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?

The Macintosh Has Lost Its Way

After some of the problems that I’ve had with the Apple, I reread Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way.  I remembered it as being about how to design user-friendly software, but it is about all the ways to make a great software company from product design to user groups to interaction with other companies.

What I was looking for is on pages 55-56:

“Great products are elegant.  They may have many features, but the features are tastefully and transparently implemented.”  P. 52

However, "elegant" and “transparently implemented” have gone by the wayside.  See “Computers Under the Control of Magicians”, “Don’t get caught on Sierra”, and “More Update Craziness”.

A counterpoint is “Now Apple’s really ‘for the rest os us’” by Michael Gartenberg, Macworld, 2010-06-23.  But I think things have gone quite a bit downhill since 2010.

Don’t get cut on Sierra (Apple's latest OS)

Sierra is Spanish for saw and is the name of Apple’s latest operating system OS 10.12.

However, it is not for everybody.  It has lots of gotchas that will cost the unwary in time and money.

When you upgrade, it moves your entire Document folder to iCloud.  One, the Document folder may contain more data than you have room for in your iCloud account.  Two, you will have to always have access to the web to access your data.

The first is not a big problem in that Apple will ask you to upgrade your iCloud space.  In my case, 50GB cost me 99 cents a month, automatically taken out of my checking account.

The second can be a really big problem if you either work offline a lot or have limited wireless service.  Although I did the upgrade at a coffee shop, I think home usage added a couple of GBs in only a day or two.

My current plan is for 15GB per month and I generally use about 8GB.  It used to be rather simple to calculate total prices, but it seems that AT&T is making calculations even more obscure.  I gave up for now trying to calculate the cost of unlimited service.

At least I have a nearby AT&T store.  I plan to stop by soon for a power-cord gadget.  I’ll ask if they can help me calculate the true cost to a significant upgrade.

I think I have all the really important, current “Document” data moved off iCloud and accessible without an internet connection.  Now the next question is how do I back that data up to iCloud at my convenience.

P.S.  I found out that the latest Epson software for my printer  is valid for older operating systems.  The list only gives the latest two OS’s but another page shows it would work for several older OS’s.  Sigh!

Computers under the control of magicians

How many of you are old enough to remember:
“The computer for the rest of us” and
“1984 will not be like 1984”

These were two of the slogans that Apple used in 1984 when it introduced the Mac.  I loved it with its WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures).  Almost everything you needed to know was on the screen.

Many Mac users of that time were eager for the newest operating system or newest Mac: hard drives, multi-tasking, color.

I can’t pinpoint when it all changed, but I stopped looking forward to the latest operating system.  Features that worked fine on OS P were a nightmare on OS Q.  It seemed that the gratuitous changes were made only to keep programmers employed.  Or that a new set of programmers had to do it their way no matter what most long-time customers wanted.

This has been one of those bad years for me.

Sometime in March or April, Apple made a minor update.  It did not seem like a big deal and I installed it.  I found out much to my chagrin that my Epson WF-3640 would no longer accept paper from anything but Tray 2.  I thought the machine didn’t work and exchanged it with Best Buy on a warranty.  The second one did the same thing.

After a couple of calls to Epson I learned that Apple had changed the print dialog to all the information the user needed from being on the screen to being buried under certain choices.  Once I had that info, I could print from whatever tray I chose.

Then Apple provided a gratuitous “EPSON Printer Software Update, Version 3.3”.  I downloaded and installed it.  Now my printer didn’t work at all!

A third person at Epson said it was my cable.  Well, as I talked to him, I did have my external hard drive connected, not the printer.  But when I was off the phone and had the proper connection, it still didn’t work.

I next tried the the friendly folks at Geek Squad.  I described the basic problem and they were ready to set me up with a Geek Squad account.  Each time I got near the bottom of the payment window it would disappear.  What were they ready to blame: my browser (Safari).  What?  There are dozens of payment windows that work just find with Safari.

I had to go elsewhere and excused myself.

Today, I despaired and went to Best Buy to buy another cable.  i also bought a couple of thumb drives to replace those that I “crashed” by taking them out of the USB slot before closing them.  Another story for another day maybe.

I plugged my new cable into my MacBook and into the printer.  Nothing happened.  I couldn’t print.

