The discussion <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1j9ypqu/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino/mhljej9/?context=3" author="" source="Reddit">Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino</a> is about the article <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino" author="John Gruber" source="Daring Fireball">Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino</a>, which was a much-longer post than usual, discussing the failure of Apple Intelligence features and the failure to focus on software-quality that it illustrates. <h>MacOS Apps are not great</h> Although Gruber focuses on Apple's iOS, a decrease in quality in user experience has become endemic in their auxiliary products on MacOS as well. I added a few quick examples to my comment in the discussion. I've made many of these complaints before---perhaps most recently in <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4730">Our gadgets fail us every day</a>---but, whereas some things have gotten better, others have stayed the same, or gotten worse in other ways. <dl dt_class="field"> Music Search is an embarrassment. (See <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5391">Apple Music search is questionable</a>.) Notes There have been super-slow sync problems for years that nearly impede typing and drain your phone or laptop battery. It can't quickly auto-sync the simplest collaborations Photos The "People" UI is an incoherent catastrophe. All of the links for "finding more photos" are at the bottom of a giant list of photos. See the longer section of complaints about Photos in <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4730">Our gadgets fail us every day</a>, almost none of which have been fixed. Reminders/Calendar These cannot consistently sync reminder status across MacOS and iOS devices. Spotlight It often cannot find document, even by exact name, even if you've opened it dozens of times before. <i>SLOP</i> shows up first. TV This app can barely remember which episodes I've watched and does not respect the user's intent at all (see below). </dl> <h>Updating an iPhone</h> So, here's just a single recent example of stupid, sloppy bullshit from Apple in MacOS Sequoia. I just saw a couple of days ago. <img src="{att_link}make_up_your_mind_apple_jfc.png" href="{att_link}make_up_your_mind_apple_jfc.png" align="none" caption="Make up your mind Apple JFC" scale="50%"> The page behind the dialog box very clearly shows that iOS 18.1.1 is installed; the message below that indicates that version 18.3.2 is available. The dialog box proudly claims that 18.1.1 is the current version. Does "current" mean "latest"? Or is it just telling me in a confusing way that the current version remained untouched because I'd canceled the upgrade? How do mere mortals who don't do this for a living know what the hell is going on even 10% of the time? <h>🤯 Apple TV</h> I know I've mentioned this many times before but I'm just going to keep screaming from the ramparts that the way the Apple TV streaming service works is <i>not OK</i>. They have some TV shows and films that I enjoy<fn> but they are <i>trapped</i> within a barely adequate and quite frankly hostile user experience. One of the worst offenses is it how it behaves when you finish watching an episode and there are no episodes left to watch in that series. When an episode ends, it more than occasionally segues into a well-chosen song that plays over the credits. You have perhaps been moved by the show; you have perhaps learned something; you are, perhaps, thinking about what just happened. You are, let us say, engaging with the show. You may even be basking in having experienced it. Apple does not care. They want to shove more content into your slack maw. They thrust another piece of content at you, often a thing that they have just created and are nakedly desperate for you to watch. They then give you five seconds to avoid <i>starting a whole new show, right then and there</i>. This startles you out of your reverie. If you're not accustomed to this "the money's on the nightstand, sweetheart" approach, then you will be very, very rudely awakened. You are no longer basking, that's for sure. You are instead fumbling for the remote control, trying to figure out how to prevent the awful series that Apple has selected from starting. (Press the <kbd><</kbd> button.) Apple does this with the next episode of a running series as well. There is no way to disable this behavior in the settings, as with Netflix. Netflix is somehow coming out the hero in this, for being a multi-billion-dollar company that managed to include <i>one settings</i> in their player.