As a Certified Apple Whore, I was pretty much obligated to purchase the new version of Apple TV. Could not be helped, really. Is it worth the money for the upgrade? Let's find out...

The original Apple TV was a hot mess of a product. Dubbed "iTV" it had a hard drive for local storage, but I don't know that it ever used it because the unit required you to stream video from a computer. Eventually it was upgraded with additional functionality (namely, you could buy media from the iTunes Store) but it was such a klutzy product that I never really used it.

Then came the second generation. This Apple TV was a fraction of the size of iTV, jet-black in color, and much more capable. With no local hard drive, your only option was to stream content, which is pretty much what it was meant to do all along. This implementation was a huge improvement, but still pretty crappy. The menu GUI is awful. It always seemed under-powered, and dropouts or full-on crashes were common. Apple upgraded bits and pieces for the third generation model which, I'm guessing, helped with more reliable streaming... but I never bothered because it was pretty much the same damn thing.

And here we are at Generation Four...

The new unit looks much the same as the previous version, but is noticeably taller. Everything else about it, however, is a very different animal.

First of all, I had the crap shocked out of me when I plugged in the new unit to my television and had the television automatically turn on and change the input to Apple TV. This is thanks to HDMI-CEC which is an extension to the HDMI cable standard that allows you to control HDMI devices in a smarter way.

An Example:

If you have a television, a cable box, and a stereo receiver, you end up juggling three remote controls just to watch the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory. Yes, many remotes now-a-days can be programmed to control multiple devices, but that'e exactly how it happens... you are controlling three different devices separately. With HDMI-CEC, however, you don't. Assuming all your components are CEC capable, they talk to each other and control each other. Turn the volume up on your TV and it will pass the info to your stereo receiver. Change channels on your TV and it will pass the info to your cable box. And so on. The system isn't without its hiccups, but it's a fantastic technology in theory (and mostly in practice).

The upshot of all this? Your CEC-capable TV automatically switches inputs when you turn on your Apple TV and you can control television volume with the Apple TV remote. Nice.

Setting up Apple TV couldn't be easier if you have a modern iOS device. You just wave your iPhone (or whatever) over your Apple TV when it asks and your Apple ID and iTunes account info is transferred automatically over Bluetooth. Pretty spiffy, right?

Right.

Unless your WiFi router is set up to restrict access via specific MAC addresses like mine. Usually, this is an easy fix... you just look at a sticker on the peripheral you want to grant access to your wireless network, type it into your router's "allowed" table, and you're golden. Except Apple doesn't put this information on their precious Apple TV. Which would be fine because you can get the MAC address from the Apple TV's system menu. EXCEPT YOU CAN'T ACCESS THIS MENU UNTIL THE APPLE TV IS SET UP. BUT YOU CAN'T SET UP THE APPLE TV UNTIL YOU HAVE INTERNET ACCESS! This is categorically stupid. I had to disable access control on my router to set up Apple TV so I could get the MAC address to set up access control. HELPFUL HINT TO APPLE: put the fucking MAC address on the damn Apple TV next time... like you used to do.

It's during this setup that you get exposed to Apple's new remote control. It's plastic and metal, not awesome solid aluminum tooling like previous generations, but it has a nifty "swipe pad" at the top. This allows you to swipe to select menu items and, more importantly, swipe to enter keyboard data like user id and password. While definitely a better option than having to click click click to pick letters off an on-screen keyboard, it's not perfect. I had no problem swiping left to right, for example, but rarely am I able to swipe up and down and get it to register the first time. Annoying. But only half as annoying as the fact that I couldn't get the iPhone Apple Remote App to work with the latest Apple TV.

Okay... so you've set up your Apple TV. Now what? Well, the first thing you'll notice is that Apple has a minimal number of "stations" showing... whereas the previous generation had a shitload of them... whether you wanted them or not. Don't use Hulu? TOUGH SHIT! HERE IT IS! But the latest Apple TV nicely avoids the unnecessary clutter by turning all the "stations" into apps. Want to look at YouTube videos? Grab the app. Want to view NetFlix content? Grab the app. But that's not all... apps are for more than just "stations"... you can download full-blown actual apps, like games, and run them right on your television. This is a pretty powerful upgrade, and I wonder how many people will drop gaming consoles if the content for Apple TV really takes off.

And speaking of upgrades... Heeeeere's Siri!

Using voice commands with Apple TV is pretty great. Click the "listen" button and tell the thing what you want. "Show me John Goodman movies" works exactly as expected. Better than expected, actually, because Siri searches not just the iTunes Store, but your apps as well! And here's where Apple TV really shines... it gives precedence to cheaper options first. If the movie you want to watch is available on your Netflix subscription AND on the iTunes Store... the Netflix option is first up because you've already paid for it. That's a pretty bold move for Apple, since most companies would put their own product ahead of everybody else.

Siri is most welcome to Apple TV because the interface, while less cluttered, is still pretty shitty to navigate... even with Apple's new swipe remote. The problem is that there's no API for Siri, so most apps can't use that feature. YouTube, for example, would benefit greatly from Siri interaction... except it can't. Not yet anyway. Another problem with Siri is that Apple TV Siri is limited to only Apple TV functionality. Unlike iPhone Siri, which can answer questions or do internet searches, for example. HomeKit functionality, surprise surprise, is missing.

AirPlay is, not surprisingly, fully supported. which means you can stream content from your iPhone or computer (assuming they have that capability).

All Apple TVs comes with a spacious 2 GB of memory, but there are two models when it comes to the amount of storage (via flash memory)... 32GB or 64GB. I have no plans for downloading a ton of apps, so 32GB was the choice for me.

When it comes to hardware features, the fourth generation Apple TV comes up short compared to older versions. First of all, it's HDMI only... including for sound, because Apple TV no longer has an optical audio out jack. In addition, the only service port is the USB-C port. Luckily, a USB-C to USB cable is included in case you don't have one. There's an ethernet jack, which is nice if your WiFi isn't reliable, but kind of a waste otherwise.

Performance is much improved in the latest iteration of the product thanks to the Apple A8 chip upgrade. Menus are smoother (and prettier)... streaming feels more reliable... and response time is better.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with my new Apple TV. Well worth the price of admission... especially if you have a lot of content purchased from the iTunes Store. I wish that it was smarter about voice interaction though. Having to press the button on the remote to activate Siri seems old-fashioned when you've got devices like Amazon's Alexa that's always listening. Furthermore, Siri should be a hell of a lot smarter. Right now it's a drastically dumb-downed version from what I'm used to on my iPhone, which makes no sense. I mean, come on... at least give Siri access to my music library! Also lacking in the "no sense" department? No support for 4K video(!) and no iPhone remote support.

Maybe next time.

Which I'm guessing will be 2017. A little late to the party.

Since the beginning of the home computer revolution, I have used thousands of programs (apps, for the kids out there). Some have been good, some have been bad, some have been amazing. But, in all that time, only one of them can be crowned "Worst Software of All Time."

And it's Apple's iTunes.

No joke... iTunes is the single biggest pile of shit I have ever encountered.

It started as a music player called SoundJam back in 1998, and I was a huge fan. When it came to playing your digital music collection, it was easily the best solution out there. Apple knew this too, which is why they bought out the program and self-branded it iTunes to fit with the whole "i-esthetic" they had going on at the time. And, for a while there, all was good. Apple changed a few things and made it look a prettier, but it was still the SoundJam I enjoyed.

But then everything changed. No longer merely a music player and cataloger, iTunes quickly became Apple's "hub" for digital media thanks to the release of the iPod. It wasn't too bad at first... sometimes I had a hell of a time syncing my music but, for the most part it worked well. It was also around that time we got handy additional features, like "Smart Playlists," that were a welcome additions to the program.

The honeymoon wouldn't last.

As more and more "features" (aka "crap") were added to iTunes, it grew into a massive pile of bloatware that was complicated, confusing, and bug-ridden. iTunes wasn't exclusively for playing music any more, it was a storefront for the iTunes Music Store. Movies and TV shows were added. And ringtones. And podcasts. And apps. And internet radio. And books. Very quickly iTunes was suffering an identity crisis, and Apple struggled (and failed badly) to come up with a user interface that made sense across all the shit it was supposed to be managing.

Then, just when you thought it couldn't possibly get worse, Apple Music was crammed into the mix.

And suddenly I was longing for the days that iTunes was merely complicated, confusing, and bug-ridden. Apple's streaming music solution, which I could give a fuck about, further pushed iTunes into utter ruin. The program is so fucked up now that you don't use it... you tolerate it. And even that's too much to ask sometimes.

Take for instance video streaming.

I have been ranting for years about how fucking stupid it is that Apple forces you to download your movie and television purchases so you can watch them. Never mind that every other digital content provider on earth allows streaming video, Apple did not unless you wanted to watch on an AppleTV. But, surprise surprise, video streaming was added along with Apple Music. No more being forced to clutter valuable hard drive space with a download when you want to watch The Matrix for the hundredth time... now you just start playing.

Except when you can't. Which is often.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to watch a movie only to have it stutter, drop out, go out of sync, or even crash. This evening I wanted to watch Edge of Tomorrow and found it impossible. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Stutter. Stutter. Stutter. At first I wanted to blame my internet connection. But streaming from Netflix was fine. Streaming from Amazon was fine. Streaming from YouTube was fine. It's just Apple's piece of shit service that doesn't fucking work. So I have to wait 20 minutes for the movie to download before I can watch it. Used to be you could watch a movie while it's downloading, but the stuttering was worse than when I tried streaming. It's absolute bullshit that Apple has BILLIONS of dollars at their disposal and can't get this shit figured out when literally everybody else has.

And what about music?

Apple added a subscription service called iTunes Match back in 2011 which allows you to put your music in "the cloud" so it's accessible anywhere. And not just your music purchased from Apple... all your music, no matter where it came from. And it was too good to be true. All that music I ripped from my CDs at a low bitrate because I didn't want it taking up hard disk space? Well, if Apple sells it, they automatically match it and upgrade the file to the best quality they have available. And since it's in the cloud, it's taking up -zero- megabytes on your drive! Brilliant!

