All of the features you've just canned, I use regularly, and don't see the huge issue that you're talking about. I receive calls on my laptop daily and I've very rarely had it fail. I find being able to reply to texts and calls insanely useful. Regardless of my anecdote all new technology is prone to bugs. To say "turn off the 10 gimmick features so you can get back to some level of sanity" is ridiculous. The feature you're talking about is Handoff, its 1 checkbox in your device. Airplay not working? I use it regularly again, with Plex and Beamer, its one of the most useful things I have connected. You say its ruined through software updates, but then go on to say that your gripe is the interaction interface? And of all things, scrolling. Wouldn't that be a pre-existing condition?
I feel like your frustration could be solved with just simply setting up your devices in a way that suits your uses, not the common denominator.
If Yosemite, iOS 8 and other recent changes have shown anything, it is that that problems are not consistent across the user base -- some users are plagued by bugs, while others are somehow, inexplicably completely problem-free.
I myself have been hit hard by Yosemite bugs (graphics glitches, slowness, wifi not connecting at all, very slow wifi, Mac not coming out of sleep, AirPlay issues, Airdrop issues, Bluetooth suddenly disappearing etc., all this on a fast, fairly new MBP), but I have never experienced any iOS 8 bugs of note.
The corollary is that when someone complains, we need to take it seriously and not pretend everything is fine. Clearly many people are hit by problems, and the problems are very real.
Similar story here, and I don't even bother complaining anymore. The product is perfect. My fault, that Wifi doesn't finds no APs (fixed now in Yosemite), Bluetooth works occasionally (better in Yosemite, not up to par with competition), camera works once in Skype + next time after reboot (still happens) and audio stutters (still happens, but not as bad as in Mavericks). Oh, and don't get me started on the power brick cable quality [1]... Neither Apple or user forums care, the posts just get deleted. Whatever. My next laptop won't have a fruity logo. I need something that Just Works. Like Macbooks once were.
My next laptop won't have a fruity logo. I need something that Just Works.
I'm right there with you, but the trouble is, I'm not sure anything satisfies that criteria any more. :-(
Not so long ago, I was expecting to go the other way, with our next laptops here having that fruity logo precisely because we expected OS X to Just Work where Windows 8 was just nasty.
However, right now, neither of the major commercial platforms is at all appealing, and anything Linux-based still has the fundamental problem that there aren't enough professional quality applications available to meet our needs yet. Relying on SaaS to break the OS strangleholds is also a questionable business move that we are increasingly glad we haven't made as the stories of broken "upgrades", sharp price increases, and outright cancelled services pile up.
I'm holding out some hope that either MS will come back with the next version of Windows and promote some sort of very-long-term stability and support (which is something they have historically been good at, but it seems unlikely with their new choice of leadership) or the FOSS work will finally start to take over (but this probably requires changes in the law, specifically making clear that patents are not enforceable anywhere that matters on things used for interoperability like data formats, communications protocols, and algorithms necessary to work with them).
>If Yosemite, iOS 8 and other recent changes have shown anything, it is that that problems are not consistent across the user base -- some users are plagued by bugs, while others are somehow, inexplicably completely problem-free.
Not really inexplicably: different graphics and airport cards (in different Mac models), different wi-fi routers, some have installed BS haxies while others have not, some have updated their OS on top of the previous installation for 3-4 OSes, where others start from a clean slate, etc. Regarding Hangout, it's also different iOS device version, proximity to the phone, etc.
It's true that there are plenty of possible explanations, but whether those explanations should still be possible as we head into 2015 is a different question.
Wintel boxes through the 1990s and 2000s coped with a much more diverse range of hardware and related drivers than the Mac ecosystem has ever had, and while certainly there was the occasional glitch, the track record was dramatically better for a very long time than what we see today.
This idea that widespread failures are somehow acceptable and to be expected is a bizarre change in mindset that seems to have taken hold in the 2010s. It is not in any way inevitable. It is just a result of poor specification and standardisation, bad programming, and rushing junk to market for commercial reasons when it isn't up to the standards we used to expect, often with some vague promise that any flaws will be corrected by on-line updates later.
I'm increasingly of the view that the Internet has actually been the worst thing that has ever happened to the software industry. It should be a huge advantage, but in reality it is often used as an excuse to ship bad code early and to impose unwanted updates, rent-an-app pricing models, and other user-hostile strategies.
