Erica Sadun

Where technology meets something or other

Archive for January, 2019

Mojave and Folderol

If you use my Folderol app, you may encounter issues in Mojave. I have not but I can confirm that some of my users have found that their folders tend to be “sticky”, and will keep their icons and folder colors even when they’ve been changed to new ones.

If this happens to you, the easiest solution is to set up a new folder, customize it with Folderol, and transfer the contents and rename it like the old one. I have reports of the issue with 10.14.3 and 10.14.2. The most common factor among those affected is that the system is running one or more UI customizations like dark mode.

Folderol works by using Apple’s NSWorkspace method that sets an icon for a file. So the actual “work” beyond creating and blending the icon is done by that class, over which I  have no control.

I’m going to try to update the app description with a warning about the problem and add a set/remove/set sequence to see if that helps.

If you’re experiencing issues with Folderol, please let me know your OS specifics, and whether you’re using custom dark mode and/or tints. Thanks!

Things I love about Apple Watch

I bought my Apple Watch to track. As I have learned over the last few months, the watch kind of stinks as a tracker and a fitness tool. It loses track of my workouts or fails to pick them up entirely. My movement in real life and my watch’s rings often fail to align. I may be wiping sweat from my brow as my watch thinks I’m taking a nap or something. And if tracking were the only thing my Watch offered, I’d write it off as an expensive failure.

Much to my surprise, though, I have fallen in love with my watch. The reasons surprise me, and had nothing to motivate my purchase. In looking back over the past months, I am constantly astonished by the watch’s convenience  and comfort (at least once I was able to get a band I could live with, because my first few attempts with the band didn’t go very well…)

Let me step back and speak of my watch’s best points.

For one thing, it lets me answer calls on my wrist. This is not a feature I would ever have wanted or searched for or asked for or desired. And yet, it’s one of the greatest things my watch does.

I bought the basic watch. It’s the one without built-in cellular so I receive calls only when my watch is near enough to my phone. I find the reach is good enough that I can answer my phone from my wrist anywhere within my house. I no longer  have to run to grab the phone from its charger. That’s amazingly convenient.

Sure it’s just weird speaking into my wrist. I’m not Dick Tracy and the ergonomics aren’t the best. And yet, I can handle a quick convo and get on with my life and I don’t have to start digging through my backpack to find the phone, which always manages to slip between things or slide into a notebook or otherwise hide itself away.

It’s a feature I didn’t know I wanted and it’s one I use daily. That alone is close to justifying the purchase price.

And, if I need to find the phone to open an app or do something that demands more real estate, I don’t worry about it slipping away in my backpack anymore. Now, I just pull up the watch’s quick utility panel and tap the phone pager. My phone pings and I instantly find wherever it has slipped. Brilliant!

But wait, there’s more.

This may sound absolutely ridiculous, but I no longer have to dig out that same self-hiding phone to look at the time. I can now glance at my wrist and the time is right there. Yes, I am the only person alive who is surprised and astonished that a watch tells you what time it is or that might be a reason for its purchase. This probably explains a lot about me.

When I put the Mickey face on the watch, I can even touch the watch without looking and hear the time. I wish that feature was available on other faces and without the creepy pedo-vibe that Mickey gives. I’ve sort of given up on Mickey because 1. pedo and 2. not enough complications (the add-ons that let you stick mini-app widgets onto the main display, kind of the “Apple Watch Dock” metaphorically) and switched to the Infographic display instead. But I love the “tap to hear the time” feature, even if I don’t use it very much.

Not only do I now know the time just by looking but my watch also tells me what date it is: perfect for writing checks, filling out forms, what have you. I don’t have to check my computer’s menu bar or drag out that phone. Again, this is about as deep into Captain Obvious territory as you get. It’s also a simple pleasure I did not consider when buying this hunk of expensive tech strapped to my arm.

And if that’s not enough, I also know what appointments are coming up next because my calendar events appear in the center of my main screen. These events travel with me no matter where I am and I can review, analyze, and plan even on the go. I didn’t realize how much I checked my schedule until I stopped looking at my calendar on my computer all the time. My watch freed me from that.

