Sat - June 18, 2005

Tiger problems


The OS feels a little undercooked.


fig1. Fuzzy icons after minimising apps to the tiny Dock (iStumbler and Safari).



fig2. A bigger Dock, and sharper icons after reminimisation; but the old icons are still low-rez.



fig3. The Dock is made tiny again; the old icons (iStumbler and Safari) that were minimised when it was big stay sharp, but the ones newly minimised to the Dock are again fuzzy.



The niggling problems with Tiger continue to erode my faith in the resurgent Apple.

The latest include the DVD player constantly crashing -- just lots of little spinning beachballs and some screens that refuse to render, appearing just as a lot of corrupted graphics. The controllers also lose their alpha channels and antialiasing when Expose kicks in and all windows are reduced in size. You can even see the original bounds of the controllers' graphics. At the same time, the pointer gathers to itself some weird horizontal artifacting.

The other annoyance is the Dock. Minimised icons appear blurry or as if they are rendering at a lower resolution when the dock is small. They only appear sharp -- but not as sharp as they did under 10.3 -- if the Dock size is increased. Even if you increase the Dock's size (hold OPTION while clicking and moving the vertical line in the Dock to maintain a regular increase in size) the icon will stay fuzzy until it is again maximised and then minimised. (You can see thie results in the example above where the icons for iStumbler and Safari are sharper with a bigger Dock and reminimising, but the other minimised icons that haven't been redrawn still look awful.)

This is just crap, frankly. And it smacks of a QA team asleep at the wheel. This is something that should have been noticed within moments of the problem appearing.

Let's hope the 10.4.2 maintenance update fixes these screwups.

Posted at 09:53 PM    

Sat - May 7, 2005

Tiger unloosed


The upgrade went smoothly, but that was just the beginning.

I have lost count of the number of operating systems and their patches I have installed over the years, but it is well into three figures.

And they never go without their hitches.

Usually the problem lies not in the OS per se, but with third-party applications, hacks and hardware. The problems range from minor annoyances such as mis-mapped printer fonts to catastrophic failure and permanent data erasure.

Tiger was a relatively smooth installation at the lower end of this continuum.

Although many advised a clean install, I simply could not be shagged backing up all my docs, finding all the app install discs or package installers on the NAS and then going through all the re-registrations. I wonder what is the cost to third-party software developers for the support issues from Tiger's release?

But the upgrade process went smoothly and a couple of hours later the iBook had rebooted and it was game on. Thirty minutes later I was left wondering what all the fuss was over. I could see little of practical benefit in Spotlight that marked it against desktop search under 10.3. There are some nice widgets for Dashboard, but not so much that it outshines Konfabulator.

If all I faced was a bit of disappointment that Tiger would not solve world hunger, cure cancer or bring peace to the Middle East, then I could live with that.

But then the problems began. The machine would not shut down. This may be a problem with SpeedTools, I later discovered, to which there is a fix.

But by far the most worrying unexpected outcome of the upgrade was the iBook fan was nearly spinning fast enough to cause the machine to become airborne and reach low-Earth orbit in response to the 100 per cent CPU usage. This I also discovered was caused by an incompatibility with Virex 7.5 anti-virus software, which I suspect is linked to Spotlight. Uninstalling the software solved the problem and mercifully the fan can now take a breather.

Although Apple can't certify every third-party software app against its OS, it should not have allowed such a major problem with Virex -- which until just a couple weeks ago it provided as part of its .Mac service -- to slip through undetected. That would seem to indicate, as eWeek's David Coursey notes, serious cultural flaws with Apple's certification processes.

Simply quietly dropping the software from .Mac without explicitly informing subscribers why is not only irresponsible, it is possibly criminally negligent.

Posted at 04:57 PM    

Fri - May 6, 2005

Bonjour, Windows


One of Apple's smartest moves of the year is to ease Windows networking.

Apple does a lot of silly things, but the latest attempt to smooth the interaction of PCs and Macs is not one of them.

Apple has released Bonjour, a "zero-configuration network discovery protocol", for Windows otherwise known as Zeroconf.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft's attempts to use Samba to speed the passage of its NT operating system into Unix data centres in the 90s. The result of that experiment was that network admins became enamoured of Samba, not so much NT.

Bonjour is a key technology to encourage potential switxers, especially those who buy the entry-level Mac Mini.

Posted at 11:59 PM    

Sun - May 1, 2005

Taming Tiger


Tutorials to help you get the most from 10.4.

I will post some OS X 10.4 installation and application tutorials here for future reference:

Pre-installation
Thorough preparation smooths the upgrade process
Panther Maintenance steps from MacDevCenter.

Installation
Clean install of upgrade?
MacDevCenter has a tutorial that takes you beyond simply flipping an install disc in the drive and clicking "OK". It walks the user through a process to boost performance by streamlining the Mac prior to installation, and then testing the results afterwards.

Applications
Getting the most from those 200 new features
Apple's online webinar

Discussion
What users say
Dashboard widgets
Tiger kills 4G iPod
Upgrade or clean install?
Is a Tiger faster than a Panther?
Ars Technica forum
Breaking Applications I
Breaking Applications II
Gems in the OS
Slashdotters weigh in

Reviews
What the techos say
David Pogue tells NYT switxers that Tiger is "remarkably tame".
Opening the hood @ Ars Technica
Geek Patrol found paradoxically that although XBench scores consistently rated Tiger as slower than Panther in crucial areas such as CPU, Quartz and Disk (as well as overall), the new OS "felt" faster.
Anandtech
Macintouch
OSNews

Posted at 08:43 AM    

Sat - April 30, 2005

Quicktime 7 available for download


And you don't need Tiger.

As predicted, it didn't take long for Apple to release Quicktime 7.0 for the rest of us.

Apple says Quicktime now supports "pristine" H.264 video, Built by joint teams at the ITU (study group 16) and ISO/IEC's Moving Picture Expert Group.

"Chosen as the industry-standard codec for 3GPP (third-generation mobile phones), MPEG-4, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, H.264 represents the next generation of video for everything from mobile multimedia to high-definition playback," Apple says

The H.264 codec is a big deal because it will replace H.262, better known for its use in MPEG-2 and found in DVDs, within a couple of years on all mediums from the wire to the air and on disc or magnetic storage media. Its high-compression makes it ideal for transmission over the air, while its high-quality brings high-definition from the studio to the home.

Apple says also available is QuickTime 7 Pro, a "powerful application that’s ideal for creating high-quality audio and video content".

Posted at 10:27 AM    

Fri - April 29, 2005

No Tiger


Not happy, Steve.

It's Friday, April 29, 2005, and my copy of Tiger still isn't here.

Posted at 04:06 PM    

Mon - April 25, 2005

Clawing back Tiger


Seems like someone in the logistics department at Apple is looking for a new job.

Engadget reports that some customers received Tiger (Build 8A428) more than a week ahead of schedule.

Vendors PCMall/MacMall and ClubMac gave pre-order customers a treat by unleashing the OS ahead of schedule, quickly followed up by a “recall” of the copies from PCMall. They’re telling customers the Tiger copies that shipped out early will not be supported by Apple, and that users will have to return the boxes and get new copies shipped next week.

It is stupid to criticise others for releasing your product before you do, and then fumbling the ball so badly to gazump yourself. It is even more stupid for the direct sellers to compound their mistake by putting the onus on the innocent customer -- who paid in advance -- with such a hollow bluff. Even if Apple could somehow detect the early shipments -- and it is unlikely it could because it couldn't even stop them going out in the first instance -- it would be illegal for the company not to support a legally acquired product.

Steve needs to step up and tell these clueless resellers to retract their statements, that they did not originate with Apple, and that although unfortunate Apple will honour its commitments.

