All things Apple, the tech not the fruit

[CooterBrown 18002]

On 9/24/2023 at 10:56 AM, Francisco 2.0 said:

it no longer has lightning for the interface, so keep that in mind when your older cord doesn't work and handed it over.

 

 

This is what will make me upgrade sooner than later.  My last 3 iPhones would not charge via a cable because the lightning opening would get too loose and it couldn't make solid contact.  I can only charge using a charging pad.  I've been told it's because I charge my phone too much, the battery swells, and stretches out the plug receiver. I only charge over night and the battery runs down to around 25% every day so I don't know if that's correct but it's been a major problem for me.

[Captainant 27625]

5 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

This is what will make me upgrade sooner than later.  My last 3 iPhones would not charge via a cable because the lightning opening would get too loose and it couldn't make solid contact.  I can only charge using a charging pad.  I've been told it's because I charge my phone too much, the battery swells, and stretches out the plug receiver. I only charge over night and the battery runs down to around 25% every day so I don't know if that's correct but it's been a major problem for me.

Idk if USB-C will be any better than lightning in that regard unfortunately. If your phone is at the point of bulging noticably you should be taking that spicy pillow to an Apple store ASAP before it bursts into flames. 

Lightning cables were prone to corrosion on their pins that carry power, so it's possible your old phones also had corroded charging pins that impeded charging if your phone wasn't actually bulging. 

[CooterBrown 18002]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Idk if USB-C will be any better than lightning in that regard unfortunately. If your phone is at the point of bulging noticably you should be taking that spicy pillow to an Apple store ASAP before it bursts into flames. 

Lightning cables were prone to corrosion on their pins that carry power, so it's possible your old phones also had corroded charging pins that impeded charging if your phone wasn't actually bulging. 

That sounds more like it since there's no visible bulge. The corrosion is most likely on the phone since it doesn't matter what cable I use.

[Celery Man 20931]

I don't know if the person who told you it was corrosion/battery swelling was actually looking at your phone, but if they weren't/they didn't know what they were doing I can tell you that the thing that always solved my "loose connection" problem was to use the little plastic toothpick from a swiss army knife to clean out all of the jean pocket lint that had been impacted into the charging port. Shine an led flashlight in there and get to work. I brought in an iphone to have the charging port replaced to a phone repair type place once and had to convince the teenager who pulled the lint out in 15 seconds to go ahead and just fucking take the $20 I was gratefully waving in his face.

I am curious how the USB-C port holds up over time. Obviously it's well used but phone port is used the heaviest. It does feel nice and secure in comparison to the lightning. I ordered a 3 pack of 6 foot cables and quickly realized I need some 3 footers. I'm going to bury one mini-usb in the bottom of my cable drawer with the usb-b and finally throw the rest of those fuckers away. I guess I haven't added any new cable technologies into my mix with this but I still feel like I need to stop seeing those when I'm trying to find a micro,

[52-80 19142]

charge over wireless you cavepeople

[PilotsError 2286]

When I can wirelessly charge without the case on then I’ll do it that way. 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

When I can wirelessly charge without the case on then I’ll do it that way. 

What kind of case do you use? I have been charging wirelessly for the past 3 years or so and use a case without issue.

[Captainant 27625]

35 minutes ago, PilotsError said:

When I can wirelessly charge without the case on then I’ll do it that way. 

iPhones do have integrated magsafe though?

[PilotsError 2286]

It’s an iPhone 14 and will not charge wireless with my case on. Standard case from the T-Mobile store. 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

It’s an iPhone 14 and will not charge wireless with my case on. Standard case from the T-Mobile store. 

Strange. In my 13 and now 15, I have used Spigen liquid air cases and they both charge fine in my cheap ass Anker wireless charger from Amazon.

[Anton Chigurh 3319]

I guess it’s not a MagSafe case. Weird that they would make one that way though.



Btw the Andar case is great. Only con is that the action button has a cutout instead of a metal button on the case like the rest.

