Apple Music for macOS Still Sucks and it’s getting worse

It has been a little over two years since my last major rant about Apple Music. I occasionally whinge on Twitter or FaceBook, but no one really pays any attention — mainly because they are currently busily techsplaining why the latest Apple Hardware sucks. I currently have three issues, and they are all show-stoppers!

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

1. I usually can’t quit Apple Music without having to resort to a piece of third-party software
2. Search regularly crashes the Music app
3. I sometimes can’t add any more music to my library (sometimes I can!)
4. Downloaded albums and playlists randomly get stuck during playback at the end of a song

Apple Music ignores the request to Quit

When I have to use a third-party piece of software to close the Apple Music application, I’m pretty sure that the end is nigh. 99 times out of 100, Apple Music won’t Quit, won’t Force Quit, won’t quit via Activity Monitor — occasionally it pretends to, but then it reopens immediately. The only way I can get it to quit is to use NoTunes. This is insane. Nobody should have to write a utility to close a standard commonly used application on a modern operating system!

Search crashes the Music App

Another regular glitch is attempting any search crashes the Music app completely. It doesn’t matter if I’m looking in my library or Apple Music (iTunes Store seems to be exempt, though!), the app will panic and die. Of course, that then requires the automatic library check to kick in, during which time I can do nothing except wait. Why can’t this be a partially modeless activity? At least let me look at Listen Now, Browse Apple Music or reset my sound levels.

What’s with the 100,000 iCloud Library limit?

I’m old school. It comes from having lived abroad with crappy, expensive and low data allowances, which means I store all my music on external drives rather than streaming. My music library (my own music (ripped or purchased) and Apple Music tracks — I split out TV and Movies years ago) is now just under 1Tb in size with over 100,000 songs, split across 9000 albums by 2000 artists. So, it’s big, and it’s now subject to the ridiculous Apple restriction that an iCloud music library cannot contain more than 100,000 songs.

Let’s just quickly look at that restriction. Officially, that 100,000, apparently arbitrary limit, doesn’t include purchases from the iTunes Store. It says so in Apple’s documentation, although by all accounts, this is acknowledged by Apple support to be incorrect, and they keep saying that the documentation needs to be updated. If this were true, I wouldn’t have any problems because three-quarters of my music was purchased from iTunes! Even a 100,000-song library takes up less than 2Gb of space. As an Apple+ subscriber, I have access to 2Tb of storage, so that sounds like nonsense unless Apple Music developers simply cannot understand how to work with large libraries — which, in this day and age, also sounds like nonsense. It gets a little more bizarre, though. Under certain (random) circumstances, I can add music to the library. Sometimes just a song, sometimes a couple of albums, but mostly, I get an error message saying this addition would take me over the 100,000 song limit. Even more bizarrely, I can continue adding albums to my iOS devices, although they won’t appear in the macOS library. It’s the inconsistency that I hate.

Music randomly stops playing after a downloaded song ends

Now I’ve got that particular rant off my chest; here’s the real problem. When I play downloaded music, regardless of whether it was purchased or part of the Apple Music collection, I rarely get to listen to more than a couple of tracks before it stops playing. Usually, a track will finish, and another one or maybe two tracks will play before it all goes quiet. The progress bar will show the first track that failed and indicates that the song never started playing. At some stage in the process, Apple Music hangs briefly and then recovers but has lost its memory and can’t figure out what it’s doing. The only way to recover is to open Apple Music and physically stop the ‘current’ track, and either start playing it again or skip to another track. If like me, you are listening to music in the shower and this happens, there is nothing you can do. Even Siri can’t help because the system status has got so confused that it can’t work out what’s happening.

I have tried everything ever mentioned in the history of Apple Music and iTunes, but I cannot get over this. It happens on multiple M1 and Intel Macs. It happens with different drives and even the internal drive — I’m lucky enough to have a 2Tb SSD on my M1 13” MBP, which happened on that when I tested it. I have rebuilt the library from scratch. I downloaded every single track again. I’ve deleted caches. I reinstalled macOS time and time again, including a clean install.

