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apple

Phone Woes

Wednesday, December 27, 02017

It was a frustrating phone day.

Backstory: like many of you who own iPhones like me, the latest software update coupled with an aging device has seen your enjoyment with your magic glass rock diminish inversely with the passage of time. My battery has required charging sometimes as frequently as five times per day. The camera often takes ten or fifteen seconds just to load up, meaning you miss that moment while the screen freezes and everyone gets bored and wanders away. The clicks are sluggish on a good day. Usability has not held steady as a word I’ve been associating with Apple products.

So I made an appointment at the local Apple store. I was gonna shell out for a battery replacement.

And the phone, which couldn’t be bothered to hold a charge long enough to buy a coffee last week… well… it had a good day.

The Kid, who had tagged along to the mall, supposed that maybe the phone knew it was going to the doctor and was behaving itself. After driving to the mall, going for lunch, and then wandering around all morning my battery was at 99%.

We tried to drain it.

We sent some Instagrams. We played Pokemon Go in the mall. I connected to WiFi and tried to do a cloud sync.

Forty-five minutes later the battery is still above 90% and when I get into to see the Apple so-called-genius he runs his little diagnostic tool on my phone and comes to the conclusion that my three-year-old epic-fail of a battery is just fine.

“It’s having a good day.” I insist.

“The test results are good.”

“Can I just replace the battery anyhow?”

“We only replace on a negative diagnostic. Why don’t you try doing a system restore. Sometimes that helps. We can do it here, or I’ll send you some instructions for home.”

“Fine.”

I go home and restore the phone… which, of course, fails… four times… and results in a factory-reset device just in time for the new year. No apps. No settings. No music. No text message history.

On the bright side, it will be a little less painful to switch to a Samsung or Google phone in a couple months.

Posted in: life happens technology Tagged: apple battery mobile device phone

Feeling: Frustrated

Monday, June 20, 02016

June 20 – Something You Are Feeling
aka. Post 20 of Those 30 Posts in June Blog-Every-Day Posts

So, at some point between arriving at work and departing, having charged my phone at my desk, Apple Music decided I didn’t really need the thousand or so songs that were stored in my collection.

Sure, they are mostly all in that ethereal plane known as the cloud, and I’ve spent the better part of an hour (RE)downloading about two hundred of the otherwise MIA tracks, but WTF Apple? W? T? F?

I’m not exactly a tech dummy, either. I know what I did. I also know what I didn’t do: I didn’t break it. I’m 99.9% certain this was not a user error. I’m not about to call up one of their so-called geniuses and be told to restart my device or that I must have done something despite my own assurances. The music spontaneously disappeared from my iPhone. It was there this morning and I listened to it on the way from the train to my office. And it was gone eight hours later, the phone having done little more than accept a top up charge and sit in my desk drawer for most of the afternoon.

Did I mention: WTF Apple?

Trust guys. It’s about trust.

I mean, first the app itself becomes a POS… now it just flat-out deleted my music. End rant! Yeah, I’m a little frustrated.

I guess my biggest beef is that since they launched it, Apple has been trying to push their streaming music service down our throats. So, that in mind, I got a bit of a “Did I do that?” Urkel vibe off of my phone, if you know what I mean… as in, maybe it wasn’t an accident. *furrows brow*

I’m not against streaming music, but then the facts seem to suggest that they don’t understand ME as a customer. Maybe don’t care to understand me. After all, I’ve only bought a couple computers and a handful of phones from them. I’m not a “heavy user” of their products. I’m just a guy who likes listening to music that he’s already bought. A guy that NEEDS to have pre-download music because I spend half my commute in a train tunnel with no wireless service. A guy that buys the cheapest data plan and isn’t going to upgrade it at these ridiculous Canadian telecom prices so that I can stream music over my precious bandwidth.

Just saying, Apple: it’s the little things. It’s tough to keep feeding the machine when the machine just gets hungrier and hungrier and then starts nibbling at your fingers.

Posted in: technology Tagged: apple borked borken fail frustration iphone music

Apple Blossom Season

Friday, May 15, 02015

I guess I’m just extra excited about spring this year, or something.

The apple trees are now in bloom, showing off their pinkish flowers and doing their best to attract some pollinators. Each year a few more blooms equates to a few more apples. Last year was actually the first year we had more fruit than we knew what to do with… resulting in the purchase of a dehydrator and the drying of about a million tasty and delicious apple chips.

