I have a fruit device for work; my phone, a model 13, has a stoopit-arsed design with a physical button/switch on the side to put it into silent/do not disturb mode.
I look at it Mon evening & noticed it was in red/low power mode but should have enough to make it til the morning when I would be at irk. I’ll charge it there using their electrons. I packed my computer bag, lunch, trash & recycle bin & took everything outside, some to the curb & some to the car. When I got to irk, I pulled the necessary things out of my bag but didn’t see the phone. I pulled out my phone (which I almost also accidentally left at home) & called my irk phone. Nothing. I went out to the & called again; again silence. Oh dummy me, I must have left it at home. Take the time to get the authenticator app setup on personal phone & then go about my day. When I got home it was not there, either. Panicking, I can only assume that it somehow jumped from my bag to the (now-empty) recycle bin unnoticed in it’s best Buzz & Woody impersonation. I look in the bathroom, the kitchen, upstairs (even though I am positive it was downstairs). Resigned that I’m going to need to put in for a new phone, when I get to irk today I look in my bag one more time…there it is; (now) dead & with the do not disturb button somehow accidentally flipped in the wrong spot in the bag. Why the @#$%& would they make a device with something that can physically make it silent w/o realizing? If that wasn’t flipped I would have realized it was in my bag yesterday morning, when it still had juice & wasted all of about 5 seconds.
* Between waiting until I got home, when I assumed it was now dead & not having any 'Find my" setup because it’s not my phone & I’m otherwise not in their ecosystem; besides that wouldn’t work anyway with location turned off.
Like a lot of the country right now, I am living in a black & white world. There is no green grass, there is no brown dirt, only white & the black (salted) grey of macadam. There was a cardinal flitting around outside with a bright red belly. He was spectacular looking against the all-white background (though looking more like he was a Phillie than from St. Louis ) & I didn’t have my (real) camera to zoom in & get a shot of him. It would have been an award winner!
The mute feature has been on every cell phone I can remember, at least every smart phone, and I think most of my old flip phones did too. The only thing that changed was the idea of pushing and holding a button to mute rather than flipping a toggle.
Well, not the only thing. You can now change the function of the new button to no longer mute. It can perform a ton of other functions instead, or do nothing. You choose. If you hate the idea of a mute button, you should love the newer iPhone because you can finally get rid of it if you prefer.
I can’t tell you how many times over the last decade or so I accidentally muted my phone with the old style of switch. It was easy to flick by accident and even if it was jolted too hard that could flip it to “ringer off” mode.
The snow blower now works, but most of the snow is dangerously ‘crispy’ / ‘icy’ ?
I moved my car and asked the town to do another plowing in front of my property.
Cue, MAGA Ahole neighbor, who not only plowed all of his snow in front of my house, but now since I have called for a re-plow, has parked his car in front of his apron so that the plow can’t remove the snow in front of my property.
Please keep in mind that this is the same MAGA scum who brandished his CCW at me from his overly tight fitting pants pocket.
I know that he has to move his car sometime. Should a pay a plow truck to bury him the way he would bury me? Should I pay some kids to throw buckets of water onto his car so it is stuck there until April?
This seems like a real life episode of Unethical Life Pro Tips…
It would be if that was the case but it’s not. You have to hold down on it to toggle on or off. Tapping it just displays whether it’s muted or not. And again, you can change that behavior, which is new. It’s an improvement, if people take a moment to learn how to use the tools they rely on.
I still have an old iPhone 13 for work with the old mute button and I wish it had the new, better one, like my personal phone. I’ll get an upgrade someday.
I’m an Android person. I can put turn Do Not Disturb (DND) on off by swiping down from the top of the screen or by going to the settings app; however, there is no physical button that can be accidentally flipped. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a button on an Android phone among all of them that I’ve owned over the years.
Fanboi much? Calling it fancier when they are more baic/idiot-proof & less able to customized than Android phones is not what I’d call a feature.
It is absolutely a design flaw that you can do something detrimental, unintentional & without realizing it by accidentally touching it the wrong way. I know that stoopit toggle is there but since I never turned it on it wasn’t even something that I was thinking of, I just assumed it was at a different location, & like I stated I had no way to track where it was.
There are absolutely advantages to having a device with an Android OS over the Apple iOS. I own am Android tablet for a reason. I can do things with that device I couldn’t with an iPad. It’s not like there is an overall objective superiority of one over the other. Outside of an enterprise system at least, where I can tell you from years of professional experience that Apple is better, but still not better than Blackberry (which is long dead, sadly). Basic and idiot-proof is very much a plus in that arena.
That describes every smart phone and tablet ever, though. I can definitely do something detrimental by accidentally tapping on the wrong thing on my Android device (and I have).
It behooves you to spend a moment to learn about a device before using it. It only has 4-5 buttons (depending on whether or not that model has the dedicated camera button). It’s not a jet cockpit. And like I said, you can reconfigure or even disable that button if you want, which should appeal to you as you were complaining about how little customization an iPhone offers. That button is an attempt to provide more customization. By default, it behaves similarly to the old ringer switch that has been in that same spot for generations of iPhone, in order to make the new button comfortable for people unfamiliar with it on a new model.
