Problems you've noticed for a long time that still aren't solved (venting optional)

[floral]

Hi guys,

The idea is what it says on the tin: Post anything you've found that's been incorrect for a while, and you're pretty surprised it hasn't been fixed. This can be related to anything Apple, such as a bug in an Apple product, an error in an application... etc. Bonus points if the problem is blatant, and super bonus points if there aren't existing discussions online about it. (Bonus points are optional and have no monetary or social value. ;P)

I'll start: On the initial release of iPadOS 16, there's a text color error on the Privacy & Security tab, where if you select it, the text will stay black instead of turning white to complement the blue selection color, when it should. The latest patch still has this issue... and I've filed a ticket about it that's been dormant for months.

[NOTICE 25/5/23] Also as the title states, you may vent/rant about these problems. You can have your message be any length you want, but for lengths above 500+ characters I'd recommend spoilering it so that people don't have to scroll a lot to get to the next message.

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

iCloud data mysteriously does not sync from time to time. (It seems like it's not just me.)

 

[Expos of 1969]

Apple Music often does not show all the available albums by the artist you have chosen in Search. You must dig down one or two more layers to discover the missing albums. No logic or reason to this as far as I can see. It could easily be fixed if someone at Apple HQ cared.

 

[MisterSavage]

On iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS if I say to Siri "Send a message to Jane" it just proceeds as normal and asks me dictate the message (which is to an Apple device).

On macOS it says "Which one?" and asks whether to use the email or the phone number for Jane. So frustrating. I did file feedback for it at least one release of macOS ago. "Send a text to Jane" has the same behavior.

 

[MajorFubar]

Playback of songs I stream via Apple Music (the service) 'blip' at 15sec across all platforms: iPhone, Mac, iPad. This has gone on for at least two years, it has never been fixed, and yes I raised it through Apple. It's usually just the first song in any playlist, irrespective of what that song is. It's as though Apple Music (the app) doesn't buffer-ahead properly.

 

[GMShadow]

The photo picker sometimes just doesn't load in Messages. Been a problem since iOS 8 or so.

On the Mac, Messages routinely fails to recognize my friend isn't in his Sleep Focus. Everything else does.

 

[VulchR]

MacOS Finder: I have a 27" iMac with plenty of screen real estate and often I open Finder windows in a maximised state in list view. Will the Finder window show complete long filenames under such conditions? No. The user has to manually resize the file name column. Is there any System Preferences setting that automatically resizes columns to show full file names? No. Is there a Finder preference that automatically resizes the filename column to show full filenames? No.

I know, I know, first world problems, but still...

 

[retta283]

My complaints aren't bugs, they are by design, and almost all have to do with the Finder. My principal complaint for this post will be tags. Why did they have to completely eliminate and never bring back the bright colorful labels? Instead we have these stupid dots that in large folders with small icons or in list view are nearly impossible to spot without spotting and analyzing the whole folder. Even keying sections looks awkward now. Before in list view that whole line was colored in, making it incredibly easy to tell what's labeled. Looked a whole lot better in Stacks views too.

The only thing that the tags are useful for to me now is for file search operations, where they are still the same basically. In general, I dislike the Finder. Funny to dislike the main part of the Mac system, but I have a lot of little nagging issues with it. Shift click doing completely different things in icon and list view, icon view fails to scale to resized windows often, list view doesn't manually use the width of your window, Quick Look audio/video previews restart themselves, built-in server connection for FTP is read-only (this one there may be a reason for that I never figured out) ands so on.

It's not all bad though, I do have good experience with Finder search and there are small things with organization that are better, for example when copying a folder it doesn't destroy the creation date like Windows does.

Music app sucks. Hopefully they focus a bit more on it soon.

 

[KaiFiMacFan]

Yes, the Music app on MacOS is so bad. I can’t believe that effectively nothing has changed since it was rebranded from iTunes. It still has a number of awkward iTunes legacy features, like the store, which is really just an embedded internet browser with clunky navigation. I refuse to believe the Music app as it is is the best they can do, but the fact that it’s been years and it hasn’t changed (and we never got the “ground up” overhaul that was rumored), I think the Music app is unlikely to improve any time soon.

 

[Analog Kid]

The interface to download albums to Watch is tortuous!

 

[Analog Kid]

My complaints aren't bugs, they are by design, and almost all have to do with the Finder. My principal complaint for this post will be tags. Why did they have to completely eliminate and never bring back the bright colorful labels? Instead we have these stupid dots that in large folders with small icons or in list view are nearly impossible to spot without spotting and analyzing the whole folder. Even keying sections looks awkward now. Before in list view that whole line was colored in, making it incredibly easy to tell what's labeled. Looked a whole lot better in Stacks views too.

