Archive
Apple Watch: Check-in After a week
I’ve had the watch a little over a week now. Saturday, I ran into the first relatively major glitch. I got my watch while I was cutting the grass and finished cutting it wearing the watch, but using my iPhone for music. This past Saturday was the first time I cut the grass since I got the watch. I had loaded music onto the watch, I paired my Plantronics Bluetooth headphones to the watch and started cutting the grass without my iPhone for the first time in years.
Apple Watch Doesn’t NEED GPS: Use 1960’s Technology Instead
On July 9, 1985, I boarded a plane at Dayton Airport and few to San Antonio, Texas where I entered Air Force Basic (it’s hard not to type that as BASIC) training at Lackland Air Force Base. I spent 6 weeks there and then 30+ weeks at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. I had taken the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and scored well enough to choose whatever field the base (I was joining the Ohio Air National Guard, so unlike regular Air Force enlistees, I knew where I was going to end up after I finished tech school) had an opening for. I decided to become an Inertial and RADAR Navigation Specialist. I would be maintaining and repairing navigation systems on LTV A-7 Corsair II Fighter jets. This jet first flew 2 years before I was born and the dates on the tails of the ones at our based ranged from 1968 to 1972. They weren’t exactly high tech (by 1985 standards) and are ancient by today’s standards. But, they had a technology that I’ve been hearing a lot lately, and, based on what I know about it from my Air Force training, I’m wondering if we are using the technology to its fullest potential.
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Apple Watch Additional Observations
Saturday, I posted about my first 24 hours with the Apple Watch. Since then, I have a few more things to note about how it works.
24 Hours of Apple Watch
After the first 24 hours of owning an Apple Watch, I thought I would put down some of my initial impressions.
How to Keep Gmail, but Not Actually Use it
I’ve been using Gmail since it was first introduced. I’ve had my own domain since 1996, and in 2000, registered a second domain.
When Google introduced the Google Apps product, I moved my mail for both domains to it. I still have grandfathered free accounts there. So, all of my mail goes through these two domains. I have an account on both of them, but I forward one to the other and only ever really set one of them up in my mail clients. I’ve been pretty happy with the Gmail service until I got my new iPhone 5s.
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My Ultra-Paranoid Backup Strategy
I am super-paranoid about losing data. I have ben using digital cameras since 1999. My oldest Daughter was one at the time.
This is the first digital camera picture I took of Megan.
There does not appear to be EXIF data on the picture, but I know it was an HP PhotoSmart camera.
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of things to protect these important files. I’ve burned then to CD and DVD, I’ve copied them to external drives and thumb drives. I’ve backed them up to Mozy (back when they actually had a reasonably-priced unlimited plan), then Carbonite (until I hit their cap where while they don’t tell you you cannot upload anything else, they slow down the upload to basically enforce a limit).
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Avoid Telemarketer Calls on iPhone
About once a week, I get a call from “The Captain” telling me I’ve won a free cruise. It always starts with the sound of a cruise ship horn. It also always comes from a Washington state phone number, so I have gotten used to just ignoring the call if it comes from there.
But now, I have found a great idea from Blogger David Smith on how to minimize the impact of unwanted calls. You can’t stop them, but David’s idea greatly reduces how disruptive they are.
Check it out here.
How Apple Lost its Way and Found it Again
We all know Steve Jobs saved Apple. How did he do it? Well, it was a lot of things, actually. But the one I think was the biggest can be seen by looking at the number of different computer models Apple was releasing.
Apple started with one product. The Apple I. Steve Wozniak built this computer and was basically giving the plans away at the home-brew computer club meetings. Steve Jobs saw that people didn’t have the time or patience to build them and proposed that they sell the boards to make it easier. They started Apple Computer and started selling bare boards that could be combined with a keyboard and a TV and turned into a computer.
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Digital Video Content
I know from past experience, that Apple really is not interested in pretty much anything their users have to say. They dictate, and we meekly accept whatever they deign to allow us to do.
But at least for the short term, there is a huge problem (from a consumer standpoint, not so much for Apple) with the way they are making video available.
Video on the iTunes store is HUGE!
I was in Vegas on a business trip. The hotel I stayed at had pay per day Internet, and it was per device and was not WiFi. I brought my Verizon MiFi with me, so opted not to pay the $14 per day for in-room Internet. This was fine for everything except getting a new movie on my iPad for my trip home. My trip home was going to take 10+ hours, and I would have actually preferred 2 movies, but there was a problem with that.
Video on the iTunes store is HUGE!
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Flash
Steve Jobs was at least mostly, if not completely wrong about Flash on mobile devices. There. I said it.
Let me start by saying that I don’t care about Flash. I am completely indifferent about Adobe and anything they do or have done. I feel the same way about flash as I feel about HTML, High Def TV, 3D movies or speed limits on highways. They exist, they serve their purpose, and we have to live with them. Does Flash cause problems? Sure. Would the world be better off if Flash had never existed? It’s a moot point, because it does exist. Does ignoring flash make it go away? This is a resounding “no”!
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