The case for splitting Apple consumer apps out of macOS gets better by the day

And this last idea of having to download and reinstall the entire OS to fix a problem with one app is out of the dark ages of bad software design and delivery. It’s long gone time that Music, Mail, TV, Maps, Home, Photos and maybe even Messages, Safari, FaceTime, Calendar and Contacts were all built and delivered as stand-alone apps, just like Pages, Numbers and Keynote. As a developer back in the day, the mantra was always to decouple code and subsystems as much as possible so that a problem with one part had as little effect as possible on the system as a whole. Why do the developers of the consumer apps need to work to the same delivery cadence as the macOS team? That’s simply bad management. iOS allows you (these days) to install just about any Apple app independently of the OS. It’s high time the mothership caught up! Even if they are unwilling to change the cycle of releases, at least let us delete and reinstall consumer apps via the Mac App Store!

With the Far Out event due to take place next week (September 7th) and the imminent release of Ventura, I’m hoping that some of these problems may magically disappear. But I’m not going to hold my breath! Failing that, it may be the next best thing will be a clean install of Ventura rather than an update — and then see what new problems I’ll encounter! Better the devil you know?

Apple Studio Display — I’m loving it!

I hit my 60th birthday earlier this year, and after over 45 years of staring at screens both at work and ‘play’, my already dodgy eyesight is not getting any better. When I returned to Prague in 2019, I bought a cheap Dell 24” monitor to sit alongside my work and personal laptops and used a hardware switch to flip between them. Back in the UK, I have been using a Dell P2719H 27” monitor which is a bit easier on my eyes, but still not ideal.

New Studio Display in my UK office set-up (photo from author)

                   

So, I’ve been looking at buying a new monitor for a while, and it has proved to be a really difficult decision. My needs appeared to be fairly simple, or so I thought:

• It needed to work in an exclusively Apple environment (no more Windows for me now I’ve retired!) with M1 Silicon
• I wanted a minimum of a 27” display with 4K resolution
• From a design perspective, it needed to look the part
• A few additional ports would be useful
• Good all-round display quality for photo-editing, writing and website design
• It needed to be delivered on my next trip to the UK — between June 26th and July 13th
• 
  

There were a few unknowns — did I like the idea of a curved monitor? Was a 34” screen overkill (and would it even fit on my desk?)? Would I keep the existing 27” Dell (which does have a portrait mode which I like for documents)?

I had a short list with 27–34” monitors from the usual suspects — Dell, Ben-Q, Samsung, LG and even Huawei. And the Studio Display from Apple. I watched dozens of YouTube videos and eventually ruled out the Huawei because even though I loved the design, I’d prefer to err on the safe side of data privacy. I also liked the Samsung M8 but decided I wanted a monitor, not an all singing, all dancing video box. My desk is quite constrained regarding worktop space, so I stopped looking beyond 27” and curved monitors. After watching more videos about the scaling issues with 4K and Apple, I was becoming more inclined to stay in the Dell stable and choose a U2719D UltraSharp 27 with 2560 x 1440 resolution. But there was a nagging doubt in my mind about whether I would regret not going for the outrageously expensive Studio Display and end up buying one in a year anyhow…

My trip to the UK was only going to last three weeks. Our local Apple store is in Leicester, and it looked like they had some base Studio Displays available for in-store collection, but by the time I got back to the UK, the cupboard was bare and would stay that way until August/September. A quick search indicated AO.com had the base model in stock for next-day delivery, so I bit the bullet and placed an order. AO.com came to my rescue when I wanted the 13” M1 MBP in a hurry last time I was. I knew they’d come up with the goods in the UK, and it was no more expensive than buying from Apple.

I was confident that the base model would be right for my needs. I use a Twelve South Curve Riser on my desk, so I figured I wouldn’t need the height adjustable stand; I’ve always been comfortable with the glossy screens on iMacs I’ve owned in the past, and I don’t have a monitor arm (or enough space on my current desk).

