“It just works” has long been Apple’s mantra. The unique Mac-running gadget rescued non-techies from the inscrutable command line of DOS with a brilliant, cheery, factor-and-click interface. The iPhone replaced the wonky revel in scratching on a soft screen with a stylus with a tap-and-move experience that toddlers quickly master.
But even though Apple often provides, the promise of “It simply works” makes a gaggle of longstanding bugs and negative layout alternatives–in software programs and hardware, on iOS gadgets and Macs–all the more frustrating. They range from caught computer keys to fraying electricity cables to app icons that don’t pass wherever you need them to in iOS.
Here are 11 in particular tense system defects–as picked by my Fast Company colleagues and me–with the best workarounds. Got Apple frustrations of your personal? Hit me up at seanjcaptain@gmail.Com or @seancaptain on Twitter.
1. AIRDROP TAKES FOREVER TO FIND A DEVICE
AirDrop is available to switch documents between iPhones, iPads, and Macs–sooner or later. Say you’re in the iPhone Photos app and click the Share button. Icons for destinations, which include Twitter, Mail, and Messages, appear instantly within the menu. But for a long time–I’ve clocked 12 seconds, and now and again, way longer–you notice a blank area within the AirDrop section, even if your laptop is inches away. Sometimes, the Apple gadgets of random close-by strangers even appear before yours.
Coping mechanism. Be patient. (And be cautious no longer about clicking on someone else’s tool.) Or transfer through a cloud carrier like Dropbox or Google Drive.
2. NEWER MACBOOK KEYS KEEP STICKING
In 2015, in its by-no-means-ending quest to make its gadgets thinner, Apple delivered low-profile, “butterfly” keyboards that promised pace and a higher tactile experience. Many people aren’t thrilled with their much less-than-complete-travel experience. But there’s a bigger hassle: Numerous MacBook and MacBook Pro customers have pronounced suffering from temporarily or permanently caught keys. The pinnacle suspect is debris, along with crumbs, getting caught underneath the keys, but even neatniks document issues. Apple stated the problem in March 2019; however, it said it influences a small range of users.
Coping mechanism. Spraying compressed air into crevices around the caught key may additionally help. If no longer, check out Apple’s loose restore application.
Apple, in the end, recounted that MacBooks have a caught key hassle, even though the business enterprise says it doesn’t affect many users. [Photo: Flickr user Austin Kirk]
3. YOU CAN’T PUT APP ICONS WHERE YOU WANT IN IOS
I even have lots of apps on my iPhone and believe that they should pass on my domestic screen (and other monitors)–for example, social networks Twitter and Instagram after each different. But iOS makes organizing icons arduous via robotically filling the screen, from top to backside, no longer letting me pin an icon to a particular spot, as Android does. Moving an icon forces others to jump up, down, and around in a chaotic fashion.
Coping mechanism. Periodically reorganize your telephone by dragging the icons on one display to an adjacent one, then replace them on the first inside the favored order. Or store associated apps in folders, which might appear to be Apple’s favored technique of tidying matters up. Yeah, it’s tedious. Arranging icons is a twisted recreation of musical chairs.
4. IOS ALERTS RUIN MUSIC PLAYBACK
If you permit signals for such things as incoming texts, iOS turns down audio playback in track apps, so the brief “ding” of the alert is less complicated to hear. (Curiously, apple’s Podcasts app doesn’t suffer from this. But iOS continues the extent down for an infuriating 5 seconds.)
Coping mechanism. You can mute all signals by swiping down from the home screen and clicking the crescent moon-formed Do Not Disturb icon. For specific apps, tap Settings>Notifications, pick the app consisting of Messages and click on the Allow Notifications slider. To keep visible indicators, preserve Allow Notifications, click Sounds, and select None below Alert Tones. (See Apple’s instructions for greater data.)
You can’t make disruptive audio indicators much less demanding, but you could close them down absolutely. [Photo: courtesy of Apple]
5. APPLE MUSIC PLAYS ITS FIRST SONG WHEN YOU CONNECT YOUR IPHONE TO YOUR CAR
Are you obsessed with “A-Punk” by way of Vampire Weekend? Riders in your automobile may suppose so. The Apple Music app frequently launches and plays the (alphabetically) first track for your library on every occasion you join an iPhone through your automobile’s USB or analog audio enter jack, like a newer tackle Rickrolling. Apple blames older motors for this, saying the audio structures force a newly related device to play. Apple hasn’t defined why iOS can’t override the command or routinely play music from an app you might select over Apple Music, including Pandora.
