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MacFixIt Details Mac OS X 10.2.8 Bugs
mneptok writes "Premier Macintosh troubleshooting site MacFixIt has just posted a detailed report on the bugs and broken features in Apple's latest point release for MacOSX. As reported previously on Slashdot, the 10.2.8 update was released and pulled within hours earlier this week. Many users upgraded before the update was pulled and are being bitten, and MacFixIt has run down the behavior you can attribute to Apple's goof."
My system works fine on 10.2.8, it seems to be an extremely small (but vocal) minority with problems.
And I'm able to do so because I didn't download the point release.
Started to, then thought better of it. Best to wait a few days. Maybe that's because I've used one too many Microsoft products or something.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Begun, this flame war has...
First Post. I upgraded and have no problems.
BAH! Fooled you mr man. all you gets is da troll stick.
My software update has been coming up for weeks saying there was a 10.2.6 update (which I haven't applied yet because I'm leery of all the problems others have had with point updates). The last time it popped up was a couple of days ago, but it still didn't say anything about a 10.2.7 update. And now there's a 10.2.8 that's already been pulled?? I was hoping they'd get their act together by now. They're practically making Windows Update look good by comparison.
Several MacFixIt readers have noted a problem where iMac and eMac systems (primarily) display a blue screen at startup rather than proceeding to the Desktop.
Ahh... seems I installed XP Service Pack 1 on my iMac by mistake. My bad.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I haven't experienced any of the problems listed in the article. The only thing that I've noticed since the upgrade was that my Keyspan USB->Serial adapter is no longer working.. which sucks when trying to configure a router :(
Diablo II LoD now goes all wonkers at 800x600 resolution... Also crashes at the Arreat Summit.
Not your typical bug report, but definitely related to 10.2.8
When are people going to learn to wait a few days before doing an upgrade? How many times do you have to read about people getting burned?
Um, actually, if everyone waits, there'll be nobody to play the guinea pigs. Forget what I just said, unenlightened masses -- download immediately, for my benefit!
c-hack.com |
You'd never have these kinds of software problems with a
tcd004
In fact, 10.2.8 fixed my most annoying problem with 10.2.6, which was that my mouse kept hanging every hour or so. I was able to fix it every time by unplugging it for a few seconds, but it's so much better not to have to bother.
It's funny how many problems people are willing to attribute to 10.2.8. The "Dual Display configuration" issue, for instance, has been present since 10.1. "Linksys Router needs new firmware" sounds completely unrelated to me; Linksys routers are crap anyway.
My personal rule is to wait at least a week from the date a patch is introduced before applying it to my system. There are enough adventurous Mac owners out there to test the waters and to notify the various Mac-related sites of whatever issues that may come up. If all seems quiet after a week, I'll do a fresh backup of my system and run Apple's Software Update.
And 10.2.8 is, I believe G4 or earlier only.
I read at one point that 10.2.8 was "not recommended" for G5 systems, but it wasn't clear to me whether it would install at all.
If someone wants to send me a G5, I'll be happy to test it though!
Of course, it's not recommended for anyone now... :)
Ouch. My girlfriend's iBook had a problem with the display, but they were great about fixing it. They even cleaned it.
http://www.kottke.org/98/11/
You stole this from a comment made on a blog from 11/98. You're a retard.
Jeez, at least write an original troll.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
Just tried a network transfer here.
70MB file. I tried a 17MB file but it was almost instantanous.
Server: Celeron 333, RH 7.2, SMB share, Mylex DAC960 raid card w/ 5 36GB drives in a raid 5 config, no-name freebie nic.
Client: New dual 2G G5
100Mb linksys switch.
12 seconds.
I guessing that the GigE port on the Mac is confusing whatever networking hardware you're using and causing MAJOR collisions and retrys!!!
Guess they made the first apple that bites you back? :)
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
> My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is faster than this G5 dual 2GHz machine at times
Call Apple support. I really doubt your 486 would be faster. Perhaps your G5 has a technical problem. To be honest, I can't really understand where your problem is from the post. Networking? What?
Someone has released a utility to fix the problem until Apple releases the fixed update. The comments on it all seem to say it works well and takes care of things.
My buddy Aaron installed the update which was SAID to be stable. God only knows what happened to his laptop...I kept getting periodic status updates like, "I hate my powerbook!" and "I need a new computer." A few hours later he said it was a bad update. So he wiped his machine, did a clean install, and was running again. Aaron...if you are reading tell the nice people of your misery :*)
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
If the lack of virtual desktops is such a big problem, perhaps you should check out CodeTek's Virtual Desktop software. That should do what you need.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
I installed the update and have had no problems. I have an iBook 700mhz, and It even took care of that annoying poping noise coming from the speaking when operating on battery power.
I could reasonably be described as a 'Mac fanatic' I guess, but I won't flame you. I will point out that if your dual G5 is that slow at copying a mere 17 meg file, there must be something wrong. My new 1 GHz G4 eMac is blindingly instantaneous when copying files. Check out Mac OS X Hints or Macfixit for some tips on speeding up your machine. Or get one of the many excellent O'Reilly Mac books.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
As soon as you get past Apple's poor quality assurance on their hardware, the happier you'll be.
Sincerely,
A tibook owner whose only still-original part is the keyboard
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
and then the damn patch crashes your machine so that you have to reinstall the OS...
What?!? Apple!
Oh, I thought this was a Microsoft article.
Nevermind.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
jeez. :-)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I upgraded 6 systems to 10.2.8, including a Beige G3, an early iMac and a TiBook. Five are fine, one--a dual 450, the most common source of problems--couldn't access the internet until I downgraded the AppleGMACEthernet.kext file.
How the mighty have fallen! All hail OS/370!
I don't want to start a holy war, but have you heard of punctuation and sentence structure before? Holy run-on sentences Batman!
Where the hell are you copying this 17meg file from? I've copied literally hundreds of megs off an NT4 server and XP Pro systems more times than I care to remember, sometimes even over a VPN link, and neither my work 867 G4 nor my home Dual800 G4 hiccup or even bat an eye while that's going on.
Literally the only time I notice is when I'm doing it across VPN, my connection is maxed and the internet is pathetically slow - not exactly a surprise given what's happeneing, nor is it limited to the G4 - other systems on the network receive equally slow internet connections.
I suspect you have either a poorly wired cable, crappy hub (not all hubs/swtiches are the same, maybe you "saved" $25 the wrong way), or some other network problem which you're blaming on the system, instead of doing the proper investigation. Well, that or you're doing this across the internet and your pipe is pegged, and lo and behold, your internet connection is slow. Gosh, who woulda thunk it?
That said, the G5s are intended to run 10.3, but the OS was not ready in time so they're running 10.2.7. Performance is slower than expected due to this. It should be bumped up in 10.3 and further in successive releases. Be patient, nobody ever profits from knee-jerk reactions.
BTW, what I'm talking about isn't unusual, when PowerPCs were new several successive OS releases actually increased the useable speed on PowerPC systems (migrated more and more of the OS to use PPC native instructions instead of emulated 680x0) - contrast this with Windows, where each successive OS gets more bloated and slow.
Hey, nothing wrong with a good PR department. Macs now have a stable OS, but they were behind MS in that respect (I consider w2k very solid) and now are belatedly rubbing Win 9x's BSOD in MS's face. Apple is playing the "peception is reality" card. In Apple's defense, though, even complete reinstall of the OS X.2 could be performed by my grandma without trashing settings, docs, or apps. It really is easier for a novice to fix a Mac than a Wintel when things go really wrong.
Are you some kind of puritan?
If that's "blatantly sexual" then you must have missed "Three's Company" on TV in the late 70's..
Yea, I've looked at it and it sounds pretty good from what I've read. Unfortunately, I refuse to pay $30 for something that should be built in to the GUI. There's a GPL'd virtual desktop tool too which basically fakes it by creating window sets that get hidden and made visible when you "switch desktops." Unfortunately, since it's forced to fake it, you can tell.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It must be that Apple has finally made enough changes to the Mach microkernel that OSX is beginning to act like OS9, OS8, and OS7.
