iPhone 5s Day 4: I've got the power

I need Lightning cords. You are saying, "But Marco, there are cheap Lightning cords everywhere!" Well since you think you know it all, let me educate you a bit. I'm not sure if it's iOS 7 or the 5s, but apparently it throws some warning about non-Apple cords not being certified for use on the phone. The cords still work, but I'm curious if Apple stores that info somewhere, and if your phone happens to blow up, they can say "Warranty denied biatch!!!" I also had a funny conversation with some friends (also ex-coworkers and my Apple gurus) about the cords:

Still in tears over "Chinese DEATH BY FIRE CABLES!" Don't worry, I'm not starving the boys. By the way, what is the definition of starving someone? Anywho, a friend on my FB timeline posted this article about preventing iOS 7 from killing your battery. I figured I might as well look through the article and see if any of them apply to me, since I was already feeling a power pinch:

• Turn off Parallax
• I didn't know what the hell Parallax was, nor did I really notice it until I looked really closely. This "feature" seems pointless to me, so off it goes.
• Turn off AirDrop/Bluetooth
• I looked up AirDrop. It is basically Apple's answer to Samsung's phone humping file sharing, minus the phone humping. I obviously don't need that feature unless someone specifically wants to phone hump with me. Bluetooth is also on an as needed basis. Both are conveniently in the Control Center (what I called the quick access panel). Done and done.
• Stop searching for Wi-Fi
• Once again, Control Center makes it easy. Done.
• Disable location services (for apps that don't need it)
• No CBS Atlanta News app, you don't have a Markina Brown section, and you don't need my location to give me news. Off with you, and the dozens of other apps using my GPS for no reason.
• Turn off background app updates
• I like this one too much to turn it off. Unless I see crazy stupid power drain while it's still on, it stays.
• Turn off background app refreshing
• Once again, most of these apps don't need to update in the background. It can update when I bring it back to the foreground. Off, off, off, off, <insert like 20 more offs here>, off.
• Disable auto-brightness
• This apparently didn't carry over from my 4s. But off it goes, and down goes the brightness. But Marco, what if it is bright and sunny outside? Control Center once again saves the day.
• Go on a push notification diet
• Way too many apps using push notification. Not any more...
• Don't push; fetch
• Most my email accounts can't do push on an iPhone anyhow, so this one is doesn't matter to me.
• Turn off Siri's "Raise to Speak" feature
• This one was a gimmick, and it did carry over from my 4s as off already. One less thing to do.
• Turn off 4G
• So what you want me to do is turn off one of the main features that made me buy this phone??? What did that lady say? "Ain't nobody got time for that!" 4G stays, no matter how low my battery goes.

The article ended with some general battery tips that I will never follow and should never have to follow because if I still have this phone by the time the battery starts failing, worse things have happened to me.

Still didn't take pictures of the phone in its new prophylactic. I'll get to that soon, I promise. Until then...

iPhone 5s Day 3: The network is my friend

I knew that Sprint's network sucked when you traveled outside of a major city, but I had gotten used to it. Driving to Asheville from Atlanta, there are a several spots where I start roaming, and a few where my data disappears entirely, leaving my boys asking "What happened to Pandora Daddy?" to which I respond "it's the network boys." On the way back, with my new network, and taking a route even more remote than the way in (US-23), I never lost signal. Pandora played the whole way through and Waze never told me it was searching for the network. I'm guessing Verizon would probably keep me at LTE speed in more places, but the AT&T network is a vast improvement already.

Speaking of LTE, I ran a speed test comparing my 5s on AT&T's LTE network versus my wife's 4 on Sprint's 3G. Test results were staggering: Me 6.7 Mbps, my wife 1.8 Mbps. Not really a fair comparison, but it's just another example of how I've been living in the dark ages.

