Tag: Apple Shit

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Just a little Techno-Bitching!

Artificial intelligence robot 0427211.Some of you may be aware that Apple has, over the past few iterations of their IOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS, been adding more active predictive text input.

Essentially the various Operating Systems try to guess what you’re about to type based on your usual word choices and learned sentence structures. This can be really cool, and helpful, except when it isn’t.

There are two problems as I see it. The first is that if you’re trying to improve your writing, the automated choices presented tend to make you lazy because it’s easier to choose what’s shown than fight the system. Oh, and the system does tend to get in your face if you change your vocabulary and / or sentence construction.

The second problem is that the embedded dictionaries in these operating systems have gotten sloppy.

For example: If I misspell the word sueing the OS changes the word to seeing, instead of changing the misspelled sueing to suing.

Download Free Oxford English Dictionary.The example above is a fairly common mistake that the internal dictionaries should easily recognize and correct in English. (I recognize that there are other languages in these operating systems and those languages have different rules.)

I however am speaking and writing in English so that’s my personal baseline. In English, there are many instances where the ‘e’ is dropped when adding the ‘ing’, but sometimes that rule doesn’t apply. It’s in those times when the automatic dictionary can be mind bogglingly helpful, or an annoying hinderance.

This is common throughout all the platforms.

It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing, until you stumble over it again and again. If you write a blog, or you’re writing a manuscript it gets annoying fast. We all get bumble fingered if we’re typing fast in a moment of inspiration or if we’re tired and just trying to slog our way to the end of the project or our day.

At these times, when we’re not at our best, the autocorrect systems should be helping us instead of muddying our thoughts by selecting incorrect words based on God only knows what kind of algorithm. 

Microsoft Word induces its own decidedly annoying version of this, with its internal dictionary. I have literally become so confused typing a word in Word that I’ve pulled out a paper dictionary to find the correct spelling. Turns out, the word I was misspelling wasn’t that far off. All I’d done is typed an ‘I’ instead of an ‘e’ and had swapped the ‘I’ position in the word. It should have been the 8th character and I put it in the 9th position.

Word not only couldn’t comprehend what I’d done, Word couldn’t present me with any alternative spelling at all.

Since I know that sometimes I’ll use an ‘I” instead of an ‘e’ I tried both. Word stubbornly refused to show me possible alternative spellings, opting to steadfastly highlight the word as misspelled. 

Even when I erased the word and typed it letter by letter from the dictionary into the document, Word highlighted the now correct word as incorrect, after a few moments Word decided to remove the little red squiggle.

Ahem! 

It’s times like these that I speak harshly to my computer because it’s adding to my confusion seemingly on purpose.

I shouldn’t speak harshly to my computer, I should be yelling at Microsoft! It’s their 1 gigabyte bloated program that can’t seem to get out of its own way.

I remember when Word existed on a single floppy disk and worked pretty reliably. Now, I find that I don’t enjoy working with it as much as I once did. These days, it’s slow and ponderous and while I have a very fast computer, Word sucks up a lot of resources.

I’m tending toward lighter faster programs for text processing and only using Word when absolutely necessary.

I suppose the bottom line here is I expect better.

The next version of IOS, iPadOS, and Mac OS is likely to add some kind of AI component running on the devices.

I am not looking forward to this ‘Improvement’. It seems to me, if these software behemoths can’t do simple things like providing useful dictionaries perhaps installing AI software on our devices isn’t a great idea.

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WOW! Apple does it again! Not in a good way!

Apple one icons logo 100857611 largeThe other half and I decided to go with the Apple One subscription back when they first started it. 

Both of us were paying for Apple Music and individual iCloud Storage. We’d purchased Apple TVs for the living and bedrooms, but Apple’s original programming wasn’t anything we were interested in at the time. 

I knew that I was going to be interested in Foundation when Apple released the first season.

When we did the math, we found we were already spending nearly the initially high 29.95 monthly fee for Apple One individually, since we could share the Apple One subscription we went for it.

Honestly we were only interested in the Music and iCloud storage. There was a high probability that Apple TV+ would become interesting to me. Although to date I’ve only watched Foundation and Invasion. There are some Apple produced movies that looked somewhat interesting but not enough to captivate my attention so that I sat down and spent 2 hours of my life watching them. 

I was interested in the Apple Fitness guided training. I’ve used it a few times just to get a feel for it. At first it only worked on the Apple TV so training had to take place in the Living Room or the Bedroom. Honestly, that didn’t really work. Since then Apple has expanded the functionality to iPhone and iPad so it’s a little more portable.

It’s understood that Apple is a “Woke” company. Okay, that’s fine, I’ve always known Apple was full of blue haired people with so many piercings they can’t get through a TSA metal detector. However, recently I thought I’d get more familiar with Apple Fitness and take advantage of regular workout routines during the Winter. 

Opening the Fitness+ tab on the Apple TV I was a little put off.  It wasn’t that DEI was front and center, it was.

It was that so many of the workouts appeared to be geared for way younger folks than I am. After some digging I was able to find some things geared toward older adults. I’ll try a sampling to see if Apple Fitness+ is for me.

