Analyzing mobile phone plans: Our old AT&T plan vs. H2O wireless

We're enrolled in a no longer available AT&T plan that included a secondary phone option of 

• shared family minutes, long distance, etc.
• $10 monthly per device
• $15 for 200MB data (with alerts when limit nears)
• No SMS

At the moment my daughter is on this plan, the boys are on H2O wireless. Thanks to typical carrier hidden fees and some SMS usage billed at extortionary rates** the average monthly cost is about $33.

I'd been planning to switch her to H2O wireless too, but after doing a bit of analysis I can see why AT&T discontinued the plan we have -- it's oddly cost-effective for someone with the discipline to control data use. (The latter requires a level of self control that excludes her brothers.)

Here's a rough cut at what a valuation looks like for staying on this plan over 2 years (with a new contract iPhone) vs. switching to H2O wireless:

Item	Estimated value
Phone subsidy	450
AT&T sneaky phone fee	-40
iPhone 5S 16GB initial fee	-200
Two year payments	-840
H2O plan cost	120*
NET	-510

So compared to H2O wireless staying on this plan would mean:

• Pay an extra $510 over two years
• Get an iPhone 5S (list $650)
• Get enough data for location services, light email, iMessage, Facetime-audio

If we wanted an extra iPhone 5S her current plan would make sense. We don't, so I'm likely to switch her to H2O wireless when her contract expires - like her sibs. On the other hand, if we lose a phone it makes sense to add her back on this plan and get a new contract.

Again, I can see why AT&T discontinued this plan. It is oddly competitive with paygo options.

* As of today H2O wireless for our kids use pattern costs about $80 for two years - voice and SMS only. It used to cost $200 for two years, this $80 price is weird and seems unlikely to last. In fact I'm not sure I can even get this plan for her any more, I think it was an artifact of some pre-smartphone pricing.

** Most of her texting is via iMessage.

PS. Walmart online has an interesting list of prepaid options for AT&T compatible MVNOs.

iOS 7 has completely removed ability to play Podcasts through Music.app and Video.app

Message received when connecting my daughter's iOS 7 4S to iTunes:

Until iOS 7 one could get reliable iTunes Podcast sync by deleting Podcast.app and viewing Podcasts in Music.app or Video.app. Those abilities are now gone. Not a surprise, too bad Apple brought a lot of bugs with the transition including iTunes 11.1 Media Kind bugs causing podcast invisibility, and claims of massive data loss when synchronizing archived podcasts with iOS 7

It's well past time for me to switch to either Downcast or Instacast. My app.net colleagues are reviewing the tradeoffs with me.

(I'm still on iOS, I like the kids to find these bugs first.)

iOS 7 fixes iOS parental controls webkit hole. Finally. (EXCEPT for Siri)

It's been exactly three years since I wrote Apple's iPhone parental controls are completely broken.

Sure, you could turn off Safari -- but there was no way to disable use of webkit embedded browsers. A lot of apps and games kids like, including encyclopedias, use links that bring up an embedded browser. From there it's often a few hops to Google and beyond.

I ranted about this in various places, but mine was a lonely voice. (One can imagine many reasons why most parents don't seem to be concerned about full web access with iOS devices, but, whatever the reason, there's clearly no clamor for a fix.)

Today, years after I gave up, Apple fixed parental controls in iOS 7. You can use Restrictions:websites:specific websites only to restrict both Safari and webkit access to urls. I believe the changes were made pretty deep in the iOS network stack, they seem to affect all browser use.

iOS comes preconfigured with a set of approved sites. The list is not simple to edit but they are all fine with me. You can add others.

There are bugs. Even preconfigured sites seem to sometimes require second authentication on attempted access. Still, it's a big, albeit very late, improvement.

IOS 7 is quite slow on the iPhone 4s two of the kids use, but this one feature is worth the sluggishness.

Update: In early testing #1 says he can't hack the current restrictions. It also seems to be far more useable than superficially similar site restrictions in OS X Mountain Lion; Mountain Lion's current mechanism has been completely broken. I wonder if some serious attention went into making this work.

Update 11/29/2013.

Siri: "Show me pictures of dogs". Shows dogs.

Siri: "Show me pictures of xxxx"....

You have to disable Siri, there are no parental controls there.

iTunes 11.1 is unable to browse some older podcast files - with a partial workaround (Fix)

The first hints of a problem with iTunes 11.1 came via an app.net referral to Kirkville: Apple Has Broken Podcasts. A large numbers of older podcasts were no longer seen in iTunes. They weren't deleted, but iTunes didn't show them.

My first thought was gratitude for my multiple onsite and offsite backups. Unsurprisingly, I'm impacted too. I have 367 episodes of In Our Time in my iTunes Podcast folder, but only 311 are browsable in iTunes -- either via Podcasts or Music. On the other hand, a Smart Playlist searching on the album "In Our Time" finds them all even if I specify Media Kind = "Podcast" in the search criteria. 

Search won't find the lost podcasts however -- only Smart Playlists.

