I am sending the following paper letter to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
Tim Cook
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
Dear Mr. Cook,
It is 1984 and Apple is Big Brother!
I have been debugging software, my own and others’, for fifty-nine years. In 1983 I left corporate life to work on personal computers. Some of them were more difficult to program than the main-frames I had worked on.
Then came Apple and the Macintosh in 1984. By September I had my first Mac (and a Lisa). Pascal was a joy of simplicity, even if I had to do it through the Lisa. Every time a new Mac came out, I was eager to buy one as soon as possible. More storage, more speed. Hurray!
One of the standing jokes was that Mac owners didn’t need manuals because of WIMP. About the only thing I needed a manual for was how to use diacritical marks in text (åäéñ).
Then OS X came. I never did recover everything that I had on my on-the-floor box. For awhile, I did upgrade to a new OS X. But changes started making old stuff obsolete. Or changes were rather gratuitous. Did iPhoto really need new background colors? Did iPhoto need to change how photos were annotated? It seems that changes were made more to keep programmers busy than give the users truly better software.
I’ve been in that position before. I didn’t want to maintain the old mainframe software; I wanted to work on the new hardware.
I have a long list of peeves of how Apple software changed gratuitously from simple one-step operations to operations with a hidden second step. I got to the point that I would only change major levels of software when I bought a new computer.
Then, either deliberately or accidentally, I upgraded to Sierra on my lap top. Fortunately I was at a coffee shop with unlimited internet access instead of at home with a limited monthly access. One of the big surprises was that Sierra dumped all of my Document folder to iCloud!! It was lots of “fun” moving it back to my MacBook Air. I know lots of people who would have to go to Geek Squad or other help professionals to get through this.
My wife’s iMac is swiftly deteriorating. Again, we have to do a lot of fussing to move data to my old MacBook Pro. The disk drive no longer works. Fortunately, we have some large capacity thumb drives so we were able to move her Document folder to the MacBook Pro.
And thumb drives get me to another of my Apple peeves. If one pulls out a thumb drive without “deleting” it, all the data is lost. This is really a 1984 nightmare.
How many of “the rest of us” has Apple left behind?
Showing posts with label wi-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wi-fi. Show all posts
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Thursday, April 07, 2016
The Blamer Games
Sometime last year I switched from Republic Bank to Pioneer National Bank. I could not access Republic Bank from my cell phone using cellular data. I could access my account if I went to a coffee shop and used wi-fi.
Republic Bank and Consumer Cellular (my cellular) provider each absolved themselves of any problem. Republic Bank said that Consumer Cellular was changing its IP address. Consumer Cellular said they were not.
I could access my wife’s accounts at Pioneer National Bank without a problem. So, I switched my account to Pioneer also.
Now this problem has raised its ugly head again. I tried making a estimated tax payment to the State of Minnesota. It would not open any page where I was to provide information, whether I wanted to pay online or just request a form to pay by mail. It said I had cookies turned off. This happened with both FireFox and Safari. With Safari it happened both with my MacBook Air and with my iPhone.
As far as I could see, in both FireFox and Safari I did not have cookies turned off. In fact, in one of these browsers I had a long list of cookies.
I went to Perk Place and bingo, everything worked. Same laptop. I have a receipt in my email.
Wanna bet that somebody will blame the problem on my Mac. As I gaze around the coffee shop, I see over a dozen Mac laptops and only on or two other laptops. I think these providers better get with the program.
I have heard this same thing from the Duluth News Tribune, a problem with Macs. I can’t even access the Olive edition of the DNT. Olive is the name of the software that provides a facsimile of the printed edition and allows expanding any article for easier reading. However, I access the Olive edition of the Star Tribune without problem. In fact, the Strib has even fixed the annoying problem of inconsistent expansion of the comics.
This whole mess would be comical if it weren’t so time-consuming and frustrating.
Republic Bank and Consumer Cellular (my cellular) provider each absolved themselves of any problem. Republic Bank said that Consumer Cellular was changing its IP address. Consumer Cellular said they were not.
I could access my wife’s accounts at Pioneer National Bank without a problem. So, I switched my account to Pioneer also.
Now this problem has raised its ugly head again. I tried making a estimated tax payment to the State of Minnesota. It would not open any page where I was to provide information, whether I wanted to pay online or just request a form to pay by mail. It said I had cookies turned off. This happened with both FireFox and Safari. With Safari it happened both with my MacBook Air and with my iPhone.
As far as I could see, in both FireFox and Safari I did not have cookies turned off. In fact, in one of these browsers I had a long list of cookies.
