Perpetual Random Apple Rants Thread

[ant1pathy]

The Apple Music mini player screen does not show the track title or artist, and nothing you can hover over or poke will show it unless you click on the “make a bulleted list” button, get the ”up next” panel, and then move your pointer anywhere below the “Playing Next | History” tabs. Absolutely user-hostile design.

What does it do when you embiggen the mini player? I'd need to confirm, but my recollection is that the square generally hides most of the details (so you have the full artwork) but when you expand it vertically you start to get permanently displayed controls and track info.

 

[ant1pathy]

Re: Cast iron, I usually use mine for cooking salmon, so if I don’t wash it in soap and water, I’d need to just pack up and find a new place to live. Some soap and gentle washing doesn’t seem to do anything to the seasoning. In my experience, the real seasoning killers are high-acid foods like tomatoes.

On topic rant:

I’m not sure how long this has been happening, but my AirPods Pro will not hold a standby charge anymore. From what I can tell, the case slowly dies, then the AirPods think they’re out the case and connect, then they die. Unless I leave the case on the charger 24/7, I have no way of guaranteeing that they’ll be ready to use when I need them. It’s all the more frustrating because the AirPods themselves still hold a charge well.

They’re four years old at this point, so it’s hard to complain too much, but I do wish Apple would hurry the hell up and release an update, because the replacement costs are criminal and I don’t want to shell out for second gen Pros when they’re already two years old.

Have you tried using a Q-tip to clean out the "wells" in the case, see if there's some debris in there preventing a quality connection on the charging points?

 

[ant1pathy]

For APP2s, is there any way to get them to not slowly work their way out of your ears?

If I go on a walk with noise cancellation on then after a while I start to hear all the low-level rumblings of the city again. When I notice it and push them back in, all is silent again. This especially happens when talking. No size tips seem to make a difference. I'm half tempted to switch to the Beats over-the-ear design, but I can't comfortably keep that case in my pocket.

Try a different style of tips. I have the same issue with the gummy ones working their way out. Comply makes good foam ones, maybe start there.

 

[ant1pathy]

Plus one on the "never trust CEC". I have it disabled for my setup. Remotes controls volume on the receiver. I have to keep a remote around to do the panel power on/off, along with receiver input switching (from the turntable on the phono to the ATV on an HDMI port), and then the ATV remote handles volume and media selection. Never have a single issue with controls, 100% reliable.

industry giants like LG and Onkyo

They might be industry giants, but I would trust their CEC implementation about as far as I could throw my LG washing machine.

 

[ant1pathy]

Side note, I loved Bartender, but after it sold to a new developer - I dropped it.

Yeah, it's almost like this prompt is trying to solve a legitimate problem and there's no real good way to do it .

 

[ant1pathy]

Not a new complaint, but I'm growing more and more tired of my HomePod minis randomly deciding to not be connected to wifi until a reboot. Especially since there's no off/restart button so I have to dick around under my desk to unplug them.

Gonna ask the silly question... when was the last time you restarted your router ?

 

[ant1pathy]

They've behaved like this since new, across multiple different network setups, and are the only devices on my network to do so. I don't think it's the router's fault

Do you have a mesh system or single AP? I can't recall a single issue with the 4 HomePod Mini's I have scattered around the house (from a connectivity standpoint, I had to restart one when it started acting up on playback and couldn't get it to stop so I could start whitenoise).

 

[ant1pathy]

Marvin on an iPad is what I have used for years and years and it's perfectly cromulent for my needs. Can pull files from iCloud Drive, so I just chuck them in there on a Mac (or direct save if that's an option) and pull down on mobile. I would like a better manager than Calibre though. Such a cumbersome and heavy program for my minimal organization and metadata editing needs.

 

[ant1pathy]

In retrospect, they should have kept the iTV name for the hardware. Then they could have called the service “Apple TV” (without the +) since they wouldn’t need the + to differentiate it. You watch Apple TV shows on your iTV. Done.

That just leaves the TV app, which confuses me in general. Why isn’t the Apple TV’s home screen just…the TV app? I know, because they made the Apple TV into a general app platform thinking that people would use it to shop, play games, etc. But in reality, does anyone use their Apple TV for anything other than streaming video? I suppose I do use the Photos and Music apps on occasion, so those features would need to live somewhere – but there isn’t a single third-party app I use for anything other than video (Netflix, YouTube, etc.). And that’s just because those services don’t integrate with the TV app!

