I’ve been finding it very hard to write lately.
There’s a lot of stuff going on in my life and my local environment that have created a bunch of noise in my head.
I’m worried about a lot of things, and even ignoring the larger issues of the world at large the static is making it very hard for me to put thoughts together in any coherent order.
There have been a lot of false starts in blog posts and other projects, they’re not progressing because lately I have the attention span of a gadfly.
The more I try to set aside time for me. Just me to sit quietly, collect my thoughts and plan a day, the more interruptions, or disasters, rain down on my life.
I’d love to actually plan a day and not have every single plan blown to hell almost instantly. Perhaps I’m asking too much!
The more distracted I am of course the less gets done that I need to do and the greater the frustration I have, because my stuff is piling up.
It’s a vicious cycle and really starting to harsh my buzz.
The latest annoyance is that the most recent MacOS update is killing my laptop’s battery in just a couple of hours. I discovered this when I decided to take my laptop and myself outside to enjoy the nice weather we’re having.
I thought perhaps being outside would assist me in clearing my head. The plan was to remove myself from all the distractions inside the house and just sit looking for a job, and perhaps writing a bit, in the sun and fresh air. HA!
On balance I got about an hour of what I wanted to get done, done before the unusual power drain became apparent. Then I was sucked down the rabbit hole of identifying what was causing the power drain.
Still unsure about that. After turning off all the communication channels. BlueTooth, WiFi, etc. The drain was still happening. That led me to all the crap running in the background, (most of which is Apple’s ill defined subsystems,) according to Apple’s monitoring software there was nothing wrong. Uh Huh sure! Looking at the UNIX monitoring software there were 600 processes running most of those were sleeping but several of their “New” modules were consuming a lot of CPU time. It’s unclear how to actually turn off any of these modules which I’d do in a heartbeat because I don’t use them.
This kind of thing annoys the crap out of me because clearly Apple dropped the ball again! They’re apparently not doing real world testing and that annoys the hell out of me because I’m a software tester that has applied to Apple at least 20 times for testing positions, only to be completely and rigorously ignored.
I’ve said it before. Automated testing has its place, but an actual human working with the machine is still necessary because automation can only spot those items it’s programmed to spot.
In other words, automation will confirm that the software completed the expected task. A human on the other hand will spot things about the requested task completing, with other collateral issues, (like excessive power drains,) and get curious about what’s causing them.
But God Forbid, the great and wondrous Apple actually considered that!
As I said, I’m annoyed. Here’s an axiom for you:
Shitty software is still shitty software regardless of the logo. No-one is immune to creating shitty software. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, are all guilty of unapologetically foisting shit on the public. Apple never apologizes for anything, no matter how bad it is! (Unless they’re forced to do so by a class action lawsuit.) Just once, I’d love to see Tim Cook apologize for a crappy Mac OS or IOS release in his opening remarks at a convention or online event. I’d probably have a heart attack but it would be worth it.
The MacBook Pro isn’t the only device having battery problems. Apparently, some iPhones are sucking their batteries dry after the latest release of IOS 15. Apples response, in typically Apple fashion is, “**smug** You’ll just have to wait until we get around to fixing it. **smug**”
So for the time being, I’m chained to my power adapter, instead of enjoying the spring weather and being able to write. What happened to my MacBook outlasting the competition?
Oh yeah… poor testing & verification on one of their products core advantages!
To make matters worse, this has been an ongoing issue for at least the last four releases so you’d think someone in their software development and testing team would have a big assed sign that said, “TEST BATTERY LIFE IN REAL WORLD SITUATIONS!”
I’d be happy to design a sign for them if they’d be willing to pay me a year’s salary for it.