This is a repost salvaged from my old Wordpress Blog. I know it’s about telephones. But the other telephone post was over a year ago.

So it has been well over a year since I switched over to Apple for my daily smartphone use. I have an cheaper pre-paid Android phone that I use for… well Android stuff. I am 100% for sure that there is a place in my life for an Android phone, namely for the “dangerous” things that I do like maker stuff and going outdoors.

I have experienced a lot of upheaval in my life this past year, thanks to a divorce, a job layoff, loss of an apartment, and a couple of car accidents. It’s not like having a cool phone has lessened the pain of any of it, but having an iPhone has been a bit entertaining. Some folks noticed that I made the switch because my texts came up blue. I definitely like the ability to fast emoji reply to text messages. I get now how Apple people felt receiving my Google Voice texts with few to no emojis. It doesn’t make me feel superior, but I understand now how it could make other people feel that way.

Where it succeeds#

I have to say that when you use Apple shit the way that Apple dictates, it’s pretty dope. That is to say only for texting, picture taking, shopping, and social media. The ability for these apps to work fairly seamlessly on my iPad is really nice as well. I have basically achieved my dream of switching over to a tablet when I get home, and not needing the phone again until I leave the house. I have even found a couple of “hacker type” apps like VOIP clients and encrypted password safes that are pleasant experiences on the iPhone.

There are some cool integrations that I have never experienced with a mobile phone, like Siri working through my earbuds to read me alerts. Being able to summon Siri through the earbuds is nice as well. Once I figured out how to forward text messages to the iPad, I can call and text from either the iPad or iPhone interchangeably. To achieve this in the past, I needed to use Google Voice as my primary number.

Where it fails#

Fail is a strong word. “Does not succeed without sacrifice” would be a better way to put it. I know a lot of my comparisons here are to Google Voice, and that moving over from Android to iPhone is essentially rejecting Google’s cloud stack for Apple’s.

The only true sacrifice I made was maps. The only way I can find to click on a street address on a webpage or text message and have the phone navigate to it was to quit using Google Maps and use Apple Maps instead. It’s not like I really cared about Google Maps, other than for real time traffic stuff. But honestly, I quit using Waze because it wanted me to click shit while I was driving all the time, and Google Maps got to be that way as well.

I have not yet established a method for making and receiving calls on a desk phone and a non-Apple computer that satisfies me.

For desk phone calling, I took a stab at it with a Bluetooth Link2Cell thing, but it was not great. I didn’t have the text message forwarding working at the time, and answering calls at home, but not at my desk was problematic. The next thing to try is using call-forward-no-answer to a VOIP extension that I can control the outbound caller ID on. I don’t have a home office set up just yet, so that project is on hold until I can get my VOIP phone out of a box in my girlfriend’s garage. Also, the phone system at my new job isn’t nearly as advanced as my old job, so there are limitations there as well.

Texting and calling from a PC is weird. On Windows 11 there is the Phone Link app that lets you connect to an iPhone via Bluetooth. You can’t access texts and calls when you leave your phone at home, but it will keep you from having to pick up your phone while sitting at your desk. If I can get the call-forward-no-answer feature working with a VOIP number, I can use a SIP softphone on the PC for calling. Texting with that setup is another story. getting the kind of if-then-else logic for receiving and sending text messages would require me running my own PBX, which is far outside the scope of this blog.

The day may come when I run MacOS to solve this problem, but it is not this day.

Was it worth it?#

The short answer is “yes” but the longer answer is “not at first.” It took a while to adjust to the “logic” of Apple. These devices are how advanced technology ends up in the hands of people’s grandparents. There is only one way to do anything. That makes it easy to explain to a regular person how to do something. Anytime a new tech thing (like A.I.) finally hits the iPhone, regardless of how crippled it may be, that’s how you know it’s going to take off with normal people. It also took a while to adjust my expectations. Apple is the industry leader in vendor lock-in. You just have to lean into the idea that you have to do it that one way, and that there will probably be a benefit to sacrificing your consumer choice. Just stop worrying and do it The Apple Way(tm).

Once I got off of my high horse, the Apple experience isn’t bad. I still have other gear that I can futz with to get “clever” solutions working. But for a trip out of town, or to the grocery store, it’s nice to just put my phone in my pocket without thinking. I’m a former hacker, I get that bleeding edge features are fun. I understand the need for everyone to see how much smarter you are than everyone else. Yes, Apple shit is expensive. I am still using all refurbished equipment because I can’t afford new Apple things. Now that I am half-way into Apple: Year Two, Apple’s planned obsolescence may get the better of me. But until then, I think making the switch has made it easier for me to keep in touch with people, which is the whole reason why I have a phone in the first place.