My most-used complication (again, that’s a “docked” app widget) is my timer. And I use it constantly throughout my day,  whether I’m cooking or working or doing physical therapy. I never knew how much I needed a $400+ timer on my wrist. You can pick from the presets (1 minute, 3, 5, 10, etc) or customize exactly the timing you need. I wish I could run more than a single timer at once, as there are often several things I’m doing at once. (Making waffles? 2 minutes, one after another. Stew? 90 minutes. etc)

I love how I can download audible books and music to my wrist and listen to them completely without a phone as I work out. Yes, I wish I could use the built-in speaker but even with Bluetooth-only audio, it freeing to step away from my big old 6+ and fashion-forward (yeah right) fanny pack. At some point I’m going to buy all kinds of tinkly yoga music but for right now I’m doing my PT stretches at the gym to the strains of “Funny in Farsi“.

I’m really pleased that Siri is along for the ride. I get a lot of the same utility from wristSiri as phoneSiri in terms of quick math calculations, sending a text, making a call, and so forth. I love Siri!

I’m also a big fan of both the breathe and stand app, items that have…mixed…reception and utility in the wider watch world. I use the breathe app not just to work on breathing but to exercise my back muscles and sitting strength. The stand app gives me the opportunity to stretch and move and challenge myself. I’d like to push these even further and have been shopping for a good coaching app that instills physical, mental, and personal habits via the watch. If you have any recs, let me know!

I haven’t installed many 3rd party apps on this, but I’m particularly pleased with the Just Press Record app, which does exactly what the name suggests for noting down quick thoughts when there’s no pen or paper around. On a similar note, I like that you can draw messages in the built-in texting app. It’s not ideal but it’s saved me a few times when I needed to respond to family quickly, even if the response sometimes looks like “Yes you CaN buy IT but nto mre than $10“.

I’d love to hear what 3rd party apps you’ve found that work well for you. I used the Sleep++ tracker (paid with IAP) for a while but it’s not great and I like not having to wear a wristband to bed. I also own the irritatingly meticulous Rules game, which I occasionally play when I’m desperate for something to occupy me. I feel as if I’m missing out on some great apps but I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Speaking of apps, every now and then I need a quick app that I can grab and take with me and the watch is perfect for that. To be honest, writing for watchOS is annoying (and testing is horrible) but for simple things, I can write and throw an app onto my watch for immediate use as I need it and then unload it when I don’t need it anymore. I’ve done this to scrape schedules for quick reference, to store a few important pictures to show and share, and a few other apps of various utility.

Again, this is an unexpected pleasure that doesn’t involve having to drag the phone along with me when I use them and despite the development process not being ideal, it’s a fully customizable thing that gives me the tools I need when I need them in a form that is the most portable I could imagine.

Let me finish by talking about my wristband, which I mentioned earlier in this post. When buying the watch, I first went with the sports loop, after trying all the bands on at the store. Once at home, I found it uncomfortable when worn for multiple hours at a time. So from there I bought a very cheap milanese loop knockoff for about $10 at Amazon. It’s very pretty, but had the same no-flex/no-give issues as the sports band.

In the end, I purchased a third party woven elastic band from Tefeca for just under $30 with tax shipped. I still don’t love having something physical on my wrists but this seems to be the best compromise I’ve found.

So what do you love about your watch and what advice do you have for me as a new watch owner? Please let me know.

UX fail: Logging into Apple TV

My son brought a new (which is to say, an old) Apple TV into our lives yesterday. He picked up a 2nd gen unit from Goodwill for under ten bucks in excellent condition. We were delighted.

Even older Apple TVs, a couple of generations before the app store hit, allow you to share music from the family library, watch shows and movies, project from hand-held devices, and use TVs as wireless extra displays.

We immediately began setting it up. The first issue at hand was to log into my Apple ID, so the unit could see my account, purchases, and home share.

I use long passwords. I recommend long passwords. Entering long passwords on a 2nd generation Apple TV using a remote is…well, it’s pretty horrible. Even though I’m a bit proud of my remote skills (for example, press-and-hold to access upper case letters from the lower case screen, or using hold-to-slide for quick letter navigation), it still takes a significant amount of time to enter my password.

