You're mocking me, aren't you
I took an email break a few hours ago, and in order to have a usable Dock.app and to free up some screen real estate, did an Apple+H to hide my email client. If you check out the image from the last post and compare it to the one above, you'll see what happened. Nothing would get rid of it short of un-hiding and re-hiding the original app...
Stupid Dock.
Stupid Window Manger.
Stupid, stupid 10.4.
Now, while the above wonkiness would confuse a normal user, it isn't what I'd call a nightmare, and its way too late to spend time figuring out where and why its occurring, and even if it did know the specifics I doubt I'd care at the moment.
It's the kind of thing I see over and over in Mac OS X lately, but gloss over mentally because slowly but surely the System is brainwashing me into accepting that it's normal for things like text to be fucked up and for windows to not draw correctly. I just account for it and change my usage to suit the System's bugs, like I did with older versions of Windows, because strangling the computer only hurts my hands.
Maybe I'd feel better about this stuff if it wasn't past 5am, and if I wasn't hearing that 10.5 was shaping up to be more of the same -- and possibly much, much worse. The rumbles are that they're way behind where the builds need to be if they are going to improve quality while trying to steal some thunder in timetable and features from the Windows Vista juggernaut. You don't necessarily expect beta quality at this point, but you expect it to be farther along than it is, and they know it.
Quite frankly, at this point I'm wondering if we'll see the promised and demoed Quartz 2D Extreme (hardware accelerated drawing) in 10.4, unless they water it down or just cry havoc and let loose the dogs of imprecision and general indeterministic screwiness. The rumbles say this stuff may not even be ready for prime time in the 10.5 time frame either, but those are black thoughts which will hopefully be dispelled with a nap.
In fairness, iTunes jumped an entire version point in 1.25 frickin' months, which didn't happen by accident. That must have taken some mad effort -- perhaps even unit testing, or serious testing at all -- if they were able to fix the bugginess from version 5 while adding in the new features. Fear the future, and schedule many naps.
Posted by drunkenbatmanOctober 17, 2005, at 06:19 AM
Comments (38)
Posted by: Rebecca Martin at October 17, 2005 06:39 AM
I'm noticing you aren't a morning person. :-)
Most went over my head and I wish you would elaborate more on the big words in this and how they apply "...or just cry havoc and let loose the dogs of imprecision and general indeterministic screwiness."
Posted by: Colin Barrett at October 17, 2005 06:59 AM
You are the die from which all QA people should be cast, DB. Imagine if Apple had an army of drunkenbatman clones? That is, who's to say they don't. Also, to the above commenter, I don't think DB and "morning," "afternoon," and "night" are usable in the same namespace. It's kind of like trying to duel someone with a wet noodle. It just doesn't work. I hope I've managed to come back a little from rounding the horn last night, and I hope all that makes sense.
Posted by: Carl at October 17, 2005 07:10 AM
"Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war" is from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. … And from Star Trek, which is what I actually know it from.
Posted by: Kuahine at October 17, 2005 07:51 AM
As Matt said above, the standards we value are not those to which Apple feel$ compelled to adhere. That's because Apple is peddling its wares to consumers now, and consumers don't give a shit. They buy and use Macs indiscriminately according to affinty-group influence, cultish brainwashing propaganda, and mimetic desire (see TUAW.com).
Eh, so wat you like do, brah? Fuck em, dass wat.
We adore you, drunkenbatman. Big alohas and mahalos plenty from Hawaii. xoxoxoxoxo
Posted by: Michael at October 17, 2005 08:34 AM
"Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war" is from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
You're close, Carl. It's actually "slip":
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/julius_caesar/julius_caesar.3.1.html#293
Posted by: at October 17, 2005 08:35 AM
In fairness, iTunes jumped an entire version point in 1.25 frickin' months, which didn't happen by accident. That must have taken some mad effort -- perhaps even unit testing, or serious testing at all -- if they were able to fix the bugginess from version 5 while adding in the new features
Is that sarcasm?
Posted by: flyermoney at October 17, 2005 08:46 AM
Eh?
I tried to reproduce the bug you're experiencing, by sending around 15 open mail documents to the Dock, and hiding Mail.app, over and over again.