Amazing magic tricks
We've had 9 ibooks go bad since April 2003. They all needed main board replacments. The LCDs got these awful lines or would just go black. I think it's a defect or design flaw, but Apple won't admit to it. These things are 14 to 18 months old... all of them require a $600 fix. It's the last time we'll buy *any* of their i-line crap as it is CHEAP!
It sounds like, to me, you wanted a Linux machine.
Why did you buy OS X?
Apple has been hinting of late that it's becoming more uncomfortable with seeding pre-release software to developers. Routinely, leaks of the new features and builds in the latest versions of the software make it to the mac rumor sites within hours of being made available in the seed channels.
Of course the argument was that it was a necessary evil to put up with this stuff because the feedback that Apple received from developers (both in quality and quantity) helped catch glaring bugs.
10.2.8 news has been rampant through the rumor channels for a LONG time. Now that it's finally out, there are quick glaring holes that cause the recall of the update and lots of bad publicity for Apple.
I certainly hope Apple doesn't get paranoid about the release of new software to paying seed developers, but this is just another reason that the scale may be tipping toward the paranoid, closed-testing route than the limited open-seeding way it is today.
Applecare is like 150 bucks for an iBook. You might have considered it after the first couple had a problem. My girlfriend's iBook cost $0 to fix. Not to rub it in :)
Uh, yeah, sorry everyone...I guess, I was just so excited about working on Panther that I just plain forgot to look at the bug reports for 10.2.8 ... sorry about that. Hey, it worked on my machine, what can I say?
Um...I'll take care of that right away...just as soon as I implement SuperCubeSpinExplode minimization in Panther...
I run a lab with an OS X server which relies on ssh for remote access, and all I wanted was a point patch to fix the ssh security hole announced two weeks ago.
However, Apple failed to provide us one. Instead, they rolled the patch into the 10.2.8 release, thus exposing anyone who upgraded solely for the security fix to additional instability caused by changes to other OS components.
I feel sorry for those server administrators who were unable to upgrade to 10.2.8 because it means the server is still vulnerable to the ssh security hole.
I'm running 10.2.8 on a version 2.1 powerbook with no discernable adverse results.
I've been aware of the pull, but have not opted to fix what I can't see as broken. More importantly, there are no (so far) service exploits reported. For those who have similar systems and have not encountered the problems described, I would recommend against the "archive and Install" option in the article for the time being.
after struggling for a few days with the results of teh update i just finished resintalling 10.2.6. Most anoying thing was that my mac beige g3 wich was up for weeks with continious usage started crashing with a blank screen every few hrs once i started using the netowrk a bit. Heck i was coding a new nntp app (check out osxnews.sf.net heh, might as well plug it) and any heavy usage of the netowkr like downlaging lists would kill my mac. Dunno what it was but it was really sad to see it crach like that. :(
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I've had 2 bad power adapters, 2 bad motherboards, and bad memory for my iBook. Which I got in March.
but it's pretty! what, you expected working hardware in addition to a pretty package? sucker!
I bought a g4 eMac a few months ago and within 3 weeks it was in the shop for over $500 in work. Video card + monitor assembly was shot. A few weeks later, it was in the shop again for a bad motherboard. Not to mention the constant software issues. Aqua locks up solid after a few hours of actual usage. The apps that don't crash just plain suck (mail, safari, iTunes, i'm looking at you.) Don't even get me started on the horror that is printing from OS X.
Typing this from my IBM thinkpad (running Debian) which hasn't had a single hardware or software issue in the 14 months i've owned it.
That guy is a known troll, he posts that same speech about his broken Mac all over the place, recently modified to include the G5. Don't believe a word of it.
But if they added virtual desktops to the OS, how would they get you to buy a 23" monitor?
Bugs Fixed in 10.2.8
1) Able to use a three button (or more) mouse. Requires external hardware.
2) People hate seeing that spinning wheel while your Mac just sits there and does shit all. It has been changed to a happy smiley face instead.
3) All Terminal app crashes have been eliminated by removing the Terminal all together.
4) People are always moaning about the chane in file permissions after an update. To fix this problem all permissions will now be set to World readable and writeable.
5) Because we supply an ancient version of the PHP module with Apache and have been laughed at by Slashdot vistors, we will now install the Developer Tools by default. Now if you don't like it - compile it yourself!
I just bought a new 15" Powerbook Aluminum, and it came installed with 10.2.7. I'm not sure how it differs from 10.2.6.
Yeah, it's really funny to watch this repeated update fiasco and see how almost nobody even utters a peep of anything negative about it. If this were Microsoft making all these screwups with point updates you know we'd be all over them, tearing them to pieces. I've made comments a few times and gotten zero attention and no responses.
;)
I see a lot of comments from people like "it worked with my system" or "it's only a few people that are affected" or "most of the affected systems had third-party software/hardware installed, they should have known better". It's all so idiotic.
It's really not the number of affected systems that keeps me from installing my own update, it's the severity of the symptoms. Apple keeps releasing these updates that are supposed to fix things, and then it's like, "Oh by the way, there's a small chance that this will hose your system so bad that you won't be able to boot up anymore or repair your system with the CD repair tools or uninstall the update, and the only way to repair your system will be to reinstall the OS from scratch from the CD . You won't even be able to boot into "Safe Mode". But that's ok, right, because you all have spare huge-ass hard drives that you can use solely for backing up your entire main drive, and you'll do that before you try this update, just in case something goes wrong." I've literally seen dozens of people on the Apple discussion forums saying exactly that, "Just back up your whole drive with Carbon Copy Cloner or something before you do any sort of update, and everything will be cool. No problem."
Huh? How is that acceptable? No way to uninstall if you have problems? Systems hosed so bad they can't be repaired by any known method short of a complete reinstall?
Microsoft is bad enough, but I don't recall a lot of their updates causing people to need to reformat and reinstall from scratch once a month. To this day I can't understand why Apple isn't getting ripped to shreds for these terrible update problems. Is it just because only a few people are affected and everyone else just doesn't care? If you don't believe me that the problems were that bad, you just need to spend some time checking out the discussion forums on Apple's website, and probably other Apple discussion websites, where they talk about the 10.2.1-10.2.8+ updates.
Oh, and I see you've gotten a "Troll" rating already. Congratulations. That's what you get when you buck the tide, buddy. We'll show you. Maybe this post will bring in my first "Troll" rating. Keep your fingers crossed.
but it's pretty! ... I bought a g4 eMac
You think the eMac is pretty? No wonder it broke...
Besides, you're a lying troll, unless you hit it with a sledge hammer, that $500 worth of work would be covered under warranty for 52 weeks, let alone 3.
Obviously you don't own an Xserve, a PowerMac G4, or use any Bluetooth devices, for starters. All those pesky iMac/eMac users(hint: educational market) don't matter either, eh?
I use Bluetooth to sync the Address Book to the phone, and as a result of 10.2.8, Bluetooth no longer works properly. Many users with bluetooth keyboards+mice report similar problems with those devices.
It doesn't matter how "minor" the problems are- Apple has no excuse for not doing better QA. Whereas Windows must run on what must number well over a million different combinations of hardware- MacOS doesn't really have a very diverse set of hardware(there are only a limited # of ethernet chipsets/video cards/etc, only 3 current 'major' families of processors, etc). Why can't Apple do a better QA job?
Please help metamoderate.
Why doesn't Apple take a similar approach to, let's say, Debian, and apply an 'unstable branch' to OS X. That way users get to see what Apple is cooking up for their next release, and Apple gets a pool of danger-seeking users to test their code. Maybe Apple already does this--I don't know. But they are a proponent of Free software, and I don't see the harm.
Please enlighten me.
porp
It sounds to me a lot like you're looking for X - your "real work done" comment just shows that your version of "real work" is different from a lot of people's. I've used X desktops for a while, and switched to a Mac with OS X. I've found that most 'new' X desktops that try to be cute and modern really are just flashy icons that never realy work exactly like they should... I realize that they're a work in progress, and that the're perfect for many uses... but not for everyone.
I personally find Mac OS X better for getting "real work done" - when I've got a lot of windows open, lots of graphics, lots of text, I find that Aqua buckles a LOT less than X. The X11 architecture is seeming more and more ancient -- sure, multiple desktops can be nice, and being able to run programs across a network was an idea WAY ahead of it's time - but X is starting to show it's age.
I thikn that's the root reason that you can't run Aqua ('regular OS X') apps through X - it'd mean basically doing a total screen redraw from Aqua (PDF-based) to X - and that would be S-L-O-W. And it's not very reasonable to ask for programs that were never designed to work with X11 to magically work through X11 - there are PC X11 servers, you don't expect to be able to run WinXP apps through them. What OS X _can_ do is (using Apple's relatively good X11 server) run pretty much any X11 app under the sun - a number of apps (including the Gimp and (IIRC) Open Office) have been ported to the OSX-X11 combo - while still using Aqua for all your other apps. And for most of us, Aqua is fast enough, efficient, and 'lickable'.
But if you want a pure Unix-like set up (X11, boot into console, etc.), then OS X isn't for you - it's got the power 'under the hood' but you clearly want the engine exposed. Fine. You're right, the hardware is amazing.
Tim
~~~
This a a stupid troll that deosnt know the facts.. but i might a well reply
dude it was one update the had a negative impact on SOME users (including me) and they pulled it. no its not a repeated thing. and they pulled it in hours did ms ever do that with a service pack? nope and its not once a month.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Microsoft is bad enough, but I don't recall a lot of their updates causing people to need to reformat and reinstall from scratch once a month.
... Not trying to be an apologist for Apple...put their feet to the fire when they deserve it...
Right, because with Microsoft a complete reinstall is required when the wind changes direction.
I do agree with many of your points...Apple does seem to be reckless in letting its users beta test, but this sort of thing happens all over the place, not just with Apple and OS X. Personally, I'm writing this on a copy of Jaguar I purposefully tried to break when I first installed, thinking I was going to reinstall anyway because I partitioned my drive the wrong way. That was over a year ago, no problems. That said, I didn't get around to updating to 10.2.8
A lot of times I think people are making shit up when they say they have to do a complete reinstall. They may have actually done it, but that doesn't mean they needed it. I've never had to reinstall any of my machines and that was going from Windows 3.1 thru 2000 before I switched. I have done reinstalls but not because my system was so hosed I couldn't work on it.
~~~
is an easy alternative way to update
Video cards and monitors are NOT covered by applecare.
It finally sunk in, while reading the repair instructions.
/directory
cd
rm filename
Remember the Recall -> Recognition hype?
You also might look at Workspaces, which is the nicest virtual desktop system I've used on any Unix.
Yes, it's shareware, and yes, you still miss a few things, like sending individual windows between screens, but this system is just so slick, especially with multiple monitors.four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
Why stop there?
Get an Avocent KVM over IP switch and hook up 16 machines (or more with extender modules) for up to four simultaneous users. The quality of the video is nearly as good as VNC, and you can use it to watch a server go through its POST routine.
Can you say SixtyFour's Company? Mr. Roper, eat your heart out.
Well, I use fluxbox. Fluxbox is about as quick and minimal as you get when it comes to desktops. I have root menus, title bars and a bar at the bottom of the screen. That's it. I've seen Aqua choke. And frankly, I don't understand how I could manage 45 windows on one screen. It's just not possible. I think rather than going their own way, Apple would have been smarter to embrace and extend X and make its changes (even if they forked X specifically for Apple hardware) open to the community. What do I know though, I use a Sun Ray xterm all day :-).
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
A friend of mine installed a Microsoft Update on his Win2k desktop recently, and he had to reformat and reinstall. At least you don't have to reformat to do a clean install of OS X(it's called archive and install).....
You're wrong. There is a free patch. There are a few very loud people with problems. Mostly people with early G4's I think.
Actually, MS patches DO cause problems, as equally minor, but there is no fix other than reformatting. With OS X, you can do the 'archive and install' or just apply the freebie patch.
If you hate Apple so much, please, do me a favor and go use Windows instead!
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
Where is everybody? no, cannot all be on dates. i know its saturday night but, if this was another post about m$ bad updates it would have over 400 replies already.
Thou hast offended the holy Mac. Heretic, now thou wilst be moderated -1, Troll!
My iBooks have been improved by the 10.2.8 update... Safari is now stable, more speed overall , a very welcome update...
The 10.2.8 update seemed to break ethernet support on early G4 ("Sawtooth" and some later) systems. I think reverting to the earlier (10.2.6) version of the ethernet driver fixed this problem. This is the biggest problem with the 10.2.8 update.
;-)
On another not, for the first time I can remember, I did not apply this update to my "Sawtooth" G4 and so did not have a chance to experience this annoying problem. The reason for this was that I really couldn't be bothered since I've been playing a 10.3 beta and it runs beautifully. Seems its less buggy than the release version of 10.2.8!
Thanks for your wonderful comment, but I must disagree. I've read about a lot of people having severe problems with practically every update since 10.2.1. It's just that the relative number of people with severe problems was a lot higher with 10.2.4 (or was it
And what is it with Macs and RAM? If you read the MacFixit article you'll see users saying that removing a 256MB RAM module fixed their problems! I thought that if a RAM module had no errors and worked with the motherboard, then it just plain worked. How does a software update stop your computer from working with a module of a certain size? What difference does it make what size it is? Bleh. I really like my G4 at work but at this point I still wouldn't buy one, and it's mostly because of these weird problems that I've never even heard of happening on other hardware and operating systems. Macs just seem too fragile to me, and that outweighs the fact that they are nice to work with. Guess what, that's a personal opinion, you don't have to argue with it. You get to have your own! Honest.
Seems like there have been a couple of MS "updates" that caused serious problems, which they then pulled. But I can't recall, exactly. Maybe not, in which case Apple has a leg up in that department. But pulling a buggy update isn't the same as not releasing a buggy update in the first place. Keeping the OS running like clockwork when you control most of the hardware is supposed to be easier, at least that's what everyone always says when we say we want Apple to port OS X to x86.
Just a side comment, it's really convenient to be able to call anyone you disagree with a Troll and make their comments disappear. I'm starting to realize how negatively that affects our communication here.
Besides, you're a lying troll, unless you hit it with a sledge hammer, that $500 worth of work would be covered under warranty for 52 weeks, let alone 3.
Calm down, you foaming at the mouth fucking fanatic.
It was covered under a warranty; I never said it wasn't. The fact that I had to lug a 60 lb computer with no handles through my local mall to the apple store and the fact that they kept it for almost a week when they were fixing it is bad enough.
G5: The future is now... x86: The past refuses to die honorably.
Hey, they can't help that their kick-ass operating system requires decent hardware to run it. Run a crappy system, get a crappy OS.
You get what you pay for.
What, consumers aren't allowed to complain anymore when a company fucks things up? They're just expected to sit down and shut up, or else throw away their $2000 system (plus software costs) and buy a new one? This sounds like the people who say "if you question the government, the terrorists win!" and "why do you hate America so much?" As far as I'm concerned, the louder people complain, the more they make it clear that this kind of an "update" is NOT ACCEPTABLE, the less likely it'll be to reccur in the future.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You are either:
A) a damned liar, or
B) a complete nimrod fucknut pissant know-nothing.
A reboot fixed it, but this morning it started doing it again after waking the computer up.
I think I agree with the original poster - X is a great system for doing real work. I don't use it for that at the moment - but only because I absolutely have to have a few programs that only run on Mac or Windows.
If you're talking about GNOME and KDE, I couldn't agree more. However, I'd suggest taking a look at some of the more mature, stable, and businesslike environments for X - thinks like XFCE and WindowMaker. Yes, it takes a little time to learn how to use them properly, but they're huge timesavers in the long run.
Repeat this a thousand times please - X != GNOME/KDE!
I used X on a 386-25 for nearly a year with satisfactory performance. Claiming that it is slow on modern hardware is ludicrous. X performs great. Pile 10 tons of cutesy toy crap on top of it and slows down - well what did you expect?
Aqua does have a very nice accelerated display-pdf system, I'm not knocking that. But when I get lots of windows open, lots of graphics, lots of text, I'd happily trade half my cpu cycles for a decent window manager in a heartbeat. Trying to navigate Aqua (or Windows) when you've got several dozen different pieces of work open at the same time, cycling between them, sequentially or random access - this is when you understand what *nix folk mean when they call these systems 'toys.' Practically any mature X window manager has the tools to make this a breeze. Neither Aqua nor Windows does - and neither is ever likely to, as both come from a design philosophy where 'friendliness' is more important than power, where 'power features' are considered a bad thing because they confuse users.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This is a pretty sad scenario considering that only have one platform to take care of. Not like they have to run around and check bug fixes, enhancements with other OEM's
Congratulations. Wish I could do that. My TiBook has to stay on OSX though, there are some programs I have to have that won't run otherwise, and I have to keep around 10gig free hd space for video conversion runs so I can't even dual boot.
Doh! You didn't seriously expect otherwise, surely?
I wish it were otherwise, but to display those apps you have to have display-pdf. No way around that. X could have that - if a small fraction of the time and money that's gone into Gnome and KDE had been channeled to GNUStep instead... I personally think that would be a lot more worthwhile, but obviously not enough people agree with me.
Anyway, I won't whine too much about Aqua, really. The alternative in my case would have been WinXP... gack! That's enough to make Aqua look really really good.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's an eMac. If AppleCare doesn't cover things built into a computer what does it cover?
Gnome and KDE really aren't that bad. Distributions that add lots of fluff are.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Speak your mind often enough and you'll attract the odd troll and flamebait modding.
Some people don't understand the difference between an honest, strongly held, but unpopular opinion and a troll/flamebait.
Well, often the best way to judge the nature of a man is to judge the nature of his enemies.
And sometimes a troll modding means you're doing something right, so don't sweat it.
We try to deal with the issue as best we can when metamoderating.
KFG
You're wrong. There is a free patch.
:) Which, BTW, hasn't been unretrievably hosed by any sort of update, ever, as far as I know. And that's very comforting.
What does this mean? There's a patch to uninstall the "updates"? Do the updates backup the files they overwrite so you can go back to where you were, cleanly? Where can I get this patch, I haven't heard of it before.
There are a few very loud people with problems.
And those people and the severity of their problems were unimportant?
Actually, MS patches DO cause problems, as equally minor, but there is no fix other than reformatting.
Last I checked you could "back out" a lot of the hotfixes and service packs from the Add/Remove Software control panel, from Win2K onward. Is that not correct? But I think one of the main problems here is that we're even bothering to compare Apple's updates to Microsoft's updates! Other companies and operating systems shouldn't be held to the (very low) standards of whatever Microsoft does. They should be held to a higher standard.
If you hate Apple so much, please, do me a favor and go use Windows instead!
Oh, now that kind of language is completely uncalled for, sir! I don't hate Apple and I don't like Microsoft, I'm just pointing some problems. This isn't a "you're with us or against us" deal, my friend. I'll just stay right here on my Linux laptop, thankyouverymuch.
You know what's funny is, even with all these problems I'm very glad the small non-profit that I work for (as tech person) runs all Macs instead of Win2K/XP. I'm very glad indeed, every day.
"After updating to Mac OS X 10.2.8, my Apple Cinema Display's resolution defaulted to 1600x1024 (it was previously 1600x1200), and the choice of 1600x1200 is no longer available at all within the Displays System Preference. The 1600x1200 option is just completely gone."
Yup, I'm having this problem. In fact, my entire Apple Cinema Display is missing, i.e. completely gone! Oh wait, that's because I don't even own an Apple Cinema Display. Never-mind, my bad.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
It would have been a little bit funnier if you would have said:
The worst bug of MS-Windows is that it does not run on PowerPCs.
I must just be more buffed and cooler than everyone else. :-) Bow to me!
--- Ban humanity.
if you got the same issue 9 times in a row that doesnt seem to happen to anyone else.... i would evaluate what you do with your machine. kind of like how 90% of the people with hinge problems on their Ti-Books were dropping them hinge side down in their bags. i feel your pain, but something seems amiss that's not 100% Apple's issue since those 9 ibooks would span a few revisions. i know one guy that had one of the first ice-book ibooks in the Philly area and his worked 100% till he stepped on the screen recently. i know people that have had them in their bags while riding a bike and been hit by a car and they still work 100%. i know peopel that have dropped them out of bed or rolled onto them a few times in the night. they are a pretty well built machine.
You new here huh? This is a repost/reworked troll!
I didn't really have any serious problems with 10.2.8. The only odd thing was that I had to reboot one extra time because the screensaver kicked in and somehow hanged the machine. After that I repaired permissions (don't know why this helps, but it does) and everything was fine.
Except the function keys. For some reason, Apple insists on using the function keys for things like changing sound volume and turning up and down the screen brightness. I prefer being able to remap the function keys for applications, especially Emacs. The only way I know of to reclaim the function keys is to reboot into OS 9, toggle the boxes in the keyboard control panel, and then reboot into OS X. However, every software update of OS X forces me to repeat this process. That means three reboots on average for each software update (four this time, due to the problem above), which is pretty irritating given how slow my PowerBook starts up.
What I find curious is that although this is a longstanding issue, relatively few Mac users complain about it. I suppose it has something to do with most Mac users being accustomed to a mouse-centric experience rather than a keyboard-centric user interface. Or do people really need to change their screen brightness that often?
Apple does seem to be reckless in letting its users beta test, but this sort of thing happens all over the place, not just with Apple and OS X.
Yeah, and I made another comment just a few minutes ago, because I realize one of the problems here is that we keep comparing Apple with Microsoft and their screw ups. I probably shouldn't have even brought them into the conversation.
Comparing one company with some other company's low standards is not the path to excellence. The simple fact that they're putting out buggy updates and not getting slammed for it should be enough. Kudos to Apple for pulling the really buggy updates, but it would be so much better for them and us if they did some good beta testing in the first place.
Wouldn't they only need like a few hundred Mac gurus beta testing these updates in order to catch 99.9% of the bad problems? It just seems sloppy, and we shouldn't compare them with anyone else and say, "look, these guys are sloppy too!"
I've never had to reinstall any of my machines and that was going from Windows 3.1 thru 2000 before I switched.
I have personally experienced not one but two individual Win2K machines that got hosed, not by any update, but by attempting to uninstall Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum. After the uninstall the machine would get a STOP error and a nice blue screen when you tried to boot it. At the time I did some Googling and searching on Microsoft's website, and came up with pages full of literally dozens of people with the exact same problem, and no known solution. No patch from Roxio, no update from Microsoft that I could find. They knew about the problem but didn't know how to fix it. I think I even tried a "repair" install from the CD, and the system was still unbootable. So, reformat, reinstall. It does happen. I never ran into the like on Win9x, that's another reason I'm still trying to stay away from Win2K/XP. You don't know what's going on under the hood, and neither do they!
Right, because with Microsoft a complete reinstall is required when the wind changes direction.
SSSssshhh! I've got 5 Windows machines in the room with me. Don't give them any ideas.
Hey! Wake up! This is an old slash/troll. A MS junkie; No Doubt!
Apple actually evaluated what trying to 'embrace and extend' X to do what was needed. What Apple is providing is an Apple-original window system that is graphics model agnostic, as well as a vector drawing system that maps very well to PDF, which is a sort of PostScript without the non-graphical operators. This is packaged under the name 'Quartz' for easy reference by Marketing types. The window system is designed to support both buffered (like an offscreen PixMap) and unbuffered windows, and is graphics model agnostic, working equally well with QuickDraw, OpenGL, the Quartz drawing engine, X11, and third party solutions, and managing window geometry for the Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa environments. The server portion is a hybridization of screen arbiter and compositor models (and if that's all Geek to you, don't worry about it). The Quartz drawing engine supports drawing primitives similar to the graphics primitives that might be found in the DPSClient single-operator primitives library for X and NeXTSTEP. There are no math and flow control primitives, as these can be done more efficiently in the native compiled code. There are no DPS or PS wrappers, as this optimization for server-side graphics is not needed in the Quartz client-side graphics model. The operations provide imaging and path construction and filling operations as well as some interesting other bits that map well into the direction that 2D drawing is headed. (See Longhorn, or the X raster projects like Render.) The drawing engine can output to rasters (like a window!), as well as PS and PDF streams to feed printers. The Mac OS X printing system takes advantage of the capabilities of Quartz to support all sorts of printers, and make the life of printer driver developers much, much easier. Things we'd need to add/extend in X Window software (protocol+server+manager+fonts+...): 1) Extend font server and services to vend outlines and antialiased masks, support more font types, handle font subsetting. 2) Extend drawing primitives to include PS-like path operations. 3) Add dithering and phase controls. 4) Add ColorSync support for drawing and imaging operations, display calibration 5) Add broad alpha channel support and Porter-Duff compositing, both for drawing in a window and for interactions between windows. 6) Add support for general affine transforms of windows 7) Add support for mesh-warps of windows 8) Make sure that OpenGL and special video playback hardware support is integrated, and behaves well with all above changes. 9) We find that we typically stream several hundred megabytes/second of commands and textures for interactive OpenGL use, so transport efficiency could be an issue. So, yes, it looks like we can use X for Quartz. All we need do is define extensions for and upgrade the font server, add dithering with phase controls to the X marking engine, add a transparency model to X imaging with Porter-Duff compositing support, make sure GLX gets in, upgrade the window buffering to include transparency, mesh warps, and really good resampling, and maybe augment the transport layer a bit. Ummm... There doesn't appear to be much code left from the original X server in the drawing path or windowing machinery, and it doesn't appear that apps relying on these extensions can work with any other X server. Just what did we gain from this? It turns out that what Apple has in place actually makes a pretty good foundation for a X11 server. An X server would not be such a good foundation for what Apple needs.
Right Click on "My Computer"
Click "Properties"
Go the the "Advanced" tab
Click "Settings" under "Startup and Recovery"
Uncheck "Automatically restart" under "System failure"
Now when you get your next BSOD do the following:
* Note down the error including any parameters
* Run the error through Microsoft's Knowledge Base
* Run through the articles to see if its a known condition
BSODs are normally reserved for catastrophic failures (like the boot partition being damaged or broken RAM returning random information) and usually occur for good reason.
Um, the last time I did an Archive and Reinstall, gee, it must have taken all of ten minutes.
Yes. That does require that I keep the install CD.
Whoa. The suffering.
Exactly what do the more limited X window managers provide that XP or OSX don't (or Gnome or KDE don't for that matter)? Not to be a pain, but I just can't think of much and I say that having had dozens of documents open before. At worst both XP and OSX allow third party utilities for shifting around (although I've tended to uninstall them as unneeded).
You know, i find it amazing. Apple has this one problem out of a LONG time and everyone automatically thinks the entire company is useless. Everyday, Microsoft gets sued and has MAJOR viruses, and one time Apple screws up a little bit, everyone flames them.
I will say I am extremely surprised for anything slipping through Apple's QA department, but give them a break, ya know. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
With both my G5 Dual 2Ghz AND my 17" PowerBook believe it or not.
My iPod (which I can afford) however remains completely unaffected. Go Figure!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Nothing wrong with their Powermacs.
Still on my G4-733, all original equipment.
There are people who swear never to drive fords again because their cousin had a lemon (or they themselves had one)....same is true with computers.
As with everything in life. YMMV.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Wow, my first Flamebait rating, and I wasn't even trying. Note that I never said I minded the fact they were talking about a naughty little computer threesome, I was just surprised to see it on a public website. Because, I know a lot of other people who would get really offended by it. You can't say it wasn't blatant, because there was just no other way to interpret it.
This goes to the other guy who also thought I was complaining. I found the ad quite amusing. Nobody knows what I'm talking about anyway, so I'll shut up.
...but our Windows machines still manage to break something about twice a month due to windows updates. The amount of time we spend "fixing" after updates is quite the PITA. All we run on our machines is half a dozen games (its a LAN center, not like we install new SW every day or anything). WinXP has given us the "stability" to run for days at a time, we just can't run stuff we want to every time an update hits. Our center has 9 Windows machines (8 gaming machines, and a CD server) and 2 macs (web server, and cash register). The only times our macs have been restarted is after power outtages. The PC's are an entirely different matter
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
I must be smoking crack. I could have sworn I had a flamebait rating just a couple of minutes ago. GIVE ME BACK MY FLAMEBAIT RATING, YOU IMPERIALIST BASTARDS! I have my rights!
Disclaimer for any humor-disabled mods: This was a joke. We now return you to your regularly scheduled modding.
"Maybe this post will bring my first "Troll" rating."
Son, you aren't doing it right if you haven't had some butt finger mod you "Troll" for daring to say something that doesn't fall in with the official party line.
I'm a Mac fanatic but the people who gloss over the issues are one step beyond and not doing the platform any favors with their zealotry.
Great system, not perfect and in fact far from it. Better than Windows? Yeah, I think so but then what isn't? I've got about ten Macs at the house and I've had a couple that were flaky as all hell. I've also had a couple that you could patch with an NT4 Service Pack and they would probably just keep on trucking. Damned near bullet proof. I've never figured out why some were so fragile and others weren't. It is downright odd though.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I'll give you M$ Junkie you jizz-gobbling tub of guts.
And Learn When To Capitalize, Fucktard
What exactly gets archived when you do that, though? Your home directory? All the 3rd party software you've installed? I'm not familiar with that procedure and it's never really been clarified in the forums.
Regurgitating news from some other website/news source != reporting. "Previously published" I might buy.
/. useful as an aggregator and as a community, but the one thing it does not provide in any way shape or form is journalism. It's disrespectful to the people who put the sweat and shoe leather into PRODUCING content, not merely commenting upon it.
I find
Oh, we know -- we just don't give a rat fuck.
as a point of comparison, a 17 MB file copy over a 100baseT connection takes less than a minute.
Thats from a G4/466 to a G4 1.25 , both of which are substantially slower than the G5 you are referring to.
and the iPod works fine during it.
You would appear to have some other issues.
I too bought a G4 eMac earlier this year; a few weeks ago it died with no video (no EHT; whatever died there took the video board with it). All repaired happily in 3 working days under warranty. The worst part was lugging the damn thing into the second-busiest part of town (the other Mac repair centre is in the busiest part of town!) - luckily, having a commercially-signed van I could park right outside the door...
But, c'mon...What?!
Mail.app - it's nothing fancy but quite nice, the automagic filtering works better than anything else I've tried under Linux or Windows, it handles multiple accounts v.well - the only real problems I have are due to its inane rich-text-alike format.
Safari - yeah, well, I'm a Mozilla fan
iTunes - All I can say is I guess you've never actually used it. I was sceptical, but it truly is the greatest thing to happen in MP3-land since Bill Gates, Jack Valenti, & Hillary Rosen committed mass-suicide (oops, that hasn't happened - yet...)
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"You get what you pay for."
What you pay for:
Top of the line Computer
Top of the line OS
What you get:
Hardware that's two generations behind the performance curve
Bugs that make Windows look good by comparison
Yeah, I'm trolling, go ahead and mod this down...
Yeah, and how come people gloss over it when Spider-man illegaly snaps photos of bad guys without their permisssion and sells them, yet they come down so hard on Doc Ock when he does something illegal to make a buck?
Oh yeah that's right, because he's an EVIL SUPERVILLAN BENT ON CONTROLLING THE WORLD, while Spider-man is just a guy with a little power trying to do something cool and make a living at it. So hmm, I guess that's a perfectly normal and appropriate response.
c-hack.com |
Mail.app - it's nothing fancy but quite nice, the automagic filtering works better than anything else I've tried under Linux or Windows, it handles multiple accounts v.well - the only real problems I have are due to its inane rich-text-alike format.
;-). But it's quite a serviceable browser, lacking a bit in javascript & DOM stuff I guess, but still better than that Redmond-delivered p.o.s.
The threading support in the latest version (the one for OS 10.3) is very poor. You can't easily see how a group of messages relate to one another like you can in Ximian evolution or mutt. It simply groups messages by subject, it doesn't create nested trees of messages. The gpg support (even with the plugin for it) is bad. You can verify signed messages, but you can't sign messages. Even with all that, the biggest issue for me is the speed. It takes mail a full 10 seconds to refresh a mailbox on an IMAP server that evolution can refresh instantly.
Safari - yeah, well, I'm a Mozilla fan
Apple actually broke a lot of the CSS support that khtml had (and still has on linux). There's plenty of CSS stuff that IE, Mozilla and Konqueror do well that Safari chokes on.
iTunes - All I can say is I guess you've never actually used it.
Oh, i've used it. The whole playlist/library thing is retarded. I already have a library of music, it's called the "file system". To listen to music in iTunes, you need to import the music into your library (which takes forever as iTunes checks the volume of each song you import), then create a playlist and import your music into that. Any sensible player would make the library completely optional. I also completely filled up my hard disk when I first opened iTunes because by default, iTunes makes a local copy of any file you're importing. This works *great* when you go to create a playlist of 40 something gigs of music that you've got shared on a network.
Try re-selecting & confirming the Keyspan in the Network prefs pane.
I have a Keyspan PDA (Palm) adapter that disappeared after the update. I re-selected it in the Network prefs pane, and then re-chose it in the Palm HotSync software- all was well. This has happened to me before- sometimes an upgrade makes the OS forget about the Keyspan.
did ms ever do that with a service pack
Yes (well, I've managed to get them to pull a Windows 2000 QuickFix from windows update in 24 hours via some urgent emails pointing out they'd packaged NT4 DLLs inside it.
NT 4.0's SP6 was quickly updated to SP6a when it was discovered it interferred with Notes.
I misspoke, it's Archive and Install, not reinstall.
It's actually a complete install - without the erase. Everything gets parked in Users - including your Applications folder - in a new subdirectory, Archived.
The process is risk free, painless, and only a little tedious, moving everything back. Nice opportunity, though, to let fresh preferences be generated for most things.
Repair permissions, run Disk Warrior, and you're good to go.
Many posters are saying that the upgrade worked fine for them. In fact, this is true for me. I upgraded my PowerBook G4 and I'm fat and happy.
But think about it--those who were affected got their ethernet knocked out. They *can't* post their complaints to slashdot.
Yes, we do bitch about microsoft, and with reason, observe:
f tw are.html
Boy, I'm sure glad you do your research before posting:
http://simplest-shop.com/Macintosh--1-229660-so
Let's see
X.1 Sept 28, 2001
X.2 Aug 23, 2002
That puts 11 months between those two releases
And assuming the earliest release of X.3 in sept, that would be 13 months from the last release. And 16 months in december.
By contrast:
Windows 2000 , Feb 17 2000
Windows ME released Sept 14 2000
That would be 7 months
Windows XP Oct 25 2001
That would be 13 months
And lets compare prices:
Mac OS X $130 always (full version)
Windows 2000 $320
Windows ME $110 (upgrade) or $210 (full)
XP Home $100 (upgrade) $200 (full)
XP Pro $200 (upgrade) $300 (full)
So from OS X.0 to X.3
March 2001 to (assumed) Sept 2003 (31 Months)
You've spent $390
From Windows 2000 to Windows XP (19 Months)
Feb 2000 to Oct 2001
You spend at minimum $530 and at most $830
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
In regards to iTunes:
You can turn off volume checking in the preferences. This is designed so that iTunes can equalize (somewhat) the playback volume across your MP3s, because I'm sure you've noticed not all CDs are recorded at the same volume.
Second, you know you can actualy play your library, and you don't need to create a play list right?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The quality control on PowerBooks is especially bad. Desktops are fine. But every PB I've owned has had something--from broken hinges to chipping paint.
I've already started making fun of their new logo, over here.
:)
It seemed relavent to point that out here.
Where are all my files, Apple?? Does someone have to sue Apple before they fix their fucking QA?
Easy there mister troll.
I don't see anything in the MacFixIt notes about wiping hard drives, so if this actually happened, it's probably unrelated.
This one obviously got screwed up, but Apple has historically had a pretty good record for OS update stability.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Why do you think I still own a Pismo? Fucking thing is built like a tank. I've replaced the power supply (human errors on my part, whoo), but this thing has sustained some serious hits and is still ticking. Compare to the tiBooks. I've seen a total of five or so in the field, only one of which wasn't cracked or fractured or broken in some fashion.
Haven't heard of any issues with the albooks, conversely. And everyone I know of with an iBook loves the little bugger.
I dislike the tibook- I'm certain you'd have a much more positive experience with other Apple hardware.
Now that it's finally out, there are quick glaring holes that cause the recall of the update and lots of bad publicity for Apple.
You realize 10.2.8 was release to the public, right? Not just developers?
Your post seems to be an argument in favor of developer seeds.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Microsoft is bad enough, but I don't recall a lot of their updates causing people to need to reformat and reinstall from scratch once a month.
Are you seriously suggesting the problems in 10.2.8 are normal for Mac OS X?
Sure, every piece of software is going to have some problem with some individual's machine because people do strange things to their computers. But if memory serves, this is the first update in a long time that had to be pulled (I welcome corrections on that). I moderate OmniGroup's macosx-talk list. When more than a small number of systems have issues with a given release, I hear about it. With 10.2.8, there were problems. Usually there aren't.
Mac OS X hasn't crashed on either of my machines in 2.5 years, and from what I hear, that's not at all rare. Stability is the norm.
As for why Microsoft gets harassed more, why do you think? They sell themselves to the mainstream media as the one true software company, yet have lackluster products. It's a lot harder to say that about Apple. There's a good faith factor there that makes the difference when it comes to slashdot comments.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Blatant, rampant falsehood here. Software Update CANNOT install anything without user intervention. All it can do is open a window saying the update is available, with the option to install it or not. So at the very least, just on that basis alone, your post is 10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound sack. The remainder is left as an exercise for the reader.
It ran automatically and downloaded and installed the patch and I said "what the heck, if Apple released it, it must pass QA".
Thanks. I needed a good laugh.
Actually, you can't automatically update any system software. Software update will check at certain times, but it requires an admin password to download and/or install anything.
No, it raises the question.
It ran Mac OS X for all of about an hour.
Wow, really tested her out there, huh?
because then I might pay the ridiculous price for OS X.
Err? 129 bucks? Or, like, free when you bought a new mac?
I still love the hardware though. Worth every penny.
The only part of your post that made any sense.
"Several MacFixIt readers have noted a problem where iMac and eMac systems (primarily) display a blue screen at startup rather than proceeding to the Desktop."
Blue screen, eh?
These things are 14 to 18 months old... all of them require a $600 fix.
Perhaps you're doing something wrong.
But that's ok, right, because you all have spare huge-ass hard drives that you can use solely for backing up your entire main drive, and you'll do that before you try this update, just in case something goes wrong
Basically, I sometimes fully re-install my system (seeking for the perfect file/partition/apps organisation) and I've never had to back up everything because files like documents and non i-applications are not concerned by the re-install (no reformat needed, no file move impact).
One of the reasons I'm using Os X for is this way of working: You install a system, you put files (documents and applications) and it works. Nearly as easy as with Os9
Basically I also back up files in case of disk crash but not in case of system update/install and it's a real pleasure to be able to do a clean install so easily, especially compared to Windows (just try to move your windows apps from a drive to another;-)
ClaudeBBG
Here Here
The threading support in the latest version (the one for OS 10.3) is very poor ... The gpg support (even with the plugin for it) is bad.
;-) Agreed, threading & GPG are poor (or non-existant in 10.2.x). IMAP seems OK to me, but I have only ever used it across the local network.
;-)
;-)
;-)
..." phone calls...
Well, in my defense, I did say it was nothing fancy
Apple actually broke a lot of the CSS support that khtml had (and still has on linux).
Haven't noticed that exactly - what I have noticed is that the DOM is different enough to need special attention when writing cross-browser stuff, and I guess that leaks over into CSS to some extent too. I hadn't noticed that Konq was any better, but I haven't really played with it much - my Linux boxes don't have X, and my Sun still runs NS 4.godknowswhatbutitsscreaminglyawful
Re iTunes : You don't need to import (it does it automagically when you open the file). Checking the volume is done only the first time it plays (on mine at least; iTunes 4.01, and that may not be the default setting), and takes ~2 seconds. Admittedly, by default, it does copy everything into the library. But there's a "hidden" option for that - the obtusely-named "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library"
(Yes, I made the same mistake when I first set up my Linux media server. The sudden lack of local disk space was the giveaway
I guess it's all just a personal preference thing - my feelings about OS X, and Macs in general, are that everything is set up pretty well by default for the average user, but there is a hell of a lot of sensible configuration available to more advanced users hidden just below the surface.
And programming under OS X is an absolute joy compared to Gnome & KDE, approaching the niceness of BeOS. (Mind you, I hate C but love ObjC, javascript, and PHP, so take that as you will
I'm not a Mac zealot, or even an apologist - I'd used them v.occasionally over the years, thought they were a nice enough toy, until I bought my eMac - but now I tell every newbie who asks "what sort of computer whould I buy" to at least investigate the Mac line. Saves me from most of the inevitable "how do I
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Ah, but for a truly empowered experience one needs CodeTek's Virtual Desktop + a 23" Cinema Display like I've got.
... sounds ... it's nice to simply switch to the other desktop to read one's mail.
Why?
Because FC Pro takes up the entire 23" of display and when that new mail sound
Oh, and no problems with the 10.2.8 upgrade either.
I fixed this security hole on a couple servers, took almost no time at all. $ emerge openssh (takes about 2 minutes to compile on a mid-end x86 server)
I really just don't know what advantages OSX server has. Ease of administration? I played with a RH server the other week, and every daemon was configurable with a nice GUI... I don't know how RH compares to the ease of using OSX server though.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It sounds like a lot of the hardware with issues is several releases old, which isn't surprising in itself, but it is much better than Wintel machines - I would like to see a Lombard equivalent Wintel laptop running Win XP with all functionality, so things don't really seem to be all that bad. At least Apple is making an effort to keep the users who could run the system before up to date.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
From the article: Several MacFixIt readers have reported an inability to wake from sleep since installing the 10.2.8 update.
Odd, that was my reaction as well. And I don't even use a Mac! The number of affected users (low) and the complexity of the fix (plug into a 100base-T socket instead of a 10base-T) indicate not much to worry about. These could be huge problems for average home users (network? what network?), but how many of them are downloading OS updates anyway?
As a vereran of "dll hell" and several (admittedly early) problems with failed RPM's, I see this Apple problem as very minor. The "evil twist" in this story is that when the problem becomes apparent, it's not possible to connect to the internet to find a diagnosis / solution. I can almost hear all those users growling "ohhh shit!"
In a related note, I've noticed that OS vendors and ISV's are recently (in the last couple of years) referring a lot more to some mysterious "backup" which, while it reflects a very good practice, is not necessarily practiced universally. The vendors used to try and work around the problem ("here's how to back up what you'll need to recover in case this install fails"). That didn't serve them well, so referencing a "backup" without going into the minutiae of how to actually get one is really good for them to do. It makes the installation instructions much shorter, and face it--anyone who would uprade their OS without a backup doesn't really have anything important on their computer anyhow.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Your comments about X "showing it's age" are really silly. WTH are you talking about w/regards to X "buckling." OS X on a dual proc G4 500 with a gig of ram, it slows to a crawl with a few large programs open. On my 500MHZ single proc celery, X doesn't slow down until my system starts running out of memory, or if the apps are using way to much CPU time. Generally, I can comfortably run twice as many large apps on my linux boxen as on OS X, with a quarter of the ram.
All just empirical evidence, but I still think you're full of it. One thing is for sure though, OS X eats ram for breakfast.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
First, I partially agree. But the fact is, GNOME and KDE can be pretty light on resources if you turn off some of the eye-candy. KDE specifically has a bunch of unnecessary eye-candy that can be easily turned off.
GNOME 2.4 is pretty speedy by default now. The default desktop gives you a little panel and a couple icons on the desktop. Nautilus is at least an order of magnitude faster than previously(but what *nix user needs it anyway). Not quite as quick to load as a really small wm, but not bad, and WAY faster than an OS X desktop.
GNOME >=2.2 is looking really good, IMO. Cute, quick, and to the point.
KDE >=3 is bloated and has tons of eye-candy, but all of it can be turned off.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I had the same problem with my iBook 700. Major problems with the display and booting up. I was really disappointed that the hardware failed so easily. I'd had enough grief with my Win98 and XP systems and was hoping to get back to consistently higher quality gear by getting a Mac again. They ended up having to replace the main board. To Apple's credit, they allowed me to go ahead and purchase AppleCare protection (since I skimped on getting it when I bought it) even though it was past the warranty period. And they sent it back alot quicker than I expected.
I got bit by the bug. Naughty, naughty Apple for being in such a hurry to get out an upgrade that fixed the recently reported Unix bugs that they neglected to test it on a Dual 450 with a slow Ethernet network. It was certainly annoying. I had to go to the Apple Support Discussion groups, where a guy had already isolated the offending file, download the old one (or copy it from an nonupgraded Mac), put it on a disk, and install it in the dual-450. No, this isn't acceptable, but it's not exactly a disaster, either.
The other 5 systems I upgraded worked fine.
Second, there I have been peeps of negativity. I myself have criticized Apple on several occasions fro releasing a security patch with other updates. It was wrong, and we know this is wrong. Apple forcing the user to patch toys like the audio part (which admittedly some people use to make money) at the same time as the security patches was wrong.
Now, listen closely child: both MS and Apple has irrational fanboys. One reason that MS gets more flack is MS also tends to be more of a target than Apple from the Linux fanboys, and MS has pissed off it's own customers through self-serving licensing, update, and software availability practices.
As far as safe mode is concerned, it's purpose it to turn off most the services so that the computer will boot. In a Mac in OS X, if services do not work, the Mac will still boot, but the services will just not work. In OS 9 we had a feature where the shift key (i think) could be held down, which would turn off the extensions, and do the equivalent of your safe mode.
One last thing, The fact that this update failed showed the problems with updates in general. One can never assume that an update is released and a week later all the security holes will be fixed. On production machines is always necessary to test the patch for a while to make sure that it is not going to break the very machine that brings in the profit. And guess what? In this web economy many of the machines that are the most venerable are also the most necessary for production.
So, if MS issues an update once a month, then you are talking about an almost full time process of validating and installing patches. Unless you just a week until other people have validated the patch, and then install it. Which is what many Mac users do. Except for us the problems usually crop up in a few hours. We just get complacent because lately all the patches have worked.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"the first apple that bites you back?"
No, that was the Powerbook 5400. The one with the exploding batteries.
I also get a lot of real work done in the native GUI. I would get a lot more real work done, but the tools have not been ported yet.
The thing about the user interface is that Apple has one thing going for it, and one thing going against it. First, they have been working GUI issues for over 20 years. Kind of even more if you count the NeXt work. It is not like MS who woke up one day and said hey, we need one of them GUI things to compete. X is just as good, but has problem with the implementation on some hardware. The Apple implementation just isn't there yet.
The problem you are having results from the second issue. Apple has a large user base, and just can't change things willy nilly. Even the minimal changes they made to OS X caused a number of problems for the user. OS X is not X, and there is no reason it should try to be X. It is still missing features of OS 9, but lets seem what happens in Panther. Which I will wait a few weeks before purcahasing, just to be safe.
Oh, and virtual destops are nice. Have you thought of getting a second flat screen (~$300) and have two real desktops?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Ease of administration.
If you are a linux geek... fine.. you don't need or want to spend the extra money on OSX server.
OSX servers are not overly expensive, and are nice hardware. They come with a nice OS, with a few great admin tools with tight desktop integration.
Again, if you are a unix geek, you don't care, you want to do it all yourself.. but for an office without real unix geeks, tossing in an OSX server is an economical, powerful, easy to integrate solution, and far better than trying to use Win2k or something...
Yeah, we've done our research, all right. The difference in prices you cite, besides being complete bull, because MS upgrades don't break apps the way Apple's do, is still less than the "style premium" paid by Apple users for hardware over the price of the eqivalent PC.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Full disclosure: I have purchased seven computers in my life since 1983 and they have all been Apple machines.
In your post you (johnpaul191) seem to assume that the iBooks mentioned in mslinux's post were purchased at different times. I assumed the 9 iBooks were part of the same shipment and (possibly) manufacturing run. In either case, mslinux's chumpy iBooks could have been chumpy because of something Apple or the manufacturer did or did not do. In my experience, user breakage is overwhelmed by manufacturing defects.
Apple's manufacturers and Apple itself do occasionally design software and hardware badly. Sometimes, there are product runs or batches of a particular run that are fouled due either to manufacturing defects, design flaws, and/or plain ol' entropy.
One example of this is the translucent power cord that Apple debuted with the Pismo (Firewire G3) powerbooks. The material used in those cords degraded over time and eventually carried charge. As a result, those cords ended up generating sparks and, in some cases, small fires. To my knowledge, no one was ever hurt but thousands of customers were affected.
Apple replaced those faulty cords under AppleCare and quietly redesigned the power cord to use a different opaque material. Power cords that failed without AppleCare cost their users in the neighborhood of $60 (US). This is only one design flaw in one of Apple's hardware lines. Other Apple hardware lines have also been poorly designed and/or manufactured: early PowerBook 100s caught fire and PowerBook 5300s are notorious for disintegrating LCD mounts.
Now, I'm not saying Apple makes a crummy machine. Far from it. (I just requisitioned and receieved a 15" ALbook which, by the way, is a way sweet machine.) But like any hardware conglomerate, Apple and its manufacturers do occasionally build and ship lemons, a fact they sometimes they try to diguise. One way they do this is by fixing such machines under warranty. In other cases they will replace the machine in question in response to a user complaint. But because they never issue a recall (which would be overkill in most cases), a small percentage of users are left with hardware that's broken due to no fault of their own.
blog
Hardware and software costs in upgrades are two seperate issues. Keep them that way. You're also dreaming if you think MS updates don't break apps.
As for the prices being bull, they're all listed right there on that same site that's linked at the beginning.
Can you get it for less now? Sure. And I can get OS X for $50 now.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
"The LCDs got these awful lines or would just go black."
That's identical to the problem I've had, both times. I can't afford to have a laptop that cuts out on me every 1.5 months, so I won't be buying another Apple laptop.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
"Calm down, you foaming at the mouth fucking fanatic."
I love that line, I almost spit coffee all over my screen. I get so sick of the freaks that consider anything less than absolute praise a troll.
Which I guess in their world, where Apple is indeed perfect because every single flaw can be explained away or blamed on MS, anything less than worship does meet the definition of troll.
I've got an iBook 900, and after 3 months the HDD failed. After 2 weeks I finally got it back, with stripped screws and a cracked case! The iBook is a decent portable for general computing, but my experience with Apple has left a very bad taste in my mouth.
I make minimum wage, you insensitive clod!
Apple has a low home market share because it chooses to. People who make minimum wage choose not to buy Apple computers because Apple chooses not to offer a sub-low-end ($499) desktop system.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I believe, though I can't prove it, that Apple was responsible for the memory that went bad. It was 3rd party, and after they replaced the motherboard my iBook would crash daily. Eventually the memory failed and I had to RMA it. Kingston was happy to replace it. The problems started immediately after I got the iBook back. Between the time I replaced the memory and the time the motherboard broke again, it was rock solid. I believe I hadn't rebooted once in the ~45 day period.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
MS junkie? Incorrect, at home I have two macs and 2 linux boxes. You're simply way too sensitive, get outta the house and live jackass!
By the way, Linux eats a free memory also - for disk caching, but it doesn't slow down anything (oppositely - it accelerates a lot!) and it releases it immidiately when more memory is required for real process needs.
I've migrated from 10.1 -> YDL 2.1 -> Gentoo 1.4 -> 10.2 on my Powerbook. I can confirm: Mac OS X is the slowest os (after Mac OS 9 of course) that was running there. As soon as I'll change my scanner to work with SANE I'll go back to Gentoo, which is the fastest OS for Mac hardware today I ever tested.
Less is more !
I don't know if anyone will read this, it's a bit late. But the Linksys upgrade hosed my network, and I had to downgrade to get connectivity back. And not just OSX boxes, Linux and Windows as well.
More comments are on VersionTracker Older BEFSR41 drivers can be found here
I was having problems with 10.2.8 on my Lombard G3/400 Powerbook. This fixed it.
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleNDRV/ATIDriver.bun dle /System/Library/Extensions
To fix this issue with the "Lombard" open a terminal window and type
sudo rm -rf
sudo touch
Restart via the Finder
It's a bug in the ATI driver (a third party component shipped by Apple.) There will be an article on info.apple.com soon about this.
My brand new office G5 1.6 GHz has a dead CD drive. Omigod. This represents a MAJOR manufacturing problem. Obviously the G5 system is a misbegotten train wreck of bad design and broken, untested hacks. You should never buy one.
.dmg.bin (disk image files packaged for download) are now showing up with an icon for Toast Titanium instead of the icon for Disk Copy.
Or not. But how would you know? Actually it is very fast and has a really slick design. So a CD-writer failed. It happens. The only things I've been able to find to gripe about are there are some little cables dangling too near the upper PCI card slot and that the case metal is soft and easily scratched (when the instructions tell you to lay it on a soft towel, believe them. I've got some nice little gashes in the aluminum case material where some grit on our carpeted floor scraped it).
But maybe that's FUD too. Everything I'm telling you could be a lie... even this.
My point is that the macfixit.com story is interesting, and perhaps contains a lot of important and valid warnings, but it is not really a detailed bug report. It contains a lot of highly detailed ANECDOTAL cases about people who did this, and (then unknown things) and then additional things happened. They may be valuable, or they may not be, because you haven't run a controlled test on the machine in question.
To be really compelling even as anecdotal evidence, we'd need to be fairly certain that no other changes were made to the system which might result in the problems mentioned. To be really compelling as a bug report, I'd want to see the lines of code in question and an explanation of how code X running on system Y with network chip Z or framework version Q interact, in detail, to produce a problem.
In practice I did see one problem arise from the 10.2.8 update which I mistakenly installed (a friend of mine had jumped the gun and was urging me to update to fix the security issues, even though I am usually deliberately lazy by a week or two about installing updates for this very reason). I'll mention it later.
I think it is also worth noticing that at least a few of the issues are issues of compatibility with third-party programs. For example, "if you use TransparentDock to modify Dock behavior and/or appearance." Apple of course can't guarantee that arbirary system components that have been modified by third-party utilities will never change out from under these utilities.
Then there are problems like the MODU incompatibility. That sounds like a standard kind of problem with a third-party driver that works right on one version of the system and breaks on the next. Whether it is Apple's bug, or MOTUs, or just the assumption that an API will work a certain undocumented way... it doesn't matter that much. This kind of incompatibility over the life cycle of OS releases is common. Kernel drivers by definition have to do things that, if they go slightly wrong, can crash the system. (I write them for a living).
In this case it might have been avoided if Apple had separated out the security patches from the more generalized system patches. That is probably the real lesson to be learned here: "don't do monolithic updates." Of course, then we get bent out of shape because there are too many small updates.
Some of the problems, such as overwriting a flash plug-in, must be examples of weak installer scripts that don't adequately check version information. That's a very common problem. Does anyone remember DLLs getting overwritten with earlier version on Windows sytems? If you haven't seen this problem before, you haven't administered very many Windows systems.
By the way, the problem I noticed was listed in the MacFixit article under "File mapping issues." This is some degree of corroboration. Files of type
The workaround is to use "open with." I'll also check out the sugestion to use Cocktail and see if that works. Is it a pain in the ass? Yes. Do I regret installing the upgrade before it was pulled?
The problem is that the wires that go to the display go through the hinge. So they can get worn out through normal use (especially if you open and close alot--and who doesn't with a laptop). I believe they have fixed that particular design flaw in newer iBooks (mine is 18 months old). Easy to find details on it in the support forums on the Apple website--it was a reasonably common problem.
Oh wait, you had main board problems. Yes, I had that too. Cracked motherboard, probably happened when they were fixing the previous problem. So thankfully under warranty for me. Applecare is your friend. I've never bothered to get it on a desktop, but I wouldn't go without it on a laptop, because the repairs are so expensive (as you found out).
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson