Apple Nag

Here are my observations after using Snow Leopard for a while:

Better: It does seem faster in areas such as networking. But that may be because I was having so much trouble with Leopard networking, that anything is better.

Bug: There’s a bug in Mail where Smart Mailboxes always sort by Subject. I can change it, but the next time I relaunch Mail, it’s back sorting by Subject again. Extremely annoying. [Update: With some judicious editing of a .plist file, I managed to make it so that it always sorts by date. Better, but needs to be fixed.]

Feature: I do like the new white text on black background menus in the dock. I shouldn’t though, because they’re different than the menu bar. I prefer consistency to cuteness, so maybe Apple should try this look in other menus.

(more…)

I’ve used your products primarily since March 1, 1984 when I bought my first original Macintosh and ImageWriter printer. I was proud to be a Mac owner because it was so superior to the alternatives.

In the subsequent years leading up to the present time I became a Mac bigot. Everything else was not only not good, it was trash and I wondered how anyone could use that crapola.

Then Macs started going downhill with quality problems in the hardware and software. Macs just sucked less. I stopped doing unpaid sales and evangelizing for you and kept pretty quiet. When people asked me what kind of computer to get, I would no longer say, “Get a Mac”, I’d say, “What do you want to use a computer for?” I often told them to buy a PC.

(more…)

What’s up with trying to disable Palm Pre syncing with iTunes? Are you guys so afraid of Palm and their miniscule market that you’re willing to expend programmer resources to try to block the Pre?

When I was managing software developers I made it clear that I didn’t mind if they put Easter eggs into the code as long as they wouldn’t damage the company’s reputation when they were discovered or leaked. A bit of humour is good for the soul and can make a monolithic company a bit more human.

But there was one caveat. If there were anything other than cosmetic bugs in the code, or if we missed a deadline, I was going to be P.O.ed about them wasting development time on fun when the serious business of robust code or meeting commitments was getting the short end of the stick. There’s a bit more to this discussion, but I don’t want to digress any more.

My question to you is this — why are you directing effort at the Pre when you have so many defects in iTunes and syncing with iPods, particularly my 2G Shuffle? Just look at your own support forums for a huge list of bugs. Get your own house in order before you worry about the Pre — it’s just an Easter egg.

Or are you threatened that much?

All this time I’ve been nagging you for not listening to your customers. But I had an epiphany on my walk in the park with the dogs that caused me to change my mind. Yes, your quality is still poor and arguably getting worse, but it’s just what (most) of your customers want. It’s “good enough”.

Once upon a time, your customer base was composed of people who were looking for high quality hardware and software, and most of the time you delivered. That was the differentiator. If you didn’t have that you would have vanished into oblivion years ago.

But now you’re catering to the young people who don’t know what quality is because they’ve never experienced it. And on the rare occasions that they do see quality, they shrug their shoulders and mumble, “whatever.”

I’ve seen my daughter watching a DVD on her MacBook Pro listening to the audio through those tinny speakers while she’s sitting in front of our 40″ widescreen LCD TV with a Surround Sound system! When I ask why she’s not using the TV, she says, “this is fine, dad” in that “don’t bug me” tone.

(more…)

Was it all the way back in 2002 that you guys first starting talking about the Digital Hub. That’s seven, count ‘em, years ago. When do you think we’ll see it come to fruition?

You have made steps, for sure, because we’ve got Macs, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, and a monitor or two. That covers desktop and mobile computing.

There’s iLife and MobileMe to tie the hardware together giving us personal web site creation, photos, home movies, the ability to burn DVDs (those old fossils), and to share content with our family, friends, and the world on the Internet.

iTunes is a big part of the integration for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and syncing to the other devices like iPods and Apple TV. In many ways, the features are targeted at making you more money than what’s best for your customers (don’t get me started on the 2G Shuffle and iTunes 8.1 fiasco).

It sure looks like you’ve got a hub strategy. Yet, you don’t promote the hub concept anymore. Is that because it would handcuff you into implementing features that would be detrimental to maximizing your profit margin?

Let’s talk about the rough edges and one huge group of people you’ve left out — family.

(more…)

The more I use my Apple TV, the more I wish you’d stop treating it as a hobby and go pro. I mean, I’d be paying the same price regardless, right?

iTunes decided it couldn’t sync with my Apple TV because it could not connect. But wait, why was it still in the sidebar then? Was there some delay in realizing it had lost touch with the Apple TV? If so, then why wasn’t the device removed from the list as soon as it realized it couldn’t connect after I asked it to sync?

The first step was to quit iTunes and relaunch. The iTunes menu bar remained even though the Dock said the app had quit. Sigh.

After relaunching, the Apple TV showed up in the list of devices, but still wouldn’t sync. I guess that means I’d have to reboot the Apple TV.

Now this is where I get annoyed.

(more…)

I was about to write up a blog post wondering why iTunes didn’t show any content for the Apple TV in the sidebar like I was experiencing yesterday. I was suspecting it would only show purchased content. Today, I go to get the screen capture and wouldn’t you know it, it’s all listed there — both purchased and private content. Sigh.

You know, surprises may be nice in a personal relationship, but not between a man and his computer.

I had some HD video podcasts that I wanted to take with me on the iPod Touch. Unfortunately, you guys never considered that we might like to watch the podcast on the Mac, the Apple TV, or the Touch, whichever was best suited at the time. Your own children don’t know how to play nice with each other.

Elgato’s EyeTV allows us to create a schedule and specify that we want to transcode automatically to an Apple TV or iPod video format. We can’t select both, unfortunately, but that’s for another nag.

iTunes forces us to manually do the conversion. That’s bad enough, but your user interface experts don’t seem to understand the concept of a “use case“. They haven’t thought through how real people want to use the features.

(more…)

Here is a very sad posting on your discussion forums about the iTunes 8.1 and 8.1.1 updates breaking the 2G Shuffle. It seems that your internal developers are treating their own tech support folks like mushrooms — keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em manure.

The poster contacted two different support techs who gave pretty much the same message. They’d never heard of the the 2G Shuffle problems and required the poster to run through some silly steps to arrive at the conclusion we already know — iTunes 8.1 made a total mess of the 2G Shuffle.

Surely, the iTunes manager, once aware of the 2G Shuffle problems, would immediately inform tech support so that customers and tech support wouldn’t have to waste their time chasing known issues. So why didn’t this happen?

This can mean one of several things; incompetence, design intent, or … ?

(more…)

I’m being a bit facetious when I say that the current search technology in OS X Leopard is more like a dim bulb than a spotlight. No, I’m not referring to your hit-and-miss, often frustrating Spotlight, but rather all those myriad Search boxes you have scattered throughout the applications.

The problem is that these search boxes don’t retain the text I type into them when switching modes, like switching between Music and Movies in iTunes, or Groups in Address Book.

Every time I search in one location, don’t get any hits, and then switch to another area you clear the search box forcing me to retype the search term. Why oh why do you do this?

Worse yet, you don’t even retain the value with the mode. Switching back from Movies to Music in iTunes reveals that you’ve cleared the term.

This is the kind of fine detail you guys need to address to get your UI back on track. It’s all about productivity.

I haven’t done an exhaustive, application by application analysis, but I did find one app that works correctly (IMHO) by retaining the search term, and that’s Dictionary. You can switch to any of the five modes without clearing the search term. Kudos to those designers.