A community of quality
Hey Drunken Bat Dude,Is something going on with you? I was reading through your last post, and I recognize some of the behaviors you pointed out in myself, but the drunk I know would not have made me feel stupid while making his point. Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.
Mark F.
I actually got two emails like this, and after a little sleep and some coffee, and now looking over that last post, there is probably some truth to them and I should take my lumps. I was certainly a little more acerbic in what I'm banging out than I often am. I meant everything I said, but given a second shot I'd probably word some of it quite differently, as if I'm making people feel stupid I'm letting people down, including myself. In deference, I proffer these excuses:
- I'm stretched more than a little thin lately.
- A few of the things I'm working on have me frustrated to a level I rarely reach, yet I have to sit on quite a bit of it, and it wouldn't surprise me if stuff eeks out around the edges.
Let's just say I've become somewhat obsessed with the current quality of Mac OS X, and Apple hardware in general, but for right now am keeping it to the quality of what is going out on discs. I've been devoting a lot of resources into digging into what's going on, enough that I'm already backed up on the chats again. Not full-on Deconstructing Maui X-Stream obsessed, but it's getting close.
I think most real users know, in our heart of hearts, that Mac OS X has been misfiring quite a bit lately, and that 10.4 was almost a total misfire in terms of actually using it. It doesn't mean we're going to switch, it doesn't mean we've given up, it just means we know something is wrong.
You can like the idea of XHTML/JavaScript/CSS apps and still know Dashboard was a complete misfire, even if your only clue is that they're bolting on major functionality in a .2 release. You can like the idea of building webkit into your apps while knowing the quality of what you are building your app around isn't at the level it should be.
Severe, extreme wonkiness like this doesn't happen by accident, whether it is going on at Apple or Microsoft or anywhere between.
Some of what I'm finding out -- while doing my best to verify through multiple sources -- is that Apple has some people in key positions (think VPs, etc.) who are committing the cardinal sin of not listening to the UI or software engineers. Marketing has their ear, and in some worst-case scenarios, no one does, and whatever they happen to subjectively think is neat is the way it is.
You don't think Spotlight starting a search a millisecond after you've typed one character, and are still trying to finish typing what you want searched was rubber-stamped by any type of usability engineer, do you?
I'm still sifting through and connecting the dots, but more than one of these managers appears to be have come over from Microsoft, and most of what I'm hearing makes sense because my experience leads me to believe when things go this wonky its rarely about the engineers, and some of what I'm hearing also helps explain why some aspects of the system are so solid and others are as flaky as anything Microsoft put out on their worst day.
I'll talk to guys about what they're seeing in say, Core Image, and they'll bitch about some things sure -- some even major -- but they're generally in love, even if they think there are bugs that shouldn't be there that more testing would have found.
Then we'll talk about Webkit, and they'll go on about how much of a timesaver it is to have an engine built in, but that it's responsible for 95% of their application's crashes and 25% of their time goes just to working around its bugs. They can see the value in what is there, they are just not amused at the quality of the implementation. I'm just using these as examples for now, but you get the idea.
Since I mentioned it's rarely about the engineers, you may well be confused how the person actually coding something wouldn't be held responsible by myself, and a good example would be a movie I saw recently: Fantasic Four.
Now, without being on the set, I can tell you:
- This wasn't a good movie. It was just bad, and while it raked in some cash -- quite possibly due to a huge marketing budget -- no one will remember it as time goes by.
- A ton of people involved in the making of this movie really gave their all, and poured everything they had into it.
A lot of people can work very hard on something, using a lot of resources, only to have it turn into clusterf**k because of the poor decisions, priorities and demands of a few whether they be marketing or just a manager who thinks his subjective taste is better than a usability study.
The problem is that if you bought your ticket even though it sucked, Fantastic Four is the bar to meet for the sequel, and if you play with the numbers you might even find you're able to pump up the marketing for the sequel while scaling back the quality. This is what managers and accountants do, and there is value in it.
Unfortunately, after awhile, if people keep going and they keep sorta sucking, a general malaise sets in and superhero movies start to bomb, and then superhero movies won't get made for another decade whether they're good or not.
Back in Heading Over the Cliff While Whistling, I said:
I've written blurbs about this here and there throughout my posts, but the bottom line is that there's a huge elephant in the room when it comes to Mac OS X: The UI is going to hell in a hand basket and everyone is just averting their eyes...See, here's the rub -- it's gone well past the anal pixel-pushing designers now. Just about every Mac developer I've talked to believes the Mac OS X interface is in serious trouble.
You may not think the Mac UI is or was in trouble, and that's fine as I'm not asking you to agree with me or concede any points. However, as far as I'm concerned, what is going out from Apple that's being called user interface is becoming a joke to anyone I care about.
Their reputation for interfaces is becoming synonymous with fashion and prettiness, not usability. As far as I'm concerned, users shouldn't have to settle for two out of three, especially Mac users.
Now, Tiger may be running like a complete dream for you, and, well, that's great and I don't begrudge you it, because bugs don't really work that way. However, it doesn't change that the problems are there, and that they're real, and that I had to complete the last interview on a Linux box because 10.4 was whacking out when it came to text due to a known and nasty bug.
