Month: September 2015

As in, right now it’s saying I have a meeting with someone…but that is an event which belongs to my dad.

 

I think this is mostly due to the fact that all the shared stuff came from Google.  Or at least that’s what I would think if iOS had grouped all the shared stuff into one entry, but that’s not what it did.  It separated all the calendars into separate entries with the appropriate emails…and yet, despite the fact that it should know I have never attended even 1/8th of my dad’s meetings, it still reminds me, via Notification Center and sometimes popup message, that I have to leave to go to a meeting.

Or maybe this is due to the fact that I actually attend 1/68th of the meetings…because I do have my own stuff I go to that is also in his calendar…

 

Even if that was the case…that doesn’t mean it should surface one of his contacts in Proactive that I know but have never contacted at all recently.

You know one theory I have?  The theory I have is that Proactive and anything else that uses calendars to do stuff scans everything on my phone regardless of who it belongs to.  At least it rates things based on importance which is fine, but that algorithim needs work, because did I mention it reminds me of my dad’s events and surfaces his contacts?

I swear on my grandparent’s grave that iOS should have already known this.  I am dead serious.

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[WARNING:  Bashing of Apple ahead]

Continue reading “iOS and OS X doesn’t know what a shared calendar is #apple #iosisdumb”

So yeah, I keep realizing after I write, like, any post about Apple that I keep being a flip-flop about how I think about it.

 

I apologize.

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It’s actually incredibly difficult to maintain a single opinion.  And the main reason is because of its history.

Guess what?  It actually tried to be the perfect company; the one that never failed, the one who provides perfect software, in the perfect way.  The company that “just worked”.

Guess what else?  There were dents.  Even with the charisma and fiery personality of Steve Jobs on their side, some of their software just…didn’t work.  It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t satisfy everyone it came across.

Just like every other company.  Except unlike every other company who just SAYS that they have the perfect solution, Steve Jobs actually BELIEVED that he had the perfect solution.  And this belief developed a cult.  Yeah, unlike every other company, Apple developed a following of thousands and thousands of die-hard fans, just because of the SPECIFIC way that Jobs presented his gadgets.

There was also a lot of internal structure stuff that kept up the quality.  I bet there were fights about what color to make something where Steve Jobs beat someone bloody.

And then he died.

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Now herein lies the issue in which Apple no longer has a giant battering ram to force out our so-loved luscious quality.  And so down falls the quality into a basin of hell, where each change provokes massive outrages, and breakages of our so dearly-beloved digital i-Devices…

…um, sorry.

But for all the massive changes, like the total overhaul of the UI, the addition of awesome features like Proactive and Apple Pay…Apple kept the old.

There is still iCloud Photo Library and Genius Playlists.  There’s still the entire basic layout of every single app. There’s still ATTEMPTS at quality…

But they…just can’t.  There is an air of panic over at Apple Inc, as they lump together feature after feature, acquiring more and more companies, running themselves into the ground trying to please our thick, Steve Jobs-stained skulls…

But through it all…there’s been some really good stuff.  Things that offer glimpses of the old Apple.  The new trackpad on the MacBook, which immediately won over my dad…the awesome sound system in the iPad Pro (which I haven’t gotten yet, but I want to)…3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus VIIII Edition…oops, just 6s Plus…

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So can you see why it’s so difficult to keep a clear head?  It’s because there’s glimpses of Apple trying, and trying really well, but most of it’s just been broken update after broken feature, and the inconsistency makes it hard to tell if Apple is finally gearing up again to be the perfect little company who could, or diving down into a hell of broken things and repeating its 1985-1997 history (and if you don’t remember, that time frame is when Steve Jobs left Apple, formed NeXT, and Apple crumbled under the stress of no Steve and the incompetence of Gil Amelio).

