Inspired by MorePU, how do I convert from monthly to annual? I canât find anything in Memberful except to cancel and sign up again.
Thatâs pretty much how you have to do it.
Iâm glad youâre getting help with that, even though it came in a peculiar fashion!
Like @ismh, I am a skeptic on virtual reality. I was a Second Life enthusiast in the late 2000s, and I feel like SL inoculated me against VR hype.
However, I am enthusiastic for the possibility of augmented reality, once the technology arrives in something resembling eyeglasses, simply because eyeglasses seem like a better interface than screens. Imagine working in your office as it is now, only there are an infinite number windows floating in space around you with your work inside them. Or reading without holding anything in your hands. Or having directions floating discreetly in your field of vision as you drive.
Iâm excited about what you both have planned for the new year!
Joining the chorus, Iâm not sure how augmented reality will land with me. But, I assume my kids (A 2-year-old and a 3-month-old) will make it a daily part of their lives. When I consider the differences between my childhood (household computers with a home dial-up connection were rare until I was a teenager) and theirs (computers that fit in our pockets and provide unlimited anything), I am amazed. So, Iâll keep my mind curious and see what happens.
That is seriously scary
Apple may well have free backup for iPhones on their wish list. But, IMO, I wouldnât expect that to happen as long as they are paying around $700,000,000 per year to Amazon & Google for additional storage.
($300MM to Google, $400MM to Amazon)
If David is willing to order me Timâs seat I would add real âFind myâ support to the AirPods (each earphone and the case) and an improved Apple Pencil experience.
That would include improved Scribble functionality (personal dictionaries, capital letters, additional languages etc) and most importantly, CARRIAGE RETURN (just dated myself).
OhâŚand One more thingâŚ, gesture support with the pencil (like on the track pad)
When Apple releases AR eyeglasses Iâll summon a robo-Uber and have it drive me directly to the nearest Apple store. 
Iâll beat you there, in my personal jet pack.
Iâve grown rather pessimistic about the capability of computing technology to advance our lives directly in a hugely impactful way. Behind the scenes the power potential is incredible but directly âŚiâm not so sure.
I donât really need to live in a VR world. I simply need more time. Covid has made one thing clear to me. I value more time with my loved ones, more projects working with my hands and more experiences within this family bubble.
I was testing out one of those AI apps that can fix blurry photos and I was amazed at the results and again I was reminded that it wasnât the AI technology that appealed to me it was the resurrection of the likness of people I care for.
Technology has to impact people at this personal level as much as possible because for many thatâs where the true value resides.
I wonder how much it would actually cost?
I know it wonât be cheap, but iPhone backups donât seem to include anything that can be re-downloaded. For example, I restore from backup. I have data in Logos Bible Software that wasnât in the backup, and needs to be re-downloaded. Overcast has my podcast lists, but not the episodes themselves.
If they considered a âless-than-perfectâ option for the free backup tier (something like âfirst we use all your iCloud storage, then weâll continue to back things up for free but photos & videos will be stored at a lower qualityâ), I wonder what they could get the dollar-averaged per-user cost down to?
There is no way to know, but I suspect the answer is âtoo muchâ. I would guess the majority of the 1 billion or so iPhone users in the world never buy additional iCloud storage. If so, much of Appleâs Amazon/Google storage bill could be the cost of the providing 5,000,000,000 GB of free storage.
The market likes companies that are growing and Apple needs revenue from services for continued growth. They are currently fighting, IMO, a losing battle with governments around the world in an effort to protect the revenue they receive from the App Store.
Why would a company willing to do that voluntarily spend additional $billions / year on free storage when it isnât likely to increase iPhone sales?
I love the idea of working in virtual space. As much screen real estate as I need. Window lined up together and as big or small as I need. A virtual meeting with someone where it feels more like we are really together. Bring it on!
Often when I am out walking the dog, I see people walking their dogs while looking at the phone. I suspect those people would be happier, and less likely to trip and fall off the curb, if they had AR glasses that showed them whatever was on their phone screen.