Coping mechanism. If you aren’t an Apple Music user, delete the app. If you’re, buy the ninety nine¢ song “An an a Very Good Song “–10 mins of silence that “plays” while you pick out the tune you need to listen to. Or test your vehicle’s leisure gadget settings to see if you may flip off the autoplay characteristic.
Your vehicle audio machine would possibly play the first song in Apple Music–over and over.
6. YOU HAVE TO DIG DEEP INTO THE PODCAST APP TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LISTENING TO
Apple Podcasts opens inside the “Listen Now” section, a roster of episodes these days posted or partially performed. The episode description, and often the name, is truncated on this view, making it tough to recognize what the episode is ready for. Clicking the access does not deliver you an outline, but alternatively starts offevolved gambling, a podcast you may no longer be interested in.
Coping mechanism. A lot of tapping. Once the episode is playing, click the list to launch a popup window, scroll down, and click “Show” below “Episode Notes” to examine what the darn thing is ready.
It takes a variety of clicking to discover what a podcast is set.
7. VIDEOS STOP PLAYING WHEN THE IPHONE SCREEN LOCKS
With all its loose-tune movies, YouTube is a popular jukebox, and you don’t want to observe a video of a lecture, together with a TED talk, to get value out of it. But you may be listening. Whether in Safari or some other browser, on YouTube or some other website like Vimeo, or maybe inside the YouTube app or different video apps, playback stops as soon as the display goes darkish. Oddly, the lock display screen shows the call of the paused video and includes a Play button, which does not have anything while you tap it. This might make the experience at first: If the display screen is going dark, you’re surely not watching.
Coping mechanism. This annoyance is pervasive throughout video apps. But maybe whatever you’re attentive to is available in an audio-simplest app along with Spotify or Pandora. Despite the lock-display play controls, films–like this one from the Academy Awards–will now not play.
8. PRICEY MACBOOK POWER CORDS FALL APART
Apple loves slender design, even if it approaches thin cables that fray and damage. It’s quite a highly-priced problem with the sensitive MagSafe cables that powered MacBooks for about a decade. (Newer MacBooks have a USB-C charger with a replaceable cable that prices $19 from Apple and less from different makers.) with one give-up completely attached to the charging brick, changing the cable manner shopping for a brand new charger at $ seventy-nine and up)
Coping mechanism. You can save yourself harm earlier than it takes place (or receives too horrific) if you fortify connections at each end of the cable by wrapping them in Sugru, a putty that hardens right into a hard, bendy shell. The tape will ultimately fall off in a sticky much less, but Sugru–shown here on a USB cable–stays securely in the vicinity. [Photo: courtesy of Sugru]
9. VOLUME ADJUSTMENTS BLOCK THE IPHONE SCREEN
iOS blocks the center of your display for about 1/2 seconds every time you click on the quantity up or down buttons. When are you likely to adjust the volume? Perhaps while you’re looking at a video–now blanketed with the aid of a huge gray volume icon. It’s also disturbing if you are gambling songs and trying to do something else with your cellphone. Coping mechanism. The fine you may do is pause the video earlier than adjusting the volume.
10. FLIPPING THE IPHONE MUTE SWITCH TAKES TWO HANDS
The iPhone limits bodily controls to ones you most want to get right of entry to quickly. However, that’s now not easy with the mute transfer. Instead of sliding up and down, which you could easily do with one finger when maintaining the smartphone, it flips ahead and again. Try to do this with one hand, and also, you’ll see it’s unwieldy, bordering on almost impossible, making it a -passed mission.
Coping mechanism. Swipe down from the pinnacle of the display to get the right of entry to the Control Center, then run your finger all the manners down the quantity slider. Note: This mutes everything, such as media. Flipping the iPhone’s mute switch takes each of your arms. [Photo: courtesy of Apple]
11. YOU CAN’T DISMISS MAC OS UPGRADE ALERTS
Apple wants you to upgrade to new variations of Mac OS, such as the modern-day Mojave pronto. So it pops an alert within the higher proper of your display that you couldn’t dismiss, unlike alerts for other software program updates. Promptly installing incremental updates to your current working system model makes experience, as they may patch safety vulnerabilities. But it’s pleasant to attend to a whole new version of MacOS till early adopters record the inevitable insects. And if you have an older Mac to be able to pressure to run the brand new OS, you could in no way want to improve.
Like an uninvited visitor, screen-blocking MacOS Mojave signals display up and don’t want to depart.
Coping mechanism. You can click on the alert, which causes the Mac App Store to release, then stop it right away.
