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The phone I am using daily is an iPhone 13 Pro Max, which has been with me for almost 3 years. At the same time, when I got mine, I also got an iPhone 13 for my wife.
Straight after purchase, I opted for AppleCare+ with the monthly payment option. Thanks to the recurring payments, my device is still covered under AppleCare+.
I am considering an upgrade later this year, possibly in September 2024, but I am not rushing into it. My phone is performing well for its age and is still in pristine condition, which is important for potential resale value. The only thing that is showing signs of age is the battery.
After over 33 months of daily use, I started noticing that the battery is not as good as it used to be. With the built-in Battery Health feature, I can see that it’s at 87% of design capacity. It’s not bad for its age.
However, after the same period with her iPhone 13, my wife began to notice that her phone needed to be plugged in much more often.
Recently, we even noticed that the battery surprisingly jumped from 59% to 61%, only to return to 59% shortly after.
This made me start thinking, so I quickly checked her battery health. From Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging, we can see that her health is at 80%.
It’s not a bad result after over 33 months, but also not great from the customer’s point of view, especially when you got AppleCare+ purchased.
According to AppleCare+ terms regarding the battery, you are entitled to have your battery replaced free of charge when it falls below 80%.
Exactly, it states “below” 80%, which currently you may think is not met, as the battery health in settings shows exactly 80%.
But what if that value is inaccurate?
Buying a refurbished Apple product is a great way to save money. I purchased my MacBook Air with an M1 chip through this route back in 2021, and the device is still working well.
The good news when buying refurbished items directly from Apple is that they are treated no differently than new devices in terms of support and service. You are eligible to purchase additional protection through AppleCare, just like with new devices.
The savings on refurbished items, compared to the same item new, can be significant. Of course, you can buy them even cheaper if you don’t mind losing the ability to get extra care for them directly through AppleCare, but if you do mind (like me), then there is one more thing that you should think about before going this route.
If you follow my page, you’ve probably already come across my post Blocking Ads in Safari on iOS, iPadOS and macOS. In it, I described how to use the built-in Firefox Focus feature to block trackers and ads without unnecessary configuration.
This method won’t work for everyone. Others may opt for AdBlock Plus, which can be set to block ads in Safari similarly to the method described using Firefox Focus. Daily I use Firefox Focus and AdBlock Plus in my Safari browser on my phone.
No matter what you choose, every solution is good with one but…
Privacy in recent years is something that everybody is talking about. Some companies undersell their own devices just to gain the information that they will harvest. The others say it aloud that they put privacy on the pedestal, and that includes their devices. This is Apple.
Even if you decided to move away from devices and companies that violate your rights and decided to buy an iPhone, remember, that in the whole of this the weakest link, the hole in a privacy matter is you!
We are living in a world, where everybody is trying to commercialise almost everything. If selling products and services does not bring desired income and users have had already too many subscriptions to pay for another one, there’s comes Ads.
Nobody likes Ads. They can ruin the reading experience on the website, cause our computer to choke due to excessive use of resources, or put your device or ourselves at risk due to privacy matters.
I used to use, back in 2020 ads, that display dynamically on my site, through Google AdSense. This does not even bring the return of the costs, that I put into it. What’s more annoying, using Google Ads has a huge negative impact on my website performance. Ironically, my site has been penalised by Google in their ranking, due to using their solution!
Once I migrated to Hugo and start using Netlify in their free plan, I reduced costs significantly, and because of that, I decided to banish Ads altogether. My site doesn’t have millions of visitors per month, hence it does not cost me a lot to maintain it. At the time, when I will be somehow noticed, I will gain a decent number of visitors, can imagine that I will be facing other opportunities to gain profit, and hopefully this will not be from Ads.
When I appreciate Ads system like EthicalAds, Privacy-preserving Ad Network or BuySellAds, there are still Ad systems that cause me a headache. If they annoy me, they annoy others as well.
On my devices, I am using Safari as my default browser. You may say what you like about it, but definitely, it’s not the new Internet Explorer.
I am using a dual approach. To preserve my privacy and to remove annoyances from the websites that I visit every day. Here is how I am doing that on my devices.
As a person who likes technical innovations, I like to play with the latest equipment. When it comes to Apple equipment, if changing the device to a newer one right after its release is not part of our work, a typical upgrade is usually expensive and not always profitable.
Having owned an iPhone 6 a few years ago, I was in no rush to upgrade until the iPhone X came out, which I had for two years. When the iPhone 11 Pro was released, I moved towards purchasing the iPhone XS (yes, one generation back). As the item (an exception to the rule) turned out to be inconsistent with the description, I had to return it, and in order not to be left without a phone, I decided to buy the iPhone 11 Pro 256GB.
As Apple offers 0% installments, the total amount was £49.99 per month with the first payment of £20 and the last payment of £29.23. It’s not some kind of deal, but I don’t overpay at all, as is the case with operators in the UK (especially for individual customers).
I have been looking at Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Programme1 for a long time. For a fixed monthly fee, you get a new phone, which you can replace with a newer one after a year (without having to pay the remaining “installments”). Apple Care is included in the total, which additionally encourages you to think: is it worth it?
Some time ago I prepared a simple iPhone Ringtone Converter for Windows. This time it was a time for a modification na preparation version for macOS.
Recently I have been looking for a simple and easy method to convert ringtone or a song from MP3 to M4R, a ringtone format used widely in iPhones.
The conversion from MP3 to M4A and later change of file extension to M4R is not something difficult for myself, however less experienced users this can be challenging.
Because of that, using various methods I decided to prepare something, that till be working on just dropping MP3 file and double-click on specified file to ret in short moment ready ringtone for use on our phone.
I have prepared couple batch files and used for this purpose FFmpeg converter. This is the final product from my work.
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