Perpetual Random Apple Rants Thread

cateye

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That similarity was brought up in some other thread at some point (and all over the internet), but I think that's just a sign it's a really generic idea so it's not a surprise it's been done before. Which is not an excuse for Apple to have copied it so directly, but I doubt there was malicious intent. I believe it came out that the unfortunate ad was produced entirely by an internal team at Apple, and not by their agency. I would expect an agency to have had the sense to look for prior art (and to have recognized how it would have played to an audience of creatives and not pursued it in the first place).
 
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Honeybog

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Which is not an excuse for Apple to have copied it so directly, but I doubt there was malicious intent.

The problem I have with it is less malice and more:

1) The ad makes so much more sense in 2008, because that was peak people crushing/exploding/destroying stuff on YouTube and it was at least on trend.

2) I think the best excuse for Apple’s tone deafness was that people came up with an original concept and were so in love with it that they were blinded to the optics. If it isn’t even original, the obliviousness is kind of worse.

I believe it came out that the unfortunate ad was produced entirely by an internal team at Apple, and not by their agency. I would expect an agency to have had the sense to look for prior art (and to have recognized how it would have played to an audience of creatives and not pursued it in the first place).

I think that might be the worst part of the whole thing. I mean, it’s not like Apple has ever had a reputation for not believing in its own exceptionalism, but that kind of insularity doesn’t tend to lead to long term institutional health.
 

Genome

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Things I really don’t like about iOS and iPadOS is that some things you just discover by accident. Like just now, when I accidentally tapped two fingers on a link in Safari on iPad and it opened in a new tab.

Has this been here since the start? Is this a recent addition? Who knows!? I sure didn’t, because I’ve never been informed it’s something I can do. I even checked the Tips app and the user manual to see if this was something they inform you of if you’re curious, but if it’s there I couldn’t find it.

Really useful though.
 
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CommanderJameson

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Why, oh why, can’t I add a timer on my iPhone and have it show up on my Apple Watch and vice versa?

I know that clocks and timers are very difficult for you, Apple. That much was obvious for a looooooong time. But come on.
OK, time (hahahahaha 🤣) to annoy you. I set timers on my phone all the time (🤣), and they go off on my Watch.

Note: they go off on my Watch. I can’t look at them on my Watch, because that would require software engineering prowess unavailable until at least a couple of centuries in future.
 

jacs

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Is Apple trying to tell me something?

I use an 'old' 2018 mini as a "media server" - it has all of my movies and music on it (things I've imported myself, things I've gotten from iTunes) - using it as a 'shared' library with whatever Apps replaced iTunes.

I keep it up to date - so it has Sonoma on it.

And this is at least the second time since originally upgrading it to Sonoma that following a macOS update the location of the media has changed from where I want it (on an external drive with plenty of room) back to the default (on the mini's internal drive which is too small for the media I have)

I spent too long moving my media from 1 external drive to another larger external drive several months ago (an annoying process because just changing the location and checking the 'keep organized' checkbox doesn't always move it for you) for Apple to reset everything back to where it DIDN'T want it.

(And some of my media is still referencing the old external drive and not the new one - not sure how that happened. It's all on the new drive but getting the app to recognize that? No easy.)
 

BigP

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I absolutely HATE having to restart my Mac. For any reason: updates, vacations, troubleshooting, anything. If I don't have to restart it, it's wonderful, the best computer I've ever owned! But anytime it has to boot back up, it's usually 10 to 20 minutes of frustration (worst case) or just waiting for it to reach a useful state.

Back in 2020 I bought an M1 Mini to replace my 2013 iMac. I was decently strapped for cash at the time so I made the choice to bump up the RAM but not the internal SSD to more than 512GB. My genius plan was to take advantage of the TB3 and hang an external SSD off the side for all my data. And this works fine! No complaints . . . at least until I have to reboot.

Upon a reboot, the Mini is back up to a login screen in seconds, awesome! But I have to log in to a spare admin account with all of its (otherwise empty) Home folders on the internal SSD. Then I have to wait 5 or more minutes for some reason for the external SSD to mount and be navigable before I can switch over to my own profile. This is annoying but I'm pretty much used to it now.

