Nonstop whining about how Apple sucks

[MMTalker]

A quick search at the Apple employment web site lists 600+ open jobs involved with software and hardware usability testing at quite a few of Apple’s offices in the US. Keep in mind that for every opening there are many more people currently in the same and similar positions.

I have been tangentially involved with UE, UI and eye tracking studies for product and online design and information architecture for websites, and worked with people who designed and managed them. But most of the 600 jobs consist of stuff I never even thought of even thought of, stuff like this. And this is just the in the US:

I looked at just three pages, and here are a very few openings I found particularly interesting. Health, Siri, AR, VR, voice, entertainment are heavily represented:

User Studies Exercise Physiologist

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200071471/user-studies-exercise-physiologist?team=HRDWR

Biomedical Studies Engineer

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200088492/biomedical-studies-engineer?team=HRDWR

Health Sensing Data Scientist

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200009616/health-sensing-data-scientist?team=HRDWR

Human Interface Design Senior User Studies Facilitator

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200054170/hid-senior-user-studies-facilitator?team=HRDWR

Software Engineer, Motion Algorithm Verification And Validation

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200042379/software-engineer-motion-algorithm-verification-and-validation?team=SFTWR

Senior User Experience Designer, Create Machine Learning

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200022692/sr-user-experience-designer-create-ml?team=MLAI

Software Developer Engineer In Test

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200008390/software-developer-engineer-in-test?team=SFTWR

Technical Artist: AR Applications

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200000604/technical-artist-ar-applications?team=SFTWR

Senior QA Engineer, Augmented Reality Applications

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200000608/senior-qa-engineer-ar-applications?team=SFTWR

IOS Embedded Bring Up Engineer

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200057789/ios-embedded-bring-up-engineer?team=SFTWR

Siri Senior Software Engineer - Voice Experences And Domains

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200047323/siri-senior-software-engineer-voice-experiences-domains?team=MLAI

Siri Senior Program Manager: Siri Experience Team- Machine Learning and AI

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200027963/siri-program-manager-siri-experience?team=MLAI

Siri iOS Engineer

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200005013/siri-ios-engineer?team=MLAI

Senior Software Engineer, App Store

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/114377007/sr-software-engineer-web-technologies-app-store?team=SFTWR

AI/ML iOS Mac Software Engineer

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200029696/ai-ml-ios-macos-software-engineer?team=MLAI

iOS Safari Software Engineer

https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200071596/ios-safari-software-engineer?team=SFTWR

Years ago through work I did meet a few people who worked at Frog Design on the development of the original Mac as well as the Newton disaster. They said they did do usability testing and Steve Jobs was involved. They thought that the partnership with Apple ending was a combo of Apple wanting to bring industrial design in house and blame Newton on the dead guy. Steve was a hands on engineering, design and creative guy that greatly appreciated usability research, what he didn’t like was market research.

[ace (Adam Engst)]

@fogcitynative

Ever have a friend pick up your locked phone in your own house and want to use it? So they ask you “Hey Adam, what’s your unlock code?” I’d bet you’d give it to them. They’re your friend, you wouldn’t even have them in your house if you didn’t trust them.

Just to emphasize this for others—no, I would never, ever give my passcode to anyone I didn’t trust implicitly, which in my case means only my wife and son. And the only phones I can get into other than theirs are my parents’, since I so often need to help them. They trust me implicitly as well. If you’ve ever given your passcode to someone outside of such a circle of trust, go change it, right now. (And this is a big win for Touch ID and Face ID, since you can unlock an iPhone without even entering the passcode to let someone use it temporarily.)

The entire point of a “trusted” device is that you can trust that it hasn’t been compromised. Once it has, all bets are off. I’m truly sorry to hear how you were exploited after unwittingly sharing your password, but if you ended up in a situation where you were drugged, money and time feel like minimal losses in comparison with what could have happened in terms of brain damage or even death if the drug dosage hadn’t been just right or had interacted with any other medications you might have been taking. That’s the perspective I’d focus on, not concerns about authentication technologies whose protections you had circumvented.