It reminds me of how they launched the Apple Watch as a general app platform before they really knew what it would be good at. Then once it went on sale, they realized 99% of the time people use it for fitness, so they leaned heavily into that angle and largely abandoned the rest (remember Digital Touch?). The Apple TV is like that but with streaming video…except they never got to the second step of refocusing it.

They've moved away from the i-branding so that wasn't going to stick around.

The TV app requires the streaming services to hook into it. Netflix is a big one that doesn't work in it. YouTube is another. I have a nifty visualizer app (Electric Sheep) that I like to toss up sometimes when I'm playing records (otherwise it's the screensavers, which are gorgeous on a 4k OLED).

 

[ant1pathy]

This is arguing whether driving on the right side of the road or driving on the left side of the road is "natural" and "normal." You all have your preferences. Stop trying to convince others you're "right," please. The only truth is that the Dock should be on the left.
/me runs

Left dock gang .

You have more horizontal pixels than vertical ones, just makes sense to steal from the more plentiful bucket.

 

[ant1pathy]

Part rant, part cry for help.

I'm sharing my (full) screen in a Teams meeting. Now every window has some kind of blue share button where the close, minimize, and expand trifecta used to be.

For the love of all things holy, how do I disable this UI / UX abomination? I beg you, someone here please save me from this nightmare.

I know the keyboard commands by heart, but when I've closed one window only to have another behind it with private information I don't want displayed – the moment of panic as I look for the close / minimize button and see a giant blue circle of misery instead is all it takes to throw me completely off kilter.

I don't even see blue, only red as my vision is taken over by apoplectic rage. If your idea is to make a user hover over something to get at the original controls, you deserve not just to be sacked immediately, but to be retroactively time machined out of existence.

Share program window instead of full-screen as much as possible. Or if you have more than one screen, share the other panel and keep it "clean". Same issue on Windows with Teams, and yeah it trips people up all the time.

 

[ant1pathy]

At this point I am resigned to sifting through and loading my Macs up with third party utilities to make basic things work in OS as you would sensibly expect from a productivity PoV in The World's Most Advanced OS (to which I would also have to award it with The Worlds Most Advanced BS). >$100 in utilities and any pretence of OOB OS purity gone later, it's OK I guess.

I don't use multiple desktops, but I'm pretty certain there are third party tools that offer historical app access through desktops using a Cmd-tab like interface.

I think your definition of "basic" is... atypical. It's perfectly fine that you have specific needs for your computer setups, but trying to frame them as common or standard is where the divergence occurs.

 

[ant1pathy]

Yeah… but I don't think expecting CMD-TAB to work as expected is uncommon or non-standard, is it…?

"As expected" is tricky here, isn't it? There's no one canonical "expectation". I may expect it to not move between spaces / desktops, and you may expect it to. Who's "right" in that situation? Kind of like the undo-stack problem. Seems simple at first glance, but gets really tricky as you start to tease apart all the fiddly details.

 

[ant1pathy]

That's not my beef. It's the fact that, having CMD-TABed to the Finder, it takes me to an instance of Finder (the one I want, as it happens) and then instantly switches focus from the Finder to any other application in that space/desktop with an active window/document.

CMD-TABing to the Finder icon in the app-switcher and not ending up in any instance of the Finder but some other application entirely surely can't be anyone's expectation of performing that action?

I don't think I'm fully understanding the behavior you're describing (not refuting it, just not grasping it ). I do know (and just confirmed for myself) that the Finder icon exists in the Cmd+Tab even when you don't have any Finder windows actually open. When I Cmd+Tab to it, it has Finder as the focus (as indicated by the menu bar) but since there's no open Finder window it just has whatever else I had open visible on screen.

 

[ant1pathy]

Yep-- I see the same. Even with Finder windows open, it switches to another application when cmd+tab-ing to Finder if those Finder windows are in another space. (Seems to pretty consistently be whatever application last had focus in that space for me, but I don't know if that's how it works 100% of the time.)

This doesn't happen for other applications-- if I'm on Space 2, and Chrome is on Space 1, using cmd+tab to switch to Chrome ends with a Chrome window in front. It's just Finder where it'll momentarily show a Finder window in front before switching to some arbitrary other application.

Just for sake of clarity, the forced focus is going to the other window (as indicated by the menu bar)?

 

[ant1pathy]

Hmm, didn't know about this. Is it really feasible that specifically several different models of several different generations of Macs would not like my WAP, while several different iPhones, Apple Watches and a whole bunch of non-Apple hardware would have zero issues with the same exact WAP?

Are the other devices using a VPN, or just your personal and work Macs?

 

[ant1pathy]

I'm getting tired of how much worse Apple's Books keeps getting. They've now removed the ability to select more than one book and download it from your iCloud Library (I have almost 1,000 books - with the majority being free/legal copies of ePub books).

