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My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

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Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#181

Post by leakycap »

dncornholio wrote: post #104
FlyingSnake wrote: post #9

Wonderful story! We don’t give enough credit to Apple for keeping these old devices alive and kicking. I have a similar story wherein I repurposed my ancient OG iPhone SE and gave it a new life. https://samkhawase.com/blog/dumb-smartphone/

I don't agree with this take at all. I had to give up my iPhone 7 because I couldn't update iOS and my banking app refused to work on the older version. Apple would also gladly throttle your phone, see Batterygate.

Informed technical users should know that the alternative to Batterygate is that iPhones would randomly be turning OFF with no warning in user's hands.

When a battery is old and has low state of charge (under 25%), it is easy for a device to request more power than the battery can provide and BOOM, the screen is black.

Apple mitigated and avoided that experience for users by programming the phone to slow down when a user's old battery could not support the power needs of the device at full speed. It makes sense when you take the time to be informed about it.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#182

Post by leakycap »

etra0 wrote: post #17

This reminded me of the guy that built a meme database using iPhone's OCR as well [1]. I find incredible the idea of giving these devices another life. I wonder how hard is to host a sort-of vps on an abandoned android phone these days... I guess as long as you can put ethernet + docker you'd have a very capable device. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315782

This was a great read!

I'd never heard of a website hosted in any way on an iOS device... makes me wish it was an option.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#184

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #180
cortesoft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how is it even justified—does Apple really spend $99 on infra maintenance and server costs to host your app? How much something costs is not what determines how much a company charges for something. A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money. A company only lowers prices if they think doing so will generate higher total profits in the long run. Apple seems to think charging $99 a year for…

> There are probably many reasons for that, some of them already mentioned in sibling comments Those reasons don't really make a lot of sense: > keeping low effort apps out "Low effort" apps are critical to establishing demand. Small developers can't justify spending a large amount of resources on something you're not sure anybody wants. If you post the MVP and get a lot of downloads, now you know it's worth your tim…

[deleted]

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#185

Post by lm411 »

neilv wrote: post #51
aerostable_slug wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to also cover the fairly rigorous testing that occurs for each app store submission. I'm not sure a hundred bucks is the right number, but it's not fair to say all they do is host the file.

> I think it's fair to also cover the fairly rigorous testing that occurs for each app store submission. By "fairly rigorous", do you mean "fickle, random"?

Not even close compared to Google Play and their review and appeal process.

Recently I had an app for a customer. Approved easily by Apple. Rejected by Google.

The reason given by Google was completely meaningless in the context of the app. When this happens, I usually make a bullshit change, increment the version, and submit again. That was also rejected in this case. I asked for more info and they provided a meaningless screenshot of the app - that was all. So I appealed. That was also useless! They provided no info to help.

Eventually I just created a new Google Play account and re-submitted a new version of the app, and it was accepted near immediately.

I've had some annoying experiences with Apples review process but it is gold compared to Google Play.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#186

Post by crazygringo »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #150
crazygringo wrote: post #143

> The phone’s battery health held up reasonably well. After over a year of constant operation, it’s at 76% capacity. I have an iPhone SE that I've tried keeping plugged in all the time and its battery has turned into a spicy pillow three times, first with Apple replacing the whole device (since they won't touch it with a swollen battery), then using third-party replacement kits. This isn't going to work for long if t…

Plug your charger to any Homekit-compatible "smart plug," and create a shortcut that turns the the plug on when the battery reaches 45%, and off when it reaches 55%. This will of course require a Homekit hub.

That's an intriguing idea, I had no idea that was a possibility.

Unfortunately it wouldn't work for my particular usage, which was keeping it plugged into an old but expensive smart speaker as a music player via its lightning port. A smart plug would turn off the speaker along with the phone... But I appreciate the suggestion, as complicated as it is!

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#187

Post by elchangri »

seanalltogether wrote: post #123

I have about 7 old android phones/tablets that I would love to put to use as some kinda makeshift server farm, I just can't think of a good workflow that could take advantage of them

Run webservers with Cloudflare Tunnels or ngrok. Free compute

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#188

Post by yawnxyz »

CaptainFever wrote: post #118
rbinv wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's AI slop. In fact, most (if not all) of this blog's recent posts are AI slop.

That's not what slop means. This is anything but low-effort or low-quality.

the project isn't AI at all, but the writeup is definitely AI. It overuses clickbait / hijacking / hook patterns that makes it really jarring:

- poses a lot of questions: "Me? I turned mine into a server that saves me money" / "Could I have just run this on my Mac like a normal person? Absolutely. But where’s the fun in that?" - it's not just X, it's Y: "it’s not just dumping power into devices; it’s managing charging curves properly" - creates scenarios and juxtapositions: "The workflow is beautifully simple: My image processing service sends images to the phone for OCR processing using Apple’s Vision framework. The phone processes the text, sends it back, and updates its dashboard with processing stats. All while I watch birds outside my window and feel smug about my setup."

I think this kind of writing borrows from twitter threads and youtube videos. I think we're going to be so sick of these patterns soon. And also, I don't think this is necessarily what the LLMs do natively, I think it might just come from bad RLHFs

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#189

Post by NoPicklez »

encom wrote: post #153
irrational wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.

>discourage low effort apps Well that obviously didn't work. I got rid of my Iphone, but I remember the app store as being an absolute wasteland of garbage, and discoverability was awful. I don't know if it was a slogan, or an ad campaign once, but there was this thing with "there's an app for that". Yea I guess maybe there is, but good luck finding it, and finding one that isn't riddled with ads and scammy in-app pu…

It certainly does discourage low effort apps.

The PlayStore for comparison is horrible.

Re: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server

#190

Post by Eric_WVGG »

crazygringo wrote: post #186
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug your charger to any Homekit-compatible "smart plug," and create a shortcut that turns the the plug on when the battery reaches 45%, and off when it reaches 55%. This will of course require a Homekit hub.

That's an intriguing idea, I had no idea that was a possibility. Unfortunately it wouldn't work for my particular usage, which was keeping it plugged into an old but expensive smart speaker as a music player via its lightning port. A smart plug would turn off the speaker along with the phone... But I appreciate the suggestion, as complicated as it is!

it would still work if you used some kind of lighting/audio splitter (yes, that's a thing) into your speaker, but yeah, that's definitely a fringe case
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