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highwaylightsyesterday at 11:35 PM3 repliesview on HN

I get this pain with Apple in a bunch of different areas. The things they do well, they do better than anyone, but part of the design language is to never admit defeat so very few of the interfaces will ever show you an error message of any kind. The silent failure modes everywhere gets really frustrating.

I’m looking at you, Photos sync.

EDIT: just noticed this exact problem is on the front page in its own right (https://eclecticlight.co/2025/11/30/last-week-on-my-mac-losi...)


Replies

joecool1029today at 2:14 AM

> The silent failure modes everywhere gets really frustrating.

I literally just experienced this with RCS failing to activate. No failure message, dug into logs, says userinteractionrequired. Front page of HN, nobody knows, apple corp response, 'thats interesting no you cant talk to engineering'.

Read the RCS spec definition document to fall asleep to after the board swap and the call saying they won't work on it since issue resolved, answers exactly what that meant, Apple never implemented handling for it, my followup post: https://wt.gd/working-rcs-messaging

epistasistoday at 4:01 AM

I don't even use Photos, except in extreme situation. It was such a major UX downgrade from iPhoto that I could never get it to work without lots of mystery meat guessing, and every interaction with it was so unpleasant because of that.

Knowing that a company had competent product designers that made a good product, but then shitcanned the working product for a bunch of amateur output from people that don't understand dry very basics of UI, from the one company that made good UI its primary feature for decades... well it just felt like full on betrayal. The same thing happened with absolutely shitty Apple Music, which I never, ever use, because it's so painful to remember what could have been with iTunes...

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FireBeyondtoday at 12:33 AM

Photos is horrific for this. No progress, no indicators. And what little status you get has no connection to reality.

Will it sync? When? Who knows? You’re on WiFi with a full battery and charging? So? Might be a minute, might be an hour. Oh, you restarted Photos? Who cares? Not Photos.