8 ms·
Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to: * Get it synced properly * Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-de
by rossng 10y ago
Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to:
* Get it synced properly
* Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device
* Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually
* Set up simple things like email accounts
Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to Apple Music, iTunes had silently flipped on a setting that prevents this. Working out what on earth was happening took me almost an hour.
Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-deterministic. Am I alone?
- pjsg 10y agoNo -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want. I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is intuitive. For anybody from Apple reading this -- iTunes is not intuitive. It is horrible.
- mtreis86 10y agoItunes is the worst. It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders, reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags. The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems pervasive throughout apple's products.
- delinka 10y ago"our users are stupid, just do everything for them" Oh, it's worse than that: "we know better than you regardless of your intelligence. trust us: this new UI is better for you; this new media file manager is better for you; this new gesture is better for you" - forget all the work you've done, forget all that time acclimatizing to the last set of UI and gesture changes ...
- digi_owl 10y agoAnd it is a mentality that is spreading. The whole "user is stupid" attitude was basically stated to me by a big name Gnome developer a year or so ago. And his like seem to have their fingers in more and more of what lives above the Linux kernel (and are likely chomping at the bit to do the same to the kernel itself once Linus is out of the way).
- gglitch 10y agoI only just started using a mac/iphone after many years of only using Linux and Android, and my impression is that although they'd object to the language, yes, that's pretty precisely their business model, and its an insane success. I'm not saying most people actually are stupid, but I'm saying that probably the set of people who either (a) are not stupid and want their computer to do something different than what iTunes automatically does, or (b) somehow, whether by ignorance or villainy, get screwed by a situation like the one in the post, barely register in Apple's statistics. I'm (a). The author is (b). We're edge cases. The moral flavor of Apple's business model will continue to not matter while people keep shoveling over the dollars.
- Bartweiss 10y agoAlthough (b) is small, it does tend to produce truly vocal enemies enemies of the company. I had the joy of buying a product that Apple swears doesn't exist ("Our records say we never made a machine with that serial number, so I'm not allowed to put you into the support system.") Three dead logic boards later, I'm done with the company altogether. I'd like to think that with market penetration nearly complete, Apple will start to face consequences for this. They're depending on beating competitors and pushing upgrades now (instead of selling to new buyers), so lost customers are a bigger threat. I'm not holding my breath, though, it's just too rare.
- m_fayer 10y agoThat's because at a conceptual level, a "general purpose computer" is far from an ideal device for rent extraction. If your user is stupid, they won't be able to manage a general purpose computer but will instead require a well-controlled computing appliance that will dutifully collect all the rents its creators can get away with.
- kame3d 10y agoTalk about scary! I managed to unintentionally delete all photos in my aunt's iPad. All I wanted to do was disable iCloud backups. And I am a postdoc in a CS department.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago"You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want." This! One is something like "delete all the music from my iPod" and the other is "delete all the music from my hard drive". How on earth has this situation been allowed to develop?
- Bartweiss 10y agoI'd forgotten all about that question! It's like Apple never considered the possibility that you might connect an iPod and a hard drive with different files and want to keep the union of them. Similarly, the default setting where Apply tries to copy all of your content to a new iPod when you plug it in, in alphabetical order. I have 300Gb of music, you should know that won't succeed.
- rhodysurf 10y agoThats just it, they done want to let you keep both files as a way to try and combat piracy (Multiple people syncing all the files theyve bought separately). Its really frustrating, and they will never allow it to happen.
- Shivetya 10y agois this related to Apple Music use? I have never encountered this problem with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. I have music on each and separate settings for all four devices and never once has it asked to delete, let alone with a popup.
- prplhaz4 10y agoI have had a similar experience - finding out what is really going on with my iDevices always ends up being a giant time-suck. Things do seem to "just work" as long as you don't go looking too far - which, I imagine, is what most people do. I don't think this is unique to Apple necessarily, just more pronounced due to the "just works" mentality.
- IkmoIkmo 10y agoAgreed on all points, but email accounts have always been a breeze for me on iOS, although it's a bit limited it always did the basic stuff very well.
- yks 10y agoNo. iTunes is probably the worst piece of widely used software out there. It's just a UX nightmare, hard to grasp how to do things, almost impossible to grasp what the consequences of doing things are.
- vlunkr 10y agoI swear iTunes used to work great. When I got my first iPod it did the syncing correctly and played music, and those were about the only jobs it had. It has since bloated more and more, I don't even open it anymore, it's awful on both windows and osx
- phineastcat 10y agoI have to run an old version of iTunes to have my 4th gen iPod even sync properly. :\
- mrep 10y ago^ 100% agree, it is literally the worst UX design ever! I'm currently using the 3 month free trial and every time I use it i have to tell myself "it's free money, just 1 more month until I switch back to spotify". For example, the playlists I create on my laptop don't sync whatsoever with my phone. I spent a little time trying to research how to sync them and just said screw it. On what planet does a user not want their playlists automatically synced between devices, let alone making that the default option?
- sixseven 10y agoI owned my first MacBook 3 years ago. To me, the MacBook "just work" as much as any new Windows laptops I came across. So I'm clueless as to where did the phrase "just work" came from. Maybe Windows has improved over the years, or maybe a lot of things are done of the web now, the OS doesn't really matter as long as there is a browser.
- ryan-allen 10y agoYou should try Windows 10, I've been Apple free for a while now. I'll never go back to OS X.
- RussianCow 10y agoI don't know if I'm alone, but I find Windows 10 horrible. It consistently freezes on me for several seconds at a time (and usually when I'm doing something important), it takes longer to fully boot (background services seem to take way longer to start), it uses an incredible amount of CPU and disk in the background for no reason, the new Control Panel is impossible to sort through, and the overall UI/UX is a step backwards (IMO)--and all that without mentioning the privacy concerns. I'm really kicking myself for upgrading, because I thought Windows 7 was a really great OS. I ended up switching to Linux Mint, and have been very happy with it overall.
- serg_chernata 10y agoI run win10 at home since beta and also admin multiple windows machines at work. None have that issue. I would say with utmost certainty that something else is amiss. All of my machines run faster and smoother on win10.
- RussianCow 10y agoOh, I'm not saying the freezing is a general Windows 10 issue; I'll fully admit that there might be something wrong with my install. But it's just frustrating that it started happening on a fresh install of Windows 10 (not an upgrade) before I even installed anything abnormal. And there are others reporting the exact same issue as me, so I know I'm not the only one. We're talking about operating systems that "just work", and for me, Windows 10 didn't.
- theandrewbailey 10y agoI remember reading "In the beginning was the Command Line" and the description of Apple products being hermetically sealed boxes sticks to me to this day. Even though the author said that the essay was obsolete within a year or so of release (due to Apple and OSX), it proves that even over 17(?) years in technology, some things never change. Almost every other ecosystem doesn't obsessively hide every adjustment knob and switch and force you into submitting to their way of doing things like Apple's does.
- Sir_Substance 10y ago>Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-deterministic. Am I alone? Apple devices haven't "just worked" in over a decade. It's a testament to apples marketing that people still think this.
- oarsinsync 10y agoThat's a bit of a stretch. The early iPhones 'just worked'. My Mac used to 'just work'. All was groovy in my Apple life as 'recent' as ~2011. I wouldn't say my Mac 'just works' anymore, nor my iPhone for that matter. And this is commented on a lot by a lot of prominent Apple bloggers, to the point that it does get responded to by Apple SVPs (see Marco Arment and Phil Schiller) EDIT: that said, my mum gave up the PC when she got an iPad 2, and was even happier when she got a hand-me-down iPhone 4S. She finds both slow now, but still won't go near the PC anymore. For her, the Apples still 'just work'.
- snowwrestler 10y agoI think we need to make some distinctions here. My Macs and iPhones have proven incredibly durable, reliable, and flexible. It's the syncing services, specifically, that Apple is screwing up. They never figured this stuff out, even under Steve Jobs. > Fortune magazine reported that during the summer of 2008, after MobileMe had launched to mostly negative reviews, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs summoned the MobileMe team to a meeting in the Town Hall auditorium at 4 Infinite Loop. After asking them "what MobileMe is supposed to do", when someone answered, Jobs reportedly shot back, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe
- rhinoceraptor 10y agoMy iPhone currently has two apps that somehow failed to install, and I can't delete them or open them. I tried rebooting the phone, signing in and out of the Apple store, all to no avail.
- colin_jack 10y agoYeah I had the exact same issue with syncing externally purchased music whilst using apple music, I honestly could not believe apple has delivered software that behaves in such a user hostile manner. It hurts their reputation and convinced me to give up on some music.
- colin_jack 10y agoYeah I had the exact same issue with syncing externally purchased music whilst using apple music, I honestly could not believe apple has delivered software that behaves in such a user hostile manner. It hurts their reputation and convinced me to give up on some music.
- Yhippa 10y agoI got my parents an iPad mini recently and some of the contacts on my mom's phone sync and some of them don't. I am a developer and love tinkering with computers but for the love of me not figure out how to fix this.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI recently spent a good chunk of a day troubleshooting the problem "when certain people message my account on Apple Mail, I get the message twice." Confirmed that it wasn't user error, and was common, never made got another inch of headway. My eventual diagnosis was "at least you're getting the message!"
- wvenable 10y agoYeah I got my daughter a new Mac and synced it up to the iCloud so she could iMessage from the desktop and she got an odd (incomplete) set of contacts that don't seem to match any other device.
- cJ0th 10y agoThese are my main qualms with software these days: Logic went out of the window. Back in the days a good deal of software had great, albeit complex menus. The typical non-techy hated these interfaces because they didn't get results immediately and by not having an interest in technology most ruled out the idea of putting in some effort to learn the piece of software at hand. (no pain, no gain - duh!) Next, companies "figured out" that usability is soo important and that it needs to get fixed because customers were having trouble. This was generally a wrong conclusion. Getting rid of complex menus doesn't necessarily increase usability. It irritates power users to no end and doesn't help casual users when they run into special cases. Heck, even the power users can't help the casual user anymore! Every not completely trivial app(lication) should offer at least additionally a "complex" mode that offers a good old menu bar where deterministic, to some degree "atomic" functions (if you pardon the faulty analogy) are offered, grouped in a logically consistent way.
