Tony's Stuff

  If I Had To Use The New Compass on My Watch, I Might Have Never Got Home Is it me or is it them? Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) LOST IN THE WILDERNESS My screenshot of my watch compass trying to fool me My new Series 8 Apple Watch gave me a far different compass app from what I had on my Series 5. I do not understand it. I didn’t understand the Series 5 Compass app either, but this is worse. I understand the basic use of a compass because my Dad and I joined the Cub Scouts when I was young. I joined as a Cub, and he as a Scoutmaster because the previous one had recently quit, and no one wanted the job. I got a Cub Scout book, which I vaguely remember as being yellow and black and full of things I had to learn and do to advance in the Cub Scout hierarchy. I believe I got a compass too and, of course, a uniform, a yellow scarf, and I think a cap for my head. Neat! After a few months, I became bored and uninterested in climbing the ranks. I quit. My Dad could not quit, which upset him gr...

  Don’t Get Phished The scammers are using AI to fool you now Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) SECURITY Fish on a line Adobe Firefly image by author Aww, you are too smart to get phished, right? Of course you are. Just like a friend of mine who called me saying, “Tony, I think I’ve been hacked. I don’t know why I clicked that link, but I did and they stole my Apple ID password!” I don’t know why he clicked that link either — he knows better than that. So do I, but truth be told, the other day I almost clicked on a link that supposedly was from USPS about a package that I was expecting and actually was delayed. I had my finger just above the fake link when I thought, “Hold on, I already know it’s delayed. Why would they tell me again?” I clicked on the From address to see what it really was. Duh, that’s not the USPS. And that’s not the tracking number I looked at before! Fake mail from USPS, photo by author On the more amusing side, I have been getting dozens of emails like this for weeks:...

  My iPhone is the Least Important Part of My Apple Gear This “smart phones are dying” song is silly Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) APPLE A broken iphone on a pillow. Adobe Firefly image by author Have you read all the angst about the death of iPhones? About the boring prospects of the iPhone 15 due this fall? About production troubles due to shortages or problems in China? Or how about those stories saying that the Pixel or the Nothing phone are just as good or better than the iPhone? I don’t care about any of that. I joked about it recently, saying that Apple could make a Phoneless iPhone to avoid imminent insignificance. This is my more serious post on the Death of Smart Phones. Not my main sidekick I hardly ever use my phone other than for CarPlay and taking a very few pictures. Unless it's too far away, I will answer calls and make calls on my iPad. Yes, the phone needs to exist, but I seldom hold it in my hand to use it. My phone could be a box with minimal functions: making calls...

  My “Other” Exercises Which are no more fun than Apple Fitness+ Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) HEALTH Adobe Firefly image by author of Old Man Doing Pushups with Dumbbells I have lied and said that I enjoy exercise. I don’t. I enjoy eating, I enjoy feeling good, I enjoy not having a bulging belly. Exercise is only the means to those ends. Oh, sure, I like going for a walk if the weather is nice and the scenery is pleasant. I can’t say that I like going out in frigid temperatures, although I have read that exposing yourself to cold is “good for you”. I’d rather be eating something delicious while sitting in front of the fireplace with that beautiful woman who was foolish enough to marry me a long time ago. And yes, doing pushups might feel good for the first few dozen, but after that, hell no, it hurts. And no matter what I do, I end up sweaty and have to get in the shower, which is fine and dandy by itself, but after I have to squeegee the walls and make sure not to drip water on the f...

  Apple Fitness+ Was a Big Help for My Weight Loss I’m glad that I came back to it HEALTH Adobe Firefly image by author “Older man exercising with dumbbells” I recently  wrote about my long path to lose the weight  I had gained before retiring. As I said there, part of my success came from exercising more than I did when I was working. I have always found time for exercise and was never in really poor shape, but I wasn’t doing enough to stay in really  good  shape. It didn’t help that I was a smoker until 1995, and the long hours I spent driving to my customers who were scattered all over New England added to my sloth and my dad bod. Most of my exercise was simple things like walking, pushups, calisthenics, that sort of thing, with an occasional visit to the gym. Those at least kept me from obesity. Then, shortly after I retired, Apple announced Fitness+ and I added that to my workouts. Too hard for me I had a hard time with the workouts. I wasn’t flexible enoug...

Apple Should Make A Phoneless iPhone Maybe they could call it the iPod Retouch? APPLE Adobe Firefly image by author of a phone falling from the sky The sky is falling! Sorry, no, it’s iPhone sales that have dipped into “Sell off your Apple Stock!” territory. Well, for some folks, anyway, and the stock price dropped from around $196 to $181 in a week. I didn’t sell any of mine. Mark Gurman said this in his free newsletter: “ Apple Inc. has finally acknowledged a hard reality: The US smartphone market is mired in a slump.” Poor Apple, on the verge of bankruptcy again. People need to help them by buying new phones! I did my part last year by buying an iPhone 14 Pro. However, I don’t expect to buy another phone for at least five years. Why would I? It’s a great phone and I almost exclusively only use it for CarPlay when I’m driving, plus maybe a few pictures of things around the house. One of these days I want to use it to take some better pictures of my coin collection, but that ...

  Climbing The Ladder Of Success I’m so done with that Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) WORKING Firefly image of a long ladder into the clouds by author Climbing The Ladder of Success Some people step on other people’s fingers on the way up. Some people say “Excuse me” as they climb by. Some don’t bother to climb at all. Some kick other folks in the throat and laugh as they fall. Some help other people climb. Some climb up just so far and are happy. Some are never happy. Some find a ladder that isn’t so damn crowded. What kind of climber are you? (Tony Lawrence) I’m retired now and done climbing ladders. I wasn’t done when I wrote those lines back in 2009, but now I’m retired and just happened to come across this in an old file. I was lucky to find a ladder not so crowded and equally lucky to have no great ambition to climb very high. I could have climbed higher, but as I’ve explained elsewhere, my wife became ill and I wanted us to have our time in the sun while we still could. So I cut ...