Despite watching various unboxing videos for the Studio Display, when it turned up on the doorstep the next day, I was taken aback at how big, and heavy the box was and was grateful I hadn’t decided to try and bring one home on the bus from Leicester! If you’ve watched any of the unboxing videos, you’ll know that this is an experience in its own right. A few minutes later, the display was on the stand and plugged directly into the 13” M1 MPB via the Thunderbolt port. I plugged my 2 SanDisk Extremes into the USB ports and my Quntis light bar into the third slot. Finally, I sorted out the power cable, booted up the laptop, and installed the Studio Display software update.

Quite simply, this is the best display I have ever used by a long way. Text is crystal clear even for my dodgy eyes. The speakers are so good that I’ve unplugged my old faithful Harmon Kardon Soundsticks II and now use the Studio Display speakers in conjunction with an original HomePod sat on the bookshelf behind me.

I’m not going to get involved in the discussion about the webcam. I like that there is one built in; quite frankly, it’s plenty good enough for my purposes. The first time I used it in anger was during a call with my financial advisor, where both myself and my fiancée could fit in the viewfinder without having to be sat on top of each other. Quite frankly, in these days of WFH, where many of my former colleagues had such poor internet connections that they turned their cameras off and often asked other participants to do the same thing, webcam quality is the least of my problems! It works, and it’s good enough.

I’ve been using a Twelve South Curve Riser as a monitor stand. It also serves to hide the Thunderbolt Hub and keep it cool. This proved a little too uncomfortable with the combined height of the Studio Display and the riser, but setting the monitor on the middle shelf fixed this problem perfectly. The hub now sits atop the monitor's base in the shelf space.

My big challenge is to figure out how to set up a dual display with the M1 13” MBP using both the Studio Display and the 27” Dell. I purchased the Hyper Dual 4K HDMI 10-in-1 USB-C Hub, but it arrived after I returned to Prague, so haven’t had a chance to set it up yet. The workaround has been to use the 27” Dell monitor on the M1 MacMini, and use universal control to make it look seamless, which works about 90% of the time, but needs a nudge from time to time. I suspect that the sleep settings were perhaps out of sync.

I also really, really need a bigger desk…and another Studio Display in my Prague office...

 

Apple Silicon - Round 2: Choosing a new laptop

A few weeks ago I wrote about my pre-empted first foray into using Apple Silicon. After eight months of using the M1 Mac mini (16Gb / 512Tb) as my primary machine, I am well and truly hooked. I hinted that I was going to swap out my 2017 15” MPB for a new M1 laptop and I have now made good on that decision. But before I spill the beans on what I eventually purchased I want to reflect on the decision making process.

Apple Harvest Prague office set-up

I’ve been using Macs since 2007 when I was finally driven out of the Windows stable. I was working in Oslo in Norway, and my personal laptop at the time was an ASUS R1F, one of the first machines that doubled as a laptop and tablet. The computer itself was fine and I really liked using it, but it was the time of Windows Vista and at one stage it seemed that every time I switched the computer on I had an hour’s worth of updates to deal with before I could do any work. 

I made the switch to a 15” MacBook Pro just after the release of OS X Leopard and have never looked back (that machine still boots up and works perfectly well!). Since then I’ve owned a couple of iMacs, a couple of MacBook Airs in addition to the current kit. I think carefully about every machine I buy. I think about my specific use case and do my research to align my purchases to my needs. Like most people, I set a budget to work with, although I’m fortunate enough that, as my own boss, I can be flexible within reason.

Since the newest 14 and 16 inch M1 laptops were announced I’ve seen countless questions from people asking complete strangers for advice on what to buy. For every question, I’ve seen dozens of useless answers and incorrect comments. I’ve come to the conclusion that no one does any real work anymore. Everyone who uses a MacBook seems to be doing professional video editing for a living and therefore need to buy the highest specification laptop regardless of how sensible that may be. Despite the numerous vloggers and tech reviewers reporting how even the basic M1 MBA, Mac mini and 13” MBP make video editing a relative breeze, the recommendations still come in to buy 16” M1 Max MBP with 32Gb of RAM and 2Tb SSDs regardless of how “over the top” this is for many people. 