My guess on this bug is that Apple changed the rules on what shows up in Podcasts or Music so that certain older files with a Media Type of 'podcast' don't display in either category. They're still in the iTunes database, and so discoverable via a smart playlists, but iTunes can't browse them. If you remove these files from iTunes, then add them back in, they may be reclassified so they'll be browsable again.

I wonder if there's a way to do that via AppleScript.

I'm hoping this bug gets enough attention that Apple fixes it in the next month or two.

Update 2: The bug is related to Media Kind

Media Kind has long been an Achilles Heel of iTunes. It's an attribute of media that shows up in Smart Playlists and should be changeable via the Information (Get Info) window, but there's no 'column' option for showing Media Kind in lists. It looks like this is a Media Kind option.

I created two Playlists to identify my affected IOT podcasts.

I made one Playlist by dragging all the files that showed up in the Podcast view into a static Playlist.

I made another by Smart criteria: Album = In Our Time.

Then I made a 3rd to identify what was in the Smart Playlist, but not visible elsewhere:

That showed my hidden podcasts.

Of the 50 or so hidden podcasts, I tried changing media type to Music. That worked for two of them. They were now visible for search and browsing. The other 48 appeared to let me change Media Type, but when I checked again they still showed as Podcast. It seems iTunes 11.1 is ignoring the Media Type attribute and using a different source of metadata to decide what is a "Podcast". That's bad, but what's worse is that podcasts of mine that used to show as Music no longer show there, but they are also omitted from Podcast.

Update 3: A workaround: Media Kind Podcast -> Audiobook -> Podcast

I couldn't change the media kind for the '48' to Music (seemed to change, but didn't work), but I could change to Audiobook! Problem is Audiobook UI can't scale this way.

Once I'd changed the Media Kind to Audiobook though, I COULD change it back to Podcast. After that all my IOT files were Podcasts and once again visible to browse and search. Note to do all this I had to use Smart Playlists -- these were the only parts of ITunes 11.1 that could display my 'invisible' podcasts.

Heavens, but iTunes 11.1 is a hot mess.

See also:

• Podcasts playlist in iTunes is empty March 2012, so not 11.1
• Why did iTunes 11.1 (126) delete all: lots of people affected by this, though some seem to have actually lost data
• Kirkville: Apple Has Broken Podcasts
• iOS 6.01 Podcast app: Die, Apple, Die. 11/2012. Apple hates podcasts.
• Apple breaks Smart Playlists on iPhone and iTunes alike (yet again) 10/2009. Apple had Media Kind bugs four years ago.

Curse of the refurb iPhone: Apple refurbished 4S has audio compiler defect, drops microphone on calls

When Emily broke the screen on her 2yo 4S I paid for a refurb replacement so I'd get a fresh battery. I'd heard good things about Apple refurbs.

Wrong.

It now sometimes happens sometimes happens that her microphone doesn't work during calls. A power cycle or simply waiting a while can resolve it. Happens about once a week. I think this is the cause:

During a call, the other person can't hear me - iPhone 4 - iFixit

I'm sorry to tell but it is 99% sure that your 'audio compiler ic' is the issue. This is the IC which performs the noise cancellation. It is only active during calls and not during memo recording... Reballing this IC is 99% gonna solve your problem. However this requires special tools and good knowledge to be performed..."

There's a possible workaround using the hearing aid option, but I'll take the phone back to the Apple Store. I wonder if they'll believe me -- I'll try to catch it on video.

It looks like this is a known manufacturing flaw:

ian's iPhone Repair: Microphone Issues with iPhone 4

If this audio compiler doesn't work, then the person on the other end will not hear you - or they will hear a very muffled voice, or a lot of static. Due to what is largely believed to be a manufacturing error in Apple's Chinese factories, a number of iPhone 4 models were assembled with this tiny chip soldered to the mainboard (motherboard) improperly. Either too much solder or glue was used, and the connection is tenuous at best.

The problem is that the phone could work perfectly for a very long time, and then after a drop (even one that doesn't break the glass), a hard jar, or even for no reason at all, this chip loses its connection to the mainboard and causes the problem you may have experienced.

There's a 178 page Apple thread on this problem: iPhone 4S - Outgoing call no audio. Given the length of the thread it's disturbing Apple missed the problem on our refurb. They should offer a recall.

Update: I found if I gently tapped the 4S on a surface I could trigger the microphone loss, so I was able to get a recording of the drop out.

Update 9/7/2013: Apple service-swapped the service-swap (so now I'm two phones removed from the phone AT&T would have unlocked in 2 months, but I'm told AT&T can manage this if I have the paper trail).

It wasn't easy though. I'd power-cycled the phone to switch SIMs, and last time I did that it took days before I could replicate the bug. So the tech couldn't replicate the problem -- and nobody at the Rosedale Minnesota Apple store had ever heard of the (alleged) audio compiler microphone cut-off defect. It took my poorly done video of the defect in action, a Google search with precise hits, and showing this blog post to get the exchange. 

I sympathize with Apple here -- a hardware exchange for a non-replicable defect is a lot of money to lose. I wonder if they're not allowed to use Google though.

