As of this writing, we are into week two without cellular access on our iPhones (See “Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss” in last week’s Reader).
I think the biggest thing I miss is reading the Duluth News Tribune, Star Tribune, and the New York Times at breakfast and lunch. To check email, statements, and other important and unimportant information, we have to go to the library or coffee shops. I’m drinking a lot more coffee than I normally do.
The easiest is to walk to Chester Creek Café at the corner. But we don’t want to take up a table when there are many lunch or dinner customers.
Perk Place is a quiet place, but for some reason I could not log on to their server. Another Mac user had been successful. I wonder if he was using a newer operating system. A staff member did get me signed on using the coffee shop account.
Once upon a time I would walk to Bixby’s and other shops at Mt. Royal, but every year the hill up Woodland Avenue seems to get steeper, especially with a backpack with a computer. And so I wimp out and drive.
The Mount Royal Library may or may not be crowded. When I went on Thursday it wasn’t, but it did take a bit of effort to log in. I was successful with my iPhone and iPad, but I never managed to click all the right buttons for my laptop.
A diversion at the library was looking for a follow-on book after viewing “The Young Victoria”. The movie had a lot of follow-on summary information. I wanted to know more about her reign and her successors. I used my iPhone to sign on to the catalog and select some books. Having the call numbers of the desired titles on my iPhone sure beat copying those numbers onto paper from the library computers.
Caribou at Mount Royal Market is spacious and quiet. It’s biggest drawback is that there are no power outlets at the tables.
And at the cabin we are completely disconnected from the web. At least, we can still use our phones.
So, I have to carefully plan all my work before hand. I am writing this at home and will go to one of the coffee shops to email it to the Reader. I have to write most of my email beforehand. I have to plan ahead what web sites to visit.
One of those plan-ahead sites was the Apple Support Community. While at a coffee shop I downloaded thirteen threads about excessive data usage. It’s nice to know that I am not alone with this problem. Some useful advice, some blaming the user, but no really clear cut advice.
I do know first hand that solving computer problems can be a long, arduous project. Relevant information comes in dribbles from the customer and lots of digging by programmers. I was the lead investigator of frequent crashes of a Univac 1108 in Sweden. Many of the memory dumps showed a particular program was active. I badgered to customer into giving me a copy of the program. I took the copy to another site and the program crashed because it was putting data outside of its assigned space. To make the story short, the problem was they were using an outdated library and that their computer had a memory protection failure. I think it took three months from the first alarm to final resolution. And those computers were a lot simpler than what we carry in our pockets now!
Once upon a time it was said that Mac owners never used a manual. I did look up a few things now and then, mostly just what keys did I need to push to get å, ä, é, î, ö, and other western European characters. The Mac’s were described as WIMPs: Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pictures. Just about everything you needed to know was obvious from one of these.
Even then, many users came up with seemingly intractable problems. Apple’s answer was to encourage user groups. Unfortunately, often there was nobody at a meeting who had an answer. I remember somebody asking why they couldn’t make their “Whiz Bang” printer work on a Mac. The leader would ask if anybody had a solution and look around the room. Not a hand went up. This happened over and over again.
The human interface, the computing power, and the range of software has improved exponentially in the last 31 years (remember the 1984 Apple ad). We can do many tasks quickly and easily just by poking the screen or dragging a finger over it. But when things go wrong! Hoo boy!
I think I caused my problem with an inadvertent reset. My choices include going back to the last iCloud backup, but would that be done before the coffee shop closed? By reading the manual, I found that I can double-click the home button, swipe up on the screen, and then slide through all the open apps. I can close an app by sliding its image up. This doesn’t remove the app from my iPhone, it just stops it from doing any harm.
Once September rolls around, we’ll have the data part of our Consumer Cellular contract restored. I think the closing apps plan is my best alternative. I’ll start with only keeping the supposedly harmless apps open: Weather, Mail, Calendar, and a few other standards. Then I’ll have to wait until all the data is in for that six-hour period. If usage seems normal, I’ll keep a few more apps open. Either I’ll eventually find the run-away app or that the conditions are such that the app is now behaving.
Meanwhile, I’ll be drinking lots of coffee. I thought of having beer instead, but it will be just my luck to knock over the glass…
Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/26/5837_clawing_out_of_the_abyss.
