I found a Force Restart sequence online that I didn't know about: quickly press VolumeUP, then VolumeDOWN, then press and hold SIDE button. That did nothing.

But ... now the phone responded to the 2-button press that is supposed to bring up the scary Power Off and Emergency SOS screen. I was intending to power it down and then back up, since Apple doesn't provide a "hard reboot" command.  But instead of the Power Off screen, it flashed the Apple logo briefly and then quickly brought up my lock screen and everything was hunky-dory. I had to login with my password and re-login to Apple ID, but other than that it was all normal.

Not only that, it was more than half charged, probably because I had left it plugged in to a charging cable while I ate breakfast. There is something intermittently wrong with the mag charger on this phone, but the lightning cable always works. So I guess it was actually charging while it was comatose. All I needed was that Force Restart sequence and some persistence. 

I think what happened was that the mag charger drained the battery instead of charging it. I've had that happen before, but never to the point where the phone was unresponsive. Power cycling it has fixed the problem in the past, but this time the phone was so hung that I couldn't even power cycle it. 

 
 

I was investigating the new capabilities in IOS 16 (mostly ways to fiddle with the lock screen) and discovered this amazing feature. It's called something cryptic like "lift objects from background."  

This is Lena at age 2 trying on a new hat in the Columbia Outlet Store in Portland.

It was far easier to adjust to than I expected. I was apprehensive about the removal of the Home button, but the new swipe gestures are so easy to use that I really don't miss it. And Face ID works so seamlessly that I wasn't even sure it was doing anything until I tried to open my phone while it was sitting flat and facing away from me and was presented with the password entry screen. And even then, all I had to do was pick up the phone and glance at it, and it immediately opened up. SO much easier than the Home button touch-id, which took a couple of seconds and often required a few retries. I was surprised and a little hurt when I tried to open my shopping list at the grocery store and MY PHONE FAILED TO RECOGNIZE ME. Oh, right, I'm wearing a mask. 

The size is only 1/4" larger than my old OG SE, but I do notice the difference. It's at just about the upper limit of the size I find comfortable in my hand and pocket, so I'm glad I ordered a couple of super skinny cases. 

The only disappointment is the battery capacity. It's noticeably better than the old phone (which it damn well ought to be because the whole reason I decided to buy a new phone was because the battery was going downhill in the old one) but it declines pretty fast for a brand new battery. I haven't drained it yet, but I've gotten down below 60% with a few hours of setup activity and intermittent Candy Crush. Fortunately it has fast-charging capabilities and an uber-convenient magnetic charger (which DID NOT come with the phone, to the annoyance of pretty much everybody in the Apple universe). Unfortunately, the mag charger, while faster than the old 5W charging system, is not as fast as it ought to be. For true fast-charging you have to plug it into a cable (!!). Normally this would mean unplugging the mag charger from the expensive single-port 20W adapter (which also did not come with the phone) to plug in the cable. But it turns out that my computer docking hub has a fast-charging USB-C port right on the front. I normally put my phone on a charger while I am sitting at my computer, so that works fine.

The only downside I have found with the new phone controls is a very minor one, but a little annoying. I often get notifications across the top of the screen while I am doing something important like playing Candy Crush. I have been in the habit of glancing at them and then dismissing them by tapping the Home button. Now I have no Home button and have to wait a couple of seconds for them to fade away on their own. People with newer Home-less iPhones: is there a quick way to dismiss notifications? 

Aiieee! My smartphone is wearing out. AGAIN. For the last 4 years I have been stubbornly clinging to my outdated but beloved iPhone SE, the last phone that Apple manufactured that wasn't obscenely big and clumsy. It was a refurb (so it is probably actually 5 years old) and irreplaceable because Apple discontinued them in 2018 and hasn't manufactured a decent sized pocket phone since. So I kept good old Rose Gold going with a succession of sleek little charging cases and finally a full battery replacement in 2019. But time marches on; battery #2 is starting to fade and I am down to my last working charging case. 

But just in the nick of time, Apple finally gave in and is now producing a small-format iPhone again! Not a hybrid of two older models this time, but a mini version of their flagship iPhone 12!  It's just a smidge larger than the first generation SE (but with a much larger screen), a BAM-SOCK-ZOWIE new camera, and a high-res OLED display. It also costs a small fortune, and has a number of dubious "improvements" that nobody asked for and I certainly don't want (like Face ID), but it seems like my best option. 

