Oops - I(Tunes) Did It Again...

Another new operating system for the Mac and another half baked version of iTunes...

The Apple Harvest has never shied away from commenting on the mess that iTunes has become. It's hardly a lone voice either. But it would appear that none of the professional or personal voices are being heard by Apple. Or if they are, they are not being listened to.

In my day job I'm a business improvement consultant. I help companies understand their problems and give them ideas on how to solve them. I help them look for opportunities where they may be blinkered. I also help them manage change, and one of my golden rules is "Continuous Tinkering is not Continuous Improvement". I even wrote a post about it on one of my other blogs.

Apple have well and truly got into the rut of continuous tinkering when it comes to iTunes. Each step forward (and I genuinely do like some of the things they do each time a new release comes out) results in a number of steps backwards.

It really is time for one giant step change for the product team who need to throw away the legacy  and start again from scratch.

So what exactly has upset me with this latest version of iTunes?

• Technology now allows us to see over a billion colours on a screen but Apple insist on using white backgrounds for everything. Now I know that not everyone liked the colour option of iTunes 11, but it was a preference and they could turn it off. Now we have no choice - we have to have our eyes blown out by blindingly white backgrounds (same goes for the Notification Centre - brilliant white only)
• For You used to be really quite an attractive option - the only thing I like about this new incarnation is the inclusion of new music
• It used to be really easy to flick between an artist's music in your library and that on Apple Music that isn't in your library - now it's virtually impossible without having to make notes. OK, not a problem with a small library, but I have over 4000 albums, and I don't have an eidetic knowledge of which albums by which artists I have in my library
• When I click on the first track of an album I expect to be able to play the album and then finish. I don't want the next 'n' tracks in my library to appear in the current play list
• It would be quite useful to have better visibility of the current playlist in general - for example I would love to be able to delete a selection of songs without having to delete each one individually (and have it replaced by the next song in the library)
• Play Later seems to only be available under certain conditions - I'm not yet entirely sure what they are
• Who on earth decided that the Shuffle option should be turned on by default? 
• Pre-ordered albums with a few songs available seem to exist in an alternative universe to all other albums - pulling in tracks from other albums/singles and EPs 
• The Recently Added library list shares none of the characteristics of other items like Albums or Artists

Then, of  course, there are the bugs that still cause problems especially the iCloud Music Library option unchecking itself at random.

I could probably, just about, live with any one of these, and try and establish workarounds for them, but as a whole, they make using iTunes a proverbial pain in the butt! The Music app in iOS 10 has another set of quirks, but at least the overall experience is more consistent than iTunes.

Apple seems to have forgotten that not all users listen to music the same way - those of us with large downloaded libraries, particularly those of us who are album oriented, listen to our music in a different way to those who stream singles and odd songs. In different circumstances, our listening methods change, but Apple is seemingly forcing us into a specific way of listening to our music and is removing the flexibility for us to take back any control. 

But above all - it would be great not to have to constantly have to relearn how to use an application that is so fundamental to so many users every time a new release comes out. We actually want consistency and continuity - we don't want constantly changing ways of doing the basic things we've been doing for years. Some things don't need innovation - they just need to do what they're supposed to do. And with a minimum of fuss and effort on our part!

So, please Apple, either redesign iTunes from scratch, or give us the flexibility to tweak it to suit ourselves. But please, above all....stop tinkering and pretending that its an improvement! 

It Just Works

The phrase "it just works" is most closely associated with Apple since Steve Jobs repeatedly used it in his WWDC 2011 keynote. He was talking specifically about iCloud but the slogan has been used to describe just about everything Apple, both in positive and negative ways.

In my experience, 99% of the time it is quite an accurate description. Right now, I'm at the alternative Apple Harvest HQ, with about 75% of my full HQ infrastructure set up. Mavericks 10.9.2 is now out of beta, and all my apps, plugins and drivers all seem to be "just working" fine.

Even some of my long term bugbears about iTunes seem to have disappeared since my last post. My "Discrepancies" playlist which is set up to catch the iTunes Match error whereby a song has a last played date but 0 play counts, and "Discrepancies 2" which catches songs with a play count but no Last Played date have been empty for a few weeks, and even the old bug where play counts didn't get updated if the Crossfade Songs preference was turned on has been fixed.