Granted, I don't use a gMail client.
Neither have I changed Tiger's appearance theme with a 3rd party hack or by any other means... Care to elaborate?
Posted by: EST at October 17, 2005 09:11 AM
"Quite frankly, at this point I'm wondering if we'll see the promised and demoed Quartz 2D Extreme (hardware accelerated drawing) in 10.4, unless they water it down or just cry havoc and let loose the dogs of imprecision and general indeterministic screwiness."
Phrases like that (if misquoted, intentionally or otherwise, I think it is "slip" and not "loose") are what make DB dangerous. I don't 100% agree (I've had Tiger weirdness, but cannot get Mail.app or Dock.app to do this), but His words are "sticky". His "Harbingers of mediocrity" comes to mind every other day now. I'm waiting for Apple to sue him for anything to shut him up.
I'd forgotten about Q2DE, I remember the QT stream from WWDC. Was there an explanation for why it was dropped?
-Ed
Posted by: at October 17, 2005 09:41 AM
"n fairness, iTunes jumped an entire version point in 1.25 frickin' months, which didn't happen by accident. "
maybe they will jump to 10.6 so it matches better with iLife '06
Posted by: CM Harrington at October 17, 2005 09:48 AM
While Quartz 2D Extreme isn't enabled by default in 10.4, it is possible to turn it on. Many people have reported visual anomalies while Q2DE is enabled, although I personally haven't. Is there a repeatable test case that will uncover these graphics glitches?
And I, too, am curious about your 3rd party themes and such. Personally, I've never seen that type of graphical glitch (although I have seen others, also cosmetic, and minor). Was this repeatable?
Posted by: at October 17, 2005 09:53 AM
that desktop pic is sweet. where from?
Posted by: NonPlussed at October 17, 2005 10:09 AM
Why blame this on 10.4? I've been using it since the beta releases and support several hundred users running it and no such visual artifacts appear. Before pointing the finger at Apple, why don't you try running your system without hacks or mods, or at least determine if you have a hardware problem or not. Hey, there's always Windows XP!
Posted by: jbj at October 17, 2005 10:21 AM
It is hard to believe that Steve Jobs signs off on much of anything Mac-related nowadays. While it may be asking too much for a return to the micromanagement of the old days (see http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=calculator), SOME attention to elegance and asthetics -- not to mention simple basic functionality -- would be nice. FTFF, GDI.
Posted by: bonaldi at October 17, 2005 10:32 AM
NonPlussed: Because it's TIGER'S FAULT. And if you'd read earlier entries, you'd see that DB has been running without modifications etc for months, and has tracked all the bugs down to the OS. This is not user error. And yr argument is the worst fallacy of all:
1. People are seeing errors in software.
2. I don't see any such errors, and my 700 users don't tell me about any!
Conclusion: There are no errors.
Have you tried using Preview.app with more than 10 jpegs? Almost guaranteed to get screw-ups here with that. And then a minute-long wait for it to quit afterward. Tiger is just shit.
Posted by: Anthony at October 17, 2005 10:52 AM
Phrases like that (if misquoted, intentionally or otherwise, I think it is "slip" and not "loose") are what make DB dangerous. I don't 100% agree (I've had Tiger weirdness, but cannot get Mail.app or Dock.app to do this), but His words are "sticky". His "Harbingers of mediocrity" comes to mind every other day now. I'm waiting for Apple to sue him for anything to shut him up.A lawsuit would do nothing but get him posted to all the big sites. He's not posting confidential information, just speaking about issues that others can reproduce.
Posted by: Mike at October 17, 2005 12:03 PM
As much as I try to avoid using obscenities on the internet, I'm compelled to agree with the above comment by bonaldi:
Tiger is just shit.
That 10.4.2 was as big an improvement as it was over 10.4.2 says something about the state of Tiger beforehand. I've been appalled at the number of basic bugs in it (the Preview rotation issue has almost caused me an aneurysm several times) and Apple's OS upgrade strategy is beginning to grate if the releases are going to be of this low quality. I was more than happy to pay for Panther because it was a ridiculously good upgrade over Jaguar, but I consider Tiger a waste of money.
For a self confessed hobbyist geek to think that about the OS he runs full time on his favourite hobby toy (iBook) that's saying something pretty major.
