I’ve been out of touch for a few days with the flu. No it wasn’t COVID; I tested negative anyway (spit test), but who knows what that means?
But during my down time, I updated to OS Sonoma, Apple’s latest OS. Suddenly, things are not in the same place on the desktop, the background picture has changed, the brightness level is different, etc etc. (Maybe the brightness level is just the fact that I’ve spent a few days sleeping in a dark room and my eyes couldn’t cope with the brightness the screen was on before. Maybe that’s not Sonoma. But the other things are.)
What arrogance they have, these software providers, who reach in to our private computers, a part of our lives, essentially, and change things. (And Operating Systems are just that - software. Nothing more.) And I’m not just complaining about Apple here - I work on a Windows machine from time to time – and Windows 10 was a complete nightmare, particularly for people in their seventies such as a person I was helping to upgrade.
If a furniture company issued an update to a defective piece of furniture, then came into your house and moved everything around and said, “This is a much better place for your couch,” and then left it there, it would justly be resented.
What they should do, in fact, is only change things if we assent to it. Yes they might have new features (I remember when the irritating eco-features came in on a particular Apple update that darkened the screen after a few minutes then turned it off, and so on, as if we were meant to feel guilty for using electricity, and it was a nightmare to find out how to turn it off ) (To say nothing of the flagrantly illegal practice of Apple, in slowing down old devices without telling users) but every feature should be strictly assented to, and in fact, you should not even have to assent.
Maybe I’m being unjustly annoyed, because I have to admit Apple did actually ask me for assent: they told me that I had such and such a screen background, which somehow was a dreadful screen grab of some sheet music - I’m absolutely sure it was not the one I had - and then the pop-up window asked do I want their nature pics instead? I stupidly said yes, then immediately regretted it. This disgustingly sweet nature pic appeared on the screen that made me want to puke. I tried to backtrack and change it back, but I couldn’t even find the background I had before.
Ultimately I found a lovely picture of my (now sadly deceased) dog and used that as the screen background.
Basically the program should say, “Do you want to change anything?” and you say, “No.” Leave it at that.
Or even better: the perfect systems upgrade – nothing changes. New things might be available if you want them, but otherwise it works exactly the same.
Huh. I must be feeling better. I’ve got enough energy to be annoyed.
Glad you are feeling better. And I completely agree with your synopsis on Apple and their intrusive manipulative practices. Their arrogance is on par with their psychology behind the term “ useless eaters.”
Your lovely dog - very important.
I have been blessed with three Labs, and miss the first even though he died in 2019.
Apple - completely irrelevant and deeply, deeply annoying. I stopped listening to current and ex-Apple employees some time ago (see the idiot at Volvo Car as an example).