Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

Ha, indeed. But even with the term "impact", there's an impact driver (like an electric screwdriver on steroids) and an impact wrench, which is what you're more likely to use on a car, as it works with sockets.

An impact driver is designed to quickly and easily drive long screws into hard materials. A drill might have a harder time driving the same screws, and is more likely to cam-out on the screw head.

Actually, an impact is just handy to have as a 2nd driver. That way you can drill holes with your drill and drive screws with the bit driver, without having to constantly take the drill bit in and out a whole bunch of times.

So in short:
Drill: has an adjustable chuck to drill holes, or hold driver bits.

Hammer drill: can operate just like a normal drill, with a "hammer" mode for drilling into concrete or brick.

Impact driver: like a bit driver electric screwdriver on steroids, with a quick-release screwdriver bit holder instead of a drill chuck, and the power to drive long or large screws into hard wood. You can actually also get drill bits with hex bases for use in them. You should only use drill and driver bits rated for use with an impact driver, though, as others could break.

Impact wrench: often built identically to an impact driver, but instead of a screwdriver bit holder, there's a square socket mount, most commonly used on cars where you have bolts or nuts to tighten/loosen.
 
About to get an iphone XR from work ... As I've never owned an apple product aside from an iPad I was given years ago, what can I expect?
I hear it has no fingerprint scanner but relies on face recognition .... does that work just as fast?

Also, I like tinkering with files and stuff, does iOS finally allow stuff like drag n drop of files or FTP transfer? I got a whole bunch of stuff I move around all the time now on my android phone, not looking forward to plugging it in and firing up itunes everytime..

Thoughts?
 
FaceID is pretty fast. Comparison to fingerprint scanners is a bit divisive - some people strongly prefer FaceID, some don't, seems quite personal taste-specific I guess. One definite downside to FaceID at the moment is that it doesn't work with a mask obscuring half your face.

Some file management is present, but nowhere nearly as "free" as on Android. There is no drag-and-drop from a PC/Mac to a plugged in iPhone directly, as far as I'm aware - only for photo/video, where it acts like any camera. However, since iOS 13 (iirc) there is a Files app that allows on-device and in-cloud file management, and it integrates nicely with iCloud Drive (Apple's own cloud file storage offering) as well as others (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, various local NAS solutions like Qnap and Synology etc) - that's the easiest way to get generic files on and off the device. iTunes is not really needed anymore, unless you want to have offline backups of the device - although usually the online iCloud backups are more than sufficient.
 
About to get an iphone XR from work ... As I've never owned an apple product aside from an iPad I was given years ago, what can I expect?
I hear it has no fingerprint scanner but relies on face recognition .... does that work just as fast?

Also, I like tinkering with files and stuff, does iOS finally allow stuff like drag n drop of files or FTP transfer? I got a whole bunch of stuff I move around all the time now on my android phone, not looking forward to plugging it in and firing up itunes everytime..

Thoughts?

I've had an XR for two years now. Face ID was a HUGE improvement for me personally. So much better than scanning your thumbprint like a caveman. :p Of course, we're in the middle of a pandemic right now and face recognition is a hassle when you're wearing a face mask. Thankfully masks won't be around forever.

And no, Face ID won't unlock your phone if someone puts a printed copy of your Facebook profile picture in front of it. It needs to be your face, in living 3D, and your eyes need to be alive and physically looking at the screen. It also works in the dark, in bright sunlight and with (most) sunglasses. I've had a pair of cheap chunky "ballistic" sunglasses that wouldn't work reliably. The polarized ones I normally use for driving work fine, as do all the protective glasses I use when woodworking. I don't wear glasses otherwise.

My brand new XR wouldn't recognize me the on the first morning just after turning off the alarm, but on the second morning it had already learned what I look like in the crack of dawn four seconds after being forcecully ripped out of dreamland. It hasn't been a problem since.

I can't remember the last time I FTP transferred anything off my phone, although the app store is full of FTP clients if you want that. If you mean connecting to your phone over FTP, then I have to ask what the point of that is? Just drop the file in your cloud storage of choice and it'll be accessible on all your devices within seconds. ?‍♂️

The only reason I can think of to use USB and iTunes is if I have to un-brick a phone that failed a software update or something. Something I've never had to do in 12 years of iPhone ownership, unless you count messing with beta software and restoring to the older stable OS. I guess you're a Windows user since you even mention iTunes. It was discontinued and replaced on the mac a long time ago.

I can recommend spending €2,99 a month on 200GB worth of iCloud storage to make sure the entire contents of your iPhone fits, for backup purposes. Don't be one of those guys that dismiss the "your cloud storage is full" dialog every times it comes up and then cry when your phone breaks and nothing's backed up. :p
 
I can't add a lot after these messages. Granted, I have only been using an iPhone as my daily for about two years.

FaceID is great. Much like Windows's Hello facial recognition you're unlocked and ready to swipe the lock screen out of the way pretty much as soon as you bring the phone to your face. Personally, having used that and touchID, especially in these "troubled times", I would like to see some redundancy between unlock methods. Especially since you have to wear a mask outside of your home at all times, but it's honestly pretty good. I personally stored my face with and without glasses on my phone, but that's just so it can recognize me when I am woken up at ohChristHundred.

As for FTP. iOS supports SMB natively, there seem to be some well-reviewed FTP apps on the store, but I cannot personally vouch for any of them.
 
The thing about FaceID is that you need to have the phone pointed at your face. I generally prefer fingerprint readers, so I found myself using an unlock pattern more often, if that's even an option an more.
 