I'm here to tell you that as above, just about every single developer I know now thinks the quality of the code that is coming out of Cupertino often just isn't where it should be. As mentioned earlier, this is spotty with some areas being solid and others being quicksand.
I know many, many Mac developers and talk to them more often than they'd probably like. Since many of you aren't developers, and can't really see what these guys are dealing with, and most of them have to be very careful about what they say publicly.
I guess this is where I call in some of the trust I've hopefully earned over the life of the site when I tell you much of the stuff they are having to work around is stuff they should not be having to work around. It's not the end of the world, it's just not nearly where it should be.
To go back to stuff seeping at the edges, part of the problem is that I'm really angry right now at myself, and I'm angry at you, and I'm angry at the Mac community as a whole for letting it get this bad. In some ways, we've let Apple wear down our will to thinking this is just what something like the Finder is -- the best it could or should be. We often forgive too easily while asking too little.
We bought the ticket, and console ourselves with the fact that Jessica Alba looked choice, but there is no getting around that as a whole its not fully baked.
I count myself at the forefront there. I installed Tiger and saw how badly implemented features like Dashboard and Spotlight were, and how flaky the system as a whole was, but I kept thinking it'd all be fixed with a point release or so. I didn't talk about a lot of it, because it often seems like there is such little point when the communication with Apple is all one-way.
It has become increasingly difficult to even say what is wrong, both because so much is wonky and because what it means to be Mac-like has been co-opted so severely by whatever marketing thinks will look shiny. It's lost much of its meaning, aside from the shiny.
The Mac used to be about the user interface, but when that got sucked into shiny-land rather than usable-land or even the dare-I-dream-usable-and-shiny-land, people stopped caring so much about usability. It used to be about making things harder on the computer so its easier on the user, but it isn't like someone can back up their computer by dragging one drive to another anymore, because it would be hard for the Finder to be able to handle that.
It used to be about quality, about shipping when it was ready, and now it'll just get fixed in a few revisions afterwards -- hopefully. Ship-it-then-fix-it is not the Mac way.
Another problem is that -- if you couldn't tell -- I haven't really counted myself as part of the Mac community for a long time. A foot in, sure, but not my full weight.
This mostly occurred during the end of the Amelio days and the beginning of the OS X days, where I just couldn't tell what the Mac community stood for anymore, and I'll be damned if I'm going to line up behind something just because it's in front of me.
However, the truth is that I really give a damn about the Mac, even as I've taken technological mistresses. I care, and because I do I'm a part of something whether I like it or not even if I don't know what it stands for.
When you look at the underlying architecture of Mac OS X, there is beauty and elegance there that can't be dismissed and shouldn't be given up on -- the effort just needs to be applied so that beauty and elegance carries all the way up through to everything we're using, from the APIs to the Finder and all the way to Spotlight and Mail.app.
While I may have problems defining what the Mac community stands for right now, or even what the Mac stands for right now, the base denominator of the Mac for me has always been quality, not different. It's not enough to not be Microsoft, or not be what everyone else is using, or to ship first. That's the community I'm choosing to be a part of, and I guess hoping exists, so I'm not out on my own.
I'm telling you this because it's going to be the major focus of the site for the foreseeable future, and I want you to know why I'm going to be talking about the things I'm going to be talking about, and to even give you the opportunity to bow out if Mac OS X is just where you need it to be. No hard feelings on my end, but do please say goodbye to The Cow before you leave.
However, personally, I just can't identify a bigger problem on my radar than what I've just gone over, and I think its important.
Let's be honest, Apple isn't like other companies to us, and the fact that we even use the term community in the way we do shows it off quite well. When there are problems, there is a tendency to try to handle them internally, within the community, because you don't want the outsiders to know about the dysfunction in the family. Much better to sweep it under the rug so the neighbors aren't talking about us at dinner.
As a Mac user, we sort of have to deal with this, because it's there and we can't get away from it. I don't have any problems telling someone to stay away from a particular model of Dell laptop because its known to have severe issues, yet my first instinct is to shy away from telling someone who is interested in a Mac just how many problems the iBooks or Powerbooks or iMac G5s are having.
In both examples you'd be helping out your friend by warning them away from a potentially bad purchase, but we hesitate because in the latter example we'd be harming Apple in addition. We don't want to talk about a lot of things because it's hard to talk your friend into switching when you are going over just how lame so many aspects have become.
It's much easier to just not talk about the problems, or gloss over them, or sweep them under the rug, or to say "Mine works fine, must be something strange on your system", because hey, even if it is a real issue of course it'll be fixed in an upcoming point release soon. After all, all software has bugs, you can't expect miracles, and at least you aren't having to deal with spyware and warez.
Apple is a big company, and can take care of themselves. They can take it, and really they have to. If we don't talk about this stuff, and apply pressure, there is zero impetus for change and improvement. It has to be a public issue.
I'm convinced the software engineers at Apple know there are problems, but some of the people above them don't, and many of the people above them surely don't, and this is actually a case where there is little they can do from the inside without pressure from the outside.
One day, I want to be able to show off the Finder, rather than skipping past that part of the demo as fast as I can, or feeling like I have to apologize for it. I want to be able to show them how to get their email without having to suppress a gag reflex, and I want usability engineers to be able to point to what's great about the OS X interface instead of what's pretty and why something is usability nightmare.
