Will you pay a premium for an iPhone 8 (X)?

[TheForce]

What you describe sounds more like summer camp where your parents/offspring are less than a few hundred yards away.

Specifically, the cruise ship experience for the family is all things. A typical cruise is 7 days. Some of that time is on shore excursions where the families are usually together. On days at sea, the together time is at meals and evening entertainment. During the day, people tend to split up and have private time for personal interests. The cruise experience offers something for everyone. For example the last cruise, my wife found a group of women who got together to knit. So she met with them on days at sea. Obviously, that is something I and most kids would not enjoy. But, the professional photographers on board offered seminars that I attended at the same time. This last cruise had a representative from GoPro and I enjoyed attending those to get some hands on the new GoPro Hero 5 and 6 features. They also offered an advanced still photography seminar that I attended. There were also a group of veterans and active military who got together. Years ago, several of us satelliteguys joined with AVS forum and put together cruises with presentations from industry leaders in that industry. Then there are the educational enrichment seminars pertaining to the places we will be seeing. I think cruise ships can offer this unique selection of choices, something for everyone, while going to a theme park and a hotel room 10 miles away, doesn't. It's why it has become the most popular way to vacation for all ages.

The point is when a family takes a vacation together for a week, it is a mistake to feel every minute of every day needs to be spent doing the same things. The 21st century improvements using the smart phone app is just a convenient tool for families and friends to coordinate their plans and find each other on the ship.

 

[harshness]

The point is when a family takes a vacation together for a week, it is a mistake to feel every minute of every day needs to be spent doing the same things. The 21st century improvements using the smart phone app is just a convenient tool for families and friends to coordinate their plans and find each other on the ship.

When did surveillance replace interaction as how parenting should be done? Who documents these disparate "sessions" for posterity?

Are we going to see a generation of kids that we blame technology for their failings?

 

[lakebum431]

I still am incredibly skeptical of face id, and can't say I am at all excited about the likely price tag for a plus-sized XI. And I doubt I'd ever go back to a device smaller than my 8 plus.

Face id works great. I have had no problems with it at all. Much better than fingerprint.

 

[lakebum431]

Is the point of a family vacation to get away from your family? Speaking of the Bay Area, my sister tells me that in San Mateo (South Bay) that a household income below somehwere around $107,000 is considered "low-income" and may qualify you for gubmint programs. What elderly neighbors she has are all living on reverse mortgages. Who says you can't take it with you?

Separate conversation, but a reverse mortgage is literally never a good idea. No matter what the Fonz says.

 

[harshness]

Separate conversation, but a reverse mortgage is literally never a good idea.

Yet that's kind of what happens when the house you bought for $50,000 thirty years ago is now evaluated at $1.5 million. Property taxes (around 1.5%) are based on the assessed value, not the initial investment. Few can comprehend how insane the cost of living is in the Bay Area and for many elderly, they have considerable equity in their home but not much income nor fresh credit history.

 

[lakebum431]

Yet that's kind of what happens when the house you bought for $50,000 thirty years ago is now evaluated at $1.5 million. Property taxes (around 1.5%) are based on the assessed value, not the initial investment. Few can comprehend how insane the cost of living is in the Bay Area and for many elderly, they have considerable equity in their home but not much income nor fresh credit history.

Doesn't matter. A reverse mortgage is still a terrible option. In the case you are talking about, if you must take out a mortgage then it would be a much better option to take out a regular cash out mortgage and use that to pay your taxes and the mortgage payments. The fees are terrible on a reverse mortgage. Plus they stop paying you the monthly payments when you reach a certain LTV (loan to value) - usually around 65%.

 

[TheForce]

I wonder about how easy is it to qualify for a cash withdrawl loan based on equity when you are 80 years old and no real income. Plus, if you don't plan to leave inheritance, how quick would you reach 65% LTV? I wouild never do a RM but I can understand some may find it suited to their particular situation.

 

[lakebum431]

I wonder about how easy is it to qualify for a cash withdrawl loan based on equity when you are 80 years old and no real income. Plus, if you don't plan to leave inheritance, how quick would you reach 65% LTV? I wouild never do a RM but I can understand some may find it suited to their particular situation.

If that is the situation (no income), they probably need to sell the house.

 

[harshness]

If that is the situation (no income), they probably need to sell the house.

That's effectively what a reverse mortgage does only you aren't slammed with the considerable capital gains. You have to look at it in the context of a locale where housing is in the seven figures range (even condos) and much less than a six figures income is pretty rough going.

