I’m pretty fickle when it comes to music subscription services; I like to try them all. I’ve used Pandora, Rdio, Google Music, and Spotify. I had no particular reason to switch to Apple Music when it came out because Spotify works so perfectly. Then came the reports about Spotify’s recent privacy policy changes; I decided to try Apple Music after all.

I upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite on my MacBook tonight and thought I’d share some of the fixes I had to apply to get my development environment set up again. I’ll continue to update this post as I discover new things that aren’t quite working the same as before.

Last week, T-Mobile announced they’d pay your Early Termination Fee to switch from another carrier to T-Mobile. I had been thinking about trying out an Android phone for a while, and the Nexus was my top pick. I couldn’t have a Nexus on Verizon because of GSM/CDMA crap, and I wasn’t about to go back to AT&T since I left them in disgust for Verizon a year back. The T-Mobile deal was my ticket off of Verizon, which was a decent carrier if expensive, and into the Android world. The next day, I went out and swapped my iPhone 4S for a Nexus 5. I’ve been keeping notes in Evernote on my new phone about how the experiences differ.

I got an iPhone 4S today after my AT&T contact expired yesterday. I’m excited to be on Verizon now and will hopefully experience fewer dropped calls. I was with AT&T for seven years, since they were Cingular back in the day, and I finally got tired of the crappy cell service. It was always the most frustrating around UK’s campus, when I would have to try multiple times to even get a call to dial out. It tended to say “call failed” immediately, not even ringing. I’m expecting to like Verizon’s service better, and I’m certainly liking the iPhone 4S over my ancient iPhone 3G. I was surprised to be able to trade in my old 3G for $65; there’s still a demand for them?

Well, after a few hours and several different Google searches, my iPhone 3G is now jailbroken and has Whited00r on it. I think my phone may be the fastest it’s ever been, and I’ve tried iOS 3.1.3, 4.0, and briefly tonight 4.2.1 on it. I updated my iPad to iOS 5 tonight and, on a whim, decided my aging iPhone could use some more flash and glitter, too. Someone on Reddit mentioned Whited00r as being a way to make your older iPhone speedier while still getting some of the features from later iOS versions, so I decided to try it.

I got my Air! I’m typing this from it now. :) I’ve had fun organizing and configuring everything, and I’m finally settling in to using it for some real work. Well, not work as in someone’s paying me to do it: I’m just working on a new layout for this site and my portfolio. I bought Acorn from the Mac App Store and am using it for my image editing, with Komodo Edit for my HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Here’s a screenshot of my primary desktop with Mission Control showing my apps:

I ordered one of the new MacBook Airs last night, and I’m super excited about it coming next week. I’m typing this entry on my old 2007 MacBook, which I bought used from a friend. All my Macs I’ve had used, so it’s cool to be getting my first brand-new one. I didn’t go the cheap route, either: I bought one of the 13” ones with the upgraded CPU and a 256GB SSD. Jon is such an up-seller, too: he was sitting beside me when I ordered, and he was all “you know, you’re spending this much on a computer anyway, you might as well spend the $100 extra and get the better CPU”.

So I’ve had my iPad 2 for a month now and I thought I’d write about how it’s worked for me. I hope you guys aren’t sick of iPad posts, because I’m all excited about my new baby and want to write about it. :P First the good things.

I downloaded Depict tonight after seeing someone on Reddit suggest it as another multiplayer iPad game like Words with Friends. It was $0.99, and it may be the best $0.99 I’ve spent so far on an app.

In case anyone else has the need to do this, I’ll explain how I converted a .docx file to a PDF on my iPad 2. The fact that I feel the need to write a tutorial on how to do this should be a big hint to the folks at Apple that their file management system, or lack thereof, needs work. :/

I feel like I gave the impression that I’m not enjoying my iPad, or that I regret its purchase. I don’t, and have been having a lot of fun with it. My big grief in the last post deals with stupid corporations, not limitations of the iPad. Anyway, from my few days of using this thing (I’m typing this blog post on it now), here are some of my favorite apps:

UK just lost to Connecticut in the Final Four so I’m cranky anyway, but one thing I’m really starting to find annoying is media limitations on my iPad. Grooveshark has a snazzy new HTML 5 interface, but they still require Flash for the music player. No Grooveshark app exists for either the iPhone or iPad in the App Store, so no Grooveshark for me on my iPad.

I got my iPad 2 in! I’m using it now, to type this entry, and it’s going pretty well. I took notes in compilers this morning using Upad, which allows me to type as well as draw in the same document. It went pretty well, though I found a few annoyances that I’ll have to note in a review. We’ll see how it goes in models of computation, where I use a lot of mathematical symbols and figures; I bet the drawing capabilities will be very useful there. In compilers, I mostly found myself writing text.

Recently, I noticed that my battery for my aging Macbook was starting to bulge in the middle, along its length¹. I Googled around and saw other folks complaining of the same thing, and that there was some recall program that ended in 2009 where Apple would replace your battery for free. My Macbook was bought in 2007 by someone else, and I bought it off them used a couple years ago, so it was definitely made in the time frame where the recall program would include it.