I really wish Apple Music had the equivalent of browser tabs for listening to music, or at least a way to easily switch back and forth between streams. My work drive is fairly short, so I typically listen to a playlist driving there and home since there's not enough time for any sort of continuity to matter. But at work when listening times get longer then I'll frequently play an album straight through instead (yes, I listen to artists that still prioritize full albums). But then that means abandoning whatever I was listening to on the way, so when I drive home I have to pick something else or find my place in the prior playlist or whatever. Nevermind how often Apple Music just randomly loses its place in whatever I was listening to anyway, which is particularly obnoxious when it's doing the infinite play and having a particularly good run but there's no way to get back into it. Which is a rant all its own, the music recommendation algorithm isn't very good and often leads into cul-de-sacs, while aside from a few quirks the infinite play algorithm is excellent.
Perpetual Random Apple Rants Thread
- Thread starter gregatron5
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The new Books app in iOS/iPadOS 16: I hate it. After Apple got the DOJ smackdown over ebooks their ecosystem languished anyway even though iBooks were one of the original selling points for the very first iPad. Really there were only two reasons to use it at all: either consciously avoiding Amazon’s Kindle or because you liked the Books app.
And despite the neglect Books was a nice app that felt great to use. The interface struck a nice balance between avoiding unnecessary distractions while still letting you keep visible what you wanted. And the page-turning animation was terrifically tactile. The new version drops all of that. You can’t keep the progress bar permanently visible anymore, I can’t figure out how to display remaining pages in a chapter at all, and page turns have been replaced by a simple slide over. I really hope Apple reverts all or at least most of these changes. I really can’t think of a single change I actually prefer.
And despite the neglect Books was a nice app that felt great to use. The interface struck a nice balance between avoiding unnecessary distractions while still letting you keep visible what you wanted. And the page-turning animation was terrifically tactile. The new version drops all of that. You can’t keep the progress bar permanently visible anymore, I can’t figure out how to display remaining pages in a chapter at all, and page turns have been replaced by a simple slide over. I really hope Apple reverts all or at least most of these changes. I really can’t think of a single change I actually prefer.
Not about to even try defending the App Store mess, but there are some workarounds. The easiest way by far to get an app from one device to another is a long press on the home screen, then share app, then AirDrop it. Doesn’t help a whit if it’s not installed on anything, but does help with the “I’ve got this game on my iPad and want it on my phone too,” problem.
My latest rant is with Apple Music, although I’m not sure any other services fix this either. Why is there no equivalent of tabbed browsing? If I’m listening to a long playlist, or having a particularly good run with the infinite play algorithm, and a friend sends me a son or one of my kids want to listen to something, the only way to do it is to drop the current play entirely. That means finding my place in the playlist, which can be hassle enough, but the infinite play is lost for good. Why don’t I have the option to open the equivalent of another tab, listen to whatever it is, then close that tab and go back to what I was listening to before?
Hamburger menus are…well, not great, but at least fine on mobile devices, especially phones, where space is at a premium and an extensive toolbar is infeasible. While I don’t love them I also can’t come up with anything better given the constraints they’re working against. They’re also common enough to be recognized as “menus and settings here.” They have no place in a typical desktop UI where they inevitably sit next to lots of other buttons, widgets, and submenus, which means there’s no way to know what’s on the burger without clicking on it to reveal the contents. And you won’t remember what was in there either except in a small group of your most commonly-used apps. When every option is a compromise they’re a reasonable option, but when better choices are available use them.
Those get a pass from me by being at The system level, so even if they’re not intuitively obvious or rational their sheer ubiquity gives them a privileged position.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/28/ios-16-4-apple-books-page-turning-animation/
Hal. Le. Lu. Jah
For all the rants rightly directed at Apple, and even this is fixing a totally self-inflicted wound, I’ll give them credit. They did fix it. Wonder if they redid the corner interface too, which is a UI abomination in its own right.
Hal. Le. Lu. Jah
For all the rants rightly directed at Apple, and even this is fixing a totally self-inflicted wound, I’ll give them credit. They did fix it. Wonder if they redid the corner interface too, which is a UI abomination in its own right.
