Mastodon Posts (@recursivegeek)

Oh Apple, your iOS/iPadOS platform has gotten too completed with all the Notification settings. Recently, there was an issue with people seeing me as “Notifications Silenced” in Messages. All of my devices, despite Silent Mode being off, didn’t have any sounds coming through. The “fix” was to turn on a focus mode (DND) and then turn it back off. Poof! Sounds back on and “Notifications Silenced” off.

What does iOS Outlook have to make it difficult (or impossible) to add images with transparent backgrounds to signatures? On top of no support to move an appointment to another account due to accidental incorrect selection?

I'm looking to replace an HP Printer from 2010 due to misfeeding on the second page. Wow, printers today are disliked. And they're not simple. Some are single-band Wi-Fi, and some require chips with cartridges. Too much time is required to research.

New Microsoft Teams on Windows Pro 11 (32GB RAM, 12th gen i7-1255U) started out strong and more agile than old Teams, but for the last two or three weeks, it has been running the CPU hard, causing 100% utilization across all cores and significant fan usage. Audio is jittery, and multitasking is slow.

The Big Door Prize, an Apple TV original, a company who pushes privacy, and a show that asks for a social security number and hand prints via a mystery machine. Umm… grooming for scamming? Interesting show until then. Then ick factor.

It is too bad that Azure App Service access to Azure SQL is so painful, if not impossible, to be service principal-based, eliminating the need for connection strings with username and password. Unlike App Services with Azure KeyVault, which is well done.

Copilot (Chat GPT4) is great when it is helpful and frustrating when it is not. I use it for coding. It does spawn ideas, but it also just makes stuff up. Whaaa?! The latest was presuming "az sql", part of the Azure CLI, could assign permissions. When asked why it didn't work, it confessed that it doesn't exist. 🤪

I wanted to like the Apple Podcasts app with iOS 17.x. It is just so clunky with a bunch of podcasts. Too limited on management. I tried and liked Overcast and Castro, but I use video (tricked with Castro with its sideloading demo show video with TED). I am back to Pocket Casts. While not perfect, its "up next" tailoring and download management suits me best.

This seems like a barrier for usability of Copilot for Microsoft 365 (or in general) 🤪:

“Preordered” the Snapdragon® X Elite Compute Platform (essentially just a list - hopefully can order soon since availability is June 18). I am looking forward to comparing this to my i9 NUC with Windows 11 x64 and Apple M2 Parallels running Windows 11 on ARM. qualcomm.com/support/contact/f

So which single app should I use for OneDrive on iOS? The OneDrive App doesn’t support multi-select. The Microsoft 365 (Office) app does, but only to delete files, not move them. OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 (Office) apps all allow access to SharePoint libraries. Sigh to the “mess”.

It is 2024, and Outlook iOS still cannot move an appointment between accounts. Apple Mail on iOS can. I would move over to Outlook Mobile if this existed. But it doesn't, so I can't. Yes, I make the mistake of putting an appointment on the wrong calendar, often because I need to do it quickly, or Siri gets it wrong. Instead, I am "stuck" with the iOS Calendar as I will only use one program per device to minimize configuration and support, especially with credentials that need regular updating.

Whoa - this morning, with New Teams on Windows 11, Microsoft Presenter+ is working again!

Microsoft Presenter+

Microsoft, when is OneNote for iOS going to support setting the display name for a notebook like the Windows app does? 😶

Microsoft Loop has some nice features. A favorite that isn't available in OneNote is code snippets and selecting the type of code for color coding. An annoyance is cover "hogging" typically being too tall. Other major issues are the lack of writing support, and limited page organization (grouping). Why loop? Because pasting content from OneNote into Teams message is so annoying!

The introduction of Amazon ads, unless one pays an additional $2.99, leaves a bad taste. It is vindictive. We already pay for Amazon Prime. We spend to get that free or quick shipping. Since then, I have stopped streaming (even before ads started to appear) their content unless it is a movie I purchased. It isn't about the money. It is about their greed, their penalizing customer loyalty and not focusing on generating profits through service improvements, such as searching within Amazon.

Wishing Apple Books had tagging to organize content beyond collections. If collections are to be the only way to organize, then how about folders to allow collections to be organized as the number grows? Or, even better, both! 😆

I have experienced the Apple iPhone alarm failure issue. It appears I am not alone, which hopefully will find a solution. Volume wasn’t the issue. It just didn’t make a sound despite showing on the screen with snooze and off options. Without making changes, it typically works the next night. theguardian.com/technology/art

I saw the @thurrott post on MS-DOS 4 being open-sourced. Cool! Or so I thought. Until I looked at it. Assembly?! Less cool for me. It's totally impressive. It's real coding—like building a house with trees, nails, a hammer, and a saw. 💪 github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tr

The new iPad Pro M4 with OLED seems great, but today, IMO, it is not a worthwhile upgrade from M1 or newer CPU versions because iPadOS remains too locked down to harness such power. Perhaps iPadOS 18 will indicate differently? 🤞