An Apple a Day … May Drive Me Crazy

After a lot of thought, weighing all options, and calculating savings – I jumped ship.

I made the call last night and not only switched carriers from Verizon to T-Mobile, I went Apple. The best deal for me not only is going to save me about $100 a month, my wife and I both get iPhones for free. It was too good a deal to pass up.

I could have opted for a new Android phone, but almost all of them needed money down right from the get go. I’d been eyeing a few different models, but to have to come up with $200 in addition to what I paid to switch just didn’t make sense.

Technically, we are still on Verizon until the new phones arrive and we get things set up. At some point tomorrow I’m going to have to head to the Verizon Cloud and grab everything from there and put it on a hard drive.

I know I shouldn’t be, but my anxiety and stress levels are slowly climbing in anticipation of the change ….

Maybe I need to call the doc and up some meds?

To T or Not To T. To I or Not To I. Those Are The Questions.

I have been a customer with Verizon for over 20 years. I have stayed with them because I knew that if I was traveling I would have a good signal. When I was DJing, I had their Jetpack which allowed me to use internet to download songs if I had to. Today, I rarely travel far and I no longer DJ. I had to really look at things.

I won’t go into my financial situation, but it recently became clear that we had to cut back a little. We have been paying about $250 for my phone and my wife’s phone. We also pay for a line for her Apple Watch. My mother and father-in-law have four phones on their plan (maybe with AT&T?) and pay about $100. So I began the search.

You would think that if you’ve been with a carrier for as long as I have that there would be some incentive to stay with them. Every time we get a new phone or the bill creeps up, I call Verizon. I tell them what I need and they may be able to bring the bill down a bit, but over time it begins to creep back up again.

T-Mobile’s coverage has increased a lot since they took over Sprint or whatever other carrier they merged with. They have a couple plans to choose from, and even their most expensive one is considerably less than what we pay at Verizon. I guess it helps that I am 55, because they have a 55+ plan. I will make a decision by the end of the day today, but it seems like we will make the switch. With that switch comes another issue.

I have been an Android user for what seems like forever. I have never had issues with it. I have things backed up to my Google account and on the Verizon Cloud (I suppose I will have to grab all of that if I switch). I always felt like it was easier to use than an iPhone. My wife has been bugging me to get an iPhone since we got married. I guess primarily for Facetime. I have no issue using Google Meet or even Facebook Messenger for video calls now, but she likes Facetime.

If we switch to T-Mobile, I can get an iPhone 17 for free. My wife would get an upgrade to the same phone for nothing (as long as she trades in her current iPhone). One of the things I love about my Android phone is that it seems to take better pictures than the iPhone (even my wife has said that). I like how quick I can edit photos with it, too.

If you have read my blog for any length of time, you know that I do not do good with change. Even though I have worked through a lot of it over the last 8 years, it just is not easy for me. I am a creature of habit and I worry about not having the familiarity that I have with my current phone. Every time I have ever had to do something on my wife’s phone, I end up having to hand it to her because I have no idea how to navigate it.

I have the guy from T-Mobile calling me back this evening to finalize things, should the switch be what happens. I guess I really need to think about this.

Friday Photo Flashback

I have a few pictures of me that I absolutely love. I may have featured this one before, but it makes me smile when I see it.

This is me at my grandma’s house. It is taken in their front room, where no one was really ever allowed to go (at least when we were there). It was rare that anyone would venture into this room, let alone sit in it.

I’m not sure how old I am here, but I’d guess one or two. I love the look of determination on my face in it. I have no idea what kind of suit I am wearing here. As I look at it, I’m not really sure that shirt even goes with it. I also wonder if I had just woke up from a nap because of the way my hair is all messed up.

That’s my mom behind me. I wish there was more of her face in the picture. I love her smile here. I am guessing that my grandma is sitting on the couch in front of me.

Speaking of the couch, get a load of that crazy design! Compared with the chair my mom is sitting in, I can’t help but ask if these two pieces of furniture even go together. It is almost like they are from two separate (and ugly) sets.

Photos of my grandma’s house are always neat just because of the stuff in the background. The table behind my mom has candlesticks and a lamp on it. I don’t get it. That lamp also has a wacky design on it. I remember that it had one of those light bulbs that had three different brightness levels on it. It also had a way to make the bottom of the lamp only light up.

That orange pillow behind my grandma – I remember it being like a silky kind of material that seemed to snag on anything. There were always little threads hanging off it where it got caught on something.

This is one of those photos where I wish I could zoom out and get a bigger picture of what’s going on. Sadly, I can’t. So I will look at myself staring at this apple with a bite out of it and my mom smiling …. and smile.

Apple Anger!

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I have had my iPod Classic for about 17 years. The original computer I used to synch it with iTunes is long dead. I haven’t added any music to it in some time because I had synched it to too many computers (now all dead) over the years. Recently, I had my first issue …

I need my music. Music is SO important to me. I listen to it at night while at work (often drowning out the conversations or non-stop babble of coworkers). I listen to it when I take a walk. I listen to it in my car (while connected with USB). I have over 5000 songs on it, many of which I cannot find anywhere anymore. I do NOT want to give it up.

Within the last few weeks, the one ear stopped working. I thought it was just the headphones I was using, but upon trying other headphones, I discovered it was something in the iPod itself. I contacted Apple Support tonight and was basically told that my iPod Classic (as well as an old Nano my son had) was “obsolete”. I could try cleaning it with the bristles of a tooth brush or blow air into it to see if there was debris in it (which I did), but that didn’t work. The only option she gave me was “try to go to an Apple store and they ‘may’ be able to fix it”.

The closest Apple store is an hour from me, and quite frankly, I don’t want to pay a ton of money just to have it looked at. Besides, there are plenty of articles online about how when people had taken it in to be fixed, they were told it was beyond repair. Right now if I connect it to my car USB, it plays in both speakers. So, technically, it still works. I don’t want them to “break it further”!

I certainly don’t have the money to buy a new one, which is the iPod Touch (which, as you know, had a huge touch screen and is easily breakable even with a case, screen protector, and such). Hell, the refurbished ones (with the space I have on my classic) is something like $200! So, do I get one only to have it become “obsolete”, too?!

Apple – you disappoint me. First, you made it so after a few computers, I couldn’t add music to my device. Then, you update iTunes to the point where it won’t even connect to the device. Then you basically don’t support your previous devices. I cannot begin to voice my disappointment loud enough! It angers me! I know that I cannot be the only Apple customer who feels this way. You didn’t even offer me a trade in toward a new device. Sad.

I really don’t want a cheap MP3 player, but I guess that’s what I may end up doing. I also will now need to make that list of songs on the iPod currently and begin to create a folder somewhere on my laptop or external drive to store them so that when I get another device I can put those songs on it. I also will need to see about finding a way to get the ones that are unavailable for me to get, or things that I personally recorded for it, into some sort of file to transfer it over.

In the meantime, at least I can still listen to it in the car, and still use it on the dock while I DJ. Hang in there old and obsolete friend….

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