Photos? That's just never going to work in any way. I'm still on iPhoto.
Perpetual Random Apple Rants Thread
- Thread starter gregatron5
- Start date
It's insanely difficult and hard to predict how changing iTunes Music output is going to land. I have an ancient Airport Express puck hooked up to a very much more ancient 1960 Philips radio. Yes, takes 100 W to sound just about as good as my 2025 M4 MacBook Air using up single digit Watts, but whatever.
Getting bothiTunes Music and the system to output to both local and that airplay target is supremely difficult. Then again, when it succeeds, the audio is very much in sync. This is Apple showing both how good it can be when it cares and how bad it can be when it doesn't.
Getting both
Being 2026.... what is so hard about telling the user WHICH programs is inhibiting eject of a USB disk?
How can any sane person on A not fix this usability aspect that has been around or 23 years....
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How can any sane person on A not fix this usability aspect that has been around or 23 years....
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I have an external SSD that I use for Time Machine and occasionally get those warnings when I try to eject it for no apparent reason. The other day, it was complaining about the disk being in use despite the fact that (a) Time Machine wasn’t running and (b) no apps were open. What’s using the disk then?!
Most often is one the mds deamon (aka Spotlight), but those are UI less processes so the alert in Finder will not show the name.
What problems do you have? I use this functionality frequently and have ~no issues (using the Remote app to control the music library on a Mac Mini to multi-output to multiple AirPlay destinations).
A lot of the time Music just doesn't want to play anything. Switching a no longer available airplay target to an available output doesn't help and I need to quit and restart Music.
(Obviously it doesn't help that I have two Apple TV 4Ks, an Onkyo receiver that accepts airplay, that Airport Express which is disconnected from power 99.8% of the time, an LG TV that at one point was an airplay target but now holds me hostage to its new privacy policies, the built-in speakers, my external monitor's audio out, an Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter (prefer that one as I can change the volume using the keyboard with it), two sets of Airpod Pros and an additional bluetooth headset.)
(Obviously it doesn't help that I have two Apple TV 4Ks, an Onkyo receiver that accepts airplay, that Airport Express which is disconnected from power 99.8% of the time, an LG TV that at one point was an airplay target but now holds me hostage to its new privacy policies, the built-in speakers, my external monitor's audio out, an Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter (prefer that one as I can change the volume using the keyboard with it), two sets of Airpod Pros and an additional bluetooth headset.)
How the fuck do you change an applications photo access level once it’s been set? Did Apple never consider that this might be something a user might want to do?
I do it through Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos > app [toggle access]
(Yes, Apple considered this something a user might do.)
(Yes, Apple considered this something a user might do.)
At least they have an option for linear mouse movements now. Maybe in a few decades, a linear mouse wheel, too.
I remember digging in old NeXT source code to understand their acceleration curve file format, to hack it, back in 2006 or so. Easily the second worst code I ever seen.
The problem with making mouse non linear is that it makes the final position depend not just on the movement but on the velocity during the movement, and also depend on exact moments when it is sampled. Basically, as far as a human is concerned, the response is no longer even deterministic, and if you are able to hit buttons quickly with the mouse (without eye to hand delay), it is supremely irritating when you can't disable mouse acceleration. This is not something anyone can ever simply get used to and then be able to hit a button as quickly as they would with a linear responding mouse, for the fundamental reason that the exact same mouse movement, offset in time by half the sampling interval, will land the cursor in a different position in the end. A leftover from the ball mice era (1990s), that persisted until 2023.
I dunno man, I'm fairly good with doing precise mouse work with the stock acceleration curves. My brain is able to factor in acceleration to manage how fast I move my finger for the degree of desired precision. It's not particularly conscious anymore.
Linear seems really annoying every time I encounter systems with linear movement.
Linear seems really annoying every time I encounter systems with linear movement.
Mouse acceleration is not a leftover from the ball mice era. It's there for a good reason, which is to make the mouse more precise when you move it slowly.
I never had a problem with mouse acceleration.
A linear mouse wheel is awful IMO. When I see PC users scrolling like crazy just to move to the next page, I feel tof them.
I never had a problem with mouse acceleration.
A linear mouse wheel is awful IMO. When I see PC users scrolling like crazy just to move to the next page, I feel tof them.
Yeah, no. If your use case is hitting a giant assed button that’s on a small screen, then maybe linear works for you. But precisely hitting an insertion point or edit point in a document or photo on a large screen is super frustrating if the mouse doesn’t slow down its acceleration when you (totally naturally) slow down your mousing as you approach the target. Linear scrolling is just horrible UX.