I want developers spending more time making Mac applications rock instead of having to write code to work around bugs in the APIs, which seem to only get more plentiful with each release.
That's my goal.
As we head towards 10.5, accomplishing it may not really be possible, but it wouldn't be the first time our eyes were bigger than our plate, yet we choked it down with help. Leopard may well end up hurtling itself towards the cliff, but if we're really yelling this time it might hear us.
Posted by drunkenbatmanAugust 01, 2005, at 02:59 PM
Comments (48)
Posted by: Ed Gordon at August 1, 2005 03:39 PM
I remember telling myself, 'I am sure they will retool the finder in 10.2...' Now I have almost given up hope that they will ever do it 'right'. And I see at all as one application package - Finder, Dock, Spotlight, Dashboard. And they have all been relegated to minimal duties. Finder: only when I am too lazy to use the terminal to sort by 'recently modified'. Dock: minimized up top via a prefs hack, so that it is nearly disable, except when I accidentally minimize a window there. Spotlight: didn't replace launchbar. I only use it for when I want to search based on document contents (which is rarely). And finally Dashboard: using it for a trash size icon and SysStat cause i like to switch it on when i am thinking. But I wouldn't miss it if it were gone tomorrow. Bottom line is that I would take the 10.2 Finder if it were blazing fast and bug free over the current 'improvements'. Or, even better. I can just keep using sawfish over X11. Super fast with fully customizable keyboard shortcuts.
Posted by: Rory at August 1, 2005 03:40 PM
Cool I'm really glad you're going to address this as you've got enough influence now to get all the right folks buzzing. Managers who can't see past the end of their own nose's are the bane of any software developers existance so I feel for the poor guys at Apple who are working under them. Pressure from the outside is absolutely the right way to help these poor souls out.
Posted by: Larry Miller at August 1, 2005 03:45 PM
DB--
You keep wingeing on about the problems in 10.4.x without giving any specifics.
I have found 10.4 to be a bloatware nightmare (it eats hard disk space alive) and Spotlight to be an extremely intrusive technology of often limited utility, but Tiger does not seem to "feel" unstable.
The first releases had unacceptable delays getting to simple things like print dialogs (a particular peeve) but much of this seems to have been cleaned up by 10.4.2.
On my (stock) machines, the intermediate releases of 10.3 seemed to be really, actually flaky with frequent crashes-- so much so that I began to suspect faulty hardware (and bought a new, uneeded Mac because of it).
Your uninformative, content-free grumping without specifics is starting to wear thin with many of us; I note that quite a number of your commenters are not experiencing problems that you give veiled hints at. Are you using wierd 3rd-party software (the Linux Syndrome)?
Posted by: mikeash at August 1, 2005 03:51 PM
Ship-it-then-fix-it is not the Mac way.
This doesn't sound right to me. System 7.0, System 7.5, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 8.5, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3. The earlier ones on that list in particular were pretty horrible and had to be patched up. Even the better OS X releases weren't that great until a couple of point releases had to come out.
Apple is many good things, but "getting it right the first time" isn't one of them in my book.
Posted by: Nabil at August 1, 2005 03:54 PM
For any Apple honchos that may be reading: I'd rather see you focus your energies on making your system ROCK SOLID. You've been given a tremendous opportunity to clean house and get everything up to speed and stable, and STILL have a stronger feature set than your competition. There is a difference between moving quickly and rushing. Guess which you're doing?
DB, as ever, great post.
Posted by: Colin Barrett at August 1, 2005 04:19 PM
How you managed to crawl inside my skull and write a post from inside, I'll never know.
Posted by: Dave Robertson at August 1, 2005 04:24 PM
Talking about Apple's recent software - and Finder in particular - being somewhat half-baked is setting off alarm bells. The theme resonates. Has anyone tried using Apple Pages for example. Its beutiful to look at, the concepts behind it are brilliant, but in actual execution it leaves something to be desired. Its just not all there. Lets not even get started on Mail.app 2.0. But here's my real concern; Apple has been generating a lot of buzz recently about its enterprise offerings. People are, according to the Mac sites buying Xserve G5s with OSX Server and Apple Xsan and guess what? Once again these are alluring in concept and beautiful in design, but the wheels fall off when you try and use it in real life. I'm thinking in particular of Apple's Open Directory and Xsan software. These things are buggy and incomplete. The manuals are full of features that have not been implemented yet. The software does not do what Apple Marketing claims it can do.
I think the malaise is not just in Finder and Webkit. Sadly, its pervading the company.
Posted by: Hayley at August 1, 2005 04:29 PM
I'm so pleased you're going to tackle these issues that have been so neglected by so many Mac-oriented bloggers. Charge on. A little revolution now and again is good for the soul. If Apple can't take the internal criticism from it's "community", then it won't stand up to genuine commercial competition.
It seems so clear that so much of what is going on is a classic case of marketing overtaking engineering.
Posted by: Alex at August 1, 2005 04:38 PM
Amen, that's all I'm going to say:)
Posted by: Retard at August 1, 2005 04:49 PM
Even though I'm a new user (relatively speaking) being here only 2 1/2 years, I'm still noticing a slight skew since even 10.2 - flashy stuff that doesn't necessarily work/isn't useful (dashboard at the moment), instead of the really important tinkering under the hood. Oh I'm sure its still going on, but its not quite as pronounce as before, and doesn't work as well as a consequence
Posted by: Tobias Weber at August 1, 2005 04:53 PM
Sometimes, late in the night when its raining outside, I get the feeling that "marketing over engineering" is where Apple *wants* to go.
