I’m beginning to hate computers. I have been trying to deal with Apple security this morning, trying to log in to the system on my home Mac mini. The problem is two-fold: one is that I have to log into my Apple account; two is that I don’t own any of my computers. Somehow, they are all registered to my wife.I had to register with Apple all over again, which took an absurd amount of verification and re-verification and filling out forms. Finally got that straightened around, set up my new official account, tried to login, only for it to tell me that I needed Mary’s password now.
I took one stab at it and quit. The other delightful thing about Apple is that you get three tries, and then you are locked out of even attempting to log in for a week.
I have spent the last hour screaming profanities at the ceiling.
Check out this article. You might not have to wait a week, tho that probably depends on your macOS version.
Too much security and too little explanation of the security. It should be that they have a simple easily findable procedure for situations like yours. [And phone answering robots should begin with how long the wait is to talk with a human, offer you an opportunity for a callback, and only then try asking you questions to ‘help you’ – and when the human comes on the line they should have the answers you gave to those questions so that they don’t freaking need to ask them again.]
My wife just suffered through a similar torture with her Mac laptop. I am fortunate the OS I use does not require authorization by Corporate or giving up my genetic code. I realize of course that some people have no choice depending on their needs.
When I started with that computer stuff I really wanted an Apple. They were just so sleek and shiny – and probably what Atari tried to copy with my ST.
By the time I had enough funds to buy one I had discovered Linux and enjoyed the idea of being in control of my own computer. At times that has gone horrible wrong, but at least it was usually my own fault.
Linux all the way.
Your computers are yours, not the manufacturers.
Dibwys @ #2 — For every person saying “too much security” there’s someone saying “not enough security.” That probably depends on how recently you got hacked. As for the documentation, there’s tons of it. No one reads it. Admittedly it’s difficult to document…I tried back in the day…and it’s not scintillating reading.
I have a school issue I Pad and I have a private one. They have exactly one thing going for them: they’re small and lightweight.
They come with next to no internal storage (every 200 bucks no name Android phone easily has multiple times the storage) so you have to buy an expensive version as well as cloud space and they’re also not user friendly. Seriously, simply saving a file often requires 5 different steps. I don’t know where the hype is coming from
It’s probably no consolation, but Microsoft is the same way. The newer versions of Office are incompatible with older versions, and you can’t run the older versions with the (fucking) preinstalled newer version of Office.
PZ, face reality: in today’s world, you don’t own anything, you are a renter at the mercy of the billionaires who don’t care if you live or die. Apple products are too expensive toys for the elites. Just like all the other huge crapitallist corporations that own this society, they make up the rules, you are a pawn in their rigged chess game.
We love penguins and puppies. Open source and linux have given us hope. I know you have experienced a little of that.
I don’t benefit in any way from making this statement. The new 13in. apple laptop is CRAP. It is $600 and the specs are not nearly as good as the refurb’d dells parts people sell for less than $400.
i first started using computers seriously with 286 and 386 processors running DOS, and then Windows 3.0. Got used to the look and feel of the Windows operating system. I cant use IOS for shit. everything is in a non-intuitive place. drives me nuts. i use android for my phone for same reason.
Apple has been declining for a long time, and now they are really nose-diving in quality. (They’re pulling a Boeing, no pun intended.)
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the best OS Apple’s ever put out was 10.6, back before 2010. It’s been getting worse and worse since then. The nonsensical changes, the ripping away control of your own computer to themselves controlling it, the lockdown of your computer, the ever-increasing number of bugs and security flaws in their OS’s which they never bother to supply patches for. Taking over owning your computer: it isn’t yours, it’s theirs.
Louis Rossman runs a shop that specializes in repairing Macs, and he’s doing well enough that he can afford office space in Manhatten. He might perhaps be the best expert in the world on Apple hardware. On his YouTube channel, he advises peple strongly not to get a Mac, that their hardware is too low-quality, what with their locking it down and soldering things to the motherboard, etc. And, that’s his livelihood, repairing Macs! He’s telling people not to get them.
I’m a long-time Mac consumer user (not a dev or pro or gamer), I have never so much as learned how to turn on any other kind of computer. I’m certainly more of an expert in how to operate their software than anyone who works for Apple.
And I’d say that too: don’t get a modern Mac, their software (OS’s) are too low-quality. The number of flaws, mistakes, security loopholes that patches are never issued for, ownership of your computer and how you must work with it, the un-blockable spyware that’s installed on all OS’s now, that sends a record to Apple on every app you open, and that Apple can use to even prevent you from opening any app they want. I intend, when my current OS or hardware finally goes down, to move to Linux. I will never buy another Apple product.
So, I’m not really the world’s expert on consumer use of Apple OS’s, but out of what experience I do have, I say, don’t buy Macs.
I’e used Jump Desktop, have for years. Used a lot in my industry (film/video post production) because of its extremely short latency. Works cross platform, and from phones and tablets. An account is very cheap and permits almost unlimited devices. You and share screens in either direction or control either way. Super easy to setup. The other end doesn’t need an account. You can make a connection permanent or temporary, so the other party is secure. I use it for doing tech support for friends (a lot). Usually I have a permanent connection where I can log in as long as the machine is on and connected to the internet.
Yes, it gets around firewalls. Lemme know if you have questions.
Super inexpensive.
The big selling point of the Mac ecosystem is supposed to be that it “just works”… But the problem with stuff that “just works” is that you’re shit out of luck when it “just doesn’t“.
I’ve always been a Windows guy, but Win11 has finally pushed me to make the jump to Linux. (For personal use, anyway – professionally, there is no escape for me.)
I refuse to deal with Apple stuff.
Once you start, you’ll be Assimilated By The Borg:
Apple computers, Apple phones, Apple other crap.
Not that Micro$hit is that much better. Nuke ’em from orbit.
I decided in 1985, after observing an Apple pitch to replace our Lisa computers with original Macintosh computers, that Apple was no longer serious about usability. I was forced to use a Macintosh in 1995 and the experience only confirmed my earlier conclusion. No one with half a brain would use the symbology of dragging the hard drive icon to the trash icon to implement an off switch.
Robro @ #6
It is too much security if it is preventing you from doing something and there is nothing wrong with what you are trying to do. For every security system there should be an easy way to find out what you need to do to get past it when you don’t have nefarious intent. There can be delays built in to the procedure, but it needs to be that when you do encounter a delay you know how long it will be and why it exists. And good documentation is not hard, you just need to be able to remember the perspective of the person reading the documentation and having a couple of editors who do not think like you do.
Dunc
Same. Not that I had any personal attachment to Windows, it was just that Mac was outside of the price range. Then they stopped support for Win 10 and seriously expected me to throw away a perfectly fine computer and buy a Winn 11 compatible one. The only thing I miss is shortcuts for special characters
And they are no longer easy to use. I am driven mad by trying to find my way around the monern Apple system and the software (looking at you MS Word) working off it. The simplest jobs lead to me being lost in a maze..
I never got dragged into the Apple/Mac gravity well. DOS, then Windows, then two years ago Linux (Ubuntu). Dual boot on my laptop, and I let the Windows half upgrade itself to Win11, which I have to use maybe once a month. I was in a series of Unix and Linux environments when I was working, and I like being able to switch to command line and do a little scripting when I want (yeah, PowerShell is basically bash, but it doesn’t feel the same on a machine that’s first and foremost a GUI).
I used Apple for a while — up until I needed a new battery for my laptop and it needed me to physically drive the machine to an Apple store 80 km away and leave it with them for up to 2 weeks to change it. Instead I bought a knock-off battery, a set of Apple-usable screwdrivers, and changed it myself in about fifteen minutes. That was the end of buying Apple for me.
One of my students who had worked at an Apple “Genius” store informed me that it was a strategy by Apple. They had worked out that a fair percentage of customers would buy a new laptop rather than wait two weeks to have a simple battery replacement. So there’s their corporate philosophy in a nutshell. Intentional wastefulness and poor service because it helps gouge money out of the rich schmuck end of the market.
robro@6–
I just had to complete an online security module for my university…it contained actively counter-productive information about recognising deepfake videos.
Yes it’s an universal pain (in th’ butt) felt by everyone.
Let’s face it: manufacturers don’t even try to deliver usable systems, and now they don’t even care about being seen not caring. Everything is crap by design.
Apple was sort-of-an-exception maybe 15 years ago, now I agree they are gone to the dogs. I had a desktop bricked by an OS update, my one and only iPad burned out after 13 months (by design eh? But I had paid extra for the 36 month guarantee, so…) and so on and so drearily forth.
Retirement beckons for me too, so that’s when I’ll switch to Linux (prolly Mint) if I can steel my soul enough for… the change.
