iTunes auto-rating all played tracks …

For more than a year it’s been bugging me that iTunes “sometimes” would auto-rate played tracks. It happened on some albums, yet not all albums. Back in May 2018 I posted this video on YouTube showing the behaviour: As you can see iTunes here automatically rates “En Masse” (track 10) from the moment it starts …

Rethinking iTunes

Apple’s iTunes desktop app is notorious for trying to be everything to everyone, all the time: music, books, apps, videos purchasing, syncing, and a lot more. Would iTunes be a better product if it were split up into smaller, focused, single-purpose apps? Check out these student projects to find out! 16 ideas worth your time. …

Fixing the “Connect to iTunes to use Push Notifications” alert in iOS 7.0.3

Ever since updating to iOS 7.0.3, my iPhone kept telling me to “Connect to iTunes to use Push Notifications”. Connecting to iTunes did just nothing: the notice kept popping up. Additionally iMessage and FaceTime didn’t work anymore, really annoying. Above that the notice forced some apps in a loop as an app would lose and …

Fitts’ Law vs. Apple on Windows, continued, again

Two years ago I wrote about Fitts’ Law vs. iTunes/Safari describing the lack of the upperleft and upperright pixels in the Windows distribution of Safari. The lack of those two pixels resulted in some really odd behavior (the upper right corner for example didn’t trigger the close button, as you clicked *through it*, hitting the …

Their missing Mile-High Menus and Magic Corners : Fitts’s Law vs. Apple on Windows

When using software Fitts’s Law is in effect all the time. Microsoft understands the importance of this but Apple apparently doesn’t, at least not on Windows … Fitts’ what now? Fitts’s Law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area, as …