@transplant My S.O. has an iPhone 12, and I will readily admit that Apple maps is a better trip routing package than Google maps most of the time. But there are other things about the Apple ecosystem that would just drive me bonkers.
@transplant@werehatrack
Man, I have an iPhone and an Android. That chick living in the iPhone gives the worst directions. She is worse than my wife trying to read a map to me, and my wife is blind!
@jjnova Both of them routinely start off by telling me to turn the wrong way coming out of a parking lot. In our Nissan, Siri must be heard through the phone’s speaker and not Bluetooth to the car’ sound system. If we try to Bluetooth the directions, the first word will vanish from every single one, and sometimes that makes them dead wrong. My old Caravan does not speak Bluetooth, which suits me just fine; a complication that’s not present is also not going to vex me.
I use a Google Pixel 6 Pro. I’ve had Androids since they were introduced with a Motorola bag phone as my first. I had an iPhone for work and really disliked it for many reasons; I only used it when I had to. Keep the hate mail coming.
A phone from the original inventor of the cell phone. An inexpensive Motorola. An enginner( Martin Cooper) from Motorola finished his invention 50 years ago.
I only have it on if I’m expecting a call from someone or if I need to call lost distance. For my home phone I have an AT&T Trimline, it was introduced in the 70’s and it was their most popular model. I highly recommend the Trimline. You can find it on eBay.
@growyoungagain I may get one of those. I see Amazon has them for a bit over $16.00.
I’d love one of the old Western Electric or ATT box desk phones…the ones that weigh a ton and will last forever. There are cheap knock-off out there, but I can’t find a decent old one.
I’ll never give up my landland. A REAL landline, not a digital one, even though it costs a fortune!
@growyoungagain@Tadlem43 Old school was near bulletproof while it lasted. But the copper ends down the street from me, and the connection is digital from there to the next hub. Lots of landlines are like that now.
That’s part of why my old land line number is a Google Voice connection now.
@growyoungagain@Tadlem43@werehatrack Yeah, our original provider (Cox) for the landline went digital. We already had the business and home lines with MagicJack, just had the landline because of bundle pricing and having a phone that would work in case of power outages. But I canceled that last year. It was hooked up to the FAX machine. I hooked up the extra MagicJack to that. It still receives and send faxes with the right settings. Not that we do that very often.
A phone from the original inventor of the cell phone.
I didn’t know AT&T ever made a cellphone for retail. I know Motorola made the second cellphone in the early '70s so they could compete with AT&T who created cellular in 1947 through Bell Labs.
@Tadlem43 I won’t give up my landline either, but I am not impressed that they (CenturyLink) will be raising the price. I have their cheapest plan 3hrs,no voice mail and no long distance and it will cost more than a cell per month,
@growyoungagain Yeah… I have ATT here in Dallas, the same landline and number I had 30 years ago, and I have no intention of giving it up. They tried to force me to get into fiberoptic years ago, and I flatly refused. It’s real expensive though!
I have a cell phone that I only use for emergencies and games, etc., and I only pay $19.99 for 3 months (Tracfone), but my landline cost over $100 a month. I think I’ll give up the long distance and just have the basic phone.
I thought that motorola made the first cell that was available to the public.
Thanks to the slow pace of the FCC not only did Motorola almost go out of business but the first portable cellular phone commercially available for use on a cellular network was developed by E.F. Johnson and Millicom, Inc. in September of 1981.
@iluvmingos Current most inflammatory behavior is its insistence that anything I don’t use “often enough” deserves to be summarily lobotomized without my approval, and confined to inactivity, requiring me to rescue it and revive it with fresh input of settings that I’d much rather NOT have to dig out every time. This is just the latest in a long list of things symptomatic of an obsession with making the device “helpy” when I’d very much prefer “obedient”. “Smart” features almost always aren’t.
Almost all the phones at my parents’ house look more like this, but in a proper beige:
At least one of them is the old rotary dial, but it can no longer be used for dialing. The local phone company dropped support for that a decade ago (I think).
(They also have an old cordless phone nowadays, making it easier to move about the house or even outside. I remember it when I was a kid… but it was at my grandparents house back then.)
@lisagd@xobzoo The avocado phone on my parents night stand was rotary. The banana wall phone in the kitchen pantry was push button. It had probably a 12’ cord that was always tangled.
the old rotary dial, but it can no longer be used for dialing.
Remember the days in the early 80s when you could buy a (cheap) phone that had push buttons, but actually dialed? You could hear the sound of the dialing on the line.
@lisagd@Oldelvis@xobzoo I finally e-wasted the last of the non-touch-tone pushbutton phones I had last year, when an expedition to the attic uncovered some in pristine condition in a Nixonian-epoch deposit. (There was also a pair of plaid polyester pants present, requiring the use of PPPE to safely remove and dispose of them.)
We also have a landline (see my note above about my cell phone) on which we used to get calls from people we know and we used it to send faxes, especially when I was working. Now, the only calls we get are scam calls, except rarely our son calls us on it if he wants to speak with us both at the same time. A few weeks ago I discussed with my wife cancelling it and a week later the line stopped working! I’m going to cancel it, even though my son tried it yesterday. He ended up just speaking to me.
@werehatrack Thanks for the thought. I always forget that I have a Google number that I never use. I probably have to get the line fixed, though, for that to work. I am sure if they come to fix it they will blame me and charge me! Not that I don’t trust Verizon. And then I’d get the scam calls on my cell, but I can probably screen them.
@andyw My landline stopped working about 15 years ago, when everyone still used them. The repair guy told me that houses have two lines going into them in case one fails, and that if the second one failed, I would have to pay to do the repairs. Six years ago, when I had my kitchen renovated, the contractor took out the wall that had the phone plug in it, so now the phone line goes up to my house but not in it. The only reason I still had a landline was because the cable package was cheaper with phone included (who knows why); about the only actual people who called me on it were my parents.
@lisagd I think things may have changed with fiberoptic. I looked in the box where some things split off and in a brief peek I did not see anything wrong. I’ll look again in daylight. Thanks for the idea, though.
@andyw you absolutely don’t have to get the line fixed to port that number to Google voice, and it can screen calls and block spam. You can get the calls on your cell, on your computer, and if you can get your hands on an obihai VoIP device, your original home phone.
@lisaviolet The LG brand is still being applied to phones in production, but I don’t know if they’re still actually made by LG. Lenovo of China has been acquiring phone brands, and LG could be one. https://www.lg.com/levant_en/mobile-phones
remember getting multiple of what we call landlines now?
some people got multiple so there was a parents vs kids #.
I didn’t have kids, but often had 2 wired lines (wired? was there any other kind?); one was for fax and computer modem, other was for normal use.
many people don’t know there was dial-in computer communication long before what we know as the ‘internet’. You would just dial directly to who you wanted to reach (assuming they had a line dedicated to a computer that would answer and connect to you). This included school, various clubs, and my friends (I had nerdy friends). I seem to remember even banks and other utilities having text-based online service.
@pmarin when my folks had a business we had two lines in the house. Also when us kids moved away, my mom felt bad that we were paying so much in long distance phone bills to call them that she got an 800 number for the business line. She didn’t have it published but I’m sure it was a tax write off just the same.
@f00l@pmarin I was the sysop for a large board, and my current S.O. was the local Fidonet lead. And then we spent over 20 years being just passing acquaintances. Life can be very strange sometimes.
Goog pix 6. Almost as intuitive as a Sam Gal. Sam works better in some ways, Goog works better in others. IMO it’s kind of a toss-up between which is better.
I’ve developed a pretty big addiction to Motorola (I like the “shake to bring up your camera, chop to turn on the flashlight” among a lot of little Moto touches), so I’m on my… 4th? 5th? Motorola. This one is some crazy series of monikers… 5g UW ace, maybe?
@tondaanderson Are those actions Motorola-only? I had no idea. I’ll have to remember that when I need to replace my G7…
(I had never imagined I would love the chop-to-turn-on-flashlight so much, but WOW! I use it a lot.)
I love my iPhone and the various iPads I use (the most current from work). To be clear, I’ve nothing against Android or those who prefer it; I do despise the trash talk, whenceever it originates. I had to be talked into my first iPhone (at the time, I was leaning toward Android, but have been glad for being on iPhone ever since). In my case, it better supports what I do for work and I’m very fond of the gui and its consistency.
I will talk trash about M$’s mobile OSes. For the short time I owned an M$ phone (it was not my choice), it was unstable as fuck. A buddy of mine had similar experiences. I’m happy to use the Office 365 apps on iOS though. I might prefer Apple’s productivity suite, based on what I’ve seen of it, but, again, work likes us on Microsoft, even though Apple is nevertheless our mobile platform. Hell, they even gave up on Surface laptops.
For the record, I prefer Chrome as a browser and make use of Google’s suite (mostly Sheets).
Of the various things accused of being cults in this culture of ours, Apple seems only nominally guilty, except in small circles. And among those who are fanatical in their loyalty, I think most have good—but not universally applicable—reasons for it.
I’ve been a Motorola boi for decades now. No reason to spend hundreds or even thousands more on phones. <$200, unlocked, works for years, easily replaced.
I once had a Kyocera smartphone that ran palm os and had a browser.
Precursor to the Treos.
This was in the 2g cellular network days, I think.
(1g was analog, unencrypted. people with police scanners could listen in.
Think “Tampongate” and “Squidgygate” in the Royal Family, from the early 90’s)
Pixel
In the very few hours I allow it to be on, I have an iphone. I hate cell phones.
Tele.
@yakkoTDI Stop calling, stop calling
I don’t wanna talk anymore
I got my head and my heart on the dance floor
KuoH
@kuoh @yakkoTDI Love this version of that song:
Sometimes I use an iPhone, other times a Motorola moto g something something.
Google Pixel 6
I drank the apple Kool-Aid back in 86.
I have an iPhone.
@transplant My S.O. has an iPhone 12, and I will readily admit that Apple maps is a better trip routing package than Google maps most of the time. But there are other things about the Apple ecosystem that would just drive me bonkers.
@transplant @werehatrack
Man, I have an iPhone and an Android. That chick living in the iPhone gives the worst directions. She is worse than my wife trying to read a map to me, and my wife is blind!
@jjnova Both of them routinely start off by telling me to turn the wrong way coming out of a parking lot. In our Nissan, Siri must be heard through the phone’s speaker and not Bluetooth to the car’ sound system. If we try to Bluetooth the directions, the first word will vanish from every single one, and sometimes that makes them dead wrong. My old Caravan does not speak Bluetooth, which suits me just fine; a complication that’s not present is also not going to vex me.
Motorola Android. I refuse to be part of the iCult!
It’s pretty little; I think it’s a microphone.
My personal phone is a Pixel. My work phone is an iPhone.
I use a Google Pixel 6 Pro. I’ve had Androids since they were introduced with a Motorola bag phone as my first. I had an iPhone for work and really disliked it for many reasons; I only used it when I had to. Keep the hate mail coming.
@andyw
/giphy you go andy
Older Pixel 3 with LineageOS
Pixel 7
A phone from the original inventor of the cell phone. An inexpensive Motorola. An enginner( Martin Cooper) from Motorola finished his invention 50 years ago.
I only have it on if I’m expecting a call from someone or if I need to call lost distance. For my home phone I have an AT&T Trimline, it was introduced in the 70’s and it was their most popular model. I highly recommend the Trimline. You can find it on eBay.
@growyoungagain I may get one of those. I see Amazon has them for a bit over $16.00.
I’d love one of the old Western Electric or ATT box desk phones…the ones that weigh a ton and will last forever. There are cheap knock-off out there, but I can’t find a decent old one.
I’ll never give up my landland. A REAL landline, not a digital one, even though it costs a fortune!
@growyoungagain @Tadlem43 Old school was near bulletproof while it lasted. But the copper ends down the street from me, and the connection is digital from there to the next hub. Lots of landlines are like that now.
That’s part of why my old land line number is a Google Voice connection now.
@growyoungagain @Tadlem43 @werehatrack Yeah, our original provider (Cox) for the landline went digital. We already had the business and home lines with MagicJack, just had the landline because of bundle pricing and having a phone that would work in case of power outages. But I canceled that last year. It was hooked up to the FAX machine. I hooked up the extra MagicJack to that. It still receives and send faxes with the right settings. Not that we do that very often.
@growyoungagain @lisaviolet @Tadlem43 @werehatrack
I didn’t know AT&T ever made a cellphone for retail. I know Motorola made the second cellphone in the early '70s so they could compete with AT&T who created cellular in 1947 through Bell Labs.
@lisaviolet @Tadlem43 @werehatrack @yakkoTDI I haven’t looked it up, but I thought that motorola made the first cell that was available to the public.
@Tadlem43 I won’t give up my landline either, but I am not impressed that they (CenturyLink) will be raising the price. I have their cheapest plan 3hrs,no voice mail and no long distance and it will cost more than a cell per month,
@growyoungagain Yeah… I have ATT here in Dallas, the same landline and number I had 30 years ago, and I have no intention of giving it up. They tried to force me to get into fiberoptic years ago, and I flatly refused. It’s real expensive though!
I have a cell phone that I only use for emergencies and games, etc., and I only pay $19.99 for 3 months (Tracfone), but my landline cost over $100 a month. I think I’ll give up the long distance and just have the basic phone.
