This is much older than 10 years
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79384/audio-balanc...
Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
41–50 of 237 posts
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#42The fact that this has existed for so long and is common enough to warrant a third party program devoted to resolving the issue is an embarrassment for Apple.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=1...
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#43I have been producing music on macOS for 8+ years on multiple laptops (from x86 to ARM), different external DACs, wired and wireless headphones, etc. I am very sensitive to L/R balance and sometimes have to adjust the panning ever so slightly if my ears are off (e.g., after pressure change during a flight) in phone’s Accessibility settings.
The fact that there is an Apple-specific L/R audio balance bug, which now seemingly everyone suffers from, is complete news to me. Sometimes I feel like I am living in a different reality…
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Following the link, and a few more, describes at as changing "when volume buttons are pressed during high CPU load". That is perhaps random-seeming, but also way different from actually being reandom. I have never used a (modern) Mac long enough to listen to audio, so I have no experience with this I just thought it sounded odd. Now having learned that, I really ( really ) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it…
> Now having learned that, I really (really) wonder how such a bug can happen, and how it can stay ignored for so long by the always-ranted-about masters of vertically integrated luxury computers. More the former, though. My first guess was that "volume up" is actually "increase volume on left channel" and "increase volume on right channel" And when there's high CPU load, one of those commands gets lost or ignored fo…
That's an even simpler (=better, often) theory! Thanks!
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#45What's the audio left/right balance bug?
To quote Apple's own (no longer available) KB-article from 2012 [1]: "In some cases the audio balance may unexpectedly drift towards the left or right channel. This can happen if you rapidly press the volume up or down keys while the computer's microprocessor is under heavy load." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120630125615/https://support.a...
Wow, I can't even start to imagine how this bug came into existence (and why it should take so long to fix it)...
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#46Reminds me of my "favourite" macOS issue: alternative keyboard language input is carried over to the next app I switch to, or Spotlight. Almost 20 years of forcing me to switch back to the default language hundreds of times a day. Any idea if it can be fixed by an app? Thanks!
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should they? Are these people going to abandon their Macs because of these bugs? Obviously not, so why should Apple spend any money at all fixing them?
In the Jobs years it was because the person at the tob intrinsically gave a shit about making a good thing. But you're right, it certainly seems that's the kind of game Cook is playing. Better than Windows, but no better, and keep the extra money.
It's a winning business strategy, especially when you have legions of die-hard customers who won't leave you. Microsoft has a similar situation (though many probably won't leave MS for different reasons), so it's in their business interest to increase profits by subjugating their customers with annoying ads baked into the OS. What do they have to lose? It's not like Apple's/MS's customers are going to switch to Linux (which has its own problems of course).
To be fair to Apple, it does sound like this is a somewhat rare bug (only seen in high-load situations?). It's not as bad, I think, as ads in the OS. So, as you say, Apple just needs to be a little better than MS and that's good enough.
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#48Some longstanding bugs/limitations in macOS/iOS make me honestly wonder if any higher ups at Apple actually use their own products, or do they just have fleshbots (human assistants/secretaries) do everything for them..
You should first ask if those problems have any major impact and if they impact the higher ups. Probably the answer will be "no".
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#49I have been producing music on macOS for 8+ years on multiple laptops (from x86 to ARM), different external DACs, wired and wireless headphones, etc. I am very sensitive to L/R balance and sometimes have to adjust the panning ever so slightly if my ears are off (e.g., after pressure change during a flight) in phone’s Accessibility settings. The fact that there is an Apple-specific L/R audio balance bug, which now see…
I can imagine, but it happens often to me. It takes some time to notice that something feels off, until I remember. With the app I get the audio-balance-restored notification every now and then. The thing is, it's annoying subtle.
Re: Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
#50as a long term apple user, their blatant disregard for fixing bugs is really starting to piss me off to the point where next time i upgrade my phone and computer, i'm probably going back to android/linux. their software is literally a microsoft-tier experience (maybe even worse at this point) across the board now, and i'm not going to keep paying a premium for non-premium bullshit full of stupid bugs any junior dev could figure out.
these are just the bugs i can think of off the top of my head which have existed for literal years:
- on iphone, the haptic and sound feedback from tapping letters on the keyboard has a noticeable lag to it half the time.
- on iphone, the volume of all system sounds shoots up to 100% without warning, even if you're wearing headphones. this bug also reverses the volume level, so you have to turn the volume up to make it go down.
- on iphone, browser tabs just get stuck displaying one page (or sometimes nothing at all) no matter how many times to try to navigate or refresh, and you have to either kill safari and restart it or close the tab and open a new one.
- on mac laptops, the battery drains while sleeping at a rate of about 20% per day. i've been a mac user since 2015 but only since i got an m1 max macbook pro, nearly every time i open the lid, it's dead.
- on mac, sometimes external storage just doesnt show up at all, restarting doesn't work, waiting doesn't work, you literally just have to try again tomorrow and hope for the best.
- on apple music (any platform), music will just stop and it will tell you that another device is trying to play music when it isn't. sometimes this doesnt happen for weeks, sometimes it happens 4 times in a single song and goes on for hours so you have to just stop trying to listen to music.
- on any platform with siri, it will just reset to the default voice/accent regularly, making all the other options useless.
- on any platform with siri, you ask it to remind you about something in x minutes or at x time, siri confirms that it will, then 1/10 times it just... doesn't.
- on apple tv, you randomly lose the ability to navigate left inside whatever app you're in, so you have to kill it and restart it.
- on apple tv, the picture just freezes but the audio continues. you have to just turn it off and on again. happens every 2-3 days.
- on apple tv, about half the time, the native voice search forces you to repeat your search 3 times. you tell it what to search for, it shows up for a split second, then clears. you have to do it three times. this one alone is worth ditching apple over. if i ever find out who introduced this bug and cross paths with them, i will physically attack them on sight.
i actually can even think of more bugs, but i'm bored of typing.