I heard that Music.app got better in iOS 14.5. Can’t remember where I read it, but it’s a lie. Why is there a “Download” button next to the “…” button on all of my tracks now? Oh wait, it’s not a button… it’s… information… I guess? Well I’m sure glad to know that every single track on this phone is “downloaded” to it, because how else would I know about that… as someone who doesn’t use Apple Music and exclusively syncs from my local iTunes library. I guess there really isn’t a single person left at Apple that still does so. Then again, the experience for Apple Music subscribers doesn’t seem to be any less shit, so who knows.

And of course, I’m still not able to navigate to the artist overview from that screen. Tapping “Eminem” does nothing. The tracks have “Show Album” in their context menu (even when you’re viewing that album), but not “Show Artist”. I can’t find it anymore now, but when I last complained about this, I think someone said it works for them – maybe with Apple Music, or with iTunes Match, or… dark magic.

It always amazes me when I find clock UI in the wild that could also be satire. When you tap on the minutes field on top, the numbers around the circle change and it goes from 0 to 60 instead.

Okay, I’ll just watch some relaxing Minecraft Let’s Plays instead of Scrubs then. Surely nothing will interrupt me when I’m in fullscreen mode! And I’m even using Windows, because I already know that Safari can’t properly deal with the insane complexity of… playing a video.

No such luck, guess what randomly popped up after several minutes of playback? Of course: Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior, “Sleeping Tabs”?

I’ll admit it, I’m really fast with computers. It is quite possible that less than a second goes by between when I open Plex and when I hit the Play button. Quite possibly not enough time for some Javascript and new assets to finish loading before finally triggering that popup. But come on, Plex. You’re supposed to be one of the good ones. Don’t do me dirty like that, interrupting me after playback had already started for several seconds(!), while I’m just trying to relax and watch some Scrubs with the original soundtrack from the DVDs.

I’m sorry, what? I have so many questions about this. Why can’t it be installed while audio is playing? How was it decided that disabling the button and showing this notice – without any explanation at all – is better than just… stopping the audio when updating, which requires a reboot anyway? What dark magic did earlier updates contain to allow such marvels of technology as… simultaneous decoding of audio streams and downloading of update data?!

I was bitching to Philipp about how this is still a thing due to my IntelliJ IDE being updated. When I opened the “Notifications” screen to allow yet another “java” entry to notify me of things, I was confused by the “Allow Notifications” toggle looking inactive. Admittedly that confusion is partly my fault, because I’ve set my “Accent Color” to “Graphite”.

Something still felt off, though. It took me a few seconds, but then I realized what threw me off: “Banners” is highlighted in a gigantic blob of bright blue. So subconsciously I was getting mixed signals from that screen about how color is used to differentiate things.

Check out the “General” screen with “Blue” versus “Graphite”:

If one of the radio selections in the second screenshot was blue instead of grey, I’d probably also assume that the other ones were inactive. Why is “Banners” in the “Notifications” screen not highlighted with the correct accent color?

The Apple Arcade¹ exclusive, “Game of Thrones”-licensed blockbuster mobile game Tale of Crows has a fun mini-game in its settings screen called “Can you spot the close button?”. (It’s an x on the top right, in case you can’t tell.)

Left screenshot is when you normally enter the settings screen when using the game. The one on the right is when you enter back into the game after a while and it has to reload from memory, I suppose. In both cases it takes a few seconds before the Game Center² banner animation is done and you can safely tap back out. If you try your luck and miss the target, you can spend another few seconds waiting for Game Center to load and then try your luck getting back out there.

This is the crème de la crème of Apple gaming. Top tier, hand selected. And yet…

So my bank asked me to check if my CC was already super secure. No idea why they need me to do anything to verify that, because… they are the ones who gave it to me?! But fine. Let’s do it.

I’m viewing this webpage fullscreen on my 24" 1440p monitor. There is a lot of screen estate. I receive the TAN. The amazing macOS feature doesn’t work, I have to copy & paste it like a neanderthal.¹ I paste the TAN and click the only visible button on the page. The button that is right there next to the input. The form refreshes, no success notification, no redirect. Something is wrong. I quickly realize my mistake – the button says “Request new TAN”. Because for some reason that only the gods of webdesign can understand, the form has a scrollbar. And the actual submit button is hidden down there. Why?! If you suck so bad at basics like this, why should I believe you’re even remotely competent about security. Oh right, I shouldn’t.

You could probably fill an entire site like this with nothing but bad navigation on websites, but hiding your submenus with a breadcrumb look-a-like is almost “I’m not even mad, that’s amazing” level.

Thanks Fuchen for the video!

Somehow my iPhone was unlocked and not unlocked at the same time when I tapped on a iMessage notification from Philipp recently. No idea how that happened, but it seems like it should not happen. Imagine if Bob was able to tell Alice about that juicy Finder screenshot in our conversation that is now visible even thought my face was not recognized.

The right screenshot shows all the other notifications I had when it happened. I’m 100% certain that this is all there was, so I couldn’t have accidentally tapped something else (e.g. a banking app or anything that might trigger another FaceID scan after unlocking the phone itself).