"I had some specific technical interest in the new iPhone. So a small shopping accident occurred"

Never mind the iPhone 17 Pro Max he's just bought: it's a foursome of Ubiquiti NAS drives that sets Jon's pulse racing, along with a trip to a car-racing track

- JON HONEYBALL

It's been quite a bitty month. The trip to Berlin for IFA (see issue 374, p26) put a small crater in my workflow, so I've been busy catching up with various projects to ensure they're delivered on time. But the late summer lull in IT news appears to be over, and vendors are moving full steam ahead.

One of the biggest sources of news came from Apple, with its annual iPhone refresh to kick things off. I decided to upgrade my trusty iPhone 16 Pro Max to the new 17 version. This isn't an upgrade I'd necessarily recommend, as usually a two-generation change should be considered the minimum. However, I had some specific technical interest in the new version, especially around its updated cameras and the WiFi/modem chipset. So a small shopping accident occurred. I say "small", but I decided to go for the 2TB version this time. I didn't manage to max out the 1TB on the 16 Pro Max, but it's always good to have a little storage headroom. At least that was the justification to myself.

Transferring from the 16 to the 17 proved smooth once I kicked both into submission. There has been a very early release of a patch for the 17 Pro Max, and this needed to be installed before both phones would see each other and start the over-the-air transfer. This time it automatically converted the physical SIM in the 16 into an eSIM in the 17, so I didn't even need to get the poking tool out to transfer the prehistoric small sliver of plastic to the newer phone.

Once installed, I had to go through the rather boring process of re-authenticating my Office 365 accounts - I have no idea why this can't be securely transferred. I can understand why I needed to authenticate the credit cards in my digital wallet for somewhat obvious reasons. The Barclays app switched over very quickly, using a QR code generated by the app on the 16 to authenticate the app on the new 17.