Posted by: John Faughnan at October 17, 2005 01:04 PM
Think Secret claimed 10.4.3 had over 500 bug fixes. It will be interesting to see how that goes. I also wonder if the Intel port will be more robust than the current OS (cleaner foundations?).
In addition to Quartz Extreme being missing in action, there's the small detail of Fast User Switching not virtualizing the kb/mouse properly. So the prospect of a server-FUS compatible thin client solution seems far way.
I'm on 10.3.9 on my iBook and 10.4.2 on my iMac. There's nothing in 10.4.2, so far, that's worth an upgrade. Ok, so the Calculator is nice, Chess works better, and Preview is a surprisingly powerful application ...
I think we need a cohort of hard-core hard-nosed Mac users to vote yea or nea on upgrades. Forget the enthusiasts who don't have work to do; let's all appoint DrunkenBlog the abitrator of all Apple software releases! (Note DB now accepts credit card donations via PayPal for those of us who fear and distrust PayPal ...)
Posted by: PXLated at October 17, 2005 01:05 PM
Hmmm...not many problems with Tiger for me. Certainly haven't with Mail or with Preview as mentioned in an earlier post. Just opened 40 JPGs and rotated no problem.
I must be living right I guess.
Posted by: Nate at October 17, 2005 01:14 PM
The biggest problem seems to be the video drivers, as I've noticed things like that even back in the 10.3 days. I don't know if it's an Apple or an ATI/nVidia thing, but I hate to say that the video drivers on Windows seem to work a heck of a lot better in general, partly because they release often for every little display bug that is discovered.
Posted by: Peter da Silva at October 17, 2005 02:33 PM
What they really need to do is "let slip the schedules of war". If Microsoft can slip Longhorn for ... it's been so long I can't remember ... surely Apple can afford to miss a release date by a few months.
Posted by: artMonster at October 17, 2005 03:35 PM
I think we, and Apple, are well served with some of theDB's rants about quality and usability, and I suspect Steve Jobs has no problem with the criticism either. But, are we getting spoiled or what? So many comments I see these days regarding Apple border on the infantile. Or sour grapes. Apple is changing and growing. It has to in order to survive. And it has to get this stuff out before Microsoft steals the idea and stitches it onto Vista.
I have seen some glitches and bugs in 10.4 as well as hardware defects in some current Apple products. But hasn't this always been the case with Apple under Mr. Jobs? Get it out there as finished as possible and fix the problems later... or end up with another Copeland fiasco.
I prefer OS X. That is why I use it. When I experience a problem (hardware), I call Apple and, so far, they have always fixed the problem to my satisfaction. Software problems on the other hand are a never ending work in progress. And so it should be.
I wish Microsoft had been broken up when the Feds had the chance, and the playing field leveled a bit. Microsoft would be more nimble, and Apple would be (perhaps) less arrogant. And there might still be a competitive BeOs or equivalent..
Posted by: cameron aka desk003 at October 17, 2005 03:53 PM
Bonaldi: Have you tried using Preview.app with more than 10 jpegs? Almost guaranteed to get screw-ups here with that. And then a minute-long wait for it to quit afterward. Tiger is just shit.
OMG this is seriously annoying. It just dies, for no reason!
Posted by: artMonster at October 17, 2005 06:04 PM
..."Bonaldi: Have you tried using Preview.app with more than 10 jpegs? Almost guaranteed to get screw-ups here with that. And then a minute-long wait for it to quit afterward. Tiger is just shit."
..."OMG this is seriously annoying. It just dies, for no reason!"
I am not sure where this kind of problem might be coming from. I opened 25 jpegs on my G5 with 2 Gigs Ram, no problem and very responsive. My G3 iBook with 768 Mb, also running Tiger.. slow but no crash. Slow to quit though.
As for "Tiger is just shit". Another good example of worthless, infantile and/or churlish comments that neither solve nor illuminate the topic.
Posted by: Ponk at October 17, 2005 06:16 PM
I'm with artMonster on that.
I'm all for pressuring Apple to fix those bugs, but the way it's treated here gives voice and power to all the MS FUDers roaming on MacSurfer.
