@jamesvandyne Also found myself doing the math for Apple Premium Plus One Extra Super in the past weeks. Still can’t justify, but I’m already paying for the 2TB for years. One day I’ll cave in.
The Week #87
by
James
- We made it through an entire week without school closing due to Covid 🎉. And indeed we are officially peaked as cases have been on the downward trend for what feels like a couple of weeks now (but you know how time is a lie in covid).
- There was an event at Leo's pre-school where has on display some of the things they've made this year. It's fun to look at the work of students just a year or two older and see how much more capable they become.
The coolest part was in the hall where the oldest students (due to become elementary school students in April) build interactive toys? games? with cardboard boxes collected by the families. Things I've never imagine making like castles, 3 washing machine boxes high, or a roller coaster, or a climbing wall. The biggest hit though was the hot springs, with water made of torn up newspaper. Why was it the biggest hit? Because you could take the newspaper and toss it at the teacher (and vice-versa!). - At Leo's birthday celebration earlier this month at school, when asked what he wanted to become when he's big he said "Shinji" (from Evagelion). When he got his haircut this week we asked the stylist to cut his hair, as requested, like Shinjis. He did a great job. They might start mistaking him for the real deal at school.
- I signed up for the Vox Meat/Less newsletter course. I've been learning a lot and hope to start implementing the advice soon. "Vegan before 6pm" sounds doable most of the time.
- We ran out of storage on our 200GB iCloud account. It's mostly photos. Upgrading to the next tier (2TB) would increase storage to $10/month. Since I got my AirpodPros a few months ago, I've been on a 6 month trial for Apple Music. While it annoys me sometimes, it's much better for music than cheapskating with YouTube. So I'd been mentally preparing myself for the 10/month cost to start paying for it.
But adding on Apple Music to my current AppleTV+ /(presumably upgraded) iCloud storage would bring my total monthly cost to $25/month, for just me. For an extra $5 / month, I could get Apple One Premier, which will allow our entire family to access everything: AppleTV+, Apple Music, News+ (just as I had been thinking of subscribing to the New Yorker – it's on there!) and Fitness+.
Writing this all out has made me feel a bit better about signing up, but it's a big jump from $8/month total to almost 4x as much. I guess you don't become a trillion dollar company by giving this away for free.
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@maique @jamesvandyne I wish there was a tier that included News+, but not Fitness+ for a bit cheaper. I’ve debated getting an Apple Watch but not sure I want to anymore so Fitness seems pointless without one.
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@pimoore Indeed. I have no need for the fitness service, and News isn’t even available here. Makes it harder to find a reason to subscribe.
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@pimoore My thought on this is Fitness+ is a nice throw in for everything else I get for the Premier plan. News+ falls in the same category.
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@skoobz My question is does Fitness+ have any use without an Apple Watch?
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@pimoore It’s definitely optimized for it, if anything.
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@pimoore @skoobz yeah, this is the bummer part -- you need the Apple Watch to use it. :(
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@rom @skoobz If I could use an Apple Watch completely independently without ever needing a phone, this would be a much more appealing scenario. I would ditch a phone entirely without hesitation, and be all in on Apple Fitness. I don’t want to supplement my phone, I want to be rid of it entirely if I could do everything from my wrist instead.
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@pimoore Dick Tracy promised us wrist radios. 75+ years later, no wrist radio...
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@JMaxB Yeah, I’m no longer holding my breath.
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@pimoore @skoobz well, good luck with that. I highly doubt that that will happen - unless the Apple Watch can be tethered to a portable battery to last the entire day with all those phone functions. :)
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@pimoore I wanted to do cellular watch + ipad...but you have to pair/activate with a phone instead of ipad.
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@toddgrotenhuis Well that’s just stupid, and is Apple’s way of making sure you buy both, obviously.
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@rom @skoobz Honestly I don’t even need or want phone functions on a watch, I rarely make calls on my iPhone as it is. I just want the other communication apps like Messages, which is where I live outside of Micro.blog of course.
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@JMaxB Apple Watch is a reasonable facsimile.
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@pimoore I use Apple Fitness+ without an Apple Watch nearly every day. Works fine. You just don’t see your real-time metrics on screen.
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@agilelisa Interesting, that would not be feasible if I was lifting weights to have my phone on me, but I wouldn’t anyway. Maybe I’ll poke around at what’s available without a watch.
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@agilelisa @pimoore I think you might need the watch to activate Fitness+? My daughter uses it frequently without a watch, but the app only showed up when she briefly paired with an old watch we had lying around
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@mroutley @agilelisa Well, shit. 😆
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@mroutley @pimoore Wow, that's so strange! (that you need an Apple watch at least once to get Fitness+ to work) But it could be true as I used to wear an Awatch and I know I did Apple Fitness from this iPad then. I wear a Fitbit Sense currently because I participate in a COVID study and they gave it to me!
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