[swraith 345]

I still have the XR.  A better camera is the part that keeps me wondering if I should upgrade.  Otherwise, the XR remains functional.  I have an Otterbox case and it works fine to wireless charge.  

[52-80 19142]

2 hours ago, PilotsError said:

It’s an iPhone 14 and will not charge wireless with my case on. Standard case from the T-Mobile store. 

Get a thinner case and/or better charger. 
 

i use generic plastic cases (without special function) on my 12 and 14 and they charge on the ubiquitous ikea charging pad and in my car reliably

[Celery Man 20931]

I guess probably newer cars can do carplay wirelessly, but unless things have changed that's not the case with my truck.

I can't decide if I like the "always on" screen. I'm tempted to turn it off but I'm giving it a fair shake. I feel like it turns on in my pocket easier. I kinda wish the assignable action button on the side existed in addition to the silent mode toggle. I switched it to camera or something different at first until I realized that.... I definitely do want to be able to quickly switch from silent to ring. I'm not a big photo guy but I can tell that the camera is nicer than on my old 11.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I guess probably newer cars can do carplay wirelessly, but unless things have changed that's not the case with my truck.
I can't decide if I like the "always on" screen. I'm tempted to turn it off but I'm giving it a fair shake. I feel like it turns on in my pocket easier. I kinda wish the assignable action button on the side existed in addition to the silent mode toggle. I switched it to camera or something different at first until I realized that.... I definitely do want to be able to quickly switch from silent to ring. I'm not a big photo guy but I can tell that the camera is nicer than on my old 11.

Always on sucks. I turned it off immediately.

[UnivTex34 1763]

4 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I guess probably newer cars can do carplay wirelessly, but unless things have changed that's not the case with my truck.

I can't decide if I like the "always on" screen. I'm tempted to turn it off but I'm giving it a fair shake. I feel like it turns on in my pocket easier. I kinda wish the assignable action button on the side existed in addition to the silent mode toggle. I switched it to camera or something different at first until I realized that.... I definitely do want to be able to quickly switch from silent to ring. I'm not a big photo guy but I can tell that the camera is nicer than on my old 11.

What truck? There are plentiful Wireless CarPlay adapters you can plug into your truck, that act as the receiver, in place of the cable, for your entertainment system. I have a 2016 F150, and use a cheap CarLinkIt from Amazon. Its fantastic. My phone never leaves my pocket, and CarPlay for everything instead of Sync.

I have had zero issues with the Always on screen. No excess battery drain, no accidental button presses. I thought I would hate it, but I actually quite like it. 

 

[Celery Man 20931]

3 minutes ago, UnivTex34 said:

What truck? There are plentiful Wireless CarPlay adapters you can plug into your truck, that act as the receiver, in place of the cable, for your entertainment system. I have a 2016 F150, and use a cheap CarLinkIt from Amazon. Its fantastic. My phone never leaves my pocket, and CarPlay for everything instead of Sync.

I have had zero issues with the Always on screen. No excess battery drain, no accidental button presses. I thought I would hate it, but I actually quite like it. 

 

ah, interesting - 2016 F150, although old enough of a 2016 that I had to replace the USB hub and update the car software to even enable wired carplay. I'll have to look into the wireless carplay adapter, I didn't even know that existed.

[52-80 19142]

The thing that irks me that the brightness level of the always on is similar enough to the brightness of the screen during most use (which is indoors), that it makes me think the phone was left accidentally On. 
 

If i get a live notification phone flashes on anyway. If its a stale notification, its not important. 

[UnivTex34 1763]

58 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

ah, interesting - 2016 F150, although old enough of a 2016 that I had to replace the USB hub and update the car software to even enable wired carplay. I'll have to look into the wireless carplay adapter, I didn't even know that existed.

I had to do the same with my truck with the new hub.

 

Here is what I have.

