Mac OS X 10.2.2 Update Available

Fork420 writes "Apple has released the 10.2.2 update. According to Apple: The 10.2.2 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications and technologies: Address Book, iChat, IP Firewall, Mail, Print Center, Rendezvous, Sherlock and Windows file service discovery. The update also includes the updated services previously delivered in Security Update 2002-09-20. For detailed information on this Update, please visit http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n107140 (when this story was posted, this link was not yet working) Enjoy..."

Comments

Journaling File System

[RobRancho]

is included too! :)

Re:Journaling File System

[xenocyst]

But, "Provides a foundation for the journalling filesystem (JFS), which may currently be enabled via Disk Utility on Mac OS X Server systems." doesn't exactly seem like support for JFS, more of an experimental thing? It does specfically say "OS X Server", and "foundation" after all. =p

Reverse /. Effect?

[RAMMS EIN]

``when this story was posted, this link was not yet working''
So...10.2.2 features a reverse slashdot effect - the site only gets working when a certain threshold of connections per second is surpassed?

Improved Find function?

[ku hand luke]

"- Improves the Find function of the Finder by no longer finding items in invisible folders." I hope this doesn't break the runaround I use on my brother's iPod: In Jag, I open his iPod on the desktop and do a search in that finder window for any .mp3 and voila!, all files available for drag and drop. We'll see soon enough...

Re:Improved Find function?

[JHromadka]

"- Improves the Find function of the Finder by no longer finding items in invisible folders."

Whew! Now it is easier to to hide pr0n. :)

Re:Improved Find function?

[dhovis]

Easy work around...

• CMD-F in the finder to bring up the new find dialog box.
• Select "Add Criteria -> visiblity"
• Set visibility to "All"

Voila, you can search invisible files. All this update does is set the default search to visible files only, as it should be.

Hopefully they fix...

[sporty]

Hopefully they fixed the mail.app program. If you have only 1 account, and it's imap, you won't see folders on the account. You have to add another account, even a dummy one that has no mail, to see folders of the first imap account. Stupid mail.app proggie.. had me using that stupid enterage program.

That's amazing

[Palshife]

when this story was posted, this link was not yet working

Did the submitter just guess the url of the article? Damn, you gotta teach me how to do that.

Re:That's amazing

[LX.onesizebigger]

Did the submitter just guess the url of the article? Damn, you gotta teach me how to do that.

That can get you into trouble.

10.2.2 Changes

[PatJensen]

Here are the changes in 10.2.2. Enjoy! -Pat

Digital Hub and Peripheral Device Enhancements

• Improves playback of large media files and peripheral device file copying.
• Resolves a rare situation in which an inadvertently-ejected CD cannot be remounted and applications accessing the disc cannot be quit.
• Addresses an issue in which an enhanced CD's data and audio sessions do not appear as expected on the desktop when using iTunes and inserting the disc more than once.
• Addresses a formatting issue that could occur when printing or previewing some TIFF documents.
• Addresses an issue in which ColorSync settings for some third-party displays are not retained after restarting or logging out.
• Addresses an issue when printing more than one copy of a file to a postscript printer from Adobe PhotoShop 7.0.
• Improves compatibility with HP 4MV printers when printing over an Ethernet network.
• Adds support for additional third-party disc burners, including: LaCie d2 48x24x48x, Sony CRX-820E, Toshiba SD-R2212 and SD-R1202, Pioneer DVR-105, and Yamaha CDW-F1 44x24x44x models.

Networking and Modem Enhancements

• SMB shared volumes may now be browsed by their user-assigned name.
• Resolves an issue in which an incorrect "Change Password Failed" message may appear when when changing a Mac OS X 10.2 Server client's password via AFP.
• Addresses an issue in which some internal Apple modems may fail to respond, displaying a "Could not open the communication device" message.
• Addresses an issue in which no sound is produced by some internal Apple modems until several seconds after making a connection.
• Resolves an issue in which some internal Apple modems fail to respond when connecting to the Internet.
• Error and warning dialogs boxes are no longer displayed if you cancel the mounting of an iDisk from the authentication dialog box.
• Addresses a startup issue that could occur if an LDAP server designated in Directory Access is not available.
• Addresses a data loss issue which could occur when copying a file whose filename ends with "#02," or other hexadecimal number, via AFP.
• Available disk space on an iDisk is updated more quickly after deleting files.
• Addresses an issue in which an iDisk would appear with an inaccurate 1GB capacity and 1023 MB available.
• Addresses some issues that could cause a "error -36" alert message when copying files to an iDisk.

Address Book and Mail Enhancements

• Resolves an issue in which Address Book could become unresponsive when using the Large Type menu and switching between applications.
• Address Book can now better import groups from prior versions of Address Book.
• Resolves a potential issue when transferring vcards from Address Book to a cellular phone via Bluetooth.
• Improves Address Book compatibility with users that are already on an AIM Buddy List.
• Allows address information to be imported when dragging vCards to Address Book which were created with Address Book from any version of Mac OS X 10.1.
• Corrects Address Book address format for Australian entries.
• Improves responsiveness when switching in and out of edit mode in the Address Book.
• Address Book entries without a name included now appear in the All group list with the email address as the name, instead of "No Name".
• Addresses the rare issue in which Mail may unexpectedly quit when replying to a message.
• Improves the responsiveness of the Mail application's date column and thread highlighting feature.
• Improves the reliability of transitioning a Mac OS X 10.1.5 Address Book.addressbook to an Address Book for Mac OS X 10.2 format.

Application Enhancements

• Improves compatibility for Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that use animations.
• Addresses a potential Disk Copy volume imaging permissions issue that could affect non-Admin users.
• Improves updating of applications installed with Mac OS X, updating them only if they have not been relocated or deleted.
• Addresses a display issue that may occur when Command-clicking a URL in some third-party applications, including BBEdit and Mailsmith.
• Addresses a situation in which the menu bar and Dock are not shown, after quitting a third-party game application, until the desktop is clicked.
• Addresses an issue in which some PDF files created within Mac OS X do not open as expected with Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.
• Reduces occurrences of "missing text" when browsing some web pages.
• Improves compatibility for FAXstf when a fax is being sent while the computer is restarted, shut down, or entering sleep mode.

Other Enhancements

• Provides a foundation for the journalling filesystem (JFS), which may currently be enabled via Disk Utility on Mac OS X Server systems.
• Improves security when using a read-write disk image volume in which "Ignore ownership on this volume" has been deselected.
• Addresses an issue in which automatic Software Update notifications are turned off when upgrading from Mac OS X 10.1 to Mac OS X 10.2.
• Addresses an issue in which, after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.2, an unexpected value in a user's com.apple.LaunchServices.plist file could prevent proper startup.
• Addresses a potential kernel panic situation when using three video cards and more than 512 MB of RAM.
• Addresses a potential issue in which an unauthorized user could log in as a deleted user.
• Improves the Find function of the Finder by no longer finding items in invisible folders.
• Reduces the time required for switching between Sherlock channels when using a low-bandwidth connection
• Sherlock channels may now be saved as a file.
• Allows automatic login to work as expected following an Archive and Install.
• Improves time needed to wake some portable computers.
• Addresses a potential loss of video when waking some PowerBooks from sleep after using DVD Player.
• Addresses a potential issue in which the computer does not respond when quitting DVD Player on some portable computers.
• Includes Apache version 1.3.27.
• Addresses a potential security issue in which access to system daemons could be blocked when RFC-based services are enabled.

Re:10.2.2 Changes

[aardvarkjoe]

Addresses a potential kernel panic situation when using three video cards and more than 512 MB of RAM.

Gee ... I sure wish I was in a situation to run into that particular bug...

Re:10.2.2 Changes

[ScottForbes]

• Improves updating of applications installed with Mac OS X, updating them only if they have not been relocated or deleted.

Aaaaaarrrrrggghh! Apple replaces one Wrong Thing with another. Before 10.2.2, Apple's installer would blindly write files into /Applications/Mail.app/contents/resources without first checking to see whether Mail.app was still in the /Applications folder.

Now Apple's installer looks for /Applications/Mail.app, and aborts the install if it isn't there. For the love of Tog, how hard is it to actually find Mail.app, considering that the OS already has this ability built in??

MacOS X can find where Microsoft Excel is hiding on my hard drive every time I double-click on a spreadsheet - how hard can it be to find /Applications/Apple/Mail.app? Why should I be forced to organize my /Applications folder in a particular way (or, more accurately, why should I be prevented from organizing the folder) just to satisfy Apple's brain-dead installer scripts?

Now I have to re-construct the /Applications folder to look exactly the way it did after a clean install, or I can't get application updates. MacOS 9 didn't require this. I could understand Apple's installer getting uppity if I turned /bin or /usr into my personal carnival of idiosyncracies, but I can't understand why Apple's new and improved OS is hard-wired to implode when I move an application from one folder to another.

One Problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

Journalling will be great. especially on the disk servers with 480GB worth of storage. But what the Xserves are missing is raid 5. I was pretty upset when I discovered that they only came with raid1 and raid0.

the missing raid mode is worse than it seems. The mac xserves come with 4 big IDE disks. If you want to you want the Xserve to play nice in a unix environment then its a good idea to format the disks UFS. (you dont have to, NFS works fine with HFS+, but you risk screwing yourself with the file name case insensitivity of the mac. A rare event since most people dont have important files that differ in name only in their case but it's lurking.

But wait! you cant format the whole thing UFS becausesome of the mac apps break unless they are on HFS+. So this means you need to format atleast one of the disks HFS for the OS and apps. that leaves three disks. But in RAID 1, you cant use an odd number of disks. So that leaves two disks for raid 1 UFS.

Thus the best you can do is 120GB HFS+ Raid 1 and 120GB UFS Raid 1. So out of four disks the most you can get is 120GB UFS redundant storage. Ah you say, why not just make a small HFS+ partition and let the rest be UFS. Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems. Thus you cant split the disk into UFS and HFS+ partitions.

Two companies are promised a partionalble raid 5 system (Xraid and NXraid) but both suddenly announced delayed shippments. My guess is they are trying to incoporate this new journaling system.

I spoke to apple about this several times. It was hinted to me to keep watching because big things were coming. I suspect these are the Journalling FS and and an outboard mass storage disk sytem. but that's a conjecture.

That's the bad news. The good news is that these Xserves are otherwise a very good deal. The throughput is better than comparably priced linux systems. Also they occupy only 1U but hold 480GB of hot swapable storage. Yes there are some NAS systems that are 1U but they are about 10 X slower in throughput, not to mention that they dont support as many services as the macs (LDAP, NFS, SAMBA, SSH, SCP, FTP, MAIL server, RSYNC,NET info, Net boot ...). The macs have dual Gig-E too. ANd in a very nice move Apple will sell you a spare parts kit with everyhing you are likely to need to fix a deadXSERVE in the field. Plus 24hour tech support.

the other nice thing about the Xserve is the construction. In addition to tool-free hot swap drives, the entire chasis slides out to the front revealing everything with no screws to undo or panels to remove. It's a clever design lacking the usual add-on slider rails of your gneric linux boxes. There's even a firewire port on the front for quick access. Another nice feature is that you dont need a terminal to set them up, they will auotmatically find the administration computer on any DNS system. And if you need to have a terminal attached, you can buy a UPS based KVM switch rather then the usual clumsy Video/mouse/keyboard KVMs.

Anyhow the bottom line is this as soon as a partionalble journaled raid 5 system is avaliable the Xserves will be one of the least expensivie full featured HIGH QUALITY 1U half terrabyte disk servers you can own. (note I said High quality). I just wish they would hurry up since I have two of these cooling their heels waiting for raid 5.

Re:One Problem:

[Cutriss]

you dont have to, NFS works fine with HFS+, but you risk screwing yourself with the file name case insensitivity of the mac. A rare event since most people dont have important files that differ in name only in their case but it's lurking.

It's possible that perhaps the UNIX community needs to move past case-sensitivity in filenames and foldernames. Just because UNIX has been doing it that way for 30 years doesn't mean that it needs to be done that way, and apparently both Windows and MacOS have a hard time cooperating with it.

Example - I'm doing development on a local machine with Visual Studio 6. I try to move my project to a Samba share so that I can work with it in a different lab...but suddenly my project won't build. It turns out that Visual Studio makes assumptions about lowercase letters in the pathing for the various files it creates during compilation. UNIX obviously doesn't abide by this, and so returns "file not found".

Sloppy? You bet. Important? Outside of anal-retentiveness, I can't think of a single reason that you'd *WANT* to be able to support filenames that differ only by case. It's an HCI issue for one thing, and the system incompatibility issues that are now surfacing are making the issue more visible.

I'd welcome some examples of places/functionality where case is of critical importance.

Re:One Problem:

[Twirlip of the Mists]

With the low cost of storage these days, RAID 5 is basically obsolete. Spend the extra few gigabytes, and use RAID 0+1

That's an overstatement. ATA/IDE/whatever storage is pretty cheap, but SCSI and Fibre Channel disks are still pricey. In order to protect a 1 TB filesystem with RAID 0+1, you'd have to have 2 TB worth of (let's say) Fibre Channel drives. That extra terabyte would cost you many thousands of dollars. But to protect the same filesystem with RAID 3 or RAID 5, you only have to have (at least) one spare drive. That's a lot cheaper than the 6 or 8 or 16 or whatever drives you'd have to buy to mirror the whole filesystem.

