palzot: October 2013

I upgraded to the iPhone 5S. It’s sleeker, faster, and does more stuff. Overall, I am pleased.

The iPhone 5S comes with free downloads of IOS versions of iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Numbers and Keynote. These might normally cost as much as $45, so that was good. This also takes off some of the pressure of needing MS Office type apps on my phone and iPad, thus simplifying my huge collection of apps. These apps are also available on my iPad 3 free of charge (same iTunes account)

The camera is a bit faster and makes slightly better photos than my iPhone 4S, which already was very good. It also boasts a slow motion feature for videos. I already had IOS 7 on my 4S so most of the camera features I am used to. There is a color balancing set of LEDs (flash) on the 5S, but I rarely use flash, although I might experiment with color lighting in other ways.

Like with all these high tech devices, there exists the implication that if you add more memory and storage you can do untold things. –up to a point! Everything works well as long as you don’t add too many apps, don’t have too many books, don’t store too many songs, and don’t take too many pictures. Well that is just not me. Here is what my old iPhone looked like:

You may notice I like to carry everything with me (and I usually delete all my photos at the end of each year and start over); like to have few hundred favorite songs on tap, and try every app that peaks my interest (I had about 20 camera apps alone). I need and use the 32G iPhones.

Well my new phone choked at the Apple store after 5 minutes of updating. I finally went home, reset the phone, and started the app updates one at a time. I should be done in a couple more days. I think Apple expects the average user to stream music, take a few photos, and download a couple apps – maybe use facetime and the fingerprint reader.

I think I will slowly build my app collection to avoid duplication of services and create a more manageable collection. I notice that many of the apps are cheaper, but include in-app purchases to remove ads and add features. These phones are starting to feel like magazines; you buy one so that you can have access to advertisements to buy more stuff.

The only thing more efficient than an iPhone is a boat or hole in the ground where you can throw money. The only thing less efficient is Windows 8