After an OS update like I did today, something weird always happens. It's like the restart part didn't go right. Today I had to wait for a long time with a black screen before a login ever popped up. After logging into the spare account I was stuck on a blank desktop image with no dock or menu bar or any other indication that it was doing anything besides the mouse cursor. After a couple of hard power cycles I finally got to a normal looking desktop but this time the dock wouldn't accept any mouse clicks. Menu bar was fine so I was able to start a couple of things (activity monitor, finder, etc) by clicking the search icon. I tried to do a normal shut down but that actually failed. One more hard power off and I was finally back in business on the spare profile. Still had to wait 10-plus minutes for the external drive to do its thing.

I'm finally back in completely normal operation but holy forkballs! I'm never putting my Home folders on an external drive ever again. I'll happily grumpily shell out for 2TB minimum internal space next time. I was just hoping that that Next Time would be right about now. I've been waiting for Apple to put the M3 options out for the Mini and Studio but it looks like they're skipping that altogether and going straight to the M4. Sometime. Later. Not soon enough! Gah!
 

wco81

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Is Apple trying to tell me something?

I use an 'old' 2018 mini as a "media server" - it has all of my movies and music on it (things I've imported myself, things I've gotten from iTunes) - using it as a 'shared' library with whatever Apps replaced iTunes.

I keep it up to date - so it has Sonoma on it.

And this is at least the second time since originally upgrading it to Sonoma that following a macOS update the location of the media has changed from where I want it (on an external drive with plenty of room) back to the default (on the mini's internal drive which is too small for the media I have)

I spent too long moving my media from 1 external drive to another larger external drive several months ago (an annoying process because just changing the location and checking the 'keep organized' checkbox doesn't always move it for you) for Apple to reset everything back to where it DIDN'T want it.

(And some of my media is still referencing the old external drive and not the new one - not sure how that happened. It's all on the new drive but getting the app to recognize that? No easy.)

Which media server software are you using?
 

jacs

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Which media server software are you using?
I'm sure I said (or implied)? I'm using the built-in software that lets you do shared libraries across Apple devices.

I've been using it like this since my first AppleTV (which was an original AppleTV - the one running macOS 10.whatever) died and was replaced by an AppleTV 2 (Though I've only recently dedicated a mini just for that purpose.)

Some versions of tvOS/iOS/iPadOS have worked well with it and some have had 'issues'.

(Does no one else consider it 'media server' software anymore? Or consider it such? It's certainly not Plex or anything as full featured as that...)
 

leet

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I absolutely HATE having to restart my Mac. For any reason: updates, vacations, troubleshooting, anything. If I don't have to restart it, it's wonderful, the best computer I've ever owned! But anytime it has to boot back up, it's usually 10 to 20 minutes of frustration (worst case) or just waiting for it to reach a useful state.

Back in 2020 I bought an M1 Mini to replace my 2013 iMac. I was decently strapped for cash at the time so I made the choice to bump up the RAM but not the internal SSD to more than 512GB. My genius plan was to take advantage of the TB3 and hang an external SSD off the side for all my data. And this works fine! No complaints . . . at least until I have to reboot.

Upon a reboot, the Mini is back up to a login screen in seconds, awesome! But I have to log in to a spare admin account with all of its (otherwise empty) Home folders on the internal SSD. Then I have to wait 5 or more minutes for some reason for the external SSD to mount and be navigable before I can switch over to my own profile. This is annoying but I'm pretty much used to it now.

After an OS update like I did today, something weird always happens. It's like the restart part didn't go right. Today I had to wait for a long time with a black screen before a login ever popped up. After logging into the spare account I was stuck on a blank desktop image with no dock or menu bar or any other indication that it was doing anything besides the mouse cursor. After a couple of hard power cycles I finally got to a normal looking desktop but this time the dock wouldn't accept any mouse clicks. Menu bar was fine so I was able to start a couple of things (activity monitor, finder, etc) by clicking the search icon. I tried to do a normal shut down but that actually failed. One more hard power off and I was finally back in business on the spare profile. Still had to wait 10-plus minutes for the external drive to do its thing.