Except when it isn't. Which is often.

The biggest problem is not really Apple's fault. If a music publisher all of a sudden decides to withdraw their music from iTunes, you lose it. This goes for every last song you purchase from Apple. Unless you've downloaded a backup it's gone. And since this scenario is in the licensing agreement you sign off on, you have no recourse. So... always have a backup of your music. This is critical.

While the concept of iTunes Match is good, it's not utopia. Sometimes music you own won't match for some reason... even though Apple sells the song. Other times Apple will match the wrong tracks. I bought The Beatles collection in mono... the way it was meant to be heard. Apple matched everything to the stereo version. And of course there's no way to fix this in the system. Annoying, but not a deal breaker.

Other problems arise when the iTunes service is down. Or Apple's streaming servers are overloaded and streaming badly. Unless you have local copies of your music (defeating the whole purpose of the cloud), all your music is inaccessible. That should be a deal breaker.

And it gets worse. iTunes is such a massive pile of crap that sometimes you can't access your music even when Apple's streaming service is working flawlessly. I have 30 "albums" by Depeche Mode. When viewing my library as "Songs," everything not purchase through iTunes disappears (even if you have "SHOW ALL MY MUSIC" checked). Change to "Artists" view and suddenly they're back. The program is so hideously complex that little problems like this are everywhere.

Topped off by the fact that iTunes is FOREVER asking you to type in your fucking password. Most of the time for no damn reason.

It's to the point now where I regret having purchased any of my digital content from Apple. Especially movies and TV shows. Far better to have purchased my digital content from a company that actually gives a flying fuck about providing a workable solution to their customers.

And Apple is absolutely not that company.

Probably isn't going to be any time soon.

And so... I've been using Mac OS X "El Capitan" Public Beta for a full day now.

Not terribly impressed. Some things I've observed in the past 16 hours...

• First the crap news. Apple STILL hasn't given users an option to have the menu bar persist in full-screen apps. And I just don't get it. I would love to be able to work in full-screen. But I need the information in my menu bar. Like the clock, for instance. Like the battery level, for instance. Like my VPN status, for instance. Like my calendar, for instance. — But here's the weird thing. Apple has added a new feature which does exactly the opposite. You now have the option for hiding the menu bar when not in full-screen! WHAT THE FUCK?!?? WHY?!??
• Visually, there's very little difference between Yosemite and El Capitan. The Spinning Beach Ball of Death is no longer gum-drop looking, but instead flattened out... and the system font has been changed a bit (for the better)... but that's about all I can see.
• One of the major things Apple is touting for El Capitan is an overall speed increase. App switching twice as fast... Two times faster display of first message in Mail... Four times faster PDF display... etc. etc. I don't really notice such drastic increases, but I'll take Apple at their word. Unfortunately, this speed bump seems to be coming at a price. The fan on my MacBook Pro keeps coming on. In Yosemite, it rarely did. I don't know if this is a direct result of El Capitan... or perhaps one of my background apps (like anti-virus or DropBox or whatever) not being optimized for El Capitan. Hoping eventually it will get sorted out, because the fan noise is annoying.
• I have found two incompatible apps so far. Fantastical 2 (download the beta for El Capitan), and SpanSieve (join the beta program to get a compatible version).
• I am a Spaces super-user. If I ever had to go back to a Mac without virtual desktops, I'd go insane. There has been some changes to both "Spaces" and it's parent app "Mission Control"... that I guess are good moves. I don't like that you no longer see tiny representations of your Spaces any more until you mouse over them... just text saying "Desktop 1," "Desktop 2," etc. but it's not a deal breaker. Just makes it more difficult to remember where you put things.
• Speaking of Spaces, Apple has now set "Dashboard" (their widget screen) OFF by default. I can only guess this means Dashboard is not long for this world, which fucking sucks. I set up Dashboard in my first Spaces slot and use it constantly.
• Apple has added the option to do split-screen apps, but it's implementation is total shit. Press and hold on the green "stoplight" control in the menu bar and you can drop the app window on the left or right side of your display. In the case of Mail, the window just gets resized. In the case of Safari, the window is scaled. No, I have no idea why there's a difference. But here's where Apple shits the bed... the apps appear to be considered "full screen" when in their split-screen region. Since the menu bar is now both split AND hidden, things get messy very quickly. Apple apps are consistently screwed up this way, but with NON-Apple apps, it's so much worse. Go split-screen with Acrobat Pro and you lose the menu bar entirely! And the disasters don't stop there. Sometimes you can't get out of split-screen. Sometimes you go from split-screen to full-screen for no reason. Sometimes windows go inactive when in split-screen. And as if ALL THAT wasn't enough... you can't use split-screen across Spaces! The two windows you want to go split-screen have to be in the same Space! Insanity. The hits go on and on. I guess this might be a nice feature once the bugs are ironed out, but I'll probably stick with Moom for Window management.
• Mail has a bunch of improvements... like tabs for composing multiple emails and gestures taken from iOS, which is nice. Being able to two-finger swipe on an email to rapidly trash a bunch of spam is sweet. But the one thing I really wanted for Mail didn't happen. A previous version of mail took away the user's ability to pick which SMTP server to use to send your message on the fly. This was a critical feature for me when traveling, and I'm pretty desperate to have it back. Nope. I understand wanting to simplify mail for people who don't need things like this... but come on. Give the people who need it the option to turn it on. Removing features like this is a big fuck-you from the "We Know What's Best for You" mentality at Apple. WARNING: For reasons unknown, I lost all my Mail account passwords after installing El Capitan. Luckily, I was able to get them out of Keychain on my office Mac since everything is synced (who remembers passwords anymore?) or else I'd be boned and have to change everything.
• Apple's system-wide search tool, Spotlight, has always been a pile of shit. In trying to make things simple, Apple just made it harder to use, so I pretty much never use it. With El Capitan, Apple has added a bunch of new capabilities and features to Spotlight... use natural language for requests... get limited info from the internet like weather and sports scores... that kind of stuff. If possible, I hate spotlight even more now. It's just a big fucking mess and a huge distraction. Thank heavens for third-party solutions that actually do search right (EasyFind, Alfred, Tembo, HoudahSpot, etc.).

