Apple Quality: How About a Subforum?

[Buadhai]

We need a forum where people can discuss general Apple quality issues that are broader than one device or application.

For example: I'm about to go on a four day dive trip during which I'll be without Internet. I'm downloading a few things to my iPhone and iPad that I'll need while at sea, including a Music playlist, some videos to It's Playing and a Netflix movie or two.

During this I get a message on the home screen that says something like:

"The item you have selected is not available for download." Great. No information on just what the item was or what application was trying to download it.

So, I have to search myself to find it. It's in Music and the item is: "That Old Black Magic" by Mel Torme". (Yes, I'm old.)

So, I go to my iMac to select "Sync Library", but it is already checked and cannot be unchecked. Yes, I subscribe to Apple Music.

So, now what? No clues given. I guess I can never again listen to "That Old Black Magic". That's Apple Magic for you.

A few minutes later I need to send an iMessage from my iPad. But, in lieu of the normal Messages screen I am instructed to "Sign in with your Apple ID to activate iMessage."

But, as you can see from the Messages screen behind the dialog box, I activated iMessage long ago and have been using it on this iPad for years.

Baffled at this odd turn of events I enter my Apple ID and am greeted with an endless "Signing in..." message. So I let it sit there while I finishing watching "Losing Alice" on Apple TV+. The "Signing in..." message never goes away. So, I force reboot the iPad and then switch to Messages, and there it is again: "Sign in with your Apple ID to activate iMessage." Grrrr. Finally, it accepts my sign in and, of course, I get this message on every single Apple device that I own.

Then when I look at Messages, I see that none of the messages I sent/received yesterday (Sunday) or today (Monday) show up. And, in fact, iMessages I sent to my wife have turned green, as if they were text messages.

(I should not that Messages is working normally on my iMac and iPhone.)

So, on a day that I should be spending time checking dive gear and packing up, I'm beating my head agains a wall attempting to deal with Apple screw ups.

Lets have a subform on Apple quality so I can read about other people's frustrations with Apple in general and assuage my only feelings of, well, anger.

And, no, I am not an Apple basher. I bought my first Mac in 1984. Our family of three owns half a dozen Macs, three Apple TVs, three iPhones, three iPads, three Apple Watches, two Airport Extremes, three sets of AirPods, and way more Apple stock than should be sitting in an old man's retirement portfolio.

 

[Wando64]

But these are not “general Apple quality issues”.

You have a very specific issue with Apple Music on iPad which you can post on either the iOS forum or the Apple Music forum, and you have a specific issue with iMessage log-in which once again it is probably best posted on the iOS forum.
The fact that you have noticed both problems one shortly after the other does not mean that they are related.

By the way, I would guess your iMessage problem was triggered by a recent iPadOS upgrade, but we are really in the wrong forum to discuss the specifics of your technical problems.

 

[Buadhai]

But these are not “general Apple quality issues”.

How many issues would I need to point out before it becomes a general Apple quality issue?

Here's another irritant that popped up today. Threre is no reliable way to identify which apps have been offloaded. I have a number of apps that I use when I'm at sea away from the Internet. These include the GoPro photography app and the BlueFire Reader app in which I have several ocean creature ID books and other diving documents. When I checked these apps this afternoon, neither of them had the little "cloud" icon indicating that they had been offloaded. When I went to make sure the GoPro app was working properly and able to connect to my camera, it had to be downloaded. When I went to check the BlueFire Reader app, it had to be downloaded. Bottom line is that there is no way for me to quickly determine which apps have been offloaded. The only way is to check each and every one that I might need. If I were to depend on the "cloud" icon I could be out at sea needing an app and be SOL due to Apple's poor quality.

 

[maflynn]

We need a forum where people can discuss general Apple quality issues that are broader than one device or application.

I would say that we already have such a forum:
Apple, Inc and Tech Industry

This is useful for talking about Apple and the industry in general terms, if you have specific product problems, then its best to use the specific forum. Creating a generic Apple Quality forum could lead to having that be just a dumping ground for problems for all apple products where as we have the site organized to provide targeted help for each of apple's products.

here's another irritant that popped up today. Threre is no reliable way to identify which apps have been offloaded.

That seems like a specific product issue and is best handled in the appropriate