Apple has released updates for both OS X and iOS today. OS X 10.10.3 adds Photos as a replacement for iPhoto, while iOS 8.3 updates and adds a whole bunch of emoji.
Apple has released updates for both OS X and iOS today. OS X 10.10.3 adds Photos as a replacement for iPhoto, while iOS 8.3 updates and adds a whole bunch of emoji.
Additional language and country support for Siri: Dutch (Netherlands)
It had to happen, eventually…
Not that it’ll do much good if its data is lacking. It can barely function in Canada, and tries to over-correct like crazy as a result. For example, I and my at-the-time gf asked Siri for the phone number for “The Wine Rack” which is, as its name suggests, a wine store. What we got was Siri saying “I didn’t find any businesses matching thurst-quenching retailer.” How is that even remotely what I said? What we later discovered was that Bing had no listing for it, so Siri tried to imply context. So far Siri has never been any use outside of the US for me, though hopefully it’s better in Europe. Personally, I prefer Google Now anyway, even when I’m using iOS. It gives me what I want most of the time, and doesn’t try to pretend it has personality.
Looks good so far, I like the emphasis on bug fixing rather than new features.
Edited 2015-04-09 02:32 UTC
iOS 8.3 introduced a new bug for me, and a lot of others if Reddit and MacRumors are anything to go by.
Touch ID no longer works for the App Store, iTunes, iBooks, etc. Works fine unlocking the phone and for other apps that use Touch ID (like 1Password or Day One), but when I want to download/purchase anything from Apple’s stores, I keep getting prompted for my password. The TouchID Dialog box doesn’t even show up anymore.
Not updated OS X yet. That one’s more “mission critical” so I’ll take my sweet time.
Does anyone know whether the wifi problems that plagued Yosemite (but not previous releases) has been fixed yet?
Many were affected (see the Apple and macrumors forums for example) by wifi either crawling, dropping out constantly or just not working.
It is indicative of Apple’s priorities that:
* it left users of premium devices without basic functions needed to get real work done for 6 months
* it prioritised emojis and new photos apps over wifi
This is sad because people pay a premium for Apple, they expect it to work with fewer issues. They have control over the software and the hardware – not a luxury afforded to Windows and Linux. The deal isn’t worth it anymore – walled garden and premium prices don’t have the quality and “just works” in return.
Just look at the forums and you’ll see people who have bricked devices as a result of the OS update. Even 10 people is 10 too many when Apple have all that cash, resources, skills, to get basic OS updates as reliable if not better than Windows and Linux.
So to get real work done I’ve had to use ethernet cabling because for 6 months of Yosemite, wifi hasn’t worked on recently bought devices (macbook pro and imac).
I look at things like the Dell XPS 15 and it has a great display, great battery life, great keybaord, ok trackpad … and wonder what the case for Apple is?
What all this tells me is that Apple is now a fashion brand, not a maker of tech for getting work done.
It was fixed in the first patch release, months ago
That’s unfounded b.s. What does all the Google and Redhat engineers have on their laps? Macbook Pro’s.
That’s what I use too, along with Linux and Windows. I use all about equal time each day professionally, and I have grown a strong preference for OS X since it has a great hardware/software combination, and I have all the unix’y tools at my disposal.
Maybe that fixed things for some people, but plenty of others continued to have wifi issues, myself included.
One of the changes listed for this update is improved wifi performance and connectivity. Hopefully with this patch they really have fixed its remaining issues.
It was fixed in the first patch release, months ago “
Maybe that fixed things for some people, but plenty of others continued to have wifi issues, myself included.
One of the changes listed for this update is improved wifi performance and connectivity. Hopefully with this patch they really have fixed its remaining issues.
I’ve also had wifi problems continuing long after the first and indeed second patch releases despite re-installing the OS to a clean partition. It’s only a couple of hours use since updating but I’ve not had any cut-outs since, and I would likely have experienced them by now. (I have a MacBook Pro, 13in non-Retina.)
