

I’ve never been an early adopter of most things, often either letting other try it so see how it’s worked for them, or just that I’ve not gotten around to something/couldn’t afford to time or money-wise.

iOS releases, since I’ve had an iPhone, have been the rare exception to that. Probably my favorite iteration is still iOS 6, but here I have five full versions later.

I’d gotten home and downloaded it directly via my phone while the backup was processing; the entire download took about 20 minutes. That’s mounds more admirable than a few versions ago, where it had taken about 3 hours (it may have been the first version they’d introduced over-the-air updates).

I’m getting used to some of the revisions they’d done, such as accessing notifications on the lock screen, and the look of the play screen. I don’t like what they’d done to the Podcasts app, which essentially stopped the ability to play podcasts automatically in the order they appear without having to add each to a “Play Next” queue. I’d readopted Stitcher Radio partly because of this, even though I have to sacrifice a few local news outlets’ feeds to do it.

I have yet to try the Screen Recording feature, though I think that may be trouble for some people in the future (even though I’d like to believe most apps to what this would be relevant might either have some kind of notification or lockdown for it. I have yet to try that, though.

Since I’m working on a 6 Plus, it’s naturally a little slow at first, and it will be since this is probably the second-lowest tier of Apple phone still in support. It’s okay; I’m not in any particular rush for a new phone, so long as it does what I need it to do.

I’m glad they’d worked on the on-device Library portion of the TV app, because its bugginess in iOS 10 was bothering the fuck out of me. They’d also re-enabled landscape views, for which I’m thankful. The disintegration of the Facebook/Twitter apps from the core is slightly surprising, but they’d also done that with iOS 7 from iOS 6 (the accessibility of both for status updates immediately as a widget in iOS 6 was another thing I’d liked.

Let’s see what else I discover as the days and weeks go by, since it seems this version they’d catered more to the iPad than iPhone anyway…

Apple says it fixed the unexpected iPhone 6/6s shutdown issue for some users - BGR

http://bgr.com/2017/02/24/iphone-6s-battery-shutdown-issue/

Some iPhones out there keep shutting down unexpectedly, even when there’s enough battery left. Apple has made few official comments on the matter since the problems started plaguing various devices including the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6. The company kicked off a limited battery replacement program for the iPhone 6s, without including older devices in it. 

Oh, my gosh! Finally! Well, it hasn't been quite as much the bother lately since, it seems, the OS update had remedied some of the strife, but it had been a bother.

For a while, my phone would get to 30% power and then suddenly shut down. Sometimes I would tap repeatedly at the screen, or rub it back and forth against my clothes for a couple minutes and then it would come back on, but this seemed such a "ghetto" way of trying to get my phone back.

Then I'd seen another BGR report that actually shed light on the situation, and that had inflamed me. "You mean, it wasn't just cold weather?!"

At the very least, if they're ready to replace my battery and it's going to be new, this should be a plus for me until things roll around again for me to get another phone! That could be their ploy, too. It's not like the phones will be of much good two years from now, maybe, aside from browsing some things and using some legacy apps that might be completely outmoded by the next few iOS iterations.