Of course, there’s always pie.

Posted in: home & garden Tagged: apple blossoms spring tree

Introducing: Baylee the Bee

Wednesday, March 11, 02015
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It figures. The day I FINALLY need to submit something to the iTunes store, after five years of contemplating that very thing, the Apple mothership suffers a DNS outage and all their online developer services are unavailable… for the first time… like, ever.

That is a kind of a roundabout way of tell you that despite taking a couple sick days because I couldn’t actually stop coughing for a few hours this morning, I found the strength to sit at my computer and finish off a multi-year-late project I’ve been working on for… well, multi-years.

Baylee the Bee is done, and as soon as the Apple servers are back online I’m hoping to ship it off to Appstore land. Well, iBooks store land. So, y’know, you can download it on your iPad.

For new (or forgetful readers) Baylee the Bee is a goofy little poem-slash-kids-story that I wrote a few years ago for Claire. I read it to her a bunch of times then had the brain-wave inspiration to try and illustrate it into a self-published book. Fast-forward a few years, and a whole bunch of art-work iterations later, and…

Let’s just say that I’ve been aiming for this day for a while. Thank goodness for sick days. Now, hopefully Apple gets over theirs soon.

Posted in: writing Tagged: app store apple book childrens book for sale ibook self-publishing upload

What is the last fruit you ate?

Friday, September 5, 02014

An apple from one of the trees in our backyard.

Posted in: food & drink home & garden sums & pieces Tagged: apple apple tree fruit tree

An Apple a Day

Tuesday, March 25, 02014

I watched a video a couple weeks ago that implied that we are eating apples all wrong. It’s assertion was that the idea of a “core” was a myth, a relic and artificial artifact of the orientation of how we are trained to eat apples, and wastes an average of 30% of the fruit. Essentially, the idea goes, that if you eat an apple from the side, yeah, you’re going to run into this middle bit of slightly-chewier middle that no one really likes to eat after the soft part on the outside. Instead, if you eat the apple from the bottom, starting at that bit where the little bits of leaf-matter are still usually clinging to that dimple (clean that off first) then after eating through the apple bottom up you’ll only be left with a few seeds and a little stem twig. So, of course you know I tried it. And… yeah: ate the core and didn’t even notice it.

Posted in: asides & shorts food & drink Tagged: apple core cultural artifact fruit ideas

Sad Mac

Thursday, October 6, 02011

I’d be lying if I claimed I had any more personal connection to the man than through the multiple consumer products stemming of his genius that have filled my life.

The first computer I “hacked” was one of my junior high Apple IIe machines, where we would re-write the typing tutor software with rude phrases (rather than original keyboarding exercises.) I can recall countless hours poking out Hypercard “games” in my high school computer lab.

I’ve owned more iPods than I can currently recall. We’ve run a MacBook Pro virtually to the ground with the everyday use we make of it. Half the sockets in my home are filled with little white power adapters to charge iPhones, iPods, or the iPad.

And this naive but growing interest in computer design of mine has in no short measure been influenced by the imaginative offerings of numerous animated features blossoming out of the genius of Pixar studios, the style of modern OSX or iOS softwares, and a general aesthetic re-balancing of technology by Apple in the last fifteen years or so.

So, no real personal connection, but obviously something worth remembering. I wasn’t going to write anything, but I guess I just did, and I’ll maybe just add…

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

      – Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Posted in: art & code life happens technology Tagged: apple ipad ipod mac rip sad steve jobs

Your Face One Thousand Times

Saturday, December 19, 02009

We woke this morning to fresh blanket of soft, light snow. If you think there is no other kind, you are sadly mistaken. The snow we received as recently as two weeks ago was wet, heavy, and cold. It was also tough to shovel from the walk. So, the delicate and fluffy version of today was a welcome change. It did leave me thinking about the hours I’ve spent indoors recently — where else but — in front of the computer.

Syntax Gull scuffs her feet through the fresh snow as we walk side-by-side. “I saw you were tagging faces again this morning.” She says.

“Yeah.” I admit. “It’s almost… addictive. It started out just casually testing a couple of image management packages and comparing the face recognition features of each. But once you get going…”

“Addictive.” She says. “As you said.”

