Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the morning of Saturday, December 2nd, 2023. All models of iPhone 15 from Apple have a delivery date of 'December 5th'. The 512GB White Titanium iPhone 15 Pro from T-Mobile has slipped from December 27 to January 3rd, 2024. It is possible it could arrive earlier, but if you want an iPhone for the holidays, be sure to order soon.
Now that Thanksgiving in the United States is in the past, we are squarely in the holiday season. With December starting, it is now time for my reading list for November. Before diving into the books that I listened to, it should be noted that this is the second to last Reading List that I will be posting. There are a couple of a reasons for this.
The first reason is that I have cancelled my Audible subscription. Part of the reason why I cancelled my Audible subscription is budgetary, but not entirely. An Audible subscription is approximately $15 a month and when you look at it over the course of a year that is $180. I am absolutely not getting $180 worth of value from the service.
In case you are not aware, an Audible subscription comes with the ability to purchase titles through the use of a credit system. At one point earlier this year I had six credits, which means that I had not purchased anything for six months. It has become a struggle to find items to purchase with these credits. While Audible credits do not expire, for the plan that I am on, I cannot have more than six at a time. If you do not use the credits, you forfeit a credit, which means that you are effectively paying for nothing at that point.
One aspect of an Audible subscription is Audible Plus. I do not utilize the Audible Plus catalog because most of the books there are not ones that I am interested in. I have tried a number of titles I have stopped listening to each of them after a bit of time and just removed them from my library.
The second reason is that there has been almost no feedback when I post them. I initially thought this might be a way of providing a non-Apple post every month, but without it getting any traction it does not make sense to continue posting these.
The third reason is that if you look over the three years of reading lists, a majority of the books are ones that I have listened to before and not that many books are new ones.
Even though I will not be posting everything that I read over the course of a month, I still will be reading books. Instead of a subscription, I will likely be a bit pickier about the books that I purchase. I may still post about titles that stand out, but this definitely will not be on a monthly basis.
And now, on to the items that I did read in November.
In November I listened to 14 books total, of which three were new. I want to highlight one of the new titles that I listened to, All Souls Lost by Dan Moren.
Say hello to Mike Lucifer, Spiritual Consultant. He’s back in town to take care of business. Unfortunately, when business is good, things must be very, very bad.
After two years trying to run away from his past, Mike Lucifer’s back in his office less than ten minutes when a persistent young woman shows up asking for help: her boyfriend’s been possessed by a demon.
That’s exactly the kind of mess that drove him from his hometown of Boston to a sunny beach—and the bottom of a bottle—in the first place. But there are some problems that even booze can’t drown, and while Lucifer may be no hero, his dwindling bank account provides a thousand reasons to take the case.
No sooner is he back in the game then the complications and corpses start to add up. The boyfriend’s not possessed—he’s dead. The tech company where he worked is looking shadier by the second. And Lucifer’s client definitely knows more than she should…about everything. The deeper Lucifer digs, the more he wonders if whatever sinister entity lurks behind this case wants him to be the last to die…
Note: the links below contain affiliate codes where I get a small commission if you purchase something.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the morning of Friday, December 1st, 2023. All models of iPhone 15 from Apple have a delivery date of 'December 4th'. Three models from Verizon have slipped a week to December 15th. Be sure to order soon if you would like an iPhone for the holidays.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the morning of Thursday, November 30th, 2023. All models of iPhone 15 from Apple have a delivery date of 'Tomorrow'. There have been no changes, but some models from the carriers are very close to the holidays, so be sure to order soon if you would like an iPhone for the holidays.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the afternoon of Wednesday, November 29th, 2023. All models of iPhone 15 from Apple have a delivery date of Thursday, November 30th. The changes for AT&T are changes for the weekend. Most models are still available before the holidays.
If there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I am constantly listening to music a significant amount of time throughout the day. If you thnk I am joking, we will get to that.
Today Apple began offering Apple Music users a recap of their listening habits for the year through a feature called Apple Music Replay. This is not the first year for this. In fact, last year at about this time was the first time Apple provided Apple Music Replay.
