Why I Don't Use Apple Pay

About a week ago, for some reason 90% of the album art for the songs on my iPhone disappeared. I tried removing all the songs and then adding them back in with no success. Nothing worked, so I finally chose the nuclear option and did a complete reset on the phone.

It fixed the album art problem, but it also wiped out all the cards I'd so meticulously put into Apple Pay.

I can't say I've ever used Apple Pay because the credit union where I have my checking account still does not support it, but I think the concept is awesome and someday I'm sure it will be the norm, rather than the exception, for making purchases.

That being said, I did have my credit cards loaded into the system, and considering what a pain some of them had been to add, I did not look forward to adding them again.

But I did.

And Apple fucked me over again.

For the past few days, mail has not been syncing between my phone and Mac. A message will show up on one or the other, but not both. Additionally, I've been unable to delete emails, getting only a cryptic message that iCloud was unable to move the selected items to the trash folder.

So this morning, after finding a recommended solution from the Google, I logged out of iCloud on my phone.

BIG mistake.

When I logged back in, the mail was working again, but I also immediately got a message from Discover, telling me that I'd removed my card from Apple Pay.

WHAT. THE. HOLY. FUCK?

I opened up Apple Pay—excuse me, Wallet—on my phone, and to my horror saw that not only had the Discover card disappeared, but all the cards.

FUCK. ME.

Y'know, it would've been nice if Apple actually warned you that this was going to happen as part of the notification that that pops up when you're about to log out of iCloud. But no.

Apple, FIX YOUR SHIT.

At this point I'm not going to bother putting the cards back in again because in all likelihood, I'll have to sign out of iCloud or reset the phone again to fix one of Apple's other issues sooner rather than later, and they'd all just be wiped out. It's not worth the hassle.

It doesn't help that there's no uniform method among the banks to actually add their cards to Apple Pay. Some just automatically add the them. Others send you a verification text. By far the most annoying are the ones that require you to call in, navigate a labyrinthine phone tree and then wait on hold for ten minutes in order to speak to a human being because there's no option to just activate the card with Apple Pay. (I have two different cards from a single bank; one sends a text to activate, but the other one requires a phone call. ABSOLUTELY INSANE.)

I swear—and being a fanboy I hate to admit this, but—Apple seems to slowly be turning into everything I hated about Microsoft. They are in such a hurry to do a yearly refresh of everything that the multitude of things that get broken with each "upgrade" are never addressed and just carry forward into the next iteration (see: Windows, Office).

Here's a thought for the brain trust at Apple: you don't HAVE to upgrade everything every year! You're not going to lose market share for not putting a new coat of paint on OS X or iOS every twelve months. Your long-time fans would much rather appreciate that you take the time to kill the damn bugs that are infesting your software and fix what's obviously broken before putting out a new release! There is no shame in admitting that you screwed up and put something out before it was finished cooking!

APPLE, FIX YOUR SHIT.