After many shipping delays from China, by way of Anchorage, my new phone has finally arrived. It is replacing my ancient iPhone 11 Pro – which I am sending back in for a return of $250 towards the purchase price of the new device. I don’t need to keep it, but I’ll be a little sad since it has served me so well for so long. I needed an Apple battery case to allow it to last a day without needing to sit on a charger.
Out with the old, in with the new. The always on display is something I sweated, but it’s great. Standby is a welcome addition but it won’t replace my Hatch Restore clock/light. It probably could, but I love that thing.
One thing I was sweating was Microsoft Authenticator as it’s how I am able to access email and company work networked items. Without that, I’d be in trouble some of the time. I went to my account, added Authenticator, launched it on my new device after data transition (only 20 minutes!) and things were working. I launched Outlook and I had to enter a pin from the Authenticator, and I believe it installed a token & I was all set. Company access restored.
I migrated my Apple Watch Ultra by first unpairing it with my old phone. I then tried to pair it in the Watch.app on the new phone – and the watch seemed to freeze. I tried to force restart it and it hung for a few minutes and then rebooted on it’s own. When it came back up, I was able to pair it. It restarted and went through a long process of “something” using the fullscreen circular progression UI – and when it was done, it pleasantly chimed and appeared with all its settings in the Watch.app. Nice.
I migrated some cards over to the Wallet.app which was even quicker. The final bit was pairing it with my car and it’s wireless Bluetooth dongle – and now CarPlay is all set (and much snappier). I noticed on the 11 Pro that for playback of a track – at around the 5 second mark there was always a minute hiccup during playback. Now that’s gone – and crossfading is enabled which is a very welcome addition. It’s not cheap, but when you spend the time and the money on the Apple ecosystem, you really do get a lot of wonderful functionality from it.
So tomorrow I will wipe out the old phone and prepare it to be sent in it’s tiny cardboard return coffin – ready to please some user in some far off country – or perhaps it will be parted out and travel the world with it’s components acting as tiny traveling satellites. Who knows. But I feel up to date and solid.
Oh – and a pair of vintage grey New Balance 992s arrived. I haven’t owned a pair since 2010. I forgot how comfortable they are – and why Steve Jobs loved them so much. They really are the best.