And It Just Works. Except When It Doesn’t (Premium)

Apple is rightly praised for the high quality of its hardware and the strength of its digital ecosystem. But Apple doesn’t always get it right. I’m sure many Apple fans view these mistakes as exceptions, but there are so many examples. Sometimes “think different” isn’t “think better.” It’s just wrong.

Stupidly, all these issues feel avoidable to me. Some feel purposeful, like Apple’s almost antagonist push to make sense of its broken butterfly keyboards across too many years and too many Mac products. But others are just foolish. And in the worst cases–the three issues that impacted me during my current trip to Mexico City–it’s just bad design. A criticism one should never be able to make against Apple.

To be clear, these are all current issues. I’m not going nostalgic here, holding a grudge because the original iMac mouse was like a bar of non-ergonomic soap. No, these are all 2024 issues, what I think of as “now problems.”

Indeed, two of them are less than a week old. They’re each minor in their own way, but because these are both new hardware releases, they’re problems that Apple fans will be dealing with for the next several years.

Mac mini (2024)

The new Mac mini has been widely praised for its impressive components, fun new smaller size, and reasonable pricing. But Apple can’t not be Apple: Despite this device’s perfect VESA-mount possibilities, the company went back to the “form over function” well and put the new Mac mini’s power button on its bottom, rather than marring its smooth exterior. It would have been so easy, and so right, for Apple to have made the Mac mini conform to the needs of this standard, but Apple doesn’t do that kind of thing. And so we’ll soon be swimming in third-party VESA mounts that will overcome this weirdness in unique ways that only add unnecessary cost and complexity. Apple fans point to this inevitability as a justification or rationalization for the device’s pointlessly poor design because of course they do.

Magic Mouse

Of course, the Mac mini isn’t the only Apple hardware to suffer from the “think different” disease when it comes to power. Some Apple Pencil models raise eyebrows because of the weirdness of their USB-C requirements, though that form factor makes it at least somewhat understandable. But when Apple released its second-generation Magic Mouse back in 2015, it didn’t just learn nothing about ergonomics from that first iMac mouse, it also added a Lightning charging port (good) but put it on the bottom (bad) for the same reason the new Mac mini’s power button is on its bottom: It couldn’t stand to mar the design of the device. As problematic, the Magic Mouse can’t be used while it’s charging. Well, Apple released a new USB-C Magic Mouse last week. And yep, the power port is still on the bottom. The only thing worse than a bad design is a decade-old bad design, I guess.

My year with Apple

I spent an inordinate amount of time this year testing Apple products, after spending an inordinate amount of money buying them. I spent thousands of dollars on a new MacBook Air M3 this past March, and then I followed that up with new AirPods Pro 2 earbuds, a 13-inch iPad Air M2, four HomePod smart speakers (two full-sized and two minis), and a pair of Beats Studio Pro headphones. Of this hardware, only Beats got the software right: These headphones work as good with non-Apple devices (Windows PCs, Android phones) as they do with Apple’s. In fact, I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere. If history is any guide, it’s a lesson Apple will continue to ignore.

iPadOS

In any event, one of my big hopes heading into WWDC was that Apple would wake up and finally give the iPad line the technical acumen it needs to compete head-to-head with computer-based OSes like macOS and Windows. Yes, some people can get work done on iPads now, and do. But with just a few tweaks, iPadOS could be a solution for a far bigger audience. It’s so close.

Nope: Apple announced iPadOS as expected at WWDC in June, and Apple talked up a lot of Apple Intelligence stuff, most of which we’re still waiting on. But Apple also neglected (or refused) to unleash the iPad, or even just the iPad Pro. There was just a single functional improvement of the type I believe this platform needs–you can now use the Files app to mark individual files so that they’re always available offline–but no improvements to Stage Manager or side-by-side apps, no Mission Control, and, most crucially, no true multitasking with background tasks. If an iPad Pro user is exporting video with Final Cut Pro and switches to Mail (or whatever) to catch up on something else, the export stops. Come on.

I overspent on my iPad Air this year just in case, but this has proven to be a mistake. In addition to it being limited largely to consumption tasks, this tablet is too big to use comfortably. Had the new iPad mini been available when I was ready to upgrade, things might have gone differently. But it wasn’t. And now I’m stuck with this behemoth, a thing too large for the tasks I use it for, and a thing incapable of performing the productivity tasks it could do if Apple would just set it free. Ah well.

macOS

That said, even Apple’s flagship desktop OS, macOS, has usability issues that I feel are negligent bordering on malignant. I wrote about this one to some depth in Apple MacBook Air 15-Inch M3: Fun with Multitasking and then The Missing Pieces of the Puzzle (Premium), but the short version is that macOS multitasking is inconsistent, incomplete, and inept, and this is the rare area where Windows is simpler, more consistent, and superior. To make macOS work that well, you need to add third-party utilities and make some very specific configuration changes. But you’ll never be able to reconcile why this crucial system capability works so poorly. It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Now, you may argue that what I’m describing across iPad and Mac there represents some spectrum of use cases, and that Apple purposefully dumbs down the iPod to make life easier on the unsophisticated mass market while keeping the Mac firmly in the power user camp: Customers bothered by the multitasking issues I’ve identified are technical enough to solve them. And there’s some truth to that, or at least some rationalization. I’m sure Apple does what it does for … reasons.