I suspect that anyone recommending a minimum of 32Gb of memory still doesn’t understand that unified memory works in a different way to memory in an Intel architecture. I also suspect that most people who claim to be doing professional video editing perhaps make a few adjustments to their 30 second iPhone videos taken in the pub on a Saturday night and push them out on TikTok when they’ve sobered up sometime on Sunday afternoon. But mostly I suspect that many of the people recommending these high-level machines to everyone and his dog, don’t actually possess one, but make people think they do, by posing as an ‘authority’ on the subject. Basically, amongst the Facebook classes, buying a Mac has become something of a pissing contest! It reminds me of my slightly eccentric late uncle who used to buy top range HiFi equipment and then buy crappy 99p cover compilation albums from Woolworths!

Anyhow, this was my use case:

1. I’m potentially leaving Prague for good this year so I wanted to move the Mac mini and 2017 MBP back to the UK and get a single M1x laptop

2. The laptop will normally be used as a desktop, and there are already Thunderbolt 3 and other hubs in place so no need for lots of extra ports, and there is a Dell 24” monitor in place to act as the primary display

3. When the laptop does get used as a laptop I want it to be small, light and usable on aeroplane and train tables. I already have a variety of multi-port dongles

4. The specification only needs to be as good as the M1 Mac mini, since the work I’m doing will be the same - although a larger SSD might not be a bad thing as my photos library continues to grow and I’d prefer it not to live on an external drive

5. I’d still like the Touch Bar because I do use it and will continue to use it and maybe will use it even more than I currently do

6. The delivery date needed to be before 12th March at the very latest to align with my travel plans

When I looked at the best options I really have three choices - an M1 MBA, an M1 MBP 13” or the 14” MBP M1 Pro. I know I don’t need the power or ports on the 14” although it does provide a better display. The MBA doesn’t have the ToolBar, so by default I opted for the 13” MBP, but I decided to go for the 1Tb SSD option.

Fate has a habit of disrupting plans, however. I finally made my decision whilst in the airport waiting for my flight back to the UK. The Mac mini was in my hold baggage and I’d adjusted my office set-up in Prague to accommodate a new laptop. The delivery date for my option was the next day, so it would be in Derby sometime on Saturday. 

By the time I arrived home and was ready to submit the order, the delivery date for all non-standard builds from Apple was in three weeks' time - a week after my return to Prague. Checking around, the story was the same everywhere - no one could deliver the 1Tb option before the 12th March - my drop-dead deadline. Eventually, I found a supplier who could deliver by the 8th March but only the 2TB option so I decided to go with this rather than face having to take the Mac mini back to Prague. It’s more than I intended to spend but sometimes you have to take what’s on offer. And before you start telling me that for £200 more I could have got a 14” MBP with a 2Tb drive, those weren’t shipping until even later in March. Other folks may be thinking that I should have waited until the Apple Peek Performance event but let’s face it, there’s no guarantee of what may be revealed at that session or when these models may be shipped. 

The nature of the computer/tech business is such that every piece of kit is liable to be superseded within days of us purchasing it. We just need to accept that inevitability and teach ourselves that buyer’s remorse is equally futile. I know that when my new laptop arrives, I shall have addressed my needs for now and the next few years. 

UPDATE: Since I first drafted this piece, the new laptop has arrived and is all set up and running perfectly. In the end, it didn’t arrive as expected but a day later - it took DPD 24 hours to ship the box from their Birmingham depot to the one in Leicester (about 40miles up the road!). I’ve had stuff arrive from Shanghai in less time! And since the rumours of the M2 13” MPB were completely scotched at the event I feel totally vindicated in my decision.

Fruity Picks #13 - KeyCue 10 is a Game Changer for Keyboard Warriors

Last week KeyCue 10 became available and it was a real game-changer for those of us who use keyboard shortcuts in anger.

I was a bit of a late starter for using keyboard shortcuts despite having been a Mac user for over fifteen years. I've always relied on the mouse - maybe it's something to do with being left-handed, who knows? But over the last few years, I've come to rely more and more on keyboard shortcuts. This is partly because I'm starting to get more aches and pains in my mouse hand as I get older, but also because I've started to realise how powerful these shortcuts can be. This has also partially been as a result of using the Elgato Stream Deck to automate many of my often used shortcuts, keyboard and others, and I'll post about this in the near future.

