While I generally enjoy using my various Apple devices, there are some major pain points and endless minor papercuts that I run into every day. Some of these would be understandable, even acceptable, in the v1 of a given service/app but instead of being fixed, they linger for years, untouched by the glacial yearly OS update1 .
For a while I considered collecting them up to write a detailed blog post on them but instead I’m going to just publish them as I run into them.
Today’s grievance is a small annoyance in Find My (Apple app/service for tracking people/things). I share my location with a number of friends/family and my #1 use-case is “How far out is person X?” so that I can plan around that. Should I put the dogs up? Should I set the table? Do I have time to finish something before they arrive?
As with many Apple papercuts, it’s something that sort of/mostly works. It works just well enough to show you how good it could be, before immediately disappointing you.
When I tap on a person in Find My it loads a card with more information including how many miles away they are and the estimated drive time. Perfect! It’s exactly what I want, blog post over, all is well!
Except… They show the drive time for approximately 5 seconds or less then it disappears for no discernible reason.
Why Apple? Why do you show me a very helpful “2 min” and then take it away? Why calculate it at all if you are only going to show it once, briefly?2
I’d file a Feedback, but I worry they would “fix” it by removing the time estimate entirely. Then again, submitting a Feedback is about as effective as shouting into the void. It would be closed when then next OS shipped with a “please recheck”, or they’d ask for a sample project without reading the report.
Do better Apple.
- Yes, I know they release multiple minor point releases throughout the year but that seems to be more focused on just shipping, almost, everything promised in WWDC/iPhone Launch than fixing bugs or improving existing apps. In “recent” (10+) years, Apple seems to find it acceptable to abandon the attention to detail that first attracted me to their platforms. ↩︎
- Yes, I know I can tap on the “Directions” to open their location in Apple Maps which then will show the distance. That’s what I do every time, but why? They clearly can show on the main page, why only show it for 5 seconds? ↩︎
Josh Strange 