Fanboy 🔗

As an “Apple fanboi,” I have become entrenched in the ecosystem of Apple’s “walled garden.” But not everything is perfect nor even close to it. If it were not for those of us that actually care about the products we use, we wouldn’t bother wasting valuable time to document it on their feedback and discussion pages.

Apple claims to want your feedback and have provided a page for it: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

They have their feedback (discussions) forum here: https://discussions.apple.com/

Desire for a better product 🔗

As my habit of contributing to the improvement of my daily tools, I don’t mind spending time to share my experience in hopes that someone else either found a fix or that it’s documented so others know they are not alone. If it bothers me enough, I would first create a new thread on the discussion forum and reference it in the feedback page to Apple. Their Feedback page is limited on the amount of data that can be posted. By using their own forum, I’d hope they would read the thread and have a better understanding of the problem I’m trying to explain. Hopefully, this would lead to a better solution by the product manager and engineers.

LoreZyra's threads

discussions.apple.com/profile/LoreZyra/subscriptions

Apple’s heavy-handed tactics 🔗

Apple’s latest feature introduced in iOS 15 and MacOS 12 is Focus. While the premise sounds great, the implementation lacks that “Apple” polish. I’d guess their product managers don’t actually use this feature and thus don’t understand its problems. So I created two posts on the topic:

Strangely enough, they only removed the second one but kept the first one… In both cases, I’m offering not only constructive, if not critical, feedback… but I’m hoping to bring more light to the case. The 2nd case was focused on my use of the Books.app and the “Reading” Focus mode.

LoreZyra (aka Richie Bartlett)

Focus doesn’t remain focusedWhile reading my eBook on Books, the focus “Reading” is triggered. However, while I’m reading and haven’t changed the app nor moved the mouse, the “Reading” focus is deactivated. I’m still reading!All the focus settings have this problem. If I’m in the middle of my work app, but proof reading my work, after a few minutes, the “Work” Focus is turned-off. Why?! Unless I’ve switched to a non-work app for more than a few minutes or I have shutdown my work app, it should remain in “Work” Focus!!It doesn’t “just work…” 🤬 This feature is obviously NOT used by the product manager. Otherwise, it would have been polished better… not to mention it should be a NON-INVASIVE icon change instead of a banner that blocks my browser/app tabs.

While a “community leader” did respond suggesting that I look at settings for scheduled events, it’s painfully obvious the person didn’t clearly understand what I was talking about. I responded in a manner that suggested how it could be fixed by Apple engineers. Apparently, the moderator didn’t like my constructive response and decided to block my post altogether. The community as a whole suffers when known problems and potential solutions are removed wholesale.

I’m not alone in my frustration with this feature:

Terms of Use 🔗

I’ll be among the first to admit I want full control over the content of my online properties. So, I’m not mad at Apple for having such vague terms that could be applyed to virtually everything (and no legally binding reason). I’d hope that in the spirit-of-cooperation and customer care along with a desire to always provide the best products, they would listen and use a lighter hand when it comes to posts on their forum. But their tactics leave me very disappointed! Things like this make me want to switch back to Microsoft solutions.

The email was kind to point out their ToU…

Hypocrisy 🔗

Despite having two threads that offered similar constructive feedback, they allowed this one to stay… Why?

LoreZyra (aka Richie Bartlett)

Annoying FOCUS bannersThe focus feature is nice when I need to limit who calls me or minimize the badges on my phone so I don’t get so distracted.However, the banners on my MacBookPro get annoying quickly as I need to switch apps (with different focus). I would be much happier if only an icon in the menu changed rather than it blocking part of my app where I need to access a tab or document.If the focus change were to buffer the notification period to ensure my “focus change” exceeds, say… 20 seconds, then trigger the notification (or icon change). Otherwise, I’m getting 3 banners within 2 seconds just because I switched from my work app to Safari and then back to my work app.

I wasn’t really ranting 🔗

I don’t normally rant about Apple, but now they’ve given me a reason to really rant. Anyone trying to visit my removed posts will likely see something like this:

OR, this:

Maybe this was a case of “technical questions that can be answered by the community.” If that’s true, then I imagine over 80% of the post on that forum would qualify for removal. And yet, those post remain…

A Google® search reveals this to be a fairly common practice at Apple discussion forums. The moderators that can’t properly answer a technical question will simply remove or block the post.

Maybe Apple is well aware of the problem and the critical mass being reached over Focus technical problems — and is both refusing to help and actively removing solutions it simply doesn’t like?

Violet Blue

Apple’s policy to remove comments that lend legitimate help is little more than a display of censorship for the internet thought leader, who clearly understands that it is Apple’s right to censor its forum users.

Moving Forward 🔗

For now on, I don’t see myself using the ASC much anymore. I’ll continue to post Feedback, but will reference a non-Apple controlled forum (like this one) where they can’t delete something because it makes them feel bad…