Skip Navigation
Apple @lemmy.world
DJDarren @thelemmy.club

What’s the tiniest thing about iOS / iPadOS / macOS that really bugs you?

As much as I don’t like negative threads, there’s one thing in iOS that really irritates me, and I want to air it…

Pressing and holding the tab button in Safari to access tab groups, should have a haptic response.

Because it doesn’t, I often end up opening the tab view instead, so I have to huff a little, hit Done, then try again. I don’t know why it annoys me that it doesn’t because none of the other buttons in Safari do, but I feel like it should.

No, I have not contacted Tim Apple about this. Yes, I probably should.

213 comments

  • Here’s another one— click through on macOS. Coming from other systems I find it infuriating. Not just the click though itself but its inconsistency, where it works in browsers and some other selected programs but not in most.

    For those not aware, click through is when you’re focused on another window and click on this one. With click through, it will immediately action what you click without you have to click first to the window then click again. This isn’t inherently inferior, but I really don’t like it personally. And it is absolutely impossible to change this behavior on MacOS by any means. Believe me, I researched this extensively.

    • There is an app I found that will autofocus the app you hover over so it takes away that extra click you have to do — effectively making a click through. It worked, but I found it felt a little weird just often enough that I turned it off.

      But I agree I wish there was an option to click through.

  • Here are some things, some minor and some major, in general I think Apple software is not up to their previous standars and just mediocre, not bad, but neither good anymore…

    • Phone app doesn’t have an in depth history of every call, just some of the last conversations.
    • Spellcheck: someten alterado Saiz it (someone already said it…)
    • Maps: Sent several corrections with detailed info and images but more than half are not fixed. I just don’t care anymore.
    • Siri: I just don’t know where to begin.
    • Apple Arcade: searching through Apple Arcade games is a nightmare.

  • iPadOS using an external keyboard:

    • There’s no way to force the software to input a lowercase letter when it wants to autocapitalize. For example: when putting in an email into a form — where the input doesn’t have proper attributes — it’ll default to inputting an uppercase letter and you can’t force a lowercase. You end up having to type the starting letter twice and deleting the first letter. (Have to type “Eemail” then delete the first letter.) Edit: Apparently you can tap shift twice to go lowercase, as described here (https://lemmy.world/comment/6294849). Thank you! I obviously can’t recall any time Apple has described this behavior anywhere.
    • The second and worse thing is that language icon that shows up when you type. That little thing that hovers in the corner of the app mostly in the way of the input. Yes you can move it, but now it’s in the way of something else. It’s basically useless, and apps end up getting all funky looking because elements try to move around it. This is especially bad in stage manager. They need to axe it or move it to one of the myriad commands you can access by holding Option.

    Edit(s) as I think of them:

    watchOS:

    • Let me download a podcast anytime I want. Put a freaking button in the podcast app that says “download to watch.” I don’t care if it eats battery. The current way to manage podcasts on the watch is abysmal.

    iOS:

    • Someone thought it was a good idea to add bird sounds to the “rain” background noise, and I’m so mad about it. I want rain, not loud bird garbage. I turn on the sound because I’m trying to drown out noise like that. (Aside that’s not Apple’s fault: I’d love to buy something like Dark Noise, but I don’t want a subscription for that, and $50 for the one time purchase is crazy.)

    • Hit shift twice in a row, then you can type a lowercase letter at the beginning of a sentence.

      • Well I’ll be damned, you’re right!

        Chalk this one up to one of those secret interface things Apple does super poorly to describe or explain!

  • I dislike having icons on home screen, I use drawers and the only place that has icon is the dock.

  • App Window management in Mac OS is beyond infuriating. Time ago it was non existent so you had to download a third party app to enable a clunky version, now it exists but you have to right click on the green dot and hope the snapping menu pops up (sometimes it opens some other menu). I just want MS Windows style “move an app window to the side of the screen and have it automatically snap to take up that half (or quarter)” not the clunky idiotic implementation Apple has provided. The number of hours I have racked up wasting my time resizing and moving windows around manually is obscene.