The way that you access your Apple Music Replay is not intuitive at all. In order to see your highlight reel, you may need to go to https://replay.music.apple.com. It may be possible that it will show up within the Apple Music app, but it is was not shown for me.
When you visit the Apple Music Replay site, you will need to log in, but once you log in you will be offered a highlight reel. The highlight reel shows seven different sections. These are:
Total Minutes listened
Top Artist with the number of minutes listened
If you were in the top 100 listeners for any particular artist.
Top Song with the number of plays for that song.
Top Album, with the number of plays for that album.
Top Genre
Recap with Top Artist, Top Album, and Top Song.
Along with the Highlight Reel there is a dashboard with a bit more information. The sections expand upon the items in Highlight Reel by providing your top 15 artists, albums, and songs, replete with the total minutes listened, number of plays, and number of plays respectively.
Milestones
One of the new features this year is a new section called "Milestones". Milestones will provide you the dates when you reached certain milestones. As an example, here is what my Milestones looks like.
Screenshot of my Apple Music Replay Milestones
I think this is a good addition, but more insight would be useful. As an example, I would like to know if there are more milestones, like maybe 1000 artists, or 100,000 minutes. I would presume there are milestones for that, but they are not listed anywhere that I could find. Let us now look at my top items.
My Top Items
Apple Music Replay Recap
I thought I would share my statistics. According to my higlight reel I listened to 85,931 minutes of music. I am presuming that is through yesterday, or 331 days for the year. That averages out to 259.6 minutes per day, or 4.32 hours per day. Compared to last year, this is about 14,000 fewer minutes.
My top artist was Taylor Swift, with 7,410 minutes or 22 minutes per day. This honestly seems low given how much music of hers that I listened to this year. Including listening to the song "You're on your own Kid" many many times on repeat. This compares to last year when I listened to 9,379 minutes, or 28 minutes per day, on average.
My top album was "One Thing at a Time" by Morgan Wallen, this is due to the me listening to my top song "'98 Braves" 125 times, as well as the title track to the album "One Thing at a Time" 103 times.
As mentioned above, it is possible for you to be a top listener for an artist, I fell into the top 100 listeners for a band called "Lucky Boys Confusion". This also happened last year.
Screenshot of being a top listener for Lucky Boys Confusion
Issues
I initally watched the highlight reel on my iPhone, and it did indeed work. However, I wanted to rewatch it on M2 MacBook Pro, so I signed in and guess what, none of the graphics loaded. I tried a private browser, same thing. I do not run any extensions, so that is not the issue. My MacBook Pro is not on any beta software, it is running on the macOS Sonoma 14.1.1. I do not understand why this is a problem, it's just web content, but for some reason it is.
My Thoughts
Overall I think Apple Music Replay is a perfectly fine way of being able to show Apple Music subscribers some of the listening habits. The additino of milestones is good to know, a bit more information about each could be helpful. I cannot think of any additional features that could be added, but having one additional item added every year would be a way of building up the information that is provided.
I honestly cannot recall if the Apple Music Replay will be updated throughout December or not. I hope it does, because otherwise it is missing an entire month worth of listening.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the afternoon of Tuesday, November 28th, 2023. All models of iPhone 15 from Apple have a delivery date of Thursday, November 30th. For Verizon, some iPhone 15 Pro models have a delivery date of December 29th, so this is after the holidays. Most models are still available before the holidays.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the afternoon of Monday, November 27th, 2023. Some models for the carriers are a lot closer to the holidays with some models having delivery dates just a few days before the holidays, and a couple that might be after. If you want to get an iPhone for the holidays, be sure to do so soon.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the morning of Sunday, November 26th, 2023. There are only a few changes for the carriers where some models are slipped from late November to early and mid-December.
Here is the availability for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max for the morning of Saturday, November 25th, 2023. The biggest changes are delivery changes to account for the weekend. A number of models from the carriers have a mid-December delivery date, so ordering soon is advised.