And, when I had done so, and counted off the number of dots and confirmed they matched the right number of password characters, I expect that I was done with setup once I clicked the continue button.

Nope, not so quick.

It wasn’t until after Apple TV asked me whether to store my password for purchases (no thank you), and had moved onto yet another screen, that it stated I could not log in at this time. Something something about verification.

I assumed I entered the password wrong but I was a bit befuddled that it didn’t tell me that right away. I had already moved a couple of screens forward before it rejected my entry. What was going on?

After a few times through the process, I knuckled down and hit the web to search for “Apple TV verification”. That’s when I discovered that I needed to generate a verification code and add it to my password (one after the other, all in text in a single privacy-protected box) to log into my iTunes account.

This design shocked me. There was exactly no information listed on the enter password screen suggesting you need to not only enter your password but also append a six digit two-factor code to your password. There was no information guiding users through the steps to generate that code. There was no support for automatically sending a two-factor request to other registered devices, the way it normally works with my browser. Instead, you must generate a verification code on an another device using the same Apple ID.

I use two primary Apple IDs: one is for iTunes purchases and is shared with my family. The other is for my development work. All my mobile devices are signed into both, but you can only generate a verification code for your iCloud ID. You cannot for your iTunes ID.

I had to go through the hassle of picking a victim iDevice, logging out of iCloud, including disabling Find My iDevice and deleting all local iCloud data, just so I could log in using my iTunes account to generate my 6 digit time sensitive verification code. (Settings > iCloud > username > Passwords & Security > Get Verification Code)

It took me quite a bit of time to get a device to the point where I could do that. Wisely (but really just luckily), I left the device logged in to the iTunes iCloud account. I had not realized I’d need to authenticate in several places on Apple TV. The first time accessed my purchased content. The second time enabled home sharing. Again, without any hints about extended passwords and 2FA.

Fortunately, I targeted an aging iPod touch as my sacrificial victim, which, while running the latest iOS release, is not a heavily used dev system. I have not yet moved it back to my main iCloud account  just in case I have to go through this nonsense again.

Once I had my six digits, I had to add them to my password entry. Since timing is critical, I had to type out the password first, fetch the code, and then enter the verification code on my  Apple TV, which had gone into screen saver mode due to the delay. I added the digits to the end of the password (none of which are readable, it’s all dots), and hoped that it took.

All of this took place without any textual or visual indication to set user expectations that the password needed extra characters at the end to begin with.

This is probably the worst design for 2FA anyone could have come up with and I’m baffled at how this got past any level of management to be presented in Apple deployment. It feels like the first iteration of a solution offered by a summer intern before anyone with sense got involved.

I’d imagine that the second you enter an Apple ID, the device is fully capable of determining whether 2FA is needed. If so, it should guide the user how to obtain that information. Add some text, show a video, do whatever is needed, but contextualize!

Assuming that people know how to create the code and then append the code to the password is asinine. It’s also bad design. Make the 2FA code a second screen, for heaven’s sake. Lead users through the process. And for all that is good and holy, don’t make the user pass through one or more screens after the failed password before informing them that (1) the password didn’t take and (2) a validation step is needed and should have been done several screens earlier.

In the best of all worlds, just allow the 2FA code to auto generate and notify the way it does with Safari. Manual generation should be the fallback position only if associated devices are not available.

Every week or two, I have to re-enter a code to access Apple’s developer site. My office rings with the various beeps and whistles of 2FA. Every device helpfully shouts out its association with the iCloud account and provides a six digit key for me to use right away.

Having to laboriously set up a device and then manually generate a code is nonsense. Differentiating the main iCloud account and the iTunes account, both of which have been authenticated, is also nonsense. If a device is signed into both, it should produce 2FA codes for both.

The screen that most offended me was the one interspersed between the “enter your password” and “you need a verification code”. Who gave the okay to continue on with the “use this password to authorize purchases” screen before confirming 2FA? It’s just insane.

In the end, a process that should have taken 5 minutes max stretched to nearly 90. If someone comfortable with problem solving and web searches was this put off by the anti-intuitive UX design, imagine how Apple’s core customer base will react.

This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten from “it just works” in Apple’s ecosystem and a user experience that gives me great pause.