Apple Operating Systems (macOS, iOS, watchOS, & tvOS) Catch-All

farley3k wrote:

Any recommendations for spam text blocking software?
I get about 10 a day and the Apple way is quite the tedious for how to block a caller

No recommendations but I think Apple is including an easier way to deal with spam texts in the next iOS release.

E: Engadget article

PaladinTom wrote:

All the olds who are bellyaching like Marco Arment and Quinn Nelson can go spit.

Note: you're coming into it sometime after the first developer beta, and being weirdly combative about it.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

All the olds who are bellyaching like Marco Arment and Quinn Nelson can go spit.

Note: you're coming into it sometime after the first developer beta, and being weirdly combative about it.

Sorry! Didn’t mean to sound that way. I meant it to be sarcastically snarky. I’m also an old and very set in my ways with a lot of other things.

More recently I’ve seen a bunch of videos of how busted the new Settings app actually is and it needs a LOT of work still. I was only commenting that (for me) the layout make a lot more sense - but again, I’m fairly new to macOS (<2 years) and I always seemed to have trouble finding what I was looking for in the old Preferences app. Plus, I’m also weird in that I like a consistent look and feel across the Apple OS’s. But that’s just me.

OK Messages, I either need you to stop giving me the popup saying you're going to delete this conversation from all my devices or I need you to actually delete said conversation off my other devices. The spam texts are less annoying than you lying to me in a popup window 3-4 times for each one.

Vargen wrote:

OK Messages, I either need you to stop giving me the popup saying you're going to delete this conversation from all my devices or I need you to actually delete said conversation off my other devices. The spam texts are less annoying than you lying to me in a popup window 3-4 times for each one.

So much this. Also, stop asking ‘Report Junk’ every time I delete a text. Email programs don’t throw a modal pop up every time asking ‘Is it spam?’ every time I delete an email.

I see you've noticed one of the more annoying changes in iOS 16. Between that and the battery life I rolled back from the beta to 15. I'm looking at iOS 16 on a phone that isn't my main phone to see if I want to upgrade yet. There's a lot I don't like about it.

DSGamer wrote:

I see you've noticed one of the more annoying changes in iOS 16. Between that and the battery life I rolled back from the beta to 15. I'm looking at iOS 16 on a phone that isn't my main phone to see if I want to upgrade yet. There's a lot I don't like about it.

My battery health is down to 82% (I need a replacement ) and the betas were terrible for my battery life. Fortunately the Release Candidate seems to have fixed the battery issues so you should be good to upgrade now if you want iOS 16.

Anyone found any must-have Lock Screen widgets yet? It’s nice having the weather there, but none of the others I’ve seen have any appeal or utility for me…

I would have added a direct link to the Remote app for my Apple TV, but if there is one I couldn't find it.

T-Mobile gives Apple TV+ away for free. Maybe your carrier does.

Anyone able to have success with handoff for facetime? I've done all the googling, updating, reseting that i can think of and nothing shows up like it does in the tutorials. FT handoff was in the last update btw if you dont know what im talking about

i should add that i can use my phone as a camera while using my computer, and that i can handoff with other things just fine.

Does anybody know what might be blocking Guided Access on my iPad? According to all the support articles I have it enabled, but triple-clicking the off button doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. I had a similar issue on my phone; that was because it was trying to bring up Apple Pay with a double-click before the third click would register. That isn’t the issue on my iPad, but I suspect there’s something similar going on.

I’ve tried adding Guided Access to the control center but that button doesn’t seem to do anything either.

I finally upgraded to iOS 16 and what’s this abomination they decided to change the time font to on the lock screen. And it’s not a trivial fix either. I need to create a new lock screen and, if I want to keep the same background (I do), I need to dig up the photo I used for it, a gorgeous evening photo I took maybe around 2013-14. What a pain in the ass. Meanwhile, every time I see my lock screen, it’s like being punched in the face (exaggeration for comedic effect).