 

https://www.amazon.com/CarlinKit-Wireless-CarPlay-Connection-2016-2023/dp/B0C49Y1F6Z/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1Y2AOKDY4UPK8&keywords=Carlinkit&psr=EY17&qid=1695761659&s=todays-deals&sprefix=carlinkit%2Ctodays-deals%2C89&sr=1-4&th=1

[Celery Man 20931]

Oh rad, yeah just grabbed that - thanks for sharing the link and making me aware of that, I can have two cup holders again!

[deft 6834]

So those who already have the new 15 in hand…..thermalgate?

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

So those who already have the new 15 in hand…..thermalgate?

So far no issues.

[atomheartbevo 89621]

On 9/27/2023 at 3:22 PM, deft said:

So those who already have the new 15 in hand…..thermalgate?

Don't play Peridot.  But that goes for any iPhone.

[Anton Chigurh 3319]

Mine had been fine but yesterday had an instance of draining battery very fast and getting pretty warm. I closed all apps and hard reset and whatever it was stopped.

Most people seemed to be having the issue early on, so hopefully this was just a software or app bug. There’s a zillion app updates right now so hopefully it was just an old version not playing nice (a similar thing happened on my 13PM last month, too).

[Celery Man 20931]

Didn’t know it was a thing, haven’t noticed it yet.

Got that Carlinkit thing, man what a mental reset to get into the car and not immediately pull the phone out and plug it in. I thought it was super flakey at first and then remembered that I had shortcuts enabled to turn off WiFi whenever connecting to CarPlay (because it is annoying for the phone to linger on my home WiFi until I’m halfway down the road). Looks like this accomplishes the same thing by virtue of how it works so killed those, cool cool cool.

[Francisco 2.0 32386]

On 9/26/2023 at 12:02 PM, Anton Chigurh said:

Btw the Andar case is great. Only con is that the action button has a cutout instead of a metal button on the case like the rest.

 

Andar has redesigned the case with a button and is offering 50% off + free shipping for a replacement to those who ordered one with the cutout, through October 15th.  Look for the email with the discount code.

 

 

 

 

[Francisco 2.0 32386]

On 9/27/2023 at 3:22 PM, deft said:

So those who already have the new 15 in hand…..thermalgate?

 

Mine is to be delivered this week, so I have nothing to report.  My wife's showed up on launch day; I backed up her old phone, transferred everything to her new Pro, handed it to her and that was that.  If it had been hot to touch or draining the battery she would have pointed it out to me by now.

 

 

[Anton Chigurh 3319]

 
Andar has redesigned the case with a button and is offering 50% off + free shipping for a replacement to those who ordered one with the cutout, through October 15th.  Look for the email with the discount code.
 
 
 
 

Nice, thanks.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13507]

John Stewart's Apple TV show cancelled because he was going to have an episode about China and Apple had a problem with that. They couldn't agree on a compromise, if a compromise was even on the table.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/media/jon-stewart-apple/index.html

[deft 6834]

I guess think different is no longer a slogan of theirs.

[Neonmoon 38129]

20 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

John Stewart's Apple TV show cancelled because he was going to have an episode about China and Apple had a problem with that. They couldn't agree on a compromise, if a compromise was even on the table.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/media/jon-stewart-apple/index.html

Was it about Apples complicit use on slave labor? 

[crash_davis 23096]

Nevermid China, the new iPhone is titanium! 

[atomheartbevo 89621]

Either an M3 event or some fancy M2 (iMacs probably) event next week, on the 30th, in the evening (odd time/date)

 

[UnivTex34 1763]

11 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Either an M3 event or some fancy M2 (iMacs probably) event next week, on the 30th, in the evening (odd time/date)

 

Pretty sure it's M3. We are seeing long lead times right now across all lines for pretty much anything custom. Which is historically typical for an impending refresh.

[deft 6834]

So…should mean nothing to us with a functioning m1 product then?

Just picked a steal of a deal of an m2 iPad Pro 12.9 for the wife. She’s been wanting to dive deeper into the procreate app (no pics). I’m impressed over using the regular iPad with the non laminated screen.

