Repurposing Old Tablets and Smart Devices

While I'm on the subject of iPods, I thought I'd share a few tips on repurposing old smart tech. I have a ton of older devices; tablets, e-readers, mobile devices, you name it, I have it, and I find they can come in handy around the house. You can trade them in when you're upgrading, but you're usually lucky to get 20 bucks for them, and if they're in reasonable shape, that's a bad deal.

 You're much better served repurposing them to play a role in your IoT (Internet of Things), or "smart house". Old iPads and tablets are a great addition to your kitchen or family room and can serve as calendars, notepads, cookbooks, security camera monitors, music players, or all of the above. My old iPad Air is still in great condition and is an invaluable addition to our kitchen counter. Look up a recipe, quickly respond to a text, check your calendar while you're on the phone and add or update an appointment, you can even see who's creepin' 'round your back door. So many uses. You can mount them on a wall, or just use them in a free-standing cradle, there are a plethora of tablet mounts and cradles on the market, something for every situation.

Same with old mobile phones or iPod Touch devices, they make fantastic smart remotes for your TV's and entertainment centers. My iPod Touch is the primary controller for my Man Town A/V setup. It has my provider's app on it which has a Cable TV remote function, interactive program guide and access to my DVR library. It also has an Apple TV remote app, my iTunes library, and it connects to my A/V receiver via Bluetooth, so my complete music library is always available through my big boy stereo. Plus, it's got a keypad and Siri, which makes searching the guide grids a piece of cake. It also has internet access via Wi-Fi so I can keep track of news and scores. Forget those pricey universal remotes, this puppy does it all. Pro tip: you can also use old mobile phones for the same purpose as long as they have Wi-Fi. Just cuz they no longer have dial tone does not make them useless; they'll still upgrade and be capable of downloading apps via Wi-Fi.

Old iPods or MP3 players can be useful as well, paired with non-smart music systems. I have a Sony HD table radio and a Bose Wave that are both still excellent sounding devices, but both lack any smart features. Rather than upgrade them and trash a perfectly good music system, I use my old 3rd gen nano with them. From an aesthetic and haptic point of view, the 3rd gen Nano, or iPod fatty, as I call it, is my favorite iPod; what it lacks in functionality it more than makes up for in rizz. It's got that old school click wheel and iconic early iPod chrome backplate, it's a sexy little beast. Unfortunately, it no longer holds a charge for sh!t, but it works just fine nestled in a 30-pin dock, which both radios have. It expands the radios functionality, and it's a design statement; it says, "Music lives here". It also says, "We're old", but meh, I could care less. I wear that like a badge of honor.

Anyways, the possibilities are endless, you're limited only by your imagination. Plus, you're keeping it green by keeping things out of our ever-growing electronic waste piles, or the land fill. Double bonus.

So, repurpose those old devices when you can, old tech needs love too.

Apple Needs To Bring Back the iPod

I jumped on the iPod bandwagon early and rode that baby all the way to the end of the line, and it was a sweet ride. The iPod revolutionized the personal music player market. No more big devices to carry around, and more importantly, your portable music library was no longer limited to the number of cassettes or CD's you could lug around with you. Your whole music library, available all the time, right in the palm of your hand. Heady stuff, Jetson-esque stuff, and it still is. Digital data opened up a whole new world for us. Then the iPhone came along, a natural progression, and eventually phased out the iPod completely.

There's still a need for them, though. I love my iPhone, but it's not the right tool for every situation. If I'm going to be anywhere near whirling blades or water hazards, I don't want my iPhone in the vicinity. I also don't want to be constantly draining its battery; I want it charged and ready for when I need it. My iPod Nano is my go-to device for things like yard work, or long walks off a short pier. It's small, sleek, and functional. No dial tone, no annoying spam, no data stealing apps, just a good standalone music player, cuz sometimes that's all you need.

Apple had really hit the sweet spot with the Nano, and the 7th gen was their best device in my opinion, from both a size and functionality standpoint. It has Bluetooth, an FM tuner, a moderate amount of storage, and relatively little else, but it does the trick. If Apple built a new model based off of the 7th gen design with a beefed-up storage capacity, say 64 or 128GB, I'd be first in line to buy one. I'd even grudgingly accept Wi-Fi for ease of syncing, just as long as it didn't increase the size and battery drain by too much and they limit the apps that run on it. No mail, no texts, I want none of it. I'm sure they'd wedge their Apple Music streaming app on there, it's not something I need or want, but I could live with it as well.

