Oh Chess.app, you damnable little bastard
You know, it's a little f'ing embarrassing to just post about how a very specific issue has been fixed involving the display of an OpenGL app, and then a few hours later open up iTunes and there it is again. Jinx.
It's the stupidest bug, and I am sure it is indicative of the major changes Apple made to aspects of the display layer in 10.4, and I know there probably aren't a lot of others throwing down with Chess.app on a regular basis.
I can always just play a game of Lux, but aside from the audio balance issue, it was the only problem that was finally fixed in 10.4.2 out of the numerous issues I'm having (Text editing in cocoa fields, Spotlight, banking in Safari, memory leaks in Dashboard, Mail.app, etc. -- all of which I'll go into), and being able to say so kept the bile down a little before I lay into the others, the text editing being the most egregious to me personally.
This stupid Chess.app thing is becoming a symbol of all the bugginess I'm having to deal with in 10.4; it's driving me batty. With the 10.3.9 massive webcore/webkit changes that were jammed on developers, and now Tiger, the Mac OS is developing a singular ability to just piss me off. I expect to have to fiddle with Linux, and I expect to have to watch Windows like a hawk, but I expect the Mac to just work sanely.
I have no clue as to why or when this bug presents itself; I'll admit I'd stopped playing Chess.app for a few weeks because I was so annoyed, but had been playing it for hours before posting that it was gone and knew Apple had been fiddling with the video drivers for 10.4.2.
No clue why launching iTunes, or switching to and from iTunes, would trigger some redraw errors, nor why after I switched to Gyazmail and back it went completely screwy (Picture 04), nor why after changing the Desktop picture and switching between apps I couldn't get it to show up again. No clue as to whether or not Apple has my bug reports, or if they think they've fixed the problem, because Apple doesn't work that way.
And no, not everyone is seeing the same bugs I am, because bugs don't work that way. I'm sure many had a lot of things fixed in 10.4.1 and 10.4.2, and I know others are seeing things I can't reproduce -- I'm sure some people can bank online now that couldn't in Mac OS 10.3 -- but I know they're there just the same. Something has got to give here, or Mac OS 10.5 is going to be a complete nightmare.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJuly 27, 2005, at 03:22 AM
Comments (31)
Posted by: steve at July 27, 2005 03:52 AM
I can trigger the problem with 100MB textures in Blender3d (used to generate that movie zooming over a landscape).
So I think the bug is in the section that moves textures in and out of graphics card memory.
Posted by: drunkenbatman at July 27, 2005 03:55 AM
I can trigger the problem with 100MB textures in Blender3d (used to generate that movie zooming over a landscape)
Thanks for the tip. Haven't forgotten about the movie, just slowly chewing through the inbox to prevent overload, like, where, you know, I end up feverishly posting non-stop about Chess.app.
Posted by: map at July 27, 2005 03:55 AM
Get a online adc membership and send your bugreports at bugreport.apple.com. You don't get a lot of feedback, but at least the bug makes it into radar (apple's bugtracking system) and will be looked at.
Posted by: Mat at July 27, 2005 03:59 AM
I definitely agree, Mac OS 10.4 in terms of the application environment was by far the worst I have ever seen it and it still is.
Mail crashes on me when I change to another application, Mail forgets my column preferences, Mail hangs when copying messages, etc. ...and that is just Mail.
It's a shame though as some areas of Mac OS X (developer frameworks) are working absolutely wonderfully. I know who in Apple is to blame for this mess but of course I will be kind and not print his name publicly.
Posted by: Phil Sr at July 27, 2005 04:31 AM
Have to say DB, 10.4 has been a smooth upgrade for me, but you do make me laugh when you go off picturing a guy in a batman outfit hunched over the keyboard ranting.
Posted by: Vodka at July 27, 2005 05:19 AM
Hey Mat,
Mail crashes on me when I change to another application, Mail forgets my column preferences, Mail hangs when copying messages, etc. ...and that is just Mail.
If you don't know this already, you might try emptying out the Library/InputManagers and Library/Mail/Bundles folders.
- Check both the /Library and User/*/Library folders.
There are some old 3rd party add ons that screwed Mail hard, it's been fine here since cleansing.
Posted by: Mark at July 27, 2005 05:30 AM
In one night you swapped your dock across the screen? I've done that once in about 12 months!
Is it more stable on it's side? Should we add this way up stickers?