[52-80 19142]

2 hours ago, deft said:

So…should mean nothing to us with a functioning m1 product then?
 

nothing.  the m1 is too goddamn fast and good.

[Captainant 27625]

The m1 was such a leap forward, the m2 and m3 have been comparatively more incremental. That said, each gen has a few new hardware accelerators - it's just what they already had doesn't change much

[Anton Chigurh 3319]

I know we just got a new Mini, but I wonder if we will see a new Mini or Studio.

[atomheartbevo 89621]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

The m1 was such a leap forward, the m2 and m3 have been comparatively more incremental. That said, each gen has a few new hardware accelerators - it's just what they already had doesn't change much

Yeah, hardware encoding on the M2 was the big improvement, and most people will never be doing anything that will really push that side of things (or it'll be so much faster than their Intel Macs that they won't care).  If there had been a 15" M1 MacBook Air, I would have happily gotten it and still be using it, instead of picking up an M2.

 

[atomheartbevo 89621]

Holy shit; that new GPU.

 

[atomheartbevo 89621]

If you're on M2/Pro, not sure it's worth upgrading unless you are doing some serious stuff that's maxing out your current system.

M1/M1 Pro?  Yeah, worth upgrading.

edit: They are pretty much targeting only M1 or Intel users.

Edited October 31, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[UnivTex34 1763]

13 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

If you're on M2/Pro, not sure it's worth upgrading unless you are doing some serious stuff that's maxing out your current system.

M1/M1 Pro?  Yeah, worth upgrading.

edit: They are pretty much targeting only M1 or Intel users.

Ehhh.

I'm still not sure this is a no brainer M1 Pro upgrade. 

 

[atomheartbevo 89621]

1 minute ago, UnivTex34 said:

I'm still not sure this is a no brainer M1 Pro upgrade. 

The people who would benefit from the M3 Pro/Max know who they are, but the rest, totally agree.

I give Apple credit for killing off the 13-inch MBP, and dropping the price on the 14-inch model.  They needed to do that after they brought the 15-inch MacBook Air into the lineup.

[UnivTex34 1763]

21 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The people who would benefit from the M3 Pro/Max know who they are, but the rest, totally agree.

I give Apple credit for killing off the 13-inch MBP, and dropping the price on the 14-inch model.  They needed to do that after they brought the 15-inch MacBook Air into the lineup.

Yeah, those are the people that are upgrading every year.

I'm actually a bit surprised by disco'ing the 13. Even with the price drop of the 14, you are not at the same price point as the 13, and people seek out the TouchBar for whatever reason.

 

[Captainant 27625]

2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

The people who would benefit from the M3 Pro/Max know who they are, but the rest, totally agree.

I give Apple credit for killing off the 13-inch MBP, and dropping the price on the 14-inch model.  They needed to do that after they brought the 15-inch MacBook Air into the lineup.

Still offering a baseline 8GB of unified memory in 2023 is ridiculous though. Especially for a >$1000 laptop

[deft 6834]

It seemed very un apple like to lower the price on the baseline pro but then I saw it only comes with 8 gigs of ram. My basic m1 14” still cooks so I’m not going anywhere. That space black is sexy tho.

[atomheartbevo 89621]

9 hours ago, Captainant said:

Still offering a baseline 8GB of unified memory in 2023 is ridiculous though. Especially for a >$1000 laptop