I set up the fingerprint security today. It still feels a little gimmicky, but it works. And before you say "Marco, did you not hear about the dudes in Germany who took time out of watching porn to hack the fingerprint reader?", let's analyze this a bit. And yes, I believe all hackers, when not hacking, are watching porn. So first, you have to get my phone. That may not be terribly difficult, but my phone is attached to me at most times of the day. So you've got my phone, now you need a good print. That is also not terrible hard considering I use my finger on the phone a lot. Now we start getting into the good stuff. You need to lift the print. Don't let CSI fool you, lifting a print to be reproduced is not easy. But let's say you've been watching CSI since the first Las Vegas season, and you get a print. You apparently need to print it on a transparency in high definition. Your bootleg inkjet printer at home is not going to cut it, and neither is the cheap toner in that laser printer at your job. If you finally manage to get through all that, there is some technique that the hackers haven't disclosed yet because just putting a transparency on the fingerprint scanner is obviously not going to work. Also by the time you do all that, I will have activated Find My iPhone and either blanked the phone or called the cops so that you could make the late evening news as the latest fool to steal an iPhone. So good luck.

I put the case and screen protector on today. I like the case a lot. Very minimal. Screen protector was a slight pain to get on, but it should work until LifeProof gets its act together. I'll take some pictures soon, pending I figure out how to take pictures of the phone, since the phone has the camera on it. I guess I could borrow my wife's again. Maybe tomorrow...

iPhone 5s Day 2: iOS7 rocks your face!!!

I told you all I was quitting at midnight last night, but that was a lie, because I can't help myself. My phone was activated at some point after midnight because I called my home phone successfully, but the bastards at AT&T couldn't be bothered to send the confirmation email. I'm glad I wasn't actually waiting for them. 

I figured out, unfortunately after the fact, that if your backup isn't encrypted, you will have to reenter your login information into most of your apps. That was close to a hundred apps for me. I'll keep that in mind for the next restore.

The phone is fast as hell. 4G is quicker than 3G for sure, but I'm not sure if it's as fast as the wireless companies make it out to be. I'll run some further tests when I get back to the house.

My first "I miss Sprint" moment was this afternoon. I initially set up my account for 300MB, thinking that would hold me over until my job takes my account over. By 2PM this afternoon, AT&T sent a text saying I was 65% through the 300MB. Granted I am out of town and using Waze for my GPS needs heavily, but I used to laugh at people who had to monitor their data usage. Now I am one of them. 

But the main highlight for me is iOS7. This ish is amazing. I don't understand how people hate it. Apple basically stole things from Android and webOS to make their OS better. I'll highlight a few:

1.  Quick access panel: with a flick from the bottom of most screens, you have quick access to toggle wifi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, do not disturb, portrait orientation lock, screen brightness, music player, flashlight, calculator, camera, clock, and Airdrop. I have no real idea what Airdrop does, I should look that up. But an Android phone has been able to do most of those functions forever, and a WebOS phone could do them with a simple tweak. This was the only reason I considered jailbreaking my phone, and now there doesn't appear to be a need.

2. Cards: the quick launch has been transformed into webOS cards. As one of the few people who stuck with webOS until I was forced out, this feels like rough sex, where it hurts and feels good at the same time. However, it only hurts because no one will realize where they got it from. But double tap the Home button and you'll see your open apps. Swipe left and right to see the apps, and swipe up to you close them, instead of the old "jiggly mode."

3.  Pages within folders: I worked really hard to keep all my apps limited to two pages. Even with folders, it was starting to get hard to continue that recently since you could only have a certain number of apps per folder. Now that there are pages within the folders, I'm comfortably in two pages. I can't understand people that have pages and pages of apps. How do you find anything?

4. Auto update: are you telling me that I no longer have to go into the App Store app, go to Updates, and then tap Update All? The phone will now just automagically update apps when they need to be updated? I guess they stole that from Micro$oft, but I'll take it. I cleared my screen before I could take a pic, but here is an example from someone I follow on Twitter:

That's all I've discovered so far. The only negative I have with the 5s currently is battery life. Like I said earlier, this weekend with my limited wifi access and heavy GPS usage is probably not an accurate measurement of what my actual usage will be like, so I'll come back to that topic later next week when I'm back to normal.