The other half and I also liked being able to share our purchases and subscriptions to many applications.

Neither of us cared about Apple Arcade, we were adults, while I looked at some of the games, none were interesting to me and so that part of the Apple One subscription was never used.

Apple News+ is okay but neither of us were really interested in much of the magazine offerings and I literally locked out of my news feed, the extremist news organizations both left and right. The other half eventually got tired of News+ and stopped using it altogether. I know this because he needed help turning off all the News+ notifications. He generally preferred BBC and NPR until the age of COVID. Then he, like me, found  very few news organizations that passed the reliability test.

At this point I could take or leave Apple News+

All of this has come to mind because of a few things.

1) The other half is dead.
2) Apple One increased its prices from 29.95 which was already expensive to 32.95 back in spring. At the time, I wasn’t capable of making too many decisions and chose to let that go.
3) Apple sent a notice of another rate increase either Friday Night or Saturday morning, (which is kind of chicken shit,  because NONE of the executives will be in over the weekend so the folks answering the phones get to take the brunt of the complaints,) The new rate is 37.95 a month.

At this new rate, we’re starting to approach old Cable TV rates. (Yes I know the Cable TV people charge far more obscene rates these days. That’s why I don’t have Cable.) As a point of interest, that’s also why I’m looking at new places to live where I can receive local TV with a damn antenna. I don’t even care if it’s only one channel as long as it’s in English. (Where I live now, I can receive one channel but it’s in Korean? or Chinese neither of which I speak.)

I know I’m not getting $37.95 value out of the Apple One subscription. I no longer have a family. (I do have a family but they don’t live with me and have their own stuff going on. It’s a big pain in the ass or was, to merge this stuff or unmerge it, if necessary.) The merge / unmerge task is so daunting, my other half is still listed in family sharing on the account. Although in truth, I’m not ready to remove him. It seems so final and I’m not ready for that yet.

The problem is that when I look at what I”m actually using regularly, and try to break out only those items, I come up with a cost that’s about the same as Apple One. Obviously this pricing structure is to keep Apple One subscriptions. 

As an older person, I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to. Well, I never wanted to spend more money than I had to. The problem for me now is that since I”m not employed, and living on retirement, I am far less loose with my money.

I’m sure there are a lot of people in the same boat I am. We’re either retired or nearing retirement and being forced out of our jobs explicitly, or surreptitiously. (Ask one of my friends about his experiences after 25 years or more with the same company. Ageism is real. Oh, and by the way, there’s nothing you can do to fight it! The law may be on your side, but lawyers… You’re lucky to get one of them to return your call or email! Maybe the next time I reach out to an attorney, I’ll say Trump did something to me. Perhaps then I’ll be worth calling back!)

In any case, all of us in this position are re-evaluating where our money goes and trimming the fat. If only we could trim the fat of taxation that gets us very little of use in our daily lives but might just drop a nuke in our backyards…

I digress.

Apple One has become too damn expensive! So effectively older folks or poor people are completely priced out of the Apple One service. DEI my ass!

I’ll evaluate Apple One for the next month or two. Maybe it’s time to cut this shit down to only what I find useful. If we can’t come to an arrangement that works for me, then maybe it’s time for me to stop paying for Apples services entirely.

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No Apple, It’s not you. It’s me

See, I have this personality flaw. I expect shit to work consistently and reliably.

I’ve got 3 pairs of HomePod speakers in this house. 4 HomePod Mini’s and 2 of the standard HomePods. I’ve got an iPad, and iPhone, a watch, 2 Apple TVs, AirPod Pros, Oh and my MacBook Pro.

On the matter of the MacBook Pro, this is my old computer because my new one was stolen while I was trying to return it to you because it was defective right out of the box.

Of Course, YOU Apple, can’t be bothered to help me out. And because your guy in sales had me flush everything and reset the computer to factory conditions, I can’t even track the machine to whoever stole it. I could have, had you not told me the procedure was to make sure the computer was wiped and disconnected from my account… So Thanks a TON!

FedEx screwed me, and Dollar General (The FedEx drop-off point) screwed me so now I’m paying for a computer that I don’t have and I’m sure the fucker that stole it is just happy as hell to have a dumb white fuck paying for their fly computer. Given that they’re probably listening to nothing but RAP I doubt they’ll notice that the sound quality is shit until the audio shuts down completely or the computer shorts out completely and burns their home down. (Hopefully with them trapped inside.)

The police say they have no evidence that the computer was stolen they’re just listing it as a missing package so I can’t even file a proper police report.

Okay, I get it nobody is at fault. Except of course the fucker that stole the damn package. Oh and by the way I’m pretty sure I know exactly who the person is. It was the person who “Scanned” the package but somehow that scan didn’t actually get recorded by FedEx. But without proof I can’t make allegations.

So I’ll suck it up, pay for the damn computer, and continue to use my old machine. You know, the one that almost immediately went from 6 hours of battery life down to 3 hours of battery life after your wonderful OS upgrade called Monterey… Yeah, Thanks for that.