A poster to the Engadget forums writes:

I have had Tiger installed for a couple of days now and it's great. Not so much of a difference from Panther except for the Spotlight and Dashboard. The best thing for me was that it enable monitor rotation feature in the display preferences so i can finally put my Dell widescreen 2005FPW into portrait mode, at least it does on my Mac Mini. Haven't had a chance to play with Automator but it does look like it'll come in handy. The RSS built into Safari is nice and the RSS Visualizer screensaver is mighty sweet with Engadget feeds flying around the screen in 3D. The only hiccup I had so far is that it broke Candybar so I have to wait for the Tiger version to come to fix my icons.

No telling whether his version is an early shipment or Torrent.

Videos of the opening sequence and RSS Safari screensaver.

The Safari screensaver is sweet, but not very practical. Definitely eye-candy to make Windows users drool.

Posted at 01:10 PM    

First there was Cheetah, next is Tiger -- what then?


When Apple chose a genus for its operating systems, it had a limited number of major upgrades in mind.

Everyone who has designed a network or created a product upgrade roadmap knows choice of naming genus is important.

There must be a great enough range to allow for new nodes, and the class must be distinctive.

Advanced Micro Devices favors breeds of horses, possibly because they evoke a sense of speed and majesty -- Appaloosa, Thoroughbred, and Palomino. Intel names its prototypes after rivers -- Banias, Barton, Foster, Dothan, Northwood -- allegedly because retiring CEO Craig Barrett likes to fly-fish.

When Apple chose big cats as the genus for its operating system codenames, it knew it had an evocative list from which it could render names for its OS until at least the end of the decade. But it is obvious the company never thought the public would latch on to the convention or it would have trademarked the early codenames -- the IP lawyers were asleep at the wheel on that score. Major promotion of the codename only began with Jaguar in 2002.

The OS X revisions and codenames:
10.0 Cheetah - released Saturday, March 24, 2001
10.1 Puma - Tuesday, September 25, 2001
10.2 Jaguar - Saturday, August 24, 2002
10.3 Panther - Friday, October 24, 2003
10.4 Tiger - Friday, April 29, 2005 (trademark filed July 2, 2003)

After the Puma maintenance release to fix the manifold problems with 10.0, upgrade frequency slowed to 18 months between 10.3 and 10.4. This is a good time-frame for Apple -- it gives it enough time to bed a new system, getting independent software vendors on board, and regularly injects fresh revenues. And given that OS releases are largely a question of market timing, this is a manageable schedule.

In the order in which the trademarks were filed, and judging by the frequency of previous releases, that gives us a rough roadmap for future OS releases:

10.5 Lynx - Friday October 27, 2006 (trademark filed July 8, 2003)
10.6 Cougar - Friday April 25, 2008 (tm July 8, 2003)
10.7 Leopard - Friday, October 30, 2009 (tm August 10, 2004)

(Interestingly, Cougar, Puma and Panther are different regional names for the same species of North American mountain cat.)

That still leaves some major trademarks to be filed on Caracal, Kodkod, and the king of cats (likely reserved for 10.9) Lion, if Apple decides to take us through to 10.9, some time in 2012-2014 (allowing room for error). But I wouldn't rule out a Saber-Tooth release, if only for its connotations of raw, unyielding ferocity.

Posted at 11:34 AM    

Sun - April 24, 2005

The Dock and other things I love about OS X


One man's beloved application is another man's revulsion.

Windows guru, Paul Thurrot, posts a Tiger review at his website.

Although I agree with the broad thrust of Thurrot's conclusions, one comment jarred with me.

Thurrot writes:

Mac OS X 10.0 also included a few flops, which continue in the product to this day, including the reviled Dock, which is used to switch between running applications and, confusingly, non-running applications.

I love the Dock.

Perhaps Thurrot is talking purely from a personal perspective, but it is not one I share. Although app starting in OS X could be more intuitive, the Dock is not the problem in my view. I further don't understand his antagonism, given the Start Bar in Windows, which has become so polluted in XP. And we need not get into the discussion again of why do we click "Start" to close down a system?

