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If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

macworld.com

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Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#231

Post by noneeeed »

makecheck wrote: post #204

While this article focused primarily on things being left unmaintained, etc. there is also a huge problem with things being touched for no reason and making them worse . When handed what must be a mountain of bugs and unfinished items, why the hell did they prioritize things like breaking notifications and Safari tabs, for instance? They’re in a position where engineering resources desperately need to be closing gaps…

The current UX of notifications is terrible. After months of using it I still don't understand the mental model. A notification comes up, I hover and wait for the cross to appear and click it. But then some time later I unlock my machine or something happens and apparantly all my notifications are still there for some reason and I have to clear them again, only this time they are in groups and I have to clear multiple groups.

Somehow Apple took a UX flow that was fine and made something that regularly makes me feel stupid because I don't understand what I'm supposed to do to make it behave in a way that makes sense.

Notifications are such a simple thing, but they somehow made them complex.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#232

Post by passivate »

hmrr wrote: post #205
passivate wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like your PC vendor installed a whole bunch of crap. I put W10 on a fresh PC just a couple of months back and it was a painless process. It was a W10 Pro ISO from Microsoft.

I did the same. I disagree. It required two rounds of reboots even though it was the latest iso and the Ethernet didn’t work (i219). Then whenever the thing goes to sleep all the windows move to the top left of the screen when it wakes up.

Sorry to hear you're facing issues with the install! I simply presented my own experience, I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, so I am not sure what you're disagreeing with!

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#233

Post by vanilla_nut »

AlexandrB wrote: post #88
alphaomegacode wrote: post #70

As an anecdotal example that may be relevant, I wanted to upgrade to Monterey and my Mac Mini said there wasn't enough room. Hooked up a Western Digital external drive that I had used on previous Macs and launched Time Machine. And that's when it started. Time Machine presented what seemed like a stack of Finder windows in the middle, a timeline with hash marks on the right-side and the only button highlighted was th…

Time Machine has been neglected for so long . The UI was never great for power users, but at least it worked. For a novice computer user it was a pretty good "set it and forget it" experience. In the last 3 years it has become so unreliable (every time it tries to backup it claims the backup is corrupted and needs to be re-created) that I've given up and switched to Carbon Copy Cloner.

Ever since they stopped building wireless routers, Apple has forgotten Time Machine in favor of pushing iCloud backups for separate services.

But there’s still no good alternative to Apple’s old routers. I tried to buy a new router for gigabit internet last year, and the interfaces are so piss-poor and the performance so pathetic across the board that I ended up getting the last generation of Airport Extreme instead. I get 800ish down, 500ish up on wifi, so as far as I can tell I’m not missing out on anything aside from 6E, which my devices don’t support anyway.

I really hope Apple starts making routers with Apple Silicon soon. With incorporated Time Capsule backups, too. That’s the only way that they’ll stop neglecting the software.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#234

Post by callmeal »

aunty_helen wrote: post #77
SamuelAdams wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey so I’ll be getting my first MacBook Pro in a couple weeks, so I’m still learning the details about OS X. I’m coming from a windows / Linux background. I thought the OS shipped with its own firewall? Would you recommend using a third party firewall despite having its own?

Get little snitch. This is a firewall that dosen't care what apple thinks is useful. There was some controversy in the previous year because apple tried to deprecate the firewall hooks and allow their junk passed the replacement they offered. I'm leaving apple for linux as we speak for two reasons, privacy and they can't help but mess with shit every time they release an update. The most recent, this week they releas…

>There was some controversy in the previous year because apple tried to deprecate the firewall hooks and allow their junk passed the replacement they offered.

Funny how framing something that's true (allowing apple software to bypass firewalls) is seen as a controversy. See previous discussion on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#235

Post by jaywalk »

rchaud wrote: post #198
loudthing wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big yikes.

Remember that the 2007 iPhone demo had showed AT&T reception at full strength? That was hardcoded for the purpose of the Keynote. I recall iPhones having iffy phone reception for at least the first couple of years.

Not AT&T, but Cingular. Although I believe that Cingular was gone by the time the iPhone actually launched.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#236

Post by Gys »

gbear605 wrote: post #216
Gys wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go to Apple Is there an easy way to do that in the moment? Genuine question. I (we) have many Apple devices and in my experience ‘it just works’ until it does not. And if not you are out of luck. No errors, no warnings, nothing. It ‘just does not work’. Googling mostly does nog give any usable solutions. I would love to gave an instant phone or chat service. For free, because I feel like like really paying a lot al…

It’s not instant, but Apple phone support/chat support is free and the wait times are usually <5 minutes in my experience.

