Sometimes, it’s the little tech annoyances that sting the most
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Jeckyl not Hyde
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
How about some coverage of the fact that Apple has strayed a loong way from the "just works" days of Jobs, and has become inferior to both Android devices in hardware and software the last few years - especially in terms of UX features and ease of use.
As for Desktops, Apple came a long way to near en-par with Windows software and hardware wise, but that is also already sliding back of late. Apple with all its mega billions is not the company it ever was before, it has more in common with the confused wasteful spending of a modern Microsoft or Goole than not anymore.
As for Desktops, Apple came a long way to near en-par with Windows software and hardware wise, but that is also already sliding back of late. Apple with all its mega billions is not the company it ever was before, it has more in common with the confused wasteful spending of a modern Microsoft or Goole than not anymore.
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Jeckyl not Hyde
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
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LaTex... wow. That takes me back. But you're right - I didn't say my way was right - just how much I dislike them and why. Your stickies space would address the issue with stickies, but I use notes for that purpose. Stickies by themselves are next to useless IMHO since they would be all over the place interspersed with my other windows.
TIL ⌘ is an actual character. Thanks.
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The desktop bits work great on macos - windows is the one I have issues with regarding desktops. My mac reliably puts my windows back on the monitors I want them on. Windows? Crap shoot if they all stay on the laptop's screen, or if I close it after connecting my 2 externals, they stay on one or pop back to some form of at least partial distribution across both screens. This happens so often I have become almost inured to it, it only pops to front of mind when anyone comments that external monitors work "fine" under windows. They do not.
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Number one and most important to hammer into the heads of marketing people: When you annoy customers, they don't complain. They just don't buy your next product, and your sales go down, and you have no idea why.
With designs: At one place, designers (the UI designer actually) were my best friend. If i wanted the software to behave in some way, I couldn't justify the cost and time for the change in a way that management would accept. So I went to the UI designer, explained what the software should do UI wise and why, they usually made took my idea with some fine tuning or improving the UI further, and told management that was how the software must work. Then they asked me how long and accepted what I said. I was happy for creating a better product without being forced to rush, design was happy for providing a good design, management where happy for caring for the customer, and the customers were happy.
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Carnotaurus
Seniorius Lurkius
Using the Power settings in the Control Panel, you could set the power button in the computer case to make the computer sleep instead of shut down.
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List view for the Windows desktop.... I'm pretty used to be a built-in feature, then it had to be re-set after every reboot. Then it stopped working entirely. Microsoft apparently hates the idea of people a having neat, efficient & legible desktop space?
Someone went so far as to make a utility to put in the startup folder, but eventually that stopped working too... There's probably still a way to set it up but I wound up throwing in the towel. These days the only reason I find myself on desktop view is using it as a holding location while moving files around or when I can't get the auto-hide task-bar to pop up...
Someone went so far as to make a utility to put in the startup folder, but eventually that stopped working too... There's probably still a way to set it up but I wound up throwing in the towel. These days the only reason I find myself on desktop view is using it as a holding location while moving files around or when I can't get the auto-hide task-bar to pop up...
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You could also potentially set it up for a key press to activate sleep for you so you just have to hit the enter key and not trying to blindly click on sleep. Either way it is a bit annoying to have to work around the poor behavior of the monitor.
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Some time back, Microsoft kept begging me to install Copilot on my Win10 machine. I kept declining. Then, a few months ago, I found it installed anyway. I guess their view is, you're gonna like this software whether you like it or not! I uninstalled it.
Now I found it installed again.
Now I found it installed again.
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As with other Google services in their respective domains, at this point, I think Gmail is honestly probably the single most corrosive entity to the functioning of email as intended by the standards.
My fun story here is years ago when I tried to enable IPv6 on my personal email server. Everything worked great, except sending to Gmail addresses, which produced an obscure error in response.
Turns out the error was due to my IPv6 address not having a PTR record. Because Comcast just doesn't even offer that as a possibility. I had SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all setup. Google was fully capable of verifying emails were sent from a legitimate server registered to the domain. But Gmail rejected them because of an arbitrary test Google added on top of any actual standard. And it's not that my IPv4 address's PTR records actually pointed back at my domain. They just pointed at some random, default Comcast domain.
So, my email server remains on IPv4 only.
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There are ten pages of complaints so this one may have been answered...
If you option-click the "File" menu, "Save As..." will be there.