The only thing that the tags are useful for to me now is for file search operations, where they are still the same basically. In general, I dislike the Finder. Funny to dislike the main part of the Mac system, but I have a lot of little nagging issues with it. Shift click doing completely different things in icon and list view, icon view fails to scale to resized windows often, list view doesn't manually use the width of your window, Quick Look audio/video previews restart themselves, built-in server connection for FTP is read-only (this one there may be a reason for that I never figured out) ands so on.

It's not all bad though, I do have good experience with Finder search and there are small things with organization that are better, for example when copying a folder it doesn't destroy the creation date like Windows does.

Music app sucks. Hopefully they focus a bit more on it soon.

My biggest issue with Finder tags is that they're only for Finder. If I could just tag mail with the same tags then I could keep email and files tagged by topic and find it all by search.

 

[drumcat]

Messages app still doesn't indicate whether the last text sent was you or them. Every other app adds "You:" when it's appropriate.

Also if you set a Favourite in Messages, you lose the ability to see their last message.

The ability to anchor the Dock in a corner still hasn't been restored.

Calendar app still can't put "today" at the beginning of the week, or top line of the month. When it's Friday, I don't want to see the Monday-Thursday in the past! Such a waste. Also can't force text to be white/black, which is an Accessibility nightmare. Calendar is a right bag of horse poo, and it's embarrassing.

Oh, and my favourite -- iOS Reminders will notify you of a scheduled reminder with a Red Number, but there's no way to select "Scheduled" like there is in MacOS. It's missing "Today", "Scheduled", and "All" for no known reason.

 

[xxray]

AirPods Max with my iPhone. When resuming audio after having it paused, receiving a phone call, or just putting the headphones back on after having them off, the volume level of my audio jumps to a pretty loud volume. As soon as I even just slightly try to reduce the volume, it immediately snaps back to the audio level it was supposed to be at and reduces the volume lower from there. Also, the volume level in control center still shows the volume being at the level it was supposed to be at despite it being much louder in reality.

I've tried unpairing, repairing, and resetting my AirPods Max. I've wiped my phone and restored from backup, even did a DFU restore. I still have the issue. I really want to start with a completely fresh install for iOS 17 (instead of restoring from backup) because I'm just tired of all the bugs. I dread the thought of trying to restore every setting I've changed though.

Part of the problem with not restoring from backups is that you lose some data from apps though. For instance (and this is another Apple-related bug I'm complaining about), I was trying to change my Reddit password to make it more secure because I didn't want to ever lose the account. I used iCloud Keychain to generate my password. Well, the password that iCloud Keychain itself generated didn't save the password to the keychain, and I don't have an email tied to my reddit account, so now I have no way ever logging into my Reddit account again. It's nearly a 10 year old account and a kind of rare username. The only way I can access it is through the Apollo app on my iPhone because somehow it still keeps me logged in when I restore from backup. I'd lose that if I started fresh.

 

[ScreenSavers]

Control center bugs up constantly on iOS 16. Can’t exit by swiping up or by tapping out of it. It usually opens that useless privacy overlay and then freezes for a few seconds.

 

[fwmireault]

• I've been unable to search text in Messages for months now, on macOS and iOS (messages are indexing apparently)
• iOS Spotlight is incredibly slow, and sometimes doesn't work at all
• Siri is a massive failure, being dumb most of the time and slow for very simple requests. Probably the most blatant failure of all this list

• Find My for AirPods is not very reliable, as I will constantly receive notifications saying I forgot them while they are just in my pocket
• Not a bug, but I'm still surprised by the lack of UI consistency between Apple Mail on macOS and iOS. I don't have the same options for the swipe action, so I am unable to swipe right to move an email to a specific folder on macOS (while I can on iOS). This lack of consistency is a general issue with many of Apple's apps)
• +1 for occasional iCloud Drive syncing issues
• Authorizing a website to override content restriction directly in Safari will alway make it crash. I have to do it in Settings every time
• I've been unable to setup eARC on my Apple TV for months, the TV signal wouldn't stop flickering every few seconds
• Updating a saved password directly in safari will not always update iCloud Keychain, resulting in lost passwords that I have to reset again and change manually in Keychain
• Apple TV app is very slow to load content, and I'm surprised how little improvement it had in the past years.
• Last one is more hardware related but I can't ignore it: I love my AirPods Pro, but they are probably my less reliable Apple device in a long time. APP1, I had to deal several times with the crackling issue. APP2, I have a repetitive issue where transparency mode is flickering on one of the AirPods. I had them changed three times so far, but the issue always comes back after a few weeks. For both generations, I have occasional charging issues where one of the AirPods is not charging while in the case, and connection issues where one AirPod will connect to my iPhone but not the other.