@growyoungagain @lisaviolet @Tadlem43 @werehatrack Motorola made the first handheld cellular phone. Doug was working at Bell Labs and came up with the idea of a cellular network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_H._Ring
Thanks to the slow pace of the FCC not only did Motorola almost go out of business but the first portable cellular phone commercially available for use on a cellular network was developed by E.F. Johnson and Millicom, Inc. in September of 1981.
Pixel 7 Pro. Not 100% happy with it.
@werehatrack I love mine! What don’t you like about it?
@werehatrack Same, same.
More importantly, is it:
We’re Hat Rack
Were Hat Rack
We Rehat Rack
We’re Ha Track
Or something else entirely?
@fondaporn Were-hatrack. Think lycanthrope.
@iluvmingos Current most inflammatory behavior is its insistence that anything I don’t use “often enough” deserves to be summarily lobotomized without my approval, and confined to inactivity, requiring me to rescue it and revive it with fresh input of settings that I’d much rather NOT have to dig out every time. This is just the latest in a long list of things symptomatic of an obsession with making the device “helpy” when I’d very much prefer “obedient”. “Smart” features almost always aren’t.
I continue to be a Nokia fan, because I like phones I can literally run over with the car. Although I do miss Symbian.
@brainmist There are still plenty of people who miss the Crackberry, too. And not without reason.
One Plus 10. It’s great, and charges very fast.
@Oldelvis So… 11?
Almost all the phones at my parents’ house look more like this, but in a proper beige:
At least one of them is the old rotary dial, but it can no longer be used for dialing. The local phone company dropped support for that a decade ago (I think).
(They also have an old cordless phone nowadays, making it easier to move about the house or even outside. I remember it when I was a kid… but it was at my grandparents house back then.)
Some old things never die.
@xobzoo That’s what I call Compaq grey. I grew up in the 70’s and our phones were either Avocado, Something-near-orange, or banana.
@capnjb @xobzoo We had a near-banana wall phone–fancy! It was a rotary phone–not fancy!
@lisagd @xobzoo The avocado phone on my parents night stand was rotary. The banana wall phone in the kitchen pantry was push button. It had probably a 12’ cord that was always tangled.
@xobzoo
Remember the days in the early 80s when you could buy a (cheap) phone that had push buttons, but actually dialed? You could hear the sound of the dialing on the line.
@xobzoo Someone on here wanted one of those. I have one I can sell them that I am not using.
@lisagd @xobzoo that’s because when those phones came out toichtone dialing was an extra payment. Those phones would simulate the rotary dial signal.
@lisagd @Oldelvis @xobzoo I finally e-wasted the last of the non-touch-tone pushbutton phones I had last year, when an expedition to the attic uncovered some in pristine condition in a Nixonian-epoch deposit. (There was also a pair of plaid polyester pants present, requiring the use of PPPE to safely remove and dispose of them.)
@xobzoo and they had some weight to them. They could be used as a proper weapon.
Pixel 3 and 7a.
I did have the 4a but that didn’t survive a very rainy run. That’s when I discovered google didn’t introduce IPX ratings until the 5
Pixel 7 pro
We also have a landline (see my note above about my cell phone) on which we used to get calls from people we know and we used it to send faxes, especially when I was working. Now, the only calls we get are scam calls, except rarely our son calls us on it if he wants to speak with us both at the same time. A few weeks ago I discussed with my wife cancelling it and a week later the line stopped working! I’m going to cancel it, even though my son tried it yesterday. He ended up just speaking to me.
@andyw You can also reassign the number to Google Voice, have it ring to your cell phone, and have no monthly expense.
@werehatrack Thanks for the thought. I always forget that I have a Google number that I never use. I probably have to get the line fixed, though, for that to work. I am sure if they come to fix it they will blame me and charge me! Not that I don’t trust Verizon. And then I’d get the scam calls on my cell, but I can probably screen them.
@andyw My landline stopped working about 15 years ago, when everyone still used them. The repair guy told me that houses have two lines going into them in case one fails, and that if the second one failed, I would have to pay to do the repairs. Six years ago, when I had my kitchen renovated, the contractor took out the wall that had the phone plug in it, so now the phone line goes up to my house but not in it. The only reason I still had a landline was because the cable package was cheaper with phone included (who knows why); about the only actual people who called me on it were my parents.
@lisagd I think things may have changed with fiberoptic. I looked in the box where some things split off and in a brief peek I did not see anything wrong. I’ll look again in daylight. Thanks for the idea, though.
@andyw you absolutely don’t have to get the line fixed to port that number to Google voice, and it can screen calls and block spam. You can get the calls on your cell, on your computer, and if you can get your hands on an obihai VoIP device, your original home phone.