Mail 7.2 is fully operational with my favourite add-ons (with the sad exception of DockStar) and the UI modification apps, Flavours and DockMod (both previously mentioned in this blog), have both been updated to work properly with 10.9.2.

Now that all is rosy in the Apple Harvest garden I've decided that the MacBook Air will no longer be used for beta versions of OS X - a very timely decision since 10.9.3 has just been seeded to developers this very morning!

(Rant Alert) It's easy to knock Apple when bugs appear in the OS regardless of which version it is. But I do get angry when people use inappropriate language to slag off developers. OS X is an incredibly large and complex system, which ultimately has to run on an infinite set of configurations. There will be problems with some set-ups, just as there are with Windows and other operating systems. And it's not unreasonable for frustration to take over from time to time. What is unreasonable is for people who have no idea of the effort that developers put in to creating their work to make unpleasant accusations. Sadly some people are never going to be mature enough to realise that trolling on the internet serves only to highlight their own ignorance and insecurities. (End Rant)

Two great new games made it onto the iOS devices this weeks - Lyne and Threes. Both are cerebral, pattern matching games (for want of a better description), and both are highly addictive. I've had to put a limit on the number of games in succession I have on Threes because it's making me light headed! It's also a serious battery gobbler.

You've been warned!

My Top 6 OS X Pre Mavericks Bug Fixes - Revisited

Back in July this year I published a set of bugs/features that I wanted to have sorted out before or with the release of OS X 10.9 a.k.a Mavericks. For your delectation and delight I thought I'd revisit that list and give an update on how I perceive things to have improved. Of course, what works or doesn't work for me may be different to other people's environments, but most of the issues I wrote about in July were common to a lot of folk - if the discussion forums are anything to go by! Keeping with the same random order as before, I started with three gripes about iTunes.

iTunes and iMatch

At the time of writing we're now onto iTunes 11.1.3. So we've been through a major version increase and several minor revisions since July. And nothing much has changed regarding my specific issues.

• Playcounts are still a mess and iMatch still screws things up by returning corrupted meta data whereby play counts or the last played date are wiped out
• In Home Sharing mode playlists can only be viewed as lists of songs and not shown in artist or album view
• It still takes a long time for the Check Library function to complete if iTunes has been forced to quit, especially on very big (approaching 1Tb or bigger) libraries

MacAppStore

The specific problem I referred to in July of installed apps not appearing in the update or purchased lists hasn't manifested itself for some time, so, touch wood, it may have been resolved in the Mavericks update.

Time Machine

Similarly the Time Machine "sparse.bundle already in use", or "Time Machine Disk cannot be found" messages have not reared their ugly heads for a long while. This could be down to improved firmware in the Time Capsule or a bug fix in Time Machine, but for now at least this is no longer a problem for me.

Networking

My jury of one is still out on this network issue of wireless networks being dropped on sleep. I'm not running Sleepless any more, but since moving to my girlfriend's house the network environment is so different from Apple Harvest HQ I'm not sure quite what is going on. Certainly, after a quick sleep, the wireless network is still there, but I haven't really logged the behaviour over a longer period. Certainly things are moving in the right direction.

Air Play

I no longer have access to an Air Play speaker like I do at Apple Harvest HQ, so again haven't really been able to monitor the state of play with Mavericks, but on the occasions when I have been at home I've not noticed Air Play problems to the extent I was getting them.

Safari

Aside from some of the teething problems I had with early installs of Mavericks, I happy to report that Safari, by and large is now behaving itself again. There are occasional glitches, but having finally ditched Glims once and for all, I'm not sure whether the quirks may have been Glims induced.

Not a bad result really. Everyone at Apple with the exception of the iTunes team clearly reads the Apple Harvest and prioritises their bug fixing accordingly. OK, so that's a bit of wishful thinking, but in five categories a whole bunch of niggles have disappeared completely or to an extent that they are no longer causing me grief.

All I need now is an update to fix the DisplayLink issues on USB monitors and a rewrite of iTunes - preferably one that splits out Music and Video like they've done with iBooks.  Anyone got any 'genuine' insights into OS X 10.10?