A lot of things I'd liked fixed/changed, to be sure. But the biggest is my laptop fan going off and on all day long. It just sucks to have to listen to it all the time when I rarely had to with previous OS X versions. If this is the cost for speed bumps I barely notice, then no thanks. Hopefully Apple is on the case.

UPDATE: After futzing around with the CPU monitor, I think that it's Mail that's the culprit. Even when running in the background, it's pegged at 138%+ CPU usage. Quitting Mail lets my laptop run much, much cooler. Guess I might be needing to find a new app for email.

Another September, another Apple Event.

This time there were few surprises, as Apple rumor sites have had the skinny on what's coming for months. Actually, with the exception of the Apple Pencil, I don't think there were any surprises. But we'll get to that in a bit.

Apple Watch

• Until they make it thinner, I just don't give a crap. All the cool new features in the world don't mean a thing unless I actually want to wear it. Holy crap. You're Apple. Figure out a way of moving the battery to the strap or something.

iPhone 6S

• I covet the new 12MP camera. That also shoots 4K video. Which is amazing (assuming you've got the memory for it).
• DEEP. TRENCH. ISOLATION.
• At first I thought that Live Photos was gimmicky... until I looked at the gallery. Photos that come to life like this are pretty cool. Kinda like Vines, I guess. Facebook support is great... hopefully Vine will be supported too.
• 3D Touch (formerly Force Touch?) with Taptic Engine response and "Peek & Pop" looks wonderfully intuitive and useful. If developers start integrating it in their apps like the video showed, this alone might be worth the cost of an upgrade.
• Faster-Better-Stronger Touch ID is a welcome upgrade.
• The new "iPhone Upgrade Program" from Apple is interesting. A new iPhone every year so you've always got the latest. Unlocked for any carrier. AppleCare+ included. $36.58 a month for a 64GB 6S. That's $438.96 a year, which saves you around $200 from the cost of buying a new iPhone outright each year... $300 if you include a new AppleCare+ contract. Still, I don't know if this is something I'm willing to get into unless my mobile carrier will give me a discount on service since I won't be subsidizing a phone with them. I'm guessing that's not going to happen, and so... my 2-year contract with AT&T will undoubtedly be renewed. When is Apple going to create their own mobile network?
• UPDATE: Shit. No optical image stabilization on the 6S. You still have to go with the "plus" model to get it, which sucks, because I still find the "non-plus" models to be too big.

Apple TV

• Still no HomeKit. Holy shit is Apple fucking up on this.
• The new model is not the breakthrough Apple seems to think it is. Others (including Google) had a lot of these new features ages ago.
• Given how pathetic Apple's menu system is and how hard it is to do anything with the crappy Apple TV interface, slapping Siri on top of everything is appreciated... but doesn't do jack to solve the real problem.
• The new swipe remote is great. If there is one area Apple excels, it's boiling down complicated remotes to something elegant and simple. Nice.
• Siri's "What did they say?" feature which automatically jumps back 15 seconds AND temporarily turns on closed captioning is genius. The ability to access Siri info while watching AppleTV without interrupting what your watching is also very nice.
• The Apps feature, assuming they get some good games, could really put a dent in Wii, Playstation, and Xbox sales. Apple TV certainly has the power to play good games.
• Where my disappointment comes in is that I honestly thought Apple would be coming out with their own network content offerings, thus allowing everybody to build a cable package of only the channels they want to pay for. I am so sick and fucking tired of paying for an outrageously expensive cable package filled with tons of shit I don't want, but have to pay for. Oh well. It's coming one of these days. It pretty much has to, even if Apple isn't the one to do it.
• Given how much money I've got invested in iTunes Store media AND the fact that my Apple TV is really old... I'll probably go ahead and spend the $149 come late October (since I won't be playing games (I have consoles for that), the $199 version would be overkill). Blergh.

iPad Pro

Okay. I'm just going to come right out and say it... I want one of these things so very, very bad.

Surprise!

I've been jonesing for a graphics tablet with display for the longest time. Problem is they are incredibly expensive, and the stylus lag coupled with the thick glass above the display on more affordable models is a total boner-killer for me. But here comes Apple with a new "Apple Pencil" that apparently eliminates lag and is coupled with Apple's laminated display which minimizes the amount of glass between you and what you're drawing...

And, oh yeah... it's still an iPad, so it can do everything an iPad can already do on top of being a kick-ass graphics tablet display. Giving you a much bigger bang for your buck than purchasing a graphics tablet display alone.

And about that price...

$799 for a 32GB model (pretty useless if you're doing serious work)
$949 for a 128GB model (more realistic, but I was hoping for at least 256GB)

Add a $99 Apple Pencil and you're over $1000 for the model you want. Which hurts. But that's roughly what a Wacom Cintiq 13" HD Touch runs, and it can only do one thing (though, admittedly, it does it very well). So, assuming iPad Pro and Apple Pencil end up being as good as they look, APPLE! TAKE MY MONEY!

Guess we'll find out come November.

All things considered, a worthy Apple Event.

My favorite part of the show was closing it out with a great live performance by OneRepublic. My second-favorite was the news that Apple now has an Android app for transitioning from an Android phone to an iPhone. Classic!

   
As a Certified Apple Whore, I never feel more alive than when Apple releases something new that I want.

The file restore from my cloud backup after my catastrophic drive failure is taking much, much long than I had anticipated... or hoped. I started the restore July 25th and they're telling me they're not even half-way done collecting the files.

Needless to say, this makes everything I do take far longer than it should.

Partly because I haven't yet received the afore-mentioned backup yet and have to request files to be downloaded from the cloud multiple times for each project I'm working on.

But mostly because those older file on local backup I DO have available are trapped on Apple's "Time Machine" technology.

I used to really love Apple's approach to backup but, now that I am forced to use it for something other than an occasional "oops" moment, it's just so horribly bad. The goofy "space vortex" interface is absolute shit for serious recovery. I finally abandoned it and started restoring directly from the Time Machine file bundle, but this has its problems as well. So many times I get an "ALIAS BROKEN" error and can't even get at the original file. Even worse, every time I get the error, the Finder snaps my search window closed... so instead of choosing an alternative file to restore, I have to start my search all over from the beginning. Like I said... bad.

So... once I get up and running again, Time Machine will be completely abandoned in favor of a more traiditional technology that actually... well, you know... works.

Well, gee, where do I start.

In summary: Apple Music is a poorly-executed, bug-ridden, embarrassing pile of crap that is sadly typical of the utter shit that permeates anything to do with iTunes. If you've already got Spotify, there is nothing to see here. I'd argue that Apple's execution of a streaming music service is actually worse than Spotify in just about every sense. After the three-month free trial is over, I'll be dumping Apple Music like the steaming turd it is.

Shall we begin?

1. Apple Music "iCloud Music Library" corrupts your iTunes data. Ever since activating Apple Music, everything has been completely fucked for me. Clicking on one song plays another. Album art is a jumble. Songs are missing. There seems to be no end to the bugs that Apple Music is responsible for. Apple's "fix" for the problem seemed to have worked... but then I started having problems again (even though I turned iCloud Music Library off). It is entirely possible that I have lost some of the CD music rips I entrusted to iTunes Match, and I am very, very pissed about it.
2. Apple Music has made the iTunes UI even more stupid. iTunes has a user interface which is about as bad as it gets. And then along comes Apple Music to make things far worse. It took me forever to figure out how the fuck to even get to Apple Music, because it's under a tab titled "For You." What the bloody hell "For You" (suggestions for music you might like) has to do with a streaming service I have no idea. But any time you search Apple Music for a song, you pop back into "For You" again, so there it is. Why the fuck Apple calls it "Apple Music" but labels it "For You" is anybody's guess because it's just so damn idiotic.
3. Apple Music "For You" suggestions are shit. Seriously? Apple has access to every damn song I own, which means they know exactly what I like to listen to. But does their "suggestions" reflect that? Not in the least. It's filled with shit I wouldn't dream of listening to. I mean, Lady Gaga? Really? But here's the real problem... you can "love" a track, but you can't "hate" a track. If you can't "hate" a track, how in the hell is Apple Music ever going to learn what you don't want to hear?
4. Beats 1 Radio is worse than Clear Channel. I never understood how a "worldwide radio station" could manage to appeal to everyone. Turns out it can't. Either the music being played is the same Top 40 playlist trash you can get off a regular radio... or it's some esoteric crap I have zero interest in. After a day of listening, only rarely was I listening to something I actually enjoyed.
5. Apple Music Connect is just so lame. After Apple canceled their rather embarrassing social media music experiment "Ping," they seem to have brought it back with less features as "Apple Music Connect." Basically, it allows you to keep in touch with the artists you like. And those you don't like. Connect automatically subscribes you to any artist with an account that happens to be in your library whether you want them to or not. I have a song in my library by Avril LaVigne... don't ask me why... maybe it was free or something, because I don't care for Avril... but that was all it took to have Apple subscribe me to her feed. So now I'm stuck having to waste time UNFOLLOWing Avril and most of the other artist appearing in Connect. Or at least trying to. Clicking UNFOLLOW doesn't work most of the time. Lame.
6. Apple Music is missing some important music. Want to listen to some Prince? I don't blame you. So go start up some Prince on Apple Music! I'll wait...
7. Apple Music makes everything more difficult. Seriously unintuitive. Things that are effortless on other services are confusing, complex, and time-consuming with Apple Music. I was so confused at one point that I was Googling for help. That's when I ran across this gem. Just pathetic. Did anybody at Apple actually test this shit?
8. No Sonos support. Blergh.
9. All the iTunes bugs are still there. Having to sign in to iCloud over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again? Yep. And what about movies that want to download no matter how many times you delete them? Yep. And being forced to download a movie to watch it instead of just streaming it? Yep. ITunes Store still being brain-dead about movies you've already purchased? Yep. Purchased movies not showing up in your "My Movies" tab? Yep. iTunes Match titles not being available every time you start up the app until you logout then log back in then turn Match back on? Yep. Random crashes? Yep. None... NOT ONE of the many, many bugs that plague this pile of shit have been addressed with the latest "Apple Music" edition. Pathitic.
10. The new icon is butt-ugly. Well, it is.

