Upgrade anxiety.

Well, I was going to order ye olde iPhone 11 from my wireless provider this week, and then I saw a MacRumors post reporting on the latest iPhone 12 rumors.1

I know I should be able to look past something that’s not going to be on the market for another nine months, but sakes alive, I’ve forgotten what it means to be in the tick-tock product cycle that Apple has been in for the longest time.

For context, I have an iPhone 7 Plus with a battery that should be replaced. I would have already done this, but my screen has a nice-sized crack in it, running from slightly left of the center bottom edge to the volume rocker on the upper left edge of the unit. It otherwise functions normally, aside from the odd barcode being a pain to scan from time to time thanks to an abnormal crack running through any given representation of the binary language.

Sadly, the damage excludes my device from being serviced officially, unless I replace the glass front of my screen.

And so, after holding out for as long as I could bear with the battery, I decided that I was going to take advantage of my carrier’s interest-free financing of a new iPhone 11. I haven’t been a fan of being beholden under contract to a carrier for awhile, but I can’t really see anything wrong with this payment plan–especially when I can pay the whole balance off at any time without a penalty.

Of course, Apple offers a similar plan, but I feel even more like I’m leasing a device in that case, instead of owning a device.

Maybe I’ll just get over it and commit to getting a new device.

Here’s to hoping I remember to buy a case for it.

With Hearthstone on the iPhone now, my battery is surely forfeit.

The long-awaited update to the iOS version of Hearthstone was released this afternoon, and will soon™ be on the Android handsets that can support it. I downloaded it, which didn’t take long at all, and gave it a whirl since I could burn the five minutes it would take to play through a casual match to unlock the free pack they’re giving away for completing your first game with an iPhone.

It took five minutes. I beat a custom Warrior with a basic Rogue deck. Cha-ching: free pack.

First thing’s first, with the condensed UI, you should consider tapping the board as a menu escape method if you need to zoom all the way out from looking at your hand and just considering what’s on the table. Otherwise, it’s best to operate one tap at a time to reduce the possibility of messing up what moves you’re going to make in your turn. Assigning minions to attack specific targets still works in the logical sense—sliding from the attacking minion to the minion you wish to damage—but avoid swiping from the bottom edge in quick succession, due to bottom drawer’s triggerbeing ‘any upward swipe from the bottom edge.’

Other than that, there are minor quality of life improvements made to the UI so that you don’t have to tap on the screen additional times to get things done, such as opening packs. No more dragging a pack and then clicking an ‘open’ button. You drag the pack, you get your cards—nice and simple.

I’ll add more in the future as play more games of Hearthstone. As far as progress, I’ve not completely unlocked all of the basic decks for all nine classes, but I’m getting there. I haven’t played a solo adventure since I unlocked the casual matchmaking feature, so I’m getting slowly used to the meta. I even have a couple of custom decks, but I don’t own nearly enough of the cards that exist to really use a custom deck in a match.

Oh, and also:

But it’s only available for download on the Amazon Appstore, at the moment. Which is LOLtastic.

Well, now all of the Android people can play cards now!

Apple did a thing yesterday. I want an Watch.

You know what they announced already. It’s news. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The Apple Watch. The Apple Pay system.

Yeah. All of that is fine and dandy. But oh boy, Apple has a way making things. And I want to sign up for one of these immediately:

Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 8.15.53 AMScreen Shot 2014-09-10 at 8.16.27 AMScreen Shot 2014-09-10 at 8.23.32 AM

I know the battery life not being disclosed at this point is a huge deal, but I DON’T REALLY CARE, I JUST WANT ONE. PLEASE. IT LOOKS SO NICE AND IT MEANS I DON’T HAVE TO UPGRADE TO AN IPHONE 6, AND I WOULD REALLY LIKE ONE, APPLE. PLEASE.