In Apple’s defense, the limitation here is simple physics. The Pro camera assembly is massive even on the 6.1/6.7” models. It would be impossible to shoehorn into a chassis the size of the mini and maintain anything approaching adequate battery life.
They’re erratic for sure, but when they really focus on making something “just work” they’ve still got the ability to make it happen, with AirPods and their magical pairing being the most obvious current example. The one thing that does give me sympathy (and not just for Apple but any software company these days) is how hideously complex modern software has become. Mac OS X launched in 2001 with a build number of 4K78 running on a PPC G4 with 10-11 million transistors. Modern macOS build numbers routinely get into the mid-triple digits running on chips with 1,000-10,000 times the transistor count, while doing stuff that seems like it’s off an episode of Star Trek. I can click a single button in Photos and it will magically decide where and how to apply image enhancements and effects that 2000-era Photoshop wasn’t capable of doing manually.
That’s not to let people off the hook. There’s a degree of polish across the board in Apple’s stuff that’s missing and desperately missed vs 15 years or so ago. It’s been more than a little amusing watching game developers lose their mind of what Nintendo’s doing on the Switch’s ~2015 Tegra X1 with Tears of the Kingdom and making it do tricks they’d swear were near-impossible on a PS5/XBSX with vastly more power. But I do have sympathy for just how much they’re doing, and while that 15-year-old system may we’ll have been more pleasant to use in some ways, I wouldn’t want to go back to it.
Speaking of Apple Music, is there any way to have it save my place in one playlist/album while I switch to something else? If a friend sends me a son, or I see something interesting I want to hear, as far as I can tell it means abandoning whatever it was I’m currently listening to. That’s annoying enough when I’m in the middle of a long playlist and I’m trying to find my previous spot, it’s even worse when I’m on a particularly good run with the infinite play algorithm and there’s no way to get it back.
View: https://youtu.be/AJO8uo3UMko?si=DqPuHyPFN61NEOg4
I feel pretty much the same way. The iPhone, iPad, Watch, and now AVP are unquestionably locked down devices, but we haven’t seen a huge attempt to take the Mac in that direction. More than that, I feel like keeping the Mac open is precisely what lets those other devices be as locked as they are. As long as the Mac exists as a generally open platform it’s always there as an option when people grips about all the things they can’t do with the other devices.
The bigger point though is that Darwin DIDN’T replace Classic, Mac OS X did. Darwin is the BSD UNIX kernel underpinning the OS, but it’s not the OS itself. All of Apple’s current OSes are ultimately just different skins and interfaces built on top of Darwin, from the Apple Watch at the most constricted end to macOS at the most permissive. So what you’re worried about isn’t replacing Darwin but that Apple will rip the Mac interface off and replace it with something drastically more simplified, like iPadOS.
Which isn’t an unreasonable concern in a vacuum, but from a practical standpoint quickly gets difficult when you consider just how limited an iPad is vs a Mac and how quickly the Mac would collapse if you tried a stunt like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people within Apple that would love to try it, but they’re smart enough to realize they can’t.
I’m another that finds 17’s autocorrect to be really bad. There’s the weird random badness, like the fact that it won’t correct three of the same letters in a row (such as correcting “theee” to “three”). There’s the changing entirely correct words to something else that doesn’t even make sense. But the worst part of all is the inconsistency of it. I can’t even account for autocorrect making mistakes and work around them because sometimes it makes changes and sometimes it doesn’t. I try to type “Mac” and it changes it to “Max.” But then it changes “Max” to “Mac.” Except when it doesn’t. There’s no pattern to any of it. Infuriating.
Oh how I sympathize. I live in Round Rock, and the number of times “Round” got oh so helpfully corrected to “around” is infuriating. For “I’m” specifically, just type “im” and let autocorrect fix it. For other obnoxious replacements where it takes the correctly typed word and turns it into something wrong, Settings->General->Keyboards->Text Replacement. Then add a new replacement where what you typed is replaced with what you typed. It’ll still take a few days to learn the new rule but within a few days it’ll stop.