Apple is always walking a fine line between security and ease of use, and it’s not an obviously incorrect decision to allow the Apple ID password to be reset if you know a device’s passcode. Resetting it does require that the passcode be entered again, so letting someone use your iPhone temporarily wouldn’t allow that. And it’s not even Touch ID or Face ID enabled, so the attacker can’t drug you and use your face or fingerprint to get through to reset the password.

So it’s fine to be upset about what happened, and it’s a shame that the Account Recovery took so long—that’s a part of Apple I’ve never had any experience with, and it’s hard to know what constraints and issues they have to deal with that might explain the time lag. Or might not—it’s entirely possible that it’s just a broken system, but there’s no way to know for sure from anecdotes.

But no, I don’t think it’s obvious that Apple has made some huge security mistake here. Bring that wooden horse inside the gates of Troy and all sorts of bad things are likely to happen.

@fogcitynative

I honestly do not know, but does Apple do any end user testing in a usability lab? Because if they had this type of testing they would have caught the map with clouds issue.

Historically, yes, Apple has done lots of end-user testing. My suspicion is that it’s done under serious NDA at this point, such that it doesn’t get out. Apple is highly secretive about pre-release products, so it’s impossible to know for sure. We know that Apple builds entire research labs for fitness testing with the Apple Watch, for instance, and they said they had thousands of employees doing real-world testing on Apple Card just recently.

But no, usability testing would not have caught the cloud issue. That’s a data problem, not a usability problem, and undoubtedly a very rare one. If I go into Maps and zoom in and scroll around, I can’t find a single area obscured by a cloud.

@fogcitynative

I just want Apple to get back to being on a mission to change the world. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been wowed by an Apple New Product Rollout.

The world is a lot harder to change than it used to be, and we’re a lot more jaded. The Apple Watch is a good example. For many people, it’s an overpriced gewgaw. But as someone else noted, it has actually saved lives, and it’s being used to do Really Important medical research. That’s amazing, and we should allow ourselves to be wowed by that achievement, even if we’re old and cranky and our Timex watches just keep ticking.

If something wows you, great, you should buy it and use it. But I don’t think it’s fair to complain that Apple isn’t wowing you. They’re doing what they’re doing, and it’s up to you to be impressed or not. If not, just move on—by definition, most things aren’t impressive.

@m.hedley

In conclusion there’s much to praise Apple such as its stance on privacy and environment, but Apple could reduce the whining by getting out of its ivory tower.

Adam - whining happens in communities and TidBits helps me realise that I am not imagining things when Apple stuff is illogical, difficult and frustrating to me.

Let me push back gently on that. There is nothing wrong with asking about things that you find illogical, difficult, or frustrating, and there’s nothing wrong with describing how you find something illogical, difficult, or frustrating. That’s inquiry and criticism.

It only devolves into whining when blame starts being assigned, particularly at the individual level, and ill intent is assumed. In many cases, as I hope people have been seeing in this thread, there are answers to the questions or explanations for the frustrations.

If we work together constructively, we’ll find those answers and explanations. If we whine, well, I’ll dump the posts in here.

[bettyfellows]

I agree. I appreciate Apple, especially after spending too many years working in the PC world. Apple creates great products. Do they have problems? Of course and we should point out the problems. I prefer to look for the good in people and in organizations instead of always finding fault.

[Matt_McCaffrey]

@fogcitynative

Ever have a friend pick up your locked phone in your own house and want to use it? So they ask you “Hey Adam, what’s your unlock code?” I’d bet you’d give it to them. They’re your friend, you wouldn’t even have them in your house if you didn’t trust them.

That is what happened to me. My so-called friend, who I had known six months and who had been to my house ten times, put some sedatives in my food or drink. She was cooking dinner for us. She kept filling my glass with more Pina Colada.

Once I was out, she cleaned me out.

I’m sorry for your loss: loss of your Apple ID account, device, and trust in your friend.

That you chose to allow this doesn’t mean I’m going to call you “stupid” or suggest there needs to be a change of regime in the stewardship of your devices.

But honestly, you’d lose that bet about whether I’d share my iPhone’s unlock code with a friend, or anyone else. My spouse, and no one else, has access to my devices and knows where my 1Password emergency kit is located.

If I were ever to loan my iPhone to a friend for calling purposes, I would be the one unlocking it, for all the reasons you subsequently learned about. It locks again when it goes to sleep, in about a minute. Same with iPad, iMac, and MBPro. Not to mention Watch 3. And for that one, I’m reconsidering my current habit of allowing Watch to unlock my MBPro.

I’m sorry your “friend” turned out to be a grubby con artist. But you enabled the entire chain of events to unfold, and that’s not because Apple is stupid or is promoting lax security. It’s not Apple’s fault.

And to be clear, it’s not Eddy Cue’s fault, or Tim Cook’s fault that you were befriended by a grifter and essentially handed over your keys. You did that.

I do appreciate the suggestion that perhaps there needs to be two branches to follow if you’ve lost control of your devices: one for “I forgot” and one for “I was robbed.”

[ace (Adam Engst)]

@Matt_McCaffrey

Not to mention Watch 3. And for that one, I’m reconsidering my current habit of allowing Watch to unlock my MBPro.

I actually ran into a really good use for Apple Watch unlocking recently. I bring one of our laptops to track meets for timing, and I normally need to give my friend Jullien who runs the meet management software a login password (and fuss with changing it before and after). The last time, though, I was using Tonya’s MacBook Pro, which is newer than my MacBook Air and supports Watch-based logins. So when Jullien opened up the MacBook Pro, it saw my Apple Watch since I was standing a few feet away, and logged her in without me having to give her a password.

[drakewords (Peter Drake)]

Adam - great, you blew your top! Well done, good for you. There are so many of us who love the stuff Apple produces. Nothing’s perfect in real life but, like you, I find it depressing to read these negative diatribes. Please be assured the silent majority is with you all the way. And if you feel like letting off steam now and again, nobody’s going to blame you! Keep doing what you’re doing, TidBITS is an essential element in my online landscape.
Peter Drake

[paolo (Paul Albert)]

I agreed in total with fogcitynative!. The arrogance is the key factor.
The idea that a laptop with only USB-C is just outrageous. I want to carry a light laptop now I have to carry another adapter or dock to plug in anything. Oh, so they can beat their chests about a 3 mm thinner computer than before. It is all absurd. Pretty much only security and privacy is on their side. They are not in the forefront any longer, their designs out perform their functions. One recent example is the HomePod speaker, with it’s outmoded software that is connected to the internet and can only answer questions on the weather and music. I had it unplugged for 2 months now as it interrupted conversations a number of times with rock music for absolutely no reason.
You are right Apple is not Apple anymore and I don’t think it’s any one person’s fault.

[Simon]

@paolo

The idea that a laptop with only USB-C is just outrageous.

I could give you a whole list of things I think Apple should improve on the latest MBP and even macOS (and there’a a bunch of stuff I don’t like about the way Apple is being run these days), but that said, I really don’t get the issue I keep hearing with USB-C.

Of course if you use mem cards all the time it’s nice to just insert them. And MagSafe offered really nice extra safety that we seem to have given up now. I get that. But that aside, isn’t it a great feature that we now have one port to rule them all? One port that offers all kinds of protocols and can connect to pretty much any device, even AC power. Isn’t it great that you only need the right cable and then you have full freedom to connect whatever you want to whichever side of your MBP and you’ll never happen to run out of that once specific port because you already used it for another device?

Sure, you’ll need to replace a few legacy cables, and during a period of transition you’ll probably even need an adapter (definitely at least USB-A to -C), but there’s no doubt USB-C is where USB is headed and before long just having several such ports means you’ll be well equipped to handle everything thrown at you. Better yet, because it’s not just plain USB-C, but rather the superior TB3, you can use that same physical port for stuff that needs more oomph, like really hi-res displays or super-fast storage. But again, none of that freedom comes at the expense of your other more mundane stuff, because hey, those same ports are also just regular USB-C if you want.

To me this entire transition sounds like a dream I’ve long had finally coming to fruition. If I need to pay ~$100 for two adapters and two new cables on the way there, I will definitely do so. At the office where I use a TB docking station to connect to my screen, GigE, KB, mouse, and extra storage, I’ll eventually just swap that dock. It’s a one-time $250 expense for a >$5k setup that helps me earn my living. To me personally, that’s worth it.

Anyway, I’d be curious to hear why such a path doesn’t sound workable to you.

[Matt_McCaffrey]

@paolo

The arrogance is the key factor.
The idea that a laptop with only USB-C is just outrageous. I want to carry a light laptop now I have to carry another adapter or dock to plug in anything.

You may or may not find a single pair of USB-C ports useful compared to the 9 or 10 holes that used to grace both sides (and at one time, the front AND the back) of our laptops.

I’m sending you this message from a MBPro plugged into an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, in turn hosting a large monitor and a wireless keyboard. All of that stays here at the office when I leave; the MBPro goes. I can use it by itself for many hours, or at home use it wirelessly on my network.

The last time I tried this was in the early 2000s. The dock that plugged into the entire left side of my PowerBook was practically bespoke because of the precision required to get every single plug on it positioned correctly. It was expensive, it sometimes crashed for no reason, and it was utterly useless when I replaced my computer.

I’d call it a rational design decision to take advantage of mega bus speeds to standardize on a single port type. Carrying a dongle from time to time is fine with me. I’ve no big need for Ethernet, Firewire (any more), DisplayPort, or multiple USB ports. When I do need any of them, they are available on my dock.

[Matt_McCaffrey]

@ace

So when Jullien opened up the MacBook Pro, it saw my Apple Watch since I was standing a few feet away, and logged her in without me having to give her a password.

Neat! And it’s also exactly the thing that (sort of) worries me. I sit down at my desk, and when the laptop wakes up it “sees” the Watch and logs in. I’m working out whether I’m really comfortable with that. I’ll probably decide there’s no likely scenario where that would be worrisome—after all, my Watch locks the moment it’s off my wrist, so it’s not like someone could take both the laptop (which locks on sleep) and the watch and do anything with it.

With the advent of magic comes middling responsibility.

[aleckinnear]

@srb5814

If you does not like Apple, then don’t buy it. No one is forcing it on you. If you have a problem, ask for help. If the first person can’t help you, take it up the food chain. I never could abide my children whining when they were little and I would not answer them if the voice was whiney. I feel the same today, but when it’s “adults” doing this, I’m just totally turned off.

Oh great, I’m going to throw away twenty years of expertise in an OS and its third party applications, not to mention a ten thousand investment in software personally (and probably another twenty thousand for my company) because you are turned off.

Sorry. Not good enough. We’re going to keep on talking. You’ll just have to ignore those veteran Apple users calling out Apple for the decreasing reliability, security, consistency and user-friendliness of Mac OS. Yes, Mac OS is still better than Windows. The margin of difference is probably smaller now.

Personally I’m looking forward to moving to Linux at some point, but simply cannot afford it. Switching would be about a 50% productivity loss over the course of a year (more at the beginning less at the end, after a year the transition would largely be done and there’d probably be a linger 10 or 15% effect as the Mac OS third party applications overall are better). If I were starting over now, a flavour of Linux it would be though.

@ace

Our reader survey, which I’ll be looking through in detail this week, reveals that 88% of our readers are over 50 and 95% of our readers are over 40

I belong to the TidBits readership who have been reading Adam et co. and buying their books for decades. Apple used to inspire me. For the last seven years they’ve mainly annoyed me.

Killing off brilliant core tools like FCP Studio and Aperture just to try to be trendy is not something I will forget soon. And the replacements (FCPX, Photos) are second-rate consumer applications which many years later have still not reached parity with the products they “replaced”.

FCPX does have a brilliant rendering engine which would have been wonderful under the hood of the much more capable FCP Studio. Photos has almost no redeeming features: there’s no even vaguely convenient way to work with Photos and use a file system structure and retain ratings and metadata. Photos plays even worse with the outside world than Adobe.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

@aleckinnear

Sorry. Not good enough. We’re going to keep on talking. You’ll just have to ignore those veteran Apple users calling out Apple for the decreasing reliability, security, consistency and user-friendliness of Mac OS.

My big issue is that there are people (not just one person, but several people) who post the same exact complaints over and over and over again. I’m not sure why once isn’t enough. I’m already to the point that I ignore the posts of several people who just keep making the same complaints (and lay the blame on the doorstep of specific senior management at Apple), and, if this forum continues to be just a complaint-fest, I may just unsubscribe. It’s not worth the time to read all this crap over and over again.

[paolo (Paul Albert)]

I guess you just don’t get my point.
A Laptop-portable computing! Simple, ez- take pictures- insert card.- transfer photo or file quickly -usb.
My wife has an Air 2017- we take hers on trips- mine stays home- pain in the butt.
Nobody on the Dark Side (PC’S) have that problem -no inputs for a portable laptop.

[johan.van.rafelghem]

In my unsatiable curiosity I have been constantly exploring all kinds of operating systems. From the Mac in its early OS7 days, DOS (God, I liked diving into that command line), Windows from 3.1 to 10 (I skipped Vista, it spelled disaster before it even appeared) and later Linux in a rapid succession of distro’s and flavours but time after time I find myself sailing back in the safe and peaceful harbour of my 2017 4K iMac, my venerable 2010 MacBook Air, a very old iPad and my iPhone SE.

I cannot tell you how much joy I get from experimenting, reinventing and discovering but when I want something to work. When I need something I can rely on. I find myself looking at the logo of Eve’s forbidden fruit.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t got my own share of ocasional misgivings, criticisms and dislikes about what Cupertino is cooking. I do, but what I hate most about Apple is the realisation that I will never be able to lay my hands on the high end Macs and try them out. Not enough time, not enough means and to be honest not enough knowledge.

We live in a wonderful age and time where the opportunities to learn and experience are countless.
No time for whining.
Just smiling.

[MMTalker]

@fogcitynative

Because everyone uses software in a different way is why Google has a substantially large multi-story building in Mountain View totally dedicated to end user usability testing. I have no idea the total number of observation labs in that building or if there are more buildings like it in other places. But I walked by 4 labs before I got to the one they were using with me.

Four test labs ain’t no thing, and Apple has teams working in a beautiful new campuses in Cupertino and Austin, as well as in offices across the country. From the 600+ current US job descriptions posted on Apple’s website, it’s highly likely that user experience testers are part of specific segments and teams. They obviously aren’t bit players with walk on parts. Many are specialists with extensive experience in segmented fields like medicine, health/health sensors, entertainment, face, handwriting and voice recognition, computer vision/AR/VR/3D and a whole lot more top secret, eyes-only stuff.

Google doesn’t release any application to end users before it is tested in a usability lab. They’re aren’t necessarily looking for bugs, they’re looking to see how you use their software to see what they might have missed along the way. Everything from on-screen design, menus, help text, roll-overs, even colors.

Apple doesn’t release software or hardware unless it is thoroughly tested and vetted. They seem to have a much more wholistic approach to application, web and content development and testing.

[Simon]

@MMTalker

Apple doesn’t release software or hardware unless it is thoroughly tested and vetted.

In the interest of a serious and factual discussion, let’s not generalize.

Apple’s recent releases of buggy installers (to the point where they needed to retract and re-release) or the production release of the initial butterfly keyboard (to the point where they have an ongoing maintenance program that extends to include even their latest shipping product) were very public demonstrations that at least in certain cases, Apple does not test their software and hardware thoroughly enough.

I think many long-time Mac users would also agree that the thoroughness of Apple’s testing appears to have declined in most recent years compared to a period roughly 5-10 years ago (and possibly even before that).

