A newspaper’s takeover of subscribers’ computers

Given the increasing complexity of software and its decreasing user-friendliness, I think 1984 has arrived.  We are supposed to follow robotically through the latest commands of the software designer, aka Big Brother.  And like in 1984, we have no idea what we are doing or should be doing.

I have almost 59 years of computer experience.  I started with a summer job in which I used a textbook to learn to program an IBM 650.  That was a set of large refrigerator size boxes with punched cards in and punched cards out.

Over the next twenty-plus years I went on to program and debug larger and larger computers.  I was often an advocate of newer techniques, like using compilers instead of machine code or using email instead of typed memos.

Then personal computers appeared on the scene.  Some of them easy to use, some of them opaque to use.  In 1984, the Macintosh appeared.  It was a real break-through in ease of use.  Many laughed at WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures).  They preferred the complex set of coding that had to be done for the simplest tasks.

I was hooked and became a Certified Macintosh Developer.  I was eager to get the latest Mac with many great features: color, faster and smaller storage devices, and more.

Then OS-X (operating system 10) appeared.  It had many nifty features except ease of transferring older programs to it.  I never got around to rewriting my genealogy program and have lost all that data (except that which I had printed out).  On the other hand, there were many new features that were a delight to use.

But as one OS X after another followed, the Mac started being persnickety.  Printers that were easy to use became a nightmare.  Where is the setting to print an envelope.  Why does the scanner work well with an old OS but gives dark blobs on a newer OS?

Then sin of sins, without asking me, Apple decided I should install the latest operating system just because I was using wi-fi at a coffee shop.  Not only did Apple decide that I should upgrade, it decided that all my files in the Document folder should go to iCloud.  But that was more data than my free 5GB.  It asked me to upgrade my account to 50GB.  The extra $0.99 a month was no big deal, but I still haven’t completely reorganized my Document file so that I don’t need be hooked up to the web to use those files.

The same increasing difficulty has struck many web-sites.  I now subscribe to four newspapers.  Most of them generally work well with only a few quirks that take awhile to figure out.  Just like the print versions, the newspapers are filled with ads.  Generally you can just scroll past them.

But sometime last year, the Star Tribune began to have intrusive ads.  They would take over the computer with no obvious way out.  Not only would the ad page take over the tab slot on a browser, there was no way to get out of it except close the tab or follow it on to other pages in the ad chain.

A similar annoyance is a side-bar ad with a misleading message: “Log In”.  It is not a log in to the newspaper, but an ad for using a Google product for signing in to web sites.

A friendly guy at Star Tribune’s support department helped me try to clear things up.  But it was drastic, including resetting my iPad.  Guess what that did?  It wiped out all my cookies so that I had to enter saved passwords all over again.  Good thing I have the passwords stored in an obscure place.

Rather than making my life simple by easily accessing my bank accounts, reading the latest news, and sending email to friends, I seem to have gone into standby debug mode.

Unfortunately, one of those pop-ups appeared again this morning.  That’s it.  I asked the Star Tribune to cancel my subscription.  Bye to “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” and many other comics that are not in the Duluth News Tribune.  Good-bye to many in-depth state stories and editorials.

I do have relatives who spend a small fortune calling Geek Squad every time time they need to make some software change.  Do you think the Star Tribune would pay me for all my efforts?  Do you think your phone will run forever without re-charging?

P.S.  Well, maybe I'll keep the Star Tribune subscription for a few more days.  It worked fine this morning.

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?

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!