It’s been a while since I penned my mini-screeds about iOS 14 and what I disliked, nay despised, about iOS 14. My biggest gripe was and still is about the lack of a phone speed dialing widget. That’s still missing and looks to be gone forever. That’s why I turned to Shortcuts in an attempt to create a replacement.

Until 14.4 landed, which is the current release, I was still having the occasional problem where my Shortcuts’ speed dialing would stop working. Touch a shortcut to dial, and it just hung. I removed the widget when it did that one time, then put it back. The Shortcuts’ widget was blank; no speed dial buttons at all. The only way to correct it was to reboot my friggin’ iPhone. As of 14.4 that seems to have been fixed.

Another problem was with Apple CarPlay. I now drive an Acura 2020 MDX because I discovered that my 67-year-old ass wound up in a world of hurt if I drove for any amount of time in the Toyota Prius. My wife was having the same issues as a passenger. So six months ago we traded in her Prius for the MDX, and have been in a lot better physical shape since. We don’t drive very far in retirement, so I believe, barring any unforeseen catastrophe, we’ll have that vehicle for a very long time. It was meant to be our travel car before the pandemic, but you can see how that worked out…

One of the MDX’s features was the ability to use Apple CarPlay. That has been something of a mixed bag. When it works, it’s wonderful. Getting it to work consistently is the issue. Too many times I’ll plug in my iPhone into the MDX, and the MDX will say it can’t see it. I’ve used multiple cables to no avail.

Another odd problem with CarPlay concerns Siri and hand-free dialing. On more than one occasion Siri would enter a state where she could not dial out. I’d ask her to call someone, and she’d hem and haw around and come back saying she couldn’t complete it. Those faults are fixed with iPhone reboots as well. But like I wrote earlier, when CarPlay works, it’s wonderful. And that problem seems to have been fixed in iOS 14.4 as well.

I’m not about to sing the praises of iOS 14. All I’ll say is that considering the alternative, Android, iOS 14 is the lesser of two evils.