iOS

Apple Deserves What It Gets From This Battery Fiasco

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Yesterday Apple issued an apology for the intentional slowing of iPhones because of aging in the iPhone battery. As part of that they announced a number of changes, like a $29 battery replacement and actually giving people information and choices about how their device functions. This says a few things to me. First, it says that have gouged consumers for the cost of a battery all these years. Second, it tells me they are scared enough of these class-action lawsuits to admit fault publicly. There are a million reasons why an iPhone might perform poorly, especially after an upgrade. This has little to do with the battery, and likely more to do with background maintenance tasks that happen after an …

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Software is Always Broken

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I’m sitting here watching my iPhone update to iOS 11.0.1. Apple says that there are just a couple of fixes: some security updates and a fix for the Exchange email problems. The update is sure taking a while, though. That’s consistent with my knowledge of how software development works. Color me skeptical that the first point release of a new iOS only has a couple of changes. My bet is that there are hundreds of fixes for all sorts of problems reported during the beta, but weren’t large enough to stop the release. Development of software like Apple’s iOS or VMware’s vCenter never stops. At a certain point someone takes a snapshot of the way it looks and decides that …

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Apple Lawsuit Over iOS Advertised Capacity

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In case you hadn’t seen it, Apple is being sued over the fact that a 16 GB iOS device does not have 16 GB of space usable on it. The Verge has a good story on it, link is below. In contrast, Macworld’s Susie Ochs has published a whiny, elitist article entitled “Apple faces dumb lawsuit over the size of iOS 8.” This link is also below if you’d like to witness the cesspool that Macworld has become. I don’t think the lawsuit is dumb, at all. On one hand computers have never included the space consumed by the OS when listing their storage capacities. Consider that an OS installed on a PC stays fairly static over the life of the …

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Dear Google: I'm Not Changing My SSID

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Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel, Google: I’ve considered your offer to not add my wireless network to your location database in exchange for appending “_nomap” to the SSID. I am rejecting it out of hand and laughing at the idea that this is “greater choice for wireless access point owners.” To start with, I’m not going to reconfigure all the wireless clients I support. I’m sorry that Google is facing increased scrutiny, legislation, and legal action for raping the world’s privacy in order to sell things, but changing an SSID is a big deal for everybody. Doesn’t matter if it’s grandma’s little wireless network or a giant intercontinental wireless hotspot setup, it’s a big pain in the ass to “protect” …

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iTunes Match & iCloud Music Tips

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I’ve been using iTunes Match since the developer releases, and these are a few things I’ve learned so far about the service. I’m excited by it, mainly because I’ve longed for a proper multi-iTunes sync for a long time between my work, home, and laptop computers, and I think Apple is doing this right for iOS users. 1. There are new “iCloud Status” and “iCloud Download” information columns in iTunes. If you right-click on the iTunes column header you can turn them on to see what iCloud thinks of your music. Statuses include: Purchased: You bought this track from the iTunes Store, and regardless of the original format if you (re)download it you’ll get a 256 kbps AAC file. Matched: …

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iOS 5: Promise Good Despite Some Rough Edges

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I have been running iOS 5 on my iPhone 3GS since the developer release of the GM seed. I upgraded my first generation iPad today. To summarize my experiences: iOS 5 on my 3GS seems to be decent, though I’ve noticed reduced battery life even with most of the over-the-air stuff off. iOS 5 on my iPad has been a process, with the upgrade failing, the sync taking hours, and iTunes claiming that the device is full of “other” data. When I’m done with this post I’m going to go nuclear on it. I do major iOS upgrades on my devices with a particular routine. First, I make sure I get a good backup, and I go into the iTunes …

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