I think it sucks too. Also the file dialog that comes up when you just want to close an edited window. Also MS Word has adopted the file dialog for closing an edited window, and it still sucks.
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at least for non-smd components, which I've not done much with (those desoldering tweezers they make look pretty awesome for that stuff), I've found using the fluxless wick with manually applied liquid flux works pretty well... in some situations I'll also spread out the strands of the wick a bit.
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"Buy the non-standard Apple product, which is designed specifically for macOS and also famously ergonomically uncomfortable to use depending on your mousing style, or get a third party app" is a workaround at best. Helpful, maybe, if you have a really great third party app to recommend, but still a workaround.
A two button plus click-wheel mouse should not require third party drivers to be fully functional on any OS, including support for standard gestures like zoom. It's true Apple has never made exactly this style of mouse (though the Mighty Mouse was pretty close), but these have been the industry standard for literally decades now.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a fun thread. There's no reason to be getting annoyed here.
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All the apps cruft MS installs as part of the default user profile, instead of adding them at the system level. No longer can you configure or image a workstation to a workplace standard, having removed the cruft, and send it out the door confident in the established user experience. Now the cruft is automatically installed for every person who logs on, and you either clean up after the fact, or shrug your shoulders at the new reality, accepting that everyone is doomed to the same shitty experience.
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Sounds like a nice gig. If the place I used to work for which has been mentioned plenty in these comments had that kind of culture between the UI designers and engineers, I'd probably still be there.
I could only go so long watching great recommendations from the engineering side of the business just get outright ignored and then those same silly design decisions get torn apart online, or result in predictable confusion from friends and family before it was just too frustrating staying in my little corner.
Might try again someday. The place was pretty decent otherwise.
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For FaceOff, may I suggest the Detrumpify plugin if you're using Firefox? Among other functions, it can replace that insufferably haughty mug, and that of other similarly respectable persons in his orbit, with a picture of a puppy or a bunny or even with nothing. I'll let you discover the (quite funny) text-replacement functions, for which I admit I submitted several honorific titles.
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Among what keeps me on Windows is that I can barely imagine using a system without X-Mouse Button Control. Endlessly helpful utility and has a portable version.
Full disclosure: I swear I have nothing to do with the developers.
Full disclosure: I swear I have nothing to do with the developers.
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1) What I claimed is trivially confirmable, with even rudimentary internet search skills. (And, no, I’m not going to do your work for you. If you want to contest that, again easily confirmable, point it’s up to you to find some reliable citations to the contrary.)
2) In future, kindly include the WHOLE of the relevant context that you are commenting on. Otherwise, it just reads as drive-by snark, and doesn’t add new information, or advance the conversation in other ways.
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I'm literally in the middle of a project right now on my Mac, and was taking a little mental health break when I read this.
My project: I'm sick and tired of iTunes (or, if you insist, Music.app) forgetting my sort metadata.
Everyone listens to music differently. Me, I know what genre I want to listen to, so I'll pick a genre, then scroll through my library on my phone. I sort different genres by different criteria. My "Rock" music I want sorted by artist name, then chronologically ("Rush" sorts in the "R" section before "Fly By Night", which sorts before "Caress of Steel" and so forth). "Film Scores" are sorted by title. "Humor" goes by style--sketch comedy, then standup, then music. And so forth.
Several years ago I spent a couple of weeks going through and adding sort data to the "Sort Album" field for every track I have (30,000 plus), and everything sorted perfectly, just the way I want it. Several versions of iTunes/Music, iOS and MacOS later, and literally half of the tracks in my library have had that metadata deleted. Not by me, mind you. Apple apparently just decided it knew better than me and is helping me out a little bit at a time.
So I've given up on the "Sort Album" metadata, and my project now is to actually rename all of the albums themselves--my score of "The Last Starfighter" is now titled "L1260 The Last Starfighter". Because Apple.
It feels like yet another example of humans adapting to the needs of technology, instead of the other way 'round.
My project: I'm sick and tired of iTunes (or, if you insist, Music.app) forgetting my sort metadata.
Everyone listens to music differently. Me, I know what genre I want to listen to, so I'll pick a genre, then scroll through my library on my phone. I sort different genres by different criteria. My "Rock" music I want sorted by artist name, then chronologically ("Rush" sorts in the "R" section before "Fly By Night", which sorts before "Caress of Steel" and so forth). "Film Scores" are sorted by title. "Humor" goes by style--sketch comedy, then standup, then music. And so forth.
