Category: Miscellaneous

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!

I updated to the iOS 18 beta (iPhone 15 Pro) when it was announced early this week. I am very impressed by the new features of this update! It’s all about customizability.

iOS 18’s Customizable control center

I was an Android phone user until December 2022. That’s being said, I am a pretty new iPhone user. I have been used to the iPhone and the Apple Ecosystem, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes miss the customizability of Androids.

This iOS18 gives me back some customizability I used to have – customizing the control centre. And I’d like to say it’s even better because I can customize the size of each “Control” (you see how large the Media Control is?).

Customizable Home

Now we can decide which two icons at the bottom of the screen.

And it’s integrated into the wallpaper settings. That’s being said, you can have different sets of “controls” for different wallpapers.

More choices of Charge Limit

Before iOS 18 we can only limit the charging up to 80%. But now with iOS 18, we have much more choices. Better for your battery health!

FaceId protected apps

Now your iPhone is safer in iOS 18, because you can now use Face Id to protect apps.

You can either make an app “Require Face ID” or “Hide and Require Face ID”.

The first option makes it required to pass Face ID every time someone tries to open an app on your phone. The notifications will only have a preview in this case.

The second option hides the apps in a “Hidden” folders in the App Library. It won’t show up in the search results as well.

Redesigned Gallery

iOS 18 comes with a re-designed gallery app. It looks surprisingly different than the old one. We can customize the layout of the library.

But where is the Hidden Folder?

What am I still looking for as a previous Android user?

Focus mode

Focus mode! When I used my Galaxy S20, I could turn on Focus Mode, and all muted notifications would be indeed “muted” – I wouldn’t be able to see those notifications in the “Notification Center”. But using my iPhone, every time when I open the notification center (by scrolling down), I see the notifications from the muted applications.

Fonts

Using my Android phones, I could change the fonts of my phones, globally. I don’t think iOS 18 supports this feature.

Smart Lock

I have been missing this feature since early 2022 when I made the shift to the Apple Ecosystem. I hope that Apple can consider this feature in the near feature.

Issues/Bugs

So far, I have seen the following lists of issues/bugs:

1. I can not access Screen Time in Settings. Every time I click Screen Time from Settings, Settings crashes, and I am redirected to the homepage.
2. When I use the larger icons (which is also a new feature), the icon of the Contacts app will be blank. This issue only exists in dark mode.
3. Sometimes I experience a slow refresh rate, but that’s not very often and I think it’s okay considering it’s the first beta of iOS 18.