    Also hardware related: the fucking charging port on the magic mouse will go down in history as the stupidest, anti-user design decision in human history.

    • I was never able to get annoyed with the mouse charging port. The idea was that you could plug it in for a few minutes, go and make a coffee / have a piss / whatever, and when you came back it was good for weeks worth of juice. Ultimately, Apple didn’t want people using their wireless mouse with a wire.

      But it does lead to a discussion about what art means to the viewer vs the artist. Apple’s job was to make a mouse to sell to users, and the users job is to use it however they see fit. Trouble is, Apple are terrible for not wanting the users to cloud what their vision is for their products.

      • I don’t know what world you live in where you can plug those things in for a “few minutes” and it be good for weeks of use.

        I am sick of apple apologists saying apple didnt want people using their wireless mouse plugged in. If that was the case they’d also make their wireless keyboard charge port be on the bottom.

        Fact is it’s a shitty design that they’ve been too lazy to change or update for over a decade.

        Also, industrial design is not “art.” It is a craft that, when wielded responsibly, creates a product that is as user friendly as possible.

  • swinging back around because I was just reminded of this trying to get to a calculator: iPad OS still not having a built in calculator in 2023 because Lord God Steve Jobs proclaimed a million years ago you can just use your iPhone. Sure you can. but why is that a reason to not have a feature? Fucking infuriating.

    • I was reminded of this last night when I opened the calculator on my Watch, and did a sensible chuckle.

  • MacOS — making me go into system settings to allow an app to install that I’ve initiated. I know where the app comes from, I just downloaded it, why do I have to tell my own computer I trust myself to not be an idiot?

    iPadOS — multitasking. I know that things are better than they used to be but it’s still a clunky experience to use multiple windows or flip back and forth between them unless you use a keyboard (at which point why wouldn’t I just use a laptop?)

    iOS — not a lot these days. I’d still like to be able to customise my Home Screen layouts more, and shortcuts are still pretty unreliable, but I’m largely happy with iOS itself.

    watchOS — better customisation for the widgets section. Let me have multiple complication/shortcut blocks, let me organise widgets more easily, etc. More watch faces would be nice too. A lot of the ones that are available are pretty ugly.

    • For future reference, if you control click > open on a downloaded app, it should open up without you having to confirm it in Settings. It’s still an extra action, but it’s more streamlined than having to open Settings and click a button.

      • Good to know. I’m sure I’ll forget by the next time I need to do this, but nice to know it’s an option.

    • @HeavyDogFeet @DJDarren and more AI in MacOS and iOS, please. If I repeat a folder action three times, how hard is it to get that if I start the same action for the forth time, I would like to repeat the same sequence? Also, why do I have to correct the rather common name of my daughter 17.451 times, before the auto-correct finally gets it?

      And finally; localization, which used to be a strong point of Apple, leaves a lot to be improved.

  • When I save things and then go try to find them in Files and they aren't there, only to find out later they ended up in some hidden part of the file system that Files doesn't see.

    1. Vocabulary Recognition Mystery:
      • iPad doesn't recognize the word "Vidalia" as a word.
    2. Home Lighting Grouping Wish:
      • Annoyed that I can't create groups of lights within a room.
    3. Delayed Photo Sync Confusion:
      • Photos don't sync immediately, and you cannot make them, except for one sync at a time.
    4. Caps Lock Quirk:
      • About 70% of the time, I have to press the caps lock key twice for it to activate or deactivate.
    5. System Settings Search Issue:
      • The search function in System Settings doesn't seem to do anything.
    6. HomePod Timer Sync Problem:
      • Timer set on HomePod doesn't show up on my other devices.
    7. Volume Control Headache:
      • System sounds/music volume lacks logical control. Accidentally clicking my buds when putting them in results in ear-piercing music, I guess because I have the systems sounds volume up high.
    8. Autocorrect Woes:
      • Autocorrect has supposedly improved, but it has actually gotten significantly worse.
    9. iOS refuses to sync ringtones I made in GarageBand across my devices. I resorted to creating them on each individual device and then iOS reverts them back to the default after a couple of minutes.
213 comments