Bricked devices? Don’t be ridiculous. Corrupted installations, yes. Rendered unbootable, yes. But bricked? Hardly. When a device is bricked it no longer functions at all and can no longer be made to function. No PC or Mac operating system upgrade even has the ability to brick the computer on which it is installed, and the danger of that for Macs ended when the os stopped being stored in firmware back in the 90s. To brick your Mac, an EFI firmware update would have to go wrong which is certainly possible, but is an update entirely separate from the operating system.
Here is a quote from macrumors.com forums.
“”I’m having an issue getting my MacBook Air to boot after this update as well. I’ve already tried going into disk utility, selecting the greyed out MacBook HD, unlocking the drive, and repair permissions and repair disk. It still will not boot up. This sucks. 😡😡 If anyone comes up with any ideas please let me know. 😬””
The premium Apple deal is that updates don’t render your laptop unbootable. And that you don’t have to know about stuff like UEFI or unlocking disks.
There seem to be a lot of WiFi problem deniers too .. Is it Apple PR in action?
In no way does Apple guarantee that os updates won’t make your computer unbootable. In any case, your quote represents an os upgrade gone wrong. It’s inconvenient certainly, as inconvenient as it is when Windows or Linux do the very same thing. I’ll stress again, however, that his computer is not bricked. This person will need to reinstall, but that’s the worst of it. Their computer is, therefore, not a brick. Overkill such as yours only makes you look foolish.
First, I’m a long time Mac user (so no “you hate Apple b.s.” please) but also happily use other OSes, Linux mostly, with some BSD and Haiku, Android, etc. (so I’m NOT a “fanboi”, I try to be reasonably objective)
The post you replied to uses the unfortunately all too common unbootable=bricked FUD. Is unbootable bad and to be avoided, with better QA? YES. Is it as bad as bricked? NO.
Also, not sure how things stand with 10.10 (haven’t used to the point of unbootable), but with 10.4, 10.5 (and I would think the in between releases 10.6-10.9) reinstall could and in most cases does preserve home folders, apps, etc.
I point this out because I know for many Windows installs, there is no install media/partition of any sort, just for “Restore” which destroys everything on the computer from when you bought/installed originally to the present that isn’t backed up elsewhere. That this is not as often a problem on Macs even when they are unbootable may be news to someone who uses primarily/only Windows. One of the reasons I like Linux/Windows installs with separate OS/data partitions is to get most of the same benefit, but Macs can do it with only 1 partition, cause you know, better designed installer 🙂
P.S. In your prior post you mention Macs with OS in firmware? I assume you mean Open Firmware Powermacs. Unless I totally misunderstand, no part of Mac OS has resided in firmware, more like the opposite. Code found in firmware on Old World Macs, and not updatable/fixable was later (New World) moved to a Mac OS ROM file on disk, cause they were too cheap to retrofit writable eeproms into the hardware on the old beasts.
That’ll be news to the thousands of people who I see attended technical conferences with nothing Macbooks. It’s good to know none of us have been getting work done.
Yes, they’re great for coding on, although some of my colleagues use external keyboards.
Unlike iPhoto, it looks like Apple have made Photos a mandatory part of the installation. Trying to delete it from the applications folder generates the same “required by OS X” error message as stuff like iTunes and App Store.
I’m sure it’s possible to bypass that restriction and remove it manually with a bit of effort, but there’s no guarantee that wouldn’t screw something up.
It’s not a large piece of software, but I still prefer to minimise the amount of unused crapware cluttering up my MacBook’s less than massive flash storage…
They did sneak some feautures but mostly to new account creation from iCloud (or at least I wasn’t aware)
I think the biggest issue with OS X is FileVault. Unless your file system is perfect, it will cause some serious glitches and issues. Mavericks and Yosemite have caused me to reinstall on most updates.
While hard to replicate 100% and the errors happen a couple of days after, it is very annoying that they don’t have any other suggestions than what I figured: have a backup and reinstall from scratch.
In their defense, I’ve never been able to enable full disk EFS in windows. I just don’t have TPM enabled software or my disks are too big and it hangs while encrypting.