Same. I recently updated my laptop (from an Intel model), and one big reason for doing it now was to get it before it would be infected with Tahoe. What an absolute dumpster fire.
Perpetual Random Apple Rants Thread
- Thread starter gregatron5
- Start date
Only visually, because I don't want to play with betas, but my past experience tells me that visual and utility decay go hand in hand, like System Settings and the other sloppy iOS ports. At this point I'm asking what compelling features come from switching to a larger version number, not assuming that it will be better than the current one; breakage is guaranteed.
Today I learned that the Auto FPS feature exists on the iPhone camera app, and, apparently, is active by default. For some reason it's never reared its head before, but the most recent 4k60FPS videos I tried to shoot came out in odd frame rates, which made them (for me) unusable for further editing and publishing.
Why can't Safari keep an uncorrupted set of favicons for my bookmarks for more than a nanosecond?!?
Every other browser out there seems to be able to do this, but Safari's favicon database gets corrupted over and over and over again. Even when I go spelunking in the Finder to nuke and pave the database manually, a sizable number of my sites get no favicon when I revisit them. Safari never seems to be able to download the favicon. What gives? I mean favicons are table stakes for a browser in 2025, right?
Every other browser out there seems to be able to do this, but Safari's favicon database gets corrupted over and over and over again. Even when I go spelunking in the Finder to nuke and pave the database manually, a sizable number of my sites get no favicon when I revisit them. Safari never seems to be able to download the favicon. What gives? I mean favicons are table stakes for a browser in 2025, right?
Quick Follow up: On my iPad running the iPadOS 26 beta, I noticed that if I go into the sidebar and take a look at my bookmarks there, Safari now shows favicons. I don't think it used to do that in iPadOS 18. What's more, Safari seems to have gone through and preemptively downloaded all of the favicons for my bookmarks without me having to visit any of the sites. Can anyone out there running the MacOS Tahoe beta check to see if Safari is doing the same there, i.e. preemptively downloading favicons for bookmarks? Is there reason to hope that our long national nightmare of Safari favicon flakiness might soon be over in MacOS Tahoe?
I use Apple Music with local libraries as my music player. It is getting worse and worse. The biggest problem I have is how it mangles multiple libraries. I have a local library of music I regularly listen to stored on an external SSD. On other drives I also have a smaller library of tracks down converted to 256K for playing in my car and a very large library of assorted music that I periodically wade through to find interesting music (my taste change and evolve over time). When you open a different library, Music often doesn't change the file path so if you make a change to a track it might affect this library but more likely affect my "main" library. Even when you go into settings and change the path it might work for a while if you hold your mouth just right. It continually confuse what it has "decided" is my library with the other libraries. Tracks that are AAC are identified as Apple Lossless, if you delete a file it could do almost anything....
The idea of dealing with multiple libraries has terrified me because of longstanding issues like this. I decided to keep one library for my 30,000+ song library, and because I didn't want to deal with any issues related to Apple Music merging/overwriting metadata and cover art I'd created I chose not to sync my Mac's Apple Music library. That leads to other annoyances, like not being able to access my now considerable personal playlists I've created on iOS/iPadOS, but it seems worth it.
I'm looking to get a new iMac once Apple upgrades it to M5 and when that happens I think I'll move my local music and disconnect it from my Apple Music app, and just use a 3rd-party player to access it.
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...
(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...
Are Apple Music Genius fingerprint mismatches still a thing? I have a smart playlist of songs rated 3
️ and up (and one for 4 and 5). I'm pretty sure I don't have the Dany Elfman-sung demo for The Nightmare Before Christmas, but yesterday in the car it played a version of the Oogie Boogie song with him singing. I know I have high-starred the movie soundtrack version, but since I don't think I've ever even heard this one I'm not sure how it got into the playlist.
It could also be that Music silently stopped playing that playlist and started playing something else. That has definitely happened before.