So AppleCare extensions, oof. Our daughters share an iPad Air that recently hit the expiration date on it (we have six kids, of course we want the damage insurance). The oldest brought it to me a couple weeks back saying the AppleCare was about to expire. The machine said it had two days left. So I went ahead and did the renewal and got the success message, which also said it would take 2-3 days for the renewal to actually show up. No worries. A couple days later she comes back and says now the AppleCare has expired. Great.
So I get on the phone and call Apple. This has to be escalated because I’m trying to extend AppleCare on a product where it’s expired which is something they don’t allow. The guy I talk to was excellent. Very pleasant, very helpful. However he does ask why I waited until the absolute last minute to renew the AppleCare. Huh? He explains he can see my renewal request and that despite what the iPad displayed (two days remaining) I made the attempt about 90 minutes before it expired. But he’s confident we can get it worked out.
He needs to escalate further so he sets up an appointment to call me back in a week. This, I’ll remind you, to simply renew coverage on something where the failure was all on Apple’s end. He calls back a week later. Denied. But he says he thinks they looked at it wrong and didn’t realize the renewal was attempted when it was still valid. So he’ll try again and call me back in three days. He does so. Denied again. Apple policy is I needed to call for the renewal and trouble shooting before the coverage expired. No open case, no approval. This despite the fact the iPad a, reported that I had two days left to renew when I only had 90 minutes and b, the iPad saying it would take a few days for the coverage to renew so give it time. I ask him what I should have done differently and even he’s at a loss without any ideas, but he also doesn’t have any authority to do things differently.
The whole mess was pretty infuriating and really left a sour taste in my mouth. In hindsight yes I can see what I could have done differently to avoid this mess, but all of it was far beyond what a reasonable person would have considered necessary.
So I get on the phone and call Apple. This has to be escalated because I’m trying to extend AppleCare on a product where it’s expired which is something they don’t allow. The guy I talk to was excellent. Very pleasant, very helpful. However he does ask why I waited until the absolute last minute to renew the AppleCare. Huh? He explains he can see my renewal request and that despite what the iPad displayed (two days remaining) I made the attempt about 90 minutes before it expired. But he’s confident we can get it worked out.
He needs to escalate further so he sets up an appointment to call me back in a week. This, I’ll remind you, to simply renew coverage on something where the failure was all on Apple’s end. He calls back a week later. Denied. But he says he thinks they looked at it wrong and didn’t realize the renewal was attempted when it was still valid. So he’ll try again and call me back in three days. He does so. Denied again. Apple policy is I needed to call for the renewal and trouble shooting before the coverage expired. No open case, no approval. This despite the fact the iPad a, reported that I had two days left to renew when I only had 90 minutes and b, the iPad saying it would take a few days for the coverage to renew so give it time. I ask him what I should have done differently and even he’s at a loss without any ideas, but he also doesn’t have any authority to do things differently.
The whole mess was pretty infuriating and really left a sour taste in my mouth. In hindsight yes I can see what I could have done differently to avoid this mess, but all of it was far beyond what a reasonable person would have considered necessary.
I find Siri to require absurd amounts of specificity to get it right, and it still misses far too often (an annoyance on my phone, maddening in a HomePod or when using CarPlay). If I say, verbatim, “Play song ‘X’ off album ‘Y’ by artist ‘Z’” (including using the words song, album, and artist in my instructions) it usually but not always gets it right. It at least gets things good enough that I don’t have a HomePod-shaped hole in my kitchen window.
And FWIW not knowing what album that song came from I just tried “Play song Positively 4th Street by artist Bob Dylan” and it got it right the first try.
And FWIW not knowing what album that song came from I just tried “Play song Positively 4th Street by artist Bob Dylan” and it got it right the first try.
About the best thing I can say for Siri is it’s never advised me to eat rocks or put glue on pizza.
I’m partial to the original 1.0 version with three single eighth notes as opposed to the joined pair of eight notes all later versions used myself. Admittedly blue purple pink wasn’t the best color combo but I preferred that style.
Was looking at changing the wallpaper on my iPad and why are all the included iOS/iPadOS wallpapers so bland now? Apple used to a terrific selection including photos, drawings, abstract designs, and more but now? If you don’t have a photo of your own you want to use I hope you like planets or emoji.