So I decided to check and see if Books supported AppleScript or Automator - nope, nothing.

Also, not an Apple specific rant, but if I want to read a series, why is it I can only find 1, 2, 5, 7 in eBook format among B&N, Amazon, Apple, but the rest I would have to buy paper?

If OCR would get better and not require a couple of edits per page of a book, I would simply buy them, cut them up and feed them to a scanner. Alas, I tried that - did not work well. Paper is becoming more challenging due to eyesight.

MacOS or iPhone / iPad? I use Marvin 3 (I liked the OG Marvin the most, but alas it's too old and creaky now) over the native Books app and it's worlds better.

 

[ant1pathy]

I bought the damn movie, let me group it as I see fit.

Fuck you Apple, Skull and Crossbones it is.

I don't hesitate to hoist the flag on content that I've also paid for. Having a personal file copy on a drive connected to my computer still means something to me .

 

[ant1pathy]

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.

They also work great as just an AirPlay casting destination, either by tapping or sending from the playback panel .

 

[ant1pathy]

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.

Combo of mature platforms, a lot of Apple related sturm und drang, and... the broader "WTF is happening in the world" burnout that makes it hard to get excited for anything for more than a few fleeting moments.

 

[ant1pathy]

Buy a laptop with a beautiful high resolution color calibrated screen -> leave it closed 100% of the time and plugged into monitors. I will never understand this .

 

[ant1pathy]

My 5k iMac got wiped and Bootcamp'd to stand in as a sometimes gaming machine when I have the itch to play something older and don't want to run the space-heater tower. If the screen wasn't so dang pretty it would have been relegated to a remote Music.app device (like the even older iMac that's sitting in the basement).

 

[ant1pathy]

Not to be contrarian since this isn’t Mac related but we are specifically pointed to Chrome over Edge for day-to-day usage at the Fortune 500 company I’m at. Edge continues to be a hot mess, even for MS in-house software (Sharepoint, Office, etc.).

Interesting, I find Edge to be way more reliable / consistent when working with the Office suite online (SharePoint, shared Office docs, OneNote, etc). It's been a minute, but I recall Chrome having a few small annoyances that drove me to default to Edge for all of my corporate use (especially the SSO feature and company managed "important links" folder, so when they change the system for annual reviews the link is still current!).

Workday.

That's... not a MS product. Not surprising it works best in Chrome or anything, but doesn't really speak much to the "Edge is a hot mess" statement.

Also, for the "I'm ditching Safari because the new tab / front page"... how much time are you spending there? I see the "landing page" of Safari for about .1 seconds before I type or paste into the omnibar and am off to the website I'm after.

 

[ant1pathy]

Thing is, it's extra screen space up there. If it bothers you that much, there are apps (or I believe, even a simple tweak to your screen resolution settings) that will move your menu bar below the notch leaving you with exactly the same amount of screen real estate as you had in the pre-notch days.

Bingo. I'll hammer this point every chance I get; the notch isn't taking screen away, it's giving you back the "wings" on the left/right.

 

[ant1pathy]

It IS taking functional space from the menu bar, which previously had the entire width of the screen.

With a much thicker top bezel to accommodate the webcam. Disable the "wings" and you're left with the exact same screen space as before, just filling "bonus pixels" with black instead of letting the menu bar go into that space.

The notch is not intruding into the previous screen space, the screen is bumped up into what was previously dead bezel.

And, in the spirit of the thread, menu bar items are generally silly and remind me of Android phones with goofy fonts and icon packs (the immediate reflexive "that looks terrible").

 

[ant1pathy]

The fact they continually omit the Bluetooth icon is bizarre, given the wireless world we live in.

I expect it's because it's generally not interacted with very much. You pair a mouse / keyboard / headphones, and then don't touch it for months or years.

 

[ant1pathy]

Maybe I'm just an iTunes unicorn, but I manage a substantial library of music through it without any issues (and have for near 2 decades now). All on an external HDD, many many ALAC tracks mixed in with mp3s. Have had Match since they launched it. Smart playlists, multi-casting, using the Remote app to control the office Mac to manipulate mutli-casting... not sure if I'd fall into the "power user" domain but I'm certainly more than bog-standard consumer use of it.

 

[ant1pathy]

Re: local music libraries and cloud; I have a 27,638 track local library that I cloud sync with zero issues. I'm retentive about tagging before adding to library, and prefer to grab FLAC -> ALAC for archival lossless. No feedback on merging libraries, but I've not encountered any of the weird issues mentioned up-thread.