️ and up (and one for 4 and 5). I'm pretty sure I don't have the Dany Elfman-sung demo for The Nightmare Before Christmas, but yesterday in the car it played a version of the Oogie Boogie song with him singing. I know I have high-starred the movie soundtrack version, but since I don't think I've ever even heard this one I'm not sure how it got into the playlist.It could also be that Music silently stopped playing that playlist and started playing something else. That has definitely happened before.
not seen one for a while, but there was a time when it got Logic Bomb’s Sonic Algebra and Eat Static’s De-Classified swapped over. Like, track for track.
I don't know if it's been mentioned previously...
Rant: on iOS, when I type and realize I made a typo (pressing a letter next to the letter I thought I pressed), I backspace and then (and I'm pretty sure of this) I press the correct letter, but the same wrong letter is put back. Like, what!? Then I backspace again, and try again and the same typo happens.
I'm a clumsy typist on mobile devices but not THAT clumsy. And EVEN if I were to slip and press the wrong letter twice or thrice in a row, shouldn't Apple's predictive algorithms be like "this guy just backspaced, so let's not allow him to type that same letter again and look at the letters around what he's pressing and pick the correct one."
I actually have bad dreams about this where I'm in a hurry to send a message to someone and iOS is just absolutely bungling it and preventing me from typing what I want to type.
Rant: on iOS, when I type and realize I made a typo (pressing a letter next to the letter I thought I pressed), I backspace and then (and I'm pretty sure of this) I press the correct letter, but the same wrong letter is put back. Like, what!? Then I backspace again, and try again and the same typo happens.
I'm a clumsy typist on mobile devices but not THAT clumsy. And EVEN if I were to slip and press the wrong letter twice or thrice in a row, shouldn't Apple's predictive algorithms be like "this guy just backspaced, so let's not allow him to type that same letter again and look at the letters around what he's pressing and pick the correct one."
I actually have bad dreams about this where I'm in a hurry to send a message to someone and iOS is just absolutely bungling it and preventing me from typing what I want to type.
I’m betting “a snapshot” would show you mis-hitting the keyboard (again.) I sympathize — BT,DT,HT-S. Predictive text can always stand improvement, but I believe this is a user problem at the core. Fortunately for me, this doesn’t even come close to being what keeps me up at night.
Like anybody using a 5‑button mouse, I have the side buttons set to Back/Forward in Safari.
Default keyboard shortcuts being
So far so fine.
What drives me crazy is switching to my native language keyboard. Inexplicably, Safari changes the shortcuts to
I mean, it's nice Apple thought of bilingual users using muscle memory for the most used Safari shortcut, but maybe the Back/Forward system function could have worked better? Can't get it to work in Finder either half of the time.
Default keyboard shortcuts being
⌘[ & ⌘]So far so fine.
What drives me crazy is switching to my native language keyboard. Inexplicably, Safari changes the shortcuts to
⌘é & ⌘ü keeping the physical key location (just an example, not going to out my native layout here sorry). Which also breaks the Back/Forward function on my mouse.I mean, it's nice Apple thought of bilingual users using muscle memory for the most used Safari shortcut, but maybe the Back/Forward system function could have worked better? Can't get it to work in Finder either half of the time.
I'd love to be confident enough to enable sync to Apple Music on my Mac, especially snice I have several thousand songs I'd ripped at 128k MP3 back in the day that I've love to get that sweet free AAC upgrade for.
But I have a lot of custom screenshot artwork for live songs that aren't in any music databases, like live bootlegs and I know several people who lost their custom artwork for their bootleg recordings. And I know a lot more who got served different artwork when downloading music locally that had been synced to the cloud by Apple Music - eg getting artwork for a Greatest Hits album instead of the original album someone owned.
Unless they are on iTunes Store/Apple Music - Apple won't sync music videos across iCloud. To sync these non-iCloud music videos to my iPad, I have to turn OFF iCloud Music Library - which immediately blocks any Apple Music files from being copied over.
