Before I get up from my chair, I get ready to charge up my iPad, something I do in the morning so I can use free solar power. I charge everything except my watch using solar power; in the old days, I charged my devices overnight, something “experts” now frown on. I also update the installed Apps while it charges.
So, I next open up the App Store, and there’s usually a little red number telling me how many installed Apps have updates. It usually says 1 to 5, sometimes a bit more, and sometimes it’s zero. I refresh it, and sometimes it stays the same, and other times it doesn’t, like today: It said I had zero Apps to update, but when I refreshed, it turned out there were actually 30 (an unusually large number). I think it’s funny when there are a lot more updates than the little red number said at first—and that can often mean a major update to the iPadOS is coming.
A short time later, my Apps were up to date (for that moment…), the iPad was fully charged, and I’d also wiped the screen with a microfibre cloth—and that’s a daily task that does annoy me (see photo up top, taken in March of last year for a post I never did; the Leo hairs are a bonus).
My Apple devices can update automatically, but I like to keep a teeny, tiny bit of control over them, which is why I still do the updates manually. However, it actually started when I had an iPhone 5C that ran out of storage space every other day (not an exaggeration). I never turned on auto updates when I got new devices with adequate storage, and I realised that manual updating gives me a chance to review the Apps needing an update, and that means I notice Apps I never use. I can then either delete them or remember Apps I liked but forgot about. Sort of an unintended benefit, I guess.
It’s similar with my phone, but I often forget to to update the apps on it because I don’t update my phone every day (usually every third day, when the charge drops to around 40%). In addition to my morning ritual, I also use my iPad while I watch TV in the evening, so it generally needs daily updating. I also need to clean my phone screen less often because I don’t use it as much or as long.
All of this has been true for many, many years. In fact, the only thing that’s really changed is that I now charge my devices in the daytime using solar power. Wait, there’s one other thing that’s very different: I bought my phone and iPad for myself. In my old life, Nigel always used to buy me a new phone when I needed one (or, when he thought I did, which was often before I did), and he gave me his iPad when he moved on to something else, or decided he didn’t use it enough (that happened three times). He looked after my tech needs back then, and now I have to do it myself. I guess nothing about this is actually the same, apart from me being lazy about deleting Apps I don’t use, and also having to clean the iPad’s screen a lot.
On the other hand, my modern mornings are so familiar and routine now that I’m not even aware of how different they actually are unless I stop and think about it all, as I just did. And that, I think, is a very good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment