4 ms·

That's kinda been my experience, too. The amount of detail Apple has put into their drivers and software is truly underrated (and overshadows by their more rece

by duhi88 6y ago

That's kinda been my experience, too. The amount of detail Apple has put into their drivers and software is truly underrated (and overshadows by their more recent scummy business practices). The surprising thing to me is that most of the small details I rely were in OS X 10-15 years ago. If a Linux distro were created to mimic OS X 10.4 I would be perfectly happy using it as an everyday OS and recommending it to others. I keep hitting dead ends in my research, and it seems like the major desktop environments have a lot of architectural problems preventing them from implementing some basic UX improvements. The barrier of entry to help develop these features also seems high to me, coming from web development.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
People always say this, and then my experience with iOS / MacOS devices is always super bad. Like the other night, I was helping my mother put an mp3 file from her computer onto her phone (an audiobook she got from the public library). It was blisteringly difficult to do. We tried the following: 1) Airdrop the mp3 file, except iPhone thinks the mp3 file is a video, so the only options to open the mp3 file are iMovie, iTunesU, WhatsApp, Clips (none of which do anything when you select them). 2) Put the file in her iTunes and sync it with her phone, except her iPhone has a special type of charger and her MacBook doesn't have any USB ports, so we can't connect the two, but you can't sync iTunes with any phone unless they physically connect through a cable, in 2020. 3) Turn on Home Sharing in iTunes and play the file from Home Sharing. This works (after updating the iPhone to iOS 14 because Home Sharing causes the phone to crash in iOS 13.x). But then we realize if she turns iTunes off on the computer, the Home Sharing also stops, so the iOS device loses access to the mp3 file. 4) Try downloading the file on the phone itself, for whatever reason none of the browsers offer this option, when we open the mp3 file, it plays through the browser, but we can't save the file (so we cannot keep track of where we stopped listening last, or play the file offline). 5) Email the file to her, well the file is too big to email, but Gmail offers to store the file on Google Drive and then send it. We download the Google Drive app on the iPhone, download the files from the email to her Google Drive app, enable offline storage, and then click "Open In" (which is buried two menus deep) to open the file in a SECOND third-party app to finally store and play the audio file (because it won't play in the Apple Music player). And then I think, when can I finally get all that user-friendly software people are always talking about...
HatchedLake721 6y ago
What recent scummy business practices did Apple do?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Their products are manufactured by literal slaves in concentration camps. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-iphone-factory-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-ip...
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    The linked Business Insider piece falls into a category of stories that come out fairly regularly which could be described as "exposes on truly bad things about the global supply chain that many technology companies benefit from but we've learned we get way more attention if we say 'APPLE <sub>and also many others</sub>' and focus on Apple specifically." This is a pretty classic example on BI's part. The NGO in Australia that the BI piece links to describe their own findings with "The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. Those factories claim to be part of the supply chain of 82 well-known global brands." BI puts the focus specifically on one of those 82 well-known brands, writing, "Although the report highlights that the displaced Uighur workers are present in many different companies' supply chains including Nike, BMW, and Amazon, Apple features prominently as a case study." That's both true and misleading -- they could also have written "Nike features prominently as a case study" or "Adidas features prominently as a case study." The big Apple suppliers mentioned in case study #3 also contract for Samsung, HTC, HP, Microsoft, Oppo, Nintendo, Sony, Oculus, and others. None of this "excuses" Apple; it's just that there's something faintly disingenuous about focusing on them as if they were a unique source of this problem. We could just as easily say "your Nintendo Switch is manufactured by literal slaves in concentration camps," but we don't, because... it's not as satisfying to be outraged at Nintendo, I guess? At any rate: I strongly suspect the OP was referring to recent controversy surrounding the way Apple runs the App Store.
    - 6y ago

by duhi88 6y ago

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

People always say this, and then my experience with iOS / MacOS devices is always super bad. Like the other night, I was helping my mother put an mp3 file from her computer onto her phone (an audiobook she got from the public library). It was blisteringly difficult to do. We tried the following: 1) Airdrop the mp3 file, except iPhone thinks the mp3 file is a video, so the only options to open the mp3 file are iMovie, iTunesU, WhatsApp, Clips (none of which do anything when you select them). 2) Put the file in her iTunes and sync it with her phone, except her iPhone has a special type of charger and her MacBook doesn't have any USB ports, so we can't connect the two, but you can't sync iTunes with any phone unless they physically connect through a cable, in 2020. 3) Turn on Home Sharing in iTunes and play the file from Home Sharing. This works (after updating the iPhone to iOS 14 because Home Sharing causes the phone to crash in iOS 13.x). But then we realize if she turns iTunes off on the computer, the Home Sharing also stops, so the iOS device loses access to the mp3 file. 4) Try downloading the file on the phone itself, for whatever reason none of the browsers offer this option, when we open the mp3 file, it plays through the browser, but we can't save the file (so we cannot keep track of where we stopped listening last, or play the file offline). 5) Email the file to her, well the file is too big to email, but Gmail offers to store the file on Google Drive and then send it. We download the Google Drive app on the iPhone, download the files from the email to her Google Drive app, enable offline storage, and then click "Open In" (which is buried two menus deep) to open the file in a SECOND third-party app to finally store and play the audio file (because it won't play in the Apple Music player). And then I think, when can I finally get all that user-friendly software people are always talking about...

HatchedLake721 6y ago

What recent scummy business practices did Apple do?

michaelmrose 6y ago
Their products are manufactured by literal slaves in concentration camps. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-iphone-factory-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-ip...
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  The linked Business Insider piece falls into a category of stories that come out fairly regularly which could be described as "exposes on truly bad things about the global supply chain that many technology companies benefit from but we've learned we get way more attention if we say 'APPLE <sub>and also many others</sub>' and focus on Apple specifically." This is a pretty classic example on BI's part. The NGO in Australia that the BI piece links to describe their own findings with "The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. Those factories claim to be part of the supply chain of 82 well-known global brands." BI puts the focus specifically on one of those 82 well-known brands, writing, "Although the report highlights that the displaced Uighur workers are present in many different companies' supply chains including Nike, BMW, and Amazon, Apple features prominently as a case study." That's both true and misleading -- they could also have written "Nike features prominently as a case study" or "Adidas features prominently as a case study." The big Apple suppliers mentioned in case study #3 also contract for Samsung, HTC, HP, Microsoft, Oppo, Nintendo, Sony, Oculus, and others. None of this "excuses" Apple; it's just that there's something faintly disingenuous about focusing on them as if they were a unique source of this problem. We could just as easily say "your Nintendo Switch is manufactured by literal slaves in concentration camps," but we don't, because... it's not as satisfying to be outraged at Nintendo, I guess? At any rate: I strongly suspect the OP was referring to recent controversy surrounding the way Apple runs the App Store.
  - 6y ago