Author: Mark Alexander

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Ready for Prime Time?

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I went back to the Yosemite Beta (or, more specifically) the Developer Preview. Apple released Gold Master Candidate 2 last Tuesday, followed up almost immediately with Candidate 3 two days later.

While the MacRumors 10.10 Forum remains abuzz with complaints about things that still aren’t working properly, it seems from my very unscientific and non-professional viewpoint that most of them are of the “if you stand on your head and shake your right foot vigorously, your left hand starts turning purple” variety. Maybe I have a very generic setup and use very generic applications, but I haven’t experienced any of the issues that people are recording. In the interest of full disclosure, there are still a few minor graphic inconsistencies, and I still haven’t fully solved the Magic Mouse disconnection problem, but with Apple’s next big event coming up on Thursday and its expected release of Yosemite to the public at that time, I would say it’s damn close to being ready for Prime Time.

Others, of course, may disagree.

 

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It Just Works

I don’t know what I could add to this (emphasis mine)…

From Rusty Rants:

My first Apple product was an iPod Mini. I still vividly remember being hooked by the design and functionality of such a tiny, sexy device. My next Apple product was a Powerbook G4. Those two products started a long journey of buying and loving Apple products. iPhoto. iPhone. iPad. iWork. I bought them all, and I loved them all. One phrase always kept me coming back for more: “It just works”. After coming from devices that always felt buggy and half-finished it really did feel just like that. Everything, well, just worked.

Fast forward to today, 2014. Zoom in to me. I’m typing this on a Macbook Pro. In my pocket is the iPhone 6. Three metres away sits a Mac Mini. On the surface, nothing has changed. The problem is, it feels like everything has changed. In short while Apple’s hardware continues to impress me, their software has gone downhill at a rapid pace. iPhoto is an unusable mess with the volume of photos I now have. Aperture has been discontinued and is badly lagging behind in terms of both performance and features. iTunes takes forever to launch, and is bloated mess of way too many features and functions. iCloud is still a mess that I wouldn’t dream of storing my important data in. iOS 7 crashed so often that I became intimately familiar with the Apple logo that appeared every time it did. iOS 8 fixed the crashing, but introduced thousands of little paper cut like bugs. I used to install updates from Apple the second they came out, now I wait a few days to see if they are actually any good.

If you think this is just my experience, let’s take a quick recap of the last few weeks of Apple news:

  • iOS 8.0.1 was released, with bugs that prevented iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners from connecting to the cell network, and using Touch ID.
  • Users trying to fix iOS bugs, reset the settings on their devices. This had the fun, unexpected consequence of wiping their iCloud documents, and syncing those deletions to all their other devices.
  • Apple released HealthKit as part of iOS 8, only to pull it, and any apps that supported it due to bugs.
  • Apple ‘fixed’ HealthKit as part of iOS 8.0.2, but my Twitter timeline is still full of people complaining about bugs. By all accounts, and going by the iOS 8.1 change log released today, it’s nowhere near ready for prime time.

On the developer front recently:

  • iTunes Connect is still amazingly buggy, and Apple managed to make it more so while developers were submitting their iOS 8 updates. I saw so many automated rejections, upload errors and bugs fill my timeline.
  • Xcode still crashes for me, at least once or twice a day.
  • Apple bought TestFlight, much to our delight, only to reveal that their answer to ‘beta testing’ is to let us distribute to 25 people that have administration rights over our apps. Do you want your beta testers to be able to change your app prices, descriptions, screenshots and to be able to pull apps from the store? Yeah me neither. The alternative is to submit your app for app review, before you’re allowed to distribute it to beta testers. Really Apple? Did I mention that the review queue is currently 9 days long and growing? Thank Thor that HockeyApp still exists.
  • Size classes, Apple’s answer to ‘how on earth are we going to deal with the new screen sizes’ lack even the most basic functionality required to do that. The iPhone 6 Plus has it’s own size class, in landscape, but in portrait orientation? Every single iPhone ever made is treated the same way. That’s right, you can’t lay out a different UI for the 3.5″ iPhone in portrait than you can for the 5.5″ monstrosity of a 6 Plus. How Apple missed this basic developer requirement is baffling to me.
  • Swift, the language we were all amazed by in June, has turned out to be a bag of hurt for anyone that jumped into it headfirst. It’s clear that it too wasn’t ready for prime time. I would have happily waited another year or two, especially if Apple built some major apps using it first. As it is we’re beta testing it for them, even after the 1.0 release.

Tim Cook keeps telling us that ‘Only Apple’ could do the amazing things it does. I just wish that Apple would slow down their breakneck pace and spend the time required to build stable software that their hardware so desperately needs. The yearly release cycles of OS X, iOS, iPhone & iPad are resulting in too many things seeing the light of day that aren’t finished yet. Perhaps the world wouldn’t let them, perhaps the expectations are now too high, but I’d kill for Snow iOS 8 and Snow Yosemite next year. I’m fairly confident I’m not alone in that feeling.

All that being said, at this point you’ll still have to pry my Apple devices from my cold, dead, hands.

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My New Work Attitude

I had a one-on-one with my supervisor the other day. I approached this with the attitude that I was going to be totally honest with her, and if I got fired afterward (I should be so lucky), so be it.

“So how are things going?”

I got up and closed the conference room door.

“Oh dear.”

“To be honest, I am very unhappy. In fact, I’m looking for another job.”

The look on her face was priceless. She was genuinely thrown off by this revelation.

We proceeded to discuss the sources of my unhappiness—including the frat house atmosphere of the department—and she promised to start making some changes in that regard…at least at first. By the end of the meeting, however, she was backpedaling and trying to tell me that this middle-school maturity I am immersed in on a daily basis is typical for our career. “I’ve worked with lots of techs and it’s the same everywhere.”

Uh, no it’s not.

“Please don’t leave! You’re the only tech I have who people haven’t complained about!”

That told me reams.

I would like to think something positive will come from our little chat, and to her credit she did call out someone yesterday who let an f-bomb fly, but I’m really not expecting much. A lot of what I hate about this place is engrained in the company DNA, and nothing is going to change.

Ironically, the annual employee survey came out the day after our meeting, and I was totally honest there as well. “Have you thought about resigning within the last six months?” Seriously? Unfortunately there was no every single fucking day response available.

Would you recommend ██████ services to friends or family?

Not only no, but hell no.

The remainder of the questions were mostly about my satisfaction with the company—much like the survey you get after eating at Jack-in-the-Box, where 1 is “highly dissatisfied” and 5 is “very satisfied.” I couldn’t answer a single question any higher than “neither satisfied or dissatisfied,” with the majority of them being “dissatisfied” and “very dissatisfied.”

And at this point—even if the survey isn’t “anonymous” as advertised, and it gets tracked back to me, I DON’T CARE.

And not surprisingly, my supervisor hasn’t exchanged a dozen words with me since our meeting…

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FBI and Police Departments Endorse Apple’s Full Device Encryption

Via Daring Fireball:

The Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple and Google on Thursday for developing forms of smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when they have valid search warrants.

I can’t think of a better endorsement of Apple and iOS.

“Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. ‘The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.”

Well, that didn’t take long. An even stronger endorsement. The pedophile card is pretty much the last resort for these law enforcement types who feel entitled to the content of our digital devices. Fear mongering with bogeymen and an appeal to base emotions.

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Better Late Than Never

Last weekend Ben and I flew down to Phoenix for our very belated wedding reception. Since we got married under the friends/family radar a year ago, we both thought some sort of celebration is due—not only for ourselves, but also for those same friends and family.

He somehow got me on an airplane.

Since the vast majority of the people we wanted to share in our special day lived in Arizona, we decided that Macayo’s in Phoenix would be our venue. Since we haven’t had really good Mexican food since we moved to Denver, this was a no-brainer.

Obviously, we went for a Doctor Who theme, but only the die-hard fans got the fez…

Bowties are cool.

I think everyone had a good time…

Besties. I love these women.

We had to run a few errands the next day before we left…

Feels like home.

And of course we had to visit one of our old (and hopefully future, in 2-3 years) stomping grounds…

Then we met a few of our friends at Lolo’s Chicken & Waffles for brunch before heading to the airport. Absolute heaven…

I miss these women more than words can express.

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Aspire to Greatness

I know I’m a little late to the blogging party on this one, but much like Robin Williams’ passing, this one really hurt. I mean, I didn’t know the woman personally, but her humor and outrageousness has been a part of my life since I first heard What Becomes a Legend Most back in 1980. I don’t remember now if I’d heard of Rivers prior to this or not, but once I heard that recording I was hooked.

As the years progressed and her very vocal LGBT advocacy became more and more pronounced, culminating with her famous, “Oh grow up!” line in the midst of the AIDS crisis, she endeared herself to my soul. I still have a copy of her “Can We Talk?” AIDS pamphlet somewhere.

While her humor in these later years at times seemed more pointed, nasty and some may even say—tired—than in the past, I remained a fan. Yes, there were times when I turned off Fashion Police simply because the manufactured venom (obviously jokes written for her, not by her at that point) crossed the line even for my libertine sensibilities, but I never stopped respecting her for all she’d done for the gay community.

You are missed, Joan and gone too soon.

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