I started owning my first MacBook in 2014 (Air), used MacBook as company machine from 2013. Between 2008 and 2013 Linux was my only Desktop. In 2018 I bought a System76 Galago Pro, and tried to move back to Linux because I got mad of all the bugs Apple won't fix since years ago. Below I'll list most of them, but meanwhile I have to admit, that the non-Apple world of laptops still didn't get the touch pad right, so I mainly still open up a MacBook for general purposes.
There can be a strange battery drain in MacBooks between 2016 and 2019. Happens to a 2017 15 inch Pro in the family, happens to my company's 2019 13 inch Pro, and happened to my father's MacBook Air 2019. The machine is turned off, shot down, really shot down, but it drains battery. There are many topics about it, one even suggesting turning off Bluetooth:
discussions.apple.com
In case of sleep it may also drain.
In better case a macOS reinstall resolves it. In worse case by the time you notice, the battery got shortcut too and permanently damages after going to 0. It could be fine, but service under Apple Authorised Service Program is not always a happy path, when you don't live next to an Apple Store. Also Apple stores near me need booking 1 week advance in case of Macs. Since ages.
Another issue is the "sleep" thing: you close the lid and it starts sleeping. But sometimes you want to shut down. And you want to keep it shot down. You have no option to check if the machine is shot down if you are closing, because by now (from 2016), even opening, or when kept open, touching the touch pad or any key starts the boot process. It's impossible to protect the battery from going zero like this. And my other favourite side bug affecting more Macs in the family is - date and time sets back to 1970 when the battery dies. About the lid open bootup there is a stackexchange thread I opened and no one knew a solution:
apple.stackexchange.com
Sometimes you don't want the machine to sleep. But there is no easy way to hack your Mac into locking the screen only when closing the lid. Why I don't want "sleep"? Because if many things are open, things are going to swap and compressed memory.
Did I mention swap and compressed memory? Well there is another issue:
On Calatina /bin/purge is sometimes not working. Memory management is bad in general. In my 32GB RAM 2020 MacBook Pro, I have a screenshot where there is 5 GB reserved, 1 GB in swap, 1 GB compressed - I attached it. This is ridiculously sub-optimal memory management. And this becomes worse and worse - and as a result slower and slower in all macOS major versions. I managed to reach this 5GB ram reserved bug without sleeping, sleeping makes swapping/memory conmpression even worse, and after 3 sleeps the Mac starts lagging. I also dedicated this bug 2 Stackexchange threads:
apple.stackexchange.com
apple.stackexchange.com
Ironically people in the comment there claiming things which are clearly NOT TRUE. And the attached screenshot proves it.
This bug is not just historical, getting worse version to version, and forced me to replace my 2014 8GB RAM Air to a 2020 32GB RAM Pro, and then proved, it can be still bad enough on the 32GB RAM Pro. This bug is just utter ridiculous.
Next on the list is not even really a bug, more like a UX and accessibility issue: I just don't understand few years ago why it made sense to force the "full screen" instead of the "well working" "maximize window" feature. At least as an accessibility setting they should still have option to keep windows windows, not separate screens. I need to size them by hand. It's a joke. And no one noticed in the past 4-5 years how bad an idea was this, escpecially in an OS which historically had "drag n drop" based UX so much (one window to another). I just don't understand how bad decisions like this are made.
If we are on the UX side, I also don't like the animations (yes, including the switch fullscreen windows) being that slow. In few cases I have options to set them faster:
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string suck
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.10
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE;
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-show-duration -float 0.1
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-hide-duration -float 0.1
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-page-duration -float 0.05
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.05
defaults write -g NSBrowserColumnAnimationSpeedMultiplier -float 0.05
defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.05
I always start with this as I want to work swiftly on my Mac, not waiting on animations. (And also not waiting on slow read from swap or compressed memory)
About slowness: isn't it ridiculous that a Mac OS X 10.5 booted faster from and old HDD than macOS 10.15 boots from the fastest SSD available in the notebook world? (Yes, the hardware is still insanely good in comparison to other manufacturers, my complain is about software - also I'm happy that at least after 3 years they dropped the butterfly keyboard and we luckily got back the Esc key)
What I understand as a business decision but I don't like: iOS backups and Photo library would be completely okay to be stored on an external drive. I need to know how the Unix mount works for this, but I can do this. When my MacBook Air 2014 only had 256GB I "hacked this through", now with 1TB SSD I don't care. But I still feel on a soldered SSD this a bit unfair. At least there are solutions to save space. And no, not Apple's own solutions.
They are not effective or force you to buy more icloud storage. At least from sales point of view I get it, yes, it's for profit, I understand, I can live with it.
About iCloud - easy to accidentally turn on icloud backup and icloud photos, even when you wouldn't need it. All for a very bad UX of "what machine stores what data in the end", "delete" means "delete from where", and sometimes there is no point in deleting, as a next sync re-adds everything. With photo and "music" libraries I just accepted that everything is on every machine. But I'm pretty sure a better UX could exist. And it's not getting better at all. Today I restarted my Mac and my iPhone 6 times on top because sync was stuck on "waiting for photos to sync". And Finder didn't remember "do not automatically sync", nor "do not sync photos" settings. So when I plugged it in again it started again. It drove me pretty mad.
And while we are at iOS: did any of us need a "Siri button" at all? Who in their right mind approved this? If I press that button long I don't want to speak to Siri. I want to shut down. We almost all needed to use Google to know how to shut down iOS for the first time after iPhone X: and this is ridiculous. And not even an accessibility setting is there to change this.
Did I mention accessibility? We have these huge phones, and since iPhone X reachability is unreliable, as it falsely detects touches and gestures differently. It became a pretty hectic experience.
Hectic experience? Well the copy paste UX: that was working once, I don't get why they had to replace it with these inconvenient 3 finger gestures. And it's random when a long touch will show up the "paste", that's why I started using the 3 finger gesture, which works but is inconenience. But tell me: should threads like these exist in 2020?
www.unlockboot.com
discussions.apple.com
I'm not sure what to do anymore. If there was decent hardware for Linux I'd just move back to Linux. But I wouldn't be able to cope with Android, I'd sooner start hacking libimobiledevice under Linux - it's not hard writing something better than the current buggy Finder sync anyway (except the backup part). I suggested Mac for so many people and now they are all disappointed. With trivial ages old bugs like this.
One thing is sure: I won't ever switch to Windows 10 - at least I've never seen Activity Monitor not responding. In Windows even the task manager is unreliable. That would kill me.
To cheer me up write here other macOS and iOS bugs which are present since ages. That would make me feel the problem is not with me, it's software quality. Or alternatively - feel free to write annoying and awkwardly permanent-looking UX decision from Apple.
Which was the most annoying Apple "update" for you?
There can be a strange battery drain in MacBooks between 2016 and 2019. Happens to a 2017 15 inch Pro in the family, happens to my company's 2019 13 inch Pro, and happened to my father's MacBook Air 2019. The machine is turned off, shot down, really shot down, but it drains battery. There are many topics about it, one even suggesting turning off Bluetooth:
Battery drains when off! - Apple Community
In case of sleep it may also drain.
In better case a macOS reinstall resolves it. In worse case by the time you notice, the battery got shortcut too and permanently damages after going to 0. It could be fine, but service under Apple Authorised Service Program is not always a happy path, when you don't live next to an Apple Store. Also Apple stores near me need booking 1 week advance in case of Macs. Since ages.
Another issue is the "sleep" thing: you close the lid and it starts sleeping. But sometimes you want to shut down. And you want to keep it shot down. You have no option to check if the machine is shot down if you are closing, because by now (from 2016), even opening, or when kept open, touching the touch pad or any key starts the boot process. It's impossible to protect the battery from going zero like this. And my other favourite side bug affecting more Macs in the family is - date and time sets back to 1970 when the battery dies. About the lid open bootup there is a stackexchange thread I opened and no one knew a solution:
On lid open Macbook Pro 2016 boots automatically - after turning off I need to juggle 10 seconds with the touch id power button to boot
I have the late 2015 (15 inch) MacBook Pro. By default it turns on when laptop lid is open. This is not good for me, sometimes I open the lid on weak battery to make sure it's not turned on, so I w...
Sometimes you don't want the machine to sleep. But there is no easy way to hack your Mac into locking the screen only when closing the lid. Why I don't want "sleep"? Because if many things are open, things are going to swap and compressed memory.
Did I mention swap and compressed memory? Well there is another issue:
On Calatina /bin/purge is sometimes not working. Memory management is bad in general. In my 32GB RAM 2020 MacBook Pro, I have a screenshot where there is 5 GB reserved, 1 GB in swap, 1 GB compressed - I attached it. This is ridiculously sub-optimal memory management. And this becomes worse and worse - and as a result slower and slower in all macOS major versions. I managed to reach this 5GB ram reserved bug without sleeping, sleeping makes swapping/memory conmpression even worse, and after 3 sleeps the Mac starts lagging. I also dedicated this bug 2 Stackexchange threads:
Tell macOS to only use swap and compressed memory when really needed (macOS 10.14 Mojave)
As disabling swap and/or compressing memory is not recommended and also not a stable option after 10.9 Mavericks (despite the vm setting exists), I'm doomed after few days of running my Mac with my
Can I turn off swap and/or memory compression on macOS 10.12, Sierra?