Several years ago I spent a couple of weeks going through and adding sort data to the "Sort Album" field for every track I have (30,000 plus), and everything sorted perfectly, just the way I want it. Several versions of iTunes/Music, iOS and MacOS later, and literally half of the tracks in my library have had that metadata deleted. Not by me, mind you. Apple apparently just decided it knew better than me and is helping me out a little bit at a time.
So I've given up on the "Sort Album" metadata, and my project now is to actually rename all of the albums themselves--my score of "The Last Starfighter" is now titled "L1260 The Last Starfighter". Because Apple.
It feels like yet another example of humans adapting to the needs of technology, instead of the other way 'round.
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How are you running a mail server on a home account? Or do you have a business account? I certainly can't send to port 25 from my home address, and most mail servers would blacklist me anyway.
I do run a personal mail server on a cloud server, though I'm reconsidering it. Even if it didn't filter port 25 outbound, again I'd have to deal with blacklists. I certainly block a ton of cloud services for my server. For outbound mail I'm using the cloud service's email proxy. I don't send a lot so cost isn't an issue.
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"Update: Figured it out... Solution was actually fr pretty elegant but the margins are too thin for me to write it all out here. Peace"
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A couple of years ago we replaced a computer suite of late-2012 Mac minis, which had been trundling along with almost no issues but were at the end of their servicing/update life, with M2 models. We've had all sorts of weird little niggles with the M2 machines - for example, the teacher computer, attached to both a touchscreen interactive whiteboard and a regular computer monitor, will not remember that it is set to "clone" its display, instead deciding that the whiteboard screen its primary display, even when the whiteboard is switched off. Cue support calls from teachers thinking that the Mac has frozen, because the login window is being shown on the other (off) display.
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"What minor tech irritations have you overcome recently?"
Just got a new, shiny, bleeding-edge gaming rig. I expected that I'd have to solve some problems. But the very last thing I thought would be a problem was the first and biggest problem: my surround sound system interfaced with my previous rig via three RCA jacks, and the new rig, from the MB, had ONE RCA out.
Solution: an external sound card. But that was an expense I didn't want to pay, and I shouldn't have had buy a new piece of hardware to add to a bleeding-edge gaming rig to solve a problem that was never a problem with the old rig.
Just got a new, shiny, bleeding-edge gaming rig. I expected that I'd have to solve some problems. But the very last thing I thought would be a problem was the first and biggest problem: my surround sound system interfaced with my previous rig via three RCA jacks, and the new rig, from the MB, had ONE RCA out.
Solution: an external sound card. But that was an expense I didn't want to pay, and I shouldn't have had buy a new piece of hardware to add to a bleeding-edge gaming rig to solve a problem that was never a problem with the old rig.
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Microsoft Outlook on Windows 10 and 11 randomly resizes the message window. Every 3rd or 10th message I read opens in a ridiculously small windows. I drag a corner to where it is the right size and place. That lasts for a few messages, and then it shrinks again.
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Google has a whole culture around it - there's an offical internal website you're supposed to load up and maximise on their PC if they leave their PC unlocked (it's nothing too bad, just a finger-wagging web page about forgetting)
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That's an entirely normal check - there's a whole laundry list of checks that aren't in any standard because spammers and email admins are in active warfare.
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For a while, Apple was pushing a new system for document saving. An app would auto-save documents as you go and you’d be able to spin off a duplicate when you wanted. When you used “Duplicate…” you’d remain in the old document, so have to then switch to the duplicate you had just created.
I never figured out how it was supposed to better, nor found it better in actual practice. It just added a level of confusion, for me.
Some system to make sure you don’t lose work if the app crashes is useful, but I should explicitly control what is considered the “definitive” current state of my document.
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The most egregious sin I see on any OS is a non-resizable dialog window that has a scrollbar in a control within. Layout libraries have been around in major use for 30+ years. There's no excuse.
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It's a business account. Although I'll probably just give up at some point and move to a cloud provider, because it's increasingly not worth the hassle (nor the cost of the business account, even with some discounts applied).
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Of the many irritating aspects of MacOS and iOS updates, the one that most burns my goodwill is that MacOS updates (5 of 7 so far) wipe out me smart mailboxes. Not the emails contained therein, just the organization I've created that helps me find what I need.
Honestly, it makes me wish for Steve Jobs to return from the Void. Apple needs (and plainly, does not have) someone with top authority who is massively hung up on details and functional continuity.
