Category: Apple

yet another apple aggravation

whbeebe

 

This is my Apple Watch Series 7. I purchased this fine instrument back in mid-2022 when Amazon was having a mid-year Black Friday style sale, and the Series 7 was being heavily discounted. My watch at that time was a Series 3, and even though it was the stainless steel bodied version with a whopping 16 MiB of internal storage (due to its ability to connect to a wireless network like my iPhone), it was beginning to show its age, and there was the threat that it wouldn’t get another major watchOS update past 2022. So I decided to take the hint and get the Series 7, even though the Series 3 was still perfectly usable.

This, of course, was my undoing in 2022. No sooner had the Series 7 gone on my wrist than Apple announced the Series 8, and some new features that would only be available on the Series 8 and later. I was unhappy, like I’d been unhappy when Apple released a version of iOS that would perform face recognition while wearing a mask with the iPhone 12 and later, but not with my iPhone 11 Pro Max at that time. This is how Apple rolls, and this is how Apple tempts their users of current and perfectly functional devices to drop more cash and stay on the upgrade treadmill. But I digress…

But wait, you ask. Didn’t I write about going back to my Citizen electro-mechanical watch over my Apple Watch? I did, but I’ve been using my Apple Watch to track a number of health metrics after I had my left knee replaced. Metrics such as number of steps/day, heart beat, blood oxygen levels, walking distance, total time exercise, total time spent outside in the sun, balance, etc, etc. All the metrics are good and getting better over time, since I started the measurements mid-July of 2024. I share my metrics with a number of my doctors. I’d rather be doing all of that, than popping some more questionable prescription meds.

I have no idea exactly when my Apple Watch starting to ask for account verification, except it was during a flurry of Apple software updates earlier this year. I’ve been having to deal with this, every morning, since about February or there abouts. Fortunately I had enough presence of mind this morning to grab a photo with my iPhone before I tapped the “Not Now” button to dismiss it. The Apple Watch 7 is still associated with my iPhone and I still get phone calls and haptic pings from my iPhone, as well as having my walking and exercise information being sent to my Health app on my iPhone. And if you think it’s a simple matter to type in a long password on the Apple Watch’s piss-ant tiny keyboard, without any visual feedback (i.e. seeing the password in plain text while you type it in), they you either don’t own one of these, or you’re just out of your pea-pickin’ mind.

This is what drives me crazy about Apple. Decisions Are Acted Upon and Software Changes Are Made and then buried in the release notes, with Dire Consequences for those trying to use these devices. I would have assumed that mere Bluetooth association from the iPhone I own and have to log into would take care of anything requiring security credentials for the devices to securely communicate, but oh no! In any event nothing is broken if I just tap “Not Now” and it only takes a second to tap that dismissal.

Which brings me up to password management in general. With the latest release of software, Apple split out password management from System Settings into its own Password app. Why is this a problem? Because there is no good way to update passwords within the app. I updated my Amazon password to something a lot stronger than what I had been using through the web interface. Unfortunately I use Vivaldi, and even though Vivaldi picked up the password update, Apple’s Password app did not. When I tried to update a password directly in Password, it wants to send me back to the website to change my password yet again, even though I’ve already changed it. What I was expecting was a simple dialog to appear and I would type in or copy the new password and then save that. Something simple.

Like I said Vivaldi knows, and fortunately for me I also maintain on my computer a file with up-to-date login information that I reference when I need to log in yet again, such as when for whatever reason the login credentials expire. As time goes along I wind up slowly changing a password here or there, and Passwords doesn’t pick up the changes, going further and further out of date as more passwords are changed. For managing something so critical as passwords, Apple’s Password app, and general password management, are worthless.

what is wrong with apple?

whbeebe2 Comments

This is a story about the old vs the new. In my case, it was about an Amazon Echo Dot generation 2 vs an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Let me explain…

I’ve been going around and cleaning out old items around my home, especially unmarked boxes that for whatever reason got stuffed into various corners, where they remained for many a year. When I say many, I’m talking about going back to when I was still fully employed. One day while going through one of those mystery boxes I found an Amazon Echo Dot generation 2 unopened in its box. I have no idea when I purchased it, although it had to be after October 2016 when this model was released. I do have an idea how it was placed into the box I found it in. Back then I was traveling a bit and and was very busy in my job, so we reached out to a cleaning company to get someone into our house to help my wife keep the place clean. One of the cleaning people had a bad habit of “temporarily” placing items into boxes in order to clear an area to clean. That cleaning person had a very bad habit of not telling us she’d done that, and it was but one reason she was eventually sent on her way. I thought I’d found everything she’d stashed away, but I was wrong with this particular item in that box.

We already have a number of Alexa/Amazon items in the house, although we barely use them except to play the occasional tune or to verbally ask Alexa to turn off the lights in one room of our house. We have three advanced models that can display the time, so I have those scattered around as heavily over-engineered digital clocks (and we’ll occasionally set a wakeup alarm with them). I decided to plug in this old/new stock Echo Dot and get it integrated our home network. That’s when my problems stated.

I have the latest Alexa app installed on my iPhone, and have had it on all my iPhones going back at least to Christmas 2016, which is when I believe I purchased this one. I use the Alexa app to bring these Echo devices up and integrated into our home network. Usually when I get a new Echo Dot it gets almost immediately powered on and set up, but apparently not this time. Now I was faced with using the latest iPhone with the latest Alexa app trying to integrate an Echo Dot from late 2016, nearly nine long years ago. A lot of technical advancement happens in a nine year period. And that might have been my problem.

With Alexa up and running on my iPhone and this Echo Dot up and waiting for integration, I found I couldn’t add it to my Alexa network using my iPhone 16, no matter how many times I tried. The iPhone with Alexa would not detect this Echo Dot. I wasted a week of evenings trying one solution after another, discovering yet again during this process that the Internet is full of useless advice. I gave up with the iPhone and was seriously considering tearing the Echo Dot open just to see if I could repurpose the electronics.

And then I reached into my collection of old Pixel Android phones and pulled out a Pixel 4a. I purchased a Pixel 2, a Pixel 3x, and two Pixel 4as back in 2020 for a project because they’d been heavily discounted by Amazon of all places. I’m talking half price or less. I picked the 4a because I like its small compact design. It was running Android 13, which is where Google stopped updating the device (which I can thank my luck stars). I could still install from Google Play so I installed the same version of Alexa on the Pixel 4a as I had on my iPhone 16. I then sat down and tried to bring the Echo Dot up using that Pixel 4a. Low and behold it worked the first time. That Echo Dot is now fully integrated in with the rest of my Amazon Echo devices.

So here’s the question. How is that that an “obsolete” Pixel 4a running Android 13 but the same version of Alexa that my latest and greatest iPhone 16 Pro Max, running the latest and greatest iOS version, and with the same version of Alexa as found on Google Play, can properly communicate with the Echo Dot generation 2 when my iPhone 16 can’t?

I have never regretted an Apple device purchase until now. I still wish I had my old iPhone 11 Pro Max, and I would still have it except the 11’s mobile radio was beginning to fail with dropped calls and an inability to be cleared unless the handset was power cycled. I couldn’t have that. The 16’s mobile radio is reliable (so far), so I should be thankful for that. But there have been enough aggravating quirks while operating the 16 that I wish I could trade it in for something completely different. But then I read the horror stories of Android handset problems, especially after an Android software update, and I just have to shake my head. I think it’s all been enshitified now. I need to start looking for much older Pixel handsets, such as perhaps the Pixel 5, or maybe the Pixel 6. Something old but reliable, like the 4as.

Today’s handsets and mobile operating systems are a classic Hobson’s choice.