Didn't the Intel Switch presenation mention that they're a lifestyle company selling ways to listen to music everywhere except in record stores? If ugly CPUs work ok for that, why shouldn't half-bad software, either?
Posted by: Mike at August 1, 2005 04:57 PM
Got to be with you on this one.
Tiger is not really a problem for me - but I can really see the places where it can and should be improved and fixed.
The most important goal, as I see it, is to make sure Leopard has a 2 year release schedule, minimum. How we're going to do this, well, I'm not sure.
Finally, to foresmac - Mac OS X has real bloat issues, atm - the fact that it has to be compiled with -Os for the G5 to restrain its memory requirements pretty much proves this beyond doubt. Therefore, just saying it should be bug-free, then optimised isn't enough. By 10.5, optimisations should, and need to be happening - unfortunately, Apple is in the nasty situation where it has piles of bugs to fix at the same time.
Posted by: lookmark at August 1, 2005 05:16 PM
Hmm, I feel that two issues are being conflated here -- (a) Apple management's tendency to ship ambitious releases on schedule, while letting QA slip, which is unfortunate (though I'm not yet convinced this is unprecedented) and (b) the feeling -- among a certain tech-savvy contingent, anyway -- that the OS X UI is going to hell in a handbasket.
I don't happen to agree with the second -- I think the OS X UI is by and large excellent, if still clearly catching up with Tiger's technology. But I'm always interested and willing to read a detailed analysis of what's going wrong... kindly just try to keep (a) and (b) apart.... unless there's clear evidence the two issues are meaningfully connected.
Posted by: Ben Rosengart at August 1, 2005 05:21 PM
Many have tilted against the windmills of Apple corporate culture and come away discouraged. I wish you better luck, db.
You might coordinate with John Siracusa, who has also taken an interest in the Finder.
Posted by: Andrew Escobar at August 1, 2005 05:25 PM
"I want to be able to show them how to get their email without having to suppress a gag reflex."
LMAO! -Well put. I take it you are talking about Mails horrible new interface. Its so ugly, it looks like it belongs in Longhorn. If you want to fix the problem and get the "Panther look" back, try Mail Stamps 1.1. Its gotten great reviews.
http://www.andrewescobar.com/mailstamps
Posted by: Tommy at August 1, 2005 05:30 PM
I have to agree w/ mikeash. I've been a Mac user since 1987. How, given I am a user and not a programmer. I'm not out there writing code or anything. I just use my Mac like I use a car. It helps me get from point A to point B.
But w/ that said I've spent my life working as a "suit" at ad agenices. Next to real estate and employee salary, the money we spent on Macs was our #3 cost. At five firms over 15+ years we never, ever went with a new OS until at least a few point releases. There were always problems, many not forseen. You may see it differently, and gosh knows you know a lot more then me, but IMHO Apple has never been create at releasing clean upgrades from the start.
Posted by: Ankalon at August 1, 2005 06:28 PM
It's kind of hard for a switcher to know what the bugs are, even if they manifest in front of ones eyes, if one comes from the Windows corral. I know personally.
I've got X working, and I'm more productive and creative on it, even though not where I've publicly hedged myself. (Yes, that means you, Blogger.) But I realize that practice makes perfect, and an OS is somewhat living code, and we can never get every thing and situation perfect. X may be superior compared to the competition, but we can never judge oneself by others, but by our potential.
I suppose that is the reason you are railing along with the other pundits, we have a lead against Windows, and must push forward, lest we become second and second best. What makes us the best? The standards and UI rules.
If the standards fail, like they already are starting to, chaos ensues. Not only do rules separate order from chaos, but visible rules are needed, or something that may not be random, seems like it, and might as well be. I have heard stories of the Finder and it's many views...
Besides, I'm getting tired of the Maui crap. And I see you have detractors, truly you are no longer a "secret blog" See: "secret band."
And if you hate bugs, I get this when I preview my posts in Safari:
MT::App::Comments=HASH(0x8283334) Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.
Posted by: Eddie Hargreaves at August 1, 2005 06:55 PM
Most people who say the OS X Finder is just fine are Windows users who don't know what the pre-OS X Finder was. As someone who started with System 7, I'm still waiting for a number of features from OS 8, 8.5 and 9 to be returned to OS X. I was told so many times, "OS X is young, they're still working on it" and the Jaguar and Panther upgrades did improve things immensely. But Tiger is really quite awful, mainly because of Spotlight, but also because they actually *removed* certain functionality (Control-Tab in List view, where have you gone?) Apple obviously does not care about the Finder anymore because they are going on record as saying no one will need to use the Finder thanks to Spotlight and iLife.
Please put pressure on Apple to FTFF!
'Well, it's better than Windows' just doesn't cut it.
Posted by: Carl at August 1, 2005 07:21 PM
Here's hoping that 10.5 has no new features, just bug fixes, UI improvements, and speed increases.
