5 ms·

An annoyance that is driving me away from the Apple ecosystem is the lack of choice when it comes to these new features - they are forced onto you with no way t

An annoyance that is driving me away from the Apple ecosystem is the lack of choice when it comes to these new features - they are forced onto you with no way to disable them and sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. I'm still using an iPhone and plan to get the new SE (and only because of Touch ID is back - Face ID was a dealbreaker) but for work I got myself a Thinkpad. Some things are worse, but at the very least I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight because someone at Apple wanted to earn a promotion with a feature that's completely useless to me. In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Every time there's a risk of misclicking and accidentally broadcasting a meeting's audio or (if they have auth enabled) annoying the neighbor by waking up their Apple TV (or taking over whatever they've been watching), and yet I have to faff around with that menu constantly because of the next point: The AirPods auto-switching/roaming introduced in Big Sur made mine completely unusable due to some edge-case bug (even disabling the auto-switching doesn't make them as reliable as they used to be back when they were released, and it takes me 30 seconds of connecting/disconnecting/switching between audio sources upon joining a meeting to actually get it working) forcing me to buy a USB headset. My AirPods are still OK for music on iPhone but became completely useless for meetings even though I bought a second pair just for that reason. - I just can't afford to waste 30 seconds of every meeting gesturing like an idiot while screwing with my audio settings just to get people to finally hear me. The new "hide my email" feature in Safari now pollutes every email form field with a dropdown that I'll never use, and yet again no way to disable this.

askura 5y ago
Reminds me of the "Songs of Innocence" U2 debacle. You get less and less control over what you can do with Apple. They run a good PR game but they really like to micro manage so much.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TrainedMonkey 5y ago
This is partially tongue an cheek, but have you considered playing instructions on how to properly setup security to your neighbors airplay speakers?
- ghostpepper 5y ago
  They might never even realize what happened and think the message was automatic
TooKool4This 5y ago
The Find My network can be opted out of in the settings [1]. And if I remember correctly, it asks you to opt in (but I might be remembering wrong) I have somewhat the opposite opinion though that there are way too many settings in iOS now and it does get difficult to dive through all the menus. Best thing I can recommend is to use the search in the settings. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-apples-find-my-network-on-iphone-ipad-and-mac/ https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-apples-fi...
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Seems kind of ridiculous that in order to opt out of Apple's airtag network you essentially have to give up the ability to find your phone if it gets lost.
  - _g5q8 5y ago
    They use the same system
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      They didn't use to, though. And you can't get that old functionality back while disabling the new.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Yes you can, they have different toggles. There are currently two independent systems for finding your phone that work in different but complementary fashions. Well arguably 3 systems, an iPhone can also be set to report it’s location when the battery is low.
  - TooKool4This 5y ago
    No this will just turn off the ability to find your phone by using other people's phone. You will still have the phone report its location and be able to locate it in "Find My" but lose features such as being able to find the phone if its out of battery/turned off/not in cell reception range. Image of the current settings and explanation: https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2 https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2
jimrandomh 5y ago
> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Make it play Rick Astley until they fix it.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Play the russian national anthem on loop if you really want to make them hustle
  - RF_Savage 5y ago
    Or the shitty fluted version to extra grating (and extra speed!). Could be a fun wardriving project to do.
Severian 5y ago
Have you considered blasting them with the most annoying music you can find until they fix it? Deny all culpability of course.
- srvmshr 5y ago
  I believe there is a billboard which even ranks the most annoying tracks every year. I remember Frozen's "Let it go" & James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" were on it too. Not recommending GP should do it - just found it an interesting fact to add here.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
1. I empathize with all your pain points 2. "forcing me to buy a USB headset." --> If it has a boom, everybody on the meeting, unknowingly, thanks you :)
- stavros 5y ago
  I haven't found anything that compares to even a middling wired boom mic. Wireless has too much latency and non-boom has too much noise. The only thing better is an actual VoIP phone (eg Polycom).
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    It is polarizing though. There are a lot of people who will get positively offended at the notion that their wireless earbuds are not perfect. One of the things that biases is that they hear the others OK, so assume the earbuds are fine. What needs digging is to understand that when somebody has open mike like that, most meeting software engages heavy noise reduction or even half-duplex conversation; so there's a lot of interruptions and "what did you say" and garbled voices for other people, that is hard to trace to root cause of that open busy mike.
    - stavros 5y ago
      Oh man, the half-duplex conversation is terrible. If people start cutting off whenever someone else speaks, I tell them to wear headphones, but I really don't understand how headphones + push-to-talk isn't standard for everyone by now.
      - NikolaNovak 5y ago
        It's the difference between: 1. Grouchy geek who wants to optimize 2. Cheerful regular person who thinks everything is great (*and doesn't really want to bother) As well, it reminds me of how everybody believes themselves to be a great driver. Try getting advanced driving school gift certificate to a friend, family or special someone - they almost universally find it insulting and offensive. "I've been driving for 20 years!". (sure, what new skill have you learned or worked on in last 19.8 years?) Similarly, no matter how kindly I suggest headset, I invariably hear some variation of angry "I do this for a living, trust me" or a strangely patronizing "No, this works great".
varenc 5y ago
re: AirPlay speakers, if you really never want to use AirPlay you can apply a configuration profile that disables it entirely. These are the profiles that allow IT departments to enforce all sorts of policies on employee computers. You could use ProfileCreator to make one: https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator Increasingly it feels like powerful configuration settings are only available via IT management profiles like these. I use one to enabling full system logging since that’s the only way.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Oh thanks, I'll definitely do that. I use profiles on iOS and am fairly familiar with them but didn't bother checking as I assumed macOS not being so locked down wouldn't have "profile-only" settings. I'll also use the opportunity to disable Apple News, TV+, widgets and similar bloat I'm not using.
  - varenc 5y ago
    Wow I’m glad to meet someone else that does this as well! Next iOS device I get I’m going to set it up as “managed” from the start so I’ll have access to the more powerful security configuration profile settings. It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      > It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users. If it was purely up to Apple they'd rather not give anyone these options at all, however that won't fly in the enterprise so they have to compromise.
calvinmorrison 5y ago
Vendor lock in means vendor upgrades. The last time I used google maps (maybe 6 years ago?) you couldn't have any history of your recent destinations if you also turned of google search history... Now I run CalyxOS, haven't used google maps in a long time, and maybe i'm worse for not knowing about speed traps or the fastest route, but... I feel fine.
jlarocco 5y ago
> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Every time there's a risk of misclicking and accidentally broadcasting a meeting's audio or (if they have auth enabled) annoying the neighbor by waking up their Apple TV (or taking over whatever they've been watching) "Accidentally" broadcasting a few times is probably all you need to do to get them to fix their stuff... They probably don't even know.
yosito 5y ago
> I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight I feel the opposite. I switched to Pop!_OS a year ago, and had a fairly standard setup. A recent update broke my dock and my launcher and made the whole machine unusable for days. I eventually fixed it, but the dock kept crashing and the launcher was acting wonky, so I've switched back to Mac. I don't like everything about Mac philosophically, but at least It Just Works!
- kaba0 5y ago
  May I ask you why Pop OS! I think there are much more stable distros out there. But sure, you do have to tinker with linux the first time to make sure every hardware is properly supported, but afterwards I have to say it may be the most stable out of all three. I have really nasty software bugs on Mac as well, random process going 99% CPU, slow downs, etc.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Pop!_OS is presently based on gnome a broken mish mash of c and JavaScript and extensions which rather than being written to an actual extension API merely monkey patches the JavaScript. When the underlying JavaScript to be patched created by gnome changes extensions can silently break. Outside of gnome land this really isn't at all normal. One could for example have used i3wm without issue for the last 12 years, awesomewm for 14, compiz for 16, KDE for 25 years and if you really hate change there is a fork of KDE 3 so you could have pretended its still 2002 for the last 20 years if you like while still actually making use of current versions of everything from the kernel to your web browser.
idontwantthis 5y ago
I just updated from Catalina to Monterey and the airpod switching is magical. Always plays from the device I want.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
drewzero1 5y ago
> sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. This is one of the reasons (along with price) that I try to stick to Apple products that are too old for them to care about. I'd like to see them try to remove functionality from my iBook G4! (Granted, it didn't have as much functionality to begin with, but what it does it's stuck with for now.) I tend to research purchases extensively before I buy, and it's incredibly frustrating when the manufacturer decides that actually, the product I bought wasn't finished yet, let's have an update to add/change new and exciting features. I chose to buy a specific device with specific features, and if I decide I want new features I'll trade it in for next year's model. (Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.)
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  > (Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.) No, and then yes, and then no again: No, if it's older than iOS 14. And then yes, if it is: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/apple-will-let-users-stay-on-ios-14-and-receive-security-updates-even-after-ios-15-is-released/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/apple-will-let-users-stay-on-... And then no again :-( https://www.techspot.com/news/93052-apple-stops-issuing-ios-14-security-updates.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93052-apple-stops-issuing-ios-...
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Unfortunately that doesn't really work for devices that connect to the internet and/or deal with untrusted data - those have to be kept up to date.
Schroedingersat 5y ago
> Some things are worse, but at the very least I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight because someone at Microsoft are working on fixing this soon Leave now before turning off secure boot is disabled

askura 5y ago

Reminds me of the "Songs of Innocence" U2 debacle. You get less and less control over what you can do with Apple. They run a good PR game but they really like to micro manage so much.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TrainedMonkey 5y ago

This is partially tongue an cheek, but have you considered playing instructions on how to properly setup security to your neighbors airplay speakers?

ghostpepper 5y ago
They might never even realize what happened and think the message was automatic

TooKool4This 5y ago

The Find My network can be opted out of in the settings [1]. And if I remember correctly, it asks you to opt in (but I might be remembering wrong) I have somewhat the opposite opinion though that there are way too many settings in iOS now and it does get difficult to dive through all the menus. Best thing I can recommend is to use the search in the settings. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-apples-find-my-network-on-iphone-ipad-and-mac/ https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-apples-fi...

QuikAccount 5y ago
Seems kind of ridiculous that in order to opt out of Apple's airtag network you essentially have to give up the ability to find your phone if it gets lost.
- _g5q8 5y ago
  They use the same system
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    They didn't use to, though. And you can't get that old functionality back while disabling the new.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Yes you can, they have different toggles. There are currently two independent systems for finding your phone that work in different but complementary fashions. Well arguably 3 systems, an iPhone can also be set to report it’s location when the battery is low.
- TooKool4This 5y ago
  No this will just turn off the ability to find your phone by using other people's phone. You will still have the phone report its location and be able to locate it in "Find My" but lose features such as being able to find the phone if its out of battery/turned off/not in cell reception range. Image of the current settings and explanation: https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2 https://imgur.com/a/TepOqb2

jimrandomh 5y ago

cwkoss 5y ago
Play the russian national anthem on loop if you really want to make them hustle
- RF_Savage 5y ago
  Or the shitty fluted version to extra grating (and extra speed!). Could be a fun wardriving project to do.

Severian 5y ago

Have you considered blasting them with the most annoying music you can find until they fix it? Deny all culpability of course.

srvmshr 5y ago
I believe there is a billboard which even ranks the most annoying tracks every year. I remember Frozen's "Let it go" & James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" were on it too. Not recommending GP should do it - just found it an interesting fact to add here.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

1. I empathize with all your pain points 2. "forcing me to buy a USB headset." --> If it has a boom, everybody on the meeting, unknowingly, thanks you :)

stavros 5y ago
I haven't found anything that compares to even a middling wired boom mic. Wireless has too much latency and non-boom has too much noise. The only thing better is an actual VoIP phone (eg Polycom).
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  It is polarizing though. There are a lot of people who will get positively offended at the notion that their wireless earbuds are not perfect. One of the things that biases is that they hear the others OK, so assume the earbuds are fine. What needs digging is to understand that when somebody has open mike like that, most meeting software engages heavy noise reduction or even half-duplex conversation; so there's a lot of interruptions and "what did you say" and garbled voices for other people, that is hard to trace to root cause of that open busy mike.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Oh man, the half-duplex conversation is terrible. If people start cutting off whenever someone else speaks, I tell them to wear headphones, but I really don't understand how headphones + push-to-talk isn't standard for everyone by now.
    - NikolaNovak 5y ago
      It's the difference between: 1. Grouchy geek who wants to optimize 2. Cheerful regular person who thinks everything is great (*and doesn't really want to bother) As well, it reminds me of how everybody believes themselves to be a great driver. Try getting advanced driving school gift certificate to a friend, family or special someone - they almost universally find it insulting and offensive. "I've been driving for 20 years!". (sure, what new skill have you learned or worked on in last 19.8 years?) Similarly, no matter how kindly I suggest headset, I invariably hear some variation of angry "I do this for a living, trust me" or a strangely patronizing "No, this works great".

