Author: Pan

多伦多的晚雪

在三月中的正午

匆匆而至

姗姗而来的朋友们

又会在今年的何时

出现？

iPhone 15 pro is the first apple device that I subscribe Apple Care+ for, having thought that I could get a free battery replacement after two years (September 2025).

That’s my only goal of subscribing, and keeping Apple Care+ for two years and four months, spending $13.49 + taxes monthly. I still used cases, Belkin screen protector, every day. I even purchased many different cases, and have exchanged the screen protectors three times or four times.

I have protected my iPhone 15 pro so well – it is still in pristine condition. No damage or scratches at all. Hence there is no way to make an apple care+ claim under this condition. Anyway, I do not want my device to break, therefore it is a good thing that no claim was made.

But what about the battery life? It’s been 80% since early last December, so it has been stuck at 80% for two months. So unfortunately, I have to keep the subscriptions until it is finally dropping to 79%!

Apparently, it is not a wise investment. The out of pocket fee to have the battery replacement is $135 (without apple care+). That is just a little bit more than having AC+ for 10 months! That means that, if I did not have the AC+ at the very beginning, I would have my battery replaced twice – which would give me a much better use experience too (I am now suffering from the reduced battery capacity).

So if my (and your) goal to have apple care+ just for the battery replacement, then it is a totally wrong reason to have AC+!

I have made the following changes since last week, to fix the mistakes:

1. I took off case: this gave me a much lighter phone – similar to iPhone Air if someone puts a case on their Airs. Much better feeling holding it.
2. I just let it go: without the cognitive thought that I needed to protect my phone from being damaged – it gave me a sense of relief, which I think AC+ is worth for.

When to stop AC+ now? Under the following two possibilities:

1. When the battery drops to 79% and my phone is still in a good condition;
2. When my phone breaks somehow – I will pay to have it repaired/replaced and then stop AC+;
3. When I lose my patience of keeping AC+ (maybe in 6 months?), I will have my phone express replaced – the genius from the Apple Store told me that I could just go this way to get the battery replaced earlier, no need to actually have a broken phone.

Today I went to EB Games in Scarborough Town Centre to trade in my old PS5 for the new PS5 Slim. After applying the trade-in credits, I only had to pay $16 for a brand-new console — definitely a great deal.

The whole process was quick and easy. There was no line-up, and everything was done in about 15 minutes. I told the staff that my old PS5 was the original 2020 launch model, only to find out it was actually from 2021 and a 1100 model, not the 1000 series. The new PS5 Slim I got is the 2100 model, made in Vietnam.

I don’t really play much PS5, even during the pandemic, but it’s still nice to have one in the living room. At this point, my nephew probably plays my PS5 more than I do. I really miss the old PSP days.

I am 9955m in the sky, make this post using Air Canada’s WIFI. The speed is good!

I switched to Freedom Mobile yesterday from Fido, at the cost of a hard credit check. I am satisfied so far. I don’t see any issues with the signals in Toronto/Scarborough.

I will pay $35 for 50GB. In contrast, I paid $43 for 35GB with Fido. Most importantly, Freedom Mobile gives me free US roaming, which means that I do not need to worry about paying expensive roaming fees ($12 per day at Fido), just to trigger the roaming by mistake.

It is not Black Friday yet. However, the BestBuy worker gave me $100 BestBuy gift card to compensate for the $45 activation fee and said I could get a price match should there be a better deal on the actual Black Friday.

Use my referral code: https://referme.to/panc-16

My website is up again.

When I woke up this morning I got an email from Jetpack Monitoring saying my site was not responsive. Checking the internet, I learned that there was a fire alarm in my website’s data centre, in LA. The fire alarm forced the power to be shut down.

Around 12:00PM EST, my site is back running. First such incident in 8 years since I started my first personal website.

News were saying Presto would be coming to Apple Wallet in July this year. Today I saw this search result in google titled “Presto in Apple Wallet”. They even have a picture to promote it.

But when I clicked, it said 404 not found. Guess they are testing something. Hopefully it’s a good signal that Presto support will come to Apple Wallet very soon!