Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update Brings Welcome Fixes

jetpack writes to make sure we're aware that Apple's OS X 10.5.2 update is available and that it contains plenty of improvements and fixes that users have been asking for. Macworld enumerates some of the big ones, saying that the update "shows Apple listens to users" (sometimes). A couple of the new features simply restore Tiger (10.4) capabilities that Leopard (10.5) had inexplicably withdrawn. You can now shut off the much-maligned transparency of the menu bar, and organize your Dock stacks hierarchically and display them as folders. And Apple has provided welcome access to common Time Machine functions in the menu bar.

Comments

AEBS backups

[sam.thorogood]

You can't back up to drives plugged into an Airport Extreme, though, even though the much-toted Time Capsule will apparently be able to (In their defence, this could come with an update before the Time Capsule actually ships).

Re:AEBS backups

[tgd]

No, but at least AirDisk drives work correctly again, at a usable performance.

10.5.2 is what 10.5 should've been in Apple didn't rush it at the expense of QA.

Re:AEBS backups

[Muzzarelli]

Tried doing an initial time machine backup to a directly connected drive, then moving the drive to the AEBS? Works for me.

Re:AEBS backups

[A1miras]

Unfortunately, whatever magic allows Time Capsule to backup to plugged in drives most likely relates to Time Capsule firmware, and has little to do with Mac OS X.

I agree this functionality would be quite nice.

Re:AEBS backups

[appleguru]

You have two options... (Though only the first will help you with backing up to an airdisk)

1) defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

2) Buy leopard server ;-)

Re:AEBS backups

[A1miras]

10.5.2 is what 10.5 should've been in Apple didn't rush it at the expense of QA.
Rush? Leopard was originally targeted for June '07. They did anything but rush, but you've got to ship at some point and users are always a bit better at finding bugs.

Re:AEBS backups

[0100010001010011]

I believe the functionality has been there since 10.5.

I have an external drive hooked up to my debian box (Formatted HFS+, RW). I have it shared via SMB as smb://debian.local/TimeMachine.

After running the command on my machine to backup to 'unauthorized' shares and enabling time machine on the drive, time machine works great.

I hadn't planned on this when I started, but time machine knows that it's a network drive and will mount it in the background to do the backup. Even if I've rebooted, taken my computer out for a while, etc. As soon as I come back the Time Machine drive will mount and start the backup.

The only thing 10.5.2 added was a fancy new icon for it.

Re:AEBS backups

[mattsgotredhair]

This is 10.5.2 which came from 10.5.1. Apple AFAIK hasn't ever charged for releases beyond the 10.x increase. 10.4 to 10.5 costs money but not 10.5.x to 10.5.y.

Re:AEBS backups

[The MAZZTer]

And Windows Vista was originally targeted for... when? THAT OS sure feels rushed to me...

Re:AEBS backups

[larry bagina]

leopard betas supported AEBS/time machine usage.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a big update too. 180MB

Re:AEBS backups

[nsayer]

The reason that it's "unauthorized" is because beta testers discovered problems with data corruption.

It'd suck to need to restore from your backups only to discover that they were pooched.

Re:AEBS backups

[Just Some Guy]

Will Time Machine do differential backups now?

Well, it has been for the last two months and I doubt they disabled it.

Just compare how long Vista has been out with how long Leoptard has been out, and it becomes even more apparent which company released a functioning product, and which one required a desperate emergency update.

You're 100% correct. Leopard is down to the point that they're fixing cosmetic issues that customers complained about, while Vista still isn't sure if you can listen to an MP3 while downloading from a local fileserver. That desperate emergency update, aka SP1, is about a year long in coming. It must irk MS to no end that Leopard just needs the final spit and polish while Vista languishes.

Typed on Linux. I don't really care one way or the other, but there's no way you can say that Leopard is as troubled as Vista.

Re:AEBS backups

[Eevee1]

The prison guards in Futurama, year 3000.

"Do you know why they use Windows in prison? Because it always locks up."

Re:AEBS backups

[earnest murderer]

And Windows Vista was originally targeted for... when? THAT OS sure feels rushed to me... Who cares about Vista, we're talking about OS X. Smelling one turd and remarking on it's fetid bouquet takes nothing away from the next piece of poo.

Re:AEBS backups

[PJ Kix]

i was able to get this working by first using the usb drive as a local backup, then later atatching it to the AEBS. when the disk showed up on the network over wifi it just worked like normal. although for some reason now my drive is full and has been unsucsessful to backup recently.

i mostly had problems using the AEBS to get disks to show up reliably when using a hub or trying to mix hfs drives with dos and its too bad it doesn't work with ntfs but thats another story ...

Re:AEBS backups

[sjf]

>> Will Time Machine do differential backups now?
>Well, it has been for the last two months and I doubt they disabled it.

If the unit of back up is the entire file system, then you are of course correct. I suspect the parent poster was looking for differences within files...that is, only backing up the 'diff' between two files, not the entire file when it changes.

I doubt we'll see this until zfs.

Re:AEBS backups

[PenguSven]

Time machine is all differential backups. it just APPEARS as if they're all full backups by using some tricky file-system stuff.

Re:AEBS backups

[osu-neko]

Rush? Leopard was originally targeted for June '07. They did anything but rush, but you've got to ship at some point and users are always a bit better at finding bugs.

Huh? What does the original target date have to do with it?

Whether it was released early, on time, or late is one fact. Whether it was rushed or released when good and ready is another fact. Whether it was shipped in a Monday or a Friday or some other day is a third fact. Despite the fact that all there of these facts are related to time and the release date, they're pretty much independent of one another. Knowing the release date will tell you the third, knowing also the original target date will tell you the first, but neither tells you anything at all about the second, since the second fact has nothing to do with either the first or the third.

Re:AEBS backups

[pthomsen]

It is not differential by any stretch. Backing up the entire file when it changes does not qualify as differential.

What I want to know is if Apple fixed the glaring hole where files that are (relatively) short lived disappear when a particular backup is 'promoted' for (eg) hourly to daily. If a file that was created after the last daily backup but deleted before this one is promoted, you're SOL.

Some backup... :-(

I suspect this is not fixed, but I don't know. Anyone?

Re:AEBS backups

[elyons]

. . .that Leopard just needs the final spit and polish
I am going to have to disagree here. I've been a long time mac fan, switching from linux with the first OS X release. I'm a developer at a university, and I have very little nice to say about 10.5 vs. 10.4. My Desktop system (last model quad-core) is much less stable, OSX apps crash more frequently, etc. In addition to running slower (in my opinion) and requiring more resources, my laptop (3yo powerbook G4) battery (less than a year old) has been shot to hell since running Leopard as documented here. Overall, I've been very, very disappointed by Apple this time around and I hope this next patch-set helps. I just wish they had kept focused on a solid OS instead draining resources to the iPhone-candy. Don't get me wrong, I like the iPhone too, but not at the expense of their core OS, which has built their strong user base.

Re:AEBS backups

[MemoryDragon]

Dont tell me, I have been using leopard for a while and have vista on my side on my working notebook. Leopard, almost no problems except cosmetic ones. Vista, WLAN often refuses to connect to already registered networks. The harddrive thrashes my disk almost 10 minutes after booting, the problem is known you can find lots of references on the web, but no definitive solution. (And yes even indexing is off on my machine) The entire configuration is a mess, ok this is cosmetic, but severe enough that it takes me often 10 minutes to find something. The entire configuration has become way worse than KDE ever was and definitely is not in the same league as Apples easy configuration! Once I play a video locally file transfer rate over the network goes down the drain! (Thank you DRM!) UAC is not a pain I see it as necessary, again 2 blue screens in the last weeks, Leopard has yet to fail on me. One update introduced a deadlock in some applications for an entire month until the next update cycle. But to give Vista one credit, the 3d desktop is as slow as apples, the only system which shows that a 3d desktop can be fast currently is Linux. Ubuntus 3d Desktop flies on my machine compared to those two systems. Or in other words at least Vista allows you to turn the dreaded thing off!

Re:AEBS backups

[jchillerup]

1a) Wait. 1b) When your drive is full, watch the fireworks. TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes does NOT work correctly and is NOT supported (hence the "Unsupported"...)

Re:AEBS backups

[Incongruity]

And it was an *ADVERTISED FEATURE* of Leopard and the AEBS until *poof* it wasn't...

Re:AEBS backups

[NMerriam]

I suspect this is not fixed, but I don't know. Anyone?

It's not broken, so don't ever expect it to be "fixed". When designing the backup system, they chose to use fewer real-time computing resources so that it was essentially invisible to the users (and thus wouldn't get turned off by everyone for "slowing down the computer") and make restoration trivially simple and fast, at the expense of disk space. You can disagree with their choices, but they're the same tradeoffs every backup system designer has to make.

I use rdiff-backup for some of my data where frequent small updates of large files are an issue, but I'm under no illusions that running a CPU at 100% for 30 minutes for every backup would be acceptable out-of-the-box behavior for most consumers. It especially wouldn't be acceptable to spend days or weeks calculating deltas when restoring a hard drive full of files that have been modified over the course of months or years.

It's a lot easier and cheaper to add disk space than processing power, as much as I'd love to see deltas offered I think I would have made the same choices Apple did if I were in charge of designing TM.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

Major problem with the discussed feature: Because Apple doesn't make external hard drives, it creates a scenario where any random 3rd party hardware would have to be supported. Anyone who has been bounced back and forth between two companies' tech support lines, each blaming the other, knows what a nightmare situation this can be. Time Capsule eliminates this by being able to control all the hardware involved, therefore being able to support it competently and completely.

Re:AEBS backups

[gnasher719]

And it was an *ADVERTISED FEATURE* of Leopard and the AEBS until *poof* it wasn't... Yeah, an "advertised feature" that wasn't "advertised" to anyone who wasn't under NDA.

Re:AEBS backups

[jellomizer]

I am not sure if you are either a New Mac User who has gotten your first Mac Within 2 years or you just tend to forget quickly...
Every New Major version of OS X comes with a bunch glitches which they slowly but shirley fix in time. It happened in 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5 there are new features that pop in that people don't quite like that get adjusted, there is some odd combination that doesn't seem to work just right. and by 10.x.4 or so. things run so smoothly that you begin to forget the pain you once had, and By the time of the next version you are on 10,.x.10 or so. Where everything is rock solid. Then you get a New version 10.x+1 and it is full of these little glitches again, normally annoying but rarely a huge show stopper.
You are under the impression that Any Software Company with deep pockets can produce a bug free system, which is wrong. I could write a complex program and debug it and check it for a huge amount of time much longer then miss a simple bug. For example I was making a type ahead dropdown box in HTML/Javascript for an intranet app. I have tested and tested it it was perfect. Then when it went to testing it came right back saying the drop down box disappeared when ever someone scrolled down. What happened when I was testing it I always used the mouse scroll wheel to scroll down the list while other people just clicked the scroll bar to drag it down and caused a lost focus on my control, causing the menu box to go away. The fix was easy but the issue was I never though of testing it that way because I do things a particular way consistently. So does Apple, and the Beta Testers... So they could have worked out all the issues they have found then on Day one of the release someone just did that one thing they never expected.