- sametmax 10y agoYet, people still buy it. They agree to pay for a product, at a bug price, and ask for people around them to do Apple's work to setup it up for them, but for free. And they find that very natural. Normal. Like they found normal 20 years ago we had to help them with their MS product they paid, but for free.
- leephillips 10y agoI recommend Android for anyone in a position to change. I plug my Android phone into my Linux laptop. The phone's filesystem is mounted. I move, copy, delete whatever music and photos I want. Dead simple and rational. I put Flickr on the phone. Photos I take with the phone are automatically backed up to Flickr, and I can see them from anywhere.
- bittercynic 10y agoThis has gotten worse over time as well. It used to be you could mount your phone's storage as a mass storage device, but now (as far as I can tell) MTP is the only option.
- leephillips 10y agoYes, it's MTP with my current phone and linux installation. Is there a problem with this? After I figured out where the filesystem was mounted (a bit of a pain), I could use it like a normal mount, as if it were an external USB drive.
- zeveb 10y ago> Yes, it's MTP with my current phone and linux installation. Is there a problem with this? For the longest time MTP & Linux was terribly painful, verging on unusable, while mass storage worked perfectly. It bit when I upgraded my Nexus phone and discovered I couldn't get to the files stored on it. Fortunately, all seems to work well now.
- ansible 10y agoThe reason for implementing MTP instead of mass storage was clear, because you couldn't / wouldn't be able to access the files from the phone while the computer was accessing them. So I understand why they went in that direction. But oh my goodness! MTP support on Linux was terrible for a while, and even on Windows it wasn't fast and reliable. It was easier at the time to just use a service like Dropbox to transfer files to/from the phone, than to use USB.
- mpswardle 10y agoIt "just works" if you fully buy into the ecosystem. i.e. all content stored in iCloud nothing synced via cable etc. I happen to do this since i tend to need a new iPhone every 2-4 months and it's just easier to pick up a new one, sign in and let it set itself up exactly as the old one. But anything that deviates from this workflow, you tend to run into problems.
- burtmacklin 10y ago> i tend to need a new iPhone every 2-4 months umm... what?
- mpswardle 10y agoYer. it could be fairly argued i don't care for it well. But honestly the iPhone 6 is the most breakable thing i've ever owned.
- sanoli 10y agoYeah... 3 iPhones a year... what? Care to explain why?
- mpswardle 10y agoi find the iPhone 6 to be very breakable, case or no case. it could be argued i don't care for it that well.
- badloginagain 10y agoI've always been a Windows/Linux guy, and I never understood the Apple "Just works" motto, because my experience has been largely the same as the issues you've laid out. iTunes has always been the worst user experience, both for myself and setting it up for the less technically inclined. I've been a firm "no-Apple" camper because Apple products doesn't give you the control if you need it. For an obsessive music fan, fine-tune control over how the product interacts with your library is critical. I am not surprised at all by the disaster mentioned in the article- it validates the paranoia I've always harboured against Apple products.
- Bartweiss 10y agoIn my experience, Apple is the living embodiment of The Hitchhiker's Guide's "things that cannot possibly go wrong". > The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. They might be slightly more reliable in their most standard use case, but you're doomed at the smallest hiccup.
- stordoff 10y agoNot so much devices (rarely come into contact with them), but this is what finally pushed me away from iTunes - https://i.imgur.com/JUIXKTd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/JUIXKTd.jpg For various reasons, I have multiple Apple IDs with iTunes content linked to them (old account, new account, various region changes over the years etc.). At some point, Apple decided that you could only download past purchases with _one_ Apple ID per computer per ninety days, effectively locking me out of the content unless I had a local copy[1] and was using a pre-authorised PC (for context, this was after Apple had done the "It's all in the cloud; just stream it" push for movies etc.). I ended up getting around it by firing up a bunch of virtual machines (one per Apple ID), downloading everything I end, striping off the DRM, and then never using iTunes again for anything other than music (and even then I favour CDs first and other download sources second). I'd certainly been a long time coming (2010ish iTunes handled my large-ish media library fine, and the UI was fine. By 2014ish, every release was feeling slower and slower, and the UI felt more and more like the iOS interfaced backported to PC), but that was the final straw. Currently moving over to foobar2000 for music (technically I could just point it at my music folders and be done, but I'm taking the opportunity to make sure everything is tagged properly). [1] Which of course I keep on my NAS, but a) I'm not always on my local network and b) I'm not always 100% diligence about making sure a copy ends up there.
- cJ0th 10y ago> I ended up getting around it by firing up a bunch of virtual machines (one per Apple ID), downloading everything I end, striping off the DRM, and then never using iTunes again for anything other than music (and even then I favour CDs first and other download sources second). This is ingenious and also hilarious if it weren't so damn tragic.