So with a certain amount of trepidation I hit DONE and ordered one. And now I'm actually a little excited to get it. I'm sure it will take me a while to get used to it, but maybe the larger display size really will turn out to be adequate compensation for removal of the Home Button. Maybe. Not convinced, but willing to give it a try. At least there's still a Lightning port, so my collection of charging cables and devices will still work.

But I will need a new case, so... back to shopping. I'm reminded of an article I read when the smartphone craze was just taking off about how people were literally falling in love with their phones: wanting to be with them all the time, constantly worrying about their safety, and dressing them up in cute little outfits. 

tldr; How to temporarily disable auto screen lock on your iPhone. 

One of the best and worst things about iPhone's IOS is its obsessive security. While it is possible to disable auto screen lock completely (not a good idea, IMHO) there is very little middle ground. The longest settable time before the screen locks on you is 5 minutes. And there is no obvious way to temporarily disable auto lock if you are doing something like reading a recipe off the screen.

But it turns out, there IS a back-door way to do this! It's through the Accessibility feature (and boy, is that non-intuitive to configure). It has to be set up per individual app, but once it's done all you have to do is triple-click the home button to lock the screen on. It's a little harder to turn it off (due to afore-mentioned obsessive Apple security) but it's a heck of a lot faster than descending through the Settings menu to turn auto lock off and on every time you want to do this.

 STEP 1)  ENABLE ACCESSIBILITY AND GUIDED ACCESS

• Open the App
• Triple-click Home to trigger accessibility mode
• Select Options in lower right corner
• Toggle ON the Sleep/Wake Button

I'm finding this incredibly useful in the Photos app. I'm playing a puzzle game (The Witness) and occasionally I find it helpful to take a snapshot of a puzzle and refer to it when solving the next puzzle. This is a lot more useful if the picture you are referring to doesn't keep going dark. I also plan to use this for my shopping list app and of course my all-purpose journal and notes app for things like recipes.  

Don't mind me, I'm just fiddling around with my new toy. I knew that when I finally gave in and got an iPhone it would change my life in some small but time-consuming way. What I did not anticipate was that it would be the camera. It's such an unexpectedly nice camera, and there are so many things you can do with it besides simply snap a picture. I'm currently investigating options for posting pictures directly from iPhone to Internet.  I have signed up for two online photo services - PhotoBucket and Flickr.  So far I much prefer PhotoBucket (naturally, I always pick the option that is doomed). 

This picture was taken with my iPhone, tarted up with the SnapBucket app, and posted online to PhotoBucket. That part was easy.  There is an interface between PhotoBucket and LJ, but I continue to be disappointed in it. There is a one-click way to post a picture from PB to LJ, but it just posts a giant-sized picture with no option for adding text. You can edit it afterwards to resize the picture. And you can add text, but it is awkward.

It took me all weekend, but I finally found a way to transfer my iPhone 4 photos to my Windows XP system without having them rotated 90 degrees. Along the way I learned about EXIF metatagging and learned (sadly) that my beloved photo manager (CompuPic) has been legacied, so there will be no updates to fix this issue. I finally found a free utility that rotates the photos losslessly and then fixes the metatags. So now the pictures are right side up, but they still have their time stamps (and maybe even geo-tags).

Now that I have an iPhone, which I am thinking of using as my primary camera, I have a different attitude towards cloud storage of pictures. I downloaded an iPhone app for PhotoBucket and posted a few pictures of Lakewood Chapel yesterday. 

Why Photobucket?  I dunno - 'cause one of my brothers uses it, I guess. I called him (on my new phone) and asked him why he picked that one. Apparently he did it more or less at random.  Coincidentally, Photobucket seems to be the one that LJ supports. But how the heck do you use it???  I've been trying to insert one of my PhotoBucket photos using the Post an Entry tool and can't figure it out.

I click the image icon and select the PhotoBucket tab.
I manage to navigate to my Lakewood folder on PhotoBucket.
Now what do I do?  I was hoping I could just click on the picture and it would be inserted into my LJ post, but clearly that's not it.