Macs have this very helpful feature that normally works quite well and actually is helpful. It automatically adds folks to the auto-complete options IF they EVER appeared in a mail message to or from you (such as hitting Reply All when a friend sends something funny or politically enticing, etc.).

Totes has Dad WT🦆ing like crazy.

Because he had no clue who this one person was, he’d hit space, which auto-completes and adds the person to the To list, so he starts typing again, 🦆s, hits space, starts typing again … I think he ended up with 20+ on there. Of the same person he doesn’t know. Or doesn’t know he knows. Or something like that.

It was so messed up, I selected and cut all from the body, closed and didn’t save the draft, started a new message, and pasted the stuff back in.

Of course he was totally miffed when everything got erased, and then calmed down when he saw it magically reappear.

On the one hand, this really is a very helpful feature. Most of the time.

On the other, it’d really help if the Mac was smart enough to think, golly, this address is already on there, maybe I can stop suggesting it now and pick someone else that the user might mean.

It is, after all, a Mac. People such as myself have become accustomed to someone using Design Thinking and good UX so that I never have to think about how to use stuff. It just works. Well, worked. With Jobs gone for good and Woz not really involved anymore, there’s no one to be the user-advocate. Sure Jobs could be a jerk. But he was the boss and was usually right, and Apple customers got spoiled.

Cook is obviously good with numbers and the bottom line, but not so much with the customer experience.

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