lorin schultz

Given how poorly the existing models work, it's hard to get excited about a new version. I'd be much, much happier to read that Apple has committed to bringing tvOS up to the standards we enjoy with its other products.

The list of weirdness got a little longer yesterday. In addition to the long-standing issues, such as...

1. Locally-stored content and cloud based content are listed in separate sections, so finding a title requires looking in two different places.
2. "Looking" is the only option for rips and downloaded content, because tvOS doesn't search local content.
3. Some services appear in the TV app, others don't.
4. The OS routinely fails to notice that we've already watched something, so when we go to watch a new episode we're presented with the last one we watched instead.
5. It does not allow purchases of individual songs. The only music acquisition option is a subscription to Apple Music.

...we can now add:

6. Despite being signed in to my iTunes account, it now occasionally reports that I have no purchases to view. I have to restart it to get it to "see" my purchases.

This is the kind of thing I might expect and tolerate in a $50 off-brand device, but it's really disappointing in an Apple product that costs two hundred bucks.

StrangeDays said:

- There is absolutely nothing brain-dead about the Magic Mouse charging -- it lasts for over a month per charge, and it sends push notifications when it gets low, so I plug it in at the end of that day. If I forget and come in the next morning, I can plug it in and get a drink of water or pee, come back, and work all day. What is the problem? Why on earth would I want to use a wireless mouse tethered? Defeats the entire purpose.

I understand that you perceive using the mouse while charging as both undesirable and unnecessary. I have no problem with that, and respect your preference.

Lemme turn it around a little though. Some of us think the idea of being able to use it while charging would be really handy. Moving the charging port from the bottom of the device to the front would allow that. How would you be adversely affected by that? Couldn't you continue to enjoy the product exactly as you do now? Would it make any difference to your preferred methods? It seems like it would simply accommodate the desires of others while having no affect on you at all. Why would you object?

I just did a quick mental inventory of all the Apple products I own (including Beats), and I can't think of even one other than the mouse that I can't keep using while it charges.

seanj said:

Really the only question for me with regard to Trackpad, Mouse and Keyboard is...
do I go with the traditional Apple white and silver,
or the bad-boy black and space-grey versions 🤔😆

That choice is made easier for me by Apple's choice to jack up the price for Space Grey versions. I don't like to use the words "opportunistic cash grab" in a discussion of Apple because it's such a cliché, but in this case it kinda seems like it might be true. The silver-and-white versions are already premium priced. The extra coin for a version that matches the computer seems... I dunno, maybe greedy.

Here's something I find curious about the current situation:

Mesh systems are super cool, but they all seem to lack the ability to connect USB devices like a printer or hard drive, and almost all lack downstream ethernet ports, so I can't add a switch or even plug-in my networked-but-not-wireless printer to the satellite extenders (in some cases, not even to the primary base station).

Traditional (not mesh) offerings from the majors offer excellent performance, but almost all lack support for Time Machine, and almost all of them look like a giant dead bug. My wife just about shit herself when I set up a Synology in the living room.

The Apple AC towers still offer reasonable performance and support current standards, plus they overcome the Time Machine, USB, and ethernet hurdles the others trip over. So how come no one on Craigslist will buy mine for under a hundred bucks Canadian each? That's like $75 US.

fastasleep said:

lorin schultz said:

fastasleep said:

lorin schultz said:

fastasleep said:

ols said:

So when is “Time Machine” backup being removed from MacOS? It is not perfect but I works and that what I like

Time Machine literally has nothing to do with AirPorts, so not sure why that'd be a thing. A Time Capsule was just network attached storage.

It's only a thing because so many third-party routers don't support Time Machine.

We had a big external drive plugged into the USB port on the Airport. Our new router doesn't even have a USB port. The one we tried before this one had a port and allowed setting up the drive as shared storage, but it would not work with Time Machine. Apparently there's something unique about Time Machine that the router must specifically support. Just because a router allows attached storage doesn't necessarily mean that Time Machine will work. The majority of routers we looked at didn't.

Not that we particularly miss it. Before we made the switch we wanted to make complete backups of all our computers. We started with mine, a Touch Bar MBP with about 750GB stored on it. When it still hadn't finished the initial backup after THREE DAYS we gave up on it.

Using a USB drive on an AirPort Extreme was actually not officially supported for Time Machine, and was known to be problematic. 

Really? Are you sure? I'm almost positive the blurb on the Apple web site specifically listed printers and Time Machine backups as uses for that port. I could be wrong, though. It's been known to happen from time to all the time.

If you're right, and I trust your memory more than my own, Apple support is even more forgiving than I thought. Neither telephone support nor the Genius Bar turned me away when I sought help for the slow performance. They didn't offer any solutions, but they didn't say "not supported."

Actually, looks like it was officially supported in the 'ac' tower version, but not the older models which is what I was working with when I looked into this before. It was unsupported on the "flat" Extremes, and while some people were able to get it to work, it was unreliable. I still have a pair of 'n' flat versions at home.

So you LIED!!!

(Kidding! Kidding! Put down the scissors!)

Yeah, I was referring to the tower version. Our last pancake died peacefully in its sleep a few months ago. It is survived by two towers, both now retired. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to development of long-range high-speed wireless network standards.