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.

Dear Maps team,

Please don’t route me onto a dirt road again. It was super un-fun. I ended up going back up to I-80 and heading over to Wyoming from Nebraska, adding another state and about 5 hours to my trip including the not-joy of I-25 rush hour traffic instead of the much quieter I-76 through Fort Morgan.

It was impossible to get any live data from said dirt road so I just went with my gut until I could get directions again, which took about 2 hours, placing me just outside Cheyenne.

Navigation through Nebraska is always horrible horrible horrible, usually just blank tiles until I hit either Colorado or South Dakota. When going state to state, I’d like to cache tiles along several possible routes because with so much highway construction, I don’t want to be caught with blank tiles in the middle of Nebraska when I have to go twenty or forty miles off to the left or right to avoid a road that isn’t roading at the moment.

Caching tiles and directions along many possible routes would have helped the whole dirt road fiasco. The no-data-no-tiles-no-rerouting trap is both unsafe and unpleasant. Plus it made me miss Sidney, NE, with the only truck stop I’ve ever encountered in the United States that offered bidets (!) in their bathrooms. A true tourist’s experience.

While I’m venting, please respect my wishes about “No tolls” or “No highways” for my entire trip, even if I take a slight detour to avoid traffic. Forgetting “Show me how to get to [Someplace] avoiding tolls” when I reroute cost me  unnecessary funds recently by putting me onto 470, aka the hell road. I was properly billed (thankfully!) and paid immediately but no one voluntarily drives on E470.

Maps folk, please let me say “Show me how to get to Colombia, MO avoiding tolls and dirt roads” and remember that request until I’m safely at my destination. And let me add those requests as I’m driving. During rush hour, let me say “Hey, let’s get off the highways until I’m close to 225”. That’s totally doable from a programming point of view.

Speaking of slight detours, I generally know better than Maps how to tweak directions within the first few miles of my home. For example, I prefer to take the relatively quiet 13th and 14th streets from downtown instead of Colfax or 6th. There’s an incredibly unsafe left turn near our house that Maps always recommends. I drive a little further and make a safe U-turn at a light with a dedicated left turn signal.

I do these tweaks near my home all the time and Maps shouldn’t be fighting me on this, announcing updated directions every single block. I’d like a setting that limits any directions at all (after the initial announcement) for the first, say, mile or two or three away from my home or other “known” starting points that I could add to a list.

In fact, I know how to get to many major milestones within the greater Denver metropolitan area like 225 and Vasquez, and Hampden and 25, and Colorado and 70. I’d like to be able to have navigation kick off once  I’m near a known point or I’m close to the highway or fairly far along towards my destination. That shouldn’t be too hard to develop and customize, requiring no in-car interaction so it’s safe.

In many cases, I only need last mile assistance when driving in-city, including other cities I’m familiar with like Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. I wish I could ask for a “guide me when I’m close to” setting for these kinds of navigation requests.

Thank you all. You know I appreciate everything you do!