Apple

I’ve been using my custom domain with iCloud email for a couple weeks. Truth be told I hardly notice any difference from when I used Gmail. That’s largely due to using Apple Mail app as my primary interface. I haven’t had any reliability issues and the only real difference I’ve noticed is the email size limit is 20MB as opposed to Gmail’s 25MB. The primary benefit I’ve seen is that calendar invites end up on my iCloud calendar, which is where I prefer them. ...

I’m in the process of migrating my email from Google Workspace to iCloud+. I’ve been using Google Workspace (aka gsuite, aka whatever name Google switches to next week) for my email for a long time. For ages it was free and made perfect sense as a service. Those free accounts have gone away, and the service’s focus is clearly aimed at the enterprise and not individuals like me. The price per user is also about to increase on me, so this felt like a good time to try something else. I’m only really interested in hosting email for a few custom domains and have no needs for any features beyond that. Our family already uses iCloud for everything so I figured why not give it a try. ...

Streaming Music Services VS an iTunes Addiction Music has been a huge part of my life for many years. I’m no longer a touring musician but I still play music as much as I can. Music is always playing in our house and I can’t imagine living life without it. Time has changed the way I listen to music a lot. I came of age in the era of the CD, but ever since I got my first iPod I’ve relied almost entirely on iTunes for my music consumption. At this point I’ve amassed a collection that would take 43 days to listen to. ...

My battery life has been absolutely terrible ever since I updated my iPhone 5 to iOS 6.0.1. Tonight I discovered it was because the brightness setting was set to the maximum after the update. Thinking this might’ve been some sort of fluke I checked my wife’s iPhone 4. Sure enough the brightness setting was maxed on hers too. If you’ve been having battery issues since the update you might want to double check this setting. ...

So Scott Forstall is out of Apple And Jony Ive now oversees interface design in addition to his hardware responsibilities. This will all make me really excited if they get rid of the stupid leather in the calendar app.

Reorganized the homescreen.

I too have been fiddling around with Bing for the past few weeks and have found it surprisingly good experience. The results seem just as good as Google’s and they look a lot more attractive and clutter free on the iPhone. Though oddly enough the desktop results seem a lot more cluttered on Bing than Google. I Switched to Bing on my iPhone and I kind of liked it

It did this without me dropping it. It was in my pocket and in an Incipio Feather case. I pulled it out to find it shattered all around the camera. Thankfully a few minutes at the Apple store and $29 later it was sporting a brand new back. As I thought about it on the train home it started to make more sense. Squaretrade sent me a refurbished replacement for my defective iPhone 4 a few months back. I was positive that their replacement used 3rd party glass for the front and the back. There was no oleophobic coating and fingerprints were extremely difficult to wipe off. Something also felt different about the glass. I put an oleophobic screen protector on the font. It scratches a lot more easily than the glass but it also only takes a swipe of the shirt to clean. There was no such solution for the back. Now that I have a true Apple back again, I realize what a big difference there e is. I really think the glass shattered because it was cheap knock off replacement part used by Squaretrade. ...

A couple weeks ago my iPhone developed a permanent vertical line down the right side of the screen. I have a Squaretrade extended warranty on the phone so I filed a claim. Squaretrade responded less than 12 hours later to request pictures. It is difficult to capture with a camera, but I did the best I could. I emailed Squaretrade these pictures at 9pm. The next morning I already had a response in my inbox saying my claim was approved and they would be overnighting a (refurbished) replacement phone. It was an incredibly easy process and Squaretrade was a pleasure to deal with. I also did not have to pay any form of deductible since it wasn’t considered accidental damage (i.e. cracked screen, phone in toilet). ...

Yesterday I determined a compromise. I’m going to keep using iCloud for contacts and calendars. Google sync makes a mess of contacts, iCloud “just works.” I’ll keep using Gmail for my main email. I’ll access it through Apple Mail on the desktop and the iPhone’s built in mail app. Here’s how I set it up to avoid duplicate messages and other craziness. Log into Gmail’s settings and navigate to the labels tab. Here you can control which labels show up in IMAP. What I did was hide all mail, starred, and important from IMAP. ...