Never had trouble hitting small items quickly with linear movement. Human hands already have the nonlinearity required for precise movement (normally, perhaps when I get old I will turn nonlinearity back on).
You needed this for ball mice because of inertia of the ball. Now all it is doing is making you do a bunch of additional sight driven small corrections before you hit whatever you aim for, slowing you down, but you are stuck with it because you are used to it, which is because they take decades to add a checkbox. edit: and the worst case for acceleration is intermediate distances, where with acceleration if you are doing it too fast it'll not only drop precision but add randomness to the position, because back in 1990s with ball mice nobody actually thought "oh this will make the position depend on the exact time the movement starts, relative to the polling period".
As far as scroll wheel goes the problem is that it scrolls too little when you are going slow. I ended up mapping the side buttons on a logitech mouse to page up and page down so I don’t even have to use the scrollwheel, even if i have my other hand off the keyboard when reading something. I don't use the scrollwheel for getting to end of pages, I use it to scroll when reading.
I think their mousing comes from the same place as not knowing what inhibits eject. They make a decent stab at UX initially but take a very long time to address UX issues that crop up due to changes in the other technology, be it the demise of ball mice or having more applications open and users knowing less about what the apps are doing. They'll eventually show what inhibits eject, it'll just take a long time.
edit: also while I'm at it, it seems OSX Chrome's scrolling is slightly incorrect for pages that keep an element at the top of the page reducing the actual scrolling space. Which I normally wouldn't care about but my employer mandates use of Chrome for accessing company stuff like github pull requests. If I hit page down on the comments page of a pull request, it skips several lines, it's a slightly-more-than-a-page down. That is more of a google rant though, Safari seems to work OK.
You needed this for ball mice because of inertia of the ball. Now all it is doing is making you do a bunch of additional sight driven small corrections before you hit whatever you aim for, slowing you down, but you are stuck with it because you are used to it, which is because they take decades to add a checkbox. edit: and the worst case for acceleration is intermediate distances, where with acceleration if you are doing it too fast it'll not only drop precision but add randomness to the position, because back in 1990s with ball mice nobody actually thought "oh this will make the position depend on the exact time the movement starts, relative to the polling period".
As far as scroll wheel goes the problem is that it scrolls too little when you are going slow. I ended up mapping the side buttons on a logitech mouse to page up and page down so I don’t even have to use the scrollwheel, even if i have my other hand off the keyboard when reading something. I don't use the scrollwheel for getting to end of pages, I use it to scroll when reading.
I think their mousing comes from the same place as not knowing what inhibits eject. They make a decent stab at UX initially but take a very long time to address UX issues that crop up due to changes in the other technology, be it the demise of ball mice or having more applications open and users knowing less about what the apps are doing. They'll eventually show what inhibits eject, it'll just take a long time.
edit: also while I'm at it, it seems OSX Chrome's scrolling is slightly incorrect for pages that keep an element at the top of the page reducing the actual scrolling space. Which I normally wouldn't care about but my employer mandates use of Chrome for accessing company stuff like github pull requests. If I hit page down on the comments page of a pull request, it skips several lines, it's a slightly-more-than-a-page down. That is more of a google rant though, Safari seems to work OK.
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Using Mail on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS (as a pretty casual email user) has some mind boggling inconsistencies and constant regressions.
Selecting "Move To" may provide a default suggestion, depending on the platform.
Mail learns that emails from my bank go to "Financial" and Order Confirmation emails go to "Orders" on said platforms. Until it forgets and decides anything that I'm going to move must be going to "Important".
Selecting "Move To" may provide a default suggestion, depending on the platform.
Mail learns that emails from my bank go to "Financial" and Order Confirmation emails go to "Orders" on said platforms. Until it forgets and decides anything that I'm going to move must be going to "Important".
And acceleration (positively) amplifies how human hands naturally work (for most people). Just 'cause it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't make sense - or work well - for the common case. You don't need to retcon an explanation to fit the perspective you're trying to universalize.
Mouse inertia is due to the mass of the moving peripheral and applies equally to optical mice.
Why can't I rewind to the earlier part of the live event stream? We used to be able to do this in the past. You can't even do it on the YouTube stream (where they normally support that kind of thing). I came into the keynote late, I wanna see the opening!