(Minor) rant: I wish there was a more convenient way to check the battery life on all my iCloud connected devices that isn't going through Find My. I have my phone right here and my laptop is charging across the room, why can't it surface what the dang battery is like it does for the watch and AirPods...

 

[ant1pathy]

Why do my Apple "Home" rooms randomly disappear and thus multiple devices get assigned to "Default".

I really don't get people that like HomeKit stuff, it rarely works for me and pisses my wife off all the time. Which is why most Nanoleaf lights have exited the house.

Do you (or anyone else with write access to the account) have any other home automation software that interfaces with Home.app?

 

[ant1pathy]

We have an extensive Home Automation system that uses Home Bridge to advertise a few non-HomeKit devices as HomeKit compatible, otherwise, no.

EDIT: I do this as it allows me to use Siri to turn on/off my Z-Wave or Insteon devices.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was something in the 3rd party software that's causing them to drop and then sync across to everything. Caveat emptor and all when you start mixing in home-brew software.

 

[ant1pathy]

Marvin is a much much better app for reading ebooks on phone and iPad. No idea about the Mac, since ~100% of my reading is iPad based, but there are options .

 

[ant1pathy]

The problem with independent e-readers is getting books. Most of the books I want to read are still copyrighted and published with DRM. Very few books can you get DRM-free. I could raise the flag, but I like paying people for their work.

I'll do both. Support the creator with a purchase, then "acquire" separately for my actual use.

 

[ant1pathy]

What's even more bonkers that some iOS‑only apps just don't ever appear in the Mac App store app search, but clicking their direct iOS app link (apps.apple.com/…) does indeed show the iOS‑only app on my Mac (even though still not available for purchase). How fucked up is that? And yes, that's even after I have selected "iPhone and iPad Apps" as the filter.

Try it yourself – a popular iOS hiking app in most of Europe is Mapy.com (offline OSM maps, I have used it from the Pyrenees to Caucasus). Searching for it on my Mac only shows all the other mapping apps I haven't searched for. Yet clicking their apps.apple.com/… iOS link on mapy.com does open up its store page on the Mac.

FFS, the App store is making you billions Apple, and it was supposed to be easy (at least for the users, developers have it quite harder)...

I'm pretty sure it's a developer checkbox to allow / disallow surfacing of iOS apps in the Mac App Store (outside of the direct linking, as you've discovered). The "display iPhone and iPad apps" bit is only to let the "developer indicated it's ok" apps to be visible.

 

[ant1pathy]

I just take the "System Data" figure with a big grain of salt and use a 3rd party app (Grand Perspective is FOSS, even if a bit clunky) to look for other culprits. Chrome and other updaters often keep a few gigs of old versions in ~/Library/Application Support, et cetera.

I had a lot of space taken up by old Chrome installers that somehow weren't cleaning themselves up after an update. I've so far resisted installing Chrome on either of my M-series machines, and have not missed it one bit.

 

[ant1pathy]

I’d trade the Action Button for bringing Force Touch back to Apple Watches in a heart beat.

Aww man, I miss force touch, especially on the phones. The long-press just isn't the same ...

 

[ant1pathy]

Isn't the "right" way to do it to use the internal fast & stable drive to boot, and store all the stuff on the external? That's been my setup since I grabbed my first 32GB SSD back in the neolithic period.

 

[ant1pathy]

I like Lightning more than USB-C. I like the "all USB-C for everything" world more than a mixed one. I went out and replaced all the things I use on a regular basic that had microUSB with USB-C equivalents, and I am so pleased to have a significantly smaller electronics bag to pack for travel or overnights.

 

[ant1pathy]

My lifetime strategy of "acquire music file, tag by hand with album art embedded in each file, add to library" continues to pay dividends . The Apple upload (used to be iTunes Match, now just rolled into Apple Music) is not friendly for post-library-add adjustments to metadata, especially album art.

 

[ant1pathy]

I just set up my old iMac 5k as a Bootcamp device to play some older Windows games upstairs in my office, as opposed to my basement with the gaming tower.

For all the complaints we have about Apple, wheeeeeew was setting up a Windows machine a freshly terrible experience. Not saying Apple can't do better (they can, and they should), but if anyone is expecting to get an upgrade by jumping platforms... good luck to you.

 

[ant1pathy]

<snip>

Menu bar -> Window. The command for the "main" window is Cmd+0, for the MiniPlayer it's Opt+Cmd+M. These are separate windows; the MiniPlayer is not what the "main" window minimizes to.

And normies wouldn't use the MiniPlayer in the first place .