I didn’t keep track of the buttons I pushed on the printer and the computer, but the results varied widely as to what happened.  Eventually my Mac and my Epson printer connected properly with one another.  I really don’t want to be a scientist who keeps meticulous notes on every step and every observation.  After all, the Mac is the computer for the rest of us.  And after 58 years being involved with computers (from punched cards to rooms full of tape drives) I just want to be an ordinary user.

Then I exchanged the new cable for the old cable.  Everything worked as it should.

As a senior wailed in the computer lab when I was a graduate assistant, “That isn’t what I meant!


Security vs. customer service?

I want to close a Fidelity mutual fund account and put the funds in an Ameritrade account.  In this day and age one would think it would only involve a a few minutes of typing on each company’s website.  It sure would beat having a check mailed (3 days minimum), taking the check to a bank, and writing another check to the other company.

One, Fidelity would not recognize the routing and account numbers of my local bank account.  Although Fidelity would allow a transfer to another brokerage, it wanted a routing number.  I could find no routing number for Ameritrade.  Of course, using Google I found it as I was writing this paragraph.  The Google summary gives the routing number.

Two, Ameritrade wanted me to print out a form and fill it in by hand.  And of course, include a copy of my latest statement.  Given all that paper, I would probably take it to the Post Office to get the correct postage.

Three, I went back to the “horse and buggy days” and asked Fidelity to mail me a check.  When the check arrives, I’ll take it to my bank.  When the check clears than I will send the fund electronically to Ameritrade.

So, I could have saved myself much time and hair pulling if I had gone with plan three instead.

And some people have the gall to complain about government inefficiency.  Many government organizations are far more efficient than many corporations.  The government will get the check to me quite well, thank you.

Banks, security, and ease of use

When we cut the cord and went wireless, we had a large number of problems including runaway data and bank access.

We solved the runaway data problem by cutting out automatic downloads and monitoring our usage.

Bank access is another problem.  Some banks put up a huge security wall, others just require an ID and a password from a known computer.  If you change computers, then they will send a text message to a known phone.  The huge security wall can be a real problem if you don’t have the “right” phone and the “right” browser.

You would think as more and more people go wireless, the banks would make it as easy as possible for depositors to access their systems.  Many people really don’t want to do the research to find out why they can’t access their bank.  And it is in the bank’s interest to have people bank online so that they need fewer tellers.

i bank at Republic Bank of Duluth.  I get all kinds of weird results including something like “If this error persists, contact the system administrator."  The long, long error code seems never to be the same and no phone number, email address, or feedback page is provided to contact the system administrator.

I have talked to a branch manager about this and she in turn called somebody in tech support.  The only thing they could tell me was that my provider, Consumer Cellular, was changing the IP address.  Consumer Cellular support says that CC is not changing the IP address.

I did figure out that I had the wrong cellular phone number in my account.  I changed that and things seemed to work for awhile.  Then the phone number went blank on my account!  I reset it again, and I have again sporadic success, more often not.

I have no such problems using Wi-Fi at coffee shops.  Can the banks ensure the security of every coffee shop’s Wi-Fi?

My wife banks at Pioneer Bank of Duluth.  She has no problem accessing her account through cellular data.  That is via Firefox on her Mac and Safari on her iPad. When I accessed her account on my MacBook via Firefox, the web page asked me to select a phone number for a text message.  When the text message came to my wife’s phone, I entered the number on my Mac and gained access to her account.

I might switch my funds to Pioneer if Republic doesn’t have a solution soon.  But as I don’t care for the format of Pioneer’s statements, I am also considering Members Co-operative Credit Union of Duluth (MCCU).  Also, I’m partial to co-operatives over corporations.

I had a long conversation with an MCCU representative and found out that their online banking doesn’t work with certain phones and browsers.  She had no information about access via Consumer Cellular.

I have decades of computer experience and sometimes relish unraveling problems.  Sometimes it seems I know less and less about more and more.  Think about all the people who are afraid their devices might crash if they push the wrong button.

If organizations really want people to access them online, you would think they would bend over backward to make it as simple as possible.  But no, they operate in their own little silo and expect all users to accept their way of doing things.

How many people do you know who would have problems figuring out half of what I have written above?  If I am confused by all that I have learned, how confused would many others be?