I would agree that the font isn't what I'd choose but I quite like the new lock screen. I can have it rotate through a nice collection of photos and I'm not stuck with a single photo that I have to change. It just does it for me and honestly does a nice job of selecting ones I like. Tomato potato I guess.

Oh, it's not that I think I won't appreciate having this functionality but they could have added it without trashing my existing lock screen. And why on earth do I need to create a new lock screen instead of just editing my old one? Or how about creating new lock screens with the option to carry over settings from an existing lock screen (like my background?!).

The new lock screen font is undeniably easier to read and a big improvement overall. I hate it.

I'm actually coming around on it, but it's slow going. It helps that the awful new numbers are easier to read so I can look away quickly.

I don't usually react to change like this, but this is so petty and minor that I'm just rolling with it. I'll save the existential crisis and self reflection for something more significant.

Such a big change (IMO) without user consent or any easy way to revert. And, clearly the old font is still there (along with many others that I'm sure I'd prefer over the new default), just they made it unnecessarily difficult to access. Why Apple why... It's been a couple of days and still hate it. Do I get used to it or do I crack and sift through a decade of photos to find my favorite background so I can create a new lock screen without the font. I'm sure you'll all be on the edge of your seats waiting to find out.

I was looking at the very few novels I have on my bookshelves this afternoon, and realized that the only ones I would be sad losing are written by Belgian writer Jean Ray, mostly because his works have been out of print for decades, and they are very hard to find second hand (at least here in Canada, and particularly in areas where French is not the main language, like Ottawa). He's written countless short stories under various names, a few novels, and some stuff he was not credited for. I don't think I've ever seen a complete list of everything he's written.

Jean Ray died in 1964. A quick lookup confirmed that, in Canada at least (but not in Belgium), his books are in the public domain. I searched online to see if they were available digitally. I found a few. Most notably Malpertuis, a short novel, one of his most well-known works. But aside from that, it was pretty disappointing. (Part of that reason, I assume, is because his work is not in the public domain in his native country, where it will not be public domain until 2034).

I thought: "Mmmh, maybe I could put a few short stories in eBook format out and help preserve his works." Probably a stupid thought, but hey. Which made me wonder what the best OCR programs were.

There's a whole bunch of them, but out of the lot, it turns out I already had one installed on my MacBook. Actually, it came with the system. It's called LiveText.

So I went ahead and tested it out with the introduction of one of his novels, La Cité de l'indicible peur (The City of Unspeakable Fear).

I took a photo of each of the 7 pages with my iPhone, AirDropped them on my Mac, opened them in Preview. I was able to select the text (as I would in Word), copy it, and paste it in a Scrivener document. I re-read the whole thing, added/removed italics as needed, added section breaks where they should have been, and voilà! I had the whole thing done in about 20 minutes.

I had never used it before but, I have to admit, LiveText works really well, even on a book printed in 1971 with yellowed pages.

So, yeah, great work Apple!

LiveText is indeed awesome. It can do pretty good interpretations on handwritten text as well, or copy any text in a picture. I use it all the time.

Has anyone used a Mac Mini to setup a Plex server? I am considering buying one for that purpose. Based on what I've looked at, it seems pretty straightforward. But occasionally I will read something that I can't make any sense of and wonder if I am completely out of my depth in trying to do it.

Plex is for playing movies over your LAN, right? The biggest downside to the Mac Mini is the minimal on-board storage that you get on the models that are actually a good deal. I assume you'd need some kind of external storage solution to make a Mini work as a media server.

Other than that it's a great little machine.

Garth wrote:

Has anyone used a Mac Mini to setup a Plex server? I am considering buying one for that purpose. Based on what I've looked at, it seems pretty straightforward. But occasionally I will read something that I can't make any sense of and wonder if I am completely out of my depth in trying to do it.

I’ve considered doing the same with mine but, as Vargen pointed out, I would need to get some external drives.

They have docks that sit directly below the Mini - and some even have compartments for drives that look quite nice.

