After writing my Eagles post, I realized I started a draft for the Pearl Jam show back in September, but never finished it off. Colleen has been in the Ten Club for a very long time and Setlist says we’ve seen them ten times now, tied for the most of any artist. Every time they go on tour, fan club members are offered the opportunity to buy tickets and we would’ve gone to both Saint Paul nights if it hadn’t been for our conflict with Duran Duran at the state fair grandstand.

On this tour, Pearl Jam was doing two shows in each city, with a night off in between. Since we couldn’t do the first night, we ordered two tickets to the Saturday show (reviewed by Jon Bream of the Star Tribune). Tickets are supposed to be assigned via seniority in the club, but we’ve never received great spots in the past. This year was not a great experience – they moved us *three* times before telling us that was our actual spot (each time we got farther and farther from the stage, unfortunately).

After reading Ron Hubbard’s review of the Thursday show, I had some serious FOMO that I missed this:

The volume and adrenaline gradually rose with each song before lead guitarist Mike McCready kicked his folding wooden chair aside during the fifth number and rose to launch into a soaring guitar solo on “Black” from the band’s 1991 debut album. Soon Vedder was up, then guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, and the rocking had clearly begun.

Black is my favorite PJ song and of course they didn’t play it again on Saturday. Our show overall turned out to be just fine (as they always are) – just different (setlist and pics after the jump). I’m sure there are lots of Saturday fans that were happy we got Jeremy, Better Man and I Am Mine that the Thursday crowd did not. Wasn’t crazy about the Purple Rain cover, but a lot of people liked that we got that one (I believe for the first time in Minnesota). My highlight was definitely McCready playing the solo in Alive behind his head. I guess the lesson is to just go to both shows in the future – competing shows be damned.

The other lesson is to buy your merch ahead of time (even outside before the shows, as was offered for this tour). We got there when doors opened, skipped the outside trailer and got right in line. They had date-specific shirts, posters and stickers for each night and our shirt was already gone by the time we got to the front of the line (I did get the sticker, pictured above). It was sad to see them listed on eBay after we got to our seats (and not available for purchase on the PJ website like other bands do). The Saint Paul hockey jerseys looked cool, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger at that price. Props to the band for selling “authorized bootlegs” of every show, though – just downloaded that tonight…

Setlist (first five songs seated)

• Pendulum
• Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
• Off He Goes
• Nothing as It Seems
• Daughter
• Do the Evolution
• Last Exit
• Once
• Who Ever Said
• Brain Damage (Pink Floyd cover)
• I Am Mine
• Take the Long Way
• Even Flow
• Severed Hand
• In Hiding
• Unthought Known
• Corduroy
• Porch
• —
• Encore:
• —
• I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty cover)
• Last Kiss
• Got Some
• Jeremy
• Better Man
• Alive
• Purple Rain (Prince cover)

It’s been almost a month since I wrote about my latest iPhone and I wanted to share a few additional thoughts:

• My friend Yagya recommended this screen cover from Amazon and it’s been amazing: no scratches, the feel and responsiveness is good and it even provides a privacy vector by blocking side views from strangers. Highly recommend!
• Was originally thinking about getting this case from Twig, but now leaning towards just having the screen protector. Might still change my mind, though…
• The size has been fine – it’s comfortable in my hand and I don’t really notice the difference in my pocket.
• The camera is even better than I expected – I find myself using all of the lens options frequently, all with great results.
• Battery life has been better than the smaller model, but not massively so in my day-to-day usage. I think part of that has to do with preferring to have the screen brightness higher than my last phone.

Well done, Cupertino!

‘Tis the season for my annual iPhone Upgrade Program membership to kick in. This year I moved from a purple iPhone 14 Pro (256GB) to a blue titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max (256GB). The notification and pre-order process went smoothly, as I received a timely upgrade email and also had the correct information populated in the Apple Store app on the older phone. It’s nice that this has all worked without major issues for several years now.

The UPS delivery person brought the new phone to our house on Friday and I decided to do the phone-to-phone transfer process again instead of restoring from the iCloud backup (which I also ran manually on the old phone immediately before starting – just in case). The time estimate displayed laughingly said it would take 10-15 minutes, but I needed to let the process run overnight. Even then, it didn’t download all the apps to the new phone until I hit the continue button Saturday morning.