I went to Perk Place and bingo, everything worked. Same laptop. I have a receipt in my email.
Wanna bet that somebody will blame the problem on my Mac. As I gaze around the coffee shop, I see over a dozen Mac laptops and only on or two other laptops. I think these providers better get with the program.
I have heard this same thing from the Duluth News Tribune, a problem with Macs. I can’t even access the Olive edition of the DNT. Olive is the name of the software that provides a facsimile of the printed edition and allows expanding any article for easier reading. However, I access the Olive edition of the Star Tribune without problem. In fact, the Strib has even fixed the annoying problem of inconsistent expansion of the comics.
This whole mess would be comical if it weren’t so time-consuming and frustrating.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Banks, security, and ease of use
When we cut the cord and went wireless, we had a large number of problems including runaway data and bank access.
We solved the runaway data problem by cutting out automatic downloads and monitoring our usage.
Bank access is another problem. Some banks put up a huge security wall, others just require an ID and a password from a known computer. If you change computers, then they will send a text message to a known phone. The huge security wall can be a real problem if you don’t have the “right” phone and the “right” browser.
You would think as more and more people go wireless, the banks would make it as easy as possible for depositors to access their systems. Many people really don’t want to do the research to find out why they can’t access their bank. And it is in the bank’s interest to have people bank online so that they need fewer tellers.
i bank at Republic Bank of Duluth. I get all kinds of weird results including something like “If this error persists, contact the system administrator." The long, long error code seems never to be the same and no phone number, email address, or feedback page is provided to contact the system administrator.
I have talked to a branch manager about this and she in turn called somebody in tech support. The only thing they could tell me was that my provider, Consumer Cellular, was changing the IP address. Consumer Cellular support says that CC is not changing the IP address.
I did figure out that I had the wrong cellular phone number in my account. I changed that and things seemed to work for awhile. Then the phone number went blank on my account! I reset it again, and I have again sporadic success, more often not.
I have no such problems using Wi-Fi at coffee shops. Can the banks ensure the security of every coffee shop’s Wi-Fi?
My wife banks at Pioneer Bank of Duluth. She has no problem accessing her account through cellular data. That is via Firefox on her Mac and Safari on her iPad. When I accessed her account on my MacBook via Firefox, the web page asked me to select a phone number for a text message. When the text message came to my wife’s phone, I entered the number on my Mac and gained access to her account.
I might switch my funds to Pioneer if Republic doesn’t have a solution soon. But as I don’t care for the format of Pioneer’s statements, I am also considering Members Co-operative Credit Union of Duluth (MCCU). Also, I’m partial to co-operatives over corporations.
I had a long conversation with an MCCU representative and found out that their online banking doesn’t work with certain phones and browsers. She had no information about access via Consumer Cellular.
I have decades of computer experience and sometimes relish unraveling problems. Sometimes it seems I know less and less about more and more. Think about all the people who are afraid their devices might crash if they push the wrong button.
If organizations really want people to access them online, you would think they would bend over backward to make it as simple as possible. But no, they operate in their own little silo and expect all users to accept their way of doing things.
How many people do you know who would have problems figuring out half of what I have written above? If I am confused by all that I have learned, how confused would many others be?
We solved the runaway data problem by cutting out automatic downloads and monitoring our usage.
Bank access is another problem. Some banks put up a huge security wall, others just require an ID and a password from a known computer. If you change computers, then they will send a text message to a known phone. The huge security wall can be a real problem if you don’t have the “right” phone and the “right” browser.
You would think as more and more people go wireless, the banks would make it as easy as possible for depositors to access their systems. Many people really don’t want to do the research to find out why they can’t access their bank. And it is in the bank’s interest to have people bank online so that they need fewer tellers.
i bank at Republic Bank of Duluth. I get all kinds of weird results including something like “If this error persists, contact the system administrator." The long, long error code seems never to be the same and no phone number, email address, or feedback page is provided to contact the system administrator.
I have talked to a branch manager about this and she in turn called somebody in tech support. The only thing they could tell me was that my provider, Consumer Cellular, was changing the IP address. Consumer Cellular support says that CC is not changing the IP address.
I did figure out that I had the wrong cellular phone number in my account. I changed that and things seemed to work for awhile. Then the phone number went blank on my account! I reset it again, and I have again sporadic success, more often not.
I have no such problems using Wi-Fi at coffee shops. Can the banks ensure the security of every coffee shop’s Wi-Fi?
