I've had the iPhone for 16 days now. Overall I'm happy with it, although I won't be able to make a clean verdict for months. I have to find out which annoyances are killer and which ones I end up just getting used to. I guess I should start with the physical features. I ended up getting a case for it. Ever since I got my Pixel 2XL, I've put clear cases on my phones. I figure I paid to have a particular phone and should show it off. The Pixel 2XL was that glorious black and white 'Panda' look. The Pixel 4XL was supposed to be a glorious orange but ended up a more dull orange. And now the iPhone 11 Pro Max is that sleek Midnight Green.
Quick aside, I named my iPhone Legendary iPhone 2300. Legendary because almost all of my 'things' are called some version of Legend. iPhone, because it's obviously an iPhone. And the clever, tongue in cheek 2300 because it's the 11 Pro Max. 11 PM. 11 PM in military time is 2300. HA!
Okay, physically the phone is nice. It's very well built and feels just as premium as the cost indicates. It's weighty. 7.91 ounces verses the 6.87 ounces for the Pixel 4XL. And yes, I can feel that difference. The screen is as glorious as promised... but it's still missing that more than 60 hz refresh rate. And again, yes I can see that difference.
I simply haven't done enough with the camera to tell the difference. Supposedly the Pixel 4 and the iPhone 11 are neck and neck, but I'll need a variety of photos to see if I can really tell. One odd thing is that the previews for the images in Google Photos are short ~ 2 second video clips. I think it has something to do with being able to catch a few frames before or after you took the image which feels like cheating to me, but whatever. They're still pretty. I don't anticipate disappointment.
The notifications are of course different than Android. There's a couple ways I use the notification shade. First, to log into my state email account the system has to send me a text to verify its me. With my Pixel I would log in using my computer, click 'Sign In' while holding my phone in my left hand and have my fingers hovering over the numberpad on the keyboard. I'd have to be ready because the notification would only stay on the screen for a few seconds, just enough time to type in the number. With the iPhone, the notification stays up longer so I'm not as rushed. BUT on the Pixel, I could mark the text as read so that it wouldn't remain an unread notification. The iPhone only gives me the option of clearing the notification, leaving the text as unread. So if I don't take care and 'read' the text, I will later in the day see that I have an unread text and go to it. Annoying, but not bad.
I can't get my texts on my computer. I was using Android messenger for my texts on the Pixel and had it linked to Google Chrome. While sitting at the computer I could pull up a chrome tab with all my texts on it. It wasn't perfect by any means as it seemed to lose connection with the phone at the drop of a hat, but it was still nice when I was having a longer text conversation with a friend. The iPhone? Nothing. It just hates Windows 10. If I had a Mac... but we'll get more to the 'if I had a Mac' later.
The alarms are still annoying. I really REALLY want a way to dismiss an alarm minutes to a couple hours before it goes off without turning the alarm itself off but after some google searching, it doesn't seem to have that ability. Nor do any third party alarm clocks. I'm just screwed on that account.
I miss having 'OK Google' at the ready all the time. It's specific to the Pixel, but there was the ability to squeeze the phone instead of shouting out 'OK GOOGLE'. Now, I have to hold down the power button to waken Siri, then say 'OK Google' (it's a Siri Shortcut) to get to my favorite assistant.
There are a few other button/phsyical shortcuts that I dislike or miss, but I have to search a bit and see if they can change. If I can remove the screen shot feature (I've mistakenly taken dozens of screen shots by holding the power and volume buttons) and change the double power button tap from apple pay to the camera, I'd probably be happy.
The phone is as snappy as you'd expect a brand new top of the line product to be. It gets a good signal, does well over WiFi, carries on voice calls with clairity. While sitting at the couch I use it to surf facebook/twitter/google more than my iPad, but that may just be the newness.
As for the Apple ecology... damn, I hate it. The whole 'if I had a mac' is ridiculous. With a Mac I could get my text messages. I could track my phone calls. I could send web pages to and from the phone. All of these are possible between Android and Windows 10 devices with either google or microsoft software, but not with Apple. You either use Apple or you screw yourself. And it's not jsut linking it to Windows 10, it's just about every alternative company to Apple.
For instance, I like the Google keyboard. Not the generic Android keyboard and not the specific Pixel keyboard but the 'Gboard' from Google. They have one for the iPhone so I thought I'd be set... but nope. It works half the time with the rest defaulting to the iPhone keyboard. I like Gmail, Google Calendar, Microsoft Word, Pocketcasts, Google Keep, Google Play Music, Microsoft One Drive. But Apple wants me to use their Calendar, iWork word processor, Apple Podcasts, Apple Notes, Apple Music, and iCloud storage. I can manually use the ones I want, but they're not allowed to become defaults. And if I DID start to get sucked into the apple ecosystem... well I'm screwed when I want to dig myself out. For example, I'd really like to get an Apple Watch. They're really high quality, look nice, have wondeful features, and work just so much better than any WearOS device I've had (I've had 4 different WearOS watches!). BUT, Apple Watches don't work with Android. At All. So if I get an Apple watch, it will either be temporary or a ball and chain holding me to an iPhone.
