Author: scrooks

This Is As Mimimal As It Gets

When it comes to cases for my iPhone I’ve always been a minimalist. I do fear dropping the dang thing since I use it so much, but i like how thin my phone is and don’t want to destroy that with a case.

When I got my iPhone 4S, Apple was selling its line of bumpers and I was quite happy with that. A bumper is just enough to protect the corners in a fall, and it worked great. (I know from experience.). For my iPhone 5S I got a cheaper third-party case, but it was still basically a bumper.

Now I’ve moved up (literally) to an iPhone 6+. It’s decidedly bigger, much bigger, but I have come to love having such a big screen. So much so that I find I’m using my iPad Air much less. The downside is that it feels much less secure in my somewhat dainty man-paws. This thing is begging to be dropped.

Before I began the hunt for another bumper-like case, I serendipitously discovered Bumpies.  Here’s what they look like in blue (I chose gray):

Bumpies, Front, Side, & Back, Sans Phone
Bumpies, Front, Side, & Back, Sans Phone

Yeah, that’s a weird picture of the “case” because there’s not much to it. They essentially took a standard bumper and stripped off all the superfluous material. That was exactly the case I’d been looking for without knowing it.  They come in a variety of colors, including mixing different colors, but I chose grey to match my phone and because I really like grey.

I worried they’d come off when I pull my phone out of my pocket, but reading lots of Amazon reviews convinced me it probably wasn’t a problem; there’s a bevel to the edges that helps prevent that. I worried they’d mar my phone in some way if I took them off, but again my research showed it wasn’t so. (The science of glue is sophisticated these days.) I decided to take the plunge and give them a try.

After a couple of weeks of living in fear of dropping my phone, my Bumpies finally arrived. The packaging is nicely innovative:

Package, Sans Bumpies
Package, Sans Bumpies

Opening the packaging reveals the instructions:

Simple Install
Simple Install

Quite simple. The box the Bumpies come in doubles as an alignment guide.

Bumpies Installed Using The Guide
Bumpies Installed Using The Guide

It took less than 5 minutes and now I’m all Bumpied up. The Bumpies feel solidly attached. There’s just enough “lip” on the sides of each Bumpy that I can safely lay down (or drop!) my phone and the screen or back won’t be touched. They extend around the sides of the phone enough that all the sides are similarly protected. My phone still feels like my phone and not a case with something in it.

Bumpied Up (Look Closely)
Bumpied Up (Look Closely)

It’ll take time to tell how the Bumpies will wear with use, but for now I’m very happy with them. Recommended.

Google says next summer for my fiber. Ended hope and paid RoadRunner $40 to move our cable modem. Poo.

Google Fiber

This thing appears to not understand sleep cycles. 3:13am.

IMG_4975.JPG

I’m tinkering with the Twitter API and need to think of something to tweet.

Oh.

The Benefits Of Not Being The Product

With many companies these days, you are the product they are ultimately selling. Facebook is probably the worst offender, but Google and other companies are the same way. Their goal is to sell you to advertisers however they can. That means your privacy is always suspect and frequently abused.

This is one of the reasons I like Apple. Here’s an announcement they just made on their new privacy site:

Not Selling You
Not Selling You

They actively work to make your personal data impossible for them to see, because they don’t need to. Their product is the hardware, not you. You’ll likely hear people saying they don’t trust the new  Pay, but it’s probably the safest way you can use your credit card. The card information is secured on the phone and never leaves it, no one can get to it (not even Apple), and the information that passes to the reader is not even your real card number. The purchase information is also never transmitted to Apple, because you are not their product–they don’t need or want that information. iMessages are encrypted from point to point so that Apple can’t see them, the fingerprint data (not even the actual fingerprint) for the fingerprint sensor is stored in a place that can’t be accessed, even by Apple, etc. There’s a lot of FUD out there, but just follow the money. Where does a company’s majority income come from? That will tell you what is really being sold.