Warning: This gets complicated, really fast, so hang on. I abandoned iPhones after Apple effectively bricked my phone about eight years ago. I inadvertently did one too many iOS upgrades, which made it incompatible with the un-upgradeable version of iTunes on my no-longer-supported PowerPC iMac. Before that, I was all in on Apple. So I have everything tied to Apple except my phone, a Google Pixel (this is important). I have a Mac Mini, a MacBook Air, and two Apple TVs (3rd generation, not the latest, which is also important).
Apple sent me an email to get me to sign up for multi-factor authentication. I'm generally good with this (we'll pass the whole MFA on mobile insecurity issue for now), so I signed up. Two weeks later, my six-year-old wanted to watch Despicable Me. My wife incorrectly thought it was not on Netflix. (We found out later she was wrong. Please do not ask me how I took it when I discovered she confused one of the sequels with the original. Also, everything I'm about to describe wouldn't have happened if she checked before this started.) I decided to blow the $4 on an iTunes rental. Because I was upstairs where the Mac Mini was, so I figured it would be easy peasy to get it there and have it air on the downstairs Apple TV. Dropped the coin, went downstairs...and nothing's there. To get iTunes streaming to work within a home network, you have to sign into the same Apple ID on all devices. So everything's supposed to be connected and signed up. I discover that due to inactivity, the Apple TV kept the acknowledgment of the account, but logged me out. I had to log back in. No problem. Email in, look up the password to confirm, type it in, and...a cryptic error message came up. I go back, try again...get the same cryptic error message: this time, my phone pings with a text from Apple with the MFA code. Upstairs I go, where there's a new screen asking if I've logged in somewhere new. Which...I guess I was trying to? I accept it, and it gives me a new code. I go back downstairs and try again, and there's that error message. This time I read it twice, and it says I have to do something weird with modifying my password to take into account the MFA. I grab my MacBook Air, which now also has a couple of these "Are you trying to sign in?" messages. Now I realize the problem is with the MFA. So let's just shut that mother down and move on with our lives. You can't. Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decided that once you choose to sign up for MFA, you can never back out. So I am now absolutely white-hot furious. I've invested a good 15 minutes into trying to get this damn movie to play. Remember: Apple loves to brag that everything works seamlessly. This is so very not seamless. Here, after another five minutes lost, is what I figured out I was/am supposed to do. 1. Try logging in on my AppleTV. 2. It will error out and give me that cryptic error message. But it will fire the MFA. 3. I have to figure out which of the three devices (the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, or my Pixel) Apple sent the code. 4. Once I've found it, I'm to try logging in again, but to append the code to the end of my password. So if my password is "Qwerty12" and the code is 987654, I'm supposed to enter Qwerty12987654 for the password. I am a very smart man who's spent his life in computers and the last 12 years in user experience design. This is psychotic. I can't wrap this up well, but it breaks my heart that Apple went from being a company I loved with every fiber of my being to one I wouldn't give a plug nickel. On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 5:09 PM Kevin M. <drunkbastar...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 3:01 PM Joe Hass <hassgoc...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> A pox on the lot of them. >> >> >> https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/hbo-max-peacock-roku-amazon-streaming-1234703977/ >> >> Sidebar: I have given up on Apple and will not be giving them another >> penny after a crazy situation involving poorly-integrated two-factor >> authentication. I'll shift everything over to Windows, Plex, Google Drive, >> and Android TV. >> >> If you'd have told me ten years ago that I would completely abandon >> Apple, the company that made me into what I am today professionally, I'd >> have thought you were nuts. But here we are. >> >> I bought an Apple TV device a year or so ago but rarely used it. When I > reconnected it, it signed me up for a free year of Apple’s > streaming service. So knowing I’m putting my hand in the snake’s mouth, > what happened with you and Apple? > > > -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CABru7%2BcjXHVDDXjVCpj31wJhJaNh3FOQ75c1tZXAcoJ3r2tpPw%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CABru7%2BcjXHVDDXjVCpj31wJhJaNh3FOQ75c1tZXAcoJ3r2tpPw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > Kevin M. (RPCV) > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4DcE155H1_3Kim9qcLwsKzXhEsUy7azvVg6NoFuUoo96Q%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKgmY4DcE155H1_3Kim9qcLwsKzXhEsUy7azvVg6NoFuUoo96Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CABru7%2BfeYoKbjTfCfh6aYtHEHZTGOZ31KugU%2BK1CXZK1B75HNw%40mail.gmail.com.
