Before the release of iOS 13, Joy and I used a shared Apple Reminders list called “Grocery” to keep our grocery list in. I’ve found the Reminders app to be completely broken for me now in iOS 13. I can’t get my phone, ipad, and icloud.com to agree on which lists I have. Apple has explicitly stated sharing a list is broken in iOS 13: Sharing a Reminders list using the Add People function does not work currently in iOS 13.

I’ve now turned off background app refresh for all apps. I didn’t realize, at first, that background app refresh could be disabled. It can, though, on a per-app or global basis. so I turned it off completely.

I noticed my phone having shorter battery life and staying warm when I wasn’t using it. In Settings > Privacy > Location Services I disallowed the Facebook app from being able to use my location. Problem seems to be solved. My iphone now stays at room temperature when I’m not using it. How did I decide to turn off location services for Facebook? iOS 7 added a feature allowing apps to occasionally update in the background.

With the 7.1 update, I’m much more comfortable with iOS 7. I no longer miss iOS 6. The updated lock screen and phone apps are the best touches. I especially like the new effects when waking up or turning off the screen: a subtle, super-fast zoom in on wake and zoom out on sleep. Making the transition animations shorter is also nice, everything feels snappier because of it. The new calendar app looks nice but is still clunky from a usability perspective.

Did you get the iPhoto app for iPhone and iPad yet? I did, and was disappointed at first. Until I read this iPhoto review. Now I love to use iPhoto to winnow my multiple shots of the same scene down to one and only one photo. I favorite the winner, then delete all of them from camera roll. iPhoto saves its own copy of any photo you favorite or edit.

Apple maintains a table mapping your Apple ID to your iOS devices (probably by serial number but possibly by SIM card). When you sell an iOS device, you should first turn off iMessage before restoring the software. If you forget, though, or your iOS device is stolen, an alternative way to disable iMessages on the device is to go to apple’s support page, log in with your Apple id, and you’ll see all the devices apple has associated with that Apple ID.

long story short, replacing just the screen wasn’t sufficient. the home key was still activating spuriously. I went back to the apple store and they finally gave me a new phone. I had only 22 days left on the warranty!

I got another appointment at a genius bar. after telling the long story, and heading him off at the pass when he started to tell me to reset it to factory defaults and not restore, he replaced the screen. I think the phantom home key presses are gone, but it might have happened during a phone call once, last night. we’ll see.

I dropped my iPhone on a sidewalk in December, shattering the screen. Apple sold me a new one for $200. After I restored my backup to the new phone, within a couple weeks the iPhone started pressing the home button by itself. That is, it would jump out of whatever app I was in, then jump back and forth between the first page of the home screen and the search page.

I’ve gotten in the habit of playing music on my big stereo via iTunes running on my Mac. A handy remote control for this is the Apple-created iPhone app called “Remote”. it looks like an ipod on your phone, but it’s controlling an iTunes running on a Mac over the network. It works well enough, but not perfectly. Lag time between waking up the iPhone and being able to control iTunes is in the neigborhood of 5 seconds, which is an eternity when you’re used to instant digital gratification.