Increasingly Familiar Apple Lust Objects for 2016 and onwards

me too but, given the pattern, the problem is not how long you can keep it alive but how long apple decides (via updates) that you can't keep it alive. Even if they didn't render the SE obsolete, as such, it would still, ostensibly, be rendered obsolete by the fact that you can no longer use your favoured or most vital app. So buying a brand new SE to keep in case & for the future would just be a waste of £400, sadly.

xpost

i have an SE, got it back in dec 2016. i plan on holding onto it as long as i used the 3S (about 5 years)

I hope you can because I have the same and don't intend to "upgrade" to another iPhone.

yeah, i would still have the 3s if i wouldn't have lost it in the back of a cab on christmas day. i love the small size of the SE (and the 3s before it). the only feature of the new phones that i crave are the new cameras.

I called my carrier yesterday and they said when Apple discontinues an old model and adds a new one, they usually buy up a ton of the old ones and mark the price down even more. So I didn't get an SE yesterday, but I'm sure I will before the year's over. My 5s is still in good shape at nearly 5 years old, but...just making sure.

the problem, of course, is that iOS will continue to update, and there will be some hotshit new app that everyone has that requires the new iOS, and then installing it will make your ancient SE so slow it's almost unusable, despite claims from apple that the new OS isn't significantly slower on older phones. when i finally lost the 3s i was almost grateful because the new OS' had rendered it almost unusable.

the lack of a home button that actually moves when you press it

the moving home button was always the first thing to break for me. the fake haptic one has been incredible.

and the lock button being in a less convenient place

yeah this placement is balls. when you grab the phone and try to lock it, half the time you trigger the volume control instead/as well.

how do they not figure that kind of thing out during development

Design by Annual Performance Goal

Maybe it lets them put all the buttons in one spot so they can waterproof that bit.

My photos are littered with random screeenshots because of the daft relative palacement of the lock and volume up controls on the X. Which combination also happens to be how you take a screenshot on the X.

Even if you can resist the hot-shit new app, the cold-shit old apps you love tend to eventually pack up if you refuse to update to the new iOS.

iOS 12 has been great for increasing performance on older devices. I have it on an old iPhone 6 and it is a whole different experience.

Me too.

iOS 12 definitely perked up my old iPad Mini 3.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/ios-12-on-the-iphone-5s-iphone-6-plus-and-ipad-mini-2-its-actually-faster/

Wow! That’s...unexpected.

I’m a little concerned about edge swipe gestures conflicting with some of my synths- not gonna update just yet

Threaded notifications are fantastic, as is the ability to clear by app; it was getting out of hand before.

Any idea if you can add Siri shortcut to the control centre. I couldn’t see it but have loooked hard.

I haven't yet got to grip with shortcuts, or Shortcuts, which confusingly seem to be two different things, but the latter seems like something that might be powerful. Never worked out how to get Automator to do what I wanted either; I am probably just too impatient and thick to do anything that resembles programming.

This is an amazingly, OTT-ly comprehensive write-up:

https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-review/

But yes, have had beta OS12 for a while and it's been faster on my iPhone 6.

I had workflow (the thing Apple brought to turn into shortcuts) to creat an open in chrome button for safari but the new iteration seems to have some added features.

Some of the precooked Shortcuts are not bad actually. Will play some more.

Oh wow - just noticed proper password manager integration at last.

in what respect?

lastpass, 1password etc can now autofill in the same way as iCloud Keychain. A big improvement for E. who uses a windows laptop for work and last pass for her passwords.

You have to enable it in Passwords & Accounts section of Settings, so I didn't notice it at first.

ugh, just installed the newest safari on desktop & it de-installed ninjakit, which means my killfile on here doesn't work anymore. any ideas of other greasemonkey-like setup for safari? I don't want to think about using ILX without it.

huh ok - i have 1password on my phone, and i've got "autofill passwords" on, but when i go to a website i don't see anything specific about 1password, it just looks like the normal iclould keychain thing

xpost

I have an ipad air 1 from 2013 that I never updated to iOS 11 – do you think it will cope with 12?

Yes, should get better, in fact

Tracer, you may need to update the 1password app to the latest version. After that you should see 1password show up in the "Allow Filling From" section of Autofill Passwords in Settings.

it worked!

holy crap the augmented reality tape measure is amazing!

Siri Shortcuts seems to have a lot of potential. Best One I’ve used is using the City Mapper app, I can set up shortcuts for my favorite bus stops for the next bus times. It works on my homepod too, so I can check it as I’m walking out the door and then when I get to the stop just by initiating Siri and saying something like “northbound Sheriden and Surf”.

The upgrade is good y'all, my phone is like new again.

I wonder if they realized a bunch of schmoes like me were considering abandoning iphones altogether and figured it's better to keep me in the ecosystem with an old phone than lose me altogether.

Incidentally this also fixed a major audio bug I've been having where music and podcasts stutter from time to time.

i've been having that same problem with music, shit skips like a CD

Yep, all good so far with iOS 12. Think I'll switch to SIM only from next month and just keep the SE going for another year or two. You never know, there might be an 4-4.5" XE or smthg next year.

Slightly concerned at what my ScreenTime stats will say by the end of today. Anything fewer than 100 pick-ups I'd be ok with.

Battery life on the X seems much improved by the update.

I’m in japan right now and Apple maps is beating google hands down, I assume this is what they have been working on.

I'm getting very into Shortcuts now. Favourite tricks so far: being able to append to the clipboard, and adding a Spotify icon to my homescreen that starts playing the song I was last listening to in whatever playlist/album it was (this is particularly good for me as I have an old phone so Spotify takes forever to launch – nice to be able to just put the phone away once I've tapped and know that it will start playing music in a while!)

The latter is pretty complex one that gets around Spotify's current lack of proper Shortcuts support:

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9h5aj6/control_spotify_with_siri/

being able to append to the clipboard

how do I activate this

Install Shortcuts app, put Shortcuts in a prominent place in your share menu items, then open this link in Safari. https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dc56cf9ad5754adfb8132cd3aba32376

It's 3 taps rather than the 1 for a standard copy to clipboard, but that sure beats switching back and forth between apps when you're pasting from multiple sources.

thanks for that!

i like how now i can measure things with my iphone and take of picture of it with the actual measurement

;)

awww yee uhhh

i aint lyin baby iphone confirmed yo

How do I use this exciting measure app? Can it do square feet?

Okay so...iPhone headphone splitters. (Meaning, charging the phone and using a non-Lightning headphone at the same time.) I can't seem to make head or tail out of the eight million suggestions out there; practically every product has wildly diverging reviews everywhere I look and I trust none of them. (Belkin seems to be heavily loathed, though.) Any suggestions?