Tag Archives: iPhone

Teens love iMessage

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Every iPhone user I know relies on iMessage heavily. It’s the app I use more than any other on my phone. Is iMessage a form of social media? I never considered it to be but the stats below make wonder if it might be.

“US youth between the ages of 10 and 19 average 25 iMessages each day. That’s compared to 14 messages over Facebook Messenger, and 8 snaps on Snapchat. The estimates propose that while Apple is often left out of the chat app ecosystem, it could be the most used platform and one of the best for brands and developers to reach US consumers.” (Business Insider)

The iPhone continues to be the most popular smartphone among teens, according to data gathered by investment firm Piper Jaffray in its most recent semiannual U.S. teen survey. 76 percent of teens surveyed own an iPhone, up from 69 percent in the spring of 2016, and the highest ownership level seen in the teen survey. A record 81 percent of teens surveyed said they expect their next phone to be an iPhone, up from 75 percent a year ago. (MacRumors)

Apple is making iMessage more functional with features like Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments via iMessage with Apple Pay. And they want it to be the go-to interface for business-consumer interaction. An upcoming update to iMessage includes iOS Business Chat, a “powerful new way for businesses to connect with customers directly from within Messages,” according to Apple.

Voice-to-text note using Siri via AirPods

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I created a note on my iPhone using Siri and voice-to-text. (In a noisy coffee shop). Music is great on the AirPods but my primary reason for the purchase was to see if/how AirPods could change the way I interacted with the iPhone. Using Siri (far from perfect) to read messages and email; create and send messages and email; schedule reminders; etc. Without removing the phone from my pocket. [Video runs 20 sec]

iPhone SE: Something smaller in my pants

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iphone6SI purchased the iPhone 6 in September of 2014 and traded it in for the 6S a year later. Now, just seven months later, I’m trading up/down/over for the new iPhone SE. The review below touches on most of my reasons. I always liked the smaller versions of the iPhone but they kept putting must-have (for me) features in the larger phones. With the SE, I can get those features in a smaller phone better suited to my Trump-like hands. But the change that sealed the deal for me was putting the on-off switch back on the top of the phone… WHERE IT BELONGS! A day doesn’t go buy that I don’t accidentally turn my phone off while adjusting the volume (see image below).

I thought the days of smaller (perfect) phones were forever gone. Thank you, Apple. Here’s some more money. This review mirrors my thinking on this.

One careless moment

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I’m quick to judge (and harshly) those who get scammed by email. I never download attachments or click links in emails from people I don’t know. I often check email headers or URLs to see if they’ve been spoofed. As for giving out my credit card info over the phone… never! And then I did.

I got a phone call one morning this past week from a woman who works in the billing department of the health care provider I use. Said they’d received a payment slip from me (USPS) but I had failed to enter the credit card number. She knew the amount. I said I was busy at the moment but would call back. I did, by hitting that number in the RECENTS list on my phone. Asked for her by name and gave her the card number.

Dumb. Turned out she was legit but dumb none the less.

When discussing this with my less-dumb friends we theorized how a scammer could have known the exact amount of the payment in question. Since I mailed it, someone could have intercepted that piece of mail and gotten the amount. Or, in theory, they could have social engineered the info from the health care provider. My obvious mistake was not verifying the correct phone number and placing the call instead of clicking the RECENTS link on my phone.

Surely, I cried, there must be a way to use my high tech smart phone to protect from such carelessness in the future. Turns out there are less than a dozen people who I would want/need to immediately take a call from. I’ve added those to my FAVORITES list in the iPhone and everyone else automatically goes to voice mail. Where they’re informed the best way to reach me is IM or email. And if they don’t already have my address or number, they’re SOL.

I’m still a little stunned I could have been so careless.

Surveillance Capitalism

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“What if, when I write down a thought on my phone to remember it later, what I am actually doing is extending my mind, and thereby extending my self using the phone. […] we extend our biological capabilities using technology. We are sharded beings; with parts of our selves spread across and augmented by our everyday things.”

“My iPhone is not like a safe any more than my brain is like a safe. It is a part of my self. In which case, if you want to get into my iPhone, what you really want to do is to violate my self.”

“Personal data isn’t the new oil, personal data is people. […] The business model of mainstream technology today is to monetise everything about you that makes you who are apart from your body.”

The nature of the self in the digital age » – Surveillance Capitalism – Part 2 »