Has Apple left the “rest of us” behind?

I am sending the following paper letter to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

Tim Cook
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014

Dear Mr. Cook,

It is 1984 and Apple is Big Brother!

I have been debugging software, my own and others’, for fifty-nine years.  In 1983 I left corporate life to work on personal computers.  Some of them were more difficult to program than the main-frames I had worked on.

Then came Apple and the Macintosh in 1984.  By September I had my first Mac (and a Lisa).  Pascal was a joy of simplicity, even if I had to do it through the Lisa.  Every time a new Mac came out, I was eager to buy one as soon as possible.  More storage, more speed.  Hurray!

One of the standing jokes was that Mac owners didn’t need manuals because of WIMP.  About the only thing I needed a manual for was how to use diacritical marks in text (åäéñ).

Then OS X came.  I never did recover everything that I had on my on-the-floor box.  For awhile, I did upgrade to a new OS X.  But changes started making old stuff obsolete.  Or changes were rather gratuitous.  Did iPhoto really need new background colors?  Did iPhoto need to change how photos were annotated?  It seems that changes were made more to keep programmers busy than give the users truly better software.

I’ve been in that position before.  I didn’t want to maintain the old mainframe software; I wanted to work on the new hardware.

I have a long list of peeves of how Apple software changed gratuitously from simple one-step operations to operations with a hidden second step.  I got to the point that I would only change major levels of software when I bought a new computer.

Then, either deliberately or accidentally, I upgraded to Sierra on my lap top.  Fortunately I was at a coffee shop with unlimited internet access instead of at home with a limited monthly access.  One of the big surprises was that Sierra dumped all of my Document folder to iCloud!!  It was lots of “fun” moving it back to my MacBook Air.  I know lots of people who would have to go to Geek Squad or other help professionals to get through this.

My wife’s iMac is swiftly deteriorating.  Again, we have to do a lot of fussing to move data to my old MacBook Pro.  The disk drive no longer works.  Fortunately, we have some large capacity thumb drives so we were able to move her Document folder to the MacBook Pro.

And thumb drives get me to another of my Apple peeves.  If one pulls out a thumb drive without “deleting” it, all the data is lost.  This is really a 1984 nightmare.

How many of “the rest of us” has Apple left behind?

Software systems working incorrectly? What's new?

I'm cleaning up lots of old notes and I found this feedback that I sent to Apple on 2002-12-18.  Sorry, the referenced article is not available on Yahoo.com anymore.  You can find it at http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=728071 with lots of sarcastic commentary.

Beginning of feedback

I concur with Mike Berman's article at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20021218/bs_nf/20277.  Although I don't have the degree of problems he has, there are many things in OS X and software written for OS X that definitely do not provide "seamless" operation.

Instead of putting flashy new interfaces or applications into OS X, I wish Apple would devote far more resources to making OS X a truly effortless operating system.  For example, when I select a server to access a computer connected to mine by a single Ethernet cable, it takes a long time and then OS X starts dialing the phone!!!!

Second, it would help users greatly if Apple certified third-party software as being "seamless".  For example, Microsoft does not have a consistent handling of text among Office products (Word to Entourage is worst).  For example, I can click on Send Messages in Entourage and it will connect with Internet Connect and wait for the connection.  If I select a site from Favorites in Internet Explorer, it starts the connection but says the server can't be found when the connection is made.

Third, it would help if Apple would certify major web sites as being "seamless" for Macintosh users.  Try using Ameritrade.com with a Macintosh; many of the fancy features just don't work or can be erratic.

I don't see any point to upgrading to OS X 10.2 at a cost of $200 for two computers for features I don't have any great need for and I don't have any guarantee all the little gotchas in 10.1 have been fixed.

Apple has been a leader in user friendly software for 18 years.  I hope Apple will now turn its focus to being a leader in software reliability.

End of feedback

Has it been eleven years since I learned to be a late adapter? Well, I haven't completely learned my lesson.  iOS 7 had a huge learning curve, and I still encounter many annoyances.  And in 29 years they still haven't learned to "do it right" on the first release.  And people expect the ACA systems to work seamlessly on the first day?

How did I type Japanese?

You may have guessed, since I didn't write all of my Japanese message in Japanese, that I don't really speak Japanese.  You're right!  I know a few hundred words and a few grammar points.  Not really enough for a conversation or to order in a restaurant other than "nippon birru, kudasai!"  "Two beers, please!"

If you have a Mac, you can switch languages with a click of the mouse.

I was going to give you a long, possibly incorrect explanation, but I'll let your Mac give you a better one.

Go to the Finder and click-hold Help on the menu bar.

Type "foreign" next to "Search".

Click on "Typing in another language" and follow the directions.

Now, if you select Hiragana as the language to type, then type "nippon birru kudasai" you will get

日本ビッルください

You might have to start typing on a separate line.

BTW, if you are using TextEdit, you have to be careful when typing in English,  I typed "nippon birru kudasai" and it became "nippon bird kudasai".   Proofread!  Proofread!