chadbag

foregoneconclusion said:

gatorguy said: It's somewhat irritating to go to the AppStore and find recommended apps since every single one now is a game and I'm definitely so gamer. Not even one minute a month spent playing them, yet what Apple "suggests" for me is nothing but. Well OK, one out of a total 17 suggestions wasn't a game.

?? The iOS/iPadOS App Store is split into Today/Games/Apps/Arcade/Search. The Mac App Store is split into Discover/Arcade/Create/Work/Play/Develop/Search. In other words, it's really easy to immediately go to a section that is guaranteed to not involve gaming. 

His point is not that you can't find other apps.  It's that that is mostly what the app store recommends, even when he has little or no history of buying games.  

More on the FedEx Ground use of contractors as drivers.  My understanding is that there are pretty strict rules on uniforms, trucks, service, etc.  However, you occasionally do see them using rental trucks (penske or whatever) and probably out of uniform.  They own their own trucks.  (I believe they buy them through a standard feddx contract from the source and have to paint it in standard FedEx Ground livery). If the truck is in the shop or otherwise out of commission, they have to get a temporary stand in.  That may mean a rental, or private vehicle.  Unlike the Express part of the business, which are company trucks and employee drivers, these are small businessmen owners who usually don't own an extra truck just sitting there.  

Also, during the holidays when there is a surge of business, they may get more packages on their routes than they can normally handle.  Since they are responsible for teh complete physical route, I've seen some drivers hire their own employees and use rental trucks to make up the slack and handle the temporary extra business.  

This is all according to my understanding after talking with multiple FedEx Ground drivers over the years.   I used to run an online and phone order sales business (early 2000s to about 2012) and mostly shipped through FedEx.  One driver that covered my location with his route became really good friends with me and told me a lot about how it worked.  I also talked with other drivers at other locations (I moved and over those years ran the business from a few different locations).  

In the early 2000s, I also wrote a Mac app that would allow you to ship through FedEx from your Mac, with very quick data entry and label printing (when I started you had to either use a dedicated FedEx PC, which I didn't have, or a web browser, and you couldn't use a Mac browser as the labels would print low res and not be any good so I decided to write my own app -- they eventually fixed their side and now you can use their website to print labels, though my app would still be faster if it still worked // they changed their back end and I never updated the app).  I wanted to sell the app or make it available as a subscription but FedEx would only certify it for my own use.  To certify it for others to use I had to join some sort of consultants program, at the time, and pay $X000s to have some third party certify it.  I didn't have the money to pay for that certification.  But I used it about 10 years on an almost daily basis so I became quite familiar with how their system worked.  

mike1 said:

davgreg said:

Not a fan of Oops! (UPS).

Not sure why Apple uses them instead of FedEx and DHL. I would like it if Apple offered us a choice and it would not be Oops.
My “signature required” $2000 + laptop was left with no signature at my neighbors house and not because there was nobody home.

This is just the kind of service often seen from Oops in my area. With numbers clearly on the house in broad daylight in 70 degree sunshine they managed to not get the delivery right.

Grrr…

Generally speaking, I've found FedEx to be a complete clown show. Their use of independent contractors to make deliveries means there are minimal standards and consistency to timeliness, courtesy, uniforms etc. I've had drivers in street clothes hop out of a truck and need a signature. Look closely at every FedEx Truck and you'll see who really owns them and it ain't FedEx.

Fedex Express does not use independent contractors.  They use employee delivery drivers, who are unionized I believe.  FedEx Ground (and home delivery) DOES use independent contractors for delivery -- each owns his/her own route(s) and gets paid per package and stop.   I've not gotten an Apple delivery through FedEx Ground that originated outside the US (or computer or phone or similar).  I don't remember about small inside the US shipments.  

FedEx Ground also has its own terminals.  They are separate, which is why you'll see a separate Express truck and Ground truck outside the FedEx Office stores in the evening.   The history behind it is that FedEx didn't do ground.  A company called RPS only did ground (and only commercial addresses).   About the turn of the century, plus or minus, FedEx bought RPS and renamed it FedEx Ground.  RPS used contracted drivers.    For a long time after the merger, FedEx Ground had completely different tracking number formats etc from Express.  Over time they've unified things between the two a lot.   So now they share a single tracking number for at etc. 

The UI problems in macOS and iOS are, in my book, not because graphics guys got the keys to the kingdom, but rather, they lost track of actual cohesive usability and just have each group make up their own. 

in an older iteration of MacOS (maybe as far back as pee OS X), only vital system stuff could take over your screen.   Non vital (non “your system is about to die”) stuff and application stuff couldn’t.  Now, the system and any app can force their precious modal to the front at any time.  I can be in the middle of typing something, like a password, and half way through some stupid modal pops up with something totally irrelevant (on macOS), interrupting what I was doing. What should happen is some sort of small UI element should unobtrusively let me know an app or the system needs some attention.  There should be no way for the system or another app to gain focus automatically, except for system critical stuff that could damage the system or cause data loss

on iOS, messages has the slide to delete that works differently than every other slide to delete in the system. 

heli0s said:

This is a feature, not a bug. 

You beat  me to it. I came in to say the same thing.