I'm finally back in completely normal operation but holy forkballs! I'm never putting my Home folders on an external drive ever again. I'll happily grumpily shell out for 2TB minimum internal space next time. I was just hoping that that Next Time would be right about now. I've been waiting for Apple to put the M3 options out for the Mini and Studio but it looks like they're skipping that altogether and going straight to the M4. Sometime. Later. Not soon enough! Gah!
I use a base M1 Mini with an external SSD and have no issues with restarts. The main difference I can see is that my user folder is on the internal drive, while my user data that would not fit on that drive (music, photos, etc.) is on the external.
 

BigP

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I use a base M1 Mini with an external SSD and have no issues with restarts. The main difference I can see is that my user folder is on the internal drive, while my user data that would not fit on that drive (music, photos, etc.) is on the external.
That was essentially my goal, I probably just didn't implement it quite right. I found instructions on how to designate a different location for the Home folders and did that. Unfortunately, if I try to log in to my profile before the external drive is mounted and "settled in" or whatever is going on, the Mac freezes up after accepting my password. I haven't had the patience to see if it will eventually fix itself so now I just wait.

I'd be interested in thinking about moving Home back to the internal drive and manually keeping the big chunks out on the external but as y'all may have seen in my other thread recently, my Library folder was/is-still pretty chonky and I doubt I could re-Home it at this point. I also don't know how to keep any login/preferences/whatever files for my profile on the internal ssd.

It would Be Nice if I could be good to go immediately after a reboot with this machine but it's a rare enough thing that I will just live with it until I upgrade. Hopping up to a M2 of some flavor isn't quiiiiiite worth it right now but I was willing to jump to the M3s which I guess they're skipping. Come on M4 Max! That will be a desktop worth keeping for a while!
 

Hap

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Is Apple trying to tell me something?

I use an 'old' 2018 mini as a "media server" - it has all of my movies and music on it (things I've imported myself, things I've gotten from iTunes) - using it as a 'shared' library with whatever Apps replaced iTunes.

I keep it up to date - so it has Sonoma on it.

And this is at least the second time since originally upgrading it to Sonoma that following a macOS update the location of the media has changed from where I want it (on an external drive with plenty of room) back to the default (on the mini's internal drive which is too small for the media I have)

I spent too long moving my media from 1 external drive to another larger external drive several months ago (an annoying process because just changing the location and checking the 'keep organized' checkbox doesn't always move it for you) for Apple to reset everything back to where it DIDN'T want it.

(And some of my media is still referencing the old external drive and not the new one - not sure how that happened. It's all on the new drive but getting the app to recognize that? No easy.)
I have two 2018 mac minis as media servers, but they run Mojave, anything past Mojave and you lose Home Sharing through iTunes. Finder media sharing doesn't respect playlist order, so...

Having said that, one has all media internal, no issues there. The other has an external DAS (and always has). Never had trouble with media "moving", but the library file itself is on the external drive.
 

Bonusround

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I’m looking to do the same: home folder (or portions thereof) on an external drive. Online resources are few and far between, and sometimes in conflict. @BigP and @leet, can you please point me to any instructions or guides you followed? Thanks

(@BigP, were you using an SSD or spinning rust for your external home?)
 
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Hap

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I'd be interested in thinking about moving Home back to the internal drive and manually keeping the big chunks out on the external but as y'all may have seen in my other thread recently, my Library folder was/is-still pretty chonky and I doubt I could re-Home it at this point. I also don't know how to keep any login/preferences/whatever files for my profile on the internal ssd.

It used to be that the Media files were referenced from the Library file location. That's why my Library file always stayed with my media and I just held down iTunes on intial launch to select the external library.

These days I don't have any video files in my local libraries (my video collection is approaching 20TB), so I just stream it via home sharing or copy it locally if traveling).
 