Posted by: Skatch at August 1, 2005 08:05 PM
Fantastic. I'm looking forward to what you have to say. Here's hoping this spurs some action in the community and puts pressure on Apple.
Posted by: jhn at August 1, 2005 08:12 PM
The situation with the new features (Spotlight and Dashboard, the underlying technical stuff) is akin to the situation with OS X 10.0 and 10.1: good ideas with flaws and performance issues. Particularly with the slowness and inflexability of Spotlight search. But I am not sure that I would go and say that there are fundamental issues that are much different than what we've had all along. It's just that Expose was so well thought-out from the get-go, and Jaguar and Panther were both so solid, that when we're back to where we were, pre-Jaguar, in terms of performace and stability, it feels like a real let-down.
Longer betas, and more usability testing are always desirable. Let's hold Apple to higher standards. But remember that I think we had just been a bit spoiled.
Posted by: Don MacDonald at August 1, 2005 08:31 PM
What's with the Spotlight hate? I guess nobody here keeps much searchable content on their hard drive. I'm working on a book on Machiavelli. I have a number of PDFs, text documents and web archives that I keep on my machine: original texts, OCRed letters and books, etc. Let me tell you: Spotlight rocks really, really hard at finding passages even when you are unsure in which document you read it. More than that, it is often faster to simply Spotlight a phrase and double click (taking you directly to the passage in question) than it is to find the document itself through the Finder (or Path Finder or whatever.)
But sure, Dashboard does kinda suck.
Posted by: Benjamin Garrett at August 1, 2005 09:05 PM
I think Apple is clearly optimizing their OS releases for aggressiveness and timeliness. Rather than perfection. I, for one, applaud their aggressiveness and think it makes damn good business sense.
Do you remember what happened after System 7? ... was anything new other than the theme until OS X came out? That was years where the OS didn't change at all.
In each OS X revision, large underlying parts of the system improve. We get faster and faster versions of the Quartz graphics engine and the Core Image/Audio/Video set of APIs which will make future OS X applications more powerful. Spotlight changed the way I use my computer.
Furthermore, compared to pre OS X times, my computer is incredibly stable. I remember on my OS 9 box the hard drive would corrupt itself every few months...
Yes, Tiger is a little more screwey UI wise and on the iPod shuffle manual in one part they call the LED indicator amber and another part they call it orange. And we should bring that to their attention ... but I don't think it's the end of the world...
I'd rather Apple have a few interface misteps (like the PDF dropdown button) than stop gaining marketshare by taking forever to do anything and second guessing the design at each level of product and engineering...
Posted by: Chris at August 1, 2005 09:32 PM
Software is inherently complex, guys. The amazing thing is that Tiger is as stable as it is, given all the new plumbing involved. Anyone thinking about switching to Windows or Linux because of perceived problems with Tiger should go and use them exclusively for a few days. You'll quickly figure out where the quality issues really reside...
Honestly, I think a lot would be forgiven if three things didn't suck so much:
• The Spotlight hang issue when searching in the Finder.
• The Finder. Period.
I have to assume the former will be rectified in a 10.4 point release and the latter will be rectified in 10.5 with a Spotlight-centric redesign of the Finder. (If Apple really wanted to extend their halo, they could do a major Finder upgrade in a point release, but I doubt it'll happen.)
• User interface consistency.
This may never be fixed, unfortunately. Bummer.
Posted by: Chris at August 1, 2005 09:35 PM
Benjamin -- heh. I too remember the bad old days. The switchers don't know how good they have it.
Not that attention shouldn't be called to these problems -- I fully support this DrunkenBlog post. I mean, it's true, these issues do suck. I just want everyone to take a deep breath and enjoy a glass of perspective.
Posted by: Nic Carter at August 1, 2005 10:31 PM
hehehe... I get the feeling you're gonna cause some problems, DB, and I think it may be painful for some of us who have repressed some of the stuff you're gonna bring up! As for me, I find it easy to dismiss some of the short-commings by saying (to myself) that perhaps my expectations are too high. I'm having no problems with 10.4, and it has fixed several bugs in Finder that were really annoying me in 10.3.x (and 10.2, 10.1 and 10.0!), and spotlight is a god-send in Mail, where I have 6 years worth of email archived!
Posted by: Twist at August 1, 2005 11:45 PM
You know I didn't even realize it but the stuff I don't like about Mac OS X but used to put up with because the benefits outweighed the drawbacks haven't actually gotten better, I have just become used to them. The Finder is still slow and window position and view are still crap shots at best. When I started running Mac OS X 10.2 full time on my PowerMac 8600 (thanks to XPostFacto) I figure that new hardware would cure most of my woes but it didn't. I have had very few problems with 10.4 but I have been completely unimpressed with the Dashboard, Spotlight, Safari RSS, and most of the other new features. Automator is probably great but I have yet to find a place in my various work-flows that it fit in. It is easier to spend ten minutes doing stuff manually than it is to craft a work-flow that takes all the little variables into account to produce the right results.
We should "Rise Up" and tell Apple that we are not going to take it anymore. I will start working on our "Rise Up" banners and stuff. I see something done with silhouettes like the iPod ads. A crowd is gathered under a flag with The Cow proudly displayed on it with their fists in the air across from a giant Apple logo and Finder icon. Of course they will just call our bluff and say "What are you going to switch to Windows?"
