I recently changed phones from a Samsung to an iPhone(Carol upgraded so I am trying her's). It’s about 6 weeks, and I’m still not thrilled. I don’t find it horrible by any means, just a few things I miss. Also, there are a few differences I’m just not used to yet. Ultimately, a smartphone is a smartphone and I can’t really say one is better than another.
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That said, I miss my smartwatch. I had a cheap watch paired to my Android, and I haven’t gotten a replacement iWatch yet, so I miss the notifications. I really miss them, which means I also actually miss notifications, so I don’t know stuff is happening. I’ll eventually get Carol’s iWatch too, which I think I will quite like, and that may be what changes my mind. Apple only offered her $25 for trading it in, which I think is insulting. 

Carol got a replacement battery for her iPhone before she gave it to me. At $29 thru Apple, it’s a great deal. It was $38 after tax and shipping & handling, but still, a great deal. There are great reasons to keep your old smartphone, and money is just one of them. I’m a practicing curmudgeon, so I don’t like change. I’m really used to what I have and learning new stuff can be frustrating. Still, it was an opportunity to immerse myself in an iPhone which I have never had, so I thought I’d give it a try. Plus, as a curmudgeon, it’s a whole nother reason to complain.
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If you’d like to keep your iPhone a bit longer while saving up for the next generation, then I have an article about what you can do HERE.

Snopes
Last weekend this Facebook warning was spreading around Abiquiu like wildfire.  People were dutifully following the instructions even through they hadn't gotten second friend requests, even though they had not checked to see if they had a duplicate account,  Your mom might have taught you to share, this is one case where you should not.  Please check these things with snopes before you start a panic.

The following is reprinted from Snopes, a great resource.

Claim
A warning about "another friend request" alerts Facebook users about potential account "cloning."
FALSE
Origin
In October 2018, Facebook users began receiving and sharing a message stating that the sender had received “another” friend request from them, and urging recipients to “check your account” and send the same message on to other Facebook friends.
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This message played on warnings about the phenomenon of Facebook “pirates” engaging in the “cloning” of Facebook accounts, a real (but much over-hyped) process by which scammers target existing Facebook users accounts by setting up new accounts with identical profile pictures and names, then sending out friend requests which appear to originate from those “cloned” users. Once those friend requests are accepted, the scammers can then spread messages which appear to originate from the targeted account, luring that person’s friends into propagating malware, falling for phishing schemes, or disclosing personal information that can be used for identity theft.

This particular warning suggests the recipient’s Facebook account has been targeted for such “cloning,” as indicated by the sender’s having received “a second friend request” from that account.

While a warning of this nature could be legitimate, the fact that this exact same message has been spread to untold thousands of Facebook users indicates that it is at worst a scam or hoax, and at best a once well-intentioned warning rendered useless by being uncritically reposted all over Facebook.

Clearly, there would be no utility to forwarding this warning to any of your Facebook friends unless you had actually received a second friend request from one of them. Moreover, even if this warning were possibly real, the optimal approach would not be for the recipient to forward it willy-nilly to every single contact on their friends list.
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If you have reason to believe your Facebook account might have been “cloned,” you should try sending separate private messages to a few of your Facebook friends to check whether any of them had indeed recently received a duplicate friend request from you, as well as searching Facebook for accounts with names and profile pictures identical to yours. Should either method turn up a hit, use Facebook’s “report this profile” link to have the unauthorized account deactivated.

I'm not a photographer. If I take enough pictures, I may eventually get one that looks OK. It's happened for me, infrequently, but it has happened. I've known photographers and they talk about the light, shadows, and point at things and talk about them in ways I would NEVER have seen. That's what artists do. My talents lie elsewhere.
Nearly everyone has a smartphone these days. It's funny to see a flip phone now. Smartphones have ridiculously good digital cameras built into them, with some impressive features. It's one of the more competitive areas of smartphones. With the features and improvements come complexities. Of course, you can just point and shoot, that's what I do. But if you want to take some better pics, there are all sorts of articles on smartphone photography, and classes too.
​I am offering a simple article on photography HERE. It's just a random article I looked at and liked. It was basic, so it's geared toward my meager brain power. Feel free to look for more articles and if you are really into it, take a class. If you capture something really cool, send it in to the Abiquiu News. We LOVE that sort of thing.

I just started using an iPhone. Carol has had one since the iPhone 4. I just got her iPhone 6S, and it's going OK. Like computers, iPhones and Android phones pretty much do all the same things. I have found a couple of things I like about the iPhone, and a few things that I miss, so I'm still up in the air about this change. There are a lot of people that love their iPhones, so I am posting an interesting link to an article that talks about some iPhone tips. I certainly have plenty to learn, and maybe that would help me like the iPhone more. Of course, I'm sure the same can be said about the Android, but the fact is, I'm more comfortable on Android right now. Still, that's not so bad. I'll learn some things, hopefully, and maybe I'll stick with it. I am definitely looking forward to trying out the iWatch. That may be the best reason to try an iPhone, in fact.

That takes us to accompanying products. The iPhone has the iWatch, and my Samsung Galaxy 7 has a Pebble watch associated with it. It was cheap, monochrome, but had some useful features I miss. The iWatch is much more expensive, and much more EXPANSIVE. There are equally good Android watches I'm sure, so  that's not necessarily the reason to switch, but the iWatch certainly offers a fantastic amount of great software linking to the iPhone. That's a whole other article though.

The link  is HERE.

Hi Carol and Brian ~
 
Twice today I have received  phone calls, purporting to be from Microsoft, telling me that my ISP has been compromised by several countries and that my license will be revoked in 36 hours. The caller ID information was weird: the call supposedly came from my partner’s initials at our phone number. The woman’s voice exhorted me to press “1” which I did not do.
 
If either of you has any light to shed on this, I’d appreciate it. The situation feels somewhat threatening, probably because I’m not up on this sort of thing. Many thanks in advance! 

Answer
This is a scam.  Microsoft will never call you.  Many people get these demands via pop ups on their computer.  Ultimately they will want you to give them access to your computer to fix a problem you don’t actually have.  Then can take control of your computer, install malware and demand payment to fix it.   Whatever number showed up was spoofed.  Just hang up.  In fact if you see your own number coming up on caller ID, don't bother answering it!

IRS will never call you.
Apple will never call you.
Scam artists will and they'll be glad to take your money.