Category: Apple

Posted on

Bummer! That didn’t last long

The new machine is going back to Apple.

Bummer!

On the plus side I was able to basically build out an M1 system and I’ve got a complete backup of that system.

Because the decision to return and replace the machine was made in less than a day, I still have my original MacBook to fall back on. So it’s an inconvenience and a delay but not the freaking end of the world. I’ve got a computer.

So here’s the deal.

As I mentioned yesterday, the new machine smelled funny. It was an acrid smell, (which is how I described it to the Apple Folks,) unfortunately “acrid” is one of those words that’s become buried in dictionaries but is rarely used these days.

I had to use the sentence, “The smell is reminiscent of a smell commonly associated with burnt out IC chips in old computers or printers.”

That registered with the Tech Support people….

Sigh.

English is such a rich, complex language. It’s a pity so many people, myself included, have poor command of it.

I digress.

The first symptom I noticed was that the Start Up chime had no bass. I wrote that off to the machine having a down level version of the OS, and I’d seen some articles suggesting that there was some kind of sound issue on M1 systems which had been corrected via software.

The second symptom was the acrid smell that increased the longer the machine was running and decreased if the machine was sleeping or turned off. This smell was not the usual smell of a wave soldered circuit board warming up for the first time. That smell is the smell of rosin which is almost sweet smelling. This smell was bitter, and irritating to sinuses, and mucus membranes.

The third symptom was that any and all audio played through the internal speakers had about half of the bass missing.

I don’t listen to music through the internal speakers of my computer very often. One thing that can be said about Apple machines is that their onboard sound systems are quite good.

This particular computer sounded like a Dell from 1990.

These combined issues caused me to seek guidance from AppleCare.

They, as always were nice, polite, and helpful. Tech support made the suggestion that the machine should be swapped out. I was fine with that except that the machine’s configuration is somewhat unusual and the unit has to be built special in China.

The Tech support people went Oh, that could be a problem.

They transferred me to a super nice man named Josh who walked me through all the necessary steps to wipe the machine, remove it from my Find My, and iCloud account.

Then he carefully explained the exchange process. When he quoted me the lead time, I’m sure that he had his earpiece well away from his ear.

In this case he needn’t have worried. The lead time, is late June or early July. He asked if this was alright.

I told him it had to be alright because the machine would have to be built in China, then shipped, and production schedules are what they are. Yeah it’s an inconvenience, but there’s nothing either of us can do about that.

He said, “Thank you for being so understanding about it, most of the time this is the point in the conversation when people start yelling and cursing me out.”

I told him that I had a long career in the industry. I got it. I mentioned that Apple could perhaps mitigate this kind of thing by maintaining a small supply of “Esoteric” builds of products in Cupertino.

Then I followed on explaining that might not work too well because there was no way for Apple to anticipate failures and it would represent dead stock racking up inventory tax just sitting in a warehouse.

The problem with this machine may just be infant mortality. It happens sometimes with complex circuits. Or it could be a manufacturing process issue.

If the problem is a manufacturing issue, Apple better move fast to nip it in the bud. This is the kind of thing that gives companies big shiners when it comes to public opinion.

Reliability gets you customers DOA equipment does not.

We know from experience that China gets sloppy with their manufacturing process from time to time.

Anyone remember tainted dog food? How about tainted Heparin (The blood thinner). Or blood pressure meds tainted with carcinogenic chemicals and in some cases metal filings? Oh, remember the tainted drywall, that was a good one, carcinogenic chemicals vaporizing in enclosed spaces like people’s homes? Then there was the defective lithium ion batteries in Samsung phones (How about a fire in your pants scarecrow?)

Good Job China! Great freaking quality controls you’ve got.

In fairness, given the number of products produced in China that work just fine perhaps I’m being a touch unfair. The problem is that with so much being produced in China, when they screw up, they really screw up on a massive scale.

This is why I’ve always questioned our reliance on goods manufactured in China. This isn’t to say that there aren’t manufacturing problems elsewhere in the world, but It seems to be China where executives are routinely murdered, only when their carelessness embarrasses the CCP. Otherwise everything is, “A-OK top notch…” even when it’s not.

You’ll note I didn’t mention anything about sloppy laboratory practices. We’re not supposed to say anything about a disease causing a panic that crippled the global economy are we? Sloppy laboratory processes, particularly in research labs, can have dire consequences. Just Sayin…

Honestly, I’d be much happier if all Apple products were manufactured here. For that matter I’d be happy if all our products were manufactured locally.

It’s a lot easier to fly a process engineer to Texas, or Oklahoma on a Sunday than to fly that same engineer to freakin China, to figure out whatever step, or steps, a Chinese executive decided to omit to speed up production.

