Screen Request Through iMessage

This came of the blue. I started receiving iMessages for requests for more screen-time recently. Not sure what happened. I asked Meimei if she changed any settings but she didn't. There must have been an iOS update that brought on this feature.

Man I love it! Their screen requests used to come an a banner prompt. And if Meimei rejected it I couldn't see it and may approve it instead. And we are always trying to recall how much time was already given.

With this new feature where the messages go to both parents through iMessage I can clearly see what was being approved or rejected. The kids were also trying to figure out what this new thing was.

I usually don't agree with the iOS updates that get into the way I do something but this I totally support. What's better than giving parents more control.

New Iphone 16 Plus

Bought myself a new phone today. I've always been receiving the hand-me-downs from Meimei and am perfectly fine with it. But Meimei needed spare phones for the kids so makes sense for me to buy a new one and pass on my old one. I was initially thinking of the pro max but it seems excessive for what I need the phone for. Which is primarily to play simple games, take photos, whatsapp, net surfing. So we landed with the 16 plus which is $300 cheaper and that went to the Apple care. Still an expensive buy but I think it's worth it. Smartphones have become an essential part of everyone's life in this day and age.

Disabling Meimei's Phone

Meimei let's Emily play with her phone occasionally. Emily knows how to disable it.

Butter Fingers

We had bought new iPhones recently. Meimei is now using the iPhone 6. I traded in my Wifi-incapable iPhone 5 for a iPhone 6 Plus. We were glad to be rid of it. Now to see if we can trade off our iPhone 4. Apple is no longer providing support for the 4 and it can only be updated to iOS 7. Soon it won't be able to update or install any new apps. We'll see how that goes.

So anyways I've been using the 6plus for less than a month when it decided to make a suicidal dive this morning. I was putting down the backpack on the backseat of the car while juggling the water bottle and phone. Out of the blue the phone took a zero pointer olympic dive off my butter fingers. While diving,  it brushed off its flip cover and hit the stepping bar on the car before landing face down on the ground.

My heart sank the moment it dropped. Like when you see a diving champ dismount from a platform but accidentally hitting his head on the edge of the platform and then landing flat into the water ... You let out a grimace as you watch it happen. So thats pretty much what happened with my phone. We had plastered a tempered glass on the phone but there is a 3mm curve edge which the glass couldn't cover. And freakishly that part hit the car.

So instead of the tempered glass cracking on the impact the phone glass did instead. Argghhhh! My heart was filled with anguish and despair at the sight of the cracked screen. It quickly turned into anger and self resentment as I cursed my own clumsiness. This is a new phone!! How can I be so careless??!! Damn it! And why did the flip turn out?! ...

Thankfully Meimei was cool and calm about it while I complained incessantly over the phone about my own stupidity. She pointed that we had bought the phone replacement insurance just for such an unfortunate incident. It's cold comfort though as it still cost $160 to replace ... and more than likely it's a refurbished set rather than a newly minted one.

Well lesson learned. No more flip covers for Mr Jelly Hands. Meimei suggest I get a Ottoman but the 6plus is already big ... I rather it doesn't become a iPad Mini wanna-be. Sigh ... Stupid stupid stupid (bangs head on wall).

My First Rotten Apple

The wifi on my iPhone 5 died. It happen late June but only have time to blog about it now. That and the irritation of the laggy-ness of the old iPhone 4 prompted me to rant about it haha.

It took awhile before I noticed that the wifi on my 5 was dead. My first clue came when the telco sent an alert for hitting 80% of 4G data bandwidth. I was utterly confused why it was happened but checked anyways to see if I had inadvertently turned off the wifi. You know how sometimes it accidentally scrolls up the command centre and the wifi or bluetooth button gets on/off while in your pants. But no, that wasn't it, the wifi icon was still on. 

The next clue came when I tried to google to see if others were getting the same 'error' message by the Telco company. The wifi icon will start to spin but the web pages will not load. I thought it was the problem with the ISP connection again, which sadly breaks pretty often too, and reseted the modem. Nope that didn't help, pages are still not loading. And thats when I realised ... oh crap. It's like going back to my old Nokia. It's frustrating that the 5 died after only a little more than a year. I know things don't last forever, like how one of the USB ports on my Macbook no longer works. But without wifi the 5 is practically useless! 

So for the next week I didn't dare to update any of my apps and limited myself to only using Whatsapp on the phone. No safari, none of the news bulletin and definitely no gaming. Only on the day before the monthly billing period was gonna restart did I initiate the app updates. And that was done with care, checking the remaining data quota and matching the update size to make sure I didn't exceed.

Meimei brought us to Sim Lim to try to resuscitate the wifi by changing the antenna. Sadly it didn't work and the technician could only offer that we call up Apple to ask for a replacement unit. "Tell them you are a loyal Apple product user, best yet, if you have a few Apple gadgets, take a picture and show it to the customer service." "Oh and call the US hotline" Well that was an idea. We were after all loyal Apple fan ... we have 2 iPhone 4, 2 iPhone 5, Ipad, Ipad Mini Retina, Macbook Pro and an iMac. But well, in the end we didn't call. I didn't want to deal with another hassle with customer service.

Thankfully Meimei was here to the rescue again. She could sense my immense irritation and dug out her old iPhone 4 for me. It was a temporary measure, we are likely to get a iPhone 6 when it comes out later this year and I could then takeover her 5.

I'm disappointed that my 5 died. I've always thought Apple products were sturdily built. While it's not going to stop me from getting Apple products in the future, I'm starting to expand my selection to other brands. Those galaxy phones do look attractive.