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InsideX At this writing, it is the eve of the release of Mac OS X 10.1, what I consider
the real thing, the final product. I delayed posting this article until now quite
deliberately. There was not point in bashing MOSX when we all knew it was unfinished,
and even Apple admitted it. And yet, by writing this article some will think I am
committing a dangerous act of civil disobedience that will have grave repercussions.
There will undoubtedly be usual dull semantic debates about what a ‘bug’ is. You
decide, just don’t bug me with your conclusions. The fact is that MOSX has been a
'bug' fest so far, and those listed here are only a sampling. I doubt even Apple
has a complete list. But, here is my stab at it, One point of this list to have a means of measuring the improvements in 10.1, which are considerable. Slowly but surely, thanks to the dedication of Apple staff, MOSX is becoming a great OS. In this article I want to take a look at where we have been, which ain’t pretty, in preparation for enjoying where we are going. You will also find I have a few points to make about MOS X problems that we most definitely will NOT see fixed in 10.1. Some of them are really aggravating. For example, I expect Apple to get a right good ribbing into the foreseeable future about our being forced too use file extensions. And, let's face it: I am an analytical freak who enjoys ranting about stuff in hopes of inspiring improvements. I can’t help it. Hopefully, this list will not only inspire Apple, but will give you some idea about the improvements I think we need in computing in general. For example, you will repeatedly see me invoking what I call 'The Granny Test.' If the Mac is 'For The Rest Of Us' and Granny can't use hers, then what is the point of calling a computer 'user-friendly'? Just for fun I have concluded this article with my personal list of prize winning bugs. Feel free to applaud or disagree as you see fit. Let’s begin by reviewing my original list of 20 bugs in 10.0.4: 0) It’s Slow: Golly, I actually had a list of 21 bugs, didn’t I! This problem was so obvious I didn't bother numbering it. I count it here as bug #0. MOSX 10.1 has significant improvements in speed. Most excellent! 1) Dysfunctional Drag and Drop: Problem found: API inconsistency. I really got fooled by this one. Drag and Drop is built into the MOSX, no problem there. However, there is an inconsistency in the Carbon versus Cocoa API for Drag and Drop. That's the problem! (Thanks to reader Andras Puiz for pointing this out!) Carbon applications happily do drag and drop just like Classic MOS. Cocoa however has this aggravating attitude that we should click on highlighted text and take a short nap before we can drag it, meanwhile refusing to change the text selection cursor to an arrow leaving you to wonder if text actually is draggable. This appears to be another NeXTism I'd rather see disappear. 2) The Finder Can’t Read Clippings: Solved! It was an anomaly in my system. I wiped out my old MOSX system (which was an updated version of the beta) and did a clean install of MOSX 10.0.4. I have read of other issues related to updating from the beta version that were solved with a clean install. Of course performing a clean install of MOSX is a nightmare, but that’s another bug. 3) Icon Order Disorder: Unsolved. Anal retentives must be ripping their hair out. There is no way to make an icon stay put! I chalk this one up to the NeXT influence where they seem to think that Icon views and List views are unimportant. Wrong. See #9 for more on List Views. 4) Generic Volume Icons: Unsolved. Apple can show personalized partition icons on the desktop if they want to. It worked just fine in the developer preview versions of X. There is no logic behind this situation. I call it a bug. 5) The Finder Won’t Auto-Update Windows: This bug is worse than ever. Example: Sherlock Won’t Show Path Changes. At first, I thought this was just another Sherlock bug. But, I have decided that this particular problem is part of an overall attitude in the MOSX Finder that windows don’t need to automatically update to reflect changes. This serious problem is all over Mac OS X. How WinDoze! You have to force Sherlock to update its listing file paths by deselecting an item then reselecting it. Similar force is required in Finder windows in general. There are odd times when even force fails. One of those times is when creating a PDF document in Classic and saving it to any volume at the root level. Good luck getting to it! Sherlock can see it, but it’s possible that no human can until they log out and log in again. Or they can wait for however long it takes MOSX to get around to updating the window on its own, which does occasionally occur. Annoying much? This is a distinct step backwards from classic Mac OS. That’s why this bug shares Second Prize with #48 as THE MOST ANNOYING BUG. 6) Comatose Installer: Explained. A couple readers have thankfully pointed out that the slowness of the MOSX installer is in direct proportion to how much MOSX is already installed on your volume. The installer inventories what you have installed in order to decide what you need. If nothing is there, the install goes fairly swiftly. Similarly, the more MOSX you already installed, the more useless is the installer’s prediction of time to completion. 7) Custom Installation is a Joke: Unsolved. With MOSX you basically install all or nothing. If you want just want one little thing reinstalled from CD, take a nap while you wait. See issue #6 above. Alternatively, if you follow the first rule of computing: ‘Always Make A Backup,’ you can grab what you need from your backup set. Of course, finding a way to backup and restore every file in MOSX is still a problem. 8) File Name Smashing: Solved in 10.1! See me smile? Smashed names are ugly. The new method of showing names allows them to run over to two lines on screen. Sanity has been restored. 9) The List View Is Unfinished: Some improvements are in 10.1. This method
of viewing files is still the runt in the family, hobbled compared to regular Mac
OS. I have noticed a speed increase in 10.0.4. But List View still suffers from having
to be forced to update (see issue #5) and won’t jump to a file you highlighted with
a keyboard letter unless, (get this!), you are scrolled BELOW where you want to go.
