I admit, i’m not an apple person, i know it’s so nice to use but at the same time you can get computers and phones just as fancy for cheaper.
But i kept seeing iPhones, everywhere, those three sinister looking cameras on the back and thumbs doing all sorts of complex gestures i didn’t understand, what was the hype i wondered, what was the hype, and why must these young people always have the latest model? where were they even getting the money from?
That’s until i entered into a raffle, it was being advertised at a local shopping centre, ‘Win an iPhone 15 Pro Titanium’ was hanging from the ceiling in shiny writing, adorned with sparkly LEDs, below sat a counter at which a queue was forming, a queue i decided to join.
Why did i join it you may ask? especially if i don’t like apple phones, and even moreso when you realize i’ve never won a raffle or giveaway in my life, because back then my phone was an android, it was good back in the day, but time had taken it’s toll, it was barely usable but lived with it, the thing had so many gremlins i fought, until one day it decided to set the clock back an hour and it got me late for work, no not again.
I’d bought a refurbished Note20 Ultra that was due to arrive in the next few days, i planned to just cancel it in the extreamly rare chance i won an iPhone, i mean, what were the chances? more likely i’d get an increase in spam email and phone calls from giving these people my details.
2 Days went by and i almost forgot about it, i was starting to realize i hadn’t won anything, this was all a con to get peoples personal details or my luck failed again.
Until the next day, i was at work when my phone buzzed, it buzzed randomly all the time, i quickly checked it to make sure it wasn’t urgent but it just said it was an email, oh well, i’ll check it at lunch.
Lunch came around and i check the email while eating at a local cafe, it’s from an address i don’t recognize and i suppose it’s spam, but i get a glimpse of the preview and immediately click on it.
‘Congratulations! you have won an iPhone 15 Pro Titanium, collect your phone plus a free case of your choosing at your [local shopping centre] with the code below’
I contemplated collecting it there and then, but i decided to do it on the way back, my job is 9-5 and the mall stays open until 8 so i had enough time and i realized that if this day was the lucky day i might have had to wait in a queue of people collecting whatever rubbish lower prizes they’d won, things like cheap headphones, and i’d risk being late back to work, i didn’t want to make things worse with my boss after the phone clock incident.
After work i drove to the shopping centre, as expected it’s almost empty and i make my way to the phone stand just as they’re packing up.
I just stopped there and said ‘Wait, i’m a winner’ i show him the code and he just wants me to choose a case, i started to wonder if i just won a case and they made a mistake, but when i asked him he was like ‘we don’t store the phones here for security reasons’ i choose a tactical case, i decided that if i had an expensive phone i might as well protect my investment, then we walked to a local phone store that this raffle was being run on behalf of, the woman behind the counter was surprised they had a big winner, apparently they’d ran a similar giveaway a year before for the iPhone 14 and no one won the phone and that they even considered scrapping it for this year, but the hype for the 15 was larger then expected and they wanted to buy into it.
‘We have a big winner do we?’ she said
‘Yes this is the code’ i said, holding up my dinosaur device
‘I can see why you entered’ she said ‘Those things were hot when they hit the market but the hardware issues meant even die hard fans were forced to switch early’ i just gave a laugh as she went out back to find the phone.
A few minutes later and she comes back with an iPhone box in a phone store bag, ‘enjoy your new phone, they’re fantastic’ she says as he pushes across the counter, followed by the guy from the stand, who leaves as his job was done, i say my thank yous and leave with the bag.
Back home i take out the iPhone 15 box and begin to open it, the top of the box smoothly slides off and i’m presented with a slick black device, bigger then i was expecting, apparently they’d come out with a new size since i last bought a phone, 6.8”, i thought oh well i can just sell it and buy the smaller version if i couldn’t get used to it.
I picked it up and felt the cool smooth titanium and glass in my hand, ‘this is the most luxury high tech gadget i’ve had in a while’ i thought as i switched it on, as it was booting up i quickly popped it into the case, as cool it was in the hand and as beautiful as it was i couldn’t risk cracking my new toy, especially when apple cost what they do for repairs.
I followed the setup instructions as i felt how smooth the OS was, i’d also been disinterested in phones since 2017 so it was interesting to see how much had changed since, the lack of a home button was something i’d have to get used to for sure.
I’d never used an iPhone so the first app i opened was one called ‘Tips’ i quickly tapped on ‘Navigation’ and read how to exit and change apps, i quickly learned what these people were doing with their thumbs, these gestures are so smooth to the point i spent like 5 minutes playing with them, mastering quickly switching apps and all that stuff, honestly it felt way more intuitive then buttons.
After creating an apple account some serious reorginization was in order, half the apps pre-installed were for other apple products i don’t have, so i uninstalled them and installed my google and microsoft apps.
The next few days with the iPhone was a blast, i ended up cancelling the Note20 i ordered, the iPhone had everything i needed, the camera was the best i’ve ever used in a phone and the telephoto lens was actually pretty useful, same with the 3D scanner, which was quite useful for my job.