Posted by: jcburns at August 1, 2005 11:56 PM
I have to say that as much as I love Tiger conceptually, I seem to be living in the land of the beachball when it comes to using Spotlight in the Finder, as well as during any kind of complex JavaScript thinking in WebKit. I admire the WebKit/Safari team's openness--a blog, a major IRC presence--and what are they working on right now?
Why, http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=10 ..!
That's the kind of work-in-the-open that makes you root for 'em. So I do.
Spotlight is another mystery.
My bug number 4119761, 'Spotlight displays keywords menu over other app windows'--"Spotlight (as seen in a finder window makes you wait for, then displays a dropdown menu over other application windows, with contents that seem not to include any actual keywords I've used for the files in that folder."
--was closed as a dupe.
My bug 4119773, 'Spotlight maybe not indexing all iPhoto keywords'--OK, I'll spare you the details--WAS investigated by a polite Apple QC guy..although that was back in May, and I haven't seen a change--the bug's still open.
As a designer who's done my share of UI stuff the inconsistencies get to me too. 'Elegant' does not equal 'pretty.'
Posted by: steve at August 2, 2005 04:20 AM
I have worked extensively in software integration, which is where the shit hits the fan and all the components come together to work smoothly - in theory!
This is an area which doesn't seem to feature prominently in many plans, yet is probably one of the most important stages to get right. My feeling is that Steve Jobs does this single-handedly at Apple.
If the marketers have the ear of the managers, then that doesn't necessarily indicate that the managers are not doing their jobs. It does indicate that the software developer team leads are not being aggressive enough in flagging problems.
Marketers and spin merchants don't create anything, and a bunch of software developers really putting the hob-nailed boots in can force a hell of a lot of points out of people who have no choice.
Internal politics in a company can be hard, nasty, vicious, but it has to be done. That said, I have no idea how Apple operates and whether people get the sack for breathing the wrong way.
Posted by: LEGO Boy at August 2, 2005 07:22 AM
Haven't installed Tiger. I've read too many stories about bugs that sound like they'll suck the utility out of my little PowerBook. As a developer, I can empathize with the orders coming down from the marketers that don't really make sense, and violate a lot of good principles. Wasn't it Steve Jobs who said that the problem with the Amelio days was that "the sales guys ran the place"? So now, the marketing guys are running the place? Hmmmm...
Posted by: Chucky at August 2, 2005 08:52 AM
Dashboard sucks. Who cares?
Spotlight rocks. The implementation is rough, but the important hooks are all there to smooth out in future (paid) releases. As some commenter mentioned upthread, Spotlight right now is like OS X 10.1. Everything is there, it just needs polish.
The Finder sucks. But it hasn't gotten any worse since 10.1. It's gotten mildly better, even though it still sucks.
Tiger stability is fine on my installation. Why do we think stability is worse than previous releases?
UI mess is a valid point.
Posted by: Chucky at August 2, 2005 08:56 AM
As long as we're complaining about Apple, how bout this one:
I've avoided using iPhoto since I want to keep my pix in my own custom folder hierarchy, so I'm not locked in to iPhoto. When Apple stops shipping iPhoto, or I stop using Apple hardware, I want my pix to follow me.
But as iPhoto integration gets more integrated into the system and into 3rd party apps, it's harder to avoid using iPhoto.
If they can let me use iTunes while letting me store my music how I'd like it, why can't they do the same in iPhoto?
Posted by: bill at August 2, 2005 12:54 PM
love windows vista , hopefully os x 10:5 will get closer to
the easy and snapiness of vista, maybe in mac-intel i hope
Posted by: Emmet at August 2, 2005 01:29 PM
I'm amazed at how little improvement has been made to the OS between Panther and Tiger, Apple just seem to be adding more crap without making what's already there better. The one major improvement that I have noticed in Tiger however is the speed at which I can mount a networked drive - this used to take ages in 10.3.x but it's now almost as fast as Windows. Spotlight has detracted from my macs ability to do its everyday work as the old command F was must faster and less intrusive, I think it's pointless to have to search the contents of every file each time you want to quickly do a find by name. Come on Apple, cut the crap and put the functionality back or at least give us the option to turn things like Spotshite off.
Posted by: richardx at August 2, 2005 04:58 PM
ugh.
i just bought tiger.
i've been reading all the "rumblings from the lab" of late, which for some reason didn't register. went ahead and bought it anyways... and now i read this.
d@mn!
Posted by: John Faughnan at August 2, 2005 05:29 PM
I want to validate the comment on Apple's historic software quality. They've had very good years (pre-multifinder) and very bad years (somewhere in 7.x was the worst OS software ever sold to a mass market -- worse than some OS/2 releases). Classic was very wonky.
Over the OS X lifespan they've had good and bad releases. 10.3.9 is pretty good. iTunes is very, very good. iPhoto should be shot.
In other words, it's not a consistent story. Unfortunately the context is that quality doesn't really matter in the current marketplace. Microsoft Word is utterly dominant, and it was horribly broken in post Word 97 and has been hacked and patched ever since. The market doesn't care.
We'll get quality software when it becomes a buying factor. Despite that, I do applaud your complaints. I'm more than willing to sacrifice features for quality. (What did Tiger get me? A working copy of Simple Finder. Good, but not worth all the software upgrades I've had to do to use Tiger.)
