I used to love my Apple products, from my first iPhone, the iPhone 4, iPad, Mac, iPod Touch and Classic, all seemingly working in harmony. And then there was the bounty of apps and great games. In app purchases did not exist.

Move forward to 2013 and 2014 and Apple devices are more complex in features, which in turn means there is more things to go wrong. My iPhone 5 for example would losse reception, never to reappear unless the phone was rebooted. My iPad Air battery life recently fell by 50%. And this is the tip of the iceberg.

Roll forward to the current time, and I was wondering why my parents iPhones and iPads weren’t allowing FaceTime or iMessages. My dad had everything configured correctly and my mum had somehow had all the settings for iMessage and Facetime switched off. She had no idea how that had happened. Anyway, with both parents on the same network, and everything all on, my mum could still not send my dad an iMessage. It kept going to send the text as an SMS. I advised them in many different ways, but in the end “it just didn’t work”.

The cure was for my dad to send an iMessage to my mum. And then for her to reply to that message. Somehow that corrected everything.

Regardless of the issues, Apple still have the best eco system and still manufacture some of the most desirable hardware. Lets hope iOS 8 improves matters and that the new iPhone has a long battery life.