Posted by: Squozen at July 27, 2005 05:51 AM
I dunno, I did a clean install and haven't had any serious problems. The few niggling non-crash bugs were fixed in 10.4.1. Maybe I'm just not enough of a power user. :(
edit: Much hate for my website being 'questionable content' :(
Posted by: at July 27, 2005 05:51 AM
Spotlight has been... spotty, but otherwise 10.4 has been a great upgrade for me, so I can't relate. Fun title to see in NetNewsWire though!
Posted by: bonaldi at July 27, 2005 08:59 AM
I get the Chess.app bug, except I get it with Preview when a lot of jpg windows are open and overlapping. If I move one away, it won't refresh underneath until its window is shaken. It's like peering into the soul of the machine.
Tiger is buggy as hell, and also has lots of poor design. Like Spotlight's UI not degrading gracefully, so on this Mac mini as soon as you type two letters into a search box you have to the SBOD as disks spin up and it tries to search everything, everywhere before you get a chance to narrow it down.
Don't get me started on the LCD font rendering that makes all white on black text bold.
Posted by: Mat at July 27, 2005 09:30 AM
Vodka, I will never install a 3rd party component for an application that does not have a public API (hence my disgust for Unsanity apps).
The bug that I am running into is actually to do with Mail using a non-Apple sanctioned (funny that) method for updating their main window. This causes a bug to appear in AppKit that should not appear ever. Obviously if they used a real method of updating their interface then it would work fine like countless thousands of other Mac OS X apps.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at July 27, 2005 10:02 AM
Man. Every time I read your blog I'm even more glad I'm sticking with Panther for now. I had this feeling that tickling the Tiger's tail was probably not a good idea just yet, after the pre-release talk about how it wasn't quite ready for prime time...
Posted by: J.Stone at July 27, 2005 10:34 AM
Just posted this under your 10.4.2 thoughts but I thought I'd add it here, too. I had the same video problems on a new G5 under 10.4 which turned out to be caused by a bad video card.
Posted by: J.Stone at July 27, 2005 11:05 AM
Try these things if you haven't already, as well:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Posted by: [maven] at July 27, 2005 11:26 AM
I'm seeing similar display corruption with the built-in slideshow and FFView (on a MAC MINI (no clue how it was supposed to be capitalised, so I went all caps on ya) at 1680x1050 display resolution). I am not sure whether it's the graphics / GL drivers misbehaving or the app forgetting to refresh a context / rebind a texture.
Posted by: tifighter at July 27, 2005 12:01 PM
On my 1.67mhz 15" powerbook I'm having none of these redraw issues. I attempted using the chess.app while using safari, preview, mail and itunes. No issue whatsoever. The only problems I've been having with Tiger was the iPhoto image saving issue (which was corrected with an iPhoto update), some widget memory leaks (corrected with OSX 10.4.2 update), menu bar widgets disapearing (corrected wtih 10.4.1). So now everything's truckin' right along. I guess there was a cingular/safari issue but that was corrected in an update (although I wasn't experiencing it) and my bank, WaMu, did a total redesign of their site and looks much more standards based and it works very well in safari.
Posted by: Retard at July 27, 2005 12:24 PM
I've found that 10.4 has worked fine with my system. The only major problem is upgrading all the programs to make sure they work. Which unfortunately means that the amazing NewsYouCanUse (www.autostylus.com) is being consigned to the bin as the developers are apparently dead. Or lazy. Or bust. Or something.
BTW, the new Clutch album is fantastic - good choice there! Despite my housemate calling it Redneck Soundgarden (though of course that may well be a good thing!)
Posted by: Dustin at July 27, 2005 12:36 PM
I haven't experienced the issues that you're talking about, but I have a whole bunch of my own that started with 10.4. The .2 update fixed a few, but a bunch remain. My most hated would be how Mail.app duplicates messages in IMAP accounts (and searching IMAP accounts is slooow), drawing 'issues' in Java programs, and random problems connecting to servers (not just in Safari - Firefox also has problems. It could be my ISP, but it was never a problem before).
All in all I have been pretty disappointed with 10.4. Maybe they can make it up in point releases, but that's not exactly great software engineering.
PS: Go Lux Go! Huzzah!!!
Posted by: Michael McCracken at July 27, 2005 01:29 PM
Hi, it might be relevant that Chess.app is a GPL program that hasn't changed since 2003. See the about box for a button that sends you to an Apple page with the source.
It makes heavy use of OpenGL, which has changed a lot in OS X since 2003, and it doesn't check the version of openGL it's running with. There's some possibility that the problems you're seeing might be part of Chess.app - and that someone can fix it for you without Apple's involvement.
Posted by: won at July 27, 2005 01:35 PM
Quicksilver single 867/1.5GB RAM/GeForce2MX, 10.4.2 clean installed, then Migration Assisted (no selection really, I'd just let it copy the whole old 10.3.9 startup disk's data).