I’d be interested in how you made out if you give it a go.

Garth wrote:

Has anyone used a Mac Mini to setup a Plex server? I am considering buying one for that purpose. Based on what I've looked at, it seems pretty straightforward. But occasionally I will read something that I can't make any sense of and wonder if I am completely out of my depth in trying to do it.

I have had one up and running since late Summer. It's the base 8/256 model, and I think the low memory amount is what's constraining how much it can do at once. Plex claims it is using the hardware for transcoding, but I have no way of knowing if that's just to decode and/or re-encode, or both. I do have certain directories linked into my user account's ~/Library folder so that the Plex library physically lives on an external drive; that part's been working flawlessly. It's a large library, and library-level metadata fills in very quickly.

Edit: I'll add that I'm interested in trying something like the Beelink SEi12, since Intel QuickSync is supported by Plex, and you can allegedly run a lot through it.

Please sell or unsell me on an Apple Watch. What cool things do you do with yours? What did Apple get right and what did they get wrong?

I’ve been wearing a Fitbit Charge 5 and am generally happy with it, but Google has apparently decided to let the Fitbit servers rot. So I’m trying to decide between replacing it with a similar fitness tracker, and upgrading to a smartwatch.

I’m probably an outlier, but I went from someone who thought I didn’t need one, to someone who would have trouble living without one. I use it for SO MANY things. I’ll just briefly summarize, and you can feel free to ask any more detailed questions.

I never thought I would ever speak to my wrist like Michael Knight, but the thing I easily use it the most for is I use raise-to-speak ALL THE TIME for adding items to our shopping list, setting reminders, and setting timers and alarms. I’d be lost if I couldn’t raise my wrist and say, “remind me to…”

I use the Now Playing function all the time to play/pause and adjust volume (with the crown!) on my AirPods.

For work, it’s one tap to see my next meeting. Also receiving/snoozing meeting reminders is huge. Also great for Teams notifications when on the go.

Viewing and ticking off items from my shopping list while in the store while I shop. (AnyList is fantastic for this!)

Medication reminders. I use the meds tracker in the Health app and it works great.

Receiving notifications in general is fine, but I recommended highly curating which apps are allowed to buzz your wrist all day. You can set separate notifications for your watch and phone.

I use the bedtime reminders and use it to track my sleep . (I actually bought a small used SE as a second device to track my sleep because the battery doesn’t last all day.)

And of course, I use it as a health tracker - which was why I originally bought it. I use it to track my workouts and monitor my health in general. I found a great interval app that runs natively on the watch. The Apple Health app provides some nice metrics and there are tons of other apps that connect to the Health app as well. For instance, I also tick off habits using Streaks and log my water using Water Minder. It’s also nice to have the ECG and fall detection functions, although I don’t really have a need for those currently. It will tell if you if your heart rate is unusual or the volume of your environment is too loud. The crash detection on newer models is also nice for peace of mind.

I occasionally use the Remote app to control my Apple TV. (Really just play/pause when I’m ducking in and out of the room.)

I very rarely use it for this - but it is great to use for walking directions when we travel to unfamiliar cities.

But the best feature ever? I mean EVER? I use Authy several times a day and it’s magical to use the Watch app to view all of my various auth codes on my wrist. MAGICAL!

I received an Apple Watch for a birthday gift in July. It took some getting used to, but I cosign pretty much everything that PaladinTom said:

1. The medication reminders are big for me. I find it very helpful to be reminded to take everything during my hustle and bustle of the morning.

2. The workout piece is huge. It gamifies my workouts in a way that has helped get back into the gym and stay active. If I weren't working out on the regular, I don't think I could recommend a smart watch of any sort, but Apple's medal system for accomplishing workouts and tracking your metrics is really helpful.

3. The sleep tracking is big. It is very cool to see when you are in different levels of sleep.

4. I definitely recommend that if you do get one you customize the settings to only allow the notifications of what helps you the most. If you let it, it will never stop pestering you. But if you narrow it down to what you actually want to be told about, it is much less irritating.