But I think even Apple’s biggest fans would agree that issue that impact “normal” users, that unsophisticated mass market, are less forgivable. That this is where Apple’s “it just works” mantra would come into play most obviously, and most broadly. And yet. I have issues with some products that should be much simpler to configure and use. They are related to each other, but are also not the same problem. More importantly, they are inexcusable.

AirPods Pro 2

The first is my AirPods Pro 2, which I purchased back in March. They do a terrific job of switching from device to device, assuming those devices all bear an Apple logo, of course. And this means, I can–and do–move from Mac to iPad to iPhone and back again in any order, and the AirPods move to whichever audio source I’m currently using. It works every time. It is impressive.

But Apple surprised us all in September when it revealed new features–Hearing Test, Hearing Aid, and Hearing Protection–for the AirPods Pro 2 at its iPhone event rather than introducing a new AirPods Pro 3 model. That’s nice, but you can’t just “upgrade” AirPods Pro 2, or any AirPods, to get those capabilities or any other updates. There’s no AirPods app, or AirPods utility in the Settings app on your Apple devices. There’s nothing.

Here’s how Apple describes the process.

“Firmware updates are delivered automatically while your AirPods are charging and in Bluetooth range of your iPhone, iPad, or Mac that’s connected to Wi-Fi. You can also use your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to check that your AirPods have the latest version.”

This sounds like “it just works.” But that’s not how it works. It just works … sometimes. More often than not, I’ve done as Apple suggests, and I’ve never gotten the latest firmware update. I charge the earbuds. I keep them next to my iPhone and iPad. I check the firmware version–you can do that and that alone using the Settings app on any Apple device, yes. But it’s not up-to-date. There’s no “Update Software” button. Even Apple TV has that.

As I was writing this, I woke up my iPhone, opened Settings, and navigated to Bluetooth > AirPods Pro 2 to check the firmware version number. It reported it as 7A305. That’s not the latest version, not the version that delivers those new features. That version is 7B19, and it was released a week ago alongside iOS 18.1. I’ve charged the iPhone every night since then, and the AirPods have been on the charger for the duration. But nothing yet. I guess the pixie dust will reach me eventually.

HomePod, HomePod mini

The second issue is HomePod. Here, Apple does provide a way to upgrade to the latest firmware version, you do that in the Home app on iPhone, iPad, or (I assume) Mac. Apple also provides multiple ways to reset a HomePod, and one of them doesn’t even require another Apple device (like an iPhone or iPad). Most incredibly, Apple even provides a way to factory reset a HomePod using Windows, if you can believe that. It’s almost like Apple looked at the problems with AirPods updating and decided they were going to fix it with HomePod.

Or it would be if any of it just worked.

When HomePod works, it works well. You can stereo pair two with Apple TV, which was my goal in the first place, and they come on immediately when you fire up the Apple TV (which, in turn, fires up my TV too). This was the issue I’d had with a Sonos soundbar, and the full-sized HomePods I use at home have worked consistently well. The two HomePod minis I purchased for Mexico City, likewise, work consistently well there, though I’ve only been using them for about a week.

Which is the problem, in a nutshell. We’ve been in Mexico City for five weeks, but the HomePod minis have only worked for one week. How is that?

There are almost too many issues here to count.

When the full-sized HomePods arrived over the summer, back in Pennsylvania, they had been sitting in their boxes for several months and needed software updates. No problem: This is easily handled via the Home app on iPhone or iPad, as noted. But once those software updates were done, I wanted to configure them as a stereo pair and connect them to the Apple TV. But the Home app would have none of that: It reported that both HomePods were “being configured.” While this is happening, you can’t do much with them, but wait. But they would never finish configuring.

If you Google this, you’ll discover what I discovered. This is a common problem. A very, very common problem. And there are all these stories, theories, really, about the ways you can solve this problem. But none of them work. Your only recourse, really, is to keep resetting the HomePod and pray, pray that one of those times what you do will work. You can reset a HomePod from the Home app. Or you can factory reset it using a variety of methods, one of which is a comical “hold your finger down on its top for what feels like several minutes” until you get the expected sequence of colored swirls and beeping sounds. A sequence that often never occurs properly, forcing you to try, try again.