 

[Smartuser]

This website offers no way to not see some forums thread subjects on its front page.

 

[Ledsteplin]

I'd like to see Apple bring back the "Delete All" button in Messages threads. It was removed in iOS 16.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Downloaded files can not be directly dragged and dropped from the springboard to the root volume. Icon of drive does not react any more (with blinking twice and then opening directory window) since around High Sierra. Drop it to desktop instead and the from there to i.e. /Applications/ on root volume, that works.
Reported that bug a couple of times now to Apple to no avail.

 

[Nermal]

Bonus points if the problem is blatant

Does "The 'Don't Save' button in Xcode saves anyway" count?

 

[dharushan411]

iPhone and iOS

• No T9 dialing on iPhone - I miss this feature very much from Android and would like it natively on the iOS Phone app
• Ability to change lockscreen icons to whatever we'd like instead of the default Phone and Torch options
• Can't switch default maps app to Google Maps or any other 3rd party maps app
• Can't rename App Library folders

macOS

• Can't quickly activate Low Power Mode under the battery drop-down menu on menu bar (have to delve into Battery Settings for that)
• Music Now Playing bugged on menu bar (doesn't show current progress on the track slider)
• Phone calls sometimes end abruptly even when both iPhone and Mac are nearby on same Wi-Fi network (calls also refuse to happen if started on Mac FaceTime app)
• Settings app is a embarassment in UI design - unlike the horizontal pane pre-Ventura it lists everything à la iPadOS/iOS

Music app on iPhone

• UI needs a redesign - can't shuffle or repeat in one tap on playback screen. Too much wasted space IMO
• Media scrubber is better in some aspects but I feel it's too sensitive as I repeatedly trigger it when holding/moving phone (previous scrubber design didn't suffer from this IIRC)
• In Songs list, the scroller bar on the right hand side is too close to the 3 dots (next to the download symbol) - again suffering from accidental activation of the song's sub-menu

 

[madeirabhoy]

so many...

when you try to log in to a website and you guess the password, both iOS and MacOS pop up asking you if you want to save it before youve even seen if its the right one. and if you hit no to get rid of it then there's no option after. especially on a mac, just put it in a side window and let me deal with it when i want to rather than a pop up.

in messenger, with people with 2 phones, when replying, no quick way to change what phone you are answering, or even knowing which one (unless they have an iphone and an android then you can guess by the colours

autocorrect will totally change words like names and companies to something entirely different, just to show its smart and can work out possibilities of words made from adjacent letters, but never fixes obvious ones like typinh

why can siri a) wake me up at a certain time, b) can play bbc radio 1, but cant wake me up with radio 1, when google can. i know you can use convoluted ways but i can just ask google...

if i set an alarm on my phone, and in the morning my ipad is nearer, why cant i silence it with that?

 

[Basic75]

There are so many things, here are a couple of random ones:

No separate volume for alarms on iPhone.

No way to make an Apple TV remember to use AirPlay speakers when the speakers are HomePods.

It's really hard to obtain some low-level information on a Mac, including things that used to be easy. (Two examples. Is TRIM enabled on this SSD? Is this monitor using full RGB or YCrCb with subsampling?)

No proper filesystem access, and no shell, on the iPad "Pro".

No emulators on iPad due to other strict App store rules.

Randomly switching to a wrong Space on the Mac when switching to an application.

Vulkan! OpenGL!

 

[dotnet]

My non-cellular iPad Pro usually offers to join my nearby iPhone’s hotspot whenever I do something Internet related. Sometimes it just don’t, and I have no reliable way of making it join the hotspot, or even have it show up in the list of WiFi networks.

 

[floral]

Does "The 'Don't Save' button in Xcode saves anyway" count?

Yes :P

 

[VulchR]

...
autocorrect will totally change words like names and companies to something entirely different, just to show its smart and can work out possibilities of words made from adjacent letters, but never fixes obvious ones like typinh
...

Spellcheckers in general suck. They still check one word at a time, so they miss errors in timing of the hitting of the space bar (e.g., 'to the' being typed as 'tot he', I won't spell out what happens to 'Got it?') or typos that makes no sense in the context of words around them (my personal favourite is 'Bets wishes' for 'Best wishes').

Also, being an American living in the UK, the difference between American English and UK English is a pain. Imagine spelling tire with a 'y'... unfathomable.