5. For podcasts, I use Overcast. It notifies my phone (which then notifies my watch) when a new episode is available and I can add it to my playlist without messing with my phone.

6. Driving directions. It is fantastic to feel a vibration for when a turn is coming up that I need to take. It prevents me from trying to look at my phone for directions.

Hopefully that helps. I love mine.

I got mine bc i use it to count laps when im swimming. i don't really use it for that much bc i changed swimming out
for other things but the watch is still good for runs or keeping track of HR for any other activity....
it's also nice to be actually use it to tell time... weird how that be.
other than that, i suppose it's nice to just check my wrist for notifications as opposed to pulling my whole phone out my pocket.

I wouldn't say it's worth buying a new one though for me, i got series 2 from my dad when he upgraded that does everything i need it to.

I use mine all the time. Never without it. I have the 7 and the battery life is good enough for a full day plus sleep tracking for me unless I'm doing several hour activity with GPS tracking.

I use Work Outdoors for workout tracking and it's great on unknown trails because it shows trail maps on the watch. It's very customizable for the screens. It's $5 with no subscription BS. And if that's not your cup of tea you can install dozens of workout apps.

One difference between Fitbit and Apple is that apple doesn't base it's rings on steps. It's based on exercise time, active calories burned, and standing for a minute every hour. I think steps are fine but like active calories and exercise time better myself. I don't care about the stand goal (in part because it's detection isn't great).

I use it for voice calls, replying to texts, creating texts, etc. Voice and audio quality is surprisingly good.

I love the ability to change watch faces just by swiping right or left. I can have a watch face for different things. A work watch face, a home watch face, a workout watch face, a weather watch face, a music watch face, etc. It's great.

My most used watch face is chronograph which you can customize to put a ton of info on it, including super quick access to call someone.

Soooo many watch bands. It's odd that I say this since I use the same band all the time but there is almost certainly a band that fits you perfectly.

Siri access. PaladinTom covered this but I'll add something I do a lot while on vacation. If we pass a town we always ask questions about the town. Population, median income, etc. It's also great when my wife and I have a discussion about some dumb topic like when did such and such movie come out.

Navigation directions on the watch are wonderful. That little tap on the wrist when a turn is coming up is more helpful than you can imagine. Especially when walking or biking.

My wife had a Garmin. Like many garmins do, the charging port got messed up after just two years. She loved her garmin (really loved it). But when hers died I had just gotten a new watch and convinced her to use my old one. That was two years ago and she has no plans on going back to her garmin. The watch I gave her is now almost 6 years old (AW3-2017) and still gets her through the day with 0 issues.

Honestly, just get one. You won't be disappointed.

I get a fair amount of use out of the Weather functions. "Hey, the rain is letting up soon so this'll be a good time to get that thing out of the car/bring the trash cans in/check the mail" is actually a very helpful notification.

Having 2-factor authorizations pop up on my wrist is really nice too.

iPhone unlocking was really useful but that's less significant now that Apple has updated FaceID to work with masks.

Oh yeah, I also set up a special watch face that I swap to that lets me know I have laundry in the washing machine.

I've been using a similar system for my ADHD meds (I leave it on my overnight face until I take them) but I could probably do with a dedicated app for that. One problem I have is the timing is less about a specific time and more about whether my digestive system can currently tank the side effects, combined with remembering if I've taken them or not. Most of what I've seen in my cursory search seems focused on alerts that can be dismissed and I need something gentle-but-persistent.

You can also unlock your Mac with the Apple Watch too. It's nice... although it isn't as rock solid as Face ID or Touch ID (and I'm not shelling out 150 bones for a keyboard that has Touch ID for my Mac mini). It maybe fails 1 out of every 30 or so times for me.

The face unlock with a mask was killer during Covid too, but like Vargen said, newer phones now support it without needing the watch.