I know there are other DAP's (Digital Audio Players) out there on the market, some with incredible specs like the high end A&K's and the Sony's, but they're all very pricey and Android based, and would entail duplicating my iTunes library or just outright converting my iTunes library into an app that works for both Apple and Android devices, but that's a hassle and entails subscription costs. My library is huge at this point with extensive playlists, so that ship has sailed for me. I'm pretty much locked into the iTunes world, warts and all, but I'm okay with that; it's free, familiar and relatively uncomplicated.

Uncomplicated, that pretty much sums up this whole argument. These days people are craving a "do not disturb" kind of device, it's not just nostalgia. There's most definitely a large market for it, and a new iPod is just the ticket. So, give us a new iPod, Apple, I'm begging you. My batteries are slowly giving up the ghost, its time, so let's get cracking.

Email Client Not Downloading Messages

 

Like many of you, I have multiple devices and multiple email accounts, so I use email clients to keep everything organized and available locally. I use Outlook 2013 on my Windows devices, and the standard iOS mail app on my Apple devices. All clients are configured the same to access my providers POP3 and SMTP servers, and all was working well, except on one platform, my Windows desktop. Messages were sending, but Outlook was hanging up when downloading new messages. It would sit and spin on "downloading" for hours, if I let it. Every so often a few emails would download, but it was a painful and incomplete process.

This was a vexing problem because mail was sending on the device, and occasionally, messages were downloading, so everything appeared to be set up correctly, plus the problem was limited to this single device. Hmmm. 

First thing I did was verify a good network connection for the desktop, which was easy for this device, it's plugged directly into a Gig port on my router and upload and download speeds were optimal.

A comparison of email account settings across devices was next, to see if I could find any differences, and I did.

When I first set up my email clients, I used all of the same settings, except on the desktop. The difference was that I had the Outlook 2013 client on my desktop set to "Leave a copy of messages on the server" and I had also checked "delete messages from server after 14 days", a subcategory, as well. On all of the other devices I had only checked "Leave a copy of messages on the server" and hadn't checked any of the deletion options. I had done this so that I could keep my mail server account effortlessly clean, while not missing any messages on any of my devices. My thought, a valid one, was that 14 days before deletion would give me enough time to be sure that I had received all of my emails on all of my devices before they were deleted from the server, and it worked, for a while...

When I unchecked "delete messages after 14 days", my new emails started flowing fast and furious on the desktop, just like on all of my other devices. Nice, like poop through a goose, as they say. Problem solved.

But why was this setting causing me problems? After all, it's something email clients are designed to do. Well, I did a little research and here are the major reasons "Deleting messages from the server" will fail:

A large volume of emails on the mail server can strain both the server and your device, causing freeze ups. Yep, that's me.

Server Issues. This is probably part of the problem as well. My original provider sold my email domain and address to another provider, and that new provider would most definitely not be my email provider of choice, if I had a choice, but I don't. I want to keep my current domain, that email address is ingrained into everything in my life, and I'm not ready to rip it out by the roots and throw my life into turmoil at the moment. Hint: my "new" provider is famous for the phrase "You've got mail". Nuff said?

Outdated or buggy email apps. It's probably time for me to upgrade Outlook 2013 to Outlook 2024, but I'm also in need of upgrading my PC's so that they can run Windows 11, so... I'll wait and do it all at once. *sigh*

Incorrect server settings. They were correct across devices and should have worked. Harumph. 

Slow or poor internet connection. Not my problem, man.

So, "Deleting messages from the server" was the issue that was hosing up my desktop, for a number of reasons, all stated above. To fix this in Outlook, go to "Email Account Settings", highlight the account you want to change, then click on "Change", "More Settings" and "Advanced". At the bottom of the advanced box, make sure that "Leave a copy of messages on the server" is checked, and that all of the subcategories that delete files from the server remain unchecked. It should look like this when you're done:

For now, I'm managing deletions on my mail server using the webmail interface from my provider. It's kind of painful; I'd prefer that it happened automagically, but it's a work around until I can clean up my mail server, and upgrade Outlook. There is another benefit to using Webmail occasionally btw, managing your spam filters at your mail server instead of on your individual devices is a much better solution in that constant battle with spam. Win, win.

