Apple’s iOS 11.4 = pOS 11.4

The worst part of camping in Arizona’s monsoon season ain’t what you think.

It ain’t wondering whether your tent’ll survive the pounding rains and bouncing hail.

It ain’t wondering whether your tent – (and perhaps with you in it!) — will become airborne like Dorothy’s house in the “Wizard of Oz.”

It ain’t the hard ground reverberating beneath you when bone-crunching thunder rolls across the night skies.

Ain’t ain’t the bold bright lightning strikes — and spectacular they are in Arizona! And that undeniable vulnerability of lying on forest ground in a little tent wondering whether a bolt will strike a tree just outside. Or the tent itself.  Well, there are worse ways to go.

The worst part ain’t the mud.

Or the uncertainties inherent in Camping Without End. A gentle way of saying that I’m homeless and am boondocking in an Arizona forest –during the state’s July-August monsoon season to boot!

No, the worst part of this scenario is: Apple’s iOS 11!

How can that be, you ask!

I must preface. I’ve been an Apple fan  since it arrived. Some 25 years I’ve been a loyalist. A looong time! Nothing except Apple in my personal life

I’ve ridden their ups and downs. Been patient through their failures, celebrated their successes. Have never owned anything BUT Apples neither have I wanted to. Through the decades, I’ve come to their defense when appropriate and forgiven them their egos and missteps when necessary.

I’m also a (not so) closeted geek. A superb troubleshooter. Am intimate with Apple products. I learn my way around — because I LIKE to and I think it’s necessary. If a problem’s seriously beyond my domain, only then do I turn to tech. With whom I get along very well, unsurprisingly.

Establishing this Apple cred is paramount to what I’m about to say:

iOS 11 (most recently 11.4.1) is A. PIECE. OF. SHIT.  Repeat: A. PIECE. OF. SHIT.

iOS should be called pOS 11.

Two words.

BATTERY. DRAIN.

This ain’t a techie blog. I’m not about to bore you or myself by retracing and detailing the innumerable steps, tests and functions tweakings I’ve attempted to MAINTAIN. BASIC FUNCTIONAL. BATTERY. POWER through a day.

Context. My phone’s merely a year old.

Previous version — 10.3.3. — worked just fine. Sure, it wasn’t ideal — what software is?! — but it certainly got me through a day with minimum to moderate use with power to spare.

It was quite unfortunate — nee by accident — that iOS / pOS 11 got downloaded onto my phone. It was neither my desire nor intent. Once there, I couldn’t remove it (since Apple had signed off on iOS 10).

Thus began the nightmare. Instantly. No exaggeration. The battery drain was IMMEDIATE. Massive. Undeniable.

With absolutely no changes, not even a most minor of tweaking, made to my phone! Just BOOM! Like the bus is running. Then the next moment, huge breakdown. No obvious rhyme or reason

Back to camping in monsoons.

It’s challenging all right. Dramatic. As living in the elements is. As a human being, you rise to those challenges. You reason, you plan best you can, you respond, you factor in conditions You do this, don’t do that. You survive.

iOS / pOS 11, unfortunately, is a gigantic thorn in the side compared to “living within Mother Nature and her monsoons.”

The TREMENDOUS battery drain — even WHEN IT IS NOT BEING USED and EVERY SETTING HAS BEEN TURNED OFF TO SAVE POWER — requires me to charge the phone a few times a day.

Hard to do when you’re camping. No outlets in the dirt!

So I rely on external sources — primarily cafes and my car’s USB port.

But doesn’t much matter. ‘Cause I can go to bed with it fully charged and wake up to half-juiced. Even when it’s not in use and setting after setting’s turned down or off toward power-saving!

This post, these words, truly they can’t convey the ABSOLUTE. FRUSTRATION — and DISLIKE — that has developed for Apple — with whom I’ve partnered in electronics for decades — as a result of iOS / pOS 11.

BTW, if you’ve any reason to doubt me — and you don’t, on this matter I write with authority  — then I invite you to google “iPhone iOS 11.” Complaints and experiences with immense and UNFIXABLE battery drain identical to mine are rampant.

I had to get this off my chest. I’m homeless. I’m camping in a tent in a forest in monsoon season.

I DEPEND on my phone to be there — just in case something happens.

I DEPEND on my phone to retrieve email or simply check a site. Can you say weather.com?!

I DEPEND on my phone to hold a charge LIKE IT USED TO before iOS 11.4.1 (got accidentally downloaded, wiping out all that was good prior).

I DESIGN MY DAY around power supply: in cafes, at fast-food joints, in my car.

Otherwise, bye-bye battery juice. Why even have a phone then?

Rather, why bother having an iPhone?

More precisely, why bother having an iPhone with iOS / pOS 11.4.1?

Piece of shit indeed.

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Yes, Virginia, there ARE just two types of people

“There are two types of people,” said my dad in one of his random bits of wisdom that’s remained in my brain for some 50 years.

“The Takers and the Givers,” said he.

Oh. How. Right. He. Proved. To. Be. That life has proven him to be.

My edition:

“There are two types of people. The Talkers and the Listeners.”

When you strip the statements down to their basics, the fundamental is identical. Takers = Talkers. Givers = Listeners

I’ve been seeing — rather, listening — to it in action for the past 1-1/2 hours. At a cafe. Two gals guesstimated 20-21 years old at the next table.

The blonde has been yammering yammering yammering for just about the entire time. Spilling out her evidently boyfriend problems in dull dramatic detail. “Like he said this, then I said that, then he said he didn’t know how to do that, and I said …” you get the picture.

Her friend with long dark hair has been listening listening, rarely commenting and even more strikingly not riveted to her cell phone, which is the modern American custom.

Irony is, from what I overheard before popping in the earbuds and dialing up Pandora, the gist of the Talker’s — the blonde’s — ceaseless chattering is Dull Drivel.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

oops, dozed off

Meanwhile, the friend with the straight long raven hair who’s hardly said anything comparatively has much more to talk about. Much more interesting content at least.

She’s about 6 months pregnant.

I am that Raven. Minus an infant-in-creation. Or the hair.

I’m the one who Listens Listens Listens Listens Listens Listens and Listens to the entire world. To the entire fucking world.

I am the Giver in my dad’s equation.

And in this current scenario, the Blonde Chatty Cathy is the Taker. Take take take take taking up air space. Taking up time and energy from Raven — who should be cited for her patience.

This scene got me thinking. If Blonde Chatty Cathy is already so ENGROSSED in her own adolescent-y stuff, is such a selfish Taker and Talker at age 20 (ish), what’s she gonna be like when she’s 30, 40?

Because by that time, you can’t blame Diarrhea of the Mouth on youth or immaturity.

I can tell you what she’s gonna be like: One in an infinite number of middle-aged women who doesn’t shut the fuck up.

It’ll be all about her, her kids, her husband, what they’re doing, not doing, what she said, what they said …. blahblahblahblahblahblahblah ………………..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

So dad, you were absolutely spot-on.

There’s two kinds of people in the world: The Takers and the Givers.

The ratio in my observation: 80% to 20%.

AND: There are the Talkers and the Listeners.

That ratio: 95% to 5%.

Praise the lord for Pandora and earbuds!! — for without ’em, well, either I’d-a grabbed the long hair of Blonde Chatty Cathy and dragged her outta the cafe caveman/woman style …. or this post woulda been bursting with profanities!

The final word I leave to this dear ol’ dude: