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…

Why I Chose... an iPhone

My first iPhone was an iPhone 3GS, which I'd bought at the Dadeland Mall Apple Store in the late summer of 2009 after work.

It was a somewhat impulsive purchase, my having gone through a few phones (the one I'd liked most being the Trēo 800w, RIP) and not liking how the application ecosystem just wasn't being friendly to anything but an iPhone. I was a heavy Yahoo! user, and they were really hyping and promoting their iPhone(-exclusive) app; I wanted it.

So, I went and got it, porting my phone number over to it and a very helpful, nerdish, attractive guy helped me to activate it. This was back when one had to go to a store to do so or it would take forever. Another reason I'd wanted to go that route was Sprint, at the time, as considering Wimax as their 4G upgrade and everyone else was going LTE. AT&T, as well, was the only game in town for the iPhone, so more incentive.

My boss, especially, was envious for weeks at my phone. He'd kept saying he wanted an iPhone, but ended up getting a Samsung Instinct and porting it to Metro PCS like one of my other co-workers.

I still have AT&T and their grandfathered-in unlimited data package.

I'd adored my 3GS, which I'd called Mars. When I moved to Georgia, I remember watching the end-of-days movie 2012 on it, streaming it via an Israeli video aggregation site (and, I think, having a multi-ten gigabyte data usage metric that month, too).

In 2011, I got my 4S, ordering it the same day they were having online sales. I'd gotten it by Fed-Ex several weeks later, and that became my favorite. Even though I love my 6 Plus now, I think I loved most that the 4S had the solidity and heft of my Trēo 800w. I think I'd enjoyed it most with iOS 6, with its inbuilt Twitter and Facebook widgets on the notifications slider.

And now I have an iPhone 6 Plus, which I've enjoyed for almost three years now.

We'll see what comes next.

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.

Stitcher Down

Sometimes it takes not having one thing to shed light on another.

I remember back when Apple first debrided their podcasts from the main iTunes app and made the separate Podcasts app.

I was a little miffed. This was back when I'd had my iPhone 3GS with limited screen space, and so one extra app would mean I would more than likely have to get rid of another app so everything would be even (I'm also very OCD in some things).

I did like its design, though, because it had this recorder reel theme under the hood that struck me as quirky and likable. The social media aspects of it, though, weren't what I was expecting. This is because I was already using Stitcher.

I'd decided to start using Stitcher on April 10, 2010 shortly after I'd moved to Georgia. This app did streaming podcasts, which meant that with my limited storage capacity (and unlimited data plan), I didn't have to worry about much and still could enjoy podcasts and my voracious appetite (especially) for news.

Sticher added more features as they went on, and so I'd put the Podcasts app to the side because it didn't do streaming of podcasts especially well under enhanced 3G conditions. I'd known Apple kept adding little things to the Podcasts app as they'd updated iOS, but I'd still not paid it an incredible amount of attention.

Then the last few days came.

Stitcher has been down for an unknown maintenance they've been doing, and to satiate my podcast thirst I've been playing around with the latest iteration of the Podcasts app on my iPhone 6 Plus (which by now ships with the Podcasts app inbuilt to iOS), and it's been pretty all right, actually. Aside from the insanely long links that occur when you want to share a podcast to social media, it's been pretty nice.

As I play around with it more, I wonder about Stitcher. I mean, I've had almost 6 years with it now, and the history function is certainly one thing I like,

Now I wait to see what Stitcher is doing with themselves.