Posted by: FredB at October 17, 2005 08:04 PM
How come that lots of people can't reproduce those bugs?
I just opened 50 jpegs (taken with my 350D, so around 3MB each) in Preview.app, it need less than one sec to switch to another pic, not time to close them and 5 sec to quit.
Never had a crash due to Mail.app, although it's sometimes slow with my 8 imap accounts...
I'm on an iMac G5 1.8Ghz with 1GB RAM.
I'm not saying that you're lying, DB, but you have to much problems to put them on OSX/Tiger only.
Posted by: at October 17, 2005 08:27 PM
The problem with bugs is that they're often very specific to one person's configuration (hardware, and or software), and can often be specific to the unconscious usage patterns of a particular person. Maybe DB has some bad RAM, and always launches a certain pile of apps after login, placing Preview somewhere in RAM where it's affected. Or maybe there's a real bug that only becomes visible under the same conditions.
But the plural of anecdote is not data!
DB, I've enjoyed your rants, especially given that they are more technically astute than most, but you're starting to fall into the "my machine has very visible bugs, and I heard from a friend that theirs does too, so apple must be blind" trap.
If every copy of Preview crashed with 10 files, Apple would notice. If even one person in a thousand regularly saw the Dock bug you're seeing, Apple would notice.
So Something Else Is Wrong(tm). I'm not saying there's no bug. It's just that the bug is never as simple as the symptoms make it appear.
Posted by: Anthony at October 17, 2005 09:22 PM
I think we need a cohort of hard-core hard-nosed Mac users to vote yea or nea on upgrades. Forget the enthusiasts who don't have work to do; let's all appoint DrunkenBlog the abitrator of all Apple software releases! (Note DB now accepts credit card donations via PayPal for those of us who fear and distrust PayPal ...)Indeed. For a positive review to be credible, I have to believe that the reviewer is capable of giving a negative review if the product sucks. The overwhelming message on most Mac sites is "It's still worth it!" no matter how bad it gets. DB's willingness to report on it when a problem is bad enough for it not to be worth it, and report on the meta-problem of crappy QA has made him probably the only online reviewer I'd trust.
Posted by: Chris Perardi at October 17, 2005 09:26 PM
From what I've noticed, and my experience certainly doesn't constitute a decent sample, is that Tiger behaves differently on every machine I've used.
On my current Rev. B iMac G5, the only Tiger bug I encounter is icons in folders or on the Desktop that randomly go missing until I restart the Finder. (Thank god for TinkerTool, now I have a 'Quit Finder' option in the Finder.)
On my work Rev. B iMac G5, there are no problems that I can definitively link to the machine. Accessing files on the server can take forever, but it's a brand new server that's having problems, so that's not the Macs fault. The only difference between the work machines and my home machine is extra RAM at work.
On my parents' Rev. A 17-inch iMac G4, my old machine, the only bug I see is that the 'spinning cube' effect for fast user switching sometimes doesn't show up.
On a new-ish eMac at work, Tiger is at its worst. All the Adobe CS2 apps die when you look at them funny (the apps run fine on every other machine I've used), the system runs far slower than it should, and eventually the OS becomes so corrupt it has to be reinstalled from an image.
Strange.
Posted by: drunkenbatman at October 17, 2005 09:40 PM
DB, I've enjoyed your rants, especially given that they are more technically astute than most, but you're starting to fall into the "my machine has very visible bugs, and I heard from a friend that theirs does too, so apple must be blind" trap.If every copy of Preview crashed with 10 files, Apple would notice. If even one person in a thousand regularly saw the Dock bug you're seeing, Apple would notice.
Anonymous,
I always pay attention, however:
1. Many of my ramblings are meant to be taken within the context of previous ramblings.
2. It helps when the person I'm paying attention to is paying attention -- where did I even mention Preview.app in this post? :)
Posted by: Muriac at October 17, 2005 10:48 PM
I don't want 10.5! I don't want a single new feature until everything in 10.4 works properly.
Posted by: sfenerule at October 18, 2005 07:18 AM
10.4 - more piffle than epiphany
artMonster for President.