Re:AEBS backups

[peragrin]

exactly. Apple is always pushing the edge so there are problems that need to get worked out. I want an iPhone but I am going to wait until after the SDK and possibly the next version of the phone to ship. The bulk of the bugs and annoyances will be gone.

The big difference between MSFT and Apple. Apple fixes the holes(most of the time) and MSFT adds another layer of paint to cover over the holes.

Re:AEBS backups

[peragrin]

If your backup volume is filled your fscked anyway.

never ever cut your backup storage space short.

Re:AEBS backups

[tgd]

I'm not going to get into my qualifications for discussing how large scale software development and QA methodologies should work, but I will say there's a substantial difference between releasing an OS where some obscure 3rd party application stops working and missing fundamental compatibility issues with your own applications and hardware.

Apple screwed the pooch on 10.5 in a way I'm not sure any OS vendor has done before. Microsoft, for all the crap they've done, never had a release that broke their own products. The Quicktime update that broke all their pro video editing software is another perfect example. Apple is rushing product these days and it shows. They still have devices out there that are fundamentally flawed (like the yet-to-be-corrected stability problems with the AEBS).

I'm not sure you should be projecting your personal inability to write well engineered, unit tested and quality-assured software onto an industry that should strive for substantially better.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

Shirley you jest!

Re:AEBS backups

[IsThisNickTaken]

Time Machine is meant to fill up. It will start dropping off the oldest backups after it fills. When I first installed Leopard, I had a 160 GB external drive free so I used that for my initial Time Machine testing. Since I was using ~ 110 GBs of my MBP's hard drive it didn't take too long to fill up the Time Machine volume. I would get a warning message telling me that the drive was full, but it kept chugging along.

I agree with your second point, which is why I have since upgraded to a larger drive for Time Machine.

Re:AEBS backups

[slawo]

You have to readjust your backup dmg size manually to fit the real size of the disk on which you save to avoid the problem.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop calling me Shirley!

Re:AEBS backups

[TrippTDF]

There's also the sheer money angle here. If you release it at a point where it's not going to bust any machines (which it didn't when it shipped, for the most part), then you ship it, start bringing in the money for it, and then continue to work on it while you still have a stream of income. Now Apple doesn't have to worry about this all that much, as OS X isn't a cash-cow for the company (honestly, I don't know why they charge for it at all).
M
Also important in this case: Get the hot new OS (that kicks Vista's ass) into the marketplace well before Christmas, so the buzz can get out and those consumers that are on the fence between Mac and PC will have another point towards the Mac. ("Oh, both companies released a new OS this year, and the Mac one is getting better press...")

Re:AEBS backups

[samkass]

Apple screwed the pooch on 10.5 in a way I'm not sure any OS vendor has done before. Microsoft, for all the crap they've done, never had a release that broke their own products.

You have some valid points, but these two statements are both false. Many linux vendors have had much worse releases than 10.5, for example, and Microsoft Windows 98 was no walk in the park. And Windows 2000 sure did break compatibility for those upgrading from the Win95 line. Sure, it was a jump to essentially a new OS, but until WinME was announced it was billed by Microsoft as 98's successor. And even then, it just put off the compatibility problems until XP for those users.

As for Apple's actions, it's hard to fault them as a company. The market seemed to reward their decision to release early and fix later, and unless that changes expect more of the same. To be honest, I preferred it the way it was released-- I installed 10.5.0 and never hit any of the serious bugs others reported, and used the extra features. It's all semantics anyway. If you just named ".0" releases "Public Beta", ".1" releases "Final Candidate", and ".2" releases "Final", you get the same thing.

Re:AEBS backups

[teeker]

It is not differential by any stretch. Backing up the entire file when it changes does not qualify as differential.

Ummm...actually in the context of backup strategies, that is typically EXACTLY what differential backup means. Not to say it excludes the possibility of delta-only storage, but that is most certainly *not* implied.

Re:AEBS backups

[wodgy7]

You can get around this by periodically running "hdiutil compact" on the backup disk image. This reclaims deleted space properly and allows you to use TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes safely.

Re:AEBS backups

[JadeNB]

So they could have worked out all the issues they have found then on Day one of the release someone just did that one thing they never expected.

This is a reasonable defence against most of the complaints, but to claim that Apple's testing never revealed the problems with the Stacks icons or the translucent menu bar (two issues specifically mentioned in the linked article) is a little silly. Notice that Apple's own default stars-on-purple background is particularly bad with the translucent menu bar.

Re:AEBS backups

[gad_zuki!]

>Every New Major version of OS X comes with a bunch glitches which they slowly but shirley fix in time.

Surely, you are correct and stop calling me Shirley.

Re:AEBS backups

[pthomsen]

It's not broken, so don't ever expect it to be "fixed". When designing the backup system, they chose to use fewer real-time computing resources so that it was essentially invisible to the users (and thus wouldn't get turned off by everyone for "slowing down the computer") and make restoration trivially simple and fast, at the expense of disk space. You can disagree with their choices, but they're the same tradeoffs every backup system designer has to make. Eh, my complaint really was not about differential backups, which I agree with you are not a feasible way to go for them.

I was really asking about the problem I outlined where short-lived files are not retained in daily/weekly backups. That to me is not acceptable.

Re:AEBS backups

[IronChef]

It must irk MS to no end that Leopard just needs the final spit and polish while Vista languishes.

I used to work at MS. As a contractor only, and only for a few years, so I have a tiny bit of insider perspective. From what I saw,I would be surprised if there are more than a few people at MS who are irked about anything Leopard does better.

The weird, weird, weirdest thing about that place was how off in their own little many people were. I expected a computer company to be full of people who liked computers in general. MSFT is full of people who like MSFT, and many of them don't really understand that there are other kinds of computers at all.

I mean, sure, they know that there are things like Macs, but in the same way I know that there are planets around other stars. What do they have to do with me?

Maybe things aren't really that bad, but it is the impression I got in my time there.

Re:AEBS backups

[mark72005]

---The harddrive thrashes my disk almost 10 minutes after booting, the problem is known you can find lots of references on the web, but no definitive solution. (And yes even indexing is off on my machine)--- Holy crap! That happens on my machine *all* the time! Randomly, the machine will just sit there with the hard drive grinding for 10, 15 minutes at a stretch. Nothing snowing in task manager, no processes that should be using all the system time. It's just doing nothing as fast as it can I guess. Can't wait until my new Macbook Pro arrives tomorrow. My Windows machine belongs in a museum.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every New Major version of OS X comes with a bunch glitches which they slowly but shirley fix in time"

They usually fix the big ones pretty quickly - and don't call me Shirley.

Re:AEBS backups

[sootman]

And this absolutely baffles me. Isn't the whole point of having different layers in the TCP/IP stack to make it not matter to an application how the network is physically configured? Why should Time Machine even KNOW, let alone CARE, how I'm connected? If TM can deal with an ethernet cable accidentally being unplugged or a server momentarily being unavailable for some reason, it ought to be able to deal with any glitches that WiFi brings to the table. Apple: I DON'T CARE if the first backup takes a long time. I DON'T CARE if subsequent backups sometimes take a while. (Hint: don't back up ~/Library/Caches/.) I don't care if increased network activity lowers my battery life while I'm sitting on the couch. (See above hint again.) I'm willing to accept all these shortcomings, just let me back up without plugging in! (And without having to buy a Time Capsule. I'd prefer to use my Mac Pro with File Sharing turned on, thankyouverymuch.)

Re:AEBS backups

[pthomsen]

Ummm...actually in the context of backup strategies, that is typically EXACTLY what differential backup means. Not to say it excludes the possibility of delta-only storage, but that is most certainly *not* implied. I think you're thinking of incremental backups, not differential. TM performs incremental backups, not differential. Here's an explanation of the difference.

Re:AEBS backups

[teeker]

No, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Did you read your own link? The terms differential and incremental don't have anything to do with whether or not whole files get backed up, they have to do with how incomplete backups are taken relative to the last full backup (your provided link clearly explains this). Still, in either case, if 10 bytes out of 100MB changes, that WHOLE FILE is backed up, which is exactly what you wrongly said "does not qualify as differential". You may be absolutely correct that it's not differential (I'm not very familiar with Time Machine), but that is absolutely not the reason why.

I believe you are thinking of a delta-type backup (like rsync). I also believe that if you look at commercial backup solutions, you will find that a majority of them do NOT do this kind of thing. You're usually on your own hacking together rsync scripts, or you're dealing with some kind of file syncing product and not an standard backup solution.

(hope I didn't sound like a dick there, it's just I deal with a lot of lower level sysadmins who don't understand those concepts very well and I hate to see people perpetuating mistakes- no offense is intended)

Re:AEBS backups

[Buran]

You have to be under NDA to read a public website? Read this link -- it was on Apple's own website!

AppleInsider | Apple yanks wireless backup from Leopard last minute

I guess now you'll want to scream "illegal" when people pass along something they read on the front page of the paper.

Re:AEBS backups

[NMerriam]

Weird, I have no idea how I seemingly responded to the wrong message :P

I agree that they have some issues with choices made about how/when to back up and retain given files. I think that TM is a very v1.0 product and is as much a framework to build on right now as it is a shipping backup solution. Just looking at the hardware issues involving anything more advanced than a USB hard drive makes clear they have a LOT of room to grow in every aspect of how well it works.

Re:AEBS backups

[pthomsen]

No, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Did you read your own link? I did read the link. I will admit that my initial statement about TM and differential backups could be construed as saying that differential backups mean what you call 'delta-storage'. It doesn't. It means what the link refers to. I'm sorry this caused consternation for you.

I believe you are thinking of a delta-type backup (like rsync). I also believe that if you look at commercial backup solutions, you will find that a majority of them do NOT do this kind of thing. You're usually on your own hacking together rsync scripts, or you're dealing with some kind of file syncing product and not an standard backup solution. Actually, I was really trying to comment on a problem with Time Machine. :-)

But to respond to your point about what's available out there, I have been participating in the Box Backup project for the last few years, and that performs file-delta backups, and also has a host of other nice features.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call me Shirley.......

Re:AEBS backups

[teeker]

Gotcha. Again sorry to sound so crabby about it.

You know, if you got that Box Backup really stable and added facilities for MS Exchange and a few popular databases, that setup would get installed all over the place. I'd very seriously consider ditching a commercial product like Veritas for something like that. Actually now that I think about it, since Symantec took it over, I'd probably trade Backup Exec for a piece of shiny aluminum foil. I'll keep an eye on that project...it's a good idea.

Re:AEBS backups

[MemoryDragon]

The problem is not the machine, it is Vista. The grinding has different causes, some machines simply swap, others simply have a process up and running doing the indexing.
Most causes simply are that Vista runs into a deadlock with the drivers and doing endless thrashing. Microsoft until now has not officially made any statement to this issue although the support forums are full of similar problems. Simply google after vista disk thrashing and you will get hundreds of references!

Id say put XP on your machine or Linux, if you run into this problem!

Re:AEBS backups

[qw(name)]

I suspect the parent poster was looking for differences within files...that is, only backing up the 'diff' between two files, not the entire file when it changes.

That's not what "differential backup" means at all. Differential backups contain all files that have changed since the last FULL backup. That has nothing to do with changes within files.

Re:AEBS backups

[moonshinerat]

What happened when I was testing it I always used the mouse scroll wheel to scroll down the list while other people just clicked the scroll bar to drag it down and caused a lost focus on my control, causing the menu box to go away. The fix was easy but the issue was I never though of testing it that way because I do things a particular way consistently. Without being funny, if you are producing code commercially then you should be testing from every perspective, your own preferences being last. I agree, with something the size of OSX this is a big job and just about impossible to do even for the likes of Apple but the example you have given is like a pro web designer saying "my web page works in IE7 so everything will be fine for every other browser". In 'us programmers' defense and in agreement with this post what I will say is that all of you who have moaned about Apples glitches should try learning some programming skills and helping us put the problems right. As part of a small team of *nix OS component developers I can say that it takes weeks sometimes to correct small chunks of code to get the desired effect time and time again in every circumstance.

Re:AEBS backups

[Anonymous Coward]

To make this clear.. Time Machine was indeed an advertised feature of Leopard, listed as one of many features that were later revoked before the final launch of Leopard (other features including resolution independence and support for Front Row on machines without infrared sensors and an Apple Remote). They were listed in keynote speeches previewing Leopard that were made publicly available, not just to developers, and with no NDA. Apple over-promised here, to be sure.

Re:AEBS backups

[Ilgaz]

leopard betas supported AEBS/time machine usage. Do you have anything to size a regular Time Machine drive B-Tree and metadata sizes? I got Disk Warrior here, it says 1.1 GB. A Disk Warrior session on a TM drive, even directly connected to actual quad CPU , 4.5 GB RAM machine takes more than 1 hour. Not bitching, it is why I paid for Disk Warrior, to actually figure what it will do first.

I wonder if Apple did some real life tests with various configurations and concluded chip based AE/USB drive connection can't handle such a complex arch on drive?

BTW- hope nobody uses this as opportunity for "HFS+ is crap" thing. I am speaking about 1.1 MILLION files inside hundreds of thousands of directories on a regular USB external drive which loses at "USB2" point alone.

If Apple concluded the USB on AE is way weak to handle that load which a workstation struggles, they should have declared it to public. It would end the conspiracy theories.

Re:AEBS backups

[Ilgaz]

If your backup volume is filled your fscked anyway.

never ever cut your backup storage space short. That is why I think array of firewire drives (or case) connected to a lowest end Mac (e.g. second hand Mac mini G4) setup as a growing RAID set could make more sense than a time capsule or pref hacks.

Mini should have max memory and directly connected via copper. It has other uses too, such as setting up Fink and installing squid etc. type of things.

I wonder if Leopard server can be installed to Mini G4. That would be the "luxury" solution too.

Re:AEBS backups

[Ilgaz]

exactly. Apple is always pushing the edge so there are problems that need to get worked out. I want an iPhone but I am going to wait until after the SDK and possibly the next version of the phone to ship. The bulk of the bugs and annoyances will be gone.

The big difference between MSFT and Apple. Apple fixes the holes(most of the time) and MSFT adds another layer of paint to cover over the holes. Leopard architecture has no problem, it is ages ahead of Tiger IMHO. Thing is, it was a bit rushed and getting slowly to the point of most stable OS X ever (10.5.2 wise). I see insane things every day such as Konqueror on Leopard X11 using comical 3% CPU while browsing a messy site such as Digg.

Vista's architecture is broken. MS will never admit it or can't change it knowing thousands of software will stop working. Apple actually sends out threatening messages to developers at console such as "This will work in 10.5.x but will raise exception in future" when they insist using a older method. Imagine MS doing such a thing.

Apple will just correct the performance etc. bugs on Leopard. MS needs to dare to rm -rf win32 just like Apple did back in 2001.

Re:AEBS backups

[Charcharodon]

NO!!!! OSX.5 sucks, Steve Jobs is the Devil and eats babbies, OMFG! I have to pay a $130 Apple tax and it doesn't even fucking work right, where are all the real tech adv all I see is some stupid fucking transparency bullshit, the piece of junk uses an extra 1.5% more CPU than the last version....SWEET BABY JESUS why don't you just GOUGE OUT MY EYES, who picked these fucking colors for the UI!.....

....oh wait that's right we're not critiquing an MS product......sorry.........

.....Let me change to the proper tone.........

E'hem, I'm sure Apple is hard at work to make this the best OSX product ever, and all the bugs are minor I'm sure, Steve Jobs is just the BEST, he's my B.F.F.!

How do you do you see the screen to type while giving Apple a rim job at the same time?

Apple Fan boys are amazing.

Re:AEBS backups

[hobbit]

Differential backup means exactly what it sounds like it means: only the differences are backed up. If you back up whole files that have only changed in part, that is not a differential backup. Indeed, even if you back up whole blocks that have only changed in part, that's not a differential backup, so ZFS doesn't cut the mustard either ;P

Re:AEBS backups

[qw(name)]

What I originally said holds true. I have no idea where you got your definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_backup

Re:AEBS backups

[hobbit]

Um... from the page you linked:

Differential
A cumulative backup of all changes made after the last full backup. The advantage to this is the quicker recovery time, requiring only a full backup and the latest differential backup to restore the system. The disadvantage is that for each day elapsed since the last full backup, more data needs to be backed up, especially if a majority of the data has been changed. In the blurb it says:

As a backup method, [Incremental backup] is highly efficient, since it allows for the illusion of storage of N copies of size S information chunks, with a total storage requirement much lower than NxS. If the original information that is backed up does not change between backups, the total size will approach just S. If it changes almost completely, the NxS limit will be approached. Note that it refers to "size S information chunks", not "files". For ZFS, S is the blocksize, as this gives a reasonable tradeoff between time and space efficiency. But the closer to a "true" differential backup you get, the smaller S will be, with the limit being a single binary digit.

Troll thread

[Anonymous Coward]

All trolls please post here please so its easier to mod us all down.

Re:Troll thread

[SuperRenaissanceMan]

Jets suck, Yankees suck, Knicks suck... Krypton sucks... Apple sucks...

Re:Troll thread

[calebt3]

All trolls please post here please so its easier to mod us all down.

Jets suck, Yankees suck, Knicks suck... Krypton sucks... Apple sucks...

Score:1, Insightful Did I miss something?

Re:Troll thread

[SuperRenaissanceMan]

I would've gone with funny, myself, but who can say for sure?

Re:Troll thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs are for gays! Correct. kdawson trolls Apple Stores for cock.

Re:Troll thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha I salute you sir! Well done!

Now to make sure *I* get modded down too. NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER! niggerdicks up your asshole! niggerdicks in your mouth!


a shitty mod and his points are soon parted. MOD ME DOWN BITCHES!

Re:Troll thread

[Anonymous Coward]

OK.

Re:Troll thread

[Eli Gottlieb]

All true, but the Red Sox and Celtics BLOW.

Does it fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the fact that it's still the evil seed of Satan Jobs?

Re:Does it fix...

[MacColossus]

Unfortunately no. It doesn't fix the fact the Linux kernel is the evil seed of Linus Torvalds or that Windows is the evil seed of Gates and Monkey boy Ballmer either. I guess Apple can't fix anything.

Re:Does it fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... parent is modded up, this post is modded troll. Go go Slashdot moderators!

Yay Menubar!

[mrxak]

Sweet, no more need for a hack to stop the menubar from being transparent. Now if only they'd make the dock look like it did in 10.4...

Re:Yay Menubar!

[Marsell]

Yes, indeed. I quite liked this from the list:

Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.

Shouldn't the default be the one that never has legibility issues? What does that semi-transparent menu really give us in return? Hello, Apple?

Re:Yay Menubar!

[Poltras]

What does that semi-transparent menu really give us in return? Hello, Apple? You're right! And since I'm never using Time Machine, shouldn't they remove that option too?

I like the semi-translucent bar... good refresh IMO.

Without reading the reversion list

[Scareduck]

... would it be possible for Apple to realize who their customers are and restore the ability to do two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes? That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss. There are alternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[mabhatter654]

they have time machine to backup your whole drive now! The only supported way to put music on your iPod is thru the iTunes.. which is backed up. I agree that they could make iPods more "hacker" friendly, but it simply won't happen.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

You know... you can drag&drop your iTunes songs to the desktop. It will copy them to the target folder. Works for mp3s - just did that the other day.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[singularity]

Wow, that took some research to figure out what in the world you were talking about.

You do not want "two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes", you are talking about bidirectional iPod syncing in iTunes. That is to say if there is a song on an iPod that is not in the iTunes Library, iTunes would copy the song from the iPod onto the computer.

That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss.

Huh? I still have my (still functional) 2nd. Generation iPod. I have been syncing iPods with iTunes for a long time and I can assure you that "feature" was never in iTunes.

Apple has to walk a fine line with the recording industry, and cannot do anything too blatant to piss off the record labels.

Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.

There are plenty of very capable third-party programs out there that do exactly what you are talking about (Senuti being the big one on the Mac right now). They do what you are talking about, and Apple does not get into trouble for it. I do not see the issue here.

And please stop saying it was functionality that was dropped from iTunes. It was never there.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

would it be possible for Apple to realize who their customers are and restore the ability to do two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes? That would be very cool. You could use it like a vacuum cleaner: have everyone in the office plug their iPod into your machine, and automatically vacuum up all the freely copyable tracks, and then place your track collection on their iPod. It'd be a win-win, and Apple customers would LOVE it. And technically, the TOUCH could even do this wirelessly.

I think the only technical issue would be that even a 160 GB iPod would be way, way too small.

If Apple doesn't do it, you know ZUNE will. So Apple, get on the ball! And add blu-ray burners to all your computers while your at it!!!

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[shawnce]

You can however sync purchased songs in both directions since if music is purchased Apple knows what account it is associated with and will let you sync in both directions with authorized iTunes libraries (under the same account).

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/tutorials/beyondthebasics.html

Copy your purchases to another computer
1. Connect your iPod to your computer and open iTunes.
2. Choose File > "Transfer Purchases from iPod".
3. If you need to authorize your computer to play these purchases, select Store > "Authorize Computer".

http://www.apple.com/itunes/sync/ipod.html

Sync both ways.
When you sync your iPod with iTunes, you do exactly that: Keep your iPod and your computer synchronized. That means anything you've purchased from the iTunes Store (even on the go from your iPod touch), your ratings, on-the-go playlists, and even bookmarks from podcasts and audiobooks all sync back to your Mac or PC.[1]

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes Store sync only one way, from your computer to your iPod. To transfer non-purchased music from computer to computer, read this tutorial.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Mike Savior]

There was an official plugin for iTunes made back when the program and iPods were quite young, and the plugin didn't come built-in with an install. It allowed bi-directional syncing, but the plugin was eventually dropped.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.

As Apple have no idea whether the songs are still under copyright & what license they're under, I don't see what business Apple have in preventing you copying your data around.

The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[fingers1122]

There are alternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'. I don't think that's entirely true. Apple in my view has done a fairly good job of satisfying the demands of the record companies with regard to content control while still allowing fairly simple exploits to its own content protection. Bottom line is Apple could not have struck the kind of deals they did without assuring the film/record companies that their content would be completely protected--an impossible guarantee, as Apple surely knows. But Apple has struck a good balance in keeping the big companies happy, creating interest from other studios, and not getting terribly in the way of user experience.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

You can however sync purchased songs in both directions since if music is purchased

Great - so I can sync music if I buy it from Apple* but I can't sync music I've recorded myself. Thanks Apple - that's intuitive!

* but not play it on a generic mp3 player

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[tlhIngan]

Great - so I can sync music if I buy it from Apple* but I can't sync music I've recorded myself. Thanks Apple - that's intuitive!

* but not play it on a generic mp3 player

If you have a regular iPod... you go into that nice directory marked "iPod Control" then look for a folder marked "Music". Sure the filenames are messed up, but nothing a competent ID3 tag editor can't fix.

Geez, Apple makes it "non-trivial" to copy your music back and people complain. This trick has worked since first-gen iPods! Apple doesn't want to make it too easy to copy music off the iPod, otherwise they'd get sued (fairly or unfairly) for people doing P2P filesharing (iPod to iPod). Unless you want MORE people getting sued by the RIAA (Apple, and Does 1-100million (iPod users)).

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[T-Bone-T]

Tell me, how is iTunes supposed to tell an mp3 you've created from one downloaded from the internet? The ID3 tags will be different but that is easily changed and isn't reliable. Besides, how exactly do you create a recording on an iPod? I wasn't aware of that functionality.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Tell me, how is iTunes supposed to tell an mp3 you've created from one downloaded from the internet?

1) Itunes has no way of telling freely shareable material from copyrighted material - that's why it has no business being the gatekeeper.

2) An mp3 you've downloaded off the internet is not necessarily in breach of copyright.

Besides, how exactly do you create a recording on an iPod? I wasn't aware of that functionality.

I didn't say it was created on the iPod, you could have created it anywhere, dropped it into itunes, synced to your iPod, expecting you'd be able to get it off anywhere easily. After all, its your music.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

You ARE whiney.

Copy the directory to your HD, run itunes and tell it to add it to your library (you have to have itunes set to copy the files).
Itunes will then, aside from copy the files, also make directories with artist name, album name, and rename the mp3s to the song name. So this one command not only renames your mp3s, but it also organizes them.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[lurch_mojoff]

True, true, true, but at the end of the day there is reality. And in reality the recording industry are like wizards - they are too powerful for their own good and very easy to anger. Look at the situation Apple are in with non-DRM'd songs on iTunes. Except for EMI, the rest of the big 4 would nearly rather put their stuff on the Pirate Bay, than allow Apple to sell it and the only reason is that they don't quite like Apple having ~75% of the online distribution market (something Apple had achieved through products and services better than everyone else's; i.e. they rightfully have that big market share). Imagine if Apple refused to cave in at RIAA's demand to disallow syncing back from an iPod - then Apple might as well close the iTunes store. This does not excuse Apple, but at least they are not doing it just to spite you or to create lock- in.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whiney" is about right.

If your crappy portable player won't play music encoded with the latest MPEG standard -- which even the Zune will -- there's a simple solution: don't buy tracks that are encoded with that standard. Bloody whiner.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[wish bot]

I understand your issue, but check out a little proggy called iPodDisk. It grew out of one of those Google summer of code thingies - works a treat.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Richard_at_work]

Why is it an artificial limitation? Did Apple in some way have to remove some preexisting code or block some preexisting method to do what you are asking?

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Jesus_666]

That's nice, but I don't own an iPod and I don't necessarily want to copy the MP3s onto my MP3 player.

I like iTunes' user interface, but they are turning the program itself into shit more and more. Not only is iTunes just about the only application on OS X that doesn't know what Core Audio is or how to use it to open files, now it also requires you to hunt around in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ to copy files somewhere. That's expecially funny when you have a large compilation playlist where you need to copy every single file out of its own folder.

If XMMS actually worked on the Mac I'd use that instead of iTunes, but unfortunately iTunes still happens to be the best choice on the Mac.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[2sheds]

If only what is now Panic had taken the Apple shilling, rather than Cassady & Greene - I often think an Audion-based iTunes would be much lovelier. Still, I wouldn't be using Coda or Transmit now if they had done, so good luck to 'em.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[OOSCARR]

There is an option to avoid that. iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > General > Copy files to iTunes Music folder then adding to library (uncheck)

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[mdwh2]

Apple has to walk a fine line with the recording industry, and cannot do anything too blatant to piss off the record labels.

Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.

We can debate the rights and wrongs of it, but let's be honest here: if it was any other company (especially that Micro-something company), people would be slamming it for working with the RIAA, for introducing mechanisms to prevent you from copying your own data. I've never heard anyone, for example, say "Well they have to introduce DRM and Trusted Computing, because they have to walk a fine line with the recording industry", let alone be modded up for it...

(This reminds me of a thread a few years ago where people saying copyright infringement was theft got modded up, and people pointing out it wasn't got modded down. Unthinkable on Slashdot you might think? Well, it was Apple software that was being talked about.)

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[jaysones]

Isn't this kind of like saying the police shouldn't pull anyone over for speeding because the only reason anyone would speed is an emergency, therefore all speeders should be assumed to be having emergencies?

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[stickystyle]

"The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al."

OR...Maybe, just maybe...they don't want to get sued by said RIAA. I know it's a wild notion to think the RIAA would sue someone, but we have to consider it.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[MachineShedFred]

Before you call bullshit, you should actually know what you're talking about.

Remember the first portable MP3 player? The Diamond Multimedia Rio 300? Diamond WAS sued.

Only because 'the Rio must be able to reproduce, either "directly" or "from a transmission," a "digital music recording."' did Diamond win, a.k.a. the fact that it did not support music transfer off the device without software hacks.

This is the legal precedent that the entire industry has been shielded under.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[singularity]

How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer. Instructions for moving music from computer to computer. Using an iPod.

Directions from Apple. With screenshots.

The iPod is designed to be synced with just one computer. That is the nature of the iTunes sync component and the iPod itself. I have never heard of this bidirectional sync "optional plug-in" the original poster was referring to. Also - I have been bidirectionally syncing devices (Palm, PDAs, phones, etc.) for years now, and have supported people who have done the same. One thing I have learned? Bidirectional syncing will delete information given enough information and enough time. It will break eventually. Restore from backups, erase a device, and resync. Annoying, but it is a fact of life when doing syncing. On the other hand I have never had issues with one-way syncing. So maybe Apple just made that decision to make things easier with less support needs.

So Apple gives clear directions for moving your music library from computer to computer, even using your iPod.

The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.

Yes, it is simply that black and white. A company either screws their customers or does everything for them.

Have you no idea of balance? A company says "Hey, we can do more for our customers (and therefore sell more product) if we make these small concessions to other big companies?"

For example - "Hey, if we include DRM on our music store, then get so big that we have enough power to push the distribution companies into allowing us to sell non-DRM music, that will be to the long-term benefit of our customer (with the benefit being that we will sell even MORE music."

No, according to you the company should never bend slightly, and instead should never give in, even if it is to the detriment of both the company and its customers.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[MachineShedFred]

Or it's because the legal precedent that allows MP3 players to exist requires that the device cannot produce digital copies.

See: RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[ncryptd]

As Apple have no idea whether the songs are still under copyright & what license they're under, I don't see what business Apple have in preventing you copying your data around. They're not. You can copy every file from an iPod using the Finder (or cp, if you're like me). There's absolutely nothing in the OS that prevents you from recovering the songs off of an iPod. Nothing in the iPod firmware either. You're complaining because they haven't made it as easy as you'd like to copy that data with a particular program (iTunes). There's a ton of software out there that will make it as easy as you seem to want it to be -- or you could use the built-in capabilities of the OS, as you would with any other files.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Jesus_666]

I'm actually reasonably happy with that option. Most of the time the way iTunes organizes the stuff is okay and I'd have nothing to complain if I could just drag and drop files from iTunes to a Finder window.

Reorgnizing my collection from hand certainly is not an option.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[nine-times]

"That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss."

Huh? I still have my (still functional) 2nd. Generation iPod. I have been syncing iPods with iTunes for a long time and I can assure you that "feature" was never in iTunes.

I may be wrong, but my best recollection is that iTunes did allow you to copy songs from an iPod to your library when the iPod was first released, but was quickly dropped due to pressure from the record industry. We're talking about 1st-gen iPods here, more than 5 years ago.

So I guess it's an issue of what you consider to be "a while ago". If Windows XP and OSX 10.0 were released "a while ago", then Apple allowed you to copy songs from your iPod "a while ago" too. However, it hasn't been the case for several years now.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[BlackSnake112]

You still need to sign in to the apple store. Even if you have never purchased any music from the apple store. You can't sign in to the apple store without giving apple a credit card. This really annoys me. I have not purchased a song via the apple store. So I need to sign in to the apple store to look up the song info or re-rip all the CDs again.

Better off backing up you music collection from the computer (tape/external hard drive/DVD/copy songs to ipod when disk ipod disk access is turned on/to a second computer via network/) then trying to recover it from the ipod. Can you turn on ipod disk access after you lose the computer where that ipod synced if it was not on in the first place?

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Complain belligerently about a non-issue so that zealots show you how you're wrong, rather than using the proper documentation and forums like a good citizen.

2) ???

3) PROFIT!

Make a folder on your desktop or an open Finder window. Open your playlist in iTunes. Cmd+A to select all the songs. Drag to the new folder (hint: if the finder window is hidden, drag the files to the Exposé corner, then drag them to the finder window and keep them there for a few seconds, and the finder window will come to the foreground).

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Directions from Apple. With screenshots.

Jeepers! Over 24 steps, with screenshots to do something that should just be as simple as dragging & dropping some music from your ipod to your desktop?

Thanks Apple! That Just Works (tm)!

I have never heard of this bidirectional sync "optional plug-in" the original poster was referring to.

The original poster was actually just referring to two way copying. Not that hard a concept to understand.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Anonymous Coward]

talking out you arse there mate. the only thing you'd need to sign into the store for is grabbing artwork

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Isn't this kind of like saying the police shouldn't pull anyone over for speeding because the only reason anyone would speed is an emergency, therefore all speeders should be assumed to be having emergencies?

No, it's more like putting a device in the car that prevents you from speeding under any circumstances.

Do you think that would be a good idea?

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Buran]

I have. And people got modded up for saying it, too.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Angostura]

I take it sir is familiar with right-click 'Show in Finder'?

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Jesus_666]

Repeating that for every single file is only marginally less tedious than hnting down the files. It's still lightyears behind just selecting the entire playlist and dragging that onto the destination folder.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[sendai2ci]

A few days late, but anyhow...

You can still do that. With the very latest version of iTunes. Select how ever many tracks in iTunes drag them to the Finder (a window, a folder icon, the desktop,) and a copy dialog pops-up in the Finder. If that's not working on your system, something else may be wrong...

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Jesus_666]

Ah, apparently they fixed it in the latest version. Thanks for the info.

What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[JonTurner]

Can anyone who has installed this confirm that the Parental Controls bug is fixed? (Enable parental controls on one account and Dashboard widgets are broken on all accounts). Spent a couple hours trying to get it working again, without success. On the upside, TimeMachine did let me roll back to a hour before I enabled Parental Controls so nothing lost, other than an evening and some confidence in Apple's software testing methodology. (which is why I'm asking here... I want somebody else to "go first" on this update!)

Re:What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[the_proton]

To quote the release notes:

Addresses an issue in which Dashboard widgets may no longer be accessible after switching to or from an account that has Parental Controls enabled.

Re:What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[JonTurner]

Yes, so I read. But that doesn't answer my original question.

"Can anyone who has installed this confirm that the Parental Controls bug is fixed? "

Because it wouldn't be the first time in history that a patch which claims to fix something, doesn't. So have you installed the patch and does it fix this problem?

Re:What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[p4ul13]

Good point. I upgraded, and my Dashboard still is frozen.

Re:What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[marklark]

Upgraded and Dashboard works for me.

Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[starglider29a]

I still double click my title bar expecting the window to vanish, leaving the title bar there, beneath my mouse, so I can say 'thanks' click click. And be back to where I was.

We were so amazed when Windows 3.0 taught us to "minimize" and still have ***another application running*** (back when DOS was neato) that we didn't ask "ok, so, why do I have to reach to the very farthest point on the screen to get my window back?"

Yes, Exposé might be a cool way around that, and some Vista maven may say 'aeroglass', but click-click... click-click is about as simple as it can possibly get. And no motion sickness!

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[shelterpaw]

What about spaces. Seems pretty fast and simple and easily selectable via the menu bar. Between that and expose, I can't imagine the problem. Plus you can double click on any window bar and it'll move to the dock. Perhaps I'm not understanding your issue.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[je ne sais quoi]

My big complaint about spaces is that the pager doesn't show what's in the desktop. I greatly prefer Desktop Manger as it gives you a real pager.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[evand]

If you hit F8, you get a zoomed out view of all of your desktops, with live previews of the windows on them included. You can drag and drop windows between spaces in this view, as well, if you like.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And while you were so Amazed at what Windows 3.0 could do in 1990, Mac users were getting stuff done in 1988 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Software_6

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Spikeles]

but click-click... click-click is about as simple as it can possibly get. And no motion sickness! I beg to differ. Some of the window managers in Linux allow you to just roll the middle mouse when your mouse is over the title bar.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[maczealot]

Absolutely agreed. I am a huge fanboy, and even I don't give a new update this much positive spin when it has just come out.

The third-party window shade is from Unsanity but alas does not work in 10.5

This is one of those legacy features that you'll just have to learn to live without (i.e. use Expose) similar to having to constantly turn on "Windows classic folders" and is nothing compared to some of the BASIC OS functions that need addressing:

- Open a folder in a listview should be one button (i.e. enter, which currenty goes to rename, really??) not Command-O
- Screenshotting needs to be waaaay easier (i.e. single key rather than shift-command-3 or whatever)
Etc. etc.

Sorry Apple, but I'll be waiting on installing this update as it seems little more than a few minor bug fixes (iCal? Yeah it has more problems than that)

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[shelterpaw]

right and can also assign this function to one of the buttons on a multi function mouse.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, WindowShadeX has not been updated for Leopard. http://unsanity.com/haxies/wsx

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[pizzach]

I just don't see it happening any time soon. The problem is, with Mac OS X in this state is a boon for switchers. Things are just familiar enough to get people to switch to Mac OS X without them having to grate their brains too much. During windowshade's absence, Expose has done a fairly good job filling that space in many Mac users' hearts.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[greylingrover]

Hmmm... I'm running a stock install of 10.5.1 and the title-bar double-click window-shade functionality works just fine... at least in Safari and Finder, so presumably most everywhere.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Westacular]

You realize that you can remap both of those shortcuts in System Preferences, right?

I'll grant that the default screenshot shortcut seems more than a bit arbitrary, but seriously: the vast majority of users don't take screenshots so often that it should have a dedicated F key out-of-the-box.

And with your Finder issue, you can also open a folder in list view by hitting Cmd-Down, which is (on most Mac keyboards) a whole lot easier to hit than most other individual keys on the keyboard.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[mccabem]

Sorry, but I must take exception. DOS was never neato. Ever.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[0100010001010011]

Double clicking the title bar just minimizes the windows.

The Post was talking about "Window Shade" functionality. Something built into OS 8/9. Double clicking on the title bar rolls the window up into just the title bar.

Unsanity has released a Haxie for this functionality in OS X:
http://unsanity.com/images/previews/wsx/wsx1.jpg

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed! God, finally someone else! I just switched, and have found a whole bunch of dumb ass problems like that. I cant stand how simple things in my version of OSX (not the current version) wont let me cut files on the desktop, how rightclicking in the mac version of Firefox doesnt work on bookmarks, as in "delete" "open in new tab" etc, and thats just accepted, all these simple windows things are just impossible in OSX. And the ads actually mock windows! These are simple things, that are just a few lines of code away from being fixed no doubt, and yet dont work at all.

They dont tell you about all the simple things that cant be done in OSX before you switch!

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

Clearly, you don't get it.

The parent isn't asking for a new way to organize his windows so he can switch between groups of related tasks. He's asking for a quick way to get whatever's in front of him out of the way so he can see what's underneath it. Spaces doesn't do this, Exposé doesn't do this (unless what you want to see is the Desktop, which Exposé does very well), and minimizing to the Dock doesn't do this (because once you minimize, you have to do something completely different in order to get your window back, distracting you from the task at hand).

I've learned to adjust the way I work around this deficiency of OSX's window manager, so I hardly ever miss it anymore. But since I never double-click to minimize, and I do still remember how frequently I used WindowShade in OS9, I'd love to see it come back.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[chthonicdaemon]

Actually, I think you meant to say "they don't tell you all the things you are used to doing one way that you'll have to learn to do another way". Trust me, every person moving from Windows to Mac that I have spoken to the day they get the mac has a few things that piss them off. Number one is probably "there is no delete key". Then there's the way that compose keys work (my native language has a lot of accents, and they've learned to use ALT-137 or whatever, and it actually annoys them that they have to do ALT-e e to get the same result). In my experience, very few people actually miss cutting files, as it's not more trouble to drag them to the new location -- you have to open the new folder anyway, and Finder has those spring-loaded folders. The thing is, it gets to one when the things that you are so used to doing don't work. This doesn't mean that you can't move files away from your desktop, it just means you can't cut and paste files.

Another thing that I am only getting used to now is the whole Mac philosophy of windows not being full screen most of the time. It really does work if you give it a chance, but it is very alien to how I was used to working. So the "zoom" button, which most Windows users expect to be "maximize" doesn't work like you're used to. The point I'm trying to make here is that Apple aren't too lazy to implement all these windows-like behaviours, they really believe that their way of doing things is better. I don't really care one way or another, but I think many of the Mac ideas are pretty solid. I can tell you that I don't miss cut and paste on files at all.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

- Open a folder in a listview should be one button (i.e. enter, which currenty goes to rename, really??) not Command-O
- Screenshotting needs to be waaaay easier (i.e. single key rather than shift-command-3 or whatever) Both of these go back DECADES.

Do not take away my quick renaming keystroke.

I agree that Command-O is cumbersome, but were you aware that Command-Down arrow works too? I find this easier, and it's perfectly logical if you also use Command-Up arrow frequently.

Screenshotting isn't a single button, because there are several ways to do it. They are:

• Cmd-Shift-3: take a snapshot of the entire screen and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-3: take a snapshot of the entire screen and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Cmd-Shift-4, then drag a box: take a snapshot of a particular area of the screen and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4, then drag a box: take a snapshot of a particular area of the screen and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Cmd-Shift-4, then spacebar, then click: take a snapshot of a single window and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4, then spacebar, then click: take a snapshot of a single window and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Open /Utilities/Grab for additional options like taking a snapshot of the entire screen after a time delay and saving the result in different formats
  

I agree that these are not intuitive, but it's what we've been using for years, and I certainly don't want to dedicate any extra buttons on the keyboard to something most people never use. Besides, as someone else pointed out, you can remap a different keyboard shortcut in System Preferences if you don't like the default.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's broken in 10.5. No sign when Unsanity is going to fix it, it's been 4 months with no word about what is taking so long. Seems like if you're going to update a product for a new system release then 4 months is enough time otherwise people start to wonder if the software has been abandoned.

Windowshade X was the best productivity tool ever. Spaces kind of makes up for it but I really miss the ability to have many layered menu bars available at just a double click. The whole animation of minimizing/switching spaces thing takes too much time and kind of makes me ill.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

My big complaint about Spaces is that it's... an awful implementation of virtual desktops. I use Word and Excel in Space #2, but whenever I open a program (or a .doc or .xls file), I'm still in Space #1. When I save my file, it inexplicably jumps back to Space #1. I don't even know why I still use it.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

I cant stand how simple things in my version of OSX (not the current version) wont let me cut files on the desktop, Copying files from the Edit menu was only added a few years ago; I almost never use it.

how rightclicking in the mac version of Firefox doesnt work on bookmarks, as in "delete" "open in new tab" etc, and thats just accepted, Right-clicking a bookmark in the bookmark bar works perfectly fine. Right-clicking in a menu to bring up another menu is weird behavior that doesn't work anywhere; it has nothing to do with Firefox. Sticky menus (menus that stay open after a single click) weren't even supported until Mac OS 8.5, if I recall correctly, and what you're trying to do wouldn't even make sense without that.

So if sticky menus could be added, maybe your crazy menus-on-menus thing will be added someday. But today is not that day.

all these simple windows things are just impossible in OSX. And the ads actually mock windows! These are simple things, that are just a few lines of code away from being fixed no doubt, and yet dont work at all. Mac OS X is not Windows. We don't want it to be Windows. Try it for awhile, and if you don't like it, either hack your way around what you perceive to be deficiencies, or switch back to what you're happy with.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[onemorechip]

He's asking for a quick way to get whatever's in front of him out of the way so he can see what's underneath it.

Ah, you mean command-H.

minimizing to the Dock doesn't do this (because once you minimize, you have to do something completely different in order to get your window back,

Yes, as completely different as command-Tabbing back to the application. *Sigh* I guess this just isn't a big deal to those of us who prefer keyboard actions to mouse actions.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite confused. If you minimize a window, cmd-tab will not bring it back. If you hide a window, you have to cmd-tab through nearly the full list of applications to get it back, as OS X moves that hidden app to the end of the list (or almost-end, if you are running certain specially treated tools like Activity Monitor).

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Triv]

You are quite confused. If you minimize a window, cmd-tab will not bring it back. If you hide a window, you have to cmd-tab through nearly the full list of applications to get it back, as OS X moves that hidden app to the end of the list (or almost-end, if you are running certain specially treated tools like Activity Monitor).

Like most directional operations in OSX, if cmd-tab goes in one direction, cmd-SHIFT-tab goes in the other.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Per Wigren]

We were so amazed when Windows 3.0 taught us to "minimize" and still have ***another application running*** (back when DOS was neato) ...while us enlightened Amiga users were crying at the ignorance of the masses that were amazed by some ugly half ass non-multitasking task switching when we had been having real multitasking for half a decade, but of course that was stupid because "you can't use more than one program at a time anyway", as you PC lusers used to say...

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[NMerriam]

Yes, as completely different as command-Tabbing back to the application. *Sigh* I guess this just isn't a big deal to those of us who prefer keyboard actions to mouse actions.

That's actually the point of the criticism -- if an application is minimized, you have to use the mouse to get it back, command-Tab doesn't un-minimize. It's us keyboard folks who are annoyed by the minimize behavior, not mouse users.

Granted, I just never minimize anything and tend to use Expose and Hide for my window management, but it would be nice for a minimized application/document to be restored if you activate it.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[greylingrover]

Doh! Right... what was I thinking (brain cells going already). That's going back a ways - so long that I completely forgot about the WindowShade roll-up. I do remember missing that when I jumped to OS X beta.

I wish there was a CMD-TAB-like function that would let you cycle through your minimized windows - might help make the minimize functionality more usable for anyone who packs their dock as full as I do. :)

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[misleb]

What about spaces. Seems pretty fast and simple and easily selectable via the menu bar. Between that and expose, I can't imagine the problem. Plus you can double click on any window bar and it'll move to the dock. Perhaps I'm not understanding your issue.

Spaces? Please. Spaces is totally useless. It is a lame copy of the incredibly useful X11 desktop pager. Virtual desktops are supposed to isolate windows into task groups. In other words, when I am in space 1, Command-Tab should ONLY cycle through the windows in the current spaces. If/when I want to switch to another space, I will do it my damn self. I got so sick of being automatically transported all over the place every time I accidentally tabbed to the wrong app in my huge list. The only thing Spaces does is visual uncluttering. It serves no functional purpose as far as I can tell.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[misleb]

Ah, you mean command-H.

Great, so what's the shortcut to get it back quickly after you hide it? There is none. You either have to visually find the Window in the Dock or command-tab through a bunch of applicaitons to get back to the one you hid. It is a pain and prone to error. I often select the wrong minimized/hidden window from the Doc.

It would be a non-issue if Command-Tab items were limited to just what was in your current space... but NO, Apple had to screw THAT up too. :P

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

Yes, but Cmd-Shift-Tab is an awkward combination to actually press. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want them to change it, but it's a difficult combination to hit.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[TheUser0x58]

ok, so, why do I have to reach to the very farthest point on the screen to get my window back?

Actually, its particularly easy to navigate the cursor to objects on the edge of the screen (see Fitts' Law).

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[thedbp]

Here's a neat Window Zooming tip:

In System Preferences, add a 2 new Keyboard Shortcuts for all Apps. They are going to be the same shortcut. Call one Zoom and the other Zoom Window. I prefer to use the Command-Option-Z combination to trigger this, but you can use what you like.

I also like to enter Full Screen and Enter Full Screen to be Command-F, that way all apps go to fullscreen with Command-F.

Cheers.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Zey]

Another annoyance: Finder doesn't provide any cursor feedback when your mouse is above a column resizer and able to be clicked. You have to guess.

There's a lot to like about Mac OS X generally, but, honestly, Apple needs to pick up a copy of Windows 95 and take a look at the user experience side of Windows Explorer. Finder being worse than a file browser nearly 13 years old is something they should be horribly ashamed over.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[RemovableBait]

Another annoyance: Finder doesn't provide any cursor feedback when your mouse is above a column resizer and able to be clicked. You have to guess. That's funny. I get the same horizontal resize cursor that's been standard on pretty much every OS for years, and I have done on Mac OS X for as long as I can remember.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[GaryPatterson]

The enter/return keys have done renaming since the original Mac in 1984. Why should Apple change such a simple and established mechanism?

Screenshots have also been command-shift-4 since 1984 or thereabouts, but there you go. I agree that it's an awkward key combination, but again it's been in use for over twenty years so it's not so easy to change now.

And yes, Unsanity should get their act together on Windowshade. Since it's a paid piece of software, I imagine they'll realise 10.5 is out soon enough and put their own update out at some point. Their customers should expect no less.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[GaryPatterson]

The latest version has an installer that include APE, the "utility" that almost single-handedly borked many 10.5 installations and was a major security hole (and still may be, it's a nice way to get keyloggers installed into OS X).

I suspect the reason Unsanity haven't released an update is because they don't want to rewrite Windowshade to be non-APE-based/compliant with Apple development guidelines.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[GaryPatterson]

I have no sympathy for people who prefer ALT-137 to option-e e, which is a bit more sensible to me. All accents of the same type have the same option key combo first, then the letter to be accented. It saves me having to remember 20-30 ASCII codes if I want to add lots of accents to text.

You're right though, moving from one OS to another requires some getting used to.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[GaryPatterson]

Finder doesn't provide any cursor feedback when your mouse is above a column resizer and able to be clicked

Yes it does. Try it and see. It's always done that in OS X.

The Finder is by no means perfect, but you don't have to make stuff up to criticise it.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I was getting stuff done even earlier with my AMIGA. Everything else sucked in comparison - Macs, PCs, everything.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"- Open a folder in a listview should be one button (i.e. enter, which currenty goes to rename, really??) not Command-O"

Cursor right?

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that these are not intuitive ... as compared to the rest of the world, who's keyboards have a special key called "Print Screen" perhaps ?

Any shortcut that requires 4 fingers to use it is not worth the time lost in trying to put the correct finger on the correct key.

What next, 4 fingers AND a click on one of the mouse's 27 buttons ??? How VERY intuitive :-)

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[mdwh2]

Humour aside, MacOS never got pre-emptive multitasking (that's only in OS X).

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[macshome]

Command-Tilde makes the app switcher run the other way and is easy to hit.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use two hands. Use right hand for cmd, shift, or both.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[chthonicdaemon]

But that's the point that I was trying to make: Given the option of remembering 20 ASCII codes to make accents or to remember the Mac way of alt-u for umlaut followed by a character, most people would choose the more mnemonic way. However, once you have learned one, you will be really resistant to learning another way of doing the same thing. This is a big part of 'knowing' a system, and it's also why people bond so strongly to their system and feel helpless in others.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[shelterpaw]

Sounds like something apple should support. Instead of whining about it, file a feature request or bug report to Apple. They do seem to listen. I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense and would use it myself.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[shawn42]

At one point in time I had window shade enabled. At another point in time I had a "spaces" equivalent, 3rd party app.

When having these installed, I have found that I never really used them that much. I had been trained on the wonder that is cmd-h. I simply hide those applications that I'm not using and cmd-tab to them when I want to see them again. I think only the adobe products gave me trouble because of their non-standard use of cmd-h.

I guess I'm asking, why has everyone given up on apple's preferred window management tool?

In case you're wondering: I am a diehard fanboy.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Altus]

- Screenshotting needs to be waaaay easier (i.e. single key rather than shift-command-3 or whatever)

Thats all well and good till you are on a laptop and your back to some crazy combination.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Altus]

Never noticed that before, although the drag target at least has the little double line thing to indicate it is drag-able.

Still, there is no reason why the cursor shouldn't change in those circumstances.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

Command-Tilde makes the app switcher run the other way and is easy to hit. Are you retarded? Command-Tilde is a completely different action; it switches between windows within the current application, and Command-Shift-Tilde goes backwards.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[onemorechip]

That's actually the point of the criticism -- if an application is minimized, you have to use the mouse to get it back, command-Tab doesn't un-minimize. It's us keyboard folks who are annoyed by the minimize behavior, not mouse users.

Yes, that is exactly why you should use command-H rather than minimize. If you prefer the keyboard then command-H is easier than minimize anyway. After command-H, command-Tab does bring it back (or shift-command-Tab, as someone else pointed out, so you don't have to go through the whole cycle).

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[macshome]

No I'm not.

Press Command-Tab to bring up the app switcher. Press it again and see how the reticle moves to the right.
While you STILL have the app switcher open, press Command-Tilde and see how it moves to the left.
Command-Tab brings it up and moves to the right. After it is open, Command-Tilde moves it to the left. This way you can quickly select the app you want.

Technically though we are both wrong as it's actually Command-` according to the docs.

My favorite function of the app switcher though is that a single press of Command-Tab will jump back and forth between the last two apps I had active.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[misleb]

Trust me, I'm not the only one notice this problem with Spaces. A ticket was filed a long time ago. See Bug ID# 5610888

Also see this blog:

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/why_apple_spaces_is_broken#comments

Basically Apple concluded that they "couldn't reproduce the issue" and have apparently dropped the issue. Looks like the functionality of Spaces is pretty much set in stone at this point. At least in Leopard. It would need a major functional overhaul to fix, IMO. We'll just have to rely on third party pagers. Last I checked there was at least one in Beta. I'll have to look again.

-matthew

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[ZERO1ZERO]

Right-clicking in a menu to bring up another menu is weird behavior that doesn't work anywhere; it has nothing to do with Firefox.

Hmm, as I read this I thought - I right click a menu some where, some time... Now I realise where - The Start menu in Windows allows right - clicking to bring up another menu depending on context.

I use this all the time to create shortcuts.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

No I'm not.

Press Command-Tab to bring up the app switcher. Press it again and see how the reticle moves to the right.
While you STILL have the app switcher open, press Command-Tilde and see how it moves to the left.
Command-Tab brings it up and moves to the right. After it is open, Command-Tilde moves it to the left. This way you can quickly select the app you want. My apologies. I was unaware of that feature, and thought you were talking about the other use of Cmd-` (which I called Cmd-Tilde only to be consistent with the original post).

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

Hmm, as I read this I thought - I right click a menu some where, some time... Now I realise where - The Start menu in Windows allows right - clicking to bring up another menu depending on context.

I use this all the time to create shortcuts.

Yep, that's it. It's occasionally handy for deleting items from the Start Menu as well (e.g. apps that failed to uninstall properly, so you've deleted them by hand), and for going to Properties so you can click Find Target. Mac OS X doesn't have a start menu though, so the only equivalent I can think of is the Recent Items lists. I don't believe it has ever occurred to me that right-clicking something in Recent Items could be useful.

Oh, Spotlight is similar, and there I can see how right-clicking might be nice. The workaround is to click Show All first.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should you have to remove one hand from the keyboard, move it to the mouse, drag the mouse around until the pointer is located over a thin window title, and then turn a little wheel on it? That's not simple. Fortunately, decent Linux window managers let you replace all that with a single keypress. That's efficient computing, and its crippling limitations in this regard are why OS X just isn't a productive environment for me.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[curunir]

FWIW, Witch can handle unminimizing a window. It's also quite useful in its own right when you've got many windows of a certain application open and want to switch to a specific one. Having been a convert from Windows 2000 (work) and Linux (home), Witch was perfect for me since it replicated the Windows ALT+TAB paradigm that had become so natural to me. The Mac CMD+TAB behavior was a nice add-on ability that has since become natural as well.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[cbart387]

Fedora 8 (GNOME) supports this. It's actually pretty nifty, like if there's an element on a webpage that has scrolling, you just have to move the pointer over the element and scroll. There's no annoying 'clicking' on it like in Windows to 'activate' it first. Additionally, it supports the same 'Alt+Tab' that Windows uses to switch between items you have open (at least in the current workspace you're in). It's quite handy when your forced to use Windows at work/school and can do the same process without consciously thinking about it.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Spikeles]

The single best thing in most Linux Window Managers i think is the alt-right-click-resize/alt-left-click-move. I so dearly want that in Windows because i find it invaluable, no need to try to position the mouse of a tiny 10pixel wide border, just alt right-click near the edge you want to resize and drag, it's so usefull and obvious.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Zey]

Yes it does. Try it and see.

I have, many times. Which is why I commented that it's an annoyance. It's poor UI which sees me dragging a column around instead of adjusting column width half the time.

The Finder is by no means perfect, but you don't have to make stuff up to criticise it.

Idiot.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

... as compared to the rest of the world, who's keyboards have a special key called "Print Screen" perhaps ? I have to point out that the "Print Screen" button does not, in fact, print the screen (in Windows). It copies it to the clipboard (equivalent to Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-3 on a Mac). There is no shortcut to print the screen, although on the Mac there used to be.

Any shortcut that requires 4 fingers to use it is not worth the time lost in trying to put the correct finger on the correct key. So don't use the shortcut. Open /Applications/Utilities/Grab and use that.

What next, 4 fingers AND a click on one of the mouse's 27 buttons ??? How VERY intuitive :-) My laptop trackpad has only one button, and I like it that way. :-)

By the way, the reason Cmd-Shift-3 is used to save a screen shot on the Mac is, Apple set up Cmd-Shift-(number) as a standard shortcut to run some piece of piece of code called an FKEY. This was before Macintosh keyboards had function keys (and quite possibly before they had Control keys). Cmd-Shift-1 and Cmd-Shift-2 were implemented internally, but Cmd-Shift-3 through Cmd-Shift-9 were available to run whatever FKEY you wanted; FKEYs with IDs 3 and 4 were included by default, but you could modify those with ResEdit, and add new ones if you wanted. As of System 7.1 the cleanest way to add new FKEYs was to add them to an empty font suitcase and drop it in the Fonts folder.

The Fonts folder is probably my favorite crazy Apple hack: all resources (not just fonts) contained in font files and font suitcases in the Fonts folder were loaded as if they were in the System file. Previously, all fonts had to be copied into the System file, which the System 7.0 Finder would open as if it were a folder (thus eliminating the need for the Font/DA Mover application). As of System 7.1, only sounds and keyboard layouts were still displayed within the System file in the Finder (I don't remember if it would let you copy a font there or not).

Ridiculous Mac trivia: in System 7 through Mac OS 9, the only time the Finder will ever display a "Move" dialog box with a progress bar (as opposed to a "Copy" dialog while copying a file) is when moving resources into or out of a suitcase. That's because there is no way to move a file between volumes, and moving a file within the same volume doesn't take a significant amount of time because the data on the disk doesn't need to be moved. In Mac OS X, you can hold down the Command key to move a file between volumes (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard had a nasty bug in this feature, which fortunately not many people ever use).

On-topic trivia: prior to System 7, Cmd-Shift-3 saved screen shots in MacPaint format, which does not support color. If you had a color monitor, you'd end up with a black-and-white screen shot (not dithered). In System 7, the format was changed to PICT. I believe early versions of Mac OS X saved to TIFF, and current versions use PNG.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[porcupine8]

Windowshade X doesn't work in 10.5 yet?

Damn, I was going to ask my dept to upgrade my laptop now that the Stacks have been given options more like the old dock, but I can't live without my windowshading. I will never understand why they took that away in the switch from 9 to X.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Anonymous Coward]

No... "Window Shade" is not back... But, they did add drivers for punched card readers!

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[starglider29a]

In case I ever run for public office and the dredge Slashdot for my positions on technology... "Neato" is a self-sarcasticating adjective. If I'm saying anything is 'neato', it prolly isn't. Ergo, Windows was 'neato', and 'more neato' than DOS.

Apple hss...

[derfy]

What hss Apple wrought!

Menubar! how to make it not completely obnoxious

[acrobg]

granted I'd like the dock to look like it did in 10.4, but turning the glass effect off with the following 2 script lines: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES killall Dock (to turn back on change YES to NO). It makes the dock be side-style while still on he bottom. If your'e lazy and have eitehr cocktail or onyx, you can do it in there with the force to side-style mode option.

Re:Menubar! how to make it not completely obnoxiou

[acrobg]

I meant the dock...my mistake.

But has...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL been fixed in X11 yet? It's pretty annoying not to be able to play games that use it, among other things.

Re:But has...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try downloading this.

Re:But has...

[SilverAlicorn]

Seems to be working fine now, at least as far as glxinfo/glxgears can tell me. Incidentally, this update also fixed issues with slow redrawing in all X11 apps, especially Inkscape 3

Racoon is still broken

[Temkin]

They didn't fix Racoon (IPsec IKE key manager). It's still busted. Worked fine in Tiger...

Re:Racoon is still broken

[CatOne]

Busted how? I've been using racoon for VPN purposes for 4 months, and it's worked fine. So some specifics could be welcome, as it's not 100% "busted."

Re:Racoon is still broken

[Temkin]

NAT problem. See Apple bug 5565096.

Re:Racoon is still broken

[Ash-Fox]

See Apple bug 5565096.

Holy crap, they get a insane amount of bug reports.

Re:Racoon is still broken

[kellyb9]

They didn't fix Racoon (IPsec IKE key manager). It's still busted. Worked fine in Tiger... Am I the only one who thinks Apple is getting out of control with the animal naming conventions? I'm not sure if you're talking about an operating system or a show on animal planet.

Re:Racoon is still broken

[Temkin]

Am I the only one who thinks Apple is getting out of control with the animal naming conventions? I'm not sure if you're talking about an operating system or a show on animal planet. Apple did not create it. I believe Racoon comes out of the KAME project. The original free IPv6 stack that has been widely adopted by the various *BSD derivatives. Note the misspelling too, it's Racoon, not Raccoon.

Here's the man page at NetBSD...

Linux picked it up too...

Re:Racoon is still broken

[kellyb9]

haha i know, I was just kidding around. Ubuntu is the one who is really getting out of control with this.

Re:Racoon is still broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... Given that the bug database goes back to the Apple II days and has to cover every single thing Apple has ever made...

Re:Racoon is still broken

[CatOne]

Mmmm. That bug (and all associated bugs) seem to relate specifically to interop with Solaris... though I'm not sufficiently knowledgable on the subject to actually know what else uses NAT-OA.

Re:Racoon is still broken

[Temkin]

Mmmm. That bug (and all associated bugs) seem to relate specifically to interop with Solaris... Well the reproducible test case is against Solaris. The Sun crew are pretty sharp, and I know they're aware of the problem. I'm not trying to claim Solaris is some kind of reference implementation of IPsec, But... If their end was broken, it'd be fixed by now, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Solaris and OS X to communicate via IPsec.

though I'm not sufficiently knowledgable on the subject to actually know what else uses NAT-OA. Me neither. The workaround is to hang on to your Tiger version of Racoon when upgrading. That's the galling thing... It was working just fine. That's why I'm lumping this one on Apple.

right direction

[je ne sais quoi]

Sounds like this is a step in the right direction. As soon as they remove the silly rooting behavior in column view in the finder, I'll buy leopard. Funny how one of these "features" they decided to include is keeping me from buying the OS. I run a mac shop, but I just bought an additional license for 10.4 instead of 10.5 because frankly, I don't see much worth shelling out the extra dough for in leopard. (In 10.4 you can bypass the rooting behavior by making an alias for the folder.) I know how to use rsync and cron, so I don't really need time machine.... and I'm not all that interested in the new preview view for the files. It's not like I'd delete it off a computer that I just bought, but I don't see much reason to upgrade since some of the things they did are not the behavior I want.

Re:right direction

[emurphy42]

What does "rooting behavior" mean in this context? (We have a donated machine with 10.3.9 but I only do a small handful of things with it.)

Re:right direction

[ToastyKen]

I'm assuming he means that if you put, say, your Documents folders in the Dock, and you open it in column view, you can't scroll left to its parent. The Documents folder becomes the "root" of the column view, forcing you to find your home directory somewhere else if you want to get to something else in your home directory.

Re:right direction

[je ne sais quoi]

What I mean is that when you click on a special folder (e.g., home, applications, documents, etc.) in the Finder in column view, it "roots" you to that spot and removes the horizontal scroll bar. In reality, it's just a silly thing that would require some retraining on my part (more likely, stop using column view) but I really dislike it. The reason for that because I feel like the Finder is trying to hide the upper level directories from me. I know perfectly damn well I'm at /Users/username rather than at "home" wherever that is and I take offense that Apple thinks I'm too stupid to be able to use a horizontal scroll bar. On 10.3 and 10.4 you can fix this by the hint shown here (macosxhints is a really great site, btw). I tried this trick on Leopard on a demo machine in an apple store and it didn't work. :(

Re:right direction

[kwerle]

It is a lame workaround, but you can ctrl-click (right mouse, I guess) on the name of the folder at the top of the finder window to see all it's ancestor directories.

Re:right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's what he means, then that's about the stupidest reason I ever heard not to upgrade.

Once you open a column view, the 'root', and your home directory appear in the sideboard, along with any other directories you want to make permanent.
I think It's good that the fussiest Mac users get left behind.

Re:right direction

[Spheniscus]

You can navigate to the parent folder at lest four different ways:

1. Command-click (or right click) on the folder name in the title of the window.
2. Press command-up (or select Go/Enclosing Folder from the menu)
3. Turn on the Path Bar (view / show path bar)
4. Customize the toolbar and add the path button to the toolbar

Re:right direction

[ZorinLynx]

Add the "parent folders" button to your Finder's button bar. It's the one that looks like a down arrow with three horizontal offset lines to the left of it.

If you end up in a rooted folder, just click it and navigate to the parent. *wham*, you get the whole path.

A minor annoyance, and definitely not a reason to not upgrade. o.O

Re:right direction

[Hes Nikke]

At least you can quickly navigate further up in the tree. Windows otoh obstacles things just a little more with it's rooting behavior for My Documents. I'll take apples rooting behavior any day of the week. Including Tuednesdays.

Re:right direction

[cp.tar]

That is a bit annoying, but you can pick any of the parent folders at the top of that window, so it's not that big a deal.

Re:right direction

[je ne sais quoi]

It's not stupid AC. I've been using the Finder that particular way since I started using Mac OS X 10.0 beta and now they change the behavior on me just because somebody at Apple got a bug up their butt? Yes I know you can click on the damn sidebar or any number of other inefficient ways to do the same thing. Firstly, I think the sidebar is a waste of screen real estate except when you want to look at mounted volumes. Secondly, that new behavior sucks ass when you've got several layers of nested directories. That is, If I'm way up in A->B->C->D->E, and I realized I need something from B, or C, it's much more inefficient to first remember which level I need and then remember which level above that is in the sidebar than to just grab the scroll bar and move it until I see what I want.

It's not that I consider the OS bad, but I see no reason to upgrade. IMO there are preexisting and usually better way to do everything in Leopard.

Re:right direction

[RedBear]

I don't think it has anything to do with Apple thinking you're too "stupid" to use the horizontal scroll bar. Rather, I think they've noticed that most people don't like clutter and complication in their interface, so they don't make the horizontal scroll bar appear every time you click on a subfolder alias in the sidebar. You'll find that your typical computer user almost never wants to navigate to the parent folders. I rather enjoy the nice clean appearance of a Finder window with no horizontal scroll bar when I'm working with my commonly used folders. It would be nice if they had an advanced option for people like you, but Apple's target market has always been regular folks that like a clean and simple interface. I would have to say that their ability to make clean interfaces is a large part of what has gained them such a large following.

Anyways, the Finder has plenty of other flaws. If you don't like it there are other options these days with much more advanced features, such as Path Finder and ForkLift. They have view modes that will always show you the entire path. As an advanced user you may want to try them out.

Re:right direction

[DurendalMac]

Your Mac shop must not be an official sales store, otherwise you'd get free NFR copies of Leopard.

Still some oddities

[93 Escort Wagon]

Although 10.5.2 introduced support for additional dSLRs, such as the Nikon D3 and D300, apparently there's still an issue preventing (at least some) Aperture users from viewing these cameras' RAW files. Really odd since iPhoto and Preview display them just fine now - but not Apple's "pro" app.

Re:Still some oddities

[MachineShedFred]

Apple also released Aperture 2.0 today. Perhaps it supports these cameras.

Insert gripe about having to buy a new version here.

MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[tomRakewell]

I had just discovered the awesome 'split' feature in Tiger's Terminal about two months ago. Click on the icon in the upper right portion of the terminal window, and a bar appears. You can drag the bar to split your terminal in two. The upper portion is the scrollback, and shows your terminal history. The bottom portion is your 'live' terminal. It's awesome, and it saves me from having to open two different terminals in many cases!

Of course, after upgrading to Leopard, this innovative feature has been removed! I couldn't believe it!

Now I'm back to opening up two Terminal windows... :(

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[BlacKat]

Just copy Terminal.app from Tiger and run it on Leopard.

Trust me, it works great, especially in conjunction with Visor, which provides a "Quake like" terminal window that pops down from the top of the screen.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[AntEater]

"Now I'm back to opening up two Terminal windows..."

You have a couple of other options. Leopard's Terminal lets you use tabs. That's not quite as nice but it saves you some screen real estate. Another option (my favourite) is to use GNU Screen in a single terminal. This gives you multiple tabs and the ability to split the screen in two (or more) windows within the terminal and use those windows for any combination of terminal sessions you want. Ten or fifteen minutes of learning gives you an incredibly useful tool at your disposal. Screen is included with OS X and most Linux distributions.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[russellh]

well, at least it does tabs. and you could use "screen" to split the terminal window if you really need to, but it won't replicate Tiger's split-window feature exactly.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[rbanffy]

What I like most about screen is the ability to detach from the screen session, log on from another location and summon back whatever I was doing in the terminal before.

Just do a screen -x and get back right where you were.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[MyDixieWrecked]

I had just discovered the awesome 'split' feature in Tiger's Terminal about two months ago.

Yeah, I discovered that the day that I installed leopard. The funny thing is that I almost never use that feature, and now that it's gone, I find that I need it quite frequently. There's another feature that the terminal is missing that I can't remember at this second; not a necessity, but an annoyance to not have it.

I have a list somewhere of stuff that apple dropped the ball on that I typed up after a couple days with leopard. It included the fact that X11's aqua interface doesn't match the rest of the system, all the complaints about the dock and menubar and menus and soft shadows, and a bunch of power-user stuff that was either mis-implemented, removed, or broken.

It's a funny thing about leopard. It feels like apple went more for dazzling with eyecandy than with keeping up with the needs of power users. Although I can't live without spaces, now. I'm addicted.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[tokul]

Now I'm back to opening up two Terminal windows... :(

Or you can use /usr/local/bin/split or whatever it is called in Mac.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[tokul]

splitvt

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[LeafOnTheWind]

Some programs (read: vi) already incorporate this functionality regardless of the terminal application. I never really use that functionality aside from vi - I just open a new window or tab.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[GaryPatterson]

I read your post and thought "Right! Another obvious falsehood about 10.5! I can knock that down."

Remembering that I did this a few times in 10.4, I launched it and found that you were spot on. Apple removed a useful feature for no apparent reason!

Well, there you go. Apple screw up every so often and that's another one.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[revscat]

Real men use gnu screen. It comes preinstalled with the OS.

For giggles, here's my .screenrc file:

shell /bin/bash
autodetach on
startup_message off
defwrap on
scrollback 100000
msgwait 8
nethack on

screen -t tomcat 0
screen -t tail 1
screen -t bin 2

# xterm understands both im/ic and doesn't have a status line.
# Note: Do not specify im and ic in the real termcap/info file as
# some programs (e.g. vi) will not work anymore.

hardstatus on
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string "%{.bW}%-w%{.rW}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{..G} %H %{..Y} %m/%d %C%a "

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to open two windows or copy the old Terminal.app from a Tiger machine, as there is a handy option under the Shell menu to open a new tab within the terminal window you have open.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[CronoCloud]

Bah! Screen was obviously designed for admins to shell into a box with one connection but still have access to multpile consoles. It has little relevance these days, unless you're an admin.

It's also VERY user unfriendly, most users on modern windowed systems are better off with a tabbed terminal, I use mrxvt myself.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[revscat]

Well obviously you aren't a real man, then.

Meh, I like it. It's widely available on different *nixes, fast, lightweight, and free. I want my photo editing program to be user friendly, or my mail client. Terminal utilities? Don't care as much. I'll take the time to learn them, if they seem to be worth it.

Plus I just got tired of looking around for decent terminal apps. My thought is: why look, when screen does everything I need/could ever want?

The one thing I really like about it is the ability to copy/paste between different screens using only the keyboard. I *love* that, and use it constantly.

Reboot loop

[Chilled_Fuser]

I wouldn't install this tonight. My new MBP is stuck in a reboot loop.

Any New drivers in it for hardware that is not out

[Joe The Dragon]

Any New drivers in it for hardware that is not out yet?

Any video driver updates in it?

are the amd chipset drivers still in it?
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.mac4ever.com/news/34085/amd_dans_leopard_10_5_2/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=2&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Damd%2B10.5.2%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DEBr%26sa%3DG

The best way to describe this update

[jht]

This is like SP1 in Windows land. Basically, 10.5 is the GM, 10.5.1 is where they fix other things that emerged in the several weeks between GM and public availability (along with a couple of critical bugs that turn up in the first few days of wider public release), and then 10.5.2 is the first release based on public feedback and issues. That's also part of why this version enables you to turn off the menubar translucency (and makes the menus themselves more opaque) - users hated it so Apple tweaked things for them.

Windows is freakin' huge - hence the year to Vista SP1 - but Microsoft's releases also go much wider, have more hardware to test with, and have more public pre-release cycles as well. So it takes them a year to do a service pack, where Apple only takes about 3-4 months.

Re:The best way to describe this update

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is freakin' huge - hence the year to Vista SP1 - but Microsoft's releases also go much wider, have more hardware to test with, and have more public pre-release cycles as well. So it takes them a year to do a service pack, where Apple only takes about 3-4 months.

It really doesn't matter what the reason is--Leopard users have waited a few months for a fairly cosmetic update, Vista users are still waiting after more than a year for Vista SP1, and signs are it won't really fix most of Vista's flaws.

If this is because of Apple's close hardware model, maybe it just shows that their model is the right one for most users. Your typical Mac zealot doesn't seem to be too much in arms about it, to the point of threatening to switch to Windows.

Re:The best way to describe this update

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like SP1 in Windows land.

Except that it exists.

Re:The best way to describe this update

[GaryPatterson]

Microsoft does have a far, far greater range of hardware that must be compatible, but if Vista shows us anything, it's that they developed an API for drivers and stuck to it. Lots of hardware drivers broke immediately, leading to many problems. I'd say that it's largely not Microsoft's fault although I see why they get tarred and feathered over it.

Surely a clean, well-implemented driver API isn't going to change in SP1, so testing all the hardware configurations shouldn't slow things down that much.

I know, real world ideals (ie my last sentence) versus reality (your point) but still!

You mean it installs Windows XP?

[syousef]

I kid! I kid!

Re:You mean it installs Windows XP?

[guruevi]

Well