My wife banks at Pioneer Bank of Duluth. She has no problem accessing her account through cellular data. That is via Firefox on her Mac and Safari on her iPad. When I accessed her account on my MacBook via Firefox, the web page asked me to select a phone number for a text message. When the text message came to my wife’s phone, I entered the number on my Mac and gained access to her account.
I might switch my funds to Pioneer if Republic doesn’t have a solution soon. But as I don’t care for the format of Pioneer’s statements, I am also considering Members Co-operative Credit Union of Duluth (MCCU). Also, I’m partial to co-operatives over corporations.
I had a long conversation with an MCCU representative and found out that their online banking doesn’t work with certain phones and browsers. She had no information about access via Consumer Cellular.
I have decades of computer experience and sometimes relish unraveling problems. Sometimes it seems I know less and less about more and more. Think about all the people who are afraid their devices might crash if they push the wrong button.
If organizations really want people to access them online, you would think they would bend over backward to make it as simple as possible. But no, they operate in their own little silo and expect all users to accept their way of doing things.
How many people do you know who would have problems figuring out half of what I have written above? If I am confused by all that I have learned, how confused would many others be?
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Teetering on the edge of the abyss
I apologize to my dozen readers for not submitting a column for last week. I was still in Internet purgatory and could not give you any further information about my accommodation to our surprises with cordless access. I did have a couple ideas on politics, but I just couldn’t come up with more than 200 words for either of them.
Because you are reading this you know that our provider, Consumer Cellular, has let us have Wi-Fi access again. But even that was iffy. Our access was not turned on until I called around 9:00 on the morning of the first of September. Then for some reason it was blocked again. Another call.
I still have no idea why we were having run-away data in the middle of August. Over a gigabyte in one six-hour period when I wasn’t even knowingly accessing the Web!
I did learn from a search of Apple Community Support that one can close all open apps. My run-away problem could have been a run-away app that kept pinging the web. Anyhow, to close open apps push the home button twice. Miniatures of all of your open apps will appear from left to right. Swipe up on each miniature and the app will be closed. When you click on the app in the home screen, it will open again in the same state as when you closed it.
Don’t worry about closing your phone and message apps. When a call or text message come in, your iPhone will open the necessary app.
I am carefully monitoring my usage both by checking usage with the settings app on my iPhone and with the Consumer Cellular website. Already I have used 826 MB of my 4,096 MB limit, and we are not even five days into the month.
I am not going to be downloading podcasts or updating apps on my dime. I used 135 MB updating three apps and 250 MB getting the latest episodes of four podcasts. Since I download podcasts once a week that would be 1,000 MB a month.
I will definitely be updating these from coffee shops.
I use seven to twenty MB per session accessing accounts and paying bills. I use about twenty MB reading newspapers. These may be doable from home, but I will wait a few days before I resume accessing these from home.
So far today I have accessed the web from an Essentia Health cafeteria before exercising and from Whole Foods Co-op while my wife shopped. I plan to send this from Mt. Royal Market when I’m done.
Let’s see, two coffees a day at two to three dollars each. That would be $120 to $180 a month. That is more than my savings from cutting the cord! Well, I should be getting out of the house more often. And we are not getting all those robocalls on our landline.
Robocalls remind me of diatribe letters that I get every so often. The writer puts on the outside of the envelope in big, oversize, multi-colored capital letters some diatribe about Obama. I don’t even bother reading all the outside message, the letter goes unopened into the recycling box.
Actually, I am apolitical about all of these dire consequence letters, surveys, whatever else some group sends out: Back Obama! Stop the Republicans! Save the whales! All of them go unopened into the recycle box. We get at least six a week.
Back to our regularly scheduled article.
Some glitches cause one to wonder what is going on. I would access my bank account, enter my ID and password, and then get a big message about “System Error”. But it didn’t happen all the time. I think the first time might have coincided with Consumer Cellular turning my account off again on the first day of restoring service. But it also happened yesterday, and today it worked fine.
One app I thought would eat up a lot of data is FaceTime. Our son called my wife’s FaceTime account and they chatted for fifteen minutes or so. The usage on her phone only went up by about 50 MB. I think this might be because FaceTime has some excellent data compression.
Apropos data compression, I hope newspaper sites that play video ads automatically have good data compression. I hope the same for those interesting videos in the New York Times Science section: like two octopuses fighting.
From some of the postings in the Apple Support Community, I did learn that one can increase the data limit with AT&T. I believe it was well beyond the 4 GB we can get from Consumer Cellular. I think also AT&T provides 4G service rather than 3G service. I should look these up as well as LTE. I believe the higher level of service gives better quality and faster speed.
