Apple Ecosystem is Broken & Fundamentally Flawed

[dysamoria]

When are Apple going to actually stop screwing around and make this ecosystem [and existing software/features] WORK in a reasonable and logical manner, and CONSISTENTLY??

Importing Photos from iOS does NOT import any captions added on the iPhone, nor the Siri Knowledge for plants/insects/etc. Photos on Mac OS frequently can't load thumbnails of photos without editing them again and forcing it to update the thumbnail.

I went away to California for a few weeks, logged into my iCloud from my GF's MacBook Pro with Mavericks. When I came back to my own place, I started up my iMac with Mavericks, only to discover that it no longer will unlock by way of my Apple Watch, and many of my Safari passwords all went retrograde, likely from the local account on my GF's MacBook instead of synchronizing with iCloud, which I know for a godamnned FACT I told it to do. I replaced all of them half a year ago, when Safari told me some of them were compromised or easily guessed, and now I have to look them up again in my spreadsheet... at least I keep an effing spreadsheet.

I had the option to AirPlay to my iMac after installing Monterrey on it... and then a couple updates later, this option was removed because "it's not supported on iMac 2017" according to Apple. EFF YOOOOOOO

I could go on and on. I'm sick of this. They market this stuff as why we should choose their products, but almost nothing works consistently and some stuff never works at all.

EDIT: The iOS Photo edits are entirely ignored, as well, it seems! I just imported a picture that's utterly the wrong tint on my iMac and I'm not doing anything other than importing through Photos. This is LUDICROUS.

EDIT2: Photos images just suddenly show up as black. Nothing works to restore the image to a viewable state other than "revert to original", losing any edits/adjustments.

EDIT3: Photos is one of several apps that don't use the OS API for text boxes, apparently, as spell-check isn't present in the image details/properties text fields...

EDIT4: and I AM going on and on forever, because the number of obvious flaws is unending. I am now thoroughly sick of waiting for Photos to finish loading thumbnails for photos on my iPhone SE3. It takes well over two minutes of nothing happening on the outside for Photos to finish loading them. Half appear instantly, as expected, but the rest sit there as blank boxes for two minutes. If I unplugged the phone, they'd blink into existence just a fraction of a second before the whole UI changes to show no device connected, so they're clearly being read from the phone.

EDIT5: I have to CONTINUOUSLY re-click to set focus in the Photo app's Properties window. This is absurd. It's one thing to set focus to the floating window from the main app (shouldn't have to be done; should be a palette), but it's entirely insane to have to do it repeatedly after adding tags to a photo. Also, it refuses to let me move a face circle after clicking the + to add one. This happened on High Sierra's Photos app, too, but the keyboard focus problem wasn't present then, which reinforces my guess that the API changes from iOS are to blame here, just as they are with the Messages app.

 

[Johnchapin]

Even basic things like Finder don't work as well as it used to. My airpods won't sync. Monterey 12.5.6.5 I've come to really hate updating OSX just like I hated updating Windows causing me to switch to Apple.

 

[pshufd]

"I went away to California for a few weeks, logged into my iCloud from my GF's MacBook Pro with Mavericks. When I came back to my own place, I started up my iMac with Mavericks,"

I don't expect Apple products to work across multiple versions of their operating systems forever. In fact they only provide official support for a couple of releases. I'm actually pretty happy with the ecosystem.

You can do Airplay to Mac using OCLP for unsupported Macs running Monterey. I did this on my 2015 MacBook Pro.

My Apple ecosystem: M1 Studio, 2021 MacBook Pro 16, M1 mini, 2015 MacBook Pro 15, 2007 MacBook Pro, PowerMac G5, Beats Fit Pro, iPad 2, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 5, iPhone 5, iPhone 7+, iPhone 13 mini, iPod nano, iPod nano 5, iPod nano 7, 2009 iMac 27, 2010 iMac 27, 2014 MacBook Pro 15.

 

[msackey]

I do find it aggravating that importing from iOS Photos to Mac Photos, the captions do not transfer if you use USB cable.

The one way so far that I have found that will work is doing AirDrop. These are my instructions written for myself since I don't import photos enough and need to document so I don't "re-invent" the wheel when I import again which usually happens just once or twice a year:

1. From the iPhone, select the photos you want to AirDrop. Go to Options and ensure that All Photo Data is selected and everything else selected is Automatic.
2. You may need to open your Finder window and navigate it to AirDrop (but you may also not need to).
3. At some point, your Mac will notify you. Select the option Open in Photos.
4. Photo will open up and under the Device heading in the sidebar, eventually a folder with a long alphanumeric title will open up. Once that is open up, choose Import All New Files. Once importing is all done, that folder will disappear and your files will appear in the Imports section of the Photo sidebar. Your photos are now in your main library.

* This method imports all captions, titles, edits, and the original file in one collapsed form just like the way you experience it on the iPhone or iPad. However, you can only reliably send this in small batches of say about 200 files (even up to 400-ish but safer to be fewer). I did try AirDropping 1,300 photos at once (~ the number of photos I took during a recent trip) and it never worked.