PIXEL 6 Pro love it.
Cricket phone is a Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G 2022 ($30 a month for 10Gb of data! unlimited talk and text).
Tello phone is an LG (who no longer makes phones).
We have three “landlines”. MagicJacks. Home, business and FAX.
@lisaviolet The LG brand is still being applied to phones in production, but I don’t know if they’re still actually made by LG. Lenovo of China has been acquiring phone brands, and LG could be one.
https://www.lg.com/levant_en/mobile-phones
Pixel Fold
remember getting multiple of what we call landlines now?
some people got multiple so there was a parents vs kids #.
I didn’t have kids, but often had 2 wired lines (wired? was there any other kind?); one was for fax and computer modem, other was for normal use.
many people don’t know there was dial-in computer communication long before what we know as the ‘internet’. You would just dial directly to who you wanted to reach (assuming they had a line dedicated to a computer that would answer and connect to you). This included school, various clubs, and my friends (I had nerdy friends). I seem to remember even banks and other utilities having text-based online service.
@pmarin And there were the BBS systems, many of which were interconnected via FidoNet late at night when the LD rates were lower.
@pmarin when my folks had a business we had two lines in the house. Also when us kids moved away, my mom felt bad that we were paying so much in long distance phone bills to call them that she got an 800 number for the business line. She didn’t have it published but I’m sure it was a tax write off just the same.
@pmarin @werehatrack
Was a fidonet node way back when.
Forgotten my node# now.
Only ran at night. Files xfers and msgs only.
Specialized in letting the world get PGP. Would get file reqs from all over the world.
@f00l @pmarin I was the sysop for a large board, and my current S.O. was the local Fidonet lead. And then we spent over 20 years being just passing acquaintances. Life can be very strange sometimes.
@pmarin @werehatrack
Several of my current very best friends, I met when we were fellow fidonet sysops back in the 90’s.
Still see/talk to several of them weekly.
I miss that ongoing sense of community.
Goog pix 6. Almost as intuitive as a Sam Gal. Sam works better in some ways, Goog works better in others. IMO it’s kind of a toss-up between which is better.
I’ve developed a pretty big addiction to Motorola (I like the “shake to bring up your camera, chop to turn on the flashlight” among a lot of little Moto touches), so I’m on my… 4th? 5th? Motorola. This one is some crazy series of monikers… 5g UW ace, maybe?
@tondaanderson Are those actions Motorola-only? I had no idea. I’ll have to remember that when I need to replace my G7…
(I had never imagined I would love the chop-to-turn-on-flashlight so much, but WOW! I use it a lot.)
I love my iPhone and the various iPads I use (the most current from work). To be clear, I’ve nothing against Android or those who prefer it; I do despise the trash talk, whenceever it originates. I had to be talked into my first iPhone (at the time, I was leaning toward Android, but have been glad for being on iPhone ever since). In my case, it better supports what I do for work and I’m very fond of the gui and its consistency.
I will talk trash about M$’s mobile OSes. For the short time I owned an M$ phone (it was not my choice), it was unstable as fuck. A buddy of mine had similar experiences. I’m happy to use the Office 365 apps on iOS though. I might prefer Apple’s productivity suite, based on what I’ve seen of it, but, again, work likes us on Microsoft, even though Apple is nevertheless our mobile platform. Hell, they even gave up on Surface laptops.
For the record, I prefer Chrome as a browser and make use of Google’s suite (mostly Sheets).
Of the various things accused of being cults in this culture of ours, Apple seems only nominally guilty, except in small circles. And among those who are fanatical in their loyalty, I think most have good—but not universally applicable—reasons for it.
Mega
I’ve been a Motorola boi for decades now. No reason to spend hundreds or even thousands more on phones. <$200, unlocked, works for years, easily replaced.
iPhone for calls, texts, apps.
Pixel for when I want a handheld computer with file system control etc.
/image brick phone
@somf69 Ours was black, as were all the others I saw.
I once had a Kyocera smartphone that ran palm os and had a browser.
Precursor to the Treos.
This was in the 2g cellular network days, I think.
(1g was analog, unencrypted. people with police scanners could listen in.
Think “Tampongate” and “Squidgygate” in the Royal Family, from the early 90’s)
Loved that Kyocera. Internet, kinda, in my hand.
I have both iPhone and an Android but I prefer to use Android so convenient. Doesn’t low batt easily
Apparently one that has shoddy reception.
Stupid new 5G. I thought the vaccine boosters were supposed to improve signal.