To Upgrade or Not Upgrade - That is the question.

I know that I am of a privileged-world, living in North America, our United States, in a wealthy part of the country, according to global standards.

I know that I have “First World Annoyances”.

 The microwave doesn’t cook fast enough.

 The McReady-When-I-Want-It coffee is too hot or too perfect.

 The TV channels are too plentiful.

I realize that I don’t have to worry about food on my plate or a roof over my head or worry about a gun-to-my face if I express my opinion or celebrate my faith.

 That said, I have a beef that has now become this rant.

 Due to the built-in obsolescence of my iPhone 8 Plus, I had to upgrade my phone or potentially lose all of the phones data at any given moment.

 There was a “Clear and Present Danger”.

Ah! But there was an ‘upside’!

Not only was Apple going to buy-back my old iPhone 8 Plus, but I was also going to receive somewhat of a rebate because of the known-but-not-discussed flaw that Apple had built into the Phone.

So, I happily skipped in to the newly-redesigned Apple Store in Oxmoor.

I was greeted by somebody who was young enough to be my son or daughter. I told them what my problems were. I was passed from one youngin’ to the next. Each Apple-Dude or Dudette was happy to offer me a new modeled phone.

I know none of these ‘kids’ were working off commissions, however, they definitely got Apple praise when they sold multiple components to multiple people.

 Each t-shirt wearing teen was extremely enthusiastic to sell me, this old bald guy, a new iPhone Pro or Pro Max.

 Now interestingly, the sales person suggested that I refrain from purchasing THE LARGEST newest phone even though I was used to my huge iPhone 8 brick in my pocket.

The iPhone 11 Pro Max is about the same size as the iPhone 8 Plus, however the SCREEN itself is larger.

Apple has figured out a way to have bleeding edge technology installed on this phone, literally.

The images actually go to the edge of the glass, like the Galaxy or any other Samsung device at this point.

There is a $100 price point difference without really anything other additional feature, except battery life.

 So, I figured to suck it up and get the smaller phone (by dimension size) that had a LARGER pixel screen than my iPhone 8 Plus.

Regardless of all that, that is not the reason why I am writing this blog.

Due to this needless upgrade, I lost 18 months of health and exercise data.

All the activity badges, exercise awards…everything else… gone.

All gone.

I was on the phone with several Apple reps for over 2 ? hours late into the evening, trying to figure out if I could retain or reclaim this data.

Neither the software engineer, nor the Apple associate, or nor the supervisors could figure out how to reinstall all this information back to my iPhone.

We even did a share screen on my iPhone to make sure I was not ‘mistaken’ (Apple Code for screwing anything up).

During the long pauses, where the Apple rep was consulting their counterparts, I consulted ‘The Google” and found out that this health data loss has happened several times to several different people.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7073012

So, word to the wise: if you do upgrade your iPhone and you have an Apple watch, make sure to back up your phone to a laptop device and encrypt your health data and restore your iPhone via that laptop device. Your Apple watch will synchronize with your iPhone with your old health data on it.

Nobody, knew this. Nobody from Apple knew this. Not the store representatives. Not the online experts. Not the telephone gurus that I spoke with late into the evening.

Also, note that your iPhone upgrade will cost you about 30 to 45 frustrating minutes resetting all of your email passwords. Passwords don’t carry over.

I was inundated every 5 minutes with the message that my email password needed to be reset. 

That was a load of fun.

And, don't forget, anything else that might require a username and password to access will have to also be reset (Napster, Spotify, etc).

Oh yeah. My downloaded playlists were gone, too. They were on the iPhone I turned in.

So, think four times before upgrading.

Save your time. Save yourself from frustration. Save the planet by minimalizing.

‘Nuff said. 

Ugh.