 

 

And if you still think that Apple screwing its quality is just a load of hooey, I just had an issue where my iOS 9.0 iPhone 5S couldn’t verify an update to iOS 9.0.1 because it SAID it wasn’t connected…even though it was fully connected to Wi-Fi.  Cellular had it do the same thing.  I had to update it through iTunes.

 

Oh well…it tries.  The trackpad is cool, and apparently it worked well enough to win over anyone who touched it, so…you know what?  You’re alright, Apple.  Everyone should love you, you deserve a cookie.

 

Except that there’s STILL NO EXCUSE FOR THAT LITTLE THING WITH THE INTERNET AND THE UPDATE.  You happy about that, Tim Cook you little jerk, you stupid…

Oh wait, I’m flip-flopping again.  Sorry.

Well, not necessarily confusing so much as “going behind your back and being very scary but once you figure it out you actually realize it’s smarter than you”.

 

Before we start, I want to say that I finally noticed a certain passage in the Apple TOS saying I was not allowed to blog about any betas.  I have since been trying to honor that.

Key word: “Trying”.  This post was originally going to be how Proactive was underhanded and sneaky…but then I actually did some homework and figured out that Proactive is actually just really smart.  This is the story of how that happened.

 

Yes, this is just me fanboying about Proactive.  Bite me.

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Now, I recently reinstalled the beta after I got my phone replaced due to dropping it.  I originally installed the beta when it was still Public Beta 1.  When I reinstalled it, it was at 3.  Now, apparently some defaults got switched around, and suddenly Bob Smith appeared in the first slot of my Siri-Contact Suggestions (and I wrote it that way because fudge naming schemes I guess).

I had not emailed Bob in two years.  And the only email I had sent him was a bug report for an app he made.  I also had not even made a contact out of him.  When I checked, the iPhone appeared to have his email and his Twitter handle.  I didn’t know he had a Twitter, and I had not followed him.

 

And then I found in the iPhone settings that there actually was a toggle that made contacts out of emails you sent things to so actually it was fine.  HOWEVER……

 

That is where Jim Adams comes in.  Jim was also a contact created by Proactive.  You might think I had emailed him at one point…but you’d be wrong.  There were no emails from him, n0 notes, no textual information, not a shred of evidence on my device that said he ever existed…except for a single, solitary calendar event from 2014.  This event contained his email (albeit an old discontinued one).

I spent all day attempting to figure all this out…and it was so annoying, because as I was doing it…well…

 

You have to understand the magnitude of what the hell Proactive is.  You can think of it like a little robotic spider in your phone, invisible to you.  It watches everything you do, and it reaches out through the Wi-Fi, downloading your calendar and email history, and crawls all over them, scanning for trends, contact information, and any other useful things.  The thing is…you don’t know what that creepy robotic spider is doing.  It could be contacting other related iPhones to correlate and pool data. Because did I mention Jim and Bob were two head honchoes of completely separate companies, and that my dad was a part of both?!

Yeah.  Me and my dad both thought that Proactive was being invasive as hell!

 

But…Bob was from a single email (and backed by two emails from Twitter suggesting I follow him), and Jim was from a single calendar event (which I guess should be kind of a high priority since it’s your calendar…except it’s not my calendar.  I have a shared calendar thing.  And iOS seems to not know that.  At all.  I’ll talk more about it if I feel like it.).

 

So in fact…Proactive was actually being smart about what it did.

 

And…my dad figured out that Proactive seemed to be basing it’s algorithm (at least for Siri-Contact Suggestions) off of the CRM, or Customer Relations Model.  [And no alt text for that link because WordPress won’t allow me to have any fun anymore :p]

 

So…good job Apple!  I hated you when I was figuring it out but I did so good job!

 

(Also…I want to say “good job” again, because while I was getting g my iPhone replaced, dad touched the new MacBook’s trackpad…and was immediately tempted to ditch his old one just for the trackpad!  So GOOD JOB!)

 

Ahhhh…this is the Apple everyone knows and loves.  Welcome back. 🙂