And I just live in it…
So, it’s been a few days with Windows now, and I’m adjusting well, I think.
I know I make it sound worse than it really is. I mean, I manage Windows-based servers and Windows-based users pretty much every day, so it’s not like I’m coming into this blind. And I’ve been using Windows on and off since Windows was a thing, so – yeah.
Sure, Windows 11 is kind of a hot mess when it comes to anything approaching a cohesive operating system; the backup facility for example is located in the still very Windows 7 control panel that no one is supposed to see anymore, and even says “Windows 7” right in the title…
And it still takes Windows Backup a month of Sundays to do a backup, but at least it’s still there I guess, so that’s a win of sorts.
Apparently, there is a new backup utility in the works where Microsoft is attempting to ape the functionality of Apple’s Time Machine – but in typical Microsoft fashion it’s half-assed and only supports OneDrive and only works with Microsoft Store applications that have been installed on the machine.
And that pretty much sums up the whole “Windows 11 Experience”: half-assed. Which is still better than Windows 8, which was whole-assed – but I digress.
Really what Window’s problem is, is it’s written by a thousand different teams of blind people all trying to describe an elephant. Every single aspect of Windows feels incoherent and tacked on, because it is.
But, even with that, I think I’ll stick with Windows for a bit – mostly because of the functionality of DirectX 11/12 for the various games I like to play. Which makes me wonder how much of Window’s install-base can be attributed to that line of thinking; “Windows sucks, but I want to play [insert game here] so – whatever.”
With the move to Windows, I’ve also had to exfiltrate all of my data from Apple’s walled garden, which was more complicated that it needed to be because he who controls the data controls the subscriptions, and no one wants to lose that subscription money.
Initially I was just going to run the Windows iCloud agent much like I do on the Mac, because iCloud contains a copy of damn near every aspect of my life – but it was somewhat buggy and more than a bit clunky. So, I started looking into what it would take to just move everything to some Windows equivalent.
Apple Notes required a third-party utility and some patience. And I needed another one to export all of my photos. For all of the general data I had squirreled away in iCloud Drive it was a simple matter of telling the iCloud agent to keep a copy of everything local, and once it was done just turning off the agent and moving everything into the correct folders.
Once this was done, I attempted to sync my iPhone with Windows, which hasn’t been possible until recently. But the new phone-to-windows utility with the ability to do iPhones is yet another beta-at-best mess, and while it did connect, the functionality is extremely basic.
And this got me thinking…
My cellphone is an iPhone “SE”, the cheap iPhone, and I’ve had it for a while now. It’s okay and does what I need it to do, but the main reason I have it is because I use a lot of Macs and I have an Apple Watch, and the phone works seamlessly with those as you would imagine.
But now I’m using a Windows gaming PC… So maybe I should switch over to some cheap Android phone as that works better with Windows.
Fortunately, at work we do a lot of “Mobile Testing”, which is software QA for smartphones. And the best way to do this is to sit a trained software QA tester down with the selection of physical phones and the software, and have at it… So, I dug around in inventory and found a somewhat recent Android phone that had never been used in testing and borrowed it for a while to see if I can coexist with it.
The phone itself is an LG V60 from back in 2020 that was purchased used and was locked to T-Mobile. But without a T-Mobile sim / account the phone was essentially useless as it constantly stopped whatever it was doing to attempt to activate – so no one ever used it.
For me this was an easy fix; just put the phone into developer mode, load up the Android tools on my Mac at work, and do a little brain surgery… Which they can’t do for testing as it invalidates the device – but I’m testing for me and not a client…
And about 30 minutes later the phone was working with the Ting sim out of my SE… And this started the day of Android OS updates. I guess Android OS updates need to be done patch by patch, in order, and the phone was on an early Android 10 version, and I was taking it to Android 13. And once the phone was on Android 13, I went in and removed / disabled all of the Google / LG / T-Mobile spyware.
Once I got past the “What were they thinking!?” of Android, I kinda like it. Granted I’ve totally removed the creature comforts of the phone like the various app stores and whatnot – so when I want to install something it requires an effort similar to command line Linux. But I can live with that.
After this, I got the phone syncing with Windows, which is pretty slick. And then I got Android Auto working in the car, which is also pretty slick. But this left my Apple Watch out in the cold because the watch really can’t function without an iPhone…
So, I dug though my storage bins and pulled out my old circa 2016 Samsung Gear S3 watch, charged it overnight, and am currently going through the update cycle on it as well.
And with that my Apple watch has been set aside for the time being, and my iPhone SE is just being used to manage my Apple credit card and handle my roommate paying his half of the rent over iMessage.
All in all, it’s been entertaining to switch platforms again, and everything is going pretty well on that front. 🙂
Listening to "Boardwalk '82" by Android Automatic