 Please forgive any typos in the post. I've been drinking heavily on top of doing the blog post from my phone...

iPhone 5s Day 1: Audibles and Space Gray Friday

I have officially dubbed today "Space Gray Friday." The significance should be obvious, but in case you live under an Android rock, I bought the 32 GB Space Gray iPhone 5s. Before we get into the unveiling, we'll start off with the audible.

My wife has been pestering me most of this past week to consent to a weekend trip to Asheville, NC since my oldest is out of school today and Monday. She even went so far as to reenact one of my youngest son's fits, which I wish I would have videotaped as blackmail evidence for use at a later date. I finally relented yesterday afternoon, only to realize that my phone and the accessories were coming today. So my audible was with UPS. They have this new service called UPS My Choice. You basically sign up for free, and if their system detects a package with your name and address, it will give you alerts about the shipment, and give you a few options (most at an additional cost) for rerouting the package. I logged on to the My Choice site, and chose the option to have the packages held at the distribution center so that I could pick it up. The distribution center just happens to be off of I-285N and I-85N, the direction we were going anyhow. I get to the UPS distribution center, and they had caught the box with the phone, but the one with the accessories was already on the truck and out for delivery. As the UPS lady pointed out, "at least you got the important one." Truer words, as they say.

So we get to Asheville, we hang out at the NC Arboretum, we go have a very tasty dinner at Salsa's Mexican Caribbean restaurant, we put the boys to bed, and I can finally get to the phone. So before I begin, I'll go over the two major changes, and a couple smaller changes:

I am moving from Sprint to AT&T. My Sprint account was opened for me by my then girlfriend on December 18, 1998 as a Christmas present. Unlike most people, I've never had any real problems with Sprint, and they have always had the cheapest rate plans by far.The only reason I'm leaving is because my job will pay for my phone bill if I go to AT&T or Verizon. I hear Verizon's network is better, but I was tired of waiting for CDMA to be able to do voice and data simultaneously, so AT&T "Drop calls like it's hot" Wireless it is.

I am going from 3G to 4G. I remember going from 2G to 3G and how big of a jump that was. I'll see if this speed is as fast as the television commercials make it out to be.

I am going from iOS6 to iOS7. This one is probably not going to be that drastic, but I haven't updated my old phone because the resale value on eBay is higher if the phone still has iOS6, since it can be easily jailbroken. My 4s was also part of the first shipment of phones from Apple where the SIM card port is not carrier locked, so that should fetch a few extra dollars too. From the social media reaction, it appears people either love or hate iOS7 with very little in between. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I am going from the 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector. Another minor change, but still a sticking point since I have several 30-pin connectors that have now gone the way of the dinosaur. I hear the Apple micro USB to Lightning adapter is very fragile, so I guess I just need to find some cheap Asian knockoffs to hold me over until someone makes a better adapter for micro USB cords, which I also have a ton of. A friend introduced me to these micro USB to 30 pin adapters, and I've already written the company asking when they plan on making Lightning ones. Still annoyed about Apple not using a standard connector, but obviously not annoyed enough to jump ship.

So let's do this thing! I of course take a few precautions. My iPhone 4s is still on iOS 6.1.3, and my iTunes 11.0.5.5. First thing was to take a full backup of the 4s with iTunes. Next was to copy the iTunes backup to another directory for safe keeping. Then I created a system restore point. I now felt comfortable updating iTunes to 11.1. The iCloud Control Panel also got updated from 2.1.2 to 3.0. So while that is going on, let's open the box:

Standard minimalist Apple box

Same presentation as my 4s

A little longer, a little thinner

Space Gray, unassuming, just what I wanted

I do like the earbud case. We'll test the earbuds out at a later date

Nothing shocking so far. I hate that it's longer, but apparently people are content walking around with bricks in their pockets. I am in the minority wanting something the size of my old Palm Pre. Enough with the small stuff, now time to turn this thing on:

She's multilingual, I like that in a woman. So I run through the setup screens to pick language, connect it to the wifi, and it's activation time. I'm kind of sad because this this means that my long term relationship with Sprint is at an end. I hit Next, answer a few questions, agree to the AT&T terms and conditions of giving up my first born child, and then it tells me I can't activate it because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. It tells me to connect the phone to iTunes to activate so I try that next. I have to reboot due to the new iTunes, but no biggie. I basically go through the same activation screens on iTunes for it to tell me that:

Due to the millions of douche bags who have bought iPhones this week, we can't activate the phone at this time. Stop whining about your first world problem of not being able to use the damn thing. We'll send you an email when it is activated.

Fair enough. It allows me to restore the phone from my backup, which fails. I start to panic a little bit, but apparently the second time is the charm and it restores the phone fine. I was just about to use it when iTunes notifies me that iOS 7.0.2 is already out. It appears someone took enough time out from watching porn to figure out how to bypass the lock code, and so we get yet another update.

It's now a little after midnight, so I think I'm going to let it finish this update, and I'll play with it some more tomorrow. This blog post is already an encyclopedia as it is...

iPhone 5s Day -2...supposedly

So I might owe Apple an apology. In my previous post, I said that they would ship my 5s as slow as humanly possible. It appears I may have been mistaken. I got my shipment notification very early this morning saying that the phone would be here Friday evening:

It's still in China as of 5 AM EDT, but I suppose UPS didn't become a multi-billion dollar company by continuing to use horses and boats to deliver items halfway across the world. Apple did use all three business days to get it ready to ship, but I'm guessing due to one of my constraints in getting this phone, they probably needed it.

I also went ahead and ordered a cheap case and some screen protectors. I want a LifeProof case, but they have not come out with a 5s case yet. I guess they are still working on the whole fingerprint home button deal. The case is an Amzer Soft Gel TPU Gloss Skin case, the screen protectors Tech Armor HD Clear Screen Protectors . Both 4.5 stars on Amazon with lots of ratings, and just a little something to keep the nicks and scratches away for under $13. Thanks to Amazon Prime, they will be here Friday as well.

So the countdown continues. I'm actually quite calm for a dude getting a new toy. Let's see what I'm looking like Friday...

30 days with an iPhone 5s...Coming soon!

It's been so long since I've done a blog post that I almost forgot my account info. But I figured it out, so here I am again! It was fun to do the 30 days with the iPhone 4s, and so why not do the 5s? I know #TeamAndroid is like "why are you still using that PoS phone?" Well, unfortunately, I'm married to #TeamiPhone. I'm just way too invested to go anywhere else. Group MMS is not the same on an Android, besides the fact that most of the group is using an iPhone anyhow. What Google and/or Samsung (since apparently the other Android manufacturers are barely on the map) need to do is offer like a $20 or $25 credit to the Google Play store so I can replace the App Store apps I've already bought. That might get someone like me to go to the dark side, or see the light, or whatever cheesy analogy you want to throw in there. Dear Google and/or Samsung, I'll take .1% of the profits you make from using my idea. Still not doing a Windows Phone, they barely have more apps than my Palm Pre did.

So I ordered the 5s online, because I'm too old to camp out for anything and I wasn't smart enough to hire a homeless person to stand in line for me. I did place my order at like 4:05 AM EDT, so I got in the "lucky" queue of 1 - 3 business days to ship. I read that by 4:10, it was 7 - 10 days for the gold one, and the other two colors followed shortly a few hours after. Now I saw the date if you order one now is mid October, which just seems ridiculous for a company who knows their demand is going to be crazy. I haven't checked my Apple stock price lately, I should see how it's doing now. There will be a couple major changes for me when the phone arrives, which should be early next week if the Apple estimate holds. I'll detail those on Day 1. Apple says it should arrive somewhere between September 30 and October 2, which means they are shipping it as slow as humanly possible, bastards.

I think that's it for now. Just wanted to warm you all up before the daily blasts started coming. Stay tuned!