I'd say that for filesystems in the range of 0-500 GB using inexpensive disks, RAID 3 and RAID 5 are probably unnecessary. But outside that set of conditions, RAID 0+1 just isn't practical.

Re:One Problem:

[sesquiped]

I often name files starting with uppercase letters so they don't conflict with others for tab-completion, but that's not the important issue. The important issue is unicode. In general, it's much more difficult to do things case-insensitively when dealing with unicode, because case isn't a very well-defined concept. Sure, for English text using the Latin alphabet, it's pretty straightforward, but for other languages and other alphabets, it can get much messier, and you have situations like several consecutive characters being shortened to a single one, as part of case normalizing, or a character turning into multiple ones. So strings can even change size as part of case normalization, making the implementation of an accurate case-insensitive unicode string comparison quite a difficult and complex piece of code, and in particular, one that you don't want anywhere near your filesystem code.

Re:One Problem:

[zzen]

Ah you say, why not just make a small HFS+ partition and let the rest be UFS. Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems. Thus you cant split the disk into UFS and HFS+ partitions.

Well I don't know of which support exactly you are speaking of, but I've been running 2 HFS+ partitions and 1 UFS partition on my iMac (with a single 40GB disk) since 10.0.3 (client) and continue to do so until now (10.2.2).

And in case you forgot to setup the FS types correctly when partitioning, here's the hint how to do it afterwards. You cannot normaly just select "Erase disk" and put a different FS type on it. It will offer only the same type as the partition already has. BUT if you reboot with an OS X install CD and launch Disk Utility, you will be able to change the format of the partition without touching the rest of the disk.

Re:One Problem:

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I'm not a native speaker of Japanese or Chinese, but I'm a little educated in both. Hiragana and katakana are different alphabets with different purposes. The katakana character for the syllable "ka" is not equivalent to the hiragana character for the syllable "ka." There's no circumstance under which you'd want corresponding hiragana and katakana characters to be considered equal.

As far as Chinese goes, traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, while simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China. Again, they're not equivalent. So you wouldn't need or want to map between them.

The uppercase-lowercase thing is pretty much unique to Latin and Latin-derived alphabets. Some languages have contextual forms-- for example, an initial character in Arabic looks different from the same character in medial or final position in the word-- but that's a rendering issue, not an encoding issue.

I actually think it would be quite straightforward to design a Unicode-based system that's case-insensitive with respect to alphabets that have distinct cases. More work than doing so for ASCII, of course, but not insurmountably more.

Re:One Problem:

[bursch-X]

There's no circumstance under which you'd want corresponding hiragana and katakana characters to be considered equal.

Huh? What about displaying Japanese file names in Dictionary order (aiueo), then of course you don't care whether it's Katakana or Hiragana, but you care whether any "nigori" are used etc. and you definitely want to to intermix the two systems. (and the same goes for the readings of the Kanji, you don't care for the Kanji used, but the Hiragana readings of them).

From the list of enhancements

[underwhelm]

"Improves time needed to wake some portable computers."

Uh oh. If my TiBook wakes up any faster than it already does, it'll resume before I even open the lid. Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'race condition.'

Re:What happened to the old Slashdot?

[Wyatt Earp]

Yep.

Back in the day, the only time you'd see an Apple on the front of /. is when they came out with hardware or sued someone.

Now I'm getting my update news here. Scary.

How to enable journaling (simple howto)

[geek]

enter the terminal.app and type:

diskutil

You'll get a list of diskutil options, two of them are "enableJounal" and "disableJournal".

Happy hunting

-todd

Re:Mac OSX

[ivan256]

It took me a minute to find the button that was going to give me a context menu. Sigh. I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?

Because the right-click context menu is a windows-ism, and as such, people who have never used windows don't care. In fact, if you gave them another button they wouldn't use it, much like how windows users don't care they are missing the ever-so-useful middle button.

People who do care plug any old multi-button USB mouse into their mac and forget about it.

Re:Cupertino, we have a problem!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

This is such a dead horse. The name of the operating system is "Mac OS X." That's the brand name. The version number is currently 10.2.2. When enough time has passed, the version number will be 11.something. At that time, the full name and version of the OS will be "Mac OS X 11.something."