Showing posts with label runaway app. Show all posts
Showing posts with label runaway app. Show all posts
Friday, August 28, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Cutting the cord and falling into the abyss
We received so many unsolicited calls on our land line that we stopped picking up the phone until we knew who the caller was. Too often, no message was left.
I received almost only junk email on my cpinternet account through our CenturyLink account. Besides offers of garage door openers and of sex, I received messages in Japanese and Turkish. Very rarely did an old contact use this account.
Besides, our nominal 7Mbps speed was often under 4Mbps. We were eligible for an upgrade to 12Mbps, but we had to call an 800 number to find the details. Once upon a time, Qwest, the predecessor to CenturyLink would state on its website how much 256Kbps, 512Kbps, and 1Mbps would cost, exclusive of taxes and fees.
A digression on telecommunication taxes and fees: the telecommunication companies (telcos) can’t give these accurately because the vary widely from locale to locale and narrowly from month to month.
We also had an iPhone 4s through Virgin Mobile (VM) because we got a deal a few years ago from Best Buy.
Along the way, we started using cell phones through Consumer Cellular: you can’t miss their ads, especially if you are an AARP member. Consumer Cellular (CC) stated on its website the exact cost of each service and its level that you requested. You could change these at any time, either up or down. I eventually bought an iPhone 5s from CC. They piggy back on the AT&T network (at 3G rather than 4G). Not only could I use the iPhone in Brimson, but I could use the phone as a hotspot for my iPad or MacBook.
With all of these providers, our total monthly payments seemed to be getting out of hand. I did a small spreadsheet to compare using only CC instead of multiple providers. If we bought another CC iPhone, our costs would drop about a thousand dollars per year (not including monthly payments for new phone. Even then, we would still save hundreds of dollars a year.
One problem was our wireless printer. How would we access it without our DSL modem? I pulled the phone cord from the modem and found that the printer still worked. The DSL modem was our router, even if it was not connected to the phone system.
We ordered a new CC iPhone 5c, and when it arrived, we set it up for my wife’s use. We could also use it as a hotspot, and so she wouldn’t have to depend on my iPhone if I was elsewhere. Also, because it worked in Brimson, we could use our phones as walkie-talkies. We would have much better reception, and nobody else would be listening to our calls.
Except, we couldn’t get her phone to work because we couldn’t transfer the VM number without an account number. None of our VM bills had an account number, only the phone number. We had to call VM, and of course, the first person we talked to couldn’t do it. We were switched to someone who suggested we might get a better deal. Unmentioned was the cost. After I don’t know how many minutes, we were told our account number. Then we called CC with it and they activated my wife’s iPhone. We didn’t have this hassle when we dropped our land line at our cabin and put it on a Home Base wireless system.
Next step was to call CenturyLink to cancel our phone and DSL. Again, we were routed to someone who tried selling us faster service. We declined, and sometime in the next day or two the phone no longer worked, but the modem still accessed the network.
Ah yes, we had separate ISP, CPinternet, from the bad old days when we had only 56Kbps dial-up (56 Kilo bits per second for those too young to remember dial-up). When we started with QWest at 256Kbps we kept CPInternet as our provider. CPInternet really had great customer service, too. Then CPInternet was bought by Hickory Tech of Mankato. Then Hickory Tech bought Enventis and assumed its name. Still great customer service. Then Consolidated Communications of somewhere bought Enventis. I didn’t have much need to call customer service, until we wanted to cancel our ISP connection. My first attempt got the automatic wait message of something like “Enventis is now Consolidated Communications”. On the ninth reiteration of this, I hung up, and tried another time.
Then new problems started, some of them my own doing.
The printer works from my wife’s iMac, but not my MacBook, the one I tested printing from.
I attempted to reset my wife’s old iPhone to erase all our data before recycling it. It needed the password for her Apple ID. We thought we knew it, but all the variants we tried were rejected. I spent over a half-hour with Apple Support trying to resolve it. Terry cheerfully assured me that he had seen many problems like this. Unfortunately, he had to admit defeat and suggested we take it to a Genius Bar in an Apple Store.
In all my attempts to reset her phone, I picked up my iPhone and clicked reset. Ah! My Apple ID. My password worked. Dummy! You just reset your own iPhone!
I’m running out of space, but I’ll give the short story on the next problem. We used up our quota of CC data and were automatically cut off. I finally figured out that my iPhone was still trying to load the one program that was no longer available from iTunes, over and over and …!