Before you go into the bullshit about batteries having a limited lifespan. Yeah, I know that. So why does the battery still say it’s got 94% of its charge capacity, and is in good health? Why did the battery drain begin literally the day after the Monterey upgrade?

The thing is, I’d probably be able to let it go except you Apple keep getting in my face. HomePods randomly report they’re not available. Then after considerable screwing around with them they magically come back. The Big HomePods reported yesterday that they weren’t on the same network as my iPhone. Wrong! The Router said the iPhone and HomePods had ip addresses and were pingable on the network.

Turns out… only one of the HomePods had a problem but since they’re a paired set well, the only way to sort it out was to ungroup them, then reset the one that was complaining and then regroup them.

This after the same set of HomePods asking me 3 days running for the passwords to my apple accounts and both of them working just fine as the sound system for the AppleTV while I was watching movies. Oh and just as a point, these HomePods had been set up from the phone they said wasn’t on the same network. Oddly, the other HomePod minis on the same network where fully functional.

Today, I thought I’d put a TV show on my computer while I was doing some other stuff. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem except that the Apple library doesn’t show the second season of the TV show but Apple TV+ does.

My Archer collection is horribly screwed up, apparently because I had the temerity to purchase a multi season bundle. Not ONE of the episodes in that bundle has ever indicated that it’s been played, so if I wanted to watch I had to search through and remember what I’d already seen.

It gets better! I’m watching the show that I wanted to watch after finding it in AppleTV+ “up next”. I’m using my office HomePod Mini’s for sound and for no apparent reason, the right speaker simply shuts off.

The speaker is on the network, the router shows it talking to someone. But all the audio is coming through the left speaker. It was working just fine, nothing changed in the configuration other than time passing.

Restart the computer, power down the HomePods power up again, and things worked for 5 minutes, then boom, the right speaker is off again. What’s really cool is that if I touch the right speaker’s interface it starts playing music. While the left speaker is still playing the audio from the TV show. So much for them being a stereo pair!

Just FYI Apple this kind of shit is exactly why I dumped Windows and PCs.

Either be broken, don’t work at all, or work as advertised. I swear to God I unplug or reset at least one HomePod once a week because it suddenly says it can’t connect to the internet, or it’s taking too long to contact a device on the network, or it’s forgotten a password, or, or, or, or.

The point is, all of this crap just happens randomly. I’m not changing network settings. I’m not changing passwords. I’m just walking into the house or the room and shit mysteriously isn’t working.

The Homekit application on the phone is next to useless. The HomeKit on the computer is worse and that’s frankly inexcusable. You’ve got all the competing power of the MacBook at your disposal for diagnostic capabilities and you send the user to their iPhone or iPad for help that is nothing more than mental masturbation that literally has never solved a HomeKit or HomePod problem.

Instead you leave the user guessing about what could possibly be the trouble. Additionally, your support pages are next to useless because they provide no answers, and often not even decent steps to troubleshoot.

So Apple it’s not you. It’s the phase of the moon, sunspots, the router, the internet connection, or anything that doesn’t point to you having put out shitty software.

Just once it would be fucking nice to hear you admit you have a problem.

Here’s a thought… Stop dicking around with gender confused narcissists, and filling diversity quotas, and do us all a favor.

Hire people that can do the job. You know, good software engineers, and testing people.

By the way I’m probably not going to be buying another Apple Watch. I’ve discovered that I prefer a watch that works without recharging and at $1000 for one of your ruggedized watches. I’d rather wait a few years and spend $6000 on a nice Omega.

I’m probably not going to upgrade my iPad and I’m not likely to be buying a new iPhone in the near future.

As to buying a new Apple MacBook Pro… Well, I’ve already purchased one of those, even though apparently I donated it to some thieving motherfucker at your direction. I’ve reported that serial number to you Apple as stolen and had some expectation that when that SN popped up on the network you’d maybe report it to the Police.

That hope is fading fast.

So if Apple won’t report stolen equipment to the Police and is no longer interested in producing equipment “That Just Works” I am really having a hard time seeing why I should pay a premium price for Apple products.

In this world, perhaps it make more sense to just buy the same shit that everyone else has and replace it when it’s a year old, stolen, broken, or comes in a new color.

(Like Apple did with the HomePod minis last year… Nothing new except a color change, really Apple? Is that all you’ve got left?)

How’s that going to work for your Green Agenda? Apple can recycle their stuff all day long but if fewer folks are buying their products it’s not going to matter much is it?

I can buy a new android phone for $99 at Walmart and throw it away next year. I could do that for 10 years and just start to come up on the price of an iPhone.

$300 for a Windows Laptop and it’s the same equation.

$69 for an Alexa, or whatever and I still have the same shitty performance, connectivity to my smart house, and a speaker.

That’s going to do a lot of landfills good across the country isn’t it?

So no Apple it’s not you. I’m just tired of paying a premium price for mediocrity.

Believe me Apple you’ve become mediocre.

Now where did I put those speakers that I can plug directly into my USB Hub?

Maybe I’ll put one of these HomePod minis in the kitchen and another one in the garage. No point in expecting them to work as stereo speakers is there?