Mac Audio Balance Bug That Apple Knew About 12 Years Ago Still Exists

[CarAnalogy]

Don't blame Cook, blame the person in charge of MacOS. Cook is just a CEO, he can't be on top of every single detail of everything that's going on. He may not be aware of this bug. You can alway send him a message.

Yes it is unreasonable to expect him to personally be involved in this bug. I know Apple is a lot bigger now than it was then. I don’t so much mean literally this situation.

Just picture Cook asking someone “why the **** doesn’t it do that.” I just miss that kind of incisiveness in their product decisions.

Clearly there is no one still at the Mac division with that kind of drive to make the Mac great.

On the other hand, I wish more CEOs would just sit down and use their own products like their users would.

I remember a famous email from Bill Gates years ago asking Microsoft why it was so hard to just download Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft’s website. Microsoft’s website was and is terrible, didn’t seem to accomplish much, but it is notable when the people who are ostensibly in charge of these things actually have to use them and run in to the same problems we do.

I find it hard to believe Cook spends a lot of time dealing with macOS notifications, for example. Steve would have put his Mac through the ****ing window…of the office of the person who approved that design.

 

[kirb]

Whether or not that is the case, what we do know is that Apple acknowledged the bug on February 12, 2012 in a Mac OS X 10.2 support document, which is no longer on Apple's website but retrievable via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

This is actually from October 30, 2003. Apple is just bad at keeping timestamps accurate on support articles.

Mac OS X 10.2: Audio Balance Unexpectedly Drifts

web.archive.org

Good sleuthing finding that article though. Apple lets some pretty bad bugs stay in the product for a long time, but this one must have been in CoreAudio and OS X from day one. Has to be one of their longest-standing bugs. Think of how few digits the radar number must be!

 

[Beautyspin]

Stressing the processor and rapidly pressing volume up/down keys... complaining that his hasn't made it to the top of the bugs to fix is like whining about a cable wearing out after yanking it from the cable and swinging it around above your head daily. Minor defect that is only exploited by edge case or deliberate actions. Move along, nothing to see here.

If it were a minor bug, why did somebody develop an app and why is it so widely known? And Apple wants to develop AI models and LLMs. Shuddering thinking about the kinds of bugs they will have.

 

[rehkram]

TL, DR version:
I think Apple were assuming that analog output was just going to be superseded by digital by now. Which is probably one reason they were in a hurry to drop the headphone jack before most of us were ready.

Long version:
I was surprised I couldn't remember seeing a 'balance' slider in my audio settings lately. I realized it's because I use DisplayPort for Audio Out on one Mac, and HDMI on the other.

They're plugged in to an external monitor which is connected to a hi-fi amp/tuner. When I switch Macs by selecting the other input source on the monitor's OSD, the audio switches automatically. This means I don't have to switch amp/tuner channels every time I flip-flop sources, it just keeps working.

On the Macs, neither of those digital output settings provide an option to control balance, only volume. To get control of balance I could use the amp/tuner's balance function but that would be a total button-pressing PITA. Better would be an intermediary DAC with a balance knob, or a digital mixer probably. Or I could open the audio file in a DAW app and control any aspect of the mix before it hits the digital output.

While I am an audio engineer in another life, I don't have a need for balance control at present. Balance always reflects the multi-channel 2.1 or 5.1 mix when using the digital connections.

 

[rpe33]

I had no idea this was even a thing. Weird.

 

[bzgnyc2]

While we're on the subject of Mac audio, can someone explain why Audio MIDI Setup appears to be unchanged since like Mac OS 10.1? In a 5.1 world, I would expect a bit more control. It seems neither intuitive nor powerful. Similarly, the name doesn't make much sense either...

 

[TinyMito]

This happened to me when using a bluetooth headphones.

 

[nt5672]

I agree they seem to have a real problem with resources, resource allocation, management, or all three in the Mac department.

With regard to my witty retort, apparently 2002 is the year the iPod supported Windows which was a huge boost and probably completely necessary at the time for its success. Also that’s the year the Mac Lamp (G4) came out, and Apple Retail started expanding.

And of course, the iPhone/iPad were in early development.

It is not a problem with resources, it is a problem with strategy. Everything at Apple revolves around the keynote. They promise things they cannot deliver (because Cook does not understand technology), and then it is a fire drill to get something released. The result is that everyone is working on todays bugs and missing functionality from the previous years keynote.

Heck, it is February, 8 months after the last keynote, and they still have not delivered all of the functionality from the last keynote. In any company that understands development, here in February, they should be working on the next keynote. But, they can't because they have not delivered and fixed things from the last keynote.

During a fire drill it is all hands on deck, there is no time to do the "right" thing.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Steve would have put his Mac through the ****ing window…of the office of the person who approved that design.

Says you.
Steve approved a lot of controversial things for the time.
The hockey puck mouse, talk about something people wanted to throw through a window.
when leopard released with a transparent menu bar in 2007, there was months of whining and complaining before an option was added to remove it.
The original iOS notifications? The big pop-ups in the middle of the screen? Steve approved those.

Edit: forgot to mention that I also hate the notifications as they are now as well.

 

[Reached]

Maybe they didn't bother fixing it because it's a relatively rare bug? I've been using Macs for almost 20 years now and I've never heard of an issue with audio balance before. 🤔

I've experienced it on several Macs, it's definitely not rare

 

[CarAnalogy]

It is not a problem with resources, it is a problem with strategy. Everything at Apple revolves around the keynote. They promise things they cannot deliver (because Cook does not understand technology), and then it is a fire drill to get something released. The result is that everyone is working on todays bugs and missing functionality from the previous years keynote.