I was semi-traumatized by this experience with the full-sized HomePods. But at least there, at home, I had access to a Mac, my MacBook Air, and one of the other ways you can factory reset a HomePod is to plug it directly into a Mac (or, go figure, a PC, more on that in a moment). And it was this method that finally worked, after several attempts. I factor reset each HomePod in turn, reapplying the latest firmware update, and then I’d unplug it from the Mac, plug it into power, set it up like a new HomePod using the Home app on my iPhone or iPad–I tried both, because this is Black Magic and you never know–and then hope for the best. Several times it did not work–the HomePod was stuck on “being configured”–and then one time, finally, it would work. In the end, I got both up and running and then stereo paired, and then linked to the Apple TV. This took two full days.

Two days. To configure speakers. “It just works,” my ass.

But it did, of course, work … in the end. It just took a while. And as noted, once I had gone through that horrible process, they worked seamlessly with the Apple TV. And that experience was good enough that I decided to pull the trigger and buy two smaller (and less expensive) HomePod mini speakers for Mexico, where we also have an Apple TV. An Apple TV that, to that point, had been inelegantly paired with a Bluetooth speaker that required me to manually turn it on and off each time we watched TV.

I bought the two minis ahead of the trip to Mexico City, and in the US, for two reasons. One, electronics are a lot less expensive in the U.S. so this would save me about $50. And two, given my previous experience with the full-sized HomePods, I wanted to get this one right and configure them ahead of the trip. They’re small enough that I could just toss them in my luggage and not worry about it.

I also made sure to get the latest HomePod mini so that it would arrive with the latest firmware. I don’t think we wrote about this since it’s such an uneventful story, but in July, Apple replaced its Space Gray HomePod mini with a “new” Midnight color HomePod mini that looks identical to its predecessor but is made with a 100 percent recycled mesh fabric covering. Exciting, right? But I was hoping these mini speakers would just work, and when they arrived, I set them up as I had previously with their bigger siblings. And this time I had a completely different experience. They did just work. Finally.

HomePod mini, take two

When it was time to travel, I packed up the HomePod mini speakers, flew with them to Dallas for a work event, and then flew with them again to Mexico City. It was October 3. 32 days ago. Over a month ago.

The next day, I pulled the bins with all my electronics out of the closet and started setting up my home office here. And I plugged in the HomePod minis to get them configured for this place. As you may know if you Apple devices and the Home app, Apple lets you configure multiple locations, called homes, in the Home app. And so I have two, one called Macungie and one called Roma Norte. The minis were configured for Macungie, of course, so I just needed to move them to Roma Norte. This would be easy.

This would not be easy. There is no way to move a connected device in the Home app between homes. You have to remove the device from its original home. And then configure it from scratch for the new home. OK, I thought. That should be easy enough. I stereo-unpaired the minis–you have to do that first–and then removed each from Macungie. And then I … hm. They were just gone.

OK, no problem. I would just reset them and then add them to Roma Norte, as I had done originally in Pennsylvania. And without getting into the weeds here, suffice to say this did not work. I tried multiple ways, as I had with the full-sized speakers in PA. They would reset, I would reconfigure them as if new. And they would get stuck on “being configured” every time. I let them sit for over 24 hours. Nope. Nothing worked.

In Googling this yet again, I rediscovered that you can use Windows to factory reset a HomePod, as you can a Mac. The difference is that you have to download the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store. Then, you plug the HomePod into the PC and … it complains that the USB port isn’t getting enough power. This seemed like a solvable problem, but after trying every USB port on several different PCs and getting the same error message, I just used my Anker 555 USB-C hub in an octopus-like configuration using an external power source, and that got the HomePod powered up and appearing in the app. And so I would reset it that way.

Sorry, just kidding. I would try to reset the HomePods that way. It never worked, not even once. I tried this with every PC I have here in Mexico, and always had the same results. Either it would just keep going—I once let it go for over 24 hours–or it would fail with an error message. In time, I had screwed up the minis so bad that the standalone reset method, where you power up the speaker while holding your finger down on its top for minutes at a time, stopped working too. In time, I had killed both speakers. They were dead in the water.

When we were preparing for this trip, I had some decisions to make. Among them was which devices I’d bring. I brought two review laptops with me, in the end, and my Surface Laptop 7, which I specifically brought because Microsoft said I’d be able to test Recall in October. (On the last day of the month, it said, “Just kidding” and delayed that test until December. So hooray for that.) What I did not bring was my MacBook Air. And based on my previous experience, I felt that if I had had the Mac with me, I’d be able to reset the speakers and figure this out. But I didn’t have it here. It was over 2,000 miles away. And we weren’t going home until the third week of November.

