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.

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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The ancient Now Contact and Now Up-to-Date are being reborn as a unified Now X. Well, they will if Now X ever gets out of beta. It’s been in beta almost as long as GMail. I’m not kidding!I think I’ll skip the discussion about how meaningless the Now X name is, they’ll find out soon enough when people who don’t know the sordid history behind these products say, “What the hell does Now X do?” There is absolutely no indication in the name as to the function of the product. Fail!

But don’t get smug. iCal and Address Book have far less functionality than Now products had 15 years ago. Shameful.
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Now that I’m using this blog to document all the things about your software and hardware that nag at me, you’re going to see some really old issues show up.

I’m almost embarrassed to talk about your window gum-drops for close, minimize, and whatever the heck that green one is supposed to do. I think you call it the “zoom” button, but it functions more like a random window resizer.

There is no way I’ve been able to predict the size of the window when I click the zoom button. In OS 9, it used to maximize the window to fit on the screen, I think leaving room for the icons along the right side.

In OS X, uh, I have no idea. Let’s check out a few of your own apps …
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Most of the ideas for this blog come from the “aha!” moments when I finally realize what’s bugging me. Depending on the severity of the problem, I can feel the itch building for days, or weeks before it becomes tangible.

Recently, I’ve been thinking that my new mouse (Logitech, never Apple) was giving me problems because the clicks didn’t seem to be registering. I’m often in a rush to do things so it often goes unnoticed. I just click again.

It’s now getting frequent that I can’t bring a window of another application, visible behind the current window, to the foreground. I can click around on other elements so I know the mouse is working. Click on that background window — nada, zip, nothing — it just thumbs it’s invisible nose at me and smirks.

The only way to bring the window to the foreground is to click on the application’s icon in the Dock.

See, this is what I’m getting at. I swear Leopard is getting flakier by the minute as part of a conspiracy by you guys to build demand for Snow Leopard in the hope that anything has got to be better than what we’re using now.

And you know what? I’ll probably pay for an upgrade just so that I don’t go insane. You bastards!