10.4.2 Baby steps

Awhile ago, there were rumors going around that the 10.4.2 was supposed to fix "all known bugs" in 10.4, which, depending on who you asked was:

  • An 'intentional leak' by Apple marketing to hopefully stave off the reputation for bugginess that Mac OS X is starting to get, with the idea being that if people have the impression it'll all be fixed soon they may hold onto some bitching. We'll call this The Great Bug Fix Hope™ theory.

  • Something that was really going around Apple; That yes, there were some problems with 10.4 and 10.4.1, but 10.4.2 was going to be their big push towards something really working, in the vein that Microsoft's Service Pack 2 was their big push towards security.

You may have noticed that I haven't really talked about 10.4 a lot on the site, or as an email put it, I've been "noticeably quiet." The truth is, I was just having a terrible amount of problems with it, but wanted to have my ducks in a row, and I kept thinking they'd be ironed out in a point release...

Things have come to a bit of a head, and we're going to be talking about bugs here shortly. Frequently, because quality control -- or at the level Apple considers acceptable -- is becoming unacceptable. It probably became unacceptable awhile ago, but allowances are made because, well, it's Apple (I do this too) and stuff will happen... And one isolated incident does not a pervasive pattern make. However, incident after incident in release after release does a pervasive pattern make.

However, before I go lifting up the plate in the sink to expose the roaches to sunlight, in the interest of fairness, today we'll mention two things 10.4.2 did fix for me. Obviously there are more things, and I'm being somewhat arbitrary, but luckily there are 365 days in a year and I'm saving a good week for Spotlight.

For the record, I've been running 10.4 with a stock install, and without my beloved ShapeShifter to remove the pinstripes, because with an OS this buggy I just didn't want it in as a factor.

Evil bloody chess

I used to play chess as a kid, and then didn't really ever again. Awhile ago, I was exposed to playing "Speed Team Chess", which was notable for a few reasons:

  • The rules are nuts; Basically if you take a piece from your opponent, you can hand it to your teammate and he can drop it into his board against his opponent.

  • I was obliterated in a ruthless and terrible fashion. I'd like to blame the fact that I had had a lot to drink by the time we started, and was playing with people who actually knew like, opening moves and such, but I really can't. I was 0wned.

OS X has one built-in game that I'm aware of that isn't a Dashboard widget, Chess.app, which aside from being almost arrogant (Come on, OS X users are beneath Solitaire or Mine Sweeper?) is pretty serviceable...

It's rendered in OpenGL, so it's 3d, which is only really notable because its not very attractive (very jagged) and it may play a role in the bugs I was seeing. It has a few fun variations included, like Crazyhouse, which lets you drop captured pieces onto the board anywhere you please.

Lots of fun, and I like to drop in and play for ten minutes when I'm taking a break. It's not only calming, but it might keep me from getting quite so embarrassed the next time I'm asked to sit down and bash kings.

As an aside, I've gotten several questions about 'wonky', and while I'm known for making up words as it suits me, this isn't one of them.
Unfortunately, something weird kept going on whenever I would switch to an app and then switch back to OS X; the window of the chess app would go completely wonky, and it could only be fixed by 'shaking' or minimizing and then un-minimizing the window.

Well, it wouldn't be every time I'd switch back to Chess.app, but just about, and while it wasn't only Chess.app that did this sort of thing, it was the most constant. It was so frequent, after awhile I just started collecting my own gallery of Chess.app wonkiness, because it was almost pretty.

Here are a few, from before I realized how strange my behavior was and stopped myself...



I was very pleased to see this has gone away for me in 10.4.2, and I can now play chess without it going completely wonky. Of course, there are still issues; launching Chess.app seems to be a good way to cause the Dock to die, and somehow revert to some old state minus whatever URLs or bookmarks or apps I've dragged to it, but it's a baby-step.

Come to think of it, the Dock will die whenever it feels like it now, so perhaps linking this to launching Chess.app isn't fair; it got hella fragile in Tiger, but that's another post.

Evil bloody sound

Man, I was having flashbacks to the pre-10.3 days with this one, and I suppose sound and Mac OS X have always had a rocky history. The Core Audio APIs took forever to stabilize, and I feel for any PowerMac G5 owners trying to make good use of VLC. I've one-offed this in previous posts, but I basically went round and round with audio before 10.3, when things finally worked.

I know, the Sound Sticks aren't the best for the price compared to what is out there, especially when I bought them originally.

Still, they are up there and I'll admit, I fell in love with the design and had to have that subwoofer.

I know I'm a tool, but it's just so cool.
I have these Grado Labs SR60 headphones I use all the time, but also a pair of Harman Kardon Sound Sticks going out over USB I switch back and forth on throughout the day.

My usage pattern caused a problem, because up till part-way through 10.2, I was taking a drastic risk by plugging in my headphones; I basically had a 50% chance of having the system throw up a kernel panic.

This would pop up in between releases, and was a nightmare, and any time I put the Powerbook to sleep I'd have to reconnect the speakers to the Sound Sticks anyways because OS X wouldn't be able to find them again. While all this was going on, there was the nasty problem in 10.1.2 and 10.2 for Powerbooks where sound would just stop working altogether, because the OS would put the sound system to sleep if it wouldn't being used, and couldn't wake it up again.

If it was able to wake it up again, you'd sit there waiting for a few seconds while it awoke -- watching a beachball -- until it finally blurged it up. A guy named Jonathan Feinberg ended up coding an app that did nothing but 'tickle' the sound system every 20 seconds to keep it from going to sleep, and I was extremely grateful.

So audio and I go way back on Mac OS X, and if it seems like I'm always trying to get you to turn down the blue pill, it's just because I've had these experiences. Apple could go on about the improved stability, but all I had to do was plug in my headphones and there was the red pill. Luckily, in 10.3, all of this went away for me and audio finally started to be sane.

Since the development period for 10.4 was extended, it stayed sane for quite awhile until 10.4 shipped. Then all my music sounded really, really weird. It turned out every single time I changed the audio output, OS X would decide I was partially deaf in one ear and tried to compensate by shifting the balance all over the map:

I use Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource to switch outputs so I don't have to go through the system prefs, so I disabled it and tried it manually to make sure it wasn't the source of the screw.

It was so weird, I could literally just click between internal (headphones) and the Sound Sticks and watch the balance go all over the place, and it was a difference place every time. If I set it to the right setting, it would stick, until I changed the output again, and then I tried it on other machines with different audio outputs... Ayep.

I normally switch back and forth 5 to 6 times a day or more, so every single time I was having to go into the sound prefs and set the balance correctly. Over time, I just stopped using the speakers altogether, because I knew switching meant going and opening up system preferences, and I was sick of it.

Admittedly, due to my past history, I'm a little sensitive to audio going wonky on OS X, so this pissed me off more than it may others, and I'm really sensitive when an OS is causing me to change my usage patterns to make up for its short comings now. The fact that it wasn't fixed in 10.4.1 was freaking me out even more, as I'd already gone a whole version with wonky sound and so didn't want to go there again.

I'm pleased to report 10.4.2 did fix my audio oddity, so that's two positive things before I start laying into what hasn't been fixed.

yummy alcohol posted button Posted by drunkenbatman
    July 27, 2005, at 01:21 AM


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