I have always loved docking styles for task starting and switching. I loved Amiga's Amidock , OS/2 Warp's WarpCenter, and NeXTSTEP's dock, which is obviously the inspiration for OS X's dock. I seem to recall PC Tools had something similar in 1994.

It seems many of the OS's in the last decade have used variations on the dock theme, including Windows, and it fulfills a need for a lot of us.

But for faster task starting under OS X I use Rachero's TigerLaunch, a brilliant tool that lets the user start apps in much the same way they did under the Apple menu on earlier Mac OS's and the Windows' Start button.

Posted at 02:38 PM    

Keeping Tiger in its cage


Deciding on whether to install Tiger OS X 10.4 this Friday is a balancing act between a stable system that works now and promises of better to come.

It's coming up to crunch time.

Tiger's release this week means millions of us will have to decide if we will abandon our carefully crufted desktops, along with their hand-picked pre-10.4 applications and plug-ins, for the unproven hope of something better.

Upgrading an OS requires a careful, studied decision, because it affects everything on your network. Even with the easiest crossovers there are always unintended negative consequences -- favourite apps fail, data corrupts, processes change, productivity falters.

There have been some upgrades over the years that were instantly worthwhile because, even with their dramas, they brought greater stability or revolutionary new features. Such tectonic shifts occurred in the switch from AmigaOS 1.3 to 2.0, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 to Windows 95 and, of course, System 9 to OS X.

But I have also experienced some disasters despite grandiose promises -- System 7.5.x (multiple confusing updates), MS-DOS 4.0 (no support), Windows 98 (broke many of my apps and hardware drivers while introducing instability), and, of course, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (introduced profound instability and incompatibility while degrading security).

Although I don't expect unmitigated disasters such as those above, I am not convinced that Tiger -- despite its touted 200 fresh applications -- has enough benefits to make it worth switching from 10.3 Panther.

Is Spotlight really "all that" when the current desktop search, although not pretty, does pretty much the same thing most of the time?

And why would I bother with Dashboard's lonely 14 widgets when Konfabulator has hundreds and a dedicated developer community?

There are few tasks I do often, so Applescript-on-steroids Automator is of little use.

RSS in Safari? I have had that function and then some in Firefox for more than a year.

I have no kids -- at least none to which I will admit, and DNA tests are inconclusive -- so OS X for the family is just bloat to me.

And I just discovered Xounds which gives me back the soundscapes I loved so much, so no word on whether that will remain compatible.

What I want is better Windows connectivity, but no word on that in the press materials. I would have thought this would be a priority for Apple with so many PC switxers buying Mac Minis. But it seems the hardware marketing guys aren't talking to the OS development guys.

The only advantage I can see in Tiger for me is Quicktime 7, and I imagine that will be released for 10.3.9 at some stage.

That leaves just one reason to upgrade -- the boast factor.

But I would prefer to stay a little behind the curve, let others make the mistakes, and capitalise on their frustration when Tiger's cub, 10.4.1, is released shortly after Tiger's debut.

Posted at 11:01 AM    

Sat - April 23, 2005

Wishlist: Network shares that automatically reconnect


The one feature I really want in Tiger this Friday.

There should be no need to manually reconnect network drives every time I reboot the network or restart the iBook.

Windows handles this network function far more sensibly -- it looks for mapped drives and if they are unavailable it gracefully and unobtrusively informs the user by changing the drives' icon. OS X has a hernia every time my Airport link drops out for more than a few seconds.

Steve, are you listening? Network plumbing like this is not flashy like an automatic search feature and it won't make a crowd collectively inhale when you demonstrate it at Macworld. But every time a customer boots their network, or their link reactivates, they will breathe a quiet "thank you".

A half-way solution is to connect to the shared drive and drop it on the dock. Next time the drive's dock icon is clicked on, the share will show the login screen and then restart. But this is still less intuitive than in Windows.

Fix network share reconnection and I will be very happy. I shouldn't have to pay $US49 for a feature that should be standard in the operating system.

Posted at 11:47 AM    

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