Robbo @ #11 — I’m sort of the opposite. I started using Mac OS in 1984. I’ve used various versions of Windows, and some other systems. Everything is in a non-intuitive place, because there is no such thing as an “intuitive place.” “Intuitive design” is marketing spiel. It’s habits we form. Drives me nuts, too.
outis@23–
Yep. When my current laptop reaches the end of its life (coming soon), I will go back to Linux. Unfortunately my uni work means I have to use Windows (grrr!), so I’m deciding whether to install a dual boot and accept the inconvenience and loss of disk space, or whether to get a cheap second laptop as a web client for uni work.
I am a computer illiterate, as in I don’t care what the operating system is, I just want the computer to do what I need it to do. Last time we bought a new lap top for me it was one that runs on Linux, Ubuntu I think. It came with various applications installed and once Mr J set it up to talk to our wifi I could use it straight away. Previously I’d used Windows, I don’t know if it’s just how old the previous machine was, but this one seems easier to use and I’m very happy with it.
@Giliell #18
Look up how to use compose and configure a compose key on your keyboard, (I use the ‘menu’ key). Compose gives you a massive list of key sequences for special characters. (The list is found at /usr/share/X11/locale/{location}/Compose, with {location} being whichever you are actually using.)
It runs from basic things like to get —, all sorts of accents like <“> to get ö, sometimes useful characters like °, ∞ or ©, oddball punctuation like ⸘, superscript¹ and subscript numbers, currency symbols like ¥ or £, various math symbols, (≮, ≥, ∅), etc.
You can even tell someone to look up. ↑
1: Useful for footnotes.
Re: christoph @ #8…
When Word for Windows wouldn’t run on a new system (Win7), I convinced my wife to switch to OpenOffice and–later–LibreOffice. LO will open (and handle) and write pretty much an Word format, plus (by accounts I’ve seen) it is more likely to succeed in opening and mostly recovering documents written with Word that Word itself can’t open.
For those busy cursing either Mac or Windows (or both), but hesitant to get their feet wet with Linux, get a Raspberry Pi and experiment with it. You can install a variety of Linux distributions, though I’d recommend starting with the very well supported RaspiOS.
Because the default device to boot from and hold the root file system is a micro-SD card, you can have multiple cards, each with a different OS on it, should you desire that. If you back up the SD card to another device, you can recover from file system destroying errors (should you make one) very quickly and easily. The hardware is inexpensive (though thanks to the AI-induced astronomical memory costs, not as much as they used to be) and the software is free. Additional bits needed (which you may already have some of) are a monitor, keyboard mouse/pointing device, PSU, and the aforementioned microSD card. A 32GB SD card is plenty of space to start with unless you’re planning to do things like edit large video files. There are forums that provide most of the support and the Pi engineers are known to answer questions.
I would recommend using the official Raspberry Pi PSUs. They’re solid, reliable and inexpensive.
Re: chrislawson @ #25…
Something you might consider would be to install Linux and run Windows as a VM on it. (That’s what I’m thinking of doing next time I get a new desktop system…I really only need Windows to a particular game I play.)
They all get you into their silo and there they do everything to keep you. I can’t send legible jpegs to an Android phone from an iPhone.
My first foray into computers was in 1983 at high-school. An Apple computer that we spent one maths period getting the text colour to change. Boring!
My next experience was in 2001 with an old ‘liberated’ WIndows 95 computer (liberated from the corporate upgrade waste stream). Within a few months I discovered what was then called Knoppix which was Linux system running from a bootable CD-ROM. Wow, why would anyone use windoze?
Subsequently moving into a career in IT support I soon learned of platform lock-in with organisations relying on software packages written for Win3.1 or older. Same can be said of those corporate entities bound into terminal systems running on AS/400 and/or Sun Solaris boxes.
These days I just take computers as I do any other tool. Can it do what I need? Can it do what you need? For most home use a Linux distro is often the best (grandma just needs web-mail and internet access), but if you are into hard-core gaming or heavy lifting of image and video files, Win or OS/X might be best.
At work now (not IT – Win and OS/X disabused me of the notion that it was a good career move) I use Win 11 because I have to. But given almost all our software is now provided 3rd party in-browser, I could use any windowing GUI system available.
I certainly feel your pain though, PZ. Been there, and I wont own a Mac again.
I had a bad experience with a refurbished mac around 2010ish. known problem with a bunch around that time, but because mine was refurbished, wasn’t covered under recall/warranty. had some other frustrations with Apple leading up to that, but my laptop bricking was pretty much the final straw.
bought a cheap windows laptop on sale, reformatted the harddrive and installed linux Mint.
