October 2022

Increase.

I received word this morning that Apple is raising the price of their Apple One Premier service by nearly 10% effective at the end of November (when my plan renews). This was the first email I saw this morning and I have to admit it really rubbed me the wrong way.

For those not in the Apple ecosystem, Apple One Premier is their online package that includes several components of their “lifestyle” approach to computing: 2TB of iCloud storage, Apple TV+, Apple Music, Fitness+, and Apple Arcade. Oh, it also includes Apple News+. I forget about that last one.

Apple is one of the richest, if not the richest company in the world. I know inflation is taking its toll on us all, but a 10% price hike for this package seems a bit much. While all corporations are focused on profit, in previous years Apple felt a little less like other corporations when it came to meeting bottom line expectations. Over the past few years that feeling has subsided and now it’s all about the corporate dollar.

I’m in the process of figuring out how to get away from Apple Premier One and go back to an a la carte approach. I’m the only one in the family that uses Apple Music, everyone uses Spotify. None of us News+ (the interface is a mess and it’s riddled with ads and really poor content). We have other storage providers in addition to iCloud. The biggies are probably iCloud Storage and Apple TV+. We’ll probably let the others drop away.

I tried to change my subscription this morning but by the 12th prompt to enter my password to get through the same screens over and over again I lost interest. If there’s one thing Apple does poorly it’s their online services and password authentication. Right on cue I had to re-enter my password for each of our HomePods. That was fun.

After all, It Just Works.

31 October 2022 by Apple. 1

No Faith.

I have absolutely no faith in the American public doing the right thing when it comes to voting in the Midterm Elections. None. Not only do I have no faith in the voting public, I have little faith in our voting process. Not because Democrats are going to steal the election, no, they’re really not that clever, but because voting districts are incredibly gerrymandered into forced ridiculous outcomes and there are already election laws in place to make sure the American voter has as little of a voice as possible, especially non-white folks.

Look, the average IQ of American society is plummeting. The young ones couldn’t care less about voting unless it’s going to earn them “likes” and “influence”. The older ones watch the stupidest of the news media outlets (and they’re ALL stupid, quite frankly) and are way beyond their shelf date. We hear both sides of every issue when the other side is so incredibly far-fetched/stupid/ignorant that it’s worth absolutely no air time. The news media doesn’t care about reporting, they care about opinions because it generates controversy which generates ad revenue because of eye balls and pearl clutching. Don’t even get me started on the idiocy of social media. We worship billionaires that were given millions as kids because they work hard(?).

“Idiocracy” was not an operating manual for society, but y’all are hellbent on turning this hellscape into their favorite sci-fi armageddon/post apocalyptic scenario because that gets better ratings.

The likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bobert wouldn’t get two seconds in any sort of conversation, let alone be taken seriously as a political contender before the 21st century. Never. They’re good for ad revenue for the news media, and therefore we have to hear their uneducated, ignorant, fucked up points of view all the time. They’re STUPID. Why must we elevate and amplify the voices of the STUPID. Let them bark at a carnival or a church or something.

The only faith I have in these midterms is the other shoe is going to drop and it’s not going to be pretty.

I need to go to a shooting range and let my hostilities out.

30 October 2022 by Why. 1

Caturday.

Truman likes to stare at me from his cat tree during work hours. Once in a while he’ll trill in my direction to make sure I’m paying attention to The Feline One. We play ball; I throw a small rubber ball in his direction and he bats it back at me. He does this until he’s bored and then it’s time for treats.

He has a routine.

29 October 2022 by He's A Feline. 0

Twit.

So as of last night, Elon Musk has completed his purchase of Twitter and immediately fired the top four execs of the company. (Source: Axios). There’s evidence of content monitoring already being relaxed. Nothing else noteworthy has occurred this early in the game, but I’m sure there’s a whole avalanche at the top of that hill.

I have two public accounts on Twitter, one for general stuff with a tech lean and one primarily for my aviation endeavors. Both can easily be abandoned without much strife on my part. I’d simply leave them in place with minimal information in the profile and that’s that.