No Chess.app problems whatsoever. No weirdness with iTunes or Preview in conjunction with said. And my installation is haxied to high heaven. I'll bet I'm encountering problems you aren't.
It seems Tiger is like the elephant and we users are the blind men.
Apple is also apparently blind, but clearly groping around inside of the $600,000 Mercedes S-Class Elephant Saddle, so possibly has no idea what's happening on the ground below.
Posted by: Akabane at July 27, 2005 02:41 PM
I'm using A LOT of apps on my 15' Powerbook, not a problem so far with the 10.4.2. Video, audio apps, all is fine... And I'm considering myself lucky when I read all of you. ;)
Posted by: Abhi Beckert at July 27, 2005 03:44 PM
I'm only having two problems in Tiger: Cmd-Tab often results in the app I switch too not having keyboard focus, and Mail's search finds nothing if I search "entire message" (spotlight works fine though, so it's not too much of an issue).
Oh, and Dashboard takes forever to load the first time you open it, this totally sucks!!! I know, not a bug but it's forcing me to only use the widgets I really need rather than fulling my screen with ones I rarely use (and would use more often if they were there).
Other than that? I love tiger *hug*.
Posted by: SamR at July 27, 2005 08:16 PM
The only problem I've noticed with 10.4 are some scrollbar rendering issues in Safari - has anyone else seen these? It looks like sections of the scrollbar aren't redrawn when a frame layout (like ADC documentation) is rendered.
Posted by: G20 at July 27, 2005 09:40 PM
Tiger has been the worst OS X to date. Safari is always quitting and the entire system will go down and need a reboot? Whatever happened to protected memory? What crap!
Posted by: Michael at July 28, 2005 02:51 AM
And what about that appalling iPhoto.app? It's had more fixes that a junky - one just the other day (5.0.4) - and it's *still* broken.
Giles Turnbull says he's frightened to use it, because he doesn't what to put his photos at risk:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7375
I don't blame him. My nephew rang me at the weekend. Guess what: he'd lost all his photos.
Posted by: Dave at July 28, 2005 09:11 AM
With the 10.3.9 massive webcore/webkit changes that were jammed on developers, and now Tiger, the Mac OS is developing a singular ability to just piss me off.
I'm a little surprised you're annoyed by the 10.3.9 webcore/webkit changes as I seem to recall you posting strongly in favour of the, then approaching, 10.4 (Safari 2.0) changes being backported to 10.3 (Safari 1.3). Apple can't win on this one, damned if they do, damned if they don't :)
Posted by: minimalistmatt at July 28, 2005 09:47 AM
I normally upgrade asap, but this time I am staying a 'laggard'. I never saw the value of dashboard, and am just experimenting with the now free Konfabulator. I could even hold out for 10.5 (not something I thought I would say). When iTools went .Mac I opened my eyes to what I was spending vs. the benefits gained.
Posted by: Henrik Nørgaard Hansen at August 3, 2005 06:19 AM
The wonky display problem still exists in 10.4.2, as you now know - but only when the window is zoomed or enlarged beyond a certain size. In this state I can recreate the problem on demand by changing chess board and piece style in the preferences. The problem disappears, and the window is drawn correctly, when the window is un-zoomed or made small enough.
PS: zoomed and unzoomed is spoken in the meaning of Mac OS 9. Zoomed is when the window is at its largest and unzoomed is default size.
Posted by: Will Johansson at January 3, 2006 06:30 PM
I had this problem ever since I got my Power Mac G5, but on a much wider scale. I was fearful it was my X850 XT. I've called Apple about it in the past and they insisted on me doing things that I've already done. I nearly sent it in to the Apple Store.
Thankfully I waited for 10.4.3. That fixed the problem completely and also fixed my G5's hard crash with Xplane. I guess perhaps it had to do something with certain ATI drivers. I don't know. At least it's fixed.
Sorry for the late post--I've only just discovered this wonderful, informative blog! :)
Posted by: Virtualforce at February 24, 2006 02:11 PM
February 06
Mail still does not work on Tiger. I'm using the yahoo pop3 server and downloading messages takes 15-100X longer than outlook on windows. Even though I tell mail to only download messages manually, it still thrashes for minutes on startup. With the importance of email to people, it's unbelievable that apple hasn't/won't address these problems in a timely fashion.
10.4 has been a low point in the upgrade chain for me, but this would be the point in the support call where the computer registers a high stress level in your voice and automatically forwards you to a supervisor...
Easy DB, with great power comes great responsibility...