Apple could have displayed all iPhone apps in settings:cellular whether or not the app uses any data. Then we could disable cellular data access without having to first use data.
They didn’t. Apps only show up there after they use cellular data.
This is really annoying when trying to stay under the data cap of #2’s $40/year mobile plan. It also confuses the heck out of customers.
I don’t think this will get fixed those. Apple’s technical debt fix list is deeper than Valles Marineris.
Today one of the family iPhones died. I went to remove it from our quota of devices (you can have a maximum of 10 devices associated with a family account) in iTunes Mange Devices.
I couldn’t.
There’s a 90 day time limit to change associations, which I don’t recall being enforced for removal, but here you go…
Except it’s not 90 days, because the grayed out non-removable devices were associated as long ago as May 2016.
Things are broken in two ways.
1. What does Apple want us to do with a wiped or lost or broken device?
2. The items I can’t remove are years old.
PS. Yeah, I hate Apple too. But really, everybody does.
Update: I reviewed Apple’s support document. If you have a working device you can remove the device from the DRM control list — but only through one very obscure screen. Logging out of iTunes doesn’t do it. Otherwise device removal requires iTunes, which, for me yesterday, showed this error.
Today I rechecked, and all the devices with “1 day remaining” are still “1 day remaining”. It’s broken.
Once this type of blunder would have been a bit of a deal, but now we’re so numbed by Apple’s quality collapse even I can’t put much energy into it. All the money in the world can’t replace culture, and Apple’s culture is broken.
Update: Added to Apple Discussions, asked @AppleSupport on Twitter.
Update 3/23/2018. On my second Apple Support call the “Senior Advisor” and I found a fix. We think iTunes, or the database it accesses, is broken/deprecated. From my Apple Discussion post:
We have a fix. On my second try with Support I called iCloud support and was escalated to the "Senior Advisor" level. Andrew and I worked the problem and found that you now need to work with https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage. There's now a section called Devices that lists devices signed into. In my case it listed all 10 devices that use the same iTunes Apple ID, so by "signed in" it means "signed in with Apple ID for iTunes/DRM".
Click on device and you get a remove option. If the device is in use and signed in then it may reappear. You can restore a device that you have removed by signing out of the iTunes Apple ID, then signing back in again.
The iTunes Manage Devices (Account:View My Account:iTunes in the Cloud:Manage Devices) screen did not update after doing this, it still showed the device I removed. I think it’s mostly broken. (Mostly, because I was able from there to sign my iPhone 8 out of iTunes and that reenabled the Remove button, albeit with the broken ‘1 day remaining’ screen, and after signing it back in the Remove button is still active.)
PS. It’s not clear if Apple is still using the 90 day limit for switching Apple IDs. It doesn’t show up in the new iCloud UI.
PPS. Maybe iTunes in the Cloud is using a different database than iCloud to manage DRM, and that the two databases are supposed to synchronize. The iTunes database may be on the way out, so it didn’t get updated when it needed to be…
This is one heck of a time saver. Didn’t realize Google Docs allowed this.
I’m far from a WordPress expert. I’m not even a WordPress fan — it’s too complex and powerful for what I do. That complexity means it is also very vulnerable to attack.
So take what I write here with some doubt.
As best I can tell the default Dreamhost One-Click installation of WordPress has an error. At least it did for me. My hpmtb.org site was giving 404 errors. I installed the Redirection plugin and it wasn’t doing anything.
A blog post had a fix that worked for me. I used Transmit for macOS to open the install folders .htaccess file and added this code:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
The 404 error is gone now and I suspect the Redirection plugin will work if I need it. I have a hunch that using “pretty permalinks” (not the default of “id=“) might also fix this file — based on some documentation here:
WordPress uses this file to manipulate how Apache serves files from its root directory, and subdirectories thereof. Most notably, WP modifies this file to be able to handle pretty permalinks.
This page may be used to restore a corrupted .htaccess file (e.g. a misbehaving plugin).
Did I mention that WordPress is too complicated?
After that I revisited MMGuardian. Things there are almost as bad. They haven’t implemented password security on their MDM profile; the vendor claims Apple doesn’t support the functions they rely on with a locked profile.
I also learned that MMGuardian’s primary app control, which is to hide all non-default apps, also deletes their folder and icon arrangements. So when they are restored they are no longer in their original locations.
MMGuardian can’t report on device usage, probably because it doesn’t have a VPN option.
Lastly, while MMGuardian can hide Safari, that’s a binary setting. It can’t schedule Safari to be active or disabled the way it can schedule other apps.
In my 2016 review Qustodio and MMGuardian were the only candidates to meet basic requirements. As of 2018 there are no longer any useable iOS parental control applications.
So now we wait to see if Jana Partners and the California State Teachers Retirement System can push Tim Cook to add remote MDM to iCloud. I doubt they’ll succeed. Next it’s up to the EU.
Update: Apple introduced a Family page and branded it as doing something in the general direction of supporting vulnerable users. That’s not a positive sign.
I did a review of Qustodio’s parental control product for iOS on my special needs blog. It wasn’t a positive review. The product routes all traffic through their VPN — and the VPN can’t handle SSL traffic. That might have been acceptable in 2010, but it won’t work today.
I’m feeling grumpy about the time I spent finding this out — not to mention the $10/month subscription I paid for. The lost time was the bigger deal though. The reviews I’d read led me to think the base product worked, so I spent time checking out other features.
Qustodio must know about the SSL issues, but they’re continuing to sell the service. That’s not nice.
iOS 11 Podcasts.app isn’t as broken as iTunes mediated iPad photo transfer or the US government, but it’s not far behind. The current version is not intended to be used with iTunes. It is designed for people who listen to Podcasts they way we used to listen to radio. Pick a podcast or collection of podcasts (a “station”) and stream it over always-on cellular.
That’s not how I listen to Podcasts. I select a topic of interest and learn from it. I used to use iTunes to organize my subscriptions and local stores; smart and manual playlists queued up my programs. In iOS 11 Apple broke all that.
Here’s what I do now.
I disabled iCloud sync in both iTunes and iOS.
In iTunes I select about 10-20 episodes from my queue. I push them to my iPhone from iTunes. In Podcasts.app I enable the ‘Downloaded’ episodes menu. That’s all I use now. I pick episodes off that queue. One at a time, because play-next doesn’t work any more. iOS Podcasts.app deletes an episode after I listen. Every week or so I add another 10-20.
It’s very simple, it’s very stupid, it’s Apple 2017.
