Greg Morris

Hey Siri: Remember To Make Reminders Work

On June 3rd 2019 and with a little trepidation, I pushed the upgrade button Apple flashed before my eyes. I’d stayed up late to install the first beta of iOS13 and already knew I would regret it in some way. During the next couple of months, I would run into a whole host of bugs and crashes – but that was ok because I knew what I was doing and still wanted to use the update before it came out.

On stage Apple demoed the hotly anticipated Reminders upgrade, featuring lots of new features and a fresh new design. To do this, Apple had to ‘Upgrade’ my tasks for them to work, and I have to do the same on my other devices if I wanted them to work correctly. This was all displayed in front of me; I knew what I was doing.

So I dealt with Reminders not syncing to my Mac – I wasn’t planning to update my iMac as I rely on it for my livelihood – and I continued on my merry way. For the most part, iOS13 was stable enough for me to use and file the odd Radar. However now iOS13 has been released to the public, there are a massive amount of people that currently can’t access their reminder on Mac – with no way to ‘upgrade’ as Apple informed them they had to do.

We are now almost two weeks from iOS13 launching; we’ve already seen an update to 13.1, 13.1.1 and only yesterday 13.1.2. Still no sign of the Mac OS update, and no definite date of when it will come. So when Apple places a card in front of you saying you will need to upgrade your devices, what it also doesn’t say is there IS NO update for your mac.

The only hint of what is going on is a small section on Apple.com when discussing iOS13 updates. Something that the vast amount of users are not going to see. I am sure the intention was to release the Catalina update alongside iOS13, but I am pretty sure Apple knew a long time ago that wasn’t going to be possible.

I knew what I was doing – most others did not. It’s on Apple to explain these things better. They let potentially millions of users upgrade their reminders with a half warning. I need reminders to work, don’t rush macOS out for me, but it’d be nice to get it pretty soon.

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