It's really not that hard to wrap your head around this idea, y'all. It's not necessary to make a lot of noise about it every single time OS X comes up on Slashdot.

Re:Mac OSX

[phillymjs]

browsing with one mouse button in IE was driving me fucking nuts

Okay, Mr. Power-User, then cough up $20 or whatever for a mouse with the number of buttons you need. For the millionth fucking time.

I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?

The one-button mouse is designed to have a very clear function, so when Grandma tries to use her new iMac, she doesn't get confused. Apple performed usability testing when they were developing the Mac, to find the optimal number of buttons for the uninitiated user. The results of their testing: one. Any more than that confused people.

You might say, "Well, that was twenty years ago, surely people are more clued in now!"

Wrong. If I had a buck for every exchange like this I've been a part of in even the last two years, I could retire to my own private island:

Me: "Sure, I can help you with that. I need you to right-click on [icon] and select 'Properties.'"
Client: "I clicked on it, but it just went dark. Where is this 'properties' thing?"
Me: "Did you right-click on it, or just click on it?"
Client: "What do you mean, 'right-click?'"
Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button."
Client (incredulously): "You mean, it does something different???"

My point: Some people STILL find multiple mouse buttons confusing. Since Apple is marketing in large part to people who are confused/frustrated/confounded by Windows, it makes sense to include an unambiguous mouse.

Most people who want a mouse with more functionality either right from the start or after they get up to speed with the Mac will purchse one, and put the Apple one in a drawer somewhere. Those who don't post on /., bitching about how a multi-button mouse still isn't included with Macs.

~Philly

Re:That is correct

[bnenning]

That little song and dance about their derivative license? Yeah, leech off free software.

Bull. Apple has released far more of their code than they had to (zero). And it's not all modifications to existing software either, quite a bit was written from scratch.

OSX gives some of what Linux's had all along.

More accurately, OS X gives what Linux has been trying to achieve for years: a desktop OS usable by non-geeks.

here.

[netsrek]

After signing up for a free ADC account at the ADC site, submit them here.

RAID

[MrChuck]

Hmmm, software raid ain't cutting it and ain't available for RAID 5 (and dearies, RAID 5 is out there, big time - a big win for my friend putting up about a terrabyte/week for their web server farm).

What to do, what to do? /me strokes beard. Hey! How about using "A HARDWARE RAID!"

Why waste your CPU cycles calculating stuff when you can have a dedicated processor taking care of your storage issues?

Call your nearby raid vendor and get a box in. It speaks SCSI, it gives you lots of bonuses. Me? For high performance RAID at a decent price (too much for hobbyists and home users, don't waste your time), try these guys. Just a personal favorite, I'm not part of their company, just a customer.

Why hardware RAID? When your MoBo/CPU/Disk dies and you can't get that software RAID reconfigured, you unplug the hardware RAID, plug it into a new machine and just go.

When you want real speed, those baydel guys have a screaming, mirrored RAM cache so you get to write at 160MB/s.

Jeez, you put all that money into your server and network connections and want to cheap out by using slow IDE disks and your CPU to do all the work?

HFS+? Yeah, I still have it for my Mac Classic II on an 80MB drive.
THanks, I'll use FFS with softupdates or ReiserFS (or XFS mmmmmm) on my real volumes.

For those of you that can't wait to install...

[rworne]

ssh (or telnet if you are daring) into your box:

%su
password:<enter password>
%softwareupdate 3404

(software update progress occurs)

%reboot

You are now updated to 10.2.2

Re:Cupertino, we have a problem!

[LordNimon]

Just let the kid watch This Is Spinal Tap and then tell him that his OS goes to 11.

10.2.2 - man page killer?

[DiscoOnTheSide]

I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but this update seems to have killed the man command in the terminal. no matter what you type now man says "invalid option -- C" did this happen to anyone else, and can anyone else give me any tips on fixing it? How shall acheive my UNIX-Guru status without my precious man pages!? I mean, I just started growing this beard and not showering :-P

Re:10.2.2 - man page killer?

[geek]

Go to disk utility and repair disk permissions. I notice everytime I run this the man pages permissions are screwed from various application installs. I dunno if that's the prob you are having but it's worth a try.

Re:10.2.2 - man page killer?

[mithras the prophet]

That's probably been broken for awhile but you didn't notice it. It's a common symptom if you haven't updated Fink for Jaguar. Go follow the update instructions.