<fn> Apple can't even do that. This is, of course, when Apple TV even remembers which episode of a series I'm actually on. Sometimes it just plain forgets that I've watched an episode and cheerily starts playing the one that I'd just finished watching yesterday, drooling on itself as it presents its brain-damaged head for a congratulatory patting. <h>Netflix also doesn't work for you</h> This isn't to suggest that Netflix has good software or provides a customer-centric service. I subscribe to Netflix, which means that I pay them a certain amount of money per month for a service. The service that they advertise and in which I am most interested is the ability to stream their videos---films and TV shows---as well as to find and manage the content that I'd like to watch and that I'm currently watching. If this service were built to serve my needs, then it would almost certainly prominently suggest that I continue watching the content that I've already begun (<i>Continue Watching</i>). Failing that, it would suggest for me to watch content that I've already selected for watching (<i>My List</i>). Instead of that, I get this. <img src="{att_link}netflix_wants_me_to_play_civilization_vi.jpg" href="{att_link}netflix_wants_me_to_play_civilization_vi.jpg" align="none" caption="Netflix wants me to play Civilization VI" scale="55%"> As you can see in the screenshot, the "Continue Watching" isn't even displayed, whereas "My List" is confined to about 15% of the screen, all the way at the bottom. No, instead of serving, a giant advertisement for a game I've never asked Netflix to show me dominates 85% of the screen. This UI serves Netflix. It has been like this for months. I neither knew nor do I care that Netflix is also in the business of selling access to video games. There is no way for me to express this preference. Netflix chooses what the home page looks like, and its choices reflect its own needs and desires, not mine. I am a paying customer. They do not care what I think. <h>Back to Apple TV for a sec</h> <h level="3">Tiny fonts</h> Not only does the Apple TV UI behave in unfriendly way, it also looks unfriendly---<i>inaccessible</i>. For one, they use needlessly tiny fonts everywhere. Whereas some services have cartoonishly large subtitles---many of the German and British channels offered on my local UPC come to mind---the subtitles on Apple TV are <i>microscopic</i>. The text in the UI is similarly much smaller than necessary, with usually a tremendous amount of free space available, simply <i>aching</i> to be filled with text. <h level="3">Mindless content-selection</h> This is a screenshot from my "home page" on the Apple TV device. I finished watching both seasons for Shrinking months ago. Apple TV blithely doesn't acknowledge this <i>at all</i>. Instead of focusing on the show I'm currently watching---<i>Severance</i>---the app scrambles to show me something, anything, other than what would come naturally. These algorithms are mindless. <img src="{att_link}why_show_me_a_poster_for_a_show_i_ve_already_seen.jpg" href="{att_link}why_show_me_a_poster_for_a_show_i_ve_already_seen.jpg" align="none" caption="Why show me a poster for a show I've already seen?" scale="50%"> <h level="3">Inscrutable UI</h> The Apple TV UI is also wildly inaccessible in that they have such subtle UI hints that they are basically inscrutable unless you go actively looking for them. The people who designed this UI went so far up their own asses that they'll never find their way out. The screenshot below shows the grid of selected content. I challenge you to immediately determine which piece of content will be activated when clicking "OK".<fn> <img src="{att_link}subtly_selected_show_in_apple_tv.jpg" href="{att_link}subtly_selected_show_in_apple_tv.jpg" align="none" caption="Subtly selected show in Apple TV" scale="50%"> Answer: it's <i>Severance</i> in the upper-left corner, which is <i>slightly</i> larger. Get it? Are you bathing in the glory of the brilliance of this visual language? Is it not a stroke of genius to renounce such <i>common</i> and <i>base</i> conventions like showing a selection square or focus rectangle? Would that not have been an utterly <i>gauche</i> capitulation to the vulgar tastes of the <i>hoi polloi</i>? Apple's got your back, bro. Apple is there to give you a UI that is so inscrutable that you'll be cheerily and constantly congratulating yourself on having gotten it to do even a single thing that you wanted. This is, of course, if you even still have wants and needs that are separate from the demands of your Lord and Savior Apple. <hr> <ft>I'm going to avoid saying "good."</ft> <ft>And don't get me started on what the "OK" button is on the Apple remote. It's in the middle of a disc-shaped, directional-control button that is very difficult to press directly in the middle without first accidentally shifting the focus to the left or right. This means you'll more often than not choose "Next Episode" when you really wanted to select "Watch Credits". Congratulations, Apple. You fucked up a remote control, a technology that we'd perfected decades ago.</ft>