Battery Replacement Delays for iPhones

Apple recently issued an out-of-warranty battery replacement policy for iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and SE devices in response to reports that they had been intentionally making their hardware obsolete.

If you have one of these devices and want to replace your battery at the newly discounted rate of $29 (down from $79), you have until December 2018. But if you’re in a hurry, you may have to wait to get your new battery. MacRumors reports that wait times at Apple stores and Apple authorized service providers may be as long as 3 months for iPhone 6 Plus devices. Delays of two weeks are expected for iPhone 6 and 6s Plus models, while batteries for 7, 7 Plus, and SE models should be readily available.

Outlook for iOS surprisingly great

Mailbox is being discontinued, so many people are scrambling to find a replacement email app for their iPhones and iPads. My friend Aram David tried Microsoft Outlook, after reading a Verge post about it. The result was utter shock as evidenced in the screenshot of his texts to me.

Here’s what he likes about Outlook:

  • built in calendar
  • filter for real vs promotional emails
  • archive
  • search is INSTANT

I transitioned from Mailbox a couple months ago because it was so buggy, and now use Google Inbox. I love it. Search is super fast, the interface is light and simple. I’d like to be able to mark emails as unread in Inbox, but even without that feature I’m quite happy with Inbox. Hopefully they’ll add that in the future. I only use Gmail/Google Apps email accounts, but if I used email accounts from multiple providers (such as a Gmail account and an iCloud account), I’d definitely try Outlook.

If you’re not pleased with your iPhone or iPad email client, check out Outlook or Inbox.

Apple Set to Release New “Photos” App in the Spring

Apple is getting rid of iPhoto and Aperture and releasing a new app, called “Photos”. It integrates with iCloud photos to sync with your iPad, iPhone, and other systems. There is also a ton of editing functionality that is very intuitive. It seems like a big improvement over iPhoto.

Check it out at the link below. Developers are able to access it starting today, with a full release planed in the spring:

Programming as a Tool of Empowerment

Last week, our CEO Jonathan Zacks attended a career day for teens. In his presentation, he discussed the importance of learning to code and doing what you love. Thanks to Transdiaspora Network for the write-up!

See the full article here.

 

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Clear out Useless Data on a Mac

Here’s a quick tip about how to find a good chunk of old data to delete, to give yourself some extra free space on your Mac. If you’ve ever upgraded iPhones (or iPods or iPads), you might have old, unnecessary backups hidden on your computer, taking up a lot of space. You can check by following these steps:

Open iTunes

Go to the iTunes menu (top left, in the menu bar)
Select Preferences
Go to the Devices tab
In there, you’ll see a list of device backups, and the date they were last backed up.
To remove one, click on it, and then click the “Delete Backup” button.
Be very careful when you do this, make sure you don’t delete the backups of your current devices (or any old backups that you haven’t restored to other devices). Note that the backups are sorted alphabetically by device name, not by date of last backup, which can be confusing.

In my case, I was able to clear out 23 GB of old, useless data

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