Be Excellent To Each Other

The batttery in the XR is utterly ludicrous. I often go to bed with it still on 60-65%. I’m going out tonight with it still at 72%, and I’ve been up since 6am! The only time it’s been below 50% is when I’ve forgotten to charge it overnight. I managed to get two full days that time, going to bed on 6% the next day.

I was toying with the idea of some kind of X, but decided to save the money. My 6s is booked in for a battery swap next week which will keep it going for another couple of years.

Honestly it’s the best phone I've ever had. Although the caveat is that I’ve not tried the XS or XS Max.

I feel largely the same about my XR too - had it a couple of weeks and it's amazing. I thought I'd miss Touch ID but actually, Face ID is far more convenient.

I think if they didn’t exist I’d probably have gone for the XR by now.
Unfortunately they do, and when I looked at the XS it was so much nicer that it made the XR feel like a poor relative but that one is more than I can justify.

Yep, I'm not spending over £1k on a phone. The XR is so much nicer than the 6/7/8 Plus though. It's the same size chassis but all screen. It's as much of a budget phone as Apple will do, but there's nothing budget about it, really. The camera isn't as nice as the XS obviously, but unless you have them side by side you won't know anyway.

Most of the reviews I read said that the XR was basically the XS but with a few missing features - and crucially, none of the missing features were really anything that the vast majority of people would be bothered about.

Of course the XR is by no means a budget model. It costs about the same as the 6/6s/7/7s Plus did at launch. It’s only “cheap” compared to the new, higher price points that started with the X.

Yep, it's their mainstream full price model that's anything but cheap.

I bought one of them iPad Pro things for Mrs Hearthly with the proper Apple keyboard, those fuckers are expensive, aren't they? Not much change from £1000 for a fucking tablet and a keyboard.

She loves it to bits though and it's solved a definite deficiency with her iPad Air 2. I know you can get third party keyboards for the Air 2 but they're bound to not work properly sometimes or have issues with them, and be a faff with their batteries etc etc.

She's going to keep the Air 2 for normal iPad duties, and use the Pro as a sort of portable computer and for when she needs to type in the house but isn't at her PC.

She sent me a picture of it IN ACTION at a local coffee shop.

They only did the US keyboard case when the first Pro came out so I got a UK Magic keyboard instead. Still going strong and is first party so no need to worry about compatibility.

Having just had a look at that picture, and a closer look at the real thing, it is indeed a US keyboard layout.

That’s a bit shit that they haven’t actually brought out a UK version yet. It’s been three years!

It's not, it's a hybrid. It has the # sign over on the right, but it has a double height return key and £ on the 3 key.

What kind of crazy ass shit is that then? Won't it just upset everybody?

In fairness it hasn't bothered Mrs Hearthly at all, she'd noticed a couple of things were in different places and just used the keys she needed in their different locations when required.

Tbf all Macs have the “ and @ transposed.

Well hopefully we'll leave the EU with No Deal, and then we can force Apple to make proper patriotic UK iPad Pro keyboards because we will hold all the cards. And they will be made in Britain too, by people who aren't a funny colour.

funny tinge I think you mean

Oh hah! Yes, of course, I forgot.

The official UK Apple keyboard layout predates the ANSI standard PCs use. It’s not crazy ass shit, it’s just an older standard that Apple have kept consistent to.

It's annoying when switching between MacOS and Windows, like I frequently do.

Especially when the old admin password had an @ in it.

Oh and mac keyboards (at least the one I'm used to) don't have an easily accessible # symbol.

#annoying

/looks at new MacBook keyboard

DaFuq is "option"? I'm glad I don't use Twitter a lot.

It's alt-3.

Same thing as "alt".

I’m not pressing two buttons at once

The Mac keyboard is irritating bullshit.

We should bring back the early Unix keyboards that had Control, Super, Hyper, and Meta plus Shift, Top, and Front.

It's even got a Like and a Dislike button, whoever designed that keyboard was clever. And also a time traveller.

An alternate alt!

Yeah this things awesome, it's got not one but two Greek buttons.

Was it "@dm1n"?

Is it "@d1mr1ll"?

Brilliant!

In fairness I'm not really that obsessed with framerates these days and I've had the Focus ST for quite a long time now.

How many years have you had the ST now, bud?

You can't beat an Atari St.

So someone saw the apple event yesterday?

lots of service,lots of confusion (for me at least)
- why do we need another streaming service?
- appelarcade v google stadia? asychronous war....
- a bloody creditcard..
- a news service that is us-centric as usual..

So this hasn't lasted long.

The keyboard started going wonky a few weeks ago, and would randomly just stop working, only disconnecting and reconnecting it again would sort it. Mrs Hearthly said she was OK with that and would put up with it.

Then a few days ago the microphone went dicky as well, and that now seems to work, or not work, completely at random. (This is not tolerable as she does loads of stuff with it that needs the mic.)

We've done all the guff online that TEN THINGS TO TRY IF YOUR IPAD'S MICROPHONE ISN'T WORKING suggest and all that shit, so it looks like it's back to Curry's with it.

Expected better from a PREMIUM APPLE PRODUCT.

Hope they sort out a replacement with minimum fuss. Apple quality is not what it used to be.

I suspect knowing Hearthy is on the warpath is what tipped Ive over the edge and made him quit.

Wasn't any money in it for Ive at Apple.

He's opened a 2nd hand car dealers on the Isle of Man.

Nah, they'll be rubbing their hands together. Hearthly will come back having bought an even flashier ipad with some kind of hover mouse and an aura-controlled keyboard and a couple of iPhone Xs.

As it happens I had to go to Curry's for something else (I didn't have the iPad with me), but I enquired about what the process for it would be, and they said to take it back to them, and they'd then send it away to their service centre, you can't exchange it for another one or anything like that. It generally takes 10-14 days to find out what the service centre has discovered, and in that time of course you don't have your iPad.

£1000 spent and the thing has scarcely lasted three months, isn't there some consumer rights doohickey that means I can exchange it for a working one? Mrs Hearthly uses it all the time, and not having it for two weeks would be a right pisser. (Albeit very much a first world problem, I readily acknowledge.)

EDIT - Google says they get one attempt to repair it, and then if that doesn't work I can get a replacement or refund. Pfffft.

Well we've done everything including a full factory reset now. Amusingly, the full factory reset fixed the mic on the back, but not the one on the front.

APPLE QUALITY.

Back to Currys it is then, stupid thing.