Interesting. Also in Europe? I will try this week. I often have problems and am pretty sure a new one will turn up soon.

AirDrop is a notoriously returning problem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. I consider myself tech savvy and understand how it works, but AirDrop is often useless.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#237

Post by SavantIdiot »

plorkyeran wrote: post #121
alphaomegacode wrote: post #70

As an anecdotal example that may be relevant, I wanted to upgrade to Monterey and my Mac Mini said there wasn't enough room. Hooked up a Western Digital external drive that I had used on previous Macs and launched Time Machine. And that's when it started. Time Machine presented what seemed like a stack of Finder windows in the middle, a timeline with hash marks on the right-side and the only button highlighted was th…

Time Machine's insane UI isn't an example of Apple's software quality slipping; it's basically unchanged since it first shipped 14 years ago. It's more of just an example of how Apple's software never was as good as some people would like to pretend.

What do you hate about Time Machine?

I've used it since 2013. Every time I've bought a new MBP, I simply use time machine to restore and my new one looks exactly like my old one. Never had an issue.

I find it far easier to use than Duplicity, Iron Mountain ConnectedBackup, or Carbonite, all of which I've used at other jobs. (All of those require fine-grained backup tweaking that requires a lot of diligence to check boxes and set policies, and then fuss with awkward dialogs when trying to recover... duplicity is so effing weird... Time Machine just works and the time scroll seems very clever compared to the other three.)

I'd be interested to hear your problem(s) with it?

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#238

Post by noneeeed »

AlexandrB wrote: post #88
alphaomegacode wrote: post #70

As an anecdotal example that may be relevant, I wanted to upgrade to Monterey and my Mac Mini said there wasn't enough room. Hooked up a Western Digital external drive that I had used on previous Macs and launched Time Machine. And that's when it started. Time Machine presented what seemed like a stack of Finder windows in the middle, a timeline with hash marks on the right-side and the only button highlighted was th…

Time Machine has been neglected for so long . The UI was never great for power users, but at least it worked. For a novice computer user it was a pretty good "set it and forget it" experience. In the last 3 years it has become so unreliable (every time it tries to backup it claims the backup is corrupted and needs to be re-created) that I've given up and switched to Carbon Copy Cloner.

Many years ago I worked at a place where we all had external drives plugged into cinema displays that acted as Time Machine drives for our laptops. The backups regularly failed, OSX would suddenly decide it didn't like it and you'd have to clear it and start again. I don't believe Time Machine could reliably cope with drives that were periodically disconnected perhaps. I had the same problem with a NAS device and my personal mac, it would periodically just decide the backups were screwed.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#239

Post by gcanyon »

noneeeed wrote: post #231
makecheck wrote: post #204

While this article focused primarily on things being left unmaintained, etc. there is also a huge problem with things being touched for no reason and making them worse . When handed what must be a mountain of bugs and unfinished items, why the hell did they prioritize things like breaking notifications and Safari tabs, for instance? They’re in a position where engineering resources desperately need to be closing gaps…

The current UX of notifications is terrible . After months of using it I still don't understand the mental model. A notification comes up, I hover and wait for the cross to appear and click it. But then some time later I unlock my machine or something happens and apparantly all my notifications are still there for some reason and I have to clear them again, only this time they are in groups and I have to clear multip…

For me the issue is notifications that appear, then disappear, and I can’t find them again, or what they refer to. If it’s important enough to do a notification, it’s important enough to keep in a notification log that I can go through chronologically, search, group, sort, etc. I will high five the person who tells me how that feature exists and I’ve just missed it.

Re: If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter

#240

Post by [deleted] »

josephg wrote: post #224
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but a vanilla Windows 10 install isn't very bloated imo. Did you perhaps start with an image provided by the laptop vendor? It's not Microsoft's fault that they're usually full of trash.

Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is from the perspective of the user. All the windows computers at the computer shop ship with bloated 3rd party crap. Except the apple computers. It’s also not Google’s fault that most android vendors don’t support old devices for long. Or Linux’s fault that hardware vendors make linux drivers an afterthought. As a consumer, I don’t care why any of this happens. I…

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