BigP

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I’m looking to do the same: home folder (or portions thereof) on an external drive. Online resources are few and far between, and sometimes in conflict. @BigP and @leet, can you please point me to any instructions or guides you followed? Thanks

(@BigP, were you using an SSD or spinning rust for your external home?)
I've got a 2TB Sandisk external SSD drive that looks suspiciously like the ones that had a major flaw but I was able to verify that mine is too old to have it. Phew!

What I found and did was super simple: Settings > Users and Groups > right-click on my account for Advanced Options > input password, and then there's a place to Choose the Home directory path which is where I made the change. I don't remember the exact search I did but I think I got this from Apple's own community site. It's been a while though!

I don't see a way to put some of Home in different places but that's how I got it off the internal drive.
 

iljitsch

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I had a setup where I kept media such as ripped and converted TV shows on DVD in my iTunes library on a semi-retired laptop with a good amount of available disk space and then stream that to an AppleTV. However, that system tended to be finicky with waking up the "server" from sleep, and having to convert everything to an iTunes-compatible format was a lot of work.

These days, I have Jellyfin media server software running on my NAS that works for the most part on the AppleTV with the Swiftfin client and also the Infuse third party video player but the free version is pretty limited. Works pretty good with the web video player on my LG OLED TV, though.

And/or play video files from a USB stick on the LG TV.

This way no need to convert files, not using up expensive SSD space on a Mac, no file sharing bugs where the Mac won't sleep after accessing its Movies database, and in general the limitations are more predictable/consistent. I do keep a few episodes of TV on my main Mac and sync those with my iPhone so I have something to watch when travelling, though.

The Jellyfin server runs on most OSen including Macos.
 
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Hap

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This way no need to convert files, not using up expensive SSD space on a Mac
I have an obsessive need to keep everything in one place. Since I have a lot of purchased content - it means conversion usually. There is apparently a way to be able to use Fairplay protected content elsewhere, but I haven't figured it out (and honestly haven't tried other that a cursory search).
 

jacs

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I have two 2018 mac minis as media servers, but they run Mojave, anything past Mojave and you lose Home Sharing through iTunes. Finder media sharing doesn't respect playlist order, so...

Having said that, one has all media internal, no issues there. The other has an external DAS (and always has). Never had trouble with media "moving", but the library file itself is on the external drive.
Huh. "Home Sharing" works for me in Sonoma - though I had to "unhide" it in the Sonoma AppleTV app 'Library' section to get to it and getting to it is different in the Music app. (Just the usual - splitting iTunes into 2 apps has led to some strange/awkwards differences between the apps)

I'm not surprised you aren't seeing/having the same issues. There's probably something different about my setup or how it got to the way it is now...

I haven't converted my video to remove Fairplay... something I believe I would have to do to move to a better media server. I'm sure I'll do that eventually. When I get around to ripping my hundreds of DVDs/BlueRays. But not yet. I do the occasional DVD.
 

leet

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I’m looking to do the same: home folder (or portions thereof) on an external drive. Online resources are few and far between, and sometimes in conflict. @BigP and @leet, can you please point me to any instructions or guides you followed? Thanks

(@BigP, were you using an SSD or spinning rust for your external home?)
Sorry, it's been long enough that I don't remember where I looked for instructions.

For Photos, I'm pretty sure I just manually copied the Library to the external, and then Option-clicked to open the application and pointed it at said library.

I don't remember what I did to set up iTunes/Music, but I poked around in "Users/me/Music/Music/Media/Music" out of curiosity this morning. Somehow there are three folders there, one with one song from 2020, two others with full albums from February. Which, given I ranted about iTunes sometimes importing a CD in to two different directories some years ago doesn't surprise me. Possibly due to the external spontaneously disconnecting, which seems to sporadically happen (I typically only know because I'll see the notification about properly ejecting; the drive is remounted by then).
 

xoa

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- I continue to absolutely loathe the new Settings app with the fury of 1000 exploding suns in every single respect. I hate hate hate it and whoever designed it and greenlit it, it's so utterly awful. Damn it.