Let me know if you've had the same or similar experiences, or tell me about your own pet bugs that are driving you mad!






 

Testing Times With Mavericks (OS X 10.9)

This is the first year that I've been officially part of the Apple Development Community, and as such the first time I've ever used a pre-release version of an Apple OS.

I loaded Mavericks onto my old MacBook Pro (mid 2007) when it was released as version 6, a couple of months ago. I was genuinely pleased that it loaded and ran on a relatively old machine. To be honest, I really don't use the MBP much these days, so it was a fairly safe bet, but because I don't use it that much, I wasn't really getting a good handle on of the Mavericks experience. But two things were for certain - the machine wasn't crashing and performance wasn't being stifled.

So I decided to repeat the exercise with my 2011 MacBook Air. By this time we were on version 8. Once again I had no problems with the installation or general performance. In fact, in many ways I couldn't really distinguish much difference over 10.8 Mountain Lion. With one major exception. Safari turned into a disaster zone and became virtually unusable. I'm not sure what caused the problems, and I wasn't going to hang around to find out. I restored Mountain Lion (luckily without any incident) and reconsidered the warnings about not using beta versions of an OS on a workhorse machine.

With the release of the GM version of Mavericks, I decided it was worth another go. The experience has been much less painful - but I do still have some quibbles with Safari, almost all of which are around the problem of not being able to click on links. Some of this is down to badly designed websites which are clearly only designed for IE, and maybe Firefox, but it still causes me some pain.

Some of my newly discovered toys don't work anymore but I'm not too surprised at that, as they almost all do some shenanigans with the core UI code. But some of them, such as Flavours, already have beta versions that will, and do, work under Mavericks. 1Password 4 is causing me some teething troubles - it installed OK but is prone to tantrums (it's having different tantrums under 10.8.5 so maybe Mavericks isn't the problem here). I find that occasionally some applications don't seem to want to load, no matter how many times I try. Terminal and Contacts are specific examples. But a reboot does seem to fix that - I'm thinking this issue maybe due to other beta software

I'm guessing that between now and some time in the next few weeks, before the offical public release, we'll be seeing a flurry of activity from developers and new releases of software will be a regular occurrence. And then the auto update feature in the Mac App Store will be a real blessing as it already has proved to be under iOS7.

Batttery life does seem to have improved considerably, so there is clearly a lot of stuff going on under the hood. My third party battery status software is showing that I've got 85% left on this charge and it's estimating that it's good for 5 more hours. Admittedly that's with most background apps switched off, but it's still much more than I'm used to.

For now, I'm happy to keep the GM release running on the MBA (although I think I'll keep the iMac on Moutain Lion). Which means I can start using some of the other features I've been reluctant to try, especially File Tagging. And if 1Password continues to misbehave I may even resort to KeyChain in the Cloud. We'll see. For me at least, there is every reason to take advantage of the full update when it is made available, especially at the price point widely expected to be around £20. Even if it is a whopping 5+ Gb of download!

Kernel Panics Can Seriously Damage Your Health

They say that getting married, moving house, starting a new job and bereavement are the most stressful things that happen to us in our lives. Well, they need to add installing a new or upgraded operating system to the list.

Having successfully installed OS X 10.8.5 on the MacBook Air while having breakfast this morning, I retired to the Apple Harvest office to repeat the process on the new iMac. I should add that both installations were being done through the Mac App Store - no magic tricks required for a routine software update. The OS asked for a restart as usual and when it had rebooted it went straight back into 10.8.4; on the MBA it went to a modeless dialogue box and showed the download progress.

I tried again, and this time I got the expected behaviour. The download proceeded without any problems but when it rebooted I got a multi language message saying something like "the computer had previously closed down because of an error. Wait a few seconds or press any key to continue". I pressed any key and the system went into kernel panic and rebooted into a continuous cycle.

I powered down, waited and restarted. Same thing. I tried to reboot from a different disk (holding down the Alt key) and was surprised to only see the main disk (no recovery disk nor any of the three external drives. Same problem on selecting the drive. I tried safe mode (holding down the Shift key) but it never even made it through the boot sequence. I tried diagnostic mode (holding down the D key) and that appeared to crash after 30 seconds. I was beginning to have my own kernel panic by now.