Journalling is good for everyone..

[goombah99]

Journaling is great and you should use it. It's good for both AOL grandmas and for big disk servers. For the average user it means if the worst happens, say you power down in the middle of a file table update, you disk does not get corrupted. this is good for every user.

for the huge disk servers it means when you power up after a crash you dont have to do a full file system check which could take hours on say a 400GB disk.

what is the cost? a very small amount of disk space (about 8 Megs) and about a 15% reduction in write-to-disk performance. There is no penalty for read performance.

Re:Mac OSX

[Tokerat]

A little known feature of Mac OS X is the Full Keyboard Access function - it's in the System Preferences, Keyboard pane, under the "Full Keyboard Access" tab.

Asside from the Ctrl-Click contexual menus, you can completely control Mac OS X from the keyboard. the default behavior is for the F-Keys (F1, F2, etc) to highlight keyboard focus on various on screen elements, including any properly API-created Aqua control.

Basically, you can run the computer almost completely without a mouse. Or CLI. With your own custom key layout if you desire. Awsome.

Oh, and my $20 Logitech Optical mouse works great with my G4. Right-click functions as-Windows-expected. Users of OS X and above also enjoy the scroll-wheel goodness, and 10.2 even introduces the "Copy & Paste Files" concept to the Mac for the first time, availible contexualy got all those adjusting Windows users.

Even better is my sister's Logitech Wireless Optical mouse, connected to her TiBook. $40 too expensive? Get the cord version. TiBooks have USB ports, you know.

I'll say one thing for Apple...

[psyconaut]

...they seem to have some pretty robust update servers.....I also grab every update pretty much immediately and never have trouble getting them.

Funny how Apple can have software update facilities that must be handing out several hundred thousand 25Mbyte updates a day.....and many websites can't even cope with the traffic Slashdot sends their way ;-)

-psy

NO!

[spitzak]

"Case insensitivity" is a user interface issue that should not be in the innards of the operating system. If a file system can treat a filename as a sequence of bytes that have no other meaning, then it can be written to be far more reliable, secure, and dependable, and easier to prove that there are no bugs.

For the "average user" case means nothing. Grandma picks files by clicking on the little pictures and would never notice if many files had the same name. The *ONLY* use for "case insensitive" is for CLI interfaces, and it is amazing that the same people who say "Unix sucks because of case sensitive filenames" are the same ones that say "it sucks because you have to use the CLI". Hey, if you don't need a CLI, you have eliminated the only reason for case insensitive filenames! Not only that, case insensitivity actually interferes with user-friendliness in a CLI as it makes it more difficult to do really advanced things in the user program, such as spelling correction of filenames.

Re:NO!

[overunderunderdone]

For the "average user" case means nothing. Grandma picks files by clicking on the little pictures and would never notice if many files had the same name.

Lets test your theory using the common scenario of doing tech support for Grandma over the phone:
Me: "OK, Grandma open now click on the picture of a paper that says 'read me'"
Grandma clicks on 'Read Me' - after long conversation I finally realise she opened the wrong file
Me: "No, the OTHER file that says 'read me'"
Grandma clicks on 'READ ME' - another long period of miscommunication follows
Me: "OK, Grandma open the file that says 'read me' but ignore the files 'READ ME', 'Read Me', 'READ me' and 'read ME'.
Grandma does an Ellen Feiss "hugnh???"

The obvious advantage of case insensitivity is that it is easier for humans to talk & think about what is on a computer without confusion. Even the tech savvy may have the occasional problem with distinguishing between 'Read Me' and 'Read me'.

case insensitivity actually interferes with user-friendliness in a CLI as it makes it more difficult to do really advanced things in the user program, such as spelling correction of filenames.

I don't follow you, how does it make this more difficult?

For those that don't know what Akamai is

[Sycraft-fu]

They are a company that delivers content for you. You pay them to hold your stuff. However they don't just put it in a fast datacentre, they actually have little cache engines that they give to large networks (like universities). This means that if you happen to be on one of those networks, your downloads are incredably fast.

They just did this at U of A, where I work. They shipped us 3 servers and a switch (for free) and then are helping us get them set up. The effect, when they are running, will be that any traffic bound for Akamai's network will instead get serverd from those local computers. So instead of loading down their and our internet links, they will come form a LAN connection.

Really it's a win for all involved. We are happy because it reduces our traffic at no cost to us. They are happy because it reduces the traffic on their network. Their customers are happy because it means fast data delivery to lots of people.