Search Results for josh centers

Josh Centers:

That gave me an idea: what if I put my recommendations on a website and sent people to that? That idea was the genesis of my new Apple Buying Advice site, which isn’t affiliated with TidBITS in any way.

And:

We offer expert recommendations to ensure you buy the right product at the right time. Whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or AirPods, we can help you make the right choice. These are the very same recommendations we would give to friends and family.

And:

The site is monetized through affiliate links, largely to Amazon, and I get a small commission when you make a purchase through them. But the affiliate commissions don’t influence my recommendations.

Check out the site (early days still), consider subscribing to the newsletter (email field and subscribe button on main page.)

If you’ve ever considered changing carriers, take a read of the linked article. There’s a lot of good detail, but here’s the bottom line:

For a single line, unlimited talk and text with 500 MB of data costs $25 per month, with various tiers up to $60 per month for unlimited everything. You can have up to three lines, and with three lines, each person gets unlimited talk, text, and data for $30 per month or $90 per month total. Not too shabby. I’ve been paying $130 per month for three lines of lousy Verizon service, and that’s with a 19% state employee discount my wife gets for being a teacher.

There are a few caveats, but nothing truly problematic. If you are considering such a move, take the time to read Josh’s article.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

For over two decades, “APPLE IS DOOMED” was a common refrain in Internet discussions. Originally, it was meant in a literal sense, but once Apple was well on the road to becoming the tech titan it is today, the saying was parroted back, soaked in irony, as a rebuff to naysayers. But lurking behind those rebuffs was the very real concern that Apple was too dependent on the iPhone and that someday the world would move on, causing Apple’s business to come crashing down.

True. First, Apple was doomed, but managed to survive. Then, when iPod, colorful iMacs, iPhone, etc. hit, doomed was ironic. Then, before the services shift, there was a bit of “too dependent on iPhone” worry behind the doomed.

Imagine a heavy, cast-iron kettlebell. If you put it on top of a paper cup, it crushes the cup. Put it on top of a concrete block and the concrete block supports it just fine. But if you lift that kettlebell repeatedly (with good form), you will get stronger. The paper cup is fragile, the concrete block is robust, and your body is antifragile (even if it doesn’t always feel that way).

A fine analogy. But why is Apple Antifragile?

Most of Apple’s 500-plus retail stores, along with many of its partners’ stores, were shut down for much of 2020. Maestri said sales of the iPhone and Apple Watch were hurt by the store closures because those are more complex transactions in which customers need assistance. But more people working and learning from home created a boom in iPad and Mac sales.

And:

Store closures also hurt the AppleCare part of the Services business, and a slowdown in advertising hampered Services revenue. But those downturns were more than offset by a boom in the entertainment aspects of the Services segment (Apple Music, Apple TV+, etc.) due to lockdowns and restricted entertainment options. Again, some services were down, but others were way, way up.

In other words, the adversity of the pandemic made Apple even stronger.

I especially appreciate the bit about Apple’s strong investment in locking down the supply chain:

Have you tried to buy a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X? Good luck, they’re still hard to get. No one can produce enough chips. The same goes for automobiles. Automakers have had to choose between producing cars with fewer features or not making them at all.

Apple hasn’t had this problem.

This is a fascinating, well-written article.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

We’re all eagerly awaiting iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 Monterey, and watchOS 8, but will they run on the devices you have now? Apple continues to do an excellent job of supporting old devices, but many iPhone and iPad features will require at least an A12 Bionic chip. On the Mac side, some of the new features require an M1 processor.

Dig into the lists, see if your current hardware will support the features that interest you.

For example, here’s a list of features that require an A12 Bionic or later processor:

• Spatial Audio and Portrait Mode in FaceTime
• The “all new city experience” and immersive walking directions in Maps
• Live Text in Camera
• Visual Lookup in Photos
• Siri on-device processing, on-device personalization, on-device dictation, and continuous dictation
• Animated backgrounds in the iOS 15 Weather app

This is what I’d call “feature coaxing”, the addition of new features coaxing you to upgrade your hardware. Apple has this down to a science.

Great, useful, post.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

I subscribe to a few podcasts in the Podcasts app but generally leave downloads off to save space—streaming works fine for me. However, a few weeks ago, I specifically tracked down and downloaded an episode of the Ham Radio Crash Course podcast so I could listen to it while driving out of cellular range. I didn’t subscribe to the podcast, as I don’t usually listen to it, but I was interested in that particular episode.

When I opened the new Podcasts app on my iPhone, I found that it had me “following” Ham Radio Crash Course—you no longer “subscribe” to podcasts in the Podcasts app, but instead “follow” them like “friends” on social media—and it had downloaded episodes before and after the only one I intended to download.

I went to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and was aghast to discover that the Podcasts app was now taking up 14.2 GB of space. Luckily, I have 256 GB of storage and plenty of free space on my iPhone, but if I’d had less available storage, it could have gotten awkward quickly.

Read the post for Josh’s take on Apple’s re-rolled Podcast app and details on how to turn off downloads.

But even if you don’t do that, do jump into Settings > General > iPhone Storage and see if Podcasts is using a significant amount of space. If so, do read the article and adjust as necessary.

I am a long-time Overcast user and I’ve made the switch to the new version of Podcast. I am determined to give it a chance. Having used Overcast for such a long time, the Podcast interface took some getting used to. But I’ve now got a sense of how to get my podcasts set up and followed.

One thing I love about the new Podcast app: The Browse tab is great for discovery. There’s the top charts/episodes if you want to see what’s popular. And down below that, a great set of categories to explore. Not sure if this has always been there, but this Browse tab setup is new to me. Remember, I’ve lived in Overcast for a long time.

As a side note, the integration with Apple Watch/Siri feels rock solid. This is important to me.

If you are new to Podcast, or considering making the switch from Overcast, be sure to read Users Despair at Apple Podcasts App After iOS 14.5 Update.

I started from scratch and have experienced none of these issue, but clearly the problems exist and are worth knowing about.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

In a Hacker News thread about Dustin Curtis’s locked Apple ID (see “The Mystery of Dustin Curtis’s Locked Apple ID,” 5 March 2021), there were several reports of iMessage accounts being disabled after other users inadvertently marked messages from them as spam during deletion (swipe left on a message and then tap the trash icon).

Follow the link for all the details. Not going to test this (something I usually try to do when I run across stuff like this, but just don’t want to fall down that sinkhole).

But worth noting:

If you regularly delete messages or conversations in Messages, read the prompts carefully before responding to them.

Awareness raised.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

An app was either on the Home screen, or it wasn’t on your iPhone. If you couldn’t find an app on a Home screen, a search was your only recourse.

The App Library changes that. All apps live in the App Library, and they can also appear on your Home screen. That means you no longer have to clutter your Home screen with apps that you want to keep installed but use infrequently. You can hide them away and keep only the apps you regularly use on your Home screens. In short, the App Library becomes “the truth” about where you can find any installed app.

This is a pretty major change from iOS 13. Worth reading, and worth noting that you won’t find this on iPadOS 14.

Jason Snell & Dan Moren, Six Colors:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the third year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 11 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, as well as optionally provide text commentary on their vote.

Lots of data to process, all based on a survey, but telling nonetheless. Read this (and check out the charts) for yourself, but one point I will note is that the biggest negative change from the 2016 report card, by far, is the rating for software quality.

Some of the comments:

In 2017, our panel’s perception of the quality of Apple’s software took a nosedive. Nobody who has been following along to Apple news and opinion for the last year will be surprised.

“Apple’s QA team has dropped the ball this year, with huge bugs in macOS, iOS, and even HomeKit, with often flawed patches for those bugs,” wrote Josh Centers. “Apple looks a bit amateurish lately,” wrote Kirk McElhearn. “It’s getting embarrassing,” wrote Rob Griffiths.”

“I don’t know how quality assurance works inside Apple, but something needs to change,” wrote Brent Simmons. Fraser Speirs wrote, “It’s as good as anyone else’s but it’s not good enough.”

“My family consists of a couple of big nerds, but mostly average users, and everyone agrees software reliability is trending down,” wrote Casey Liss.

Read the whole post. Very interesting.

Glen Fleishman, with a little help from Josh Centers, walks through the payment apps that work inside the iMessage infrastructure. Learned a lot, all very interesting, but found this telling:

We’re still in the early days of iMessage apps, but two prominent payment apps have added iMessage integration: Square Cash and Venmo. A third, Circle, was launched on multiple platforms by entrepreneurs with deep Internet roots. Oddly, PayPal hasn’t yet updated its app to support iMessage payments, but the company often lags putting improvements in its native software.

Is this a wait-and-see on PayPal’s part? They’ve clearly opened a door to the competition. Or perhaps iMessage support is just not that big a deal in the larger world of payment processing.