Tag Archives: Apple tax

Apple’s “Magic” keyboard may be inhabited by some unkind sorcery

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My desk has been more cluttered than usual the past couple of weeks, and I couldn’t blame that only on my inability to toss receipts and scan business cards. Instead, I have too often had a proprietary cable snaking its way from my computer to my keyboard–as in, my allegedly wireless keyboard.

An Apple Magic Keyboard showing a Lightning cable left just apart from its Lightning port.

I’m not unfamiliar with getting lied to by promises of Bluetooth wireless just working, but having this $179 Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad drop a connection to this Mac mini is more annoying than the average Bluetooth fail. It’s not just the lack of a proper error message from macOS when this happens; it’s that my only reliable fix for this is to fish out the proprietary USB-C-to-Lightning cable that came with the keyboard and use that to plug the peripheral into the computer.

(That’s also what I do every time the keyboard battery runs down.)

My cranky Mastodon post Thursday about the latest outbreak of this problem–a bizarre breakdown in which the keyboard transmitted no keystrokes to the Mac even as macOS reported that the keyboard remained connected–led to some commiseration with longtime Mac writer Dan Moren. He replied that “I got so tired of this I just now leave the Magic Keyboard wired to the mini.”

I’ve done that for a stretch a few times, but that sticks me with another problem: This cable stretches about 40 inches, which means I have to plug it into the back of the mini and then drape it across the top of the desk to reach the keyboard shelf.

Apple does, of course, sell a version of this cable twice as long that would let me run the cable around the back of the desk and underneath it to that shelf. But Apple charges $29 for this luxury, 2-meter cable, which reminds me that this not-so-magic keyboard should have a USB-C port instead of an Apple-exclusive port that no longer has a functional reason to exist.

And yet using any third-party keyboard is a total nonstarter, because then I’d lose Touch ID fingerprint authentication and would have to type one password or another every time I unlock the computer or 1Password. That would be worse, not that this realization makes me feel like less of a chump for dealing with Apple’s dysfunctionality.

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Weekly output: 5G leaders, Mr. Antenna, streaming study, Desi Bundle, Disney’s Star+, Seinfeld coming to Netflix, two-factor authentication, HBO Max on Vizio, Locast logs off, Apple loosens App Store rules for “reader” apps, Nielsen nixed, checking wireless coverage, WhatsApp privacy fine

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I worked a volunteer shift at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic Friday, the fourth time I’ve done so. On this occasion, we had far fewer customers than before, most coming for their second round of Pfizer or Moderna. But a few had yet to get any dose, which meant that they got to choose between those two vaccines or Johnson & Johnson’s; the latter needing a single jab made the difference for one man who said he was only getting vaccinated because his job required it. We also had a few under-18 kids who were limited to Pfizer–and one whom had been brought by her mom on her 12th birthday, so we had to take a minute to sing “Happy Birthday” to her.

8/30/2021: The 5G 50 to Watch Top Ten List, Light Reading

I helped write the bios for this list of top telecom industry executives put together by my trade-pub client. Yes, my last name is spelled wrong at the end of the piece.

8/31/2021: OTA antenna service alleges Vegas station refused to air its ads, FierceVideo

I spent most of this week filling in at my other big trade-pub client. I started by covering an allegation by a broadcast-antenna vendor named Mr. Antenna that a Las Vegas station had quit airing its ads because increased broadcast viewing would undercut its cable-TV income.

8/31/2021: New study finds more Americans splitting their streaming budget, FierceVideo

I wrote up a Leichtman Research Group study finding more Americans signing up for at least three streaming services.

8/31/2021: DistroScale streaming bundle serves up free South Asian channels, FierceVideo

If you didn’t know that “desi” is a term for people of South Asian descent before reading this post, you did after.

9/1/2021: Disney debuts Star+ in Latin America, FierceVideo

Writing this led me to dust off my VPN service for the first time in months to see what pricing this new Disney streaming service would show to a viewer in its target Latin American markets–the press releases I saw didn’t list any.

9/1/2021: Seinfeld coming to Netflix Oct. 1—and in 4K, FierceVideo

I only referenced one Seinfeld catch phrase in this piece, which I thought showed remarkable restraint.

Screengrab of column as seen in USAT's iPad app9/1/2021: Why you shouldn’t rely on texts when using two-factor authentication to sign into accounts, USA Today

I could have written this column at any time in the previous two years, but T-Mobile’s latest data breach made it newly relevant.

9/2/2021: HBO Max app comes to Vizio connected TVs, FierceVideo

This post reminded me how much of HBO Max’s early struggles with getting its apps on streaming platforms.

9/2/2021: After hostile court ruling, Locast logs off, FierceVideo

As I tweeted after this story ran, the broadcasters who succeeded in suing Locast offline might not want to gloat too much. Viewers aren’t getting any less weary of endless pay-TV rate hikes, and telling people without good over-the-air reception to stick with cable will only get less persuasive every year.

9/2/2021: Apple to let video apps point users away from its payment system, FierceVideo

Apple deigning to allow “reader” apps to include one link to their own site shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is in the context of that company’s history of App Store control-freakery.

9/3/2021: Media Rating Council suspends Nielsen accreditations, FierceVideo

My last post for Fierce this week covered an industry group snubbing Nielsen’s audience-tracking work.

9/3/2021: Which wireless carrier has the best coverage where you’re going? Here’s how to find out, USA Today

A friend’s query about ways to see if T-Mobile or Verizon would offer better service than AT&T at his home was followed by my realizing that USAT had yet to cover the FCC’s release of a new and surprisingly helpful map of predicted LTE coverage from the major carriers.

9/3/2021: WhatsApp fined under GDPR, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language channel had me on to discuss WhatsApp getting hit with a €225 million fine for violations of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The European Data Protection Board’s ruling in this case calls those failures of transparency, but I see the underlying problem as WhatsApp insisting on access to your phone’s contacts list to place a call or send a message to anybody who hasn’t already contacted you in the app.