Posted by: aether at August 2, 2005 08:13 PM
amen
Posted by: Samuel Sidler at August 2, 2005 08:48 PM
You're right on.
It first occurred to me when Jobs was demoing Tiger and it froze. When was the last time a demo went bad at a Mac event? It doesn't happen. It can't happen. Apple, in general, has been going downhill, let's hope we can all bring them back up.
Posted by: John at August 2, 2005 11:20 PM
Spotlight beginning to search right after you type is not a new Mac behavior. Go back to Panther. Bring up a Finder window. Start typing in the search box. It starts compiling search results immediately. No clicks needed.
Posted by: Jeff R at August 3, 2005 12:38 AM
Thank you. I've been using Tiger since May, and there's been an itch in the back of my brain ever since. I can't put my finger on it ... other than my iPod is freezing when syncing up w/ iTunes. I'd be lying if I said that didn't piss me off a little.
I look forward to reading the subsequent articles.
10.1.5 and 10.2 were just a little "heavy", 10.3 was "in the right direction", and 10.4 gives me that "itch".
I wish I could put it better than that, but you're doing a good enough job for both of us.
thanks again.
Posted by: FZ at August 3, 2005 01:31 PM
Announcer: After a series of staggering defeats, Apple engineering assembled in Cupertino in late 2005 for a session with famed producer Steve Jobs. And, luckily for us, the cameras were rolling.
Steve Jobs: Alright, guys, I think we're ready to lay this first OS down. By the way, my name is Steve Jobs. Yes, the Steve Jobs. And I gotta tell you: fellas.. you have got what appears to be a dynamite product!
Former MS manager #1: Coming from you, Steve, that means a lot.
Former MS manager #2: Yeah. I mean, you're Steve Jobs!
Former MS manager #3: It's incredible!
Former MS manager #4: I can't believe Steve Jobs digs our product!
Steve Jobs: Easy, guys.. I put my pants on just like the rest of you - one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I leave dents in the universe. Alright, here we go. OSX 'Leopard' - take one.
Former MS manager #1: Okay! Wait! Wait! Steve, could you come in here for a minute, please?
Steve Jobs: That was gonna be a great OS. Guys, what's the deal?
Former MS manager #1: Are you sure that was looking okay?
Steve Jobs: I'll be honest.. fellas, it was looking great. But.. I could've used a little more Insanely Great Coolness. So.. let's take it again.. and, Avie.
Avie Tevanian: Yeah?
Steve Jobs: Really change the world(TM) this time. I mean, really.. change the world(TM). I like what I'm seeing.
Former MS manager #1: Okay, wait! Stop! I'm sorry. Steve, could you come back in here, please?
Steve Jobs: Fellas.. now, we just wasted two good OSs! That last one was even better than the first!
Former MS manager #1: Well, it's just that I find Avie's Insanely Great Coolness seeking distracting! If I'm the only one, I'll shut up.
Former MS manager #2: It was pretty rough..
Avie Tevanian: You know, I could pull back a little. If you'd like.
Steve Jobs: Not too much, though! Fellas, I'm telling you - you're gonna want that Insanely Great Coolness on the OS!
Avie Tevanian: You know what? It's fine. Let's just do this thing.
Former MS manager #1: Come on, people!
Steve Jobs: That.. that doesn't work for me. I gotta have more Insanely Great Coolness!
Former MS manager #3: Don't blow this for us, Avie!
Former MS manager #4: Yeah, quit being so selfish, Avie!
Avie Tevanian: Can I just say one thing?
Steve Jobs: Say it, baby. Say it.
Avie Tevanian: I'm standing here, staring at Steve Jobs!
Steve Jobs: The cock of the walk, baby!
Avie Tevanian: And if Steve Jobs wants more Insanely Great Coolness, we should probably give him more Insanely Great Coolness!
Steve Jobs: Say it, baby!
Avie Tevanian: And, Former MS manager #4, you are right - I am being selfish. But the last time I checked, we don't have a whole lot of OSs that feature the Insanely Great Coolness.
Steve Jobs: I gotta have more Insanely Great Coolness, baby!
Avie Tevanian: ..and I'll be doing myself a disservice -- and every member in this company, if I don't perform the hell out of this.
Steve Jobs: Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more Insanely Great Coolness!
Avie Tevanian: Thanks, Steve. But I think, maybe if I just leave.. and, maybe I'll come back later, and we can lay down the Insanely Great Coolness.
Steve Jobs: Aw, baby..
Former MS manager #1: Avie, wait! Why don't you lay down that Insanely Great Coolness right now. With us. Together.
Avie Tevanian: Do you mean that, Former MS manager #1?
Former MS manager #2: He speaks for all of us.
Avie Tevanian: Thank you.
Steve Jobs: Babies.. before we're done here.. y'all be wearing gold-plated diapers.
Former MS manager #3: What does that mean?
Steve Jobs: Never question Steve Jobs! Roll it!
Former MS manager #1: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at August 3, 2005 06:44 PM
You know, I don't really want Apple to fix the Finder.
I want Apple to fix the NeXTstep file browser by pulling all the Finder crap out of it. Or, what the hell, just go back to 1997 and port what you had back then from OpenStep to Cocoa. It can't be to hard. Give me back my shelf, and my fast, responsive, multithreaded file handler.