My digital photo collection spans eight years of (I think) ever improving photography and is well above the fifty-thousand-item mark. “It’s just that I have so many photos, spanning such a good chunk of time and people. I start tagging and — wham — some pic I haven’t looked at in years shows up. Tagging that one reveals a couple more, and… well.. on it goes.”

“What’s the point?” Syntax asks. “You now have a few thousand pictures with the faces recognized? Are you going to do something with that?”

“It’s meta-data isn’t it. It’s information that helps sort.” I argue. “And it’s not a FEW thousand. It’s more like fifty-thousand.” We walk a hundred meters or so in silence. “Besides,” I say finally. “I’ve already used some of the pics I’ve tagged as an excuse to contact people I haven’t seen in five years. I emailed them a photo — a photo of them, of course — with a little ‘hey, how ya doing’ message attached.”

“I suppose.” Syntax shrugs.

“Actually, I’ve got two different collections going.” I continue. “I started this little project with the latest version of iPhoto. Apple has done a slick job of some parts and has totally dropped the ball on others.”

“How so?” She queries. “It can’t be the interface? Apple always seems so clever at interfaces.”

“Actually, the interface is, well… so-so.” I say. “They left out some important features. Like, you know all those pictures I take for the Fringe Festival each year? Well, I keep them for portfolio purposes, but I don’t know the hundreds of people who’s mugs show up in the face software.” I sigh. “You don’t know how many times I wish there was a way to highlight a whole swath of photos and click an ‘ignore everyone in these pics’ button.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s a big one.” I say. “Not to mention the performance issues over a networked drive. I’d say it was a big mistake to have done it that way, but the photo collection is currently bigger than my poor MacBook Pro hard drive. And Picassa 3 doesn’t seem to have any issues with the same set-up.”

“And you’ve got a gigabit router, too, don’t you?” Syntax adds.

“I do.” I nod. “And also with the fastest wireless I can get.”

“How does the Google product compare?” Syntax asks. “I think that’s what I saw you using this morning. I’ve heard good things.”

“Well, the interface is a lot more cluttered.” I say. “I’ll give Apple props on that one. But the speed and features make this the superior product. Especially — and I’m still a little choked about this — since I spent a hundred bucks upgrading the Apple package just to get the face regonition features, and Picassa 3 was a free download.”

“Don’t know what to tell you.” Syntax grins. “But you still haven’t answered my question? What’s the point of all this face tagging?”

“You understand content.” I scold. “You don’t get the value of meta-data?”

“I get the meta-data.” She argues. “Meta-data is priceless. I’m just not convinced that face recongition is, well, the right kind of meta-data to be capturing.”

“No? Why not?”

“Wouldn’t it be smarter to tag photos not by faces but by who is in the picture? To use — and add to the existing — keywords instead of building a very narrowly focused set of meta-data to add attributes to a very specific set of photos?” She asks. “What about all the pics without faces.”

“Keywords.” I reply. “And geotagging.”

“This is getting complex.” Syntax shakes her head and kicks another clump of snow in her path. “Call me old fashioned, but I think I might just stick to text tags until I’m sure there is some real long-term benefit in all this facial, geo, temporal, whatever-tagging.”

“Let me know how it works out.” I say. “But if nothing else, I’m quite enjoying looking at so many old photos again. Makes me quite nostagic, particularly over the holidays.”

“Some people go to parties. Drink eggnog. That kind of thing.” She grins. “You’re tagging your photo collection. Is that humbug or what?”

“I’m going to go with ‘or what.'” I say as I pitch a soft snow ball in her direction. “Now where is that eggnog?”

Posted in: informology photography technology Tagged: apple data don face faces features going just know little meta PEOPLE photo photos pics snow syntax tagging think THOUSAND

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This is a personal website to which I've been posting for over sixteen years. It's neither news nor journalism; It is often trivial fluff, but occasionally perspective and opinion.

At its heart, this blog is little more than my odd collection of words, photos, thoughts, vents, ideas, fiction and assorted mental farts, a collection that happens to live online in the form of a blog.

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8 Clicks From Nowhere has been posting since 2001 and maintains public online archives for 6214 days (about 17 years ) of content, from April 20, 02001 through April 10, 02018 It was calculated in precisely 1.675 seconds by a mechanical steam-powered wordpress difference engine.

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