AnonC

> They need to fire Craig Federighi first, but of course that is Tim Cook's job, and he showed poor judgment in firing spiky but effective Scott Forstall to keep that hack Jony Ive. Ive is the one who appointed Alan Dye, an advertising designer with no clue about UX and too arrogant to listen to those who did, leading to iOS 7 and now Liquid Ass.

These have been exactly my thoughts for years. Craig Federighi does not have any taste or interest in software quality. And Jony Ive (after Steve Jobs) has been a disaster for UI/UX and industrial hardware design. Tim Cook has been an extraordinary bean counter and hasn’t been hiring useful people (from users’ perspective) under him.

Craig Federighi needs to go when Tim Cook also moves out of his current role this year. Maybe, maybe, there are some old school folks at Apple who can take over and do things better.

I’ve seen before that this is not followed in certain cases, such as the entire development team being in a specific country where some or many team members don’t know English (well enough). As an anecdote, I’ve seen a team in a large multinational company (US origin) in Spain that used function names, variable names, database table names (and column names), log message text and many other things in Spanish. English was only for the language keywords because that’s what the compiler would accept.

With the latest Google Gemini deal to be the backend for Apple’s AI, I wish Apple could also do a deal for search (even though Google seems to be struggling more as time passes). Apple’s search being broken in Settings on iOS, macOS and iPadOS seem intentional — it can’t search in a relatively small and fixed list of items! Is it any wonder that Mail search doesn’t work with external data?

The AirDrop and Hotspot issues described are spot on. The success rate for these is like 40% to 65% (the latter if you’re lucky). These features require doing a dance of airplane mode, disconnect from WiFi, go to Settings and fiddle with the toggles, etc. When it works, it’s like magic. At other times, it’s a big joke on “it just works”.

Text selection and the trials to just move the cursor quickly and accurately: it’s like Apple has no senior management that cares enough (looking at you, Craig Federighi), no QA (this is obvious truth to every user) and no money to spend on making things better (don’t let the stock prices fool you). FWIW, I know of slower and fiddly ways to move the cursor somewhat (press space, hold and move or place finger on the text, hold and move).

All these issues persist for years or decades because senior management does not care. I can’t think of any other rational explanation.

> I loved Unity on desktop, and I know many others too.

I loved Unity in the desktop too (I had installed Ubuntu on an old Mac mini). I was disappointed when it was killed and then I switched to XFCE.

I think I get what you’re hinting at. But is there a more expensive option that’s free (as in freedom) and provides an experience that the GP referred to?

> while Outlook supports starting five minutes late

This contrast is an incorrect assumption. Outlook does allow starting meetings late as well as ending meetings early, with somewhat arbitrary durations. [1] I have definitely seen these options in Outlook settings (on web, since I hate Outlook).

However, I haven’t used it because the teams one works with need to be alerted and reminded of it before it sticks in their minds (if nobody else is using such settings).

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/end-meetings-earl...

There was a rebuttal to a recent news or rumor that emails in Gmail are being used for training. Google claimed that it’s not doing that. But these things can change any moment with enough marketing and subterfuge.

Light travels at about 0.69c in fiber optic cables (c being the speed of light in vacuum, which, as you stated, is about 300,000 km/s).

I agree. Apart from having to use npm (and its package repository being susceptible to security issues), I’d prefer something a lot simpler. Could’ve been a Rust program or a Go program (a single executable) that could be built locally or installed (using several different methods and offering a choice).

Anecdotally, I’ve found Lightning to be a nice fit when plugged in (it’s got a nice “click”) and USB-C a bit flimsy and loose in comparison. YMMV.

Seems like you’d just need to set WhatsApp as the default calling app on iOS and make sure to install WhatsApp on the watch too. The ability to set another app as the default for calls has been around since early this year. Doesn’t this work?

> It's interesting that most people on Windows PCs switch to Chrome when Edge is the default

This is primarily because most people on Windows use Gmail and other Google services, and any time you visit a Google web property from a non-Chrome browser, there’s a prominent “Install Chrome” button that’s placed on those. Without Google’s web properties pushing Chrome even to this day, Chrome may not continue to be as big.

> If they clutter the browser with AI which inherently requires data processing, often in the cloud

Where are you getting the “often in the cloud” from? So far Firefox has some local models for certain features. Using a specific cloud based AI is a conscious decision by the user within the sidebar.

> This really feels like the beginning of the end for Mozilla, sadly.

This has been said numerous times over the decades anytime Mozilla has done something. Thankfully (at least for me), it hasn’t come true so far.

Technically, a browser is a “user agent”, and it could be argued that some AI features (with privacy) can help in being a better user agent.

As I mentioned in a comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46297617 ), Firefox does not rely only on sponsors. There are a few ways to pay money that goes directly towards Firefox.