I love that my OP8T has both an in-screen fingerprint reader and face unlock.

I also like the option to add a "lockdown" button to the lock screen. Don't know why it's not there by default, but at least the option is available.
 
On iPhones, you can "lockdown" the phone by holding the power button + either volume button for two seconds. It will lock, go to the "emergency call/medical ID" screen, and only accept PIN entry to unlock again - no FaceID or TouchID/fingerprint. This can come in handy to prevent being forced to unlock it via either method quickly, e.g. by law enforcement.
 
On iPhones, you can "lockdown" the phone by holding the power button + either volume button for two seconds when locked. It will only accept PIN entry on the next unlock - no FaceID or TouchID/fingerprint. This can come in handy to prevent being forced to unlock it via either method quickly, e.g. by law enforcement.

Yeah, reading about that iPhone feature is why I checked on my OP.

On the OP, you need to long press the power button (either while locked or unlocked), select Lockdown, and the next time you try to unlock a PIN will be required.

Screenshot_20201125-174845~2.jpg
 
Interesting.
I just checked and the Pixel 5 also has it, but I have to turn it ON on settings. Probably to prevent people from locking themselves out of their phones by accident.
 
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Nice that it's a Android feature, and not proprietary to OnePlus.
 
I'm batting .000 on USB wi-fi adaptors, after 3 different units. Two were the same (one was a replacement after I had issues with the first), and then I tried a 2nd. For some reason, randomly, I'll loose the wi-fi connection. Sometimes it'll go 2-3 days without disconnecting, and sometimes it'll be several times in an hour. It's the only device in the entire house that has wi-fi issues.

So, I think I am going to go with a PCI card, but man...I'm really tired of dealing with products that have manuals only in Chinese or poorly translated english, or super sketchy websites to download drivers without any familiar company names on anything....

Anyone have any recommendations? Searching NewEgg and Amazon, basically every product has 4 stars, including the two I got which are trash.

Ideally it wouldn't have an external antennae, but I can deal if it's a great product. My computer is all black and red, and would love to keep with that if possible...
 
On iPhones, you can "lockdown" the phone by holding the power button + either volume button for two seconds.

I was thinking of going back to the thread to mention this, but I never got around to it.

Yes, apparently law enforcement (in some countries/whatever, not sure) can make you unlock your phone if it's protected by biometrics, but they can't make you enter your PIN. When reaching into your pocket for your phone, just quietly squeeze the side buttons on both sides until you can feel the phone vibrate. That'll disable biometrics.
 
Only bad is Apple continues to add features nobody wants. The "hearing protection mode" in 14.2 keeps activating and cutting volumes off when you set BT or Aux levels to max for longer than a few minutes--- a level which is normal for line level devices such as mixer boards and car inputs. No way to disable it, and absolutely infuriating.
 
Huh, that is something I only just noticed about the BT implementation in my car: it will actually sync up the volume levels between car and connected phone. Meaning if I change volume in the car, it'll adjust BT volume on the phone and vice versa (similar as you'd expect for BT headphones, for example - there's just one volume setting, not two separate ones).

Only bad is Apple continues to add features nobody wants. The "hearing protection mode" in 14.2...
That particular example is intriguing, because while I admit it's not something that anyone probably ever explicitly asked for, it certainly helps Apple consistently score best phone (or podium finish anyway) in e.g. Stiftung Warentest* comparisons. It is a good feature (generally speaking) to have, it can have a positive effect (on ear health or whatever, fair enough), despite the fact that nobody would ever actively ask for it or, more likely, even get annoyed by it (because people that are "at risk" in this department usually don't care and want their music at full blast anyway).

*A distinctly German organisation, in that it takes itself way too seriously, has absolutely no sense of humour (at all), scores any product by a strict catalog of way overthought criteria and tests and thus oftentimes publishes results that, quite like statistics, are utterly useless to the individual (or rather: you should never go by the general test result, but will have to dig into the details to see what you actually care about). Naturally, I am a subscriber :|
 
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Sometimes I think Health and Safety will be the end of this planet. Everyone will be tied to the wall in their own separate room made from beige bubble wrap.

Who gets to decide the maximum acceptable volume level, and with what kind of headphones?
 
Who gets to decide the maximum acceptable volume level, and with what kind of headphones?
I guess some medical professionals who somehow conducted weird long term experiments to determine what sort of exposure leads to damage? :dunno: Sure, the warnings are oversimplified solutions to generalized results ("statistics are useless to the individual"), but it's not like they're pulling the basis for all of this out of their asses...
 
It’s just that I’ve had cans that required a lot of volume for normal listening (I don’t like loud music personally) and earbuds that were plenty loud enough at 1-2 steps above 0, when driven by the same iphone. Obviously, everything is wireless nowadays...
 
It’s just that I’ve had cans that required a lot of volume for normal listening (I don’t like loud music personally) and earbuds that were plenty loud enough at 1-2 steps above 0, when driven by the same iphone
Yeah... that issue can't be tackled by such a generalized solution to the problem ofc... and that doesn't go away with things being wireless either. That's why I also think, which doesn't come out quite clearly in my earlier post, that this is mostly a solution that leads to better test scores and maybe helps a certain mindset in mostly clueless customers ("oh, they're looking out for us!"), while actually having zero practical implication in the real world (apart from the annoyance) :D
 
Amusingly, on my (android) I phone, audio through my Bluetooth earphones is so quiet when watching a video from a Chrome tab, that I downloaded a volume-increaser app.

How screwed up is that?
 
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