Mountain Lion and the encrypted boot drive: Implications for migration assistant and what happens when you delete the only account that had FileVault 2 access (bug)

For several reasons I decided to enable encryption on my new SSD boot drive. I used the admin account on the drive. I then migrated data from my old drive, restarted, switched to my regular admin account, and deleted the admin account I'd created for drive setup.

That's the problem. Even though that account has been deleted, when I restart the Mac the startup partition (Apple_Boot Recovery HD?) I'm asked for the password for that account.

That sounds like a bug, but it could be worse. That's because when you setup a boot drive as FileVault, then use Migration Assistant, you have to enable FileVault unlocking for each of the migrated users. [1]. I'd unwittingly deleted the only account that was authorized to decrypt my boot drive.

Once I enabled my other accounts for unlocking they appeared on the startup menu -- along with my deleted admin account. So the deleted account is still used by the hidden boot partition, and it probably can't be deleted nor can the password be changed. So, yeah, it's a bug.

FileVault 2 makes me nervous.

See also:

• [1] OS X: About FileVault 2 - Apple support. This is mandatory reading. "f you want to make the Mac available to a user that does not have unlock capabilities, log in, then when you see your own desktop, choose "Log Out (user name)" from the Apple () menu. Also, you can unlock the disk, then choose the other user's name from the Fast User Switch (appears as the currently-logged in user's name) menubar item in the upper-right part of the screen ... When FileVault 2 is enabled, Recovery HD does not appear in the Startup Manager (which is accessed by holding Option during startup).  However, you can select the Recovery HD by holding Command-R as Lion starts up."
• OS X: How to create and deploy a recovery key for FileVault 2 - This might be the most advanced support article I've read. The recovery key for a FileVault 2 encrypted disk is shown ONCE on startup and cannot be later displayed, but using this method one can save a key that can be used when a password is forgotten. (Maybe this is what Apple does when you elect to save credentials with them.)
• osx - Disable a user's ability to unlock a FileVault 2 volume at startup/login time - Ask Different: This is the best overview of the bug with FileVault 2 and inability to "remove, from the EFI loginwindow, a user who should no longer be able to unlock the startup volume."
• Using fdesetup with Mountain Lion’s FileVault 2 | Der Flounder 7/2012 - Remove users from the list of FileVault enabled accounts.
• training.apple.com/pdf/WP_FileVault2.pdf: Apple Technical White Paper. Best Practices for Deploying FileVault 2 - Deploying OS X Full Disk Encryption Technology

Update 9/11/2013

I tried sudo fdesetup list and the list did not include the unwanted user account. So I restarted and this time it didn't appear. So perhaps 1-2 restarts after enabling users took care of my orphaned EFI LoginWindow account.

I've seen some other odd behaviors, but I may get to those another time.

Google Checkout ends Nov 20, 2013 - review all of your Google Apps eNom registered domains now

Google is ending their Google Checkout service, it closes 11/20/2013. The support document on this discusses retiring Google Checkout Merchant.

That's now how I used Google Checkout though, I used it as a way to manage net purchases [5]. This is where things get confusing; because while merchant use of Google Checkout is dead, my transaction history survives with Google Wallet. As best I can tell Google Checkout non-Merchant became Google Wallet [2]. It lists, for example, all of my Google App related transactions, Google Storage [1] and domain registrations.

Ok, the last may need some explanation. Years ago, before Google wed Verizon under the red moon and drank the blood of innocent children to become the Dark Lord of the Net, Google Apps was launched as a freemium service. Anyone could sign up for a domain (most often managed by eNom) and get the full suite of Google Services for up to 20 people (or maybe more). All the payments were managed through Google Checkout, so there was one place to manage charges.

Those were the glory days. I know it's hard to remember a time when Google wasn't a synonym for Evil, but once upon a time we thought Google was different [3]. We snarfed up eNom registered Google Apps domains - I have 7 of and use 3 every day including kateva.org. Despite the blood and spells and yada yada Google lifted a claw and let us keep the free domains even after they ended the program.

It was all quite easy -- but now Google Checkout is gone, and we can't use Google Wallet to pay for those eNOM registrations [4]. So we have to go to every ... single... Google Apps account and enter our credit card information.

I just finished the 7. If I used Clark Goble's beloved Keyboard Maestro it would have been faster.

It wasn't entirely a wasted exercise. I'd set some of those domains up with what is today a laughably hackable password. They've probably been doing unspeakable things while I was away (though the pw still worked). They now all have 20+ character random string passwords that are almost as hard to type as they are to hack (don't even think of 'tap'). They also have new recovery and security alert features.

I'll gradually move the eNOM domains over to my Dreamhost account; I like Dreamhost as a registrar and that way I'll only have to update my credit card once.

 - fn -

[1] I'm grandfathered into the very cheap $20/year rate. Google hiked prices after that.

[2] I'm not sure what Google Wallet is, but it's not intended for payments for online goods and services -- where it once acted as an intermediary between my credit card and merchants. It seems to be for mobile and in-person payments. I don't know where Google is going with this, but I don't care either.

[3] Even in 2009 they were changing ...

[4] The Google Apps charges are $0.00 monthly.

[5] Seems I was the only one. It worked well for me, but I guess now there's only Amazon.