Despite the long setup time, big kudos to the team at Apple that is responsible for engineering this upgrade process. Trying to create a process that works reliably for millions of customers with a basically infinite number of combinations just blows my mind. Here are some examples from my particular setup:

• All of my Apple Wallet items transferred seamlessly (with the process to add my Wings Credit Union debit card now all online with no need to call them like before) – Apple Card, tickets, Science Museum membership card
• All photo, music, iMessage and health data just worked on the new phone (did need to sign-in to MyChart to restore that app)
• My third party calendar app Fantastical asked me to sign in again, but then all the correct calendar data appeared
• All my favorite third-party games data transferred with no issues this time: Two Dots, Lightning Link, Star Wars Card Trader and Words with Friends
• Password management didn’t skip a beat – 1Password transferred over after a sign-in on the new phone and all of the iCloud password management worked as expected
• My 2FA accounts in Google Authenticator did not automatically transfer, but the export/import process via the double QR scanning worked great (make sure you don’t erase your old device until you do this)
• Didn’t experience any of the software update issues I had read about – the setup process started by first telling me I needed to update to iOS 17.0.2 before transferring data from the old phone
• Re-pairing with my Apple Watch was much smoother this time (and was part of the upgrade process and not something I needed to handle manually)
• I had to reauthorize the new phone for CarPlay in my Honda Civic, but after that everything just worked as before (needed a new USB-A to USB-C cable)

I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go back to the larger size again, but really, really wanted the 5x optical zoom lens only available on the Pro Max. So far it fits OK in my pocket and the in-hand feel and overall weight are much better than I expected. The build quality of the iPhone Pro models continues to be on par with the excellent MacBook line of laptops – I really don’t want to use anything else.

Hopefully I can go more than a week without scratching the screen or dropping it on the floor (yes, I’m still a no-case, no-screencover daredevil)…

No shortage of opinions on today’s Apple Event, but here are my immediate action items:

• Will move from my 14 Pro to the 15 Pro Max via the iPhone Upgrade Program on Friday (256GB Blue Titanium)
• Still want an Ultra 2, but don’t like the new bands – will stick with my Series 5 for now (and might actually prefer a Series 9 with a Nike band)
• Need to find out the pricing on the new iCloud+ 6TB and 12TB storage tiers (and how that ties in with Apple One) – rumor is $30/month and $60/month
• AirPods Pro cases get USB-C on September 22, but I will still probably wait for the 2nd edition of AirPods Max

Thinking iPhone 15 Pro Max this time (if the camera rumors are true). Would also go for an Apple Watch Ultra 2 if that’s released. Need to do something about my semi-broken AirPods too…

Now that the WWDC news has faded (and resurrected again today with the new beta releases and SDK), I’ve started to think about what my next purchases will be. I’m super fortunate to have great working gear right now, so there is no big rush on anything. Apple hardware just lasts such a long time: my home office iMac is from 2017 and my Apple Watch is a Series 5, which was released in 2019. I use both daily and they still work great.

My laptop, tablet and phone are all newer and also get heavy daily use. Thanks to the iPhone Upgrade Program, I do tend to turn in phones every year for the newest model. My only decision this year will be if I want to move back up to the larger screen or not. If the best camera ends up being exclusive to the Max, I’ll probably do a 256GB Pro Max.

If I were to order a new work laptop today, I’d go with the new 15-inch MacBook Air. $1499 for the base 8/512 model is a great value. A fully loaded 24/2TB model goes for $2499, which is what I’d get for a personal use laptop. My 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro will likely last a long, long time, though. I mainly use my iPad Pro for watching video on the treadmill, so I don’t see needing a new tablet anytime soon either (same goes for our AppleTV units).

I’ll reserve all opinions on the Vision Pro until the developers go wild and I get a chance to see if my specific optical prescription will even work with the custom inserts. My initial reaction was overall positive (and much different than I expected from the rumors), but also that I probably wouldn’t want one right away. The reality is that I’ve thought that about most of the recent platform additions, but ended up buying all of them in the end (most on launch day too).

Outside of the next phone, though, here are my top 3 wish list purchases: 1) Apple Watch Ultra with Black/Gray Trail Loop, 2) the next version of the AirPods Max and 3) the next version of the iMac…