 

[lakebum431]

That's effectively what a reverse mortgage does only you aren't slammed with the considerable capital gains. You have to look at it in the context of a locale where housing is in the seven figures range (even condos) and much less than a six figures income is pretty rough going.

Except that they only get 60-65% of the value of the house. They would be better selling.

 

[harshness]

They would be better selling.

We'd all be better off financially if we had the training and experience of an accountant or even a bookkeeper but that's typically not the case.

What is easy often wins out over what is better because it doesn't require a lot of understanding and learning new concepts. Apple built their company on a campaign of simplicity even though it was rarely all that simple.

 

[TheForce]

I finally had to learn the Apple language because I really wanted the Apple watch, which required an iphone. We did have an ipad earlier but that didn't require much in the way of new language learning. Then my wife wanted one too. Our daughter was bilingual so she talked my wife into an imac for the kitchen. The highschool required academic students to be equally proficient on both Apple and PC. Today, I still struggle with understanding how to set all the accounts properly in my iphone.

Why is it that I get all my wife's text messages, but she doesn't get mine? We both have the same icloud account and have the same Verizon account. Her ipad keeps getting a warning when I log into my icloud that "another iphone has logged into our account." Once when traveling, I turned on hotspot on my iphone to get internet on my surface pro wifi, and I got a notice the two devices had logged into my account. It took me an hour of detective work to learn that my ipad packed away in a suitcase in my car in the parking lot of the hotel was logging on too. Some things in the iOS world drives me nuts!

But to be fair, I still don't understand all the new security / sharing settings for permissions on my windows 7 and 10. I constantly get "You don't have permission to access this file." I am admin on all my machines. The win 7 can see the win 10 but the 10 can't see win 7. imac can see both.

If I have a photo on my iphone and want to transfer it to my PC, I need to put the PC on wifi so the iphone will transfer a selected photo using an ip address in a web browser. Why can't I just plug the iphone in and see the photo with file manager? OK I can install itunes and struggle with that app on the PC.

Now add the android phone to my toolbox and I have the making of United Nations. Win XP, win 7, win10, 3 ipads, Surface Pro, two Apple watches, two iphones, one android phone, a PS3, an XBOX 360. I feel like I'm the only translator in the United Nations just trying to avoid a nuclear showdown among the super powers.

 

[Ilya]

If I have a photo on my iphone and want to transfer it to my PC ... Why can't I just plug the iphone in and see the photo with file manager?

Hmm. You should be able to. This works fine for me. I just connect the USB cable to a Windows PC, iPhone asks me if I want to allow Windows to see my photos, I confirm, and all photos become visible to the File Explorer, just like an SD card. I don’t use iTunes, don’t have it installed.

 

[navychop]

Just a straight transfer of photos to PC loses date data.

 

[Ilya]

Just a straight transfer of photos to PC loses date data.

Why? I copy photos all the time and they seem to have correct timestamps.

 

[navychop]

I’ll try it again. I did this last years ago.

 

[harshness]

Just a straight transfer of photos to PC loses date data.

Are you speaking of the metadata embedded in the picture file?

One of the major stupids of the new image format is that Apple felt compelled to convert everything to JPEG that leaves the phone other than via iCloud.

Many years ago, Apple forced you to use iTunes but a few years back they started doing something that simulated USB mass storage (like absolutely every other camera in the Free World).

 

[TheForce]

Hmm. You should be able to. This works fine for me. I just connect the USB cable to a Windows PC, iPhone asks me if I want to allow Windows to see my photos, I confirm, and all photos become visible to the File Explorer, just like an SD card. I don’t use iTunes, don’t have it installed.

I'll dig a little deeper. Thanks, because if that works for you it must be something I didn't to right.

Well it worked as you claimed for my new win 10 computer, but on the win 7 it just started to send all my photos to the Dropbox in a new folder "Camera uploads" In the win 10 computer it saw the iphone icon in file manager. and that's where I was able to open the folders to access the photos and videos.

 

[Ilya]

but on the win 7 it just started to send all my photos to the Dropbox in a new folder "Camera uploads"

Must be a Dropbox thing.

 

[TheForce]

Must be a Dropbox thing.

I don't think Dropbox was the push on this. I'd bet I accidentally triggered it in the iphone on where to backup my pictures. When I get some time I will dig into it. I had been sharing some very large video files so I bought a larger Drop box storage. The iphone picture and video library is small by comparison.


In other recent news- Apple started it's Developer Conference and the media is trying to pan it as Apple failed to announce new hardware. Is the iphone X+ dead? Not so fast media people. Like every year the developer conference is for app developers, a software event, not to announce new hardware.