Traditionally, keyboard shortcuts need to be added by using the Keyboard option in System Preferences. Within that preference pane, you select Shortcuts and then App Shortcuts. This is a really clunky way to create keyboard shortcuts and relies on you getting the menu structure absolutely right - a single spelling mistake will make the shortcut fail. For deeply nested menu items - the sort that would really benefit from having a shortcut - this can be a problem.

KeyCue 10 changes that, and allows the user to create dynamic shortcuts from within an application. I’m currently writing the draft for this post in Ulysses so I’ll use it as an example.

In Ulysses, there is no keyboard shortcut to insert an image into a Ulysses sheet. Using KeyCue 10, all I have to do is to find the appropriate menu item to perform the function - in this case, Edit->Attach->Image… and the using the key combination that I want to use, simply keep these pressed until the shortcut is accepted. 

This GIF from Ergonis explains it far better than I can!

If you're not familiar with KeyCue in general, I would highly recommend you check it out for the other primary features it offers. The biggest of these is that it will show you, at the push of a hotkey, exactly what keyboard shortcuts (user, system, and app defined) are being used and how. This will help you establish potential key combinations that could be used for a new shortcut without interfering with an existing combination. 

The software is available from Ergonis, and at the time of writing costs 19.99 EUR (£17.00)

A First Foray into the Realm of Apple Silicon

Sometime in the autumn of 2020, my beloved 2017 MacBook Pro started doing something horrible. As soon as the machine went into any form of sleep mode, even just launching the screen saver, a white light started flashing at the right end of the Touch Bar. It would stop as soon as I started using the computer, but immediately it started to idle, the flashing resumed. Initially, the intensity and frequency of the flashes weren’t too bad, but over time the problem worsened. 

Searching for potential solutions brought only bad news. It wasn’t an uncommon problem, although it was rare, it looked like the only fix was to take it to a service centre and potentially required a new motherboard. This was seriously bad news. Not only was it going to cost a load of cash but we were in the second phase of lockdowns in Prague and getting the fix could take a serious amount of time. And without the computer I was helpless. So, I did the only sensible thing - I put a cloth over the end of the Touch Bar and buried my head in the sand.

I managed to get back to the UK for Christmas in 2020 and the problem vanished for a short while but started up again just before I was due to return to Prague. My trip was too short to get the machine into a service centre in the UK, and besides, I was in quarantine for all but one day! But to add to the misery, the battery was also now showing signs of failing…

In July I decided to bite the bullet and take decisive action. So I bought an M1 Mac mini. I’ve never used a Mac mini before and to be honest I’ve been a bit sceptical about them in the past. I didn’t need/want another laptop. I wanted a cheap replacement that would be able to help me continue to operate while I finally took the MBP in for repair (by this time the service centres were operating again and I decided that the fix had to be done whatever the cost…)

I went for the M1 Mac mini, 512Gb/16Gb combo which worked out at £1,050, slightly cheaper than in the UK! I already had a Dell 24” monitor set up along with all the peripherals I needed so I only had to buy the unit which helped keep the costs to a minimum. I could probably have managed with the 8Gb version, but I figured I’d saved a lot of money while the pubs were closed, so what the heck…

It was a breeze to set up the Mac mini using a Time Machine backup of the MBP and from unboxing to having a working computer probably took no more than a couple of hours. The biggest issue was rearranging the desk so I could now accommodate three computers (including my work laptop). From a connection perspective, all I needed to do was swap the cable from my iTec TB 3 hub from the MBP to the mini and everything was immediately accessible. Simple - just the way Macs are supposed to be!

The current Apple Harvest configuration (Feb 2022)

The M1 (called Kampa) is an absolute joy to use. It’s absolutely silent and apart from a couple of pieces of software that I could no longer use there was little impact on my workflow. The biggest downside was that I could no longer use TotalSpaces from Binary Age (and TotalFinder from the same stable) which meant having to learn how to use Mission Control properly - more on that another time). I purchased a Satechi hub to complement the Mac mini - the one that sits under the mini and connects via USB-C and provides 6 extra ports (non-SSD version).