Perhaps an executive forgot to whip the Uyghurs enough on a particular day???

I know, I know, I’m being hypocritical. I have no high ground to bash China when I’m feeding the beast like everyone else, purchasing goods produced for mass consumption under ethically or morally challenged circumstances.

Again, I digress.

Apple has indicated they’re going to be very good about the exchange. I’ve already packed the New Machine up in all of it’s original packing materials. I’ve printed the return label, and I’ll drop it off at a FedEx facility on Monday.

Then I’ll wait for a new, new machine to arrive sometime between June 25th and July 6th.

Although, if it’s a manufacturing issue… It could be longer.

On the one hand I’d like the notoriety of being “The Guy” that caught a problem with Apple’s production lines.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that would be a good thing if thousands of Apple customers have to wait another month for their machines, and know my name.

What would be nice is if Apple responded to my job applications, or better yet sent me the machine for free.

HA! I’m not holding my breath…

Posted on

This outta be fun to watch…

Apparently the board of Twitter has decided to accept Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the company.

I’d imagine that a lot of liberal Twitter employees are shitting themselves right about now. Especially those who have been so invested in outright censorship. They’re out the door!

I’d also imagine that the remaining libtard snowflake Twitter users are having meltdowns because they may soon be seeing things in their feeds that they personally don’t like.

Oh well!

Twitter stock is shooting up and I wish I had the money to invest in it right now. I’d love to ride the wave up.

Hell, I might even consider opening a Twitter account again. It might be fun to watch the meltdowns realtime. What are the fragile little snowflakes gonna do when real freedom of speech smacks ’em upside the head?

I left Twitter a couple of years ago, precisely because the censorship and Twitter Mobs attacking someone who questioned the “Approved” narrative was so disgusting.

I’m not talking about someone saying that world was flat. I’m talking about someone asking about the legitimacy of Hydroxychloroquine. Simply asking a question about it could get the person banned. Then there’s the Hunter Biden laptop, or people correcting false narratives about Trump, by posting unedited raw videos

Something like… “Hey, here’s the whole video and this is what he really said or did.”

Yep, that was enough to get you banned.

The cockroaches should be scattering like those in a filthy kitchen when you flip on the lights. It couldn’t happen to a finer group of people. I’d bet there’s a lot of left leaning H1B1 employees freaking the fuck out right about now.

Hey assholes… Pack your bags! In a very short time Twitter on your resume will be toxic if you’re trying to find another job in a liberal “woke” company.

No doubt it will take Elon a while to wrangle the purchase, take the company private again, and fire all the shitheads. So improvement won’t happen over night, I’m sure there will be sabotage from the shitheads on their way out.

This news is a ray of hope and frankly I needed that right about now.

Hmm I wonder when they’ll be hiring replacement workers? Gotta keep my eye on that.

Elon, may be able to make Twitter actually profitable. Musk buying an existing company that already has global reach and attendant infrastructure means that newer competing platforms may also take a hit. That will be interesting to watch shake out.

I wonder what Apple is going to do about it. Will they ban Twitter like they banned Parler and Gab from the Apple App Store? That may be a nasty headache for Tim Cook. How’s Apple going to justify banning those applications while allowing a Twitter that’s all about free speech?

Alternatively, if Apple tries to ban Twitter they’ll face the wrath of the liberals who’ve come to rely on Twitter to coordinate their BLM and ANTIFA rallies. Or if they’re in LA, coordinate their smash and grab looting.

I do hope Elon has complete control before the Midterms. I’ve wondered how much sway Twitter and their censorship really had on the 2020 election. I might just be getting my answer.

Twitter, Gab, Parler, MeWe and others allowing conservative posts and real discussions to take place versus the echo chamber of censorship on FaceBook, Google, and Youtube…

I can hardly wait for some perpetually aggrieved “Woke” moron to complain their feelings got hurt on Twitter. The digital thud of everyone else saying, “Yeah? So what?” Will probably be heard in the physical world!

Like I said, this should be a lot of fun to watch.

Thanks Mr. Musk… If you need someone to wander through the halls of Twitter like the Angel of Death… I’m totally available and have an extensive technology background.

I promise I won’t make them suffer too long!

Posted on

Too much static!

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.

Posted on

I’m just not that into it…

There was a time in the recent past when I, like many other Apple users waited on pins & needles for the next iOS, iPhone, iPad, MacOS or MacBook computer.

This last iPhone event left me feeling sort of meh.

iOS 15 is somewhat interesting but I’m in no great hurry to update. This is very unlike previous years.

