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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

#531

Post by EricE »

josephg wrote: post #384
mixmastamyk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me started on the new iOS podcast app. I used to know how to use it. Now I need to click five times at random to get anywhere, and still don't understand where I am. All the views look similar, but different. I just want to hear the oldest first and see if episodes are downloaded, that's it. Cue… "you had one job!" Yes, been about six months.

Try Overcast. It’s one of the best pieces of software on my iPhone. Simple, well thought through and reliable. And the speed controls are the best I’ve seen in any program. It’s the sort of software apple makes when they’re at their best. Much better than the built in podcast app.

The audio controls in Overcast are what made it must-have software for me. I had a few podcasts with audio so bad they were barely listenable that the voice boost function in Overcast was able to make them actually listenable. That and the shorten silence feature combined with the excellent audio processing if you listen at higher speed have allowed me to really optimize my podcast consumption. Highly recommended!

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

#532

Post by EricE »

Philadelphia wrote: post #285
jjice wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something so many big companies do, and I hate it. Every 6 months it seems Spotify has to change their UI and make it harder to find what I want. Just make a decent UI and stick to it. I don't understand why there are redesigns over and over and over. My assumption is that it keeps people employed, even if they aren't necessarily needed. It at least takes away from more important issues being taken care of.

Twitter has been so bad with this lately. It feels like the app is different in some irritating and pointless way every time I open it.

When I did use twitter the only way that was even remotely tolerable was with a third party client (tweetbot was my client of choice; twitteriffic is quite good too).

The biggest benefit is you get a literal timeline that's unmanipulated by promoted tweets. I have no idea how anyone does anything remotely useful with the native twitter UI.

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

#533

Post by EricE »

redler wrote: post #457
WalterBright wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't work, either :-( The whole screen just scrolls.

What works for me is to not attempt to time it at all. Simply place two fingers directly on a message. Leave them there. Wait a second, then start sliding down. The message list should immediately shift to the right, exposing selection "circles" at the left edge of each message. As you continue sliding downward, each circle you "pass" will become selected. You can continue holding as you reach the bottom of the scree…

Ha - on the iPad there is an edit button that exposes the selection circles; never occurred to me there would be a way to do the same thing on the iPhone. Nice!

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

#534

Post by EricE »

Arrath wrote: post #151
dharmon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great! Thanks! I am forced to use a Windows machine sometimes for work, and to me the unpardonable sin is that Windows seems to randomly reboot _without asking me_! I come to my office and all my open sessions are gone. How do you turn this off?! I try turning off the setting but it randomly turns itself back on. Also, how do people set up a reasonable dev environment not built around Visual Studio? On my Mac…

> I am forced to use a Windows machine sometimes for work, and to me the unpardonable sin is that Windows seems to randomly reboot _without asking me_! I come to my office and all my open sessions are gone. How do you turn this off?! That's the neat part, you don't! Windows loves to revert those settings after every major update, even if you dig into the registry and scheduler and change the settings at the source. I…

One of the best things Apple added to macOS a while back was the reopen all windows on startup. I don't even think twice about rebooting my Mac any more. Windows could sorely use the equivalent.

One way I dramatically reduce the amount of random reboots is I have a thing that looks like a USB flash drive but it has a few switches on the side - one of them, when activated, randomly moves the mouse every 1-5 minutes (there is also a hardware wheel knob that lets you customize the duration). It was meant to be a practical joke thing - slip it onto the back of a friends PC and drive them nuts, but it works great at tricking Windows to think the computer is being actively used. It doesn't stop all reboots caused by Windows updates, but it dramatically reduces them.

I also use it to keep my work PC awake when attending online meetings, or especially when I'm presenting. We have mandatory screen saver timeouts and for some reason I can't convince the IT overlords to tweak group policy to allow non-admins the ability to enable presentation mode. Oh well. At least they haven't resorted to only allowing whitelisted USB devices to run so my little joke USB fob still does its thing. I got it from Think Geek in their heyday but there are tons of similar devices on Amazon.

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

#535

Post by alsetmusic »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #162
gommm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the worst part is that their software division used to be great. Aperture was really good when it came out, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro were great. Eveh talking about iwork suite, numbers and page used to be better than they are now. Even Quicktime regressed. It's frankly both puzzling and saddening how much Apple has lost in term of QA, user interface and vision in the last 10 years. I always feel that Tim Cook doe…

>Tim Cook doesn't have a clue about what made Apple special and is slowly destroying it by not making sure to keep those qualities Well their shares have never been higher so as long as that's the metric by which a CEO's performance is judged then you can forget about Apple caring about SW QA and other such "nonsense". Also, before Jobs passed away, Cook was Apple's supply chain mastermind so it makes sense his stren…

How can notifications, which appear in the upper right corner, end up behind a notch in the middle of the screen?

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

#536

Post by EamonnMR »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #244
threeseed wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you clearly have a hardware problem since your USB-C ports aren't charging. And rather than go to Apple you instead randomly press buttons and then are surprised when random things happen. Okay.

“randomly press buttons” is absolutely step 1, this is not a nuclear power plant we’re dealing with… they got it to work didn’t they?

I am not aware of any other way to wake up a MacBook with the clamshell closed. Step 1: plug it in. If it doesn't turn on step 2 is to hit keys, right?
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