Iiee-
ee-
ee-…
This also was printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-08-20 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/20/5807_cutting_the_cord_and_falling_into_the_abyss.
I received almost only junk email on my cpinternet account through our CenturyLink account. Besides offers of garage door openers and of sex, I received messages in Japanese and Turkish. Very rarely did an old contact use this account.
Besides, our nominal 7Mbps speed was often under 4Mbps. We were eligible for an upgrade to 12Mbps, but we had to call an 800 number to find the details. Once upon a time, Qwest, the predecessor to CenturyLink would state on its website how much 256Kbps, 512Kbps, and 1Mbps would cost, exclusive of taxes and fees.
A digression on telecommunication taxes and fees: the telecommunication companies (telcos) can’t give these accurately because the vary widely from locale to locale and narrowly from month to month.
We also had an iPhone 4s through Virgin Mobile (VM) because we got a deal a few years ago from Best Buy.
Along the way, we started using cell phones through Consumer Cellular: you can’t miss their ads, especially if you are an AARP member. Consumer Cellular (CC) stated on its website the exact cost of each service and its level that you requested. You could change these at any time, either up or down. I eventually bought an iPhone 5s from CC. They piggy back on the AT&T network (at 3G rather than 4G). Not only could I use the iPhone in Brimson, but I could use the phone as a hotspot for my iPad or MacBook.
With all of these providers, our total monthly payments seemed to be getting out of hand. I did a small spreadsheet to compare using only CC instead of multiple providers. If we bought another CC iPhone, our costs would drop about a thousand dollars per year (not including monthly payments for new phone. Even then, we would still save hundreds of dollars a year.
One problem was our wireless printer. How would we access it without our DSL modem? I pulled the phone cord from the modem and found that the printer still worked. The DSL modem was our router, even if it was not connected to the phone system.
We ordered a new CC iPhone 5c, and when it arrived, we set it up for my wife’s use. We could also use it as a hotspot, and so she wouldn’t have to depend on my iPhone if I was elsewhere. Also, because it worked in Brimson, we could use our phones as walkie-talkies. We would have much better reception, and nobody else would be listening to our calls.
Except, we couldn’t get her phone to work because we couldn’t transfer the VM number without an account number. None of our VM bills had an account number, only the phone number. We had to call VM, and of course, the first person we talked to couldn’t do it. We were switched to someone who suggested we might get a better deal. Unmentioned was the cost. After I don’t know how many minutes, we were told our account number. Then we called CC with it and they activated my wife’s iPhone. We didn’t have this hassle when we dropped our land line at our cabin and put it on a Home Base wireless system.
Next step was to call CenturyLink to cancel our phone and DSL. Again, we were routed to someone who tried selling us faster service. We declined, and sometime in the next day or two the phone no longer worked, but the modem still accessed the network.
Ah yes, we had separate ISP, CPinternet, from the bad old days when we had only 56Kbps dial-up (56 Kilo bits per second for those too young to remember dial-up). When we started with QWest at 256Kbps we kept CPInternet as our provider. CPInternet really had great customer service, too. Then CPInternet was bought by Hickory Tech of Mankato. Then Hickory Tech bought Enventis and assumed its name. Still great customer service. Then Consolidated Communications of somewhere bought Enventis. I didn’t have much need to call customer service, until we wanted to cancel our ISP connection. My first attempt got the automatic wait message of something like “Enventis is now Consolidated Communications”. On the ninth reiteration of this, I hung up, and tried another time.
Then new problems started, some of them my own doing.
The printer works from my wife’s iMac, but not my MacBook, the one I tested printing from.
I attempted to reset my wife’s old iPhone to erase all our data before recycling it. It needed the password for her Apple ID. We thought we knew it, but all the variants we tried were rejected. I spent over a half-hour with Apple Support trying to resolve it. Terry cheerfully assured me that he had seen many problems like this. Unfortunately, he had to admit defeat and suggested we take it to a Genius Bar in an Apple Store.
In all my attempts to reset her phone, I picked up my iPhone and clicked reset. Ah! My Apple ID. My password worked. Dummy! You just reset your own iPhone!
I’m running out of space, but I’ll give the short story on the next problem. We used up our quota of CC data and were automatically cut off. I finally figured out that my iPhone was still trying to load the one program that was no longer available from iTunes, over and over and …!
Iiee-
ee-
ee-…
This also was printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-08-20 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/08/20/5807_cutting_the_cord_and_falling_into_the_abyss.
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