Apple Nag

Here are my observations after using Snow Leopard for a while:

Better: It does seem faster in areas such as networking. But that may be because I was having so much trouble with Leopard networking, that anything is better.

Bug: There’s a bug in Mail where Smart Mailboxes always sort by Subject. I can change it, but the next time I relaunch Mail, it’s back sorting by Subject again. Extremely annoying. [Update: With some judicious editing of a .plist file, I managed to make it so that it always sorts by date. Better, but needs to be fixed.]

Feature: I do like the new white text on black background menus in the dock. I shouldn’t though, because they’re different than the menu bar. I prefer consistency to cuteness, so maybe Apple should try this look in other menus.

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The following is my chronicle of the Snow Leopard installation on my primary computer, an early 2008 MacBook.

Anyone reading this blog knows that I have a lot of problems with Leopard, so I will do lots of backups first. I emit an aura that is deadly for computers and software so I just know I’m going to have problems.
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I’ve used your products primarily since March 1, 1984 when I bought my first original Macintosh and ImageWriter printer. I was proud to be a Mac owner because it was so superior to the alternatives.

In the subsequent years leading up to the present time I became a Mac bigot. Everything else was not only not good, it was trash and I wondered how anyone could use that crapola.

Then Macs started going downhill with quality problems in the hardware and software. Macs just sucked less. I stopped doing unpaid sales and evangelizing for you and kept pretty quiet. When people asked me what kind of computer to get, I would no longer say, “Get a Mac”, I’d say, “What do you want to use a computer for?” I often told them to buy a PC.

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Dear Apple Support,

I see that I’m not alone in experiencing audio popping on my MacBook4,1 from August, 2008.

See this huge thread, and others on your support forum.

I just noticed it now because I’ve switched from a G5 to a MacBook as the forthcoming 10.6 will not run on my G5. Thus, I’ve got the MacBook front and center on my desk plugged into my large monitor and external speakers. Pop, pop, pop, all day long.

You’ve really got to do something about this as this is a long-standing problem. Please.

Thank you,

…Tom

P.S. Here’s an article from MacUser from two friggin’ years ago! Come on Apple, get your <bleep> together and get this fixed. I know you know how to do it. I’m at a loss to understand why you won’t.

Most of my small nags are on Twitter now. I only put larger articles on the blog because they require more work.

Since the Twitter updates are as important as the blog postings, I’ve moved up the Twitter widget in the side-bar to just below the logo. You can read a few of the most recent postings there.

The sum of Twitter and this blog indicates how much trouble just one person has with your venerable and exalted Mac OS X Leopard. To say I am looking forward to countless bug fixes and consistency work in Snow Leopard would be an understatement.

Aside from my conspiracy theory that you release “security” patches to destabilize the OS in preparation for a paid upgrade — “Anything has got to be better than this OS!” — perhaps there’s another reason for the abysmal stability of OS X Leopard and the mess your applications are in.

It’s all those Windows and Linux switchers who are coming over to the Mac platform. It’s all their fault. Well, mainly.

You look at your market share rising as a result of the poor, down-trodden Windows users seeking salvation with the Mac and say, “Hey, these flea-infested customers are used to having crappy software so why should we expend much effort in maintaining high quality or a consistent user interface?”

When your market share was closing in on the low single digits and was less than half the percentage of people who donate blood each year (yes, that bad), you needed to offer some differentiator to Windows. You tried quality and consistency and succeeded quite well, with the occasional brain fart.

Now that it’s cool to own Macs — geez, even Microsoft thinks that’s true — you’ve been spending time adding features and stealing resources for the iPhone. But, you seem to have forgotten the user interface designers and quality inspectors in that building you sold a few years ago. They might still be there, you should go have a look.

OS X was improving in stability until 10.5 Leopard came along. Now, every time I try to do something I hesitate not knowing what wonderful behaviour I’ll experience.

While you integrate your apps, there’s so much inconsistency between how they function now, that it looks like they were designed by totally different companies. I’ve covered this in several previous postings.

Without the Switchers, there may not be an Apple, but they’re lulling you into a false sense of godhood.

Having Switchers in the Mac camp is like being adrift on a life raft surrounded by salt water. You need water to survive but this water will poison you.

If the following is a typical Windows switcher, you know what I mean …
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Your networking design allows remote users to hold us hostage. “If youse want us to release dat disk, den maybe youse wanna tink about payin’ up, capiche?”

I connected my MacBook to my G5 that had a disk image mounted. The MacBook connected to the disk image but I decided that it was not what I needed.

I tried to unmount the disk image from the G5, but it could not because it was in use. There was no option to force disconnect. In fact, the message is misleading and is asking me to waste my time closing applications in a vain attempt to release the disk. As long as a remote user is holding on to the disk, it can’t be released.

I can quit iTunes and it warns me that someone is sharing my library and I can disconnect, but no option for File Sharing.

This is how one person on the network can hold hostage the disk on another user’s computer. We must be in control of our computer at all times, not someone on the network.

An exercise to the reader. How do you know who is connected to your disk so you can go beat them up? Leopard doesn’t think you need to know that vital bit of information.

As Complexity increases, Quality decreases.

As time moves forward quality still decreases even if complexity remains the same.

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For computers, year after year, the hardware and software gets more complex and this multiplication results in the abysmal, and rapidly declining, quality we’re experiencing in the computing industry.

Perhaps it’s due to the fast computers and lots of memory and disk space that breeds carelessness, but for whatever reason, the quality of some programs written by some of the world’s largest (not finest) companies is just awful. These same companies also charge for upgrades that contain more useless and buggy features. We upgrade on the hope that the old version’s bugs are fixed in the new version. They often aren’t, or they’re broken in different ways.

Of course, it’s not just large, monolithic corporations that tolerate lousy programming. It’s endemic in the industry. Too much pressure to ship, ship lots of features, and let the customers do your testing.

When you see great programs these days, you know that the programmers are truly superstars in their field because they’re so uncommon.

When I was programming, I took it as a personal failure if someone reported a bug in my code. Now, too many programmers just shrug their shoulders and give you the "whatever" look. Bugs are expected; what’s the big deal, right? Wrong. I don’t expect perfection, I expect ownership.

When you say that Snow Leopard will be mainly a bug fix, that tells you what you yourselves think of the quality of Leopard. Frankly, I think you’re giving yourselves too much credit. Leopard is far worse than you think. And your other applications? Needs work is being kind.

A couple of nights ago I thought I’d watch a TV show I recorded using my EyeTV 200 to my G5. But, I wanted to watch it comfortably in bed streaming the content over the LAN to my MacBook.

With your AirPort Express running an 802.11n only network at 5 GHz, I can get about 6-7 MB/s when copying files. That should be no problem for streaming — and it isn’t — assuming I can actually connect to the server.

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Windows experts say you should reboot your PC daily to clear out the crud. Apparently, it will run faster for awhile.

I don’t know if there was any truth to that, or if it’s a problem with Vista or Windows 7. It’s sure good advice for Leopard.

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