That link is for Mozilla Foundation, which is a non-profit and donations to it do not go to the development of Firefox. Mozilla Corporation, the for-profit entity, owns and manages Firefox. The way to support Firefox monetarily is by buying Mozilla VPN where available (this is Mullvad in the backend) and buying some Firefox merchandise (like stickers, t-shirts, etc.). I think an MDN Plus subscription also helps.

GP here. I agree. I should’ve stated that I don’t like losing chat history and have seen that as a problem with Signal.

I have edited my previous comment to reflect that I don’t like losing chat history.

> I have lost chat histories more times than I can remember, and I have to be extra diligent about this these days.

As per Signal’s diehard proponents, losing chat history is a feature, not a bug (I’m not being facetious when saying this, and you can see comments of this kind in Signal related threads here).

Edited to add: I don’t agree with that premise and have long disliked losing chat history.

The statement that Cloudflare uses HTTP to connect to your website can be false depending on how you configure it. For years, I have had personal websites with Cloudflare as the CDN and with Let’s Encrypt providing certificates on the web server. All I do is choose Full (Strict) in the TLS settings on Cloudflare. So the connection between the end user to Cloudflare and from Cloudflare to my web server are on HTTPS. No deactivation of Cloudflare required on my end during renewal (my web host, like many others, has the certificate generation automated and getting a TLS certificate just a toggle on my admin dashboard).

Are you a new HN mod (with authority over the guidelines) and are asking for opinions from readers (that’d be new)? Or are you just another normal user and are loudly wondering about this so that mods get inputs (as opposed to writing a nice email to hn@ycombinator.com)?

I think just downvoting by committed users is enough. What matters is the content and how valuable it seems to readers. There is no need to do any gate keeping by the guidelines on this matter. That’s my opinion.

I wish Apple would split software and bring back Scott Forstall (soon after Tim Cook leaves) and give him a big chunk, like iOS and iPadOS. Craig Federighi needs to reduce the scope of his work and get competent people in to handle the software area.

Yes, it does NAT traversal. If you don’t trust Tailscale servers, you can host the open source equivalent, Headscale (headscale.net) and use the open source Tailscale clients.

> I would like to support Daring Fireball (a publication I read a lot) but the only way is to buy an ad slot for $11K which seems like a scam to both the viewer and the advertiser.

AFAIK, Daring Fireball never runs these tracking ad networks with tons of flashing and annoying ads. It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.

To support Daring Fireball, you can use the links to the weekly sponsor if that product is of interest to you. Once or twice in a year or so, there may be posts with Amazon affiliate links (with full disclosure), which you can use if you want. Other than that, you can share the posts and have more people read it. That in turn could potentially help with the above mentioned aspects.

Not GP. My guess is that they’re self hosting this at home (not on a server that’s on the internet), and Tailscale easily and securely allows them to access this when they’re elsewhere.

I actually have a simple shortcut created just to turn off Bluetooth entirely (helps speed up watchOS updates by forcing it to download directly over WiFi). I also have shortcuts to turn off WiFi completely and to turn off both WiFi and cellular data without putting it in airplane mode.

Edit: The only way to even see this page without the popup is to try to print it.

Previously posted comment: I’m not sure if this is due to any content blocker on my phone (though I tried disabling Safari’s content blockers too) or if it’s not mobile optimized, but I can’t seem to get rid of the “Hello! If you print this page…” popup. I tapped elsewhere, tapped on the top right of the popup (even though there isn’t any close button), nothing helped.

Am I supposed to be doing something else to see and print it?

I wish that could happen, but sadly Tim Cook’s ego wouldn’t allow that and I don’t think Craig Federighi would want his kingdom to be torn apart (I presume he had a big role in getting John Giannandrea to be pushed out of Siri and retire).

Scott Forstall was fired for a lot less compared to the mess that Apple’s software is now.

> It started with the macOS that brought the iOS settings panel. We went from a logical structure of easily findable stuff to a complete mess.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly the decline started. But one key event before the Settings app was the Catalyst apps that were straight out and dismal ports from their iOS versions. Till date, none of those work well and cannot be navigated properly using the keyboard. Reminders, Messages, Notes and more.

Craig Federighi seems to be increasingly taking on so much authority without having a trusted set of people under him and his leadership (or lack of it) has resulted in neglecting software across device platforms. Some of the Apple apps on tvOS with paid subscriptions are worse, because the bugs in them don’t get any attention at all.

> Are you primary using electron-based apps, or true native macOS apps? Maybe I’m lucky but I run macOS daily without any problems.

There’s an in-between abomination — Catalyst based apps from/by Apple (quickly migrated from iOS to macOS). Reminders, Notes and others are downright unnavigable and unusable with a keyboard and are so, so terrible in their UX. It’s a shame that Apple hasn’t spent any effort in fixing those and making them true native macOS apps.

For the last several years, there has been nobody at Apple who has good taste and a deep and committed interest in UX.