Happy New Year!

2021 is here – finally.

2020 is finally over and not a minute too soon.

So, to everyone, please be careful and covid-19 smart until there is enough vaccine for those who need it and want to receive it.

Merry Christmas, and a happy new year!

Well, today is Christmas eve, so I thought that I’d say to all my readers have a wonderful and safe Christmas, and for 2021, a prosperous and wonderful new year.

For those of you who are in the middle of a Corona virus lockdown, stay safe, wear your masks properly and safely, and you’ll come out of this lockdown safely.

For those who are in Melbourne, Australia, have a wonderful Christmas and new year celebrations that’s free of restrictions (finally).

For those of you who are in the rest of Australia, I hope that your Christmas and new year celebrations are wonderful.

And, finally, to my most beautiful and wonderful Bella, who’s stuck in Kenya, remember darling that in 2021 we will be together babe.

Apple AirPods Max

Sweet Jesus, these things cost $899!

In case you’ve been living in a cave, or on another planet, these are Apple’s attempt at a premium, over the ear style headphone.

I have a set of Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones that I paid an eye watering $499, but they are worth it, and I have even fallen asleep on an international flight wearing them still, so yeah, I love them.

My Bose headphones are: wireless, noise cancelling, can answer and make a phone call with ease, and there is an attachment that works on all aeroplane’s in seat entertainment system.

From the technical specifications of the AirPods Max headphones, these things can operate using Bluetooth 5.0, but without an attachment (is there even a 3rd party attachment for aeroplanes?) to the in seat entertainment of aeroplanes, for effectively double the price of my Bose headphones, Apple can go and fuck themselves.

Apple can’t seem to get it right.

Wow Apple, it seems that 2020 just isn’t your year is it?

There are a heap of problems that have been announced across the Apple range of products, over this weekend.

Let’s get started shall we?

iPhone 12 and 12 Pro Users Complain of Missing SMS Text Messages and Message Notifications

Wow, this is fairly serious Apple! I’ll wait to see what Apple will do about this (I suspect a other update to iOS will be fairly soon.)

And the Pièce de résistance, by the Mac team at Apple:

macOS Big Sur Update Bricking Some Older MacBook Pro Models https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-update-bricking-some-macbook-pros/

A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines.

Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread continue to state, among other things that:

Users are reporting that during the course of updating to ‌macOS Big Sur‌, their machines are stuck displaying a black screen. Key reset combinations, including NVRAM, SMC, safe mode, and internet recovery, are all reportedly inaccessible after attempting to install the update, leaving no way to bypass the static black screen.

One commenter on Reddit said that they were told by Apple support to book their MacBook Pro in for a repair. Another on an Apple Support thread said that the issue has been escalated to Apple’s engineering team, so Apple should now be aware of the problem.

I’m really, REALLY glad that my trusty 2010 MacBook Pro seems to be immune to this gigantic cluster fuck of an update.

One thing that really shits me about Apple

One thing that really shits me about Apple’s iOS 14 is the bugs with the little things.

Take iCloud – specifically the payment reminder for iOS.

If you’re a little late, there’s a notification message that appears on the settings icon.

Fine, so I try to remove this. I amend my payment and this is accepted for a few seconds, then it fucking well tells me the same thing – AGAIN.

This is really sloppy Apple. Do you want my $2.49 a month for the 200GB of iCloud storage or what?

A personal rant.

So I’ll warn you that this post isn’t like any of my previous postings about technology at all.

I understand that the world has shat itself over the Corona virus/COVID 19.

What I really want is this stupid government of Australia to do is allow me, an adult, to sign a piece of paper acknowledging that Corona virus/COVID 19 is still in the wild and that I won’t sue or seek compensation if I contract it, so that I can just go to Kenya and bring back to Australia my wife!

New hardware types – Playstation 5 and iPhone 12.

I want to get a Playstation 5, like, really really want one.

Likewise I want to get a new iPhone 12 Max Pro (what’s with Apple’s bloody stupid naming conventions anyway?)

That being said, I already have a Playstation 4, and an iPhone X.

Both of these new devices are new for the sake of being new.

I don’t need, either of them, but I want one, however, I’m not prepared to pre order one and wait (and wait).

What I am content to do is to wait until the rabid masses have got over the novelty that both of these devices are new, and wait until early 2021 before I casually stroll into a store and buy one of these.

WatchOS 7.1

YAY!

So it seems that Apple finally sorted out the battery life issues with WatchOS 7.1.

All I have to say is that it shouldn’t have taken 4 fucking attempts to get a simple battery issue fixed.

Apple iOS 14.2

Well for some reason, Apple had not even looked at releasing iOS 14.1, rather, they just jumped into 14.2.

Hmmm. O_o

Whilst I don’t have any problems with the numbering of the iOS’s, I typically have a problem with what seems to be randomly picking an iOS version out of thin air.

As I understand it, the numbering usually goes like:

Major release number.

Minor release number.

Patch release number.

So we went from 14.0.3 straight to 14.2.

So what the hell happened to 14.1?

Yeah, so that happened.