Updating My iPhone Software

Apple sent me a request on Friday asking me to update the operating system on my iPhone. It said before doing the update I would need to make more room on the device as I didn't have enough free space. That surprised me as I had over 10 GB available. Fortunately it brought up a utility to help me remove large files from the phone.

I take a lot of pictures and movies with my phone that I use on my YouTube channel. That requires me to copy the files from my phone to my desktop computer. I don't need the copy on my phone and so I spent some time making sure I had copies on my computer before deleting them from my phone. I did keep several photos on my phone as sometimes I like to show some of my pictures to friends and family. There is a balance though as keeping too many pictures makes them difficult to find and deleting to many means I can't share some of my adventures.

I went through my phone and freed up quite a bit of space. Apple's utility then showed me my largest text message attachments. My daughter-in-law often sends me large videos of my grandchildren being cute. I made sure I had copies and then deleted the ones on my phone. That freed up even more space to the point I felt I could install the operating system update.

I made sure to plug my phone into a stable power source and started the update. It ran smoothly and half an hour later, I had a phone with the latest operating system. My hope is that Apple doesn't continue to make more large updates. If they do, then I may need to upgrade my phone simply to have more memory so I don't have to worry about these updates in the future.

Outdated Instructions and Why Dates Matter

Recently I have experienced several problem with software updates on my various computers. It is easy to search the Internet and look for solutions. Unfortunately I find myself reading outdated instructions and it is only after going through the first several lines that I discover the solution is for a previous version of the software I am trying to fix. It makes me wish that every post on the Internet is required to have a date associated with it.

One would think that the problem could be solved by including software versions in the search string but that doesn't help. Search engines are amazing but they don't know the difference between version 6.1 and 6.1.3. At least with a posting date you have some idea of how recent the solution appeared online. If it is a new piece of software that released the day before, seeing a date of last year indicates you might want to keep looking.

I appreciate this blog and how it assigns a date to every post. If I give advice, you know when it was given. This is really helpful when you see two posts that disagree with each other. I may favor a particular laptop one year and a completely different one the next. This is because of constant change and in the evolution of products. My only hope is that products continue to get better and technology continues to advance.

Online Updates

This morning I looked at my Android phone and noticed that it automatically updated 2 of my applications. Then I looked at my iPhone and noticed there are 7 applications that should be updated. Then I turned on my surround sound system and noticed it needed updating and so I did that. Once my surround sound completed, my son told me my PlayStation 4 also needs an update. I feel like I am in a never-ending cycle of updates.

I think it is great that all of these applications and devices can get updates when they are needed. I do think it is getting out of hand though. It seems like I can't turn on an electronic device, play a video game, or make a phone call without being told there is an update that needs to be installed.

I think I am going to read an old-fashioned book with real paper for pages. It may be outdated technology but it doesn't require any time to power up. It never runs out of batteries. Most importantly all major updates were included at time of printing, long before the book entered my house.