So I have a choice 1) Abide by Apple Music limitations 2) Actually watch what I want to watch.
I chose #2
Screw you Apple.
So I have a choice 1) Abide by Apple Music limitations 2) Actually watch what I want to watch.
I chose #2
Screw you Apple.
The best solution I've found for side buttons is a little FOSS app called SensibleSideButtons, which basically binds the buttons to the old three-finger swipe navigation gestures (regardless of if you have a trackpad or not), which seems to work pretty much universally.
This is a good app recommendation. I use BetterTouchTool and / or Logitech (depending on the input device) to set it. BTT also allows you to map mouse butons to trackpad gestures as well!
That's awesome, thanks! Another candidate for the Perpetual Tricks thread, if you'd be so kind?
The best part is that it's remapper‑agnostic – I can still use USBOverdrive or whatever other app for mapping other buttons or macros and keep the M4 & M5 simply mapped as M4 & M5, whereas SSB takes them over.
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.
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?
Does anyone know where the live translation settings are? Upgraded my iPhone, plug in my AirPods. Asked to download language stuff, great. It times out because I was on public transport. Cannot find where those settings exist to retrigger the download of languages.
FFS WHY DO YOU MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND SHIT IN THE SETTINGS APP.
FFS WHY DO YOU MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND SHIT IN THE SETTINGS APP.
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.
As someone who published an ebook, I cannot emphasize enough that you want to buy your ebooks from Google whenever possible.
Amazon's Kindle format is a disaster, as an author it's almost impossible to get anything other than straight prose to show up as you intend.
Apple of course only works with Apple devices and then you only get the DRM'ed ePub. But at least you get the right formatting.
But with Google you can get both an ePub and PDF version without DRM. So this works just as well on your Apple stuff but you have many, many more options.
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.
I do buy a number of books elsewhere in ePub format and read them in Apple Books.
(Though the Books app starts to get flaky if too many of your ebooks weren't purchased thru Apple.)
And there are publishers who sell DRM free books thru Apple. It's not ALL DRM, just enough to be annoying.
Speaking of Books, why the can't I set theme settings individually for books. I'm bouncing between two right now, and one is hilaribig and the other is readable. When I make the stupidly large one readable and go back to the other book, its text is unreadably small.
Also, always opens to Home when I want it to open to Library, and the UI in general is crap, but those are whole other rants.
Also, always opens to Home when I want it to open to Library, and the UI in general is crap, but those are whole other rants.
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 
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Apple’s Books.app has gotten so bad in recent years it’s like watching QVC for the movies. And Podcasts.app is not far behind, constantly trying to hawk shitty subscriptions like the worst stereotype of a sleazy used car salesman. These days, opening either of those abominations is like opening the refrigerator in your own kitchen and having to get past an obnoxious grocery sales guy every damn time before you can get to the fucking milk you’ve already paid for. Infuriating, this.
Best ebook reader I’ve found to cover my needs is Yomu. Available on all (Apple-) platforms, no subscription bullshit, syncs via iCloud and knows to get out of the way. Initial setup is a bit clunky, but it’s highly configurable and for me at least a do-it-once-and-be-done affair.
Only (to me) real downside is that the app ‘phones home’ with telemetry- and usage data, which is why once I come across a viable alternative that does respect my privacy, I’ll be be heading thataway. But for the moment, connections to yomu-reader.com, bugsnag.com and telemetrydeck.com are easily blocked using an outgoing firewall Little Snitch for macOS and/or one à la Privacy Pro for iOS/iPadOS.
Lightyears better than Books.app, even though that’s a pathetically low bar these days.
Best ebook reader I’ve found to cover my needs is Yomu. Available on all (Apple-) platforms, no subscription bullshit, syncs via iCloud and knows to get out of the way. Initial setup is a bit clunky, but it’s highly configurable and for me at least a do-it-once-and-be-done affair.