You know that feeling of inevitability, where the world is closing in on you and there’s no way out? I was starting to see this version of my life in which I had flown to Mexico with these two stupid speakers and would then fly home, seven weeks later, with them again. But I was also thinking about possible fixes. There’s an Apple Store in Polanco, in Mexico City, not super convenient but a possibility. Perhaps I could just buy HomePod minis here, at the local department store, and then return the broken ones. Or … wait a second.

“Does Cynthia use a Mac?” I asked my wife, Cynthia being a neighbor and friend in the building. She wasn’t sure, obviously, but she asked. She does. Could Paul borrow it? He could. But Cynthia uses the Mac for work, so it would have to happen after 5 pm. No problem.

On October 7, she stopped by with her 13-inch MacBook Pro, a version with the Touchbar, and watched while I plugged in the first HomePod mini. It worked without requiring the USB hub setup, and it came right up. I factory reset it, this first time requiring a big firmware download. Cynthia had to go, so she left me with the Mac, and I factory reset the second mini, being careful not to let the Mac time out, as I don’t know her sign-in. And that worked too.

Cynthia came over to pick up her Mac later that night. I thanked her, and I set out to bring up the HomePods as if they were new. I got one working, and pretty quickly. But the second just wouldn’t work correctly. I went through all the same issues as always, and it never worked. Worse, the speaker that did work wouldn’t even connect to–or even “see”–the Apple TV. I tried workarounds suggested by my searches online, one of which involved creating yet another home in the Home app, temporarily. I moved my Apple TV and the one working HomePod mini to that home … and that did work, oddly. But the second one was toast.

The days turned into weeks. I removed the Apple TV and HomePod from the new home, and they stopped working together. We watched TV, using the old USB speaker for sound. And I fumed. Cynthia went away for a week, so her Mac was unavailable. I kept trying to reset the speaker with what I had. We looked at the HomePod minis for sale at the local department store, but I wanted to wait, and figured I could get our existing speakers working, somehow. We never did go to the Apple Store. I would have. But in the interim, a thought occurred.

We have two Wi-Fi networks in Mexico City, the one that comes with our Internet provider’s router and the Wi-Fi 6E-based mesh network I added using Eero equipment. I don’t want two networks, but I can’t get into the router’s firmware and turn it off. So we have two. And they seem to work fine, despite my worries about interference.

We use the Eero network for everything. But the Apple TV is plugged into the router using Ethernet. And so I finally wondered, in late October, whether this was part of the problem. And so I put my iPhone on the router-based Wi-Fi, reset the one semi-working speaker yet again, and this time, it came up properly. It could see the Apple TV and pair with it. So I had one working HomePod mini, which I put under the TV where the old USB speaker had been. It worked, it sounded fine, and it was better than nothing.

Cynthia got back from her trip, and she came up to our apartment on October 29, almost four weeks after we’d arrived here. I plugged the non-working speaker into her MacBook Pro, it came up immediately, and I reset it. I figured that was it. But when I unplugged it and powered it up normally, it wasn’t working correctly, wasn’t displaying the right colored swirls. Uh-oh, maybe I had killed it. But I tried again, figuring what the heck. And for whatever reason, the second factory reset, using Cynthia’s Mac, worked. This time, it came up normally. I configured it with the Home app on my iPhone, and stereo paired it with the first mini. The two are now sitting under our TV, working normally and like nothing had ever happened. Mocking me.

I cannot tell you how many times I tried to reset both speakers between October 3 and October 29. It was dozens of times, at least. All I can tell you is that it never once worked in Windows, no matter which PC I used. Not once. That Apple Devices app is a crock of shit.

All I know is that the entire month it took me to get this working was a nightmare. And that while some of this was user error–I should have figured out the Wi-Fi thing earlier, that’s a weird one–the bigger issue is Apple’s crappy software. For all its vaunted design prowess, this stuff is horrible. Even when it does sort of work. What the frick is this “being configured” error that Apple has never fixed? That’s been happening to HomePod users for years. It’s inexcusable.

This is a lot of words. Sorry. But as I wrapped this up, I took a look at the AirPods interface in the Settings app, as I’ve done each day over the past week, to see whether that firmware ever updated. I’m resigned to the futility of what I do as a modern-day Sisyphus, I guess. (And it’s not just Apple, of course: I spent months waiting for Android 15 to come to my Pixel recently as well.) Each day, I’ve looked. Each day, it’s been stuck on 7A305. It’s like a fun little game we play. A game I always lose.

So I looked again.

It says 7B19. I might have rubbed my eyed. This can’t be real. But it is. The firmware update finally installed. I don’t know why. I just know that it finally happened, after 7 days of trying. A little miracle in this sea of discontent.

Unbelievable.