Then you can take what's left over and turn it back into a good solid port of the OS 9 Finder that the old Apple fans are wanting, without all the geeky browser stuff.
And ship them both. Separate applications. Two great tastes that taste great by themselves.
Posted by: meh at August 3, 2005 10:50 PM
dude, you're running some other crap on your machine.. have Growl installed? how about SIMBL? stuff with mach_*?
You really have no right to post your experiences as the absolute truth, because most other users aren't having these problems you describe.
Your head has become to big for your shoulders, and you now think you are more important than you really are.
'how many problems the iBooks and Powerbooks are having'.. I'm quite surprised you take the experience of a few people to be the case for every machine coming out of Apple. There are _no_ known issues with the iBook G4's or Powerbook Aluminums. A battery recall, nothing more. Anything else is just regular manufacturing issues, just like any other manufacturer, except that Mac users complain louder.
If you want, stay with that Linux machine. It will serve you well, and you can blame your fuck-ups and 'bugs' on open-source devs, who will be more than happy to have you help fix the code.
Things are much better than you make them seem.
'If we don't apply pressure...' This is not the idea. Let them know about _your_ problems. Do what you can to help the situation. Don't think for a second that you're doing this for the right reasons, with the right motives. (Once you start your anti-Apple blog, your hits will go through the roof! Great for adsense. Funny how the best writers don't have advertising.)
Your don't like Mail? It shouldn't matter to you, using that payware Gyazmail or whatever, but Mail.app's interface works just fine for me and most others. No suppression of gag reflex needed. Don't whine, dude, it's just plain annoying.
Posted by: chad at August 4, 2005 01:12 PM
I love and hate Tiger.
Love = They fixed my biggest gripe about the Finder.. icons now show up when they are created from the terminal automagically.
Hate = They broke java. I'm a java developer. Hate.
So for the last few weeks I've been using my Windows box a lot more. It has a smaller monitor and an uncomfortable desk arrangement, so I can't wait to get back on my mac.
Thankfully my particular show-stopping java bug is fixed in the next OS patch. Won't be long now I hope.
Tiger was not tested properly before shipping, but I every reason to expect that it will continue to be patched until its at least as solid as 10.3.9.
Posted by: Michael at August 4, 2005 01:33 PM
Thank you for speaking up for the user not the corporation, DB. Don't let abuse deflect you from telling the truths that some people don't want heard.
Posted by: Wil at August 11, 2005 07:41 AM
Thanks DB. It's not so much a stability issue as it is the utter lack of consistency. The first time I realized I couldn't delete things from a Spotlight search window using the keyboard, or organize that search, or apple-tab to that window, I realize we'd lost something. It's not about intuitive, even, as much as it's about never, and in Tiger it's gone from sometimes to never, never being able to tell how something will work.
Where is save? Where is export? In iPhoto they're in "Share" but no other application has a "Share" menu.
There is no longer a unifying ideal, or even if Apple says there is, the end user cannot find it. Why does Mail NOT behave like iTunes, despite being re-worked specifically to match it?
It's maddening, and makes working on the platform harder than it was in 10.3, despite the improvements.
I love Safari 2.0, but why can't it remember it's window position? Is that a bug that .1 and .2 can't fix? In 10.3 it was fine. And, like others here, I've given up on the Finder. I don't even look for improvements when upgrading, because I know they aren't there.
Keep up the good fight, we need it.
Posted by: Kip at October 5, 2005 02:37 PM
I switched at the time that 10.1 came out. Being an IT guy and also being into recording audio and media, I had worked with Windows all the way from 3.1 to 2000. I was sick of all the effort you had to put in just to get PC's to work consistently. I think I would reformat 3 times a year. I wanted something that would work, period.
When I bought a Quicksilver I dabbled with 9.2 and honestly couldn't understand why anyone would want to use the old Mac OS. It crashed constantly. But OS X blew me away. It was so incredibly stable. It's only crashed 3 times ever and I've never reformatted, only upgraded.
However, I was still shocked to find that 10.1 could not do simple things like network printing. But, I was forgiving since I knew that it was so new. 10.2 was a big step forward and finally 10.3 was as close to perfection as I think they have gotten.
Now we get to 10.4. This is crap. Dashboard sounds
interesting at first but there is really no practical application. And anyone saying they did not pull a Microsoft style "fast one" on Konfabulator is kidding themselves. I've had to reinstall drivers (which I've never had to do on a OSX upgrade.) and who knows what else I'm going to have to reinstall. And the new Mail did make me puke.
*sigh* It's like when Microsoft released Windows ME or something. That was kind of a fake release before XP, which is what they were really aiming for. Maybe Apple is really focusing their efforts on the Mactel and this is a "fake" release. I'm not too sure how I feel about the Mactel either.
While I do believe that Tiger is working extremely well for me, I know the experience is not consistent for everyone. I would honestly like to see Apple work more on making bug-free (or bug-minimized) and speed optimized software (in that order). This is actually one of the reasons for wanting to work at Apple and trying to get a computer engineering degree.
Sadly, it may be three years or more before I get my chance to personally try to do anything about it from an engineering point of view. In the meantime, what methods do you propose to put the pressure on Apple?