I HATE APPLE

thinking of finally upgrading to 10.15. do we know anything now we didn't know when it came out?

The latest thing is that piece doing the rounds about the sheer amount of phoning home it does — even exec calls trigger sync networking to check the certs of the executables. I'm still trying to put off updating

mine's been stable

I can tell you that running the 10.15.4 combo updater fixed all of the problems I was having and I'm thankful that trick still works.

does 10.15 bring anything worth having? I'm annoyed that they deem my mbp too old to use sidecar.

well they still haven't fixed the stupid library listing bugs in itunes/music : /

but offhand i can't recall a new feature or important fix that i rely on

thanks, I think I'll just continue to hold out then.

We replaced our AppleTV recently and the new remote is driving us all crazy. It's crazy touch sensitive, easy to pick up and handle upside down without realizing it, and the menus are all shit. Non-intuitive and confusing.

Top tip: you can train it to listen to a standard IR remote in Settings. We just use our TV remote with it now. (Not least because we lost the stupid tiny one)

you can control it from yr iphone also

Oh man, thanks!!!

I don't think that people appreciate how different the voice to text experience on a Pixel is from an iPhone. So here is a little head to head example. The Pixel is so responsive it feels like it is reading my mind! pic.twitter.com/zmxTKxL3LB

— James Cham ✍🏻 (@jamescham) May 27, 2020

yeah, i don't get why Apple threw in the towel on this so long ago

siri also depends on understanding speech and it also blows so maybe there’s a connection. apple is years behind in both.

I've been surprised at how good the voice-to-text is on my iPhone, but I only use it in the Notes app. Guess it's way better on Android devices!

poor michael geer

more questions about backblaze!

why would an overnight backblaze backup -- the type where you click "backup now" as you leave the laptop and go to bed -- cause the macOS utilities window to be open (and frozen) when you return to the laptop some hours later? (as it's frozen i have to restart to return to normal)

this has happened three or four times in the last few weeks (two of them last night)

one data-point: *one* of the times last night i know that wifi had gone down during the back-up (bcz i unthinkingly untethered the laptop from my phone) (it was tethered bcz talktalk was dicking around all of yesterday) -- would this cause this to happen? no other apps were open or operative, everything else is currently working fine

I've got a £450 worth of bricked ipad that is only 6 months old. I took it to a repair business and this bloke spent two weeks with it and said it wasn't responding and he didn't seem to know what was wrong with it and he said the manufacturers warranty is gone because there is a slight, barely discernible bend in the middle of the case. I suspect he's either a second rate repair-meister or he just couldn't be arsed with a difficult repair. Was going to try a 2nd repair business which would have meant getting into a taxi and I thought fuck this and ordered a £150 Huawei Mediapad T5 as a replacement. It only gets used for youtubing and that'll do fine rather pissing more money onto something already disappointingly short lived and way too expensive.

is there anyway to show only apple/free to stream shows on apple TV+ apps? I don’t want to see rentals

The Watch Now screen does not really distinguish between content that you own and can watch, and just Apple’s general recommendations. Hopefully, the TV app interface will be revamped soon with better features and easier navigation.

But for the time being, the easiest way to get started with Apple TV+ is to open the TV app, go to the Watch Now tab, and then scroll down until you find the circular Apple TV+ channel icon. You may have to scroll down a lot, and the position of this icon on the page changes periodically.

However, once you locate it, tap that and you will be taken to the Apple TV+ channel page. This shows you all of the Apple TV+ shows and movies available to watch, separated by category like comedy, drama or family fun.

I hate this policy. It's akin to your grocery shop resulting in a cupboard where stuff you've bought is mixed in with a whole load of empty packets.

Amazon is quite bad for it but Apple is ten times worse.

https://i.imgur.com/60EqpGe.jpg

stoked for the madness

Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers. Every year nothing changes. pic.twitter.com/NoFcjwW1tC

— 🆆il 🆂hipley (@wilshipley) June 11, 2020

I experience Apple solely as a sort of tyrannical landlord who *could* crush my business outright but will settle for making my job harder and the software I write more restricted and less useful. The WWDC to me is a yearly check-in of "how bad is it going to be, this time?" pic.twitter.com/9mCvlXFrGU

— mcc 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 (@mcclure111) June 12, 2020

Have a chance to get the 16” y/n

I was forced to get one by work. Still getting used to it but basically it sucks ergonomically (Keyboard, trackpad, touchback, sharp corners, etc.) and you should get the new MacBook Air, which is also bad but costs less.

I got one but now I'm wondering if it will be the last of the Intel Macs.

lol backblaze again:

is there any good reason why backblaze shd take four days to not complete the back up of two files, size 379MB, one of them named "live.0.indexPostings"

is there anything i can do to gee it up or let it skip this file or whatever?