But it started happening, it was a month or two into ownership, by that time the novelty wore off and it was just my phone, a notification came through.
‘Your iCloud Storage is Full, if your phone is lost or damaged your files will not be backed up’
No biggie, i take a lot of photos for my job (and now 3D scans too) and just life in general, i have other places where i can backup files.
But it kept happening, a notification every now and then, i planned to just delete everything in the iCloud and turn syncing off but i never got round to it, besides i shouldn’t have to do anything to make them happy, if my iCloud is full and i don’t want to buy into more of their cloud storage, constantly spamming my phone with notifications wasn’t going to make me magically buy into it.
Soon i got used to the notifications but that’s when it started getting worse, emails, now i was dealing with a slow onslaught of iCloud notifications and emails, the problem was they weren’t super often so everytime i got one i just thought i’d do it later and prayed that apple will finally stop spamming their customers who’d just spent over a grand on a phone.
A few weeks go by, iCloud spam as usual, then it started spamming me with other things i can setup on my iPhone.
‘Did you know you can setup a Legacy Contact? so friends and/or family can access your device after you pass away?’ how grim apple, i never bothered to set it up because i had most of my data in other services that were easy to access, even though i know how hard it can be to get into a living persons iPhone let alone a dead persons one.
But the legacy contact emails and notifications never stopped coming, claiming my iPhone ‘wasn’t fully setup’ it got so bad to the point i was turning on Do Not Disturb for even simple things, at this point there was multiple notifications and emails per day.
It couldn’t get worse could it? oh it did, because that’s when the texts, and calls started coming in.
Needless to say i was furious, i was expecting an important call and i answered the Private Number hoping to get down to buisness, only to be told my iCloud was full.
I roared down the phone ‘For the last damn time i don’t care if my iCloud is full, i pay for other cloud storage that includes all my devices including my phone, stop spamming me!’ it was no use, just a robocall, but i hope some tech at apple enjoyed the recording.
By the time i got off the call, several notifications, emails and texts had came through, i was going to do something about this, i set the phone to encourage the leaving of a voicemail by parties not in my contacts and to look for the words ‘iCloud storage is full’ in texts and bin them automatically, i did the same for my emails, except to put them in spam and autoreply the same message ‘I don’t care’ even though it was a no-reply address i thought apple might get sick of their spam being reciprocated.
Finally i purged my iCloud and turned off syncing on my phone.
The next week was peaceful, no notifications, emails, texts or calls bombarding me about the same thing.
Until one telling me to setup legacy contact came through on the weekend, i realized i forgot to exclude those ones, they were rarer anyway, i quickly excluded them and moved on.
Everything was good until the emails and texts started changing the wording to get past my filters, even worse? every time i emptied my iCloud, it would mysteriousy fill up with photos from the phone again, even though syncing was off, and that would lead to the spammy iCloud messages again.
Then one night after work i was waiting at a bus stop to pick my car up from the garage, it was the dead of winter so it was dark by 5, i was the only one there, mindlessly playing a game on my phone.
That’s when a man rounded the corner, walked past me and stopped, he took one look at the phone and said ‘Nice phone, 15 titanium huh?’ and i was like ‘yea what about it? and how did you know?’ i guess now the responsive pill or whatever apple call it was a big giveaway even though my phone was in a case.
Then he said ‘If you don’t mind, give it ‘ere’ he pulled out a shiny object that i saw out of the corner of my eye and thought was his phone, that he just wanted to compare phones or something, but i looked and saw a swiss army knife, just as i realized was happening, he spoke.
‘Give it now or your life now’ just as he said, a pesky iCloud notification came through, he said ‘iCloud full huh?’ but just as i was going to give it so i can bolt to the nearest police station and beg to use their computer so i can put it into lost mode, he plunged the knife into me.
Next thing i knew, i was in a hospital, being told by a nurse how the fact he missed the important stuff with a small knife saved my life, i begged to go home but they needed to monitor me and make sure the wound was ok.
It turned out the man was known, but i was his first stab victim, the evidence at the scene allowed police to find him, i asked the nurse about the stolen phone but she said it was the polices job and that she didn’t know anything about it, i just thought it was already sold or broken down for parts.
The next day, with a stitched wound and ready to go home, a cop comes into my room, ‘I believe this is your property?’ and he’s holding an evidence bag containing my phone, i told the cop how glad i was, how i was lucky to win it and all that, i switched it on and my heart sank, it was factory reset, all my photos were gone.
He said ‘Well the thief reset the phone to sell it, at least you have your iCloud to restore from though, they really are amazing gadgets right?’
‘Oh by the way, you should setup a legacy contact because you know. what if that was.. fatal?’
I thanked the cop for his advice and left later with the iPhone, of course not telling him my storage was full.
Back home i retrieved everything there was to from the iCloud and sold the phone, make a good profit on it too.
Love my S24 Ultra.