Also note that if accidentally holding down a button to mute a device bothers you, the same thing can happen if you accidentally press and hold the volume down button when in the wrong place. Such as the lock screen (my iPhone and Android devices both behave that way). Except an iPhone warns you with a haptic pulse when you toggle the mute button, unlike the volume down button. So it’s less likely to happen by accident.
as stated above, it is a work iphone 13. Google AI results to asking if it can be disabled state, “The physical Ring/Silent toggle switch on an iPhone 13 cannot be digitally disabled or locked through settings As a hardware switch, it will always function when moved.”
There are also certain limitations on the phone because they control it. Despite having facial recognition on, I must type in a password at least once a week & that password expires every x (30 or 45?) days, without warning. You pick up the phone to do something & you can’t until you change the password right then & there
Then it’s not a button you can tap. It’s a normal old-fashiomed ringer switch. Even flip phones had those. I thought you were talking about something that was actually new.
Modern iPhones don’t have that. You are complaining about old technology.
Good on your employer for following security best practices. We do the same. Though I admit that 30-45 days seems pretty excessive; it’s rare for an organization to require anything more frequent than 90 days. I understand complaining about that, I would too.
that I am forced to use. If I wanted to spend my own money I couldn’t just go out & get the latest & greatest version of their phone; I have to use what they give me. Obviously, if apple changed it, even they decided it wasn’t the best design; otherwise, they would have kept the toggle switch.
All of our other systems give you advanced notice that a password change will be necessary, either one or two weeks; therefore, when I do change one of those, I already know what I am going to make it because I’ve had a chance to think about it. I don’t have to write it down (security worst practice) & I’ll be able to get into my PC or that system later on. But when you need to CHANGEITRIGHTNOW to get on a call or look up a failure it’s a panic change that doesn’t sink into my brain unless it gets written down somewhere.
Fisher Investments advertises on NPR thus: “As a fiduciary, Fisher is obligated to work for their clients’ best interests.” This sounds like the weakest kind of self-promotion. It implies “we’re no better than any of our competitors”…and, worse, “we only work for you because we have to. If it weren’t for this pesky law, we’d screw you over hard!”
After a minute of research, I realized that only about 10% of investment advisors (not sure if that’s by firm, or by individuals) are “fiduciary,” and thus so obligated. But the ad doesn’t tell us this! They just assume we know this. They need to add something like “90% of investment firms aren’t so obligated; but we are, and we’re happy to help you.”
Gather round boys and girls, because this is tale of great woe, and glorious redemption.
You will recall my delightful new Camry. For reasons too complicated to get into, my garage is a tight space exacerbated by a workbench that had (until I fixed it yesterday) a piece of horizontal 2x4 sticking a few inches out of it.
When backing out recently, I heard enormous screeching, and thought I was dragging a metal bucket or some of other junk that I have all over the garage. I went out to look.
No, it wasn’t a bucket. It was a big piece of my car. The jutting-out piece of wood had grabbed onto a bottom piece of plastic quarter-panel in front of the right front wheel, and torn most of it right off. The car looked like complete shit, and I was distraught beyond belief.
The only reason it didn’t completely fall off is that the front grill and the left and right bottom panels are all one piece. So if the whole piece needed to be replaced it would be hellishly expensive. I took it to one body shop and the guy who looked at it practically yelled at me that he was backed up with 35 cars to work on, as if that was my fault.
But I found a brand new body shop in our little burg that wasn’t even officially open yet, but they took an appointment and the owner himself came in at the appointed time to look at the damage. Imagine my relief when he advised me to have a seat in the waiting area, enjoy a free coffee, and he’d have me on my way in about 20 minutes.
And sure enough, in about 15 or 20 minutes, everything looked as good as new! It was a freaking miracle! I asked the nice lady at the front desk what I needed to pay for this freaking miracle, and she said that they weren’t set up to take credit cards or issue formal invoices yet, so just a $20 would be fine. JFC! I would have happily paid $200 and considered it a deal. I will sing the praises of that body shop all over town!
Maybe it’s like new restaurants – they’re often fantastic when they first open, then gradually go downhill.
This wasn’t some two-bit operation, either. The shop area was huge, and the waiting area nicely decorated. Somebody made a major investment. I sure hope the business is successful, and if they want my recommendation, they’ve got it in spades!
My ex-wife drove Hondas. Small ones. Whose front air dam and fender assembly was unusually low to the ground vs most cars. As such it was easy to catch on parking lot bumpers and when she later backed away, it’d tear the front facade of the car away. Much like yours did.
Honda knew this of course. But rather than restyle the car to sit a little higher, they designed the attachments for that facade to be easy breakaways. The clips fail at the slightest provocation and the facade is dangling there undamaged. Climb underneath there with some new clips, pop, pop, pop to attach them to body and facade, and the car is good as new.
I suspect your car has some similar features and you were fortunate you didn’t crease the facade as it was peeled away. Once creased, now you need a new one, or costly hand work by the body shop to bend, grind, fill, and paint the plastic to look new again.
Regardless, you’ll want to not make a habit of peeling that facade back; I fear you’ve already spent your allotment of good fortune in that department.
Indeed. I’m now thinking about the heavy “organics” garbage bin that is delicately poised right next to the Camry (on top of some other junk), in such a way that if and when it falls it will either dent something, break a window, or break the right-side mirror. The next time I move the car out to go anywhere, that piece of shit is going outside and staying outside. Or else I’ll nail it to the wall. I never use it anyway. I’m a big advocate of recycling, but I don’t do the organics/composting shit.
) & I didn’t have my (real) camera to zoom in & get a shot of him. It would have been an award winner! 