Just as we are perfectly in our right to enjoy Macs and Apple, people suffering from such issues are perfectly within their right to point out these two obvious facts. That’s not “whining”, it’s pointing out a decrease in quality and care to detail (the latter being something Apple has always been well regarded for). The fact that those people don’t just shrug “whatever” and move on, is—as I would interpret—an expression of their fondness for or at least attachment to Apple. Something I would very much expect to find on a forum like this one and I would not consider in any way inappropriate.

Note also, that Apple doing the right thing (eg. re-releasing a more stable installer or performing out-of-warranty maintenance free of charge) does not justify a lack of initial thorough testing. While I think it’s great they try to make things right, I would find it even better if they would test thoroughly enough so these kinds of blunders wouldn’t happen in the first place. Utopian? Maybe. But this is Apple. They are good at what they do and they are very rich. The bar is high. Rightly so.

[fogcitynative (Norman Gilbert)]

In my case, the installer to go from Sierra to High Sierra managed to brick my 2012 MacBook Pro.

Yes, Apple did the right thing. They gave me FREE a brand new 2017 MacBook Pro and even let me upgrade the storage and memory for $200. There was a great employee in the Office of the CEO (actually he was in Austin) and he followed up religiously until things were back to normal.

Now Apple doesn’t give away over $2,000 worth of hardware unless they know to a certainty that they screwed up. The installer was upgraded to a X.1 version two days after the original release.

I think it is safe to say they did not ever test the installer on a 5 year old computer.

Oh, they were supposed to send the replacement to a nearby Apple Store in San Francisco. Instead, someone screwed up and sent it to my mail drop in Los Angeles. Only Apple could get FedEx to redirect it and that little mistake added two days to the time it took to get everything running again.

All and all I was without my computer for close to two weeks.

These are the facts. I am not going to whine about it, other than to say I have good reason to believe Apple is getting sloppy. Why? Getting the wrong address on the box coming from China. Not testing the installer on every model they claimed could be upgraded.

But praise to Apple for doing the right thing. They never actually admitted doing anything wrong. They wanted my old bricked computer back to “study”. I think they just wanted the evidence destroyed. They already knew what was wrong at the point they offered me a free replacement computer.

[fogcitynative (Norman Gilbert)]

@paolo

The idea that a laptop with only USB-C is just outrageous.

I wouldn’t call it outrageous. The Thunderbolt Port is fast and the plug isn’t keyed to only go in one way.

But it only works passing through other devices, like monitors, keyboards, printers, etc. Meaning if the peripheral device has only a Thunderbolt input and no output you’ve reached the end of the line for that port and need to use another port on the MacBook for other devices (or make sure the device with only an input is at the end of the chain) If you use both ports for peripherals where do you connect the power?

And there is no such thing as a Thunderbolt port hub or port extender. If your machine only has two ports, you cannot buy any device to make two Thunderbolt ports into four ports. Old fashioned USB hubs could do that.

So when I replaced my stolen MacBook, I popped extra for the touch-bar and 4 Thunderbolt ports. I am on my second adapter. Three old fashioned USB ports and one Thunderbolt pass thru.

The first adapter started interfering with the WiFi signal. That was fun to troubleshoot. Many calls to Applecare, many invalid solutions.

The solution finally came from an Internet search. The second I disconnected the Thunderbolt to USB adapter, WiFi suddenly got rock solid again.

My new adapter has a metal housing instead of plastic and better strain relief. on the cable. The plastic one ran really hot to the touch but the metal one is cool and cool to the touch.

But I do have a question.

Why is the interface cable on every brand new iPhone Lightning on one end and old USB on the other end?

Shouldn’t the people who haven’t upgraded to new hardware be the ones forced to purchase an adapter?

And I do wish Apple would have made the adapter to Apple standards and included it in the box with the computer. They used to include that big VGA video dongle that I never used once.

[morwen]

Bravo Adam! Complaining and whining isn’t a constructive use of anyone’s time! (So many of the complaints could have gotten fixed if they’d only go make constructive comments at apple.com/feedback.)

[foo]

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