I’m currently using a Framework laptop running the Bazzite Linux Distro. The past couple laptops have had minor hardware failures long before the performance made them obsolete, so hopefulling I can get more longevity out of the Framewok by just being able to replace parts that fail. The cusomization of ports, although limited, is a nice bonus.
granted, probably ~90% of what I do on the computer is web-based, and aside from that, Linux has some pretty good tools for running Windows games (and more and more are Linux native), I’ve played Baldur’s Gate III on my current set up without problems, that’s probably the most recent. Semi tangent, but I like GoG.com – they have a decent selection of Linux games, they are DRM free, and they give away a few freebies every year. Most are pretty simple/short, but I’ve gotten a couple free games I really got a lot of enjoyment out of.
I’ve been pretty happy with both the Framework, and Linux so far.
whheydt@30–
Virtual Windows is an option, but my understanding is that it’s a but fiddly, plus MS has a long history of deliberately making changes to break emulators. My other thought, after I wrote that comment, is that I wouldn’t need a second laptop at all if I’m only going to use Office 365 online…I can run that on any browser without leaving Linux.
lochaber@33–
Framework looks a great manufacturer, but it also looks very expensive for anyone outside the US (which also effectively makes any warranties useless).
Upcycled dumpster desktop box from Ebay: < $50
Install GNU/Linux on it, then you’ve got a perfectly good machine. Maybe not top end, but you don’t need top end for most tasks. Most importantly, like @5 DanDare said, you then have a machine you truly own.
@17 Dibwys
No.
This has been tried in the past and it does not work as intended, ever. When you allow what is essentially a backdoor for the intended user with no nefarious intent, that same backdoor works for anyone, including very much those with nefarious intent.
What you want is a threat model that rules out onerous security measures with little or no likelihood of seeing any use in your personal circumstance. Keep what you need.
My least favorite case of trying to “help a customer”, and by help I mean, “Merely installing a new app for our store”. is anything iPhone. No one remembers their freaking Apple ID, you can’t install anything at all, without using it, the setup for moving between apps, finding existing installed apps, etc., is a nightmare (instead of just clicking an icon to bring up “active app”, or another one for, “all installed apps”), and… its just stupid. Mind, the last one of those a few “lower end” Androids also hides, and almost 100% of all people you try to help has so many apps already installed that it does not automatically add the new one to any off the “drag screens/home screen”, where you don’t have to hunt for it, but at least you have a bloody way, outside going into the app store, to find the damn things. Result – my reaction to anyone asking me to help someone with “any” iPhone is, “Yeah, I have no idea how to do it on one of those.” lol
But, yeah, the only people more paranoid about security is the phones made “specifically” for weird people that think they need DOD level security (well, pre-Trump. Who the F knows that the standard is now..), and think everyone cares so much about their phone content that they need to secure it against everything from the cops to space aliens. And, I would bet that “their” security is still less stupid and annoying than everything Apple puts out.
Chakat Firepaw
Thanks, I’ll look into it when I can find the spoons. That’s the misgiving I have with Linux: It’s still mostly on a level above the average user. Without my actual programmer friend I wouldn’t even have been able to install it
I have been using Apple products for forty years. I just checked, the Mac Plus was launched in 1986 and seemed miraculous. So did the first version of the World Wide Web, a few years later. My 2017 iMac works fine; I had the hard disk replaced to 4TB but I need no more speed. However, the iPhone I got this year sucks. The changes to its consumer interface are so annoying I am seriously thinking about downgrading.
I have absolutely no idea why anyone would put up with authenticating with a company to do something as basic as login to a computer that’s sitting right in front of you. The only time that should be the case is if the computer came at no cost to you because it’s literally owned by the company. Because if you paid for it, you’re paying them to own your computer.
I know some of them claim security benefits to this sort of arrangement. For an accurate picture of what this really means, imagine whoever wrote that laughing at you. Big guffaws and giggles at your expense. Can’t even get the explanation out without pausing to laugh at you some more. Because this is about gathering information on you and gaining control over whether you even get to use the computer you have presumably paid quite a bit for. That is not a security benefit. If anything it introduces an extra attack target to your system.
About 15 years ago I switched to Linux almost 100%. I only ran Windows for some specialty programs (mostly tax software). Now I run those in a virtual machine.
I had a head start on most people with Linux because it’s the OS in the equipment we sell, and I had been writing device drivers for about five years. Unfortunately, the company runs on Windows. At least they have not downgraded to W11. I wonder how long they can keep W10 going. I’ll probably retire next year (finally!) so maybe I can avoid it.