I'm considering moving out to an apartment... more on that in a future post... but one of the problems is my computer. My computer is GLORIOUS. But the thought of packing up my mid-tower, mechanical keyboard, gaming mouse, expensive speakers, and $1100 television sized ultrawidescreen monitor is just bad. I wouldn't want to do that. So I thought about getting a temporary computer. Something I could use to type out stuff like this blog or role playing or just my thoughts. I already have an iPad, but the screen seems to small. A laptop? Not really big enough as they top out around 17 inches. I could get an all in one computer, but most of the windows ones top out around 22 inches. Then there's the iMac. Yeah, the normal one is 21 inches, but theres the 27 inch big mamma jamma model. And for $2300 it could be mine. But fuck... that would just tie me further into apple. It wold be fun to try, but I honestly just don't want to get sucked down that path.
Oh, and just like a thumb to the eye, getting the iPhone means I get one year of Apple TV.+ They don't have much right now, but they're supposed to get a new Muppets show that I want and it's always nice to have another option to find 'something' to watch. I remembered as I signed up for it and accepted the one year trial that they have that show 'For All Mankind' which is an alternate history program where the Soviet Union lands on the moon before us. Looks really interesting! Oh yea... Apple hates Android and my Nvidia Shield streaming device is based on Android TV... so no Apple app for it. To watch Apple TV I literally have to use the slow ass TV or... you guesed it... buy an Apple TV box.
Fuck, I hate Apple sometimes.
Anywho, lets move on to getting my music into Nina.
I signed up for the 3 month trial of Apple Music. On the phone, it works just about like Google Play Music. You have radio stations and play lists and can add songs to your library. On the comptuer though, it's completely and totally controlled through iTunes. I can't even listen to it without booting up iTunes. I was really REALLY hoping iTunes was just going to be needed to upload my songs, but that's not the case. Arrrggghhh!!!
Like my experience with Youtube Music, I had to use a third party web page to transfer my Google Play Music playlist over to Apple Music. That alone saved me hours of manually recreating my drive playlist. I also transfered over my 'newest' and 'femme' playlists. The newest playlist is only 12 songs long so it was easy to check them all. Drive on the other hand is 383 songs long. I decided to see how well it picked songs by just listening to them on my commutes.
Before I get into the songs, I should add that the Apple Car Play interface works a LOT better with Apple Music than Youtube Music. Youtube Music always started at the first song and wouldn't remember where I'd left off. It also refused to remember that I wanted shuffle on, so if I forgot to hit that button, I scrolled through the songs in alphabetical order. Obviously, it works better with Apple Music as that's what it wants to push. It's fast, it remembers where it left off, it remembers to stay in shuffle mode, and even seems to remember the equalizer so the songs actually sound better.
Over the first week of playing music through it, I came across a dozen or so songs that were wrong. Sometimes it was just the wrong version from a different album but still the right artist. Sometimes it was the right song, but from a different artist. Sometimes it's the right song title, but the wrong song entirely. I was getting frustrated as I'd hear the 'wrong' song and skip past it, but knew I'd have to fix it eventually. I just forgot by the time I got home. Then I realized that even though it's just Siri, its still a smart asssistant. It seems that by hitting the voice button in Nina, I can call up Siri and use her built in functions. Including setting a reminder. "Siri, remind me tonight Skyfall by Adele" Saying that makes a reminder that pops up with 'Skyfall by Adele" and that's enough to remind me to fix it (in that instance, it picked the baby lullaby version of Skyfall instead of the actual version. I have no idea why.)
This morning it only took me a good 20 minutes to fix up about 9 songs. I even figured out how to sort the playlist so that I can go song by song in comparing it with Google Play Music. But that will be for another day.
Uploading a song is easy as pie. iTunes creates a media directory in the Windows 10 Music folder and I've just maintained that system with any songs that need to be uploaded to my walkman and such. So when I installed iTunes again, it gathered up all of those songs and added it to the library. To add one of my downloaded songs to Apple Music, I simply add it to the Drive playlist (which acts like any other playlist in iTunes) and it's later updated in the phone. The first few days I used Apple Music it wouldn't update the phone without deleting the download and re-downloading it, but that seems to have fixed itself.
Overall its about as painless as maintaining two playlists can be. I'll just have to see how good I am at remembering to maintain the Apple Music version of my drive playlist.
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