I’ve already been waffling about whether to stay with the platform. This is a struggle I constantly have in my head as I find it to be an incredibly detrimental time sink with not a lot of reward. I have met some great people through social media in general, especially Twitter, but like many things in the United States, since the beginning of the Trump era it went down the shitter. (There really isn’t an elegant way to state that fact). Kicking Trump off the platform was an improvement, but the fire of idiocy had been lit and there’s just a lot of incredibly stupid people out there saying things indicating their city speed limit IQs.

As I write this blog entry I’m talking myself out of going back there but like watching the proverbial train wreck, sometimes you want to see just how awful your fellow humans can be.

I believe the new regime at Twitter will give us plenty of opportunity to behold that spectacle.

In the meanwhile, you can find me on mastodon, which is much more complicated but open source and focused on privacy. The tech hoops one has to jump through to find their way around mastodon reminds me of using CompuServe or Prodigy in 1992, but it makes for a less reductive experience when it comes to content.

Here’s a link to an article on The Verge.

28 October 2022 by Geek 0

Lucky.

Lucky likes to keep it casual on a Thursday. I like to think his ears are a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n roll.

27 October 2022 by Desert Life. 0

Decade.

A year or so before I began my personal aviation journey, I was in the habit of watching airplanes and driving by small airports in the region. I browsed through Apple Photos to see what I was up to a year ago, and this is what I found: a photo of a runway.

26 October 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Upgrades?

So last week Apple announced an upgrade to their iPad Pro line and their “regular” iPad. There wasn’t a big event around the announcement; it was more of a “here’s some new stuff” press announcement, which Apple occasionally does.

The tech world is not impressed. Neither am I.

A month or two ago I replaced my 2018 iPad Pro with a newer 2020 model. The reason I went this route is because I wanted to use the same Magic Keyboard from my 2018 iPad Pro for my new 2020 model, and I figured Apple would change everything about the 2022 iPad Pro. This is what people wanted, a new chassis with things like the front facing camera moved to the side (or the top of the iPad Pro in landscape mode), like a traditional laptop. They did not do this. It’s the same chassis, using the same accessories, just with the faster M2 chip. The current software available for the iPad Pro barely taxes the M1 chip announced back in 2020, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade to an M2 chip. There’s nothing out there that needs that horsepower. Plus, there was no Magic Keyboard refresh announced for the iPad Pro, so we still go without a row of function keys. Not good for a techie, we still rely on things like the Escape key.

The new iPad, or the iPad 10, has a new design. The webcam has been moved to the top of the iPad in landscape mode and uses the same design language as the iPad Air. However, the new iPad 10 uses the older Apple Pencil, not the magnetic version found on the other new machines. And because the original Apple Pencil is designed to use a lightning port for charging, and the new iPad 10 has a USB-C port, to charge your pencil you have to buy a dongle from Apple to convert the USB-C port to a lightning port.

Apple sure loves its dongles.

They’ve been saying for years that Apple has lost its way a bit since Steve’s passing. The company needs a strong leader that is willing to get their hands dirty coming up with solutions. I feel like Apple is devolving to their 1990s era when they had way too many products and the lineup was confusing. As I mentioned on social media last week, all that’s missing is the iPad Performa.

25 October 2022 by Apple. 0

And So It Begins.

I wish I could say I’m excited about the impending holiday season. I don’t even really get excited about Halloween anymore. Perhaps I’m becoming a cranky old man.

While the holiday experience is enjoyable, there’s a certain magic in the air that seems to be missing, at least for me. The coziness of the holidays has been replaced by Black Friday Sales, Online Tuesday Sales, 24 hour shopping experiences on Thanksgiving day, electronics, electronics, electronics, and trying to figure out what to buy people who don’t want to tell you what they want so you have to guess.

I’m not that perceptive in that area.

Halloween is in full swing. I doubt our carved pumpkins will survive the desert heat to make it to Halloween, but we went through the motions and I’m filling up on roasted pumpkin seeds.

Fiber makes the holidays better.

24 October 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Rock.

We had a load of landscape gravel delivered to our home earlier this week. The load was seven tons and we all opted to move the gravel where it need to be ourselves. Today we finished the project and got the Yavapai (that’s the color designation, apparently) gravel where it needed to be.

I think the results are acceptable. My arms appreciated the work out.

23 October 2022 by Desert Life. 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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