Heck, it is February, 8 months after the last keynote, and they still have not delivered all of the functionality from the last keynote. In any company that understands development, here in February, they should be working on the next keynote. But, they can't because they have not delivered and fixed things from the last keynote.

During a fire drill it is all hands on deck, there is no time to do the "right" thing.

Wall Street wouldn’t understand but if they ever did an in person event again and Cook announced that for at least the next cycle they are going to two years between major releases, it would get a standing ovation.

 

[6787872]

why is apple so bad with audio? i SITLL can't control my monitor with hdmi

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Yes it is unreasonable to expect him to personally be involved in this bug. I know Apple is a lot bigger now than it was then. I don’t so much mean literally this situation.

Just picture Cook asking someone “why the **** doesn’t it do that.” I just miss that kind of incisiveness in their product decisions.

Clearly there is no one still at the Mac division with that kind of drive to make the Mac great.

On the other hand, I wish more CEOs would just sit down and use their own products like their users would.

I remember a famous email from Bill Gates years ago asking Microsoft why it was so hard to just download Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft’s website. Microsoft’s website was and is terrible, didn’t seem to accomplish much, but it is notable when the people who are ostensibly in charge of these things actually have to use them and run in to the same problems we do.

I find it hard to believe Cook spends a lot of time dealing with macOS notifications, for example. Steve would have put his Mac through the ****ing window…of the office of the person who approved that design.

Very true...
As a good example:
It's unacceptable that the Vision Pro was release without an Undo/Redo button on the Virtual Keyboard. Unless I missed something.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Says you.
Steve approved a lot of controversial things for the time.
The hockey puck mouse, talk about something people wanted to throw through a window.
when leopard released with a transparent menu bar in 2007, there was months of whining and complaining before an option was added to remove it.
The original iOS notifications? The big pop-ups in the middle of the screen? Steve approved those.

Edit: forgot to mention that I also hate the notifications as they are now as well.

Ha yes I admit that that is mostly just my fantasy. He did do that about some things but definitely not all the same things I would have chosen.

I think the interface was more forgivable then. But they stopped improving it and then took the interface they had refined and threw it away in favor of the inferior one. I really would like to think Steve would not have let that happen to his beloved Mac.

 

[victorvictoria]

Never had this issue. Or if I did I never noticed it. Not a dealbreaker.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

They promise things they cannot deliver (because Cook does not understand technology)

is that like… the only retort you guys have?
bug exists because Tim bad.

 

[gdbleb]

There are a lot of these unfixed bugs that Apple ignores for years. They have a name for them. It was mentioned on this site a year or so ago. I am living with 2 of them on a daily basis. Apple Support and Apple community sites white-wash them or bury them altogether. Wish there was an independent site that listed them all. You can sometimes find exasperated rants on this site's forums to learn that you are not alone.

 

[Darren.h]

if it was windows. would be fixed

its a shame. many music engineers still use Macs.

 

[typecase]

The sleep bug where the computer will sleep in the middle of a download or HDD activity still persists. I have submitted feedback multiple times in every beta and there is no fix almost 11 years later. In Snow Leopard this was working. When the new energy settings were implemented in later releases, it forever broke this.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I think the interface was more forgivable then. But they stopped improving it and then took the interface they had refined and threw it away in favor of the inferior one. I really would like to think Steve would not have let that happen to his beloved Mac.

Maybe.

But important to remember that, even under Steve, the design of the OS changed very often.
There was the brushed metal windows boom of Panther and Tiger, then people got sick of that, so they totally did away with it in Leopard.
Then there was the linen and leather takeover of Lion and Mountainlion, which got even more hate than the brushed metal.
So that was done away with throughout Mavericks and Yosemite.
And the cycle goes on and on and on, and will continue going, even after Tim retires.

And I guarantee you in 15 years they’ll be threads on here of people saying “I hate the way visionOS15 looks, bring back Tim and the glory days of visionOS5, that was true innovation.”

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Wow.

I've experienced this issue many times over the years. But thought it was my AirPods or other audio devices, wired and Bluetooth, messing with the settings, not a bug in MacOS.

I never thought to look it up as it has only happen very rarely, and seemed to be fixed for a good while after going into Settings and setting the balance back, manually.

Seems like something extremely rudimentary to an OS.

How has this not been fixed several many years ago?

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I'm pretty sure this was happening to me in 2005-2008 (and onwards).

 

[Mayhem SWE]

This was absolutely a constant annoyance for me up until some 2-3 years ago. Happened all the time, as in several times a day every single day.

Can't quite remember exactly when it finally stopped, but I think it was after a major OS update (12.0 probably?) as I vaguely recall my first year on Apple Silicon still suffered from this highly annoying bug.

Way back Balance Lock was a paid application and I bought it immediately when I found out about its existence. Insane that apparently this bug still hasn't been completely squashed.

 

[Bigkool2inSC]

As someone who works for a software company, I can tell you that just because some people notice a bug in the software, that doesn't mean the person / team that could potentially fix it knows.

And some bugs just fall through the cracks. and some bugs, especially ones hard to reproduce, are hard to fix.
And last piece of brutal honesty, some bugs are not worth the time, money and effort to figure out what the issue is and fix.. Especially if it's effecting a microscopic % of users and rarely at that...

maybe after someone seeing this article at Apple, someone will go, "Oh, i didn't know about that, let me look that part of the code real quick and fix it".
Who knows..

 

[powerbook911]

I remember this I believe on my G4 Macs and for some time after that. I can't remember it happening in more recent times.