Phone Migration Completed

It took me several more days to complete the move to the new iPhone. Generally speaking this is a fail of the industry. But on the other hand I understand why certain things are difficult. But still - stepping up just two generations of hardware (from 15 to 17) withing a single ecosystem (Apple) should not be that complicated. Especially as they have not just the operating system but the entire apps ecosystem under control. And people are pushed to pay monthly recurring service fee (iCloud) on the promise to have things taken care of.

The Revolut eSIM did not migrate. This was kind of expected (I have no idea if other eSIMs can be migrated, but anticipating that I waited with the migration until returning from my final 2025 international trip). On the other hand Apple itself pushes the developments to get rid of physical SIM cards entirely (iPads do not have SIM slots since 2024). So once Apple gets rid of the physical SIM slot in iPhones, I'm not sure what we are supposed to be doing: carrying an eSIM QR code with us all the time or what?

Essentially all financial apps required re-authentication from scratch. Revolut was scanning my face, mBank wanted me to send an activation SMS (and refused to do that over WiFi calling, so I had to climb up the hill from my no-cell-coverage valley to reach the 5G signal). All Apple Wallet cards wanted me again to agree to the term of use (is anyone reading those BTW?). I still had the old phone running and mistakenly activated the wallet there with a CitiBank card set as the default one and the card was immediately deactivated on the new phone. Making sure you have all this right and not miss anything requires some attention...

Then to resolve the "your own music is not available in your country" issue I had to use a USB cable and re-sync the entire iTunes library from my PC.

Finally to reactivate the stock trading app (Bossa Mobile) I had to resort to ID/password combination cached by Google Chrome (yes yes my fault - not remembering the 8-digit login ID) on another device. 

The problem with biometrics and passkeys is that when you change the hardware device, they are not available. You have been authenticating and authorizing access just by looking at the phone's face sensor, so of course all the login IDs are quickly forgotten - solving one problem creates another.

There is some hope though: some apps (Adobe, Flighty) have restored fully. So there probably (forgive me the lack of iOS API knowledge) is an API that SOME apps use to have everything stored up in the iCloud (and then restored during migration). If so, Apple should enforce this. It may be an effort for developers, but putting the burden of data restore on users who pay for the backup service is not right.

Finally in Apple's own apps there are some infinite loops - the screen attached shows the Apple Music offer without any way out, regardless of which option you choose. I mean the only option is to kill the app (Settings) and do not touch the option again.