Honestly, it makes me wish for Steve Jobs to return from the Void. Apple needs (and plainly, does not have) someone with top authority who is massively hung up on details and functional continuity.
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FWIW, it sounds like the whiteboard is only "off", but still keeps the display link active. Kind of makes sense, since switching display configurations in the middle of a lesson would probably lead to even more support calls.
To be honest, the whole behavior makes me suspect the whiteboard doing something funky in terms of changing its configuration. IME Macs are usually pretty good at remembering display configurations. Though this could be the exception to that rule.
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Indeed. Autosave by default, with the original document being the one you hope you can actually restore in the event of a failure, makes me really nervous.
The newer macOS behavior just completely reverses the paradigm that always made sense to me. You want to work on a (in-memory) copy of your document by default, because you never know when you'll accidentally mess up the whole thing with an errant keystroke, find that undo somehow fails, and really, really want that original version.
I think this goes along with the general trend I see where software seems to be designed in a way that's just a little too confident in itself. This covers anything from, say, the Address Book / Contacts app, which I discovered some years ago apparently is not included in Time Machine backups when you have iCloud sync on, because what could go wrong with iCloud? (Discovered as an attempt to have iCloud restore a day-old copy of my contacts after a bug duplicated them all resulted in iCloud actually deleting all my contacts — and saved only by a single computer which happened to be offline at the time.) To password autofill constantly trying to turn on autosubmit for filled passwords. (Hello, 1Password.) To the general lack of progress indicators and error messages period in modern software. ("Application crashed due to error 12345." or whatnot may be cryptic, but at least you usually can look it up.)
Just seems like modern software is too often designed under the assumption that everything's going to work. Because if something is broken, it'll get fixed in an update, so why bother with robust fallback or error reporting? And who has a slow / no internet connection, or so many $ITEM a search is going to take more than a fraction of a second anyway?
(Do I need a /rant?)
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Careful- say it 3 times and you summon Documentation!
On second thoughts that might just be wishful thinking.
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A Mini where the entire top surface was a trackpad would be cool but possibly prone to misunderstandings.
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I have a Brother MFC-L8900CDW laser printer that kept telling me I needed a new black toner cartridge even though I had just replaced it. I ignored it thinking it would eventually sync itself, but alas, no. So when it refused to print I did the usual: pull the cartridge out and put it back in, clean some stuff, reboot the printer, and completely unplug and restart. Nope, refused to print even through the cartridge was new.
So I hit the Google search. Found a couple of YouTube videos, one of which addressed the exact issue with almost the exact printer. It took me a couple of tries to master the multi-button moves, but I was able to successfully reset the printer count for the black toner cartridge and live to print again! Appreciate those that figured out the solution to this highly annoying and impactful issue.
So I hit the Google search. Found a couple of YouTube videos, one of which addressed the exact issue with almost the exact printer. It took me a couple of tries to master the multi-button moves, but I was able to successfully reset the printer count for the black toner cartridge and live to print again! Appreciate those that figured out the solution to this highly annoying and impactful issue.
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This is the story of my life. On a regular basis technology fails me. I can't sleep my WIN 10 box because it won't wake up. So I keep it on all of the time. Every few weeks I'll come back to the box and 2/3 of my apps will have been closed. Not all of them, like if it rebooted. So it doesn't reboot but still closes 2/3 of my apps for . . . reasons. I spend my day on the phone and cell technology is unreliable as it relates to persistently good call quality. I could go on and on.
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My worst messing with muscle memory - MS Flight Simulator 2020. I flew MSFS from version 4 through FSX. And for all those myriad versions, the keyboard shortcuts were basically the same. there were MORE of them as the sim got more complex, but they were basically the same. FS2020 swept it all out the window. Completely ruined it for me, on top of it being horrifically buggy the first couple of years. I just gave up. I could have learned new shortcuts if it WORKED, but the combination of the two was just too much.
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The problem outlined in this article is all too familiar. My greatest lament, other than the state of the current U.S. government, is that once upon a time Macs could be relied upon to work and set up easily right out of the box, but alas no more. My suspicion is mission creep as things and the world and what we expect of it have just gotten more complicated. Everything is suppose to work with everything else, which of course becomes difficult, if not impossible, since multiple parties/software makers are involved and not everyone has each other's best interests in mind. Solve one problem and that high misleads you into thinking you can do that with every issue. But eventually you will run into your bogeyman and you are left believing you aren't clever enough to fix it.
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