But what of the MacBook Pro? A few days after getting the M1 setup and functional, I trudged down the road to the iStyle service centre on Revolucni in Prague’s New Town. I explained the problem and they took away my baby and told me they’d need to run some tests and come back to me with a quote. A few days later they sent me an email with the cost of the fix - for both the hardware issue and a replacement battery - under £240! I was stunned. I was expecting to have to pay a minimum of £500, and probably closer to £1,000. I agreed to have them perform the repairs before they could change their minds, and two weeks later I collected the fixed computer (it took a little while for them to source the correct battery).

Like many long time Mac users, I’m now struggling a little with the Intel-based MBP. When it’s sitting alongside the M1 Mac mini I really notice it huffing and puffing while doing very little real work. It feels old, whilst before this whole story started it was my pride and joy. So it begs the question of what next? And that, dear reader, is a question I can’t currently answer, although I’m tempted to go for an M1 13” MacBook Pro. It would meet my needs for a laptop, fit nicely into my workflow and besides, despite the pain, it’s caused me, I still love the Touch Bar!

A Return to the Apple Harvest

After a three year hiatus, I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing again. My blogging output has been almost non-existent since I moved back to Prague in March 2019. I’ve published a couple of posts on my Prague blog, one on my business blog but this site has remained fallow since February 2019! 

You’d expect that having spent the best part of three years living alone and in and out of lockdown there would have been plenty of time to indulge me. After all, it’s not as if technology stood still even though many other things were put on hold. But, back in full-time employment in Prague after a year’s absence, I had plenty of things on my plate and my blogs fell down to the bottom of the backlog.

Picking up after such a long time, it’s difficult to know where to start. So much has changed in both the Apple ecosystem and the world at large. I expected to be back in Prague until the end of 2019 but the contract went so well that I was offered an additional year. I went home in March 2020 for my birthday weekend, and two days after my return to Prague we went into total lockdown. The opportunities to return to the UK were few and far between then and now although finally, things seem to be getting better. The unexpected outcome of the lockdown is how much new kit I’ve acquired (and how the heck I’m going to get it all home when I finally leave!)

The Apple Harvest in Prague - 2020-22

Like many potential readers of this blog I have made the transition to Apple Silicon and bought my first ever Mac Mini. I’ll write a separate post about that experience and how it came about. I’ve also swapped out my Apple Magic Keyboard and mouse and now use the Logitech MX Keys and MX Anywhere 3 mouse as my main input devices. I’ve become a big fan of other input devices, namely the Elgato Stream Deck and most recently the Xencelabs Quick Keys device. 

Having spent most of the last two years working from my apartment there are a few other devices that I’ve acquired to make the experience as comfortable as possible. One is a light bar, another is the Twelve South HoverBar Duo for my iPad Pro. 

With so many new devices and the limited ports available on the original M1 devices a new hub became an essential to compliment my i-tec Thunderbolt 3 docking station. The CalDigit TB4 Element Hub fitted the bill perfectly. 

I’ve also become a convert to HomeKit. My home in the UK has been ‘smart’ since I installed a complete Hive control system but that was primarily driven by Alexa. When Hive announced that their systems would now be compatible with HomeKit I decided to go down that road here in the apartment in Prague. I’ve had plenty of fun with that which I’ll share in due course.

My Apple Watch helped me focus on my health during the dark days of lockdown when, initially, we weren’t even supposed to go more than 500 meters from your door. I recently upgraded to the Apple Watch 7 which finally ticks all the boxes. It’s amazing how far this product has changed from the Series 0 which I started off with. 

Music and video have been a mainstay and I was thankful that I packed my HomePod and Apple TV when I first came back. These were joined by a HomePod mini which sits in my bedroom and helps control the smart home. 

I upgraded my iPhone from the X to the 12 Pro, indulged myself with a pair of AirPods Max, and fell foul of the curse of the AirPods Pro but with a happy ending. 

I’ve also had some interesting experiences with mass storage, including a catastrophic disk failure on my last visit back to the UK in September 2021 which highlighted the importance of a robust backup strategy.

Hopefully, that’ll be enough to whet your appetites. Next time I’ll explain the reasoning behind buying the M1 Mac mini along with my new dilemma of what next!