(ps i think i solved the 3 june backblaze issue: if backblaze is backing up but you are using lots of bandwidth e.g. to listen to a podcast, or the bandwidth collapses completely if yr wifi goes down -- which it's been doing quite a lot recently -- then the laptop flips you to the macOS utilities window, and if it's open here for a long time it freezes up)

no chance you can use a wired connection?

Cancel backblaze and stick to local backup or get a new computer.

^

ilx so sick of my bullshit lol

There is nothing normal about what is going on with your computer. I have over a TERRABYTE of data backed up via backblaze and I never noticed it so much as slow down my computer 1 bit. You laptop flips you to the macOS utilities window? That's not supposed to happen. If that windows open for a long time and it freezes? That's not normal. Reinstall everything from scratch or get a new computer. And/or just don't use backblaze. Try it's online competitors or just use a hard-drive...or use dropbox or box. What are you backing up again?

> using lots of bandwidth e.g. to listen to a podcast

1MB a minute for podcasts, typically, possibly less - they are speech and don't require a lot.

(unless you run the bbc and your weekly podcasts are accompanied with a live video stream just so that you can display live subtitles)

only 2013 so you'd think it would still run OK (I have a 2011 MBP that just about still runs) - although it is an 11" so was presumably a little underpowered at launch. might be time for a new rig : /

(putting an SSD in that 2011 MBP would give it another year or two definitely)

dan if your truculence hadn’t put mark off your advice already you then rubbed salt in the wound by saying “it’s” as the possessive of “it” in a reply to a professional subeditor. gonna be a long way back from this one dawg

ilx so sick of my bullshit lol

lmao Tracer <3

hah. I'm just telling it straight!

tbf I set a phone alarm named BACKUP that goes off once a week and that’s usually my cue to backup the phone to the desktop and the desktop to the offline HD. laptop also gets backed up to its own little offline HD.

I have no interest in paying to have someone else put my shit in the cloud, with no guarantee it’ll even be retrievable. Time machine is “free” and works fine

^

If Time Machine works fine for you, you're one of the lucky ones. Every TM run takes literally a month for me (before I gave up even trying to use it), and I don't think I've ever successfully restored data from Time Machine. If it can't back up and can't restore from backups, what good is it

I’ve restored from time machine a couple of times with no issues. It can take a while but never longer than overnight, even if I’ve gone over a month in between backups

I’m sorry it sucks for you though!

Mark I think first port of call is to make a thumb drive of your current OS combo installer, boot from it and reinstall to underpin your foundations, so to speak. Then, if we can assume your Backblaze backup is full of worthless junk, ask them to zero it and start over, preferably while not using the computer otherwise. If you have agreed to that terrible option to offload local files from Desktop and Documents to iCloud, turn that off ASAP and retrieve them to your local machine. That file above is a Spotlight index so it seems your machine has a lot of files coming and going so the index is forever being updated. Just a guess.

extremely mid 2010s complaint here but goddamn the butterfly keyboard is a shitshow

Don’t back up files unless you know what they are for. It’s wasteful for one. Definitely don’t back up operating system files you don’t know the purpose of. They will clutter and/or fuck up your computer if you restore them anyway. Put your important files in one folder (“Documents” maybe) and exclude hidden and system files. Why complicate things down the road anyway if you have to restore?

I do that but the folder is called “Dropbox.”

MatthewK: thanks for that, this is now my first plan of attack. I'm in discussion with Backblaze about the whole thing also.

I'm well aware that dan selzer is likely correct and that trading up to a new computer is certainly one once-for-all way to solve these dumb issues i'm having (and probably needn't be having).

HOWEVER i am also very aware that i've had no new work during lockdown and watched the sector i generally get that work from collapsing (much of it unlikely to restart before next year at the earliest,m in who knows what shape or whether there' be sensible space for my skills). I'm also very aware i need to upgrade my ancient phone and that various other appliances round the house are failing. I dislike living in a world where we just accept planned obsolesence at the first glitch, trapped within the IP rentier grift, and i like the fact the ilx is a gathering of smart and knowledgeable minds who might have temporary workarounds? I want to know where my next paycheck is coming from before I decide where it's going. This involve taking gambles and internalising stress (as everyone reading of course knows). I am not NOT looking into trading up, it's just that i'm also looking into getting the last drop of juice out of what i'm currently working with.

In conclusion point me at adequately paid editing work ilx and i can stop distressing dan!

So my kids think that if I leave my account open on my (brand new 16", loaded-up) MBP that their accounts become laggier when they play Roblox. Anyone else notice this? Seems like it shouldn't be the case, right?