This. Presently, I feel like weâre just putting new shades of lipstick on the same pig.
I wish they did have the iCloud style backup for Macs. Iâve been telling my sister she needs to do a backup of her 14 year old Mac Book Pro, and today the screen died, and she has job materials there that she needs soon.
This I think begs the question, âwhat would advancement of oneâs life in a âhugely impactfulâ way look like?â A serious friendly question, not a challenge or rhetorical. 
I have some thoughts on this. I see this both waysâthat technology has and does advance our lives both directly and in hugely impactful ways, and that, at the same time, it has absolutely failed. Let me give this a try.
First, when I first started by career as a trial lawyer 22 years ago, I couldnât go anywhere without reams of paper and boxes of documents. I was an early adopter of e-mail, but we still lived in a fax world. If I went to trial, I had carts, and boxes, and boxes, and boxes, and the like. This summer I tried (arbitrated, technically) a case for 12 full days of testimony. I did it on Zoom and had everything on 1 single iPad Pro (I had backups in a thousand places, donât get nervous.) I tried an entire case with just an iPad Pro.
I also used to carry a dictaphone to document reviews and the library to capture notes on everything I got my hands and eyes on. Now, I pull out my iPad or iPhone and scan or even just take a photo of what I need. Too bad you canât get the text from an image. Oh wait!. I can even do that now!!
Second, like @webwalrus, I use Logos Bible Software. When I used to study the scriptures, Iâd have to look up an English Word in a concordance, then use the Englishmanâs concordance to see all the Greek or Hebrew words translated to the same English Word. Iâd have a dozen resources open on my desk, and I would scribble notes furiously. It was hours of painstaking work, and Iâm just talking about cleaning up the desk after taking all those books out! Now, in Logos, I can do the same things but it takes two clicks of a button. It has saved me hours, and resulted in a deepening of my actual study. More meaningful study time, because this technology tool has reduced a great amount of friction that once slowed me down.
Third, seemingly simple things like Air Drop have been huge âgame changers,â for those who remember the difficulty of transferring information from one place to another.
So, all of those things have had a big impact on âdoing the things,â but is having an impact on âdoing the thingsâ the same as that something being a âhugely impactfulâ advancement to our lives. That requires a more nuanced response. First, because the technology has not changed the fundamental work that we do, just the manner in which we do it (for the most part). Second, because I agree with @hmurchison in that the thing I need most is time. All these technology improvements should enable us to have more time. Some of them have done that, like my Logos example. But a lot of what Iâve seen is the work load has increasedâoften with just busy workârather than decreased as a result of technology. So, instead of gaining more times to be with the people we love, we are sometimes gaining more time to just do more things. Ultimately, though, that seems like a human psychology problem, not a technology one.
I donât mean to sound terribly pessimistic on this last question. I do think there are plenty of concrete ways that technology has improved my life and gotten me more time with my family. One simple example has been highlighted by Covid. I can work anywhere â on Maui, on a mountaintop, on the beach, on a plane, train, bus, or Uber.
That means there are plenty of times Iâve been able to do things that enabled me to squeeze in more family time between my demanding work, and still get my demanding work done. I spent a year where my then-one-year-old daughter sat on my lap just about every day after her afternoon nap while I worked in my home office. Without the technology to work from anywhere, I would have seen her in the early morning when I left for the office and maybe at night before she went to bed.
My wife and four kids were going up to the Bay Area last month, I went with them. While I had to work a bunch of the time, I also got time with them that I would not have gotten to have had I been stuck in the office. So, technology has bought me some freedom and autonomy that I treasure greatly.
These are just personal anecdotes, I understand. But they do demonstrate when that we put human guardrails around technology, the technology really can make a major, meaningful difference in our lives.
But, still, we largely live and do the same kinds of things. Love our families, do our work, put food on the table, and live out the purpose and plan for our lives. (And itâs so much more fun to do all that with the amazing technology that we have at our fingertips today.)
Appreciate all you, my brothers and sisters here on MPU, have a happy and blessed New Year!!