Contacts can't even align a column correctly.

Just look at that home page URL.

I mean, thinking about it, you'd actually have to work harder to do such a bad job.

Authenticating with your Apple Watch

So, Apple added new security features to try to make your actions more secure but at the same time a bit more convenient.  If you decide that you want to do something in the Finder that requires additional permissions, they now display a helpful dialog.  Like, just today when I wanted to delete this 32-bit only detritus that got left when I upgraded to Catalina.

Up pops the dialog, waiting for approval...

... and look, there it is, on my wrist.

So, I'll just double-click that side button and...


Hmmm.  Do you think that perhaps Apple didn't consider that people might actually implement "security best practices"? Authenticating the current user doesn't mean you automatically get admin privileges, because people who are being safe don't log on as admin all the time.

Now, I'm not going to argue that "a non-administrator shouldn't be deleting things like this".  That's fine, it's why the regular dialog prompts for a username as well as a password.

I'm pointing out that every time that dialog displays now, my wrist twitches because Apple decided to make the watch beep and vibrate before asking for pointless validation.

And once again, it demonstrates that Apple's QA department and developers must all be logging on as administrators all the time.  That or they don't own Apple watches.

App Store & Automatic Updates

Do you trust this setting in the App Store to keep you up to date?



Don't. It doesn't have a clue. Here is the App Store telling me that there are no updates



So, I'll go look for myself, shall I?



Uh-huh.

Default reminders

In our house we maintain many structured sets of reminders, some based on topic, some on 'the type of store', etc and we share them because you never know who will be in a position to do the buying. We make a shared list of tourist-highlights that we check off when we go visiting a new city. We even have a shared list of "all the hardware we need to pack when we are going away", now that that entails several dozen power adapters, cables, etc.

So, I upgraded to Catalina. With some trepidation I pushed the "Upgrade My Reminders" button and assumed Apple would handle things properly. Looking at the settings, I see that no, they have screwed up my "default list".

And looking closer, it looks like I can no longer choose any of my shared lists as the default.



Note, the only shared list in the popup is the current one.  None of the other entries in the popup are shared.  Given that my default list used to be "Supermarket" and I can't select that any more, functionality suffers again.

Once again, Apple demonstrate that "Sharing" really is just something they bolted on as an after thought, and its certainly something that they can't be testing in any serious way, much less thinking about during design/coding.

And no, I'm not interested in the answer "unshare it, then select it as default, then share it again".  I don't want a workaround, I want this software to be as polished and functional as Apple claim it is.

You know where this is going, of course?  So, I did unshare one of the lists but it didn't reappear in the popup, because of course, they populate that at startup, not when the status of a list entry changes.  So, unshare / exit Reminders app / set default / share again.

What is this, Windows 95?

Apple still don't understand what the 2 in 2FA is about

I've pointed this out before, but who knows, perhaps Catalina fixed it? (Spoiler: It didn't)

If you want to log into your account from a new device, Apple ask all your devices if it's ok. If one of them says OK, that's 2FA, right?


Missed my location by 1000km but you know, it's Australia, right.  It's just one state away - call it an off-by-one error. And they prompt for a code I could only get from one of the "known safe" devices, right?



Ok, so the two factors that I need are "My laptop is logged in" and "I know how to transpose numbers from one window to another" - obviously, hackers couldn't do that, could they?  What seriously was the point of this?

Apple, there is a sensible standard out here already.  Use regular TOTP, let people use 1Password or Google Authenticator or god forbid, implement the standard yourselves.  But what you have currently is a joke - please don't leave that stuff to the interns to implement.

How about focussing the next release more on security and less on making all the screen widgets look  good in the dark?

Catalina, Day One, ten minutes in

Everyone says that Apple is the company that polishes its products, it makes them just work. That might have been true in the past but it sure isn't today. Today's Apple keeps churning out garbage that is just getting worse and worse.

This blog is going to collect all the discrepancies I find that show that they seriously can't be doing any usability testing of any of the complicated scenarios they claim to support.

---

So, today, I upgraded to Catalina.  Within ten minutes, they piss the bed.

I don't log on as an administrator normally - you know, best security practice and all that.  Clearly, everyone in the Apple QA department does or, you know, they'd have actually proof-read the prompts that are displayed when you aren't an administrator and you try to move all those non-functional 32-bit apps out of your Applications folder.



Seriously?

administrator\U2019s ?

Please don't tell me "dude, that Unicode" - yes, I know and I also know that Unicode escape sequences should not be visible like this.  I'm sure someone somewhere patted themselves on the back about having used a right single quotation mark, instead of nasty old ascii.  But you know what?  It is supposed to be an apostrophe, not a quotation mark.

Sure, it's just one window, but doesn't that make it worse when some get it right?



So, now, I don't trust that the prompt is always coming out of the same "system approved dialog" either.