www.mark-heringer.com: iPhone

Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts

Thursday, February 20, 2020

iPhone 11 Pro

Before Thanksgiving, I started having problems with the lightning connector on my iPhone. This is the same problem that I had with my iPhone 6 in late 2016... This created a number of issues including connecting via CarPlay in the Volvo. I finally got frustrated enough on Monday to upgrade a new iPhone.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

iPhone Purchase History

After posting on the ten year anniversary of buying my first iPhone, I did a deep dive into my email archive. I was able to figure which out iPhones I bought and when since 2007.

iPhone 16 Pro - July 2025
iPhone 14 Pro - September 2022
iPhone 11 Pro - February 2020
iPhone Xs - September 2018
iPhone 7 - September 2016
iPhone 6 - March 2015
iPhone 5s - December 2013
iPhone 5 - September 2012
iPhone 4s - October 2011
iPhone 4 - June 2010
iPhone 3GS - June 2009
iPhone - July 2007

My Apple Watch purchase history is here.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

some love for the iPhone

With all of the negative articles that have written about the iPhone 1.1.1 upgrade and iBricks in the last week, I thought I would write about my experience with the iPhone over the last three months.

On Thursday after the iPhone launched, I walked into the Apple Store in the Arden Town Mall in Sacramento and bought an 8GB iPhone. I have been using cellular phones since the late 1980's. As I have mentioned before, I have had 6 phones in the last 9 years. I get about 18 months out of a phone before it is pretty beat up. On the average, I have probably paid almost $400 for each of those phones.

I could not be more happy with my experiences of the last three months. This includes:

The activation of the iPhone using iTunes exceeded my expectations. Although I had a lot of trepidation due to the reports from the first weekend, I was able to activate the iPhone, including switching my number from Sprint, in less than 10 minutes.

I then synced all of my contacts and phone numbers out of Outlook on the iPhone. In less than 30 minutes, I had the iPhone activated, all of my contacts loaded and I was off and running.

Each of the version upgrades (from 1.00 to 1.01 to 1.02 to 1.11) have been painless.

I have added custom ringtones. About 165 of the 750 songs that I have purchased from iTunes over the years can be made into ringtones. I find the ringtones creation features and functions in iTunes to work smoothly.

My last phone was a Sprint Samsung A900. Sprint charged me $2.50 to use a downloaded ringtone for six months. Owning the song and a ringtone with my custom characteristics that I can use on the current and future iPhones seems reasonable for $1.98.

My son is an musician with songs on iTunes. I believe that artists should be compensated for their material.

Using Flickr's functionality, I am using the camera in the iPhone to post pictures directly to my weblog.

After the 1.1.1 upgrade, I used the iTunes Wifi store to purchase, download and play a song (Into the Night by Santana featuring Chad Kroeger). I have cruised the Wifi store on a number of other occasions and will definitely make additional purchases.

[I have stopped at Starbucks and got a cup of coffee and the song of the day card over the last several days. I think that one mistake that Starbucks and Apple made is that they should have set up a way to redeem the Starbucks songs for the day on the iPhone through the iTunes Wifi store from any hotspot. I would find a place to connect and download the song so I could listen to it on the way home...]

Before our trip to New Mexico in August, I downloaded Roving Mars from the iTunes and loaded it on the iPhone. When I finished my book on the plane on the way home, I watched about half of the movie on the iPhone. After we got home and I synced back to the iTunes ecosystem. I was able to start watching the video on my iTV right where I left off.

Every morning, I update a playlist titled 1 Morning Drive with about 20 podcasts from NPR (national and local-WFUI, KQED, KCRW and KXJZ), APM, PRI, ESPN, Scientific American, CNET and others. My youngest loves the PRI's Geo Quiz. I mix a couple songs into the playlist. I start the playlist on the iPhone when I get in the car on my way to work and pick up where I left off in the playlist on my way home.

I use a bluetooth jawbone ear piece. When the phone rings in the car, the music fades out, I tap the ear piece to anwer the call. When the call is over, the music fades back in. [There is some GSM feedback that I have not completely eliminated.]

I use the iPhone to connect to the Wifi networks at home and at work for web browsing and mail.

I use Safari with the iPhone versions of Facebook, Pocket Tweets and Meebo as well as a number of other web sites.

I have the iPhone connected to my Gmail account. [I do wish I could figure out a process for deleting emails on the iPhone and have them deleted from the inbox.]

I took a number of my favorite photos and moved to the iPhone to use with the contacts and as backgrounds.

I like the way that the SMS application keeps the messages grouped by caller. It allows you to maintain a thread of the conversation.

The visual voicemail which provides a scrolling list of the messages is great!

I have used almost all of the different cell phone carriers over the last ten years on personal and work phones. It is my personal opinion that the demonization of AT&T is overblown. It my experience that the quality of voice service varies depending on where you live. Each carrier has strengths and weaknesses. You pick a carrier with a good network where you live and work. In my experience, the customer service of all the cellular carriers is poor at best.

This is just a quick brain dump of my experiences. I understand the desire to want to explore the hardware and software and add the functionality. I respect the frustration that has been expressed by some users by the 1.1.1 upgrade. Nevertheless, while it is not perfect, this is a remarkable device.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

iPhone Activation

Since I left Farm Credit for Sutter over nine years ago, I have had 6 personal cell phones, roughly a new one every eighteen months. I use my personal cell phone for a number of things, including posting pictures straight to this weblog. With my Samsung A900 approaching the 18 month mark and getting pretty beat up, I decided to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. [As an aside, I carry a AT&T Blackberry Curve for business use.]

Watching the iPhone inventory levels on-line for the Apple stores, when the Arden Fair store showed they had some in stock, I went down at lunch and picked one up. Given some of the horror stories about getting the iPhone activated and moving an existing number from another vendor, I decided that I would wait until this weekend to sit down and get it activated and set-up.

I was dumbfounded at how easy the activation process went. I connected the iPhone to iTunes and filled in a couple of screens, including the information on my account with Sprint. At one point, I got a screen saying that it was going to take 6 minutes for the next step. I walked away and when I came back the iPhone was activated and my number was transferred from my old phone. I do not think that the whole process took even 10 minutes.

Over the years, I have used software from FutureDial to keep my contacts in Microsoft Outlook and move the contacts from phone to phone. I pointed iTunes at Outlook and it loaded all of the contacts into the iPhone. On my old phone, I had a number of pictures that I used as the wallpaper and that were displayed when people called. I put all of these pictures in a directory, pointed iTunes at the directory and all of the pictures were loaded into the iPhone. It only took me a couple of minutes to attach the pictures to the appropriate contacts. I configured Gmail. I attached the iPhone to our security enabled wireless access point.

In less than 30 minutes, I was off and running with the iPhone.