It was three years between the original APP and the second generation, and current rumors have APP3 launching some time in 2025 (September seems like a safe bet), so you’re probably looking at a 14-15 month wait.
I don’t notice that as much on my phone, but it’s awful on my iPad, either a space or especially a comma instead of an m specifically. The number of times “something” has been turned into “so,etching” is maddening.
Nothing to do with sensors. Mask-enabled FaceID is a much lower security version that ignores basically everything below the eyes to let it work while wearing a mask. They simply haven’t enabled that on the iPad.
There’s a bit more logic to it than that. They’re trying to optimize for the most common conditions. Low power mode disables a number of useful features to conserve battery life, so most (bury certainly not all) people would want to enable it only when absolutely needed and then disable it when the phone’s charged. Having it shut itself off is an easy way to make sure people don’t leave it enabled by accident then miss something because of It.
Same with WiFi. For most people in most situations, the reason to shut off WiFi isn’t to disable it but to stop trying to connect to a network that’s acting weird. It’s uncommon (not unheard of, but uncommon) to want to shut it down indefinitely. And for most people the more obnoxious issue is forgetting to reenable it later (especially if you’re still on a cell plan that caps your data).
The workaround used to be (and as far as I know still is but I’m not certain) to go to the Settings app. Changes made from Control Center are temporary, but Settings stay that way until further notice)
I thought Apple had gotten over their battery replacement silliness but nope. Took my daughter’s iPod Touch to the Apple Store yesterday since the battery was shot and wanted to replace it. Laying out of pocket mind you; it’s well out of warranty. Store employee runs the diagnostics which returns 100% capacity. Sine iPod battery replacements aren’t done in store he could only offer me a refurbished replacement which would have been an extra $50 on top of the $80 the battery rate would have been (which already feels overpriced given how small an iPod’s battery is; I can replace the much bigger battery on my 12 Pro Max for the same price).
I assure you, the battery is not at 100%. It’s four years old and has been heavily used. As I showed him just running the diagnostics dropped the charge 3%, so never mind that the diagnostics were wrong. I’m paying out of pocket for a new battery. I don’t care what your diagnostics say, I don’t care if I bought it yesterday and the battery was one day old. I don’t care about or want your approval at all. If I want a new battery then give me the battery.
Admittedly he agreed with me, got his manager involved, and got me approved for a refurb replacement at the battery rate, but it shouldn’t have come to that in the first place.
And yes, I can hear Semi On laughing about Apple’s terrible battery management software.
I assure you, the battery is not at 100%. It’s four years old and has been heavily used. As I showed him just running the diagnostics dropped the charge 3%, so never mind that the diagnostics were wrong. I’m paying out of pocket for a new battery. I don’t care what your diagnostics say, I don’t care if I bought it yesterday and the battery was one day old. I don’t care about or want your approval at all. If I want a new battery then give me the battery.
Admittedly he agreed with me, got his manager involved, and got me approved for a refurb replacement at the battery rate, but it shouldn’t have come to that in the first place.
And yes, I can hear Semi On laughing about Apple’s terrible battery management software.
I’ll also add the hamburger menu to the list. It’s a lousy option that’s a necessary evil on a phone where space for extensive widgets and menu options is limited. For those same reasons it should be used only on a phone where space for extensive widgets and menu options is limited. Anywhere else, including tablets but especially on a desktop I want real menus with context.
That’s a hall-of-fame “Bezos chart” there. I especially love that it’s using Excel, as if the computer is the bottleneck for spreadsheet work rather than the guy entering data.
I’m not sure this is the right thread to post this, but I don’t even know which subforum would be better, so this seems like as good a place as any to get an answer. A few days ago on my iPhone when doing a Google search, clicking any Reddit link except the top one brings up some sort of preview page, like so:
In addition to bringing back memories of AMP best left forgotten, it’s also simply obnoxious dealing with what Google thinks I need to see instead of actually sending me to the actual webpage. How do I make this stop?