I have no clue as to what's happening at Apple these days. More and more they just can't seem to get their shit together. Apple Music is just one more failure in a series of failures, and it's getting tiring.

I shouldn't have to work so hard to be an Apple fan.

The biggest drawback of watching Apple's latest wankfest of all the "insanely great" technologies they've got coming down the pipe is me sitting in front of the computer screaming "WHY DON'T YOU FUCKING FIX THE SHIT THAT'S BROKEN BEFORE ADDING MORE PROBLEMS FOR YOUR USERS?"

Because more and more, Apple's myriad of bugs and busted shit in OS X is giving me Microsoft Windows flashbacks. What's worse is that Apple seems to have little interest in fixing stuff. No response in the forums. No fixes in the updates. No acknowledgement of anything wrong, despite many, many users reporting the same problems.

Take for instance iTunes.

The program is utter crap. It has been for years. I could go on for ages about how stupid it is that you can't stream movies you buy, but are forced to download them. I could rage for days on how utterly insane it is that the iTunes Store doesn't let you know which movies you're already bought. Or how your movie purchases never show up in the "My Movies" tab unless you've downloaded all of them. It's just such a steaming load of bullshit. Yet it's been going on for years. And Apple doesn't care. And the way you can tell they don't care is that they never fix this moronic crap. But what's worse than helpful features being omitted are the legions of bugs that make using iTunes such a horrendous experience.

iTunes Match is FOREVER fucking up. Every damn time I fire up iTunes expecting to be able to play the music I purchased "in the cloud," iTunes just sits there spinning it's wheels. It doesn't matter which computer I'm on. It doesn't matter if I disabled all virus protection. It doesn't matter if I clear caches. It doesn't matter if I try all the idiotic work-arounds people come up with. It doesn't even matter where I'm at around the world. Sometimes, after 20 minutes or so, it will tell you there's a problem and tell you to logout and login again... which does work... but should I have to do that every fucking time I start iTunes? It's become almost automatic for me now, which is fucking bananas. Because, of course, if you logout you end up having to re-start Match which takes ages to get going again.

And I can't tell you how many times a day I have problems with iCloud. I'm consistently and constantly seeing this on my screen...

This is so stupid on so many levels. First of all, my Macs are all password protected. If I've got them password protected, nobody is accessing them but me... so why in the hell is iCloud logging me out? Even if I were to accept that this is a valid security concern, "periodically" to Apple means SEVERAL FUCKING TIMES A DAY. I have to login to iCloud to use iTunes. I have to login to iCloud to use iMessage. I have to login to iCloud to FaceTime. I have to login to iCloud to scratch my nuts. Once a month would be fine. But I am sick to fucking death of this CONSTANT need to have me login over and over and over and over AND OVER again. Shit... if I logout of iTunes to try and access my Match music, I'm forced to login to iCloud THREE GODDAMN TIMES before the nonsense stops. That alone causes me to go ballistic. Add in all the other times I have to deal with this shit and I'm in thermonuclear meltdown over Apple idiocy daily.

Who the fuck is in charge of fixing busted shit? ANYBODY?

But that's old news.

The latest boatload of crap coming out of Cupertino? This...

I click "Always Allow" of course.

But Apple must not know what the fuck "ALWAYS" means, because I keep getting this damn dialog box popping up all the time. Sometimes at random. Always when clearing my browser history. Does Apple give a shit? Of course not! NO response to those sick and tired of having to deal with whatever the fuck "PluginProcess" is. No patch to fix the problem. No acknowledgement a problem even exists, because if it goes unacknowledged, the problem isn't real to Apple! It's all in your imagination!

Apple used to have a motto of "It just works."

That hasn't been true in fucking ages.

Macintosh isn't superior to Windows any more. Sure it looks better and is more logical but, in the grand scheme of things, it's not better.

