Apple strikes again! Who do they think they are? !!!!!

[Dave2002]

I set up our newest iMac with a couple of users. I am the admin.

The other user is not an admin - but now wants to become one - which is OK by me.

So now I go to System Preferences - Users & Groups and try to change the password for the other user.

Wonderful .....

In one of the updates to Catalina Apple managed to screw this up..... it might appear ...

Other users have complained and/or looked for solutions to this. I know that Apple thinks it can look after our kit better than we can ourselves, but this is really the pits!

[Frances_iom]

..I know that Apple thinks it can look after our kit better than we can ourselves, but this is really the pits!

and such will continue whilst people like you buy the kit and then complain - stop buying and maybe you will get to actually own your expensive purchases - reminds me of the old Methodist dictum re chapels "we own the pulpits - the congregation own the debts"

[french frank]

So now I go to System Preferences - Users & Groups and try to change the password for the other user.

Wonderful .....

Just out of interest, what happens when you go to System Preferences and try to change the password for the other user? Don't you have to set up a new administrator account?

[Dave2002]

and such will continue whilst people like you buy the kit and then complain - stop buying and maybe you will get to actually own your expensive purchases - reminds me of the old Methodist dictum re chapels "we own the pulpits - the congregation own the debts"

Yes - yes - yes - but I live in the real world.

What are people to do? Buy Apple - which may have the problems you mention, or Windows PCs which may not have quite the same problems, but probably a whole bunch of other ones. Oh - yes - then there's Unix and Linux. Most people aren't going to use them either - though I do use Linux from time to time.

[Dave2002]

Just out of interest, what happens when you go to System Preferences and try to change the password for the other user? Don't you have to set up a new administrator account?

Very odd. I went to do a Chat with an Apple Help agent who was very helpful. In order to answer his questions to me I went over the same actions as I did before, but this time they worked. I thought he might have tweaked something at his end, but apparently he didn't.

So it looks like some form of glitch - perhaps me - perhaps the system.

Let's hope that everything now works as I'd intended. I'll leave the password as it was before - but the account is now showing as an admin.

On this occasion I owe Apple an apology!

[french frank]

Very odd. I went to do a Chat with an Apple Help agent who was very helpful. In order to answer his questions to me I went over the same actions as I did before, but this time they worked. I thought he might have tweaked something at his end, but apparently he didn't.

Like when you take the car to the garage with some fault which immediately disappears when you want to demonstrate it to the mechanic. Except that as soon as you get home again …

[Anastasius]

They always have been a bit of a bully boy. Several lifetimes ago when the Apple II first came out, I and a business partner (in retrospect naively) set up a small computer manufacturing company. No Windows then. No IBM PCs. We felt that from many perspectives by the time one had added a decent screen, a hard drive, maybe a card to run CP/M that all the paraphernalia was a bit clunky and not easily transportable as a unit. So we bought cases from Peerless Foam Mouldings and installed a screen, a hard drive, a legitimate Apple II mother board, a CP/M Z80 card and floppy disk drive. I even designed a dedicated keyboard on the end of a long curly-wurly cable. An elegant solution. Just two pieces of kit. Easily transportable. Lot of people liked it.

Then we got a Cease and Desist letter from Apple which we thought was rather unfair as they weren't losing any money. But we were small. They were big. A year or so later, guess what they came out with ? The Lisa.

[Bryn]

They always have been a bit of a bully boy. Several lifetimes ago when the Apple II first came out, I and a business partner (in retrospect naively) set up a small computer manufacturing company. No Windows then. No IBM PCs. We felt that from many perspectives by the time one had added a decent screen, a hard drive, maybe a card to run CP/M that all the paraphernalia was a bit clunky and not easily transportable as a unit. So we bought cases from Peerless Foam Mouldings and installed a screen, a hard drive, a legitimate Apple II mother board, a CP/M Z80 card and floppy disk drive. I even designed a dedicated keyboard on the end of a long curly-wurly cable. An elegant solution. Just two pieces of kit. Easily transportable. Lot of people liked it.

Then we got a Cease and Desist letter from Apple which we thought was rather unfair as they weren't losing any money. But we were small. They were big. A year or so later, guess what they came out with ? The Lisa.

Somehow, I am not at all surprised at that. They did not get where they are today without crushing potential competition or purloining others' innovations.

[Dave2002]

Then we got a Cease and Desist letter from Apple which we thought was rather unfair as they weren't losing any money. But we were small. They were big. A year or so later, guess what they came out with ? The Lisa.

Which IIRC was a rip off/copy initially from a Xerox experimental machine.

Microsoft OTOH only copied/ripped off parts of Unix - and did it rather badly - with MS DOS when they got involved in the IBM PC.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just upgraded my iPhone 5s to ios12. The battery running down faster than water down a sink. Put it on lo power and deleted WhatsApp (apparently a battery hungry app) to see if it makes any difference ...

[Bryn]

Which IIRC was a rip off/copy initially from a Xerox experimental machine.

Microsoft OTOH only copied/ripped off parts of Unix - and did it rather badly - with MS DOS when they got involved in the IBM PC.

https://www.howtogeek.com/441599/is-macos-unix-and-what-does-that-mean/

Though how anyone can be accused of ripping off UNIX, given its provenance and legal status, is questionable.

[Dave2002]

https://www.howtogeek.com/441599/is-...oes-that-mean/

Though how anyone can be accused of ripping off UNIX, given its provenance and legal status, is questionable.

I don't think that's questionable at all. However, I can leave it there.

In the meantime Apple seem to have "improved" an aspect of MacOS by making it worse. I thought I was imagining it, but now I suspect not.

There used to be a file mode which combined an image with a list - so you could have a list of image files, and one selected one would appear in a pane above the list. That doesn't seem to work any more, so now we have Gallery View and List View, but the previous viewing mode which showed details of files, as well as images, does not seem to be available now.

The consequence of this is that one has to hunt around between different views of the same list of files to find ones which are actually the ones to use. Great!

Or did I miss something?

Ah - I see what they've done. The image now appears to the right of the list, rather than above it - in the Columns View.

Is that an improvement? I'm not sure - but I don't like it much. Maybe I'll get used to it.

It is still necessary to use the List View to get other details of each file, such as file size, date of creation etc. I can't see why the List View couldn't also show a preview of the image and that would often be more useful.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes - yes - yes - but I live in the real world.

What are people to do? Buy Apple - which may have the problems you mention, or Windows PCs which may not have quite the same problems, but probably a whole bunch of other ones. Oh - yes - then there's Unix and Linux. Most people aren't going to use them either - though I do use Linux from time to time.

I don't live in the real world. I still use my 1995 Acorn Risc PC 700, which never goes wrong, boots up and processes at lightning speed. Meanwhile, my Toshiba Windows 10 laptop and my huge Apple iMac desktop both cause me constant frustration. Despite the much faster processers, the newer machines can be nauseatingly slow.