In addition to bringing back memories of AMP best left forgotten, it’s also simply obnoxious dealing with what Google thinks I need to see instead of actually sending me to the actual webpage. How do I make this stop?
Didn’t Apple poach Google’s AI lead a few years ago to ostensibly do this? Looking around looks like she’s more of a top-level organizer/fixer that a subject matter expert (not a negative, you don’t necessarily have to know the ins and outs of your team’s subject if you can effectively manage your subordinates that do), the kind of person that knows what it takes to drag a project across the finish line when progress stalls out or get a disorganized project in shape. That’s definitely what Siri needs right now. I can’t think of another Apple product that’s regressed and actively gotten worse to the degree Siri has. It’s never been fantastic, but I’d generally learned to work around its limitations and use specific syntax to get it to do what I wanted, but now even that no longer works. Here’s hoping she brings some organization and leadership to a division that clearly desperately needs the help.
The worst part is the fix is so obvious. Scroll direction should be per device rather than system wide. This solves everything.
Here’s a weird one, since this seems to also double as “random questions undeserving of their own thread.” Lately while using the endless play feature Apple Music will play a reasonable song but from some strange random compilation album. Two examples are Mr. Brightside by The Killers playing off “Tú Mix De Serotonina Diaria” or paint it Black by The Rolling Stones playing off “pov: you’re a vampire.” I’m not sure if this is a really strange bug or if there’s some algorithmic manipulation to hijack the revenue going on. Any ideas?
I understand that accurately figuring out which device should respond to a “Hey Siri” (and yes I kept they “hey” because having Siri chime in every time I mention its name is not happening) is an incredible challenge. However, what I don’t understand is how it’s managed to regress so far. A few years ago it was borderline witchcraft watching so many devices communicate in a few seconds such that the response almost always came from the right one. Now? My wife can call out “hey Siri set a 10 minute timer” from another room and my watch will decide that’s where the timer should be.
Be that as it may, if you own a HomePod you’ve already accepted having the AI bot listening in on you 24/7, since the only other way to use them is to press and hold the top in order to activate the AI bot. As that’s a major hassle at best, having the proper device activate to the spoken command is quite beneficial. In addition, this is something that used to work incredibly well and now doesn’t, so the regression is both obvious and particularly obnoxious given the lack of good alternatives.
Less a rant and more an observation, has there been a WWDC with a more placid lead-in? You’d think a major across-the-board interface redesign would generate more speculation (or at least anxiety, wondering what’s gonna break this time), but there’s been shockingly little. Granted some of it is that beyond the interface redesign and the new numbering there’s very little else interesting in the rumor mill, but a lot of this feels like Apple’s shenanigans have really taken the shine off.
Another related bit of bad design: not realizing when the device does leave. My wife share an AppleID (I know we’re not supposed to, but keeping contacts and photos automatically synchronized is worth it; family photo albums aren’t quite good enough and there’s nothing for contacts). We meet somewhere for lunch. She leaves first, maybe to take some kids home. FindMy does nothing. I leave, and then comes the notification “[wife’s] iPhone is no longer with you, it was last at [restaurant address].”
No you idiotic machine. Her phone left that location 20 minutes ago, and you telling me this now is entirely useless.
I’m just one person, but I’ve never had any behavior like this. Is it limited to one app or device wide? If it’s everywhere I’d take it in to get looked at; what you’re describing sounds like faulty hardware to me.
Dumb question, but have you actually tried using ApplePay with the older stored version? ApplePay doesn’t actually store your card details, but a tokenized version of it arranged with the bank, meaning that if the bank issues a new card the token automatically gets updated to match the new one with no effort required on your part. So the reason it’s failing may be that the system thinks you’re trying to add the same card twice.
I went with “spicy,” but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture before that makes me want to use every single reaction icon, because they all apply. That photo is cursed, and having seen it it told me I have only seven days to live before I get an Apple Pencil jabbed through my eyes.
So I have to ask, when you created that abomination before God and men for which we all must repent in sackcloth and ashes, did the mouse charge the pencil, the pencil charge the mouse, or did the universe divide by zero and the entire obscenity get sucked into blessed oblivion?
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