Only (to me) real downside is that the app ‘phones home’ with telemetry- and usage data, which is why once I come across a viable alternative that does respect my privacy, I’ll be be heading thataway. But for the moment, connections to yomu-reader.com, bugsnag.com and telemetrydeck.com are easily blocked using an outgoing firewall Little Snitch for macOS and/or one à la Privacy Pro for iOS/iPadOS.
Lightyears better than Books.app, even though that’s a pathetically low bar these days.
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.
We've had this discussion before, but I'll reiterate my take. I believe most, if not all, ebooks should be free and include a link to pay the publisher/author directly with a suggested price and option to pay whatever amount you want. People who would pay $10 for the book will read the book pay $10 for the book. People who would hem and haw about about paying $10 for the book would read the book and probably pay $5 for the book. People who are cheapskates with a conscious will read the book and pay $1-3 for the book. People who want to read the book but would never pay for the book would read the book.
See what's common among all those options?
We've had this discussion before, but I'll reiterate my take. I believe most, if not all, ebooks should be free and include a link to pay the publisher/author directly with a suggested price and option to pay whatever amount you want. People who would pay $10 for the book will read the book pay $10 for the book. People who would hem and haw about about paying $10 for the book would read the book and probably pay $5 for the book. People who are cheapskates with a conscious will read the book and pay $1-3 for the book. People who want to read the book but would never pay for the book would read the book.
See what's common among all those options?
I wrote three books. One relatively, but not super successful with a traditional publisher. Another, less so. And a third, self-published on Amazon, Apple and Google.
I don't like the idea that you get the book without limitations and then decide how much you want to pay. I'm afraid very many people will not pay.
Originally, you'd pay something like $40 for the paper book. Then, something like $15 for the ebook. (Not a good deal for me as I would get 10% in both cases. Later deals were better.)
I charge $10 for my ebook and that's a price that I think is very reasonable for the content you get. Note that on Amazon you get a Kindle version that has severe limitations, Apple is generally a DRM ePub and Google usually no DRM and you may get both an ePub and a PDF file. So buy your ebooks on Google if you can.
I don't like the idea that you get the book without limitations and then decide how much you want to pay. I'm afraid very many people will not pay.
Originally, you'd pay something like $40 for the paper book. Then, something like $15 for the ebook. (Not a good deal for me as I would get 10% in both cases. Later deals were better.)
I charge $10 for my ebook and that's a price that I think is very reasonable for the content you get. Note that on Amazon you get a Kindle version that has severe limitations, Apple is generally a DRM ePub and Google usually no DRM and you may get both an ePub and a PDF file. So buy your ebooks on Google if you can.
One redeeming quality of the Books app is that the store can be disabled completely.
I'm a little surprised ebook DRM is still a thing-- Tor and Baen (among others) have been DRM-free for years and it hasn't adversely affected sales for them. And Tor's managing it from within one of the Big Five publishers (they're a Macmillan subsidiary).
I don't think pay-as-you-want is necessarily a great thing for authors, though.
I don't think pay-as-you-want is necessarily a great thing for authors, though.
Google DRMs books as requested by the publisher or author just like Apple and Amazon (Google uses Adobe Digital Editions, Apple a variant of Fairplay from the iTunes store, and Amazon their own thing). It's nearly impossible to get a DRM-free book out of Amazon these days, though (you'd need to download through a Kindle device or app then transfer it out, then use Calibre to convert to standard ePub).
I'll do both. Support the creator with a purchase, then "acquire" separately for my actual use.
WTF APPLE, not only you had to round window corners in Tahoe, you even rounded the fucking mouse cursor!
I certainly bought my expensive 5K Retina monitor only to see a blurry mouse cursor, right...
I certainly bought my expensive 5K Retina monitor only to see a blurry mouse cursor, right...
I just got a new Microsoft Surface laptop with Windows 11 installed and all I can say is holy shit Apple all is forgiven. I welcome Liquid Glass with open arms.