I really fucking loathe several of the Apple/Mac hardware subreddits (especially /MacBookAir).  Really fucking loathe them, because there's way too many people obsessed with some variation of  "8GB IS THE ANSWER NOBODY NEEDS MORE THAN 8GB WHY ARE YOU RECOMMENDING MORE WHY DO YOU HAVE 24GB YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT JUST BECAUSE YOU RUN PHOTO AND VIDEO EDITING PROGRAMS WHILE HAVING A WINDOWS VIRTUAL MACHINE OPEN AND 20 TABS ON YOUR BROWSER DOESN'T MEAN YOU NEED MORE THAN 8GB BECAUSE UNIFIED MEMORY AND THE STORAGE IS SO FAST YOU'LL NEVER KNOW YOU'RE SWAPPING TO THE STORAGE AND EVEN IF IT SWAPS TO STORAGE YOU WON'T HAVE THIS LAPTOP LONG ENOUGH FOR IT TO WEAR OUT THE STORAGE AND I DON'T KNOW WHY APPLE IS EVEN GIVING US MORE THAN 6GB BECAUSE MACOS ONLY TAKES UP 2.529GB SO FUCK YOU AND DIE".  Way too many of these people either got stuck with 8GB models and have a sunk cost mindset, or couldn't afford more and weren't willing to wait a few months and save up or whatever.

I have no idea if it's an confirmation, anchoring or attribution bias, or conformity bias, or some kind of halo effect, or a combination of those (it's a psychological thing for sure), but the whole 8GB vs 16GB vs 24GB arguments/rants and recommendations are the dumbest fucking things to hit the Apple subreddits (and comments/threads on Apple-related sites) in a long time, and they suck up way too many posts/threads.  Maybe not a long time, maybe just since 2020 and the switch to M1, but holy shit these arguments/recommendations are sucking all of the oxygen out of the room.

Let me back up - I'll preface it by saying I am not a fan of the pricing from 8 -> 16GB or 256GB -> 512GB, and I'm not a fan of how Apple handled the dual channel stuff, where the baseline 256GB devices have slower storage as a result.  I understand the technical aspects, but I think Apple could have done it differently without much of a drop in profit, while keeping those machines fast, either be starting at 512GB or going 2x128GB dual-channel.

But I have used an 8GB M1 Mac w/512GB storage as my temporary daily driver for a few months back in 2021, and it was fine and ran rings around even the Intel 6-core i7s from just two years before that were 2x (or more) as much price-wise, and I did push it to the limits (Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, even a Windows VM) and I would have a fuckton of tabs open in web browsers (I laugh when people say "I might even have 20 tabs open").  I could tell when it slowed down and that the memory pressure had ramped up, even without looking at the Activity Monitor and checking Memory Pressure.  

With that said, I know that my mom, dad, father and stepmother-in-law, and sister, and many other Mac users I know would be just fine with 8GB, because they'll either never truly push it all that hard, or it'll be so brief, and given the nature of what they are doing, they won't really notice.  Swapping in and out to storage is extremely smooth. And given the choice if price is an issue, I'll tell people go with 8GB and 512GB vs 16GB and 256GB, because running low on storage sucks if you're not a tech-type who can resolve that easily.

And 8GB/256GB is just fine for a lot of schools and businesses where nothing is being stored locally anyways.

I want Apple to do away with 8GB just to shut these people up.

Because a lot of us will absolutely use 16GB or more, and we can show screenshots from Activity Monitor to prove it (I don't want to swap to storage if I can avoid it, regardless of how fast/seamless it is), and a lot of the "8GB IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR EVERY SINGLE MAC USER" types need to just Shut The Everliving Fuck Up..

 

/endrant.

[TwiceHorn 31436]

Kind of amusing, a company called Masimo has obtained an exclusion order from the International Trade Commission that may halt sales of Apple Watches for a while.  It's based on their appropriation of Masimo's pulse-oximetry technology and related "skin sensors." 

Apple's not quite as evil as M$ used to be, or google is now, but it's nice when a big guy eats it.

[52-80 19142]

17 hours ago, UnivTex34 said:

and people seek out the TouchBar for whatever reason.

 

Fucking ghouls

[UnivTex34 1763]

4 hours ago, 52-80 said:

Fucking ghouls

Seemed like the coolest idea ever when it was announced. Get some touch screen benefits without getting your screen al smudgy. But it was absolutely worthless. No app support from anyone. I think in the end, I found a "dock" app that allowed it to function as my apps Dock, and then I permanently hid the actual dock from my screen.

 

Good riddance.