Yes I like Apple computers, and I still think they are good.
And they do what they must do with little maintenance compared to always updating your virusscanners.
Yet lately the list of little annoyances have built up to a level that
made me hesitant of recommending the iMac or a Macbook to others, I even chose
not to buy a new Mac myself although my current Macbook is older than four years now
and can’t run latest versions of MacOSX
Wel let me just sum up my list of little and bigger Apple annoyances.
– Need for an external program to prevent the Mac from activating it’s standby modus. Even after all those years you still need the program Caffeïne. (It is a good program but Apple should just have bought it and integrated it.)
– The loud “BANG!!” sound when you start up your Mac. Still no way of setting this from Apple side. The program found to do this works fine, Apple should have provided this by now.
– Every SD card, USB memory, external disc gets polluted by the ‘wonderful’ Spotlight. This behaviour should be possible to be disabled by default, not per disk. Not any interest from Apple to fix this.
– The Apple logo and Login screen should be set. Again why only depend on other software to do this?
– When I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard I noticed it had become more Leopard for dummies. Advancing to Lion and beyond makes me fear more what gets hidden that I do want to see.
– The only way to install Snow Leopard was to order a disk. It was no longer available as a download. The upgrade to Lion was said by the helpdesk to be found in the Apple Store as a download, but when I upgraded and looked for it, it was nowhere to be found.
– Integration of iTunes and Apple Store. More and more Vendor lock-in feeling and less freedom to choose. I want the freedom to not use iTunes and or the Appstore.
– Upgrading to Snow Leopard brought a feature that I consider a serious bug. Pressing the play button to play a mediafile from any mediaplayer launches iTunes. I found a little program that fixes this but Apple doesn’t care, want everyone to use iTunes, even two version of the operating system further this feature is still active, although heavily protested against by many many users. If it hadn’t been possible to fix by the little program I found, I am sure I would have reinstalled Leopard.
– Every time Apple comes with a newer version of its MacOSX, all of the features/bug are still in there and you have to hope that all external fixing programs still work or that the developers find time and a way to make their fixing programs work on the new version.
– The iMac Keyboard and mouse. They are wireless. I want them like the old keyboard, with a wire AND a numeric pad, and I want the choice between wireless and wired. Not having to buy a normal keyboard extra! The ‘new’ mouse is great except for it being only wireless. This also should be wired. The batteries are always empty at the worst possible moments and when not, changing batteries is always an annoyance to me. The wire from the mouse should be 5 centimeters longer, the wire for the keyboard 50 centimeters longer. And no special USB plugs please!
– The Macbook keys are black. I think they are much prettier in white. I want to see with my own eyes how they look if they are white.
– The screen size. I like a higher screen rather than a wider one. Gets more lines of code in a readable resolution (point size) on the screen at one time.
I think these are good arguments to no longer recommend Apple computers anymore. For the price you have to pay for them, I think the customer is entitled to have these wishes granted by Apple.
If you have additions to my list feel free to post them here.