Ah, speed! Sometimes I watch a page come up in a blink of an eye, and sometimes I wonder if the progress bar is even moving. Is it that a site has a large number of users, the site has some other problem, the network has a problem, or my computer has a problem? Or all of the preceding?
Apropos AT&T, we received a card this week offering “$300 in credits when you switch to AT&T”. You have to visit a store, shop at a website, or call an 800 number. There is also a square to scan with a smartphone.
I read the square and found prices per month to buy individual iPhones, but it was unclear how much monthly service would cost and how much data would be available. So much for the free market (buyers have all the information they need).
Also appears in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-09-09
Because you are reading this you know that our provider, Consumer Cellular, has let us have Wi-Fi access again. But even that was iffy. Our access was not turned on until I called around 9:00 on the morning of the first of September. Then for some reason it was blocked again. Another call.
I still have no idea why we were having run-away data in the middle of August. Over a gigabyte in one six-hour period when I wasn’t even knowingly accessing the Web!
I did learn from a search of Apple Community Support that one can close all open apps. My run-away problem could have been a run-away app that kept pinging the web. Anyhow, to close open apps push the home button twice. Miniatures of all of your open apps will appear from left to right. Swipe up on each miniature and the app will be closed. When you click on the app in the home screen, it will open again in the same state as when you closed it.
Don’t worry about closing your phone and message apps. When a call or text message come in, your iPhone will open the necessary app.
I am carefully monitoring my usage both by checking usage with the settings app on my iPhone and with the Consumer Cellular website. Already I have used 826 MB of my 4,096 MB limit, and we are not even five days into the month.
I am not going to be downloading podcasts or updating apps on my dime. I used 135 MB updating three apps and 250 MB getting the latest episodes of four podcasts. Since I download podcasts once a week that would be 1,000 MB a month.
I will definitely be updating these from coffee shops.
I use seven to twenty MB per session accessing accounts and paying bills. I use about twenty MB reading newspapers. These may be doable from home, but I will wait a few days before I resume accessing these from home.
So far today I have accessed the web from an Essentia Health cafeteria before exercising and from Whole Foods Co-op while my wife shopped. I plan to send this from Mt. Royal Market when I’m done.
Let’s see, two coffees a day at two to three dollars each. That would be $120 to $180 a month. That is more than my savings from cutting the cord! Well, I should be getting out of the house more often. And we are not getting all those robocalls on our landline.
Robocalls remind me of diatribe letters that I get every so often. The writer puts on the outside of the envelope in big, oversize, multi-colored capital letters some diatribe about Obama. I don’t even bother reading all the outside message, the letter goes unopened into the recycling box.
Actually, I am apolitical about all of these dire consequence letters, surveys, whatever else some group sends out: Back Obama! Stop the Republicans! Save the whales! All of them go unopened into the recycle box. We get at least six a week.
Back to our regularly scheduled article.
Some glitches cause one to wonder what is going on. I would access my bank account, enter my ID and password, and then get a big message about “System Error”. But it didn’t happen all the time. I think the first time might have coincided with Consumer Cellular turning my account off again on the first day of restoring service. But it also happened yesterday, and today it worked fine.
One app I thought would eat up a lot of data is FaceTime. Our son called my wife’s FaceTime account and they chatted for fifteen minutes or so. The usage on her phone only went up by about 50 MB. I think this might be because FaceTime has some excellent data compression.
Apropos data compression, I hope newspaper sites that play video ads automatically have good data compression. I hope the same for those interesting videos in the New York Times Science section: like two octopuses fighting.
From some of the postings in the Apple Support Community, I did learn that one can increase the data limit with AT&T. I believe it was well beyond the 4 GB we can get from Consumer Cellular. I think also AT&T provides 4G service rather than 3G service. I should look these up as well as LTE. I believe the higher level of service gives better quality and faster speed.
Ah, speed! Sometimes I watch a page come up in a blink of an eye, and sometimes I wonder if the progress bar is even moving. Is it that a site has a large number of users, the site has some other problem, the network has a problem, or my computer has a problem? Or all of the preceding?
Apropos AT&T, we received a card this week offering “$300 in credits when you switch to AT&T”. You have to visit a store, shop at a website, or call an 800 number. There is also a square to scan with a smartphone.
I read the square and found prices per month to buy individual iPhones, but it was unclear how much monthly service would cost and how much data would be available. So much for the free market (buyers have all the information they need).
Also appears in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-09-09
Friday, August 28, 2015
Clawing out of the Abyss
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)