Apparently, whoever programmed the List View likes to put the end of the alphabet
at the top of their window. Not me. 10) Startup Disk Control Panel 9.21 Bombs: Apparently solved in 9.2.2. From reader feedback this is clearly an intermittent bug. The work around is to never ‘bless’ the Classic System Folder if it is on you MOSX partition. I did away with the problem by moving my Classic system over to a different partition from MOSX. The other option, on New World ROM Macs, is to use the option key during a restart. Note that Mac OS 9.2, available on newer Macs, ships with Startup Disk Control Panel version 9.2.2, and it runs fine on 9.1. My testing indicates that the bug is now gone. 11) Option Key Booting Failures: Unsolvable in one respect, solvable in another. This dilemma is connected to Open Firmware, which only works completely if you have a ‘New World’ ROM chip in your Mac. (Thanks to readers Roger Stafford and Jean-Jacques Ardoino for pointing this out!) My G3 Series PowerBook has an older ROM, so tough on me. I can’t get that very kewl startup disk GUI the later machines have when you boot with the option key down. But, I did away with bad reboots to Classic with the option key when I did a clean install of 10.0.3. Apparently this was another remnant of having updated from the beta version. 12) Energy Saver Is Unfinished: Minor Improvements so far. This is a critical problem on PowerBooks. 10.0.4 actually helped, allowing the system to really go to sleep. There are still intermittent black screen problems when attempting to wake from sleep, but MOS 9 has the same problem. What has NOT been solved is the power drain during sleep. My G3 Series PowerBook battery is totally drained within 12-24 hours. As you can imagine, all sorts of problems can arise when your battery dies and your computer fails, like ruining your PRAM and severely screwing up your volume structures. I found one culprit: The PowerBook fan will inexplicably start running during sleep. I have also witnessed lines of pixels on PowerBook LCD screens can remain lit and active during sleep. Why? Obviously this needs further work. This bug gets First Runner Up as THE MOST ANNOYING BUG.
13) Sound Drop Outs: The internal speaker problems are over. The app problem has had only minor improvements, and it still shows up on only certain hardware. With 10.0.4 I get inexplicable sound drop outs on my PowerBook G3. For example, iTunes or QuickTime Player sound will go dead. Sometimes opening a new window will solve it. Restarting the app reliably gets sound going again. Classic is not immune to this problem. Sadly, you have to reboot Classic to get sound back again. I have seen no workarounds. Restarting apps in Classic makes no difference at all. The minor improvement here is that with older versions of MOSX you had to log out, then in again to get any sound. On my Mac I am distinctly ticked off by this problem. Ironically MOSX is being praised as “the best Mac OS ever for audio.” So, this bug wins 1st Prize as THE MOST ANNOYING BUG. 14) No Classic App to Quit: Unlikely to improve. I got used to going into the Classic Preferences and doing the dirty work there. I love the freeware ‘The Classic Environment’ because it tells me, at the desktop, if Classic is still running or it bombed. I found Classic in 10.0.4 was more stable, but still liked to spontaneously bomb without warning. You could substitute another Classic-only app like SimpleText if you like. I find Classic in 10.0.4 still liked to spontaneously bomb without warning. 15) Flaky Window Graphics: Improved somewhat. Redraws in X on top of Classic windows is still a problem. But, I have not seen any oddball artifacts in X itself since 10.0.4. Window redraw speed is improving. 16) PlainTalk Voices Mess: Unimproved. Steve Jobs has really fallen down on this one, he’d have to admit. He promised improvements! Where are they?! Completely missing is any voice modulation control. The result is robotic, not much better than those lousy PC voices. 17) Finder Highlighting Of Text Damaged: Unimproved. Apparently, I have to stress to some readers that this is strictly in the Finder. It also does not apply if your file title extends beyond one line. Try this yourself: Highlight the text on a file icon where the text resides within one line. Now click in the text, hoping to highlight the last word in the title to delete it. In Classic MOS you can pull down with your cursor to grab that text. You can’t in X. This is the lame way they do it in Windoze. Oddly you can still pull up on your cursor to highlight text to the left! So why not drag down to highlight text the right? 18) Missing Key Combinations: Unimproved. This is strictly a problem in applications themselves, not in Apple’s APIs. What surprises me is that Apple’s own Stickies and TextEdit have not-a-clue what Command-D means in a Save dialog box. Update them! 19) The Dock: Improvements continue in 10.1. They include being able to move the Dock to either side, as well as using faster Genie animation. In the meanwhile, use workarounds. To be honest, I have now personalized the dock to such an extent that I actually find it useful. I overcame my worst complaint about the Dock by recreating the functionality of the Classic Application Menu using the freeware application ASM by Frank Vercruesse. It frees me from looking at the dock to see what is running, and switch applications. It adds some other critical features to the Finder as well. Apple has already considerably improved the Dock by adding some of the functionality we used to have with pop-up folders. Thank you Apple. 