Ball is not perfectly coupled to the table (and little encoder wheels are not perfectly coupled to the ball, either), resulting in positional error especially for large quick movements.
Good optical mice on the other hand does not miss steps at all - if you move it 1 inch, it will report however many points of movement its resolution is.
Yes, the inertia of the mouse's body will act upon the hand, but in a way that proprioception can sense and compensate for, kind of how you can still complete the touch-your-nose-with-your-eyes-closed test while holding a mouse in your hand.
edit: Basically the big change from ball mice to good optical mice is that with old-school ball mice any fast movement will lose distance, plus the accuracy was pretty low requiring many rounds of visual feedback from looking at the pointer. Modern optical mice, however, is near perfect at measuring the movement of the mouse. Which allows you to e.g. get very near a button even with your eyes closed. edit: in fact I posted that edit by closing my eyes, then clicking the "save" button, with the mouse cursor starting about quarter of the screen height's away from it.
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What retcon? Apple itself added the checkbox for linear mouse. It just took them unreasonably long. You don't have to justify it as some sort of timeless apple wisdom, as apple users used to, because it's over. They ultimately responded to the changes in how you can use the mouse that were enabled by greater accuracy of optical mice. edit: also I very much doubt they'd have added that checkbox if we were still using ball mice. It is not an useful checkbox to have for ball mice.
I have a bunch of tracks from The Beatles in my music library, some of which are from the “1” album. Everything shows up as you would expect in the Music app on my Mac, but in CarPlay, nothing from the “1” album shows up under The Beatles. It’s like the tracks just don’t exist – there’s simply no way to access them through the CarPlay UI.
Asking Siri to play them also doesn’t work, because Siri can’t “see” them either, so it will instead play the next-closest-sounding track in my library (e.g. if I ask it to play “Hey Jude,” it’ll play “Hey Ya” by Outkast).
So the only way to play any of these tracks in CarPlay is to start playback from my phone. Bizarre!
Asking Siri to play them also doesn’t work, because Siri can’t “see” them either, so it will instead play the next-closest-sounding track in my library (e.g. if I ask it to play “Hey Jude,” it’ll play “Hey Ya” by Outkast).
So the only way to play any of these tracks in CarPlay is to start playback from my phone. Bizarre!
So, my Watch will not receive the new watchOS update. It's a series 8, so not that old (released in 2022). I was going to upgrade it probably next year or 2028, depending on how interesting the upgrade next year was going to be. We'll see, maybe I will keep it until next year and let it fall behind in terms of software support
Dropping support for the first Ultra is even more egregious. WatchOS doesn’t even add anything new except letting the stupid workout buddy run without a phone.
"Apple has seemingly listened to this feedback, as iOS 27 lets you turn off the dictation button in the Settings app under Apps → Messages → Show in Text Field."
I'd never thought I'd see the day.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/09/ios-27-fixes-justin-bieber-problem/
I'd never thought I'd see the day.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/09/ios-27-fixes-justin-bieber-problem/
Digital_Dreamer
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Not sure how many use the AppleTV app on a iPad to view shared movies from a Mac, but my frustration with the app has been long standing — years. If you pause and switch to another app when viewing a shared video in AppleTV, it will throw an error when you return and attempt to play again, forcing you to quit the app and relaunch, load your library, find the video and find where you left off. Every time. Ugg.
I have profound hearing loss, so must use the captions. Now, a recent update was released that makes it even more difficult managing the captions. If you rewind a few seconds in a video, the captions are in "Skip Back" mode, which is "on" for those who want to catch what dialog they missed. Then, it turns the captions off when it reaches the point where you originally rewound. This, requires that I keep having to turn captions back on.
Does anyone ever test this stuff?
I have profound hearing loss, so must use the captions. Now, a recent update was released that makes it even more difficult managing the captions. If you rewind a few seconds in a video, the captions are in "Skip Back" mode, which is "on" for those who want to catch what dialog they missed. Then, it turns the captions off when it reaches the point where you originally rewound. This, requires that I keep having to turn captions back on.
Does anyone ever test this stuff?
Anyone else having trouble with emailing groups using Mail.app in Sequoia (15.7.7)?
I have a bunch of groups defined in Contacts, and for years I've been able to address an email to any of these groups and it automagically expands to the list of email addresses of all members of the group. So I can send an email to 'lab' and it goes to everyone in the 'lab' group defined in Contacts. But now it doesn't. Now when I send an email to 'lab', 'lab' turns into the email address of the first member of that group in Contacts, but none of the others. WTF? Anyone else seeing this?
I have a bunch of groups defined in Contacts, and for years I've been able to address an email to any of these groups and it automagically expands to the list of email addresses of all members of the group. So I can send an email to 'lab' and it goes to everyone in the 'lab' group defined in Contacts. But now it doesn't. Now when I send an email to 'lab', 'lab' turns into the email address of the first member of that group in Contacts, but none of the others. WTF? Anyone else seeing this?
So, with iOS 27, Apple has invented a 56th* way to invoke Siri: Pulling down from the center-top of the screen.
Can you think of a different action that traditionally has been invoked when pulling down from the center-top of the screen? One that has been around since iOS 5? One that is 15 years old?
Notification Center. Yes, now if you want notifications, you need to pull down from the top-left, because top-center now belongs to Siri. You know, just in case being able to invoke Siri with:
the power button
by double tapping on the home button
the new dedicated Siri App
by saying “Siri”
by saying “Hey Siri”
by calling it with a Shortcut
By pressing the crown on an Apple Watch
by saying “Siri” on an Apple Watch
by saying “Hey Siri” on an Apple Watch
by long pressing AirPods
In case all of those things were not enough, now Siri replaces the most common gesture for Notification Center.
ETA: I missed one: pulling down to invoke Spotlight now invokes a split Spotlight/Siri bar.
Can you think of a different action that traditionally has been invoked when pulling down from the center-top of the screen? One that has been around since iOS 5? One that is 15 years old?
Notification Center. Yes, now if you want notifications, you need to pull down from the top-left, because top-center now belongs to Siri. You know, just in case being able to invoke Siri with:
the power button
by double tapping on the home button
the new dedicated Siri App
by saying “Siri”
by saying “Hey Siri”
by calling it with a Shortcut
By pressing the crown on an Apple Watch
by saying “Siri” on an Apple Watch
by saying “Hey Siri” on an Apple Watch
by long pressing AirPods
In case all of those things were not enough, now Siri replaces the most common gesture for Notification Center.
ETA: I missed one: pulling down to invoke Spotlight now invokes a split Spotlight/Siri bar.
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For. Fuck's Sake.
I've just gotten used to the gesture controls on iOS now, and have bitched quite a bit about the accessibility issues with how so much of it is structured. Now they are going to make me swipe from the furthest extreme just to see notifications, when I already have dexterity/mobility issues with my hands. Bad enough that's the standard for the goddamned "back button" (that isn't even an iOS function and is instead up to app developers to implement), but.. Jesus goddamned buttscratching shiteating Christ.
Invoking Notification Center is also weirdly not as sensitive as invoking Control Center. A light flick on the right will reliably pull down Control Center, but the same amount on the left just causes it to peek and roll back up. You have to either pull it down half way or flick with more speed.
You can also swipe up on the lock screen after it's unlocked to get to Notification Center. I just do that because it's easier than swiping from the top.
It just means that I have yet another option for accidentally triggering Siri. I just wish deliberately triggering Siri would work more reliably. I manage it moree often by accident than when I actually want to use it.
I've recommended iOS devices to older people in my family or among my friends in the past because they were almost fool-proof to use.
Apple has changed so much and added so much cruft that my dad at some point could no longer use his phone, and he knows how to use compuiters and had an iPhone for almost a decade at this point.
Another regression; iMessage used to impress me with it's ability to synch between multiple devices such that a conversation I had on my phone also showed up on my iMac and/or iPad, and visa versa. That's worked flawlessly for years. But now it doesn't. Conversations on my phone are frequently not updated on my iMac, or sometimes don't exist at all. This doesn't even seem to depend on if the conversations are with other iDevices.
I hate to admit it, but enshitification appears to be running rampant at Apple these days.
I hate to admit it, but enshitification appears to be running rampant at Apple these days.
It works flawlessly for me across iPhone, iPad, and multiple Macs despite running my Macs on Sequoia while the other devices are on 26. Doesn’t even to seem to be a problem if the other person or group is not using Messages but RCS/sms. My devices range from 2 to 5 years old.
Also, even if it was a bug or no longer working, that is not enshitification, not in even in the slightest. Unless that word no longer means what Doctorow defined it to mean (with a fairly large amount of writing and examples).
Also, even if it was a bug or no longer working, that is not enshitification, not in even in the slightest. Unless that word no longer means what Doctorow defined it to mean (with a fairly large amount of writing and examples).