If you're not going to aspire to be better than your competition, just fucking close it down and concentrate on your iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch or Apple Music or whatever the fuck is your flavor of the moment. Anything less is just wasting everybody's damn time.

And so yesterday was Apple's Word Wide Developers Conference 2015 Keynote.

I was underwhelmed. Mostly because the One Thing I wanted to hear more about was barely touched upon, and what was covered lacked any kind of "wow factor" for me.

I guess what follows here could be consider "spoilers" if you haven't seen it yet, so click here to watch Apple's Keynote if that's important to you.

On with the show...

The Intro.
A video featuring former SNL funnyman Bill Hader playing WWDC's "director" David LeGary opened the event. It was surprisingly funny. Even if you don't care about anything Apple, it's worth watching the start of the keynote just to see the intro.

Tim Cook Welcome.
Mr. Cook was his usual enthusiastic, entertaining self as he welcomed everybody to The Most Important Developer Conference on Earth. His most entertaining bit was when he brought up the Great Baseball Ransom Note. Last week Cleveland Indians' Brandon Moss hit the 100th home run of his career. The ball ended up landing in the Indian's dugout, which meant it was time for Brandon's teammates to write up a ransom note listing their demands in exchange for the ball. Interestingly enough, everybody's demands ended up being Apple products... iPads, iPhones, MacBooks, Apple watches, and the like...

Tim Cook was amused enough by this to have Apple pick up the tab for the demands, meaning Brandon gets his ball at no charge. Pretty sweet!

Mac OS X El Capitan
Craig Federighi, who has the best hair in tech, started things off by introducing us to the next version of Mac OS X, El Capitan...

Definitely evolutionary instead of revolutionary, El Cap's new features are kind of middle of the road. The new "Split View" feature which allows you to automatically size and position windows in the Finder has been something I've been doing with Moom for ages. OS X Search with "Spotlight" is already a loser to me because it's cluttered with too much shit that gets in the way of me actually finding stuff on my Mac. Well, guess what El Cap does for Spotlight? ADD EVEN MORE SHIT TO GET IN THE WAY! Yay! Craig touted more full-screen app features, but didn't mention THE ONE FUCKING THING THAT FULL-SCREEN APPS NEED... a way of permanently turning on the menu bar so you have access to critical information such as BATTERY LIFE REMAINING and THE TIME OF DAY without having to unhide the menu bar first. Lame! There are some nice new features in mail... but all I care about is if Mail has been made more reliable. Because right now Mail is utter shit, and adding more features doesn't fix shit. Note has been improved, but all I care about is whether or not Notes will sync properly now, which it hasn't done in ages. Safari is getting pinned tabs now, which is nice... but I'd sacrifice this nifty feature for better compatibility in a heartbeat. Maps is getting tansit directions at long last. And, lastly, Apple announced that Metal, their iOS graphics technology which is hugely powerful and efficient is coming to OS X. Oh happy day.

iOS 9
Siri is getting more better smarter, which is nice. Apple's getting more serious about publishing with their News app, which has me interested in seeing if it can be applied to THRICE Fiction. The Notes app is getting more powerful, which seems a little pointless considering that third-party apps have this space fairly well filled. Maps is getting improvements (including public transportation planning in some cities), which should be a no-brainer, but Apple has been dragging their heels for some reason. Wallet is replacing Passbook to better reflect where Apple is going with the app... the centerpiece being Apple Pay, which is the greatest thing since sliced bread, so that makes me happy.And, lastly, the iPad is getting multitasking, which is pretty smart considering Windows Surface has been eating Apple's lunch on this since they launched. The best news of all, however, is that iOS9 will run on every iPhone and iPad that iOS8 did, so nobody is getting left behind this time around.

Apple Music
The biggest news of the day did not end up being what I thought it would be... Apple hung that on their new streaming music service... Apple Music. It really isn't much different than Spotify or any other service, except that it looks better and appears to navigate easier. Apple is trying to up the ante by rolling in some features from their now-deceased Ping service in Connect, which allows artists to keep their fans up to date with what's going on. And then there's the new worldwide net-radio "experience" Beats 1, which seems insane to me... too many people have too many different musical tastes, so how can you plan a WORLDWIDE station that appeals to everyone? MTV (back when they actually played music) had to break up into pieces and have localized channels in different parts of the world... even that didn't work. Personally, none of this stuff appeals to me. I like to own the music I love. If I buy a digital track, it's mine to play forever. With streaming services, the music stops when the money runs out. Stop paying, stop playing. But, hey, Apple Music is going to have a free three-month trial, so who knows.

HomeKit
The main thing I was looking forward to at this conference was big news about Apple's HomeKit home automation technology which is (apparently) going to revolve around AppleTV. It was announced a year ago and has basically gone nowhere, so now was the time, right? All the WWDC propaganda had the AppleTV shape and the words "The Epicenter of Change" plastered on it, so what other conclusion could be drawn except finally HomeKit was getting its due?

And yet it didn't happen.

Maybe they were never planning on it. Maybe something changed. Maybe it wasn't ready. Who knows.

