Apple Experiences
On and off I have been using Macs for a very long time, certainly since the days when DOS was prominent. It has meant that I have been reasonably comfortable using them although I am far from an expert. There are things I really like about them and other things I’m more critical of, the same as for Windows.
The Good
Luckily for me I recently received a brand new Macbook Pro from work to replace my ageing one. It’s a lovely piece of kit and like all Apple hardware it’s nicely presented and pretty simple to get up and running quickly. I’m not convinced about the touch bar but I like the touch ID, I also like that the trackpad is larger than it used to be although it doesn’t feel quite as nice.
On setting up, the first option was to import from an existing machine, I like this touch, Apple do it with their iPhones and iPads too. Strangely I couldn’t get it working with my MacBooks despite the two machines being on the same network, they simply couldn’t see each other. In the end I decided I was better off reinstalling as It meant I could be sure what was on the new machine. An hour or two later I had most of the apps I need setup.
The Bad
Calling some of these bad is a bit of an exaggeration for me, but they are inconveniences which mean I don’t use the machine as much as I might otherwise. Others are a bit more significant.
The first issue is the vpn client, we use the Cisco one. for some reason that I really can’t fathom, you need an account to download the client. As a technical user this is mildly irritating. Eventually I got hold of the installer and it all seemed to install, however when I tried, I just got a login failed error. I knew the login worked as I was able to use it on my Windows laptop, which was physically next to the MacBook. Cisco has a useful guide, it didn’t resolve my issue but it did point me at the extensions that are needed for the client to work. This article is specifically aimed at Big Sur, the OS I have installed.
What became clear is that the relevant extensions weren’t installed. After more googling I found suggestions that this was due to SIP. for those who don’t know, SIP is a Mac security feature that attempts to prevent files from being altered when they shouldn’t, even by admins. Clearly turning this off presents a risk to the machine so it shouldn’t be off longer than can be helped.
So I uninstalled the Cisco client — bonus points to Cisco for including an uninstaller. I then turned SIP off and reinstalled the Cisco client. This now meant I was given the option to allow the extension as shown in the Cisco docs. Allowing this, and rebooting still didn’t allow me to login to my vpn. Checking through everything again still indicated that the extensions weren’t installed. I ended up giving up on using the vpn and a few weeks later checked again and there was a new client. This installed and worked as expected
The second issue is Office365. I can’t access this from my Mac and the error message which is typical of Microsofts current vague and unhelpful ones implies that it’s due to an admin setting. I’m still waiting to hear back from our admins regarding this but I do find it a little odd, especially as I don’t want to install the apps, I just want to use the web versions, and I don’t even use them often apart from outlook and teams. I’ve now discovered that others in the same organisation can access Office365 from a Mac OS.
The one that is really bad is the enforced 2 Factor Authentication. As this laptop is owned by work I used my work phone number when I registered. What I didn’t realise, and am now struggling to escape from, is that I don’t get the calls and I don’t get the text messages that I need for Apple 2 Factor Authentication. To add insult to injury I can’t turn it off without those calls or waiting a week. Looking around the apple support site wasn’t encouraging, there were quite a few complaints about 2FA and that it can’t be turned off. What is really frustrating here is that I only need it to install updates or apps that I need, so in this case 2FA is actually making my machine less secure. I’m sure the irony won’t escape most of you. Some weeks later I did come across a real time chat on Apple Support — with a real live person! This was great, he had a few suggestions for workarounds but it can’t be turned off. One of these suggestions is just to logout completely and not use an apple id on the machine. This doesn’t work for me so I’m going to go for option 2 which is to setup a whole new Apple ID (not ideal either but it should resolve my issue).
So now I’ve setup a new AppleID, this turned out to be a much more pleasant experience than I expected. Basically I just went to system preferences and logged out of my old AppleID and created a new one which was then attached to the login I use for the mac, for some reason I expected to have to create a new user on the mac and then have to mess about with docs and applications to get mine all back. This was not the case at all.
Finally, I tried to install the app I want from the app store, I signed in and then tried to download. I needed to login, fair enough, but then it wanted credit card details (we all know how obsessed the Americans are with credit cards). I was just about to give up as there is no way I was putting any personal card details into a work laptop, when I noticed a NONE option on the list of card types. After adding a few more details I had my app and was very happy. It’s things like this that are part of the reason I have moved to personal apple devices, I’m not saying Apple are perfect (I still hate the compulsory 2FA) but they do try incredibly hard to think of everything.
The Ugly
The Cisco issue is for me a little more irritating, particularly while we are still in lockdown. It’s not as easy to install as the Windows Version — at least not for me, also the client seems to not have all the functionality that the Windows one does — though that could be my misunderstanding.
So the reality is that I didn’t bother with either the VPN or Office on the Mac for a few weeks, then I tried again. Although these aren’t showstoppers for me, there are times when I have to use the Mac and then these things become irritations. What it tends to do is to push me to use online tools more. For example, My CI is installed on a server that I need the VPN to access, this may seem archaic but it does have advantages (including being free). I can’t always use online CI tools for a variety of reasons. Similarly I have moved some repos to Github, this is all well and good but I can’t put them all there.
My new MacBook sits exactly where my old one used to. One thing I have noticed is that the WiFi is not as good as the old one. It’s not as bad as using WiFi on the Lenovo but it seems to drop enough on a regular basis to be frustrating. This rarely happened on the old MacBook. Equally other WiFi devices seem to be unaffected. This is regardless of whether I’m using the VPN or not.
I can only presume that the Lenovo and the MacBook use some whole new version of WiFi that my router knows nothing about due to its age and that while they are backward compatible, there are some issues of some sort. I’m certainly not going to spend significant sums of money to test my theory.
Overall
Maybe its just me due to my extended albeit limited experience of Apple kit, but I am now finding that whenever I have an issue, there is often a simple solution that is readily accessible. I’ve become so used to endless searching for obscure ambiguous errors that only serves to frustrate me and lower my expectations. So far this is happening less and less with the Mac and in fact it serves to show off how good some of the Apple ethos can be.