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Tried enabling iMessage Contact Key Verification and got this extremely helpful error. For clarity, that is a list of all my Apple devices with iMessage.
I tried initiating the process on all three devices and always get the same error, so I don’t know what “Apple ID Settings” I’m supposed to update. I’ve updated the second Macbook to 14.2.1 by now and retried – no dice. Based on the requirements listed on the linked page, I don’t see why it doesn’t work, so specifying which device is causing an issue and why/what exactly would be helpful.

Under “If iMessage Contact Key Verification isn’t working” there’s a link to another support page, but it’s only about problems after already enabling it.

Hey EA, here’s a free password you can add to your unit test suite for the login module: 8K-6gURd6+%uL37HjVA2Bkj&

Works fine in the app, does not work on the website. Always a pleasure when you’re forced to change an actually working password due to buggy software. Somewhat mind-blowing that this happens so often that I’m used to being annoyed by it.

Finally had time to upgrade my personal Mac to Sonoma. Glad to see that iMessage still is a rock-solid steward of Mac-assed native macOS apps. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for a flagship application like this to feel like it was made with Electron year after year after year.

Fun fact: This incorrect positioning of the right border can also happen in the other direction!

Similarly to yesterday’s post, I have also been getting this prompt three times by now: Once right after the iOS 17 upgrade, once more after the 17.0.3 update and again today after going to 17.1 – where’s the “Don’t ask again” option?

It’s been a while since my last Apple Music rant. After the recent iOS 17 update the Music.app greeted me with the splash screen on the left side of the above compilation – as I mentioned time and time again, Apple Music could not be disabled any harder on any of my devices or my account.1 This splash screen has zero benefit or relevance to me.

Even more ridiculous are the constant and increasingly desperate-feeling attempts at trying to suck me into using Apple Music. To give some context for the two other screenshots from the compilation: The first time I got the ad this time was about an hour after the upgrade finished. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten and ignored the ad, it definitely popped up during iOS 16 as well. What is “special” about an offer that you try to get me to please take you up on after every iOS update? The third screenshot above happened after upgrading from 17 to 17.0.3 a few weeks later – is it a bug to be shown more than once per major upgrade cycle now, or just Apple getting more obnoxious? Hard to tell these days.

The most important context however: I own a single HomePod, and I bought it in 2018. Five years ago. How is that still eligible for a “special offer”? I’d have more respect if they simply said “We’d really like for you to fall into our services trap and think that this free initial fix might do the trick” than for this. It’s dishonorable and pathetic.


  1. Okay, maybe one could disable it even harder via Apple Configurator. I might look into that, but I shouldn’t have to pretend being a company managing a device fleet just to disable the services upselling. ↩︎

Can’t even pay the services revenue tribute without running into bugs, amazing. The solution to this You have not completed the entire form. error is to log into appleid.apple.com and perform the action there instead, obviously – entering the exact same information1. D’uh, silly me! But I don’t want to be too harsh, it’s not like Apple had at least six years to improve this.


  1. No worries, not a single digit in that screenshot is my actual CC information. Pixelmator magic! ↩︎

This is absolutely bonkers. Because the ML stuff used for “Look Up” and “Copy Subject” is taking a while, the menu item positions are changing around (multiple times!) under your mouse cursor. I’m not sure if there’s a simpler and more straight-forward rule in all of UX design than to never do that. I had to stop using Safari because of how often this would make me click the wrong thing.

(To the surpise of absolutely no one: The movie sucked.)

I guess I should be glad that at least there’s some information available about status, but… it doesn’t make sense. My internet was working fine at the time, and this wasn’t directly after waking the device from sleep or anything similar. This was after me already spending 15 minutes trying anything I could think of to get this damn thing to download the file I had uploaded from my iPhone (on the very same WiFi, mind you) an hour earlier. I waited another hour longer before rebooting, which did the trick.

This came in a while ago1 but with the absolute shit show going on right now on Reddit, it fits very well. RIP Apollo.

“A 🌈 rainbow unicorn 🦄” wrote:

Anyway, this is about Reddit. Steps to reproduce:

  1. Submit a comment on a post.
  2. Observe that Reddit is like “OMG, 1 new comment”.
  3. Observe that it’s the comment that you just posted.

Every. Single. Time. No, Reddit. I AM THE ONE THAT JUST WROTE THAT. JUST NOW. You were there, you helped me do it. I was authenticated. WTF is wrong with you?


  1. Apologies to anyone writing in – we sometimes suck at getting back to you in time or at all. Life happens a lot, but we really do appreciate your messages! ↩︎