Posted by: bonaldi at October 18, 2005 11:59 AM
artmonster: As for "Tiger is just shit". Another good example of worthless, infantile and/or churlish comments that neither solve nor illuminate the topic
Worthless? Hardly. As an answer to "what do you think of Tiger" it sums up my feelings concisely. Infantile? Perhaps if it came from sour grapes or bad vibes, which it doesn't. As for solving the problem, I don't think I can do much about that, beyond being appointed head of QA at Apple. Illuminating the problem it certainly did: there are plenty of people out here who have enough problems with Tiger to feel strongly about it, many more than there ever were about Panther. This is a problem for Apple.
I love Apple, and am a paid-up cult member. But quality has taken a drastic nose-dive and frankly, Tiger is shit. I take on board yr comments about software being a work-in-progress, but Tiger is considerably poorer than Panther was. There is almost no aspect of it that I'm more satisfied with. The bugs are manifold. This isn't the place to list them in the extended way that's all you'll apparently accept, but DB's earlier posts have already done that anyway -- this is just a forum for the more emotional venting.
And the Preview bug that I see is not that it quits, but that the display corrupts. If I open ten jpegs and leave them in the background while I do other things and move windows over them, before long at least one of the images will be corrupted.
I assume the reason most g5 users don't see it is that they've got enough vram for QuartzMegaExtremeTurbo, which presumably doesn't suffer from it. My Mac mini doesn't, and has to rely on the presumably less-tested fallback display software. If Apple's developers&co aren't using these machines daily, these are the sort of bugs that will be missed.
I'd rather Apple didn't race to get new features out the door before Vista, as you think should be their priority artMonster, because I don't think they need to scoop Vista in any way. Cramming features in without holistic testing and planning is one of the reasons Windows is such a mess. It seems Apple is heading that same way, to your great pleasure. I'd prefer they slowed down and made it work on all supported systems.
Posted by: anon at October 19, 2005 07:00 PM
If the display of some pictures is being corrupted, then the odds are nearly 98% that you have bad RAM.
I'd give 1% odds to some other program you're running is stomping on memory inside Preview's address space (which would have to be a kext or an unsanity type hack.)
And there's also the 1% odds that it's some bug of Apple's that stomps on memory or depends on your video hardware.
But seriously, if your machine acts flakey, IN ANY WAY, it's almost always bad RAM. Bad RAM is a LOT more common than people think, mostly because most of the time it doesn't actually cause a problem. The vast majority of RAM being used in your machine at any moment isn't critical. It's icons, code that won't be executed, data structures not being used that moment, etc.
Posted by: at October 20, 2005 01:20 AM
i fucking love that picture :)
Posted by: drunkenbatman at October 20, 2005 01:23 AM
If the display of some pictures is being corrupted, then the odds are nearly 98% that you have bad RAM.
Can't let that go, because you'd be wrong and confuse others -- I'm not going to comment on the preview.app issue because I didn't bring it up, but the display becoming corrupted (images not in the foreground primarily) is a known issue on OS X right now.
Posted by: Squozen at October 20, 2005 09:52 AM
Sounds like a video driver issue. I've never seen a problem like this with Preview.app (PowerBook with R9700 Mobility) and I regularly open over a thousand JPG images at once, for... um... research. *cough*
Posted by: dirtymouse at October 22, 2005 05:00 AM
If the preview thing is repeatable, then you have 'known failure'. If that is the case, try removing all but one RAM chip (if it's 256mb or more) and try doing the 10 jpegs in preview thing. If it doesn't trip, repeat with the next ram chip and so on.
If it does trip on the factory installed chip, swap it for any additonal or third party ram. Put on the white lab coat..
If trippy it persists, then RAM is not the problem, and it's likely
a display driver bug as suggested elsewhere.
I also find Tiger somewhat troublesome and have taken to turning off the two features that really forced me to upgrade. That's Dashboard and SPotlight. Running with them disabled has made my lowly iBook G4 many times more reliable and faster.
Keep up the rants, i really really enjoy them. Seriously. I'm not just the only one screaming in my room, oh what a stupid piece of crap. (thanks cartman).
The things we (you and me batman) value in our computers/os are not what apple is putting in anymore. This makes me sad. At least OSX has a long way to fall, so I should be able to use it for a while yet (heres hoping anyway).