Not my actual system but you get the idea!

I tried resetting the PRAM (Cmd+Alt+P+R which requires considerable manual dexterity when you've only got little fingers like mine!). A glimmer of light. A new screen came up that I'd never seen before saying "attempting internal recovery" and then a little globe appeared with a progress bar underneath. This ran to completion, rebooted and the same error message appeared briefly before going into the Utilities app. Phew, I thought, at least the machine itself doesn't appear to be kaput.  My worst thought that the 3Tb Fusion drive was corrupt proved to be over-reaction.

I elected to reinstall the OS and after the longest hour of this year, finally everything is back to normal. My heart rate slowly went back to normal and then I noticed the date…Friday 13th September!

How Mountain Lion Changed Its Spots

I'm not someone who tends to conform. I play nicely with the other kids, but I'm different. Well, I must be. I use a Mac! And while I like vanilla Macs, I prefer mine to be different. Things get customised a lot. Hardware and software alike. Cases, decals, docks, menu bars, desktops; if I can tweak it I do. It's almost obsessive.

But trying to tweak some bits of the user interface prove a bit more difficult than others, especially UI element colours. So you can change the background colour of Finder windows, and you can swap between Blue and Graphite appearances. And there are tools that let you change the backgrounds of Notification centre and the Login screen. And it's easy enough to change icons. And you used to be able to change the colour of the dock (although it seems that now your only option is to hide the background completely using Mirage). But to change the colour of the menu bar or the overall theme of OS X has always proved a bit more of a challenge.

I've looked at various tools in the past but they were too difficult to use to get the adjustments I'm looking for. I tried CrystalClear but ultimately there was too much choice, and without having a lot of time, it was all to easy to make a pig's ear of the whole interface.

But now I've found Flavours (thank you for spelling it the UK way!) and my screens now stand out from the crowd the way I like them to! Flavours is quick and easy and you can create your own themes from scratch or borrow other people's and use them as-is or modify them. You can still make a pig's ear of your screen if you want to, but it's more difficult using Flavours!

Mountain Lion Has Changed Its Spots

Flavours can be downloaded on a trial basis or costs $19.90 ($16.18 for a limited time). It runs on Lion, Mountain Lion and is being beta tested for Mavericks. Check it out, and then you can be different - like me!!!

Next time, some feedback on my not-too-happy experience with Mavericks on the MacBook Air.

Managing Your Menu Bar

More and more OS X applications are using the menu bar to enable access to their settings or specific features. Even on the shiny new 27" iMac at the Apple Harvest this was becoming a real problem, but on the 13" MacBook Air things were far worse. I hate to think what it would like to use an 11" MBA! There have been a few utilities to help overcome the problem - I've been using AccessMenuBarApps for a couple of years with some success, but now there's a new kid on the block which is spot on for the job.

Bartender really solves the problem of an overcrowded menu bar using such a simple set of concepts that it's a wonder that no-one thought of doing it before. It's a beautifully executed app  and it doesn't take a lot of looking after once you have set up the initial configuration. Most importantly it allows you to take control and ownership of what goes into your menu bar (and where) rather than the apps themselves (and their developers).

Bartender in action (from developer's website)

Basically, Bartender allows you to set up a secondary menu bar which sits hidden underneath the system menu bar (or can float around wherever you wish), and allows you to decide which icons sit in the main menu or which can be delegated to the secondary bar. Icons can be hidden if they aren't used very often, and reordered any which way you want. Rather than trying to describe all the features here I suggest you download the trial version from the website and have a play. I seriously doubt that you will go for the full 4 week trial period before you commit to buying it. And when you do decide to shell out, it'll be one of the best £10.17 ($15) you'll have invested in your Mac - especially if you're a laptop owner! Astonishingly some people are whinging about the price for such a "simple" app. Seriously, if it was that simple someone would have written it a long time ago!

If you don't believe me or the developers, just take a look at some of the reviews recently published in Macworld, MacLife and Cult of Mac. If you'd prefer a video, here's one on YouTube. For reference, Bartender is no longer in beta but is fully functional and currently on V1.0.6