20) No Way To Change The System Font: Unimproved so far. I asked an Apple engineer about it. He had no idea how to change the system font. I’ve tried shareware methods that failed. Are we really stuck with 12 point Lucinda Grande forever? Reader David Chilstrom made a good point that this may be entirely intentional by Apple in order to maintain the integrity of what they consider to be the Aqua interface. We have all seen really ugly system fonts on Macs. Apple has already been backing away from appearance customization in MOSX 9. This may be more of the same. The theoretical result is that every Mac interface looks 'good,' which Apple considers a selling point. And now for 60 More Bugs: 21) The Curse Of The Incompatible Permissions: This a major pain. And it
has so many ramifications! Try it yourself: (1) While booted in regular Mac OS 9,
put a new file or folder onto your Mac OS X volume. It might be useful to label it
something simple like ‘MOS 9 Item.’ (2) Boot into your regular MOSX account (not
as ‘root’). (3) While in MOSX, try renaming your MOS 9 Item. You can’t. The system
will throw a ‘-54’ error. User-hostile much? (4) Now try moving your MOS 9 Item into
the trash. You can’t! “The operation cannot be completed because you do not have
sufficient privileges for ‘MOS 9 Item.’ ” Aggravated yet? (5) Do a ‘Show Info’ on
your MOS 9 Item and try to change the privileges so you can use the thing. You can’t!!
All the privileges are greyed out! I’m annoyed. This bug REALLY concerns me because I can see newbies throwing an absolute tantrum over it. I foresee Apple Tech Support inundated with calls from users who cannot understand what is going on. The problem is that anything you put on your MOSX volume while booted in MOS 9 is only given privileges for ROOT access. What would solve the problem is putting that cute little lock function into the Show Info box where you can click the lock, toss in your admin password, and change the privileges to work in your regular account. Meanwhile, the only other solution is to perform steps #3 and #4 logged in as ‘root.’ Try explaining this to Granny, but watch out for her knitting needles. Want some more fun with privileges? Read on... 22) Privileges Insanity. The privileges dilemma in #21 is troubling. But it gets worse. Try this game while you are in your regular MOSX account (not ‘root’): (1) Go into your Applications folder and drag the Preview application onto the desktop. (2) Now drag it back into Applications. OK, that worked just fine. (3) Now drag Preview over to the root window of your Mac OS X volume. (4) Now drag Preview back into Applications. You can’t. “The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for ‘Preview.app.’ “ Huh? What is so special about the root of your MOSX volume that suddenly your privileges have changed? And can you go into the Show Info window and fix the privileges? No! Granny is going to have an aneurism over this one. It gets my Booby Prize as THE MOST ANNOYING BUG. I will be moving it up to win First Prize if Apple don’t solve it in a hurry. 23) No Trash Access Between OS Versions: If you have separate MOSX and MOS 9 partitions, you can hide stuff from both 9 and X in the Trash, and Sherlock will never find them! Go ahead and search for them! Where did they go?! They’re in the trash of the OS you’re not running. Obviously, the Trash setups in 9 and X are incompatible. Why?
24) Changing File/Folder Names Typically Requires Two Clicks. One click is needed to highlight the item icon. A second click is needed to highlight the text. But, occasionally you can do it with one click! I am either not getting the hang of this, or Apple needs to sort out and simplify the API. At the very least it’s messy. The ‘Mac Way’ of course is to click on the file name then wait, or do a quick drag away to wake it up faster. This is gone in MOSX such that the full un-smashed file name shows up in a box instead. Result: I don’t expect a solution here. 25) Flaky Multiple Alias Creation: It’s minor, but annoying. Try this: (1) Shift-click a selection of items in a window to alias to the desktop. (2) Let go of the shift key, hold down the option-command keys to get ready to drag and drop your items. (3) Click on one of the group in preparation for dragging them to the desktop. As soon as you click on one of the selected items, that item is no longer highlighted. Oops! That’s not how it works in MOS9! The work-around is to shift-click your items, drag them without the alias keys held down (option-command), then hit the alias keys AFTER you have the files in motion.
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from of course my personal perspective. Hopefully,
this list will give you a warm fuzzy feeling of ‘Oh good, I’m not the only one with
that problem.’ Or possibly you will roll over and fall asleep. This is a very long
list.
