I am fortunate in that I have someone who occasionally gives me fairly current, but not new, iPhones. They are still quite usable but not brand spanking new.
Mind you, had they been Androids, I would have rooted them and neutered the "google spying" on me with a hosts file but that's besides the point.
I prefer to be in control of my own technology devices and not have to trust in a walled garden whether it be iOS or Android or Mac or god forbid, Windows.
A Walled Garden from any manufacturer does not benefit you, the end user, eventually. It starts as a curated set of experiences that are for "your best experience" and eventually get corrupted into a spyware or commercial nightmare, or both (See Windows).
This is being written on a Debian Linux based computer that just purrs and does what I want.
My current "daily driver" is an iPhone 12. The problem is that the battery has faded to 81% health. Whatever the blazes that is supposed to mean. The end result is now that I wake up and the phone that was at 100% battery at 8:30 at night before the dog walk and sleep, is at 56% at 5:15 AM.
Who are you talking to while I am asleep? I don't know, I don't know why you are using battery other than to poll my sport watch.
At 56% at 5:15 in the morning, when I have to immediately top off the battery to be able to take Rack the McNab SuperDog (TM) for a first walk of the day gets very complex because I need this blasted phone to count my steps.
Levels of crap happen around me, usually sports related.
Bottom line is that the phone is "old" and failing to hold a charge.
So I went into the drawer that holds my "Inventory" of new-to-me phones and stumbled across the last phone that I moved off of before. It was actually at a newer battery strength than the one that I am trying to move off of but I have others that are better. Newer, with a stronger battery.
That means that my old-old phone is a candidate for "Erase and Remove" any trace of my self from it.
Here is where Apple truly earned my anger.
I told the phone that I did not want it.
It immediately began a backup.
I hit "Skip backup".
It refused and demanded me to enter in a password for iCloud.
"Why?!?!?"
I typed in that password that I have on a spreadsheet and it rejected it.
FOUR TIMES.
Mind you, any other NORMAL operating system would have a little eye that would show you what you typed in clear characters but this being Apple, no.
"Hey Apple, you are Stoopid!" you may have heard me yell, or "similar". Instead of it immediately giving me some sort of notification that it "got" what I was trying to do with it, the software simply sat there as if it were continuing on with its task. No feedback, no way to verify what was happening. Why would I need feedback?
After the fourth time, I used a normal laptop, this one, and a normal browser, Firefox, and logged in to iCloud with my password of record from the spreadsheet I keep.
So here I am an hour into this process.
iCloud logs me in and demands that I consider upgrading the account.
No. I am free, it gives me a whopping 5GB of storage. Never mind that the phone has 256GB of storage on it that I can't access except by jumping through hoops, it wants me to spend more. NO!.
Nonsensical way of doing business, nag your customer until they go to the competition.
Seeing that I have a rooted android phone on the desk, I am considering it.
The entire time that I am proving to this stupidly small, underpowered, and fragile device that I am using the correct password but it refuses to accept it, I'm feeling myself get more and more angry.
I simply wanted to get off the phone. I did not care what was on it. I did not want to save anything from it.
It would not allow me to do it gracefully so what did I do?
With an evil grin I did what many technology users would love to do.
Still wanna know?
I took it to my porch.
I put it on the porch where it was concrete.
I went back into the house in a fit of pique and...
I got the sledge hammer.
It felt great to pound the damn thing.
In fact it felt so good to do that, I did it a second time.
Why on the porch? Because I was able to get the garden hose and saturate the phone. It was now bent on a jaunty angle, and I saw that it was starting to smoke.
Good.
I hosed the thing down and it made many sad Apple noises as it released the magic smoke.
In case you think I should have sent it off to be destroyed, securely, I will. There is an electronics recycling event that I will take the accursed device to in the future along with some other old iPhones so old that they were orphaned by the accursed Apple. Iphone 5 was the oldest, the newest being an 8 that is going to go to a new home in another state.
So if you have a Mac Book Pro? I can fix it for you by installing Debian Linux on it. In the case of the iPhones? I hate them myself, find yourself an e-recycler and go for it.
As for Apple? You will never see a penny from me, your practices seem to be designed for me to need blood pressure medications, and your websites are crap.
Add a button to enter passwords in the clear. If I click on it, it's because I am feeling safe.
As Red Forman says in That 70s Show... Dumbass.
As Red Forman says in That 90s Show... Dumbass.
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