One last thing, a friend was having the same issue with their Apple email client on their iPhone, messages either not downloading, or taking forever and then downloading in fits and starts. This same fix worked for them, so this problem is not unique to Outlook.

I think we all need to clean up our inboxes a little... 

That is all. 

Apple iOS/iPadOS 18.3 update - Security, Performance and Email Issues

 The iOS 18.3 update was chock full of surprises, not all good, and from the chatter I'm seeing online, I'm not alone in that opinion. It was a frustrating experience to say the least. Most notably for many, the mail changes were the worst part of it. Mail in iOS 18.3 now automatically categorizes your inbox for you and only shows you what Apple has deemed important in your inbox by default. You can change it back, kinda sorta, but life is hard enough without Apple making half of your inbox appear to disappear overnight. A change like this needs to be optional, not automatic, but it wasn't, so here's a brief summation of the changes you'll see, and some suggestions to regain order.

First things first though, a new update for iOS and iPadOS, 18.3.1, is already out, and you should install it immediately. It addresses both performance and security issues introduced by 18.3. According to Forbes, it's an emergency patch that fixes a security issue that’s already being exploited, and “an Apple Intelligence bug that may have been introduced.” the iOS 18.3.1 update fixes a flaw in Accessibility where a physical attack can disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked device. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” What this means in a nutshell from a security standpoint is that anyone could plug a device or cable into your USB or Lightning port and copy your data, even if your iPhone or iPad is locked. Yikes, this needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.

The 18.3.1 update also fixes recent performance issues introduced with 18.3. So far it seems quick and stable, but the jury's still out. Fingers crossed.

Okay, now let's get to the email "enhancements" that they've introduced. It reminds me of their threads change, Apple seems bound and determined to reimagine email, not sure why, but they are. I’m a straight up chronological inbox guy, anything else tips over my brain. If you're the same, here's what to do.

In the top right corner of your inbox(es), you should see an ellipsis (...), tap on that and change the setting to List View from Category View. This will repopulate your inbox(es) with all of your email messages. If you have more than one email account, you'll need to do this for all of your inboxes.

You can also get rid of those inbox category icons as well by turning off contact photos in Settings/Apps/Mail. They still show up in the emails themselves, but this gets rid of them in the list view. I don't need or want to see stars, moons and clovers anywhere other than in my bowl of Lucky Charms. Note, actual contact photos will still show up in your emails, as do their little category icons, this fix just removes them from your inbox for a cleaner view.

Next, emails that Apple deems "needs responding too" appear at the top of your inbox now. This is a similar fix to getting rid of the contact icons, go to Settings/Apps/Mail, then turn off “follow up suggestions” and they'll go away. Basically, turn everything on that page off except "notify before delete", unless you like living dangerously lol.

There's also a new feature, or bug, in Calendar. After entering a new event, Apple Intelligence picks up on any text messaging or email regarding the event and prompts you with calendar inbox messages. Ideally this is a good thing, but when I enter an event like "Lunch at 12:30 with John Doe", I don't need a message that says "Text from John Doe says lunch at 12:30" in my calendar inbox after I've created the event. It used to prompt me with the text details while I was creating the event, telling me after the fact is just superfluous and annoying. Perhaps the next update will return this feature's usefulness, we'll see.

Lastly, these updates will toggle on Apple Intelligence by default, even if you previously had it switched off. If you'd like to keep it off, go to Settings/Apple Intelligence and Siri, and toggle it off. It's still in beta, so I keep it off. I did turn it on briefly when I test drove one of the new intelligent features, Image Playground. Kinda cool, it generated a pretty funny profile sketch for me that's mostly right. Mostly. Lord knows how intelligent it actually is, and what info it reports out (see bug notice above), so I turned it back off. I'll be sticking with my own lack of intelligence for now.

It shouldn't be this hard, Apple. Offer me things, don't force me to recover from them.

That is all.