Is there a way with macOS 10.12, Sierra, to safely turn off compressed memory? And is there a way to turn off safely swap? This was possible on macOS 10.9 and macOS 10.10. Although it sometimes cr...
Ironically people in the comment there claiming things which are clearly NOT TRUE. And the attached screenshot proves it.
This bug is not just historical, getting worse version to version, and forced me to replace my 2014 8GB RAM Air to a 2020 32GB RAM Pro, and then proved, it can be still bad enough on the 32GB RAM Pro. This bug is just utter ridiculous.
Next on the list is not even really a bug, more like a UX and accessibility issue: I just don't understand few years ago why it made sense to force the "full screen" instead of the "well working" "maximize window" feature. At least as an accessibility setting they should still have option to keep windows windows, not separate screens. I need to size them by hand. It's a joke. And no one noticed in the past 4-5 years how bad an idea was this, escpecially in an OS which historically had "drag n drop" based UX so much (one window to another). I just don't understand how bad decisions like this are made.
If we are on the UX side, I also don't like the animations (yes, including the switch fullscreen windows) being that slow. In few cases I have options to set them faster:
defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string suck
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.10
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE;
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-show-duration -float 0.1
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-hide-duration -float 0.1
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-page-duration -float 0.05
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.05
defaults write -g NSBrowserColumnAnimationSpeedMultiplier -float 0.05
defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.05
I always start with this as I want to work swiftly on my Mac, not waiting on animations. (And also not waiting on slow read from swap or compressed memory)
About slowness: isn't it ridiculous that a Mac OS X 10.5 booted faster from and old HDD than macOS 10.15 boots from the fastest SSD available in the notebook world? (Yes, the hardware is still insanely good in comparison to other manufacturers, my complain is about software - also I'm happy that at least after 3 years they dropped the butterfly keyboard and we luckily got back the Esc key)
What I understand as a business decision but I don't like: iOS backups and Photo library would be completely okay to be stored on an external drive. I need to know how the Unix mount works for this, but I can do this. When my MacBook Air 2014 only had 256GB I "hacked this through", now with 1TB SSD I don't care. But I still feel on a soldered SSD this a bit unfair. At least there are solutions to save space. And no, not Apple's own solutions.
They are not effective or force you to buy more icloud storage. At least from sales point of view I get it, yes, it's for profit, I understand, I can live with it.About iCloud - easy to accidentally turn on icloud backup and icloud photos, even when you wouldn't need it. All for a very bad UX of "what machine stores what data in the end", "delete" means "delete from where", and sometimes there is no point in deleting, as a next sync re-adds everything. With photo and "music" libraries I just accepted that everything is on every machine. But I'm pretty sure a better UX could exist. And it's not getting better at all. Today I restarted my Mac and my iPhone 6 times on top because sync was stuck on "waiting for photos to sync". And Finder didn't remember "do not automatically sync", nor "do not sync photos" settings. So when I plugged it in again it started again. It drove me pretty mad.
And while we are at iOS: did any of us need a "Siri button" at all? Who in their right mind approved this? If I press that button long I don't want to speak to Siri. I want to shut down. We almost all needed to use Google to know how to shut down iOS for the first time after iPhone X: and this is ridiculous. And not even an accessibility setting is there to change this.
Did I mention accessibility? We have these huge phones, and since iPhone X reachability is unreliable, as it falsely detects touches and gestures differently. It became a pretty hectic experience.
Hectic experience? Well the copy paste UX: that was working once, I don't get why they had to replace it with these inconvenient 3 finger gestures. And it's random when a long touch will show up the "paste", that's why I started using the 3 finger gesture, which works but is inconenience. But tell me: should threads like these exist in 2020?
Copy Paste Not Working On iPhone – Here's a Fix
Is copy paste not working on iPhone or iPad? That’s bad, because it is one of the handiest features. Learn how to fix this issue ...
www.unlockboot.com
IOS 12 copy paste problem - Apple Community
I'm not sure what to do anymore. If there was decent hardware for Linux I'd just move back to Linux. But I wouldn't be able to cope with Android, I'd sooner start hacking libimobiledevice under Linux - it's not hard writing something better than the current buggy Finder sync anyway (except the backup part). I suggested Mac for so many people and now they are all disappointed. With trivial ages old bugs like this.
One thing is sure: I won't ever switch to Windows 10 - at least I've never seen Activity Monitor not responding. In Windows even the task manager is unreliable. That would kill me.
To cheer me up write here other macOS and iOS bugs which are present since ages. That would make me feel the problem is not with me, it's software quality. Or alternatively - feel free to write annoying and awkwardly permanent-looking UX decision from Apple.
Which was the most annoying Apple "update" for you?