varenc 5y ago

re: AirPlay speakers, if you really never want to use AirPlay you can apply a configuration profile that disables it entirely. These are the profiles that allow IT departments to enforce all sorts of policies on employee computers. You could use ProfileCreator to make one: https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator Increasingly it feels like powerful configuration settings are only available via IT management profiles like these. I use one to enabling full system logging since that’s the only way.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Oh thanks, I'll definitely do that. I use profiles on iOS and am fairly familiar with them but didn't bother checking as I assumed macOS not being so locked down wouldn't have "profile-only" settings. I'll also use the opportunity to disable Apple News, TV+, widgets and similar bloat I'm not using.
- varenc 5y ago
  Wow I’m glad to meet someone else that does this as well! Next iOS device I get I’m going to set it up as “managed” from the start so I’ll have access to the more powerful security configuration profile settings. It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > It’s telling that these days corporate IT departments have more powerful configuration options available to them than us mere users. If it was purely up to Apple they'd rather not give anyone these options at all, however that won't fly in the enterprise so they have to compromise.

calvinmorrison 5y ago

Vendor lock in means vendor upgrades. The last time I used google maps (maybe 6 years ago?) you couldn't have any history of your recent destinations if you also turned of google search history... Now I run CalyxOS, haven't used google maps in a long time, and maybe i'm worse for not knowing about speed traps or the fastest route, but... I feel fine.

jlarocco 5y ago

> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Every time there's a risk of misclicking and accidentally broadcasting a meeting's audio or (if they have auth enabled) annoying the neighbor by waking up their Apple TV (or taking over whatever they've been watching) "Accidentally" broadcasting a few times is probably all you need to do to get them to fix their stuff... They probably don't even know.

yosito 5y ago

> I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight I feel the opposite. I switched to Pop!_OS a year ago, and had a fairly standard setup. A recent update broke my dock and my launcher and made the whole machine unusable for days. I eventually fixed it, but the dock kept crashing and the launcher was acting wonky, so I've switched back to Mac. I don't like everything about Mac philosophically, but at least It Just Works!

kaba0 5y ago
May I ask you why Pop OS! I think there are much more stable distros out there. But sure, you do have to tinker with linux the first time to make sure every hardware is properly supported, but afterwards I have to say it may be the most stable out of all three. I have really nasty software bugs on Mac as well, random process going 99% CPU, slow downs, etc.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Pop!_OS is presently based on gnome a broken mish mash of c and JavaScript and extensions which rather than being written to an actual extension API merely monkey patches the JavaScript. When the underlying JavaScript to be patched created by gnome changes extensions can silently break. Outside of gnome land this really isn't at all normal. One could for example have used i3wm without issue for the last 12 years, awesomewm for 14, compiz for 16, KDE for 25 years and if you really hate change there is a fork of KDE 3 so you could have pretended its still 2002 for the last 20 years if you like while still actually making use of current versions of everything from the kernel to your web browser.

idontwantthis 5y ago

I just updated from Catalina to Monterey and the airpod switching is magical. Always plays from the device I want.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

drewzero1 5y ago

> sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. This is one of the reasons (along with price) that I try to stick to Apple products that are too old for them to care about. I'd like to see them try to remove functionality from my iBook G4! (Granted, it didn't have as much functionality to begin with, but what it does it's stuck with for now.) I tend to research purchases extensively before I buy, and it's incredibly frustrating when the manufacturer decides that actually, the product I bought wasn't finished yet, let's have an update to add/change new and exciting features. I chose to buy a specific device with specific features, and if I decide I want new features I'll trade it in for next year's model. (Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.)

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> (Incidentally, is it possible to get security updates for Apple devices without getting feature updates? Not for the G4 of course, but my iPad mini keeps asking me to upgrade iOS and I don't want functionality to change.) No, and then yes, and then no again: No, if it's older than iOS 14. And then yes, if it is: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/apple-will-let-users-stay-on-ios-14-and-receive-security-updates-even-after-ios-15-is-released/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/apple-will-let-users-stay-on-... And then no again :-( https://www.techspot.com/news/93052-apple-stops-issuing-ios-14-security-updates.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93052-apple-stops-issuing-ios-...
Nextgrid 5y ago
Unfortunately that doesn't really work for devices that connect to the internet and/or deal with untrusted data - those have to be kept up to date.

Schroedingersat 5y ago

> Some things are worse, but at the very least I can be confident that once I do get a setup that works it'll likely stay working for years without breaking overnight because someone at Microsoft are working on fixing this soon Leave now before turning off secure boot is disabled