If anyone still made software that does an important job well and comes with meaningful long-term support, my businesses would be throwing so much money at them right now. Sadly, hardly anyone making core business software actually does. It appears that I am part of a small minority, and so many people are willing to accept and pay for substandard junk that this has become the dominant software business model of this decade.
The most frustrating thing is that, since apparently there aren't enough of us for our money to swing things back in a more quality-driven direction, it's not clear what any of us can do constructively to make things any better now. Maybe when things reach their logical conclusion and people are actually dying because some 13-year-old script kiddie accidentally crashed their car by remote control, the wider public will finally get the message and start demanding acceptable quality again.
>Wintel boxes through the 1990s and 2000s coped with a much more diverse range of hardware and related drivers than the Mac ecosystem has ever had, and while certainly there was the occasional glitch, the track record was dramatically better for a very long time than what we see today.
Perhaps rose colored glasses? I've used those Wintel systems and dealing with new and unexpected issues, with drivers, software, peripherals etc, was a day to day occurence.
It still is now, judging from Wintel friends I have, including my parents and siblings. It's just that in Wintel world there so many vendors and combinations of components, that no PC system has a multi-million units production run that a Mac has. Even for a company that pushes lots of units, like Dell, they offer 40+ different configurations at any point in time...
I honestly don't think it was ever as bad in those days as what we're seeing now, though, with the possible exception of high-end games where poor quality graphics drivers were notorious for causing crashes for a while (and still are, to some extent).
The only other big drop in compatibility that I can remember from recent years was when MS effectively moved to a different model for handling device drivers with Windows 7, which broke backward compatibility with some older devices whose vendors didn't always issue new Windows 7 drivers to replace the broken ones.
Still, considering that this was the first such change for many years and it's hardly reasonable to expect an OS developer to support the drivers for every hardware peripheral ever used on that OS, I don't think that's a bad track record.
> You say its ruined through software updates, but then go on to say that your gripe is the interaction interface?
Yeah, imagine that, multiple complaints: 1. Software updates made Apple TV AirPlay incredibly unreliable for me. And its not just me, lots of people have had this happen. I btw still think Airplay is a stellar feature and if it ever got fixed it would continue to make me stick with Apple TV. 2. The UI sucks:...
> And of all things, scrolling.
Navigating episodes/content/movies/whatever on the Apple TV is a very bad experience. Its hard to explain without first using a good experience. On Apple TV, if I'm on the last episode of a show on Season 1 that I own, getting to episode 1 of Season 2 which I don't yet own is very difficult. I have to go all the way up to "more on iTunes", then choose a season, then get to that episode. On Amazon Fire TV, its just the next episode on the list. Apple TV also strangely sorts episodes you don't own earliest to latest, but episodes you DO own latest to earliest. If I go to purchased Tv shows > all, I have no idea what the sort order is. I think it might be most recent, but then the very first show on the list I bought over a year ago, so that can't be it. And as far as I can tell I can't search the purchased section anyways, so I have to literally scroll down some non-alphabetical list of 220 shows in my case if there's a show I'm pretty sure I bought but I can't quite remember the exact name. I'm not sure how to properly describe this mess, which is why I just said "scrolling", because thats what the experience feels like on the Amazon Fire TV: you just scroll through content and don't find yourself endlessly going in and out of menu "sections". It sounds to me that you don't use the actual Apple TV UI but instead use Plex (on a jailbroken Apple TV?), which is fine, but it says nothing of the Apple TV experience.
Edit: BTW, your mention of Plex reminded me of another (long overdue) failing of Apple TV. I happen to also use Plex on my Amazon Fire TV. The install process was tapping the voice button on my remote, saying "plex", then selecting install from the app store. The process on Apple TV is either jailbreaking, running an app that pretends to be the the trailers server (which may break on any upgrade of Apple TV) or accessing your plex content somewhere else and airplaying it.
I share the same frustrations, but I guess I've also accepted that I'm not playing by the rules with my setup (especially with Plex). I hope that they do open Apple TV to more development so it isn't as foreign, it has a lot of potential, but seems to not be a focus.
I feel like your frustration could be solved with just simply setting up your devices in a way that suits your uses, not the common denominator.