- The ghost press issue on the Apple Watch is surprising and infuriating as well. Series 9, all up to date, I have it set to turn the screen off, but it's just constantly randomly starting random workouts even if I'm in the middle of another workout! And doing random splits. I've turned off all the autostart/stop stuff and it still happens. I'll be hiking and suddenly here a "split 1 marked" and it just decided to randomly set me to rowing sometime ago. Not that I wanted a random split either. FFS. Theater mode sorta helps but even that doesn't entirely resolve it and then it's harder to see anything else either. Sigh.
 

Hap

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I want the Dock to stay PUT where I want it, quit jumping from screen to screen as I accidentally hit the bottom edge. It would be ok if it was reliable in moving, but it's NOT. This drives me insane.

For reference this is my monitor configuration

Code:
Dell - Dell - Asus
        |
    Wisecom (Sp?)

I want it to stay on the bottom of the middle Dell. NOT ANYWHERE ELSE. This literally makes me want to punch my monitor.

🤬
 

OAW

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I want the Dock to stay PUT where I want it, quit jumping from screen to screen as I accidentally hit the bottom edge. It would be ok if it was reliable in moving, but it's NOT. This drives me insane.

For reference this is my monitor configuration

Code:
Dell - Dell - Asus
        |
    Wisecom (Sp?)

I want it to stay on the bottom of the middle Dell. NOT ANYWHERE ELSE. This literally makes me want to punch my monitor.

🤬

Unfortunately you are running up against standard functionality to move the Dock from one screen to another. Moving the cursor from one screen to another is currently accomplished by performing that function. Personally I'd prefer if this were controlled in the Display sections of the Settings app or right-clicking on the desktop and selecting a "Move Dock to this Display" menu or something.
 

Hap

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Unfortunately you are running up against standard functionality to move the Dock from one screen to another. Moving the cursor from one screen to another is currently accomplished by performing that function. Personally I'd prefer if this were controlled in the Display sections of the Settings app or right-clicking on the desktop and selecting a "Move Dock to this Display" menu or something.
But it doesn't always work. It only works for vertical changes. If it some how ends up on the left monitor, then I cannot move it to the middle monitor without moving it to the bottom monitor first and the bottom monitor is a 10in 1920 x 515 display only use for status.

I know I'm a power user and therefore Apple doesn't care about me, but I can't even find a 3rd party utility to help.
 

Hap

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@Hap, I've noticed the Dock choosing to reside on the bottom-most display in a vertical arrangement (when positioned on Bottom) – is that what you're referring to?
Yes, and I don't want that - for MANY reasons. I'm almost at the point of moving my dock to the right side (although that creates its own issues).
 
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gregatron5

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Yes, and I don't want that - for MANY reasons. I'm almost at the point of moving my dock to the right side (although that creates its own issues).
IMO Dock on the left is way better than on the right. One rarely ever uses the extreme left of a window, but scroll bars are on the right (and I use them a bit) as was old-school window resizing.
 
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xoa

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I'd do a warranty claim on that watch-- I've been wearing Apple Watches since the first-gen and have never seen anything that might be considered a "ghost press". Any Series 9 watch should still be in warranty, with or without Apple Care.
Thanks, this is my first one so haven't had any reference, and since Apple saw fit to specifically mention it in the 10.4 Watch OS update:
Apple said:
• Resolves an issue that causes some users to experience false touches on the display
I just sort of figured it was a thing they were still working on. I'll try to find someone Apple to ask about it. Closest Apple Store is like 4.5 hours drive away so it's not convenient to just go in person and check, will have to see how their phone/online options are nowadays.[/url]
 

xoa

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Yes, and I don't want that - for MANY reasons. I'm almost at the point of moving my dock to the right side (although that creates its own issues).
I wish the dock had some "group minimized windows by application" or other options, something inbetween default behavior of having all minimized windows on their own and "minimize into application icon", which makes it annoying to then hunt the minimized windows. Left side would usually be my preference, on most screens these days vertical space is at much more of a premium then horizontal, but with a lot of minimized windows everything gets so very, very tiny. I suppose I could use Spaces more heavily and try to stick unused windows on their own space and avoid using the Dock at all that way but it's one of those aspects of macOS that feels kinda half-baked even after over 20 years. They got the dock "ok enough" then just sorta stopped, no major changes ever since.