The iPhone 13 Pro is nice, but not dazzling. I sorta like the pale ice blue color but since I use a case that isn’t really all that compelling. My iPhone 12 Pro is still quite serviceable and does what I want it to do.

I’ve currently got an Apple Watch series 5.

I thought that I’d upgrade to the watch 7. I originally got an Apple Watch Series 3, then upgraded to the 5 and thought a 2 year upgrade cycle would probably be reasonable. Looking at the Series 7, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. Okay, it’s got a bigger screen and what else does it get me?

Apple’s presentation was even Ho Hum, it was almost like Apple themselves was “phoning it in“. Every Apple event they’re gushing about how impressed they are with their own technology. How each product, “…is the most advanced Technology Apple has created…”

Every time they say that now, I fight not to say, “Duh” out loud.

I’m always way more interested when they compare their technology to the competition.

I find myself wondering why I wasn’t excited, or even disappointed with Apple this year. I’d have expected to feel something one way or the other, I just don’t.

Early iOS adoption statistics might be indicating that I may not be alone. I caught an article last week, (which I can’t find now,) that said the one week adoption rate for iOS 15 was substantially lower than for iOS 14 in the same period last year.

Why have I not updated? That’s simple, I dealt with bugs that messed my phone up on both iOS 13 & iOS 14. I decided that this time around I’d wait. But when you add the whole issue of the CSAM scanning and privacy issues that honestly feel like an about face for Apple…

Well, I guess it feels a bit like betrayal.

It’s akin to that feeling you have finding out your spouse is sleeping with someone else. When you find something like that out, you tend to get angry, then when you calm down, you start evaluating the choices available to you.

Divorce is messy and ends up hurting you as much as your spouse. That’s kind of the nuclear option.

Ignoring it and hoping it doesn’t happen again, is another option. Sometimes that works, but can you ever really trust them again? Do you find yourself questioning everything they say or do for the rest of your life?

Couples counseling is another option. But that only works if both parties are willing to realize that a) they’re in trouble, b) the relationship still means something, c) are willing to give it a go and mend fences.

To some extent, Apple has behaved like the spouse that was caught screwing around. They’ve quietly admitted that CSAM requires more work. Their decision to hold off on rolling it out feels like, “I’m sorry I got caught. I promise I won’t do that again.“

No spouse, ever totally believes that. The one saying it, knows that there will be an opportunity in the future that simply can’t be ignored. The one hearing it, knows this too.

(I’m specifically being gender neutral above, because I’ve seen women cheating on their husbands and men cheating on their wives. Interestingly, I’ve been the third wheel in both equations. Not really proud of that, it’s life, it just happens sometimes.)

I think right now, I’m personally at the “Ignoring it phase,” with Apple. I would consider the “Couples counseling,” phase. But I’m wondering if divorce from Apple is in the cards.

I have to wonder if this is the way a lot of Apple users are feeling. The article I mentioned, was trying to cover the lower adoption numbers by highlighting that unlike previous years Apple is going to be supporting iOS 14 and iOS 15 bug fixes concurrently. In the past when Apple released a new iOS they stopped development on the previous version.

This meant that there were no security patches or bug fixes for the older version and if you wanted to close those security holes, you had no choice but to upgrade the OS. This year is different. Apple has said they’ll continue the security patches indefinitely.

I’m sure that some of the upgrade hesitancy is due to this, but I seriously doubt that all of it can be explained away. This feels more like “coming home from somewhere you never should have been,” (Thank you Garth Brooks) and finding your pillow and some ratty blanket on the couch.

I’ll admit that pillow on the couch is way better than a confrontation in the driveway and a gun shot under cover of thunder in the distance. But it’s just as much a statement. (Yeah, I’ve gotten the pillow once or twice too.)

Right now, I’m giving Apple the pillow. We’ll have to see just how contrite they are, and how willing they are to keep my business going forward.

Posted on

Apple got the message

At least for now.

Over the weekend, I noticed an article reporting Apple had decided to delay their roll out of CSAM scanning.

The report dropped on Friday and it’s unclear if Apple will push forward at a later date but for the moment Apple has put it on hold.

I think it’s a good thing.

It’s also unprecedented.

Apple never backs away from something they’re planning to release. At this point they’re saying that they’ll invite opinions from privacy protection groups and the “feel” is they’re going to be inviting input from developers in the privacy arena.

This doesn’t mean that they’ won’t push forward at a later date, but it does mean that for now, our devices won’t be spying on us, (any more than they do already,) I’m calling it a win.

That being said, I’m going to be watching privacy settings very closely and being a lot more alert to any changes.

I don’t have anything to hide but at the same time I’m not willing to just leave my digital doors and windows open all the time either.

After all, who doesn’t from time to time get a naked photo of a friend? LOL!