Macrumors, thanks for helping me get my frustrations out! Whether it’s just one person or a hundred reading my silly little complaints, I feel better just putting down in words the things that pester me.
Please understand that I’m not really a negative or glass-half-empty type person. Complaining is very atypical of me, so this is also a personal exercise in critical thinking and recognizing even the best things that can be improved. We could probably all use a healthy dose of improvement in some part of our lives, right? I could go on a diet, but instead I’m going to shake my fist at the sky.
It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek. I get it, we have these amazing products that have changed our lives, mostly for the better I think, and they are constantly being improved. In fact, here I am in a doctor’s waiting room as a loved one gets examined by a multi million dollar piece of medical tech, and I’m writing a complaint on an iPad Pro through an LTE signal connecting me to the internet, while my grandparents lived in a time where not everyone had an indoor toilet. We are living in amazing times. So, yeah, it seems silly that I should spend a few minutes ’complaining’ about such a trivial issue. I hope it’s at least a bit entertaining, brings a smile to your face, or just a “heck yeah” nod of agreement at some point.
Here is today’s Gripe:
I just downloaded super secure messaging app Signal on my iPad. Like most of you, I’m a super secret agent for a government agency that no one even knows about and I desperately need to have my highly classified transmissions protected from prying eyes. Signal is arguably the best cross-platform encrypted messaging app available. (This gives me an idea for my next gripe; I’m talking about you iMessage!)
So I just download Signal from the AppStore, fire it up, and I’m treated with the horribly familiar “iPhone app turned sideways” and I get that feeling we’ve all had. I’m disgusted by this outrageous and egregious sight, partially nauseated even, and now I’ve got a crick in my neck.
I use my iPad Pro with smart keyboard in landscape mode 90% of the time. So here I am in the doctor’s waiting room with my head cocked sideways trying to look at the app. Yeah, I’m stubborn. I know I can turn the iPad 90 degrees and “fix” this problem, but I don’t care. I’m so stubborn I’ll sit here getting odd looks and probably pulling a muscle in my neck and risk it getting stuck this way (that’s a thing, right?). Maybe I should sign up for an MRI while I’m here? I’ll just send the bill to Tim Cook. I hope it’s covered under AppleCare.
For real, though, at launch, the 1st generation iPad ran iOS 3.2. We didn’t even get iMessage until, what, iOS 5? Here we are at iOS 13, no, iPadOS 13. Finally, a true iPadOS and they can’t even force a 90 degree turn of an iPhone native app when my iPad is in landscape mode? Look at all these wasted pixels.
Were I in charge of the iPadOS dev team, this would easily have made the initial Top 10 necessary improvements from the very first day of coding.
My bodily is not nearly as flexible as when I started out punching in lines of BASIC on an Apple ][. I remember now, the first major UI improvement I personally experienced was my first switch from a black & green monitor to a black & orange monitor. WHOA THIS IS AMAZING, it’s a new color of text! Seriously that was a big deal when I was a kid, the orange monitors were definitely rad.
So, yeah, here we are in the amazing future with an iPad Pro running a Liquid Retina screen that is like a magic window to the world and it’s smaller than a legal pad of paper. Do kids even know what a “legal pad” is? Do they think it’s some sort of specialized iPad for attorneys? Well, if attorneys had to run an occasional iPhone native app on their ”legal pad” sideways and hurt their neck, you can
But I’m still turning it sideways to look at an iPhone app. Or messing up my neck in a show of pure stubbornness. Yeah, definitely the second.
Please, Tim, either fix the iPad or fix my neck. This is killing me.
Please understand that I’m not really a negative or glass-half-empty type person. Complaining is very atypical of me, so this is also a personal exercise in critical thinking and recognizing even the best things that can be improved. We could probably all use a healthy dose of improvement in some part of our lives, right? I could go on a diet, but instead I’m going to shake my fist at the sky.
It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek. I get it, we have these amazing products that have changed our lives, mostly for the better I think, and they are constantly being improved. In fact, here I am in a doctor’s waiting room as a loved one gets examined by a multi million dollar piece of medical tech, and I’m writing a complaint on an iPad Pro through an LTE signal connecting me to the internet, while my grandparents lived in a time where not everyone had an indoor toilet. We are living in amazing times. So, yeah, it seems silly that I should spend a few minutes ’complaining’ about such a trivial issue. I hope it’s at least a bit entertaining, brings a smile to your face, or just a “heck yeah” nod of agreement at some point.
Here is today’s Gripe:
I just downloaded super secure messaging app Signal on my iPad. Like most of you, I’m a super secret agent for a government agency that no one even knows about and I desperately need to have my highly classified transmissions protected from prying eyes. Signal is arguably the best cross-platform encrypted messaging app available. (This gives me an idea for my next gripe; I’m talking about you iMessage!)
So I just download Signal from the AppStore, fire it up, and I’m treated with the horribly familiar “iPhone app turned sideways” and I get that feeling we’ve all had. I’m disgusted by this outrageous and egregious sight, partially nauseated even, and now I’ve got a crick in my neck.
I use my iPad Pro with smart keyboard in landscape mode 90% of the time. So here I am in the doctor’s waiting room with my head cocked sideways trying to look at the app. Yeah, I’m stubborn. I know I can turn the iPad 90 degrees and “fix” this problem, but I don’t care. I’m so stubborn I’ll sit here getting odd looks and probably pulling a muscle in my neck and risk it getting stuck this way (that’s a thing, right?). Maybe I should sign up for an MRI while I’m here? I’ll just send the bill to Tim Cook. I hope it’s covered under AppleCare.
For real, though, at launch, the 1st generation iPad ran iOS 3.2. We didn’t even get iMessage until, what, iOS 5? Here we are at iOS 13, no, iPadOS 13. Finally, a true iPadOS and they can’t even force a 90 degree turn of an iPhone native app when my iPad is in landscape mode? Look at all these wasted pixels.
Were I in charge of the iPadOS dev team, this would easily have made the initial Top 10 necessary improvements from the very first day of coding.
My bodily is not nearly as flexible as when I started out punching in lines of BASIC on an Apple ][. I remember now, the first major UI improvement I personally experienced was my first switch from a black & green monitor to a black & orange monitor. WHOA THIS IS AMAZING, it’s a new color of text! Seriously that was a big deal when I was a kid, the orange monitors were definitely rad.
So, yeah, here we are in the amazing future with an iPad Pro running a Liquid Retina screen that is like a magic window to the world and it’s smaller than a legal pad of paper. Do kids even know what a “legal pad” is? Do they think it’s some sort of specialized iPad for attorneys? Well, if attorneys had to run an occasional iPhone native app on their ”legal pad” sideways and hurt their neck, you can
But I’m still turning it sideways to look at an iPhone app. Or messing up my neck in a show of pure stubbornness. Yeah, definitely the second.
Please, Tim, either fix the iPad or fix my neck. This is killing me.