All I know is that nobody is better at shitting on Apple technologies than Apple themselves. Yes, new devices are being released for HomeKit. Yes, Apple took a whole minute of the WWDC keynote to tell us that HomeKit will be adding support for more than just lights and locks. But that's it. All that teasing for nothing.

And I just don't get it.

The longer Apple waits to stake their claim in the exploding home automation market, the less impact they're going to have. They need to be out there now!

I never thought I'd be saying this, but Apple needs to break apart as a company. Sure it's great to have everything under one roof, but when you can't focus enough to get shit done, maybe it's not the best fit. The slow death of HomeKit before its even released is a big wakeup call.

But oh well.

Maybe Apple will get their shit together and do a HomeKit "Special Event" by the end of the year and prove me wrong.

Otherwise, why did they even bother coming up with it?

I can see Russia from my hotel room... because Bullet Sunday from the great state of Alaska starts... now...

   
• Double Daylight! "In Anchorage, visitors from more southerly latitudes are often surprised to see the sun set at 11:41 p.m. on the summer solstice, but the actual 'solar time' is 9:41 p.m. This is because at 150° W, Anchorage is a full solar hour behind the legal time zone and observes daylight saving time as well. Some local residents refer to this phenomenon as "double daylight time." — Wikipedia.

Which explains my panic when I awoke after dozing off thinking it was 9:30am instead of 9:30pm and I had slept through two alarms. As I write this now at 10:45pm, there's still daylight out there...

I can't fathom how insane it must be to visit Nome, which is still in the Alaskan time zone with Anchorage, but technically two hours in actual time zones further back. Their sunset is after midnight!

   
• Rock! The purpose for my Memorial Day weekend excursion is, of course, to visit the new Hard Rock Cafe that opened up last year here in Anchorage. This is Hard Rock No. 166 for me, and (finally) gets me caught up with all the North American properties again...

There's an upstairs with a second stage and bar...

Overall it's a nice property with a great staff and a terrific location... right in the touristy section of town... but the decor is lacking. Memorabilia is stretched a bit thin throughout, and there's a Rock Shop and massive stairwell that's devoid of any artifacts at all...

This is a massive oversight which is unimaginable to longtime Hard Rock fans who remember when the cafes used to be packed with so much stuff that you could spend hours looking around and keep coming back to see stuff you missed. I mean, holy crap... look at this shot of the old Salt Lake City cafe where you can barely see the walls...

That's what a Hard Rock is supposed to look like, and Anchorage falls way short. Putting in the effort to visit a new property is supposed to be an overwhelming experience... but more and more I find myself saying "I traveled all that way... for this?!? I dunno. Maybe they'll eventually add more cool stuff to give Anchorage the Hard Rock it deserves, but right now it's hardly destination-worthy.

   
• Burger Me! On the plus side, the food was pretty good...

Even if I had to build my own to avoid all the crazy shit that the Hard Rock usually puts on their veggie burgers.

   
• Market? I was told by my airport shuttle driver that the Anchorage Summer Weekend Market was going on and I should take a look if I had a chance. It was supposed to be open until 6:00, but most everything was torn down by 5:20...

Bummer, I guess.

   
• Murder! Much like Starbucks locations in Seattle, fur shops in Anchorage are on every street corner...

I'm vehemently anti-fur, but might change my mind if I could walk in a shop and pick up something that was personally slaughtered by Sarah Palin. Like I'm guessing this poor bear was...

By Grabthar's Hammer I will avenge you, bear!

   
• Drop! Holy shitballs do I wish Apple would get off their fucking asses and get crap fixed that's been broken for ages. Like AirDrop, their miraculous file-sharing technology that's been a steaming pile since day one. When I sent the first photo looking out my hotel window from my iPhone to my Mac, it was no problem. AirDrop found my MacBook immediately. But when I tried to send the next shot (below) 45 minutes later? I just spent 10 minutes trying to get my iPhone to see my Mac, but it absolutely won't do it. And yet... my Mac can see my iPhone just fine? WHAT THE FUCK, APPLE?!?

Why don't you use some of the BILLIONS OF FUCKING DOLLARS that people have paid you because of the promise of things like AirDrop TO FIX ALL THE CRAP THAT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK?! Every time I turn around now-a-days I'm having to deal with Apple's busted shit and I'm just sick of it.

   
Annnnd... I suppose I should get some sleep seeing as how it's now 11:30pm and the sun is finally going down and all...

Put on your Easter bonnet... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Egg! Happy Easter!

   
• Trek! Happy First Contact Day!

   
• Seder! And... hope you had a happy Passover yesterday!

   
• Watch! Still not sold on Apple Watch, but have to admit the thought that went into creating it is pretty amazing.

Too thick. Too expensive. For me.

For now.

   
• Like! Yep.

Expectations inside the social media bubble.

   
• Burberry! When "To Serve and Protect" involves showing up to somebody's house by mistake and shooting their dog, something is very, very wrong...

Errr... more wrong.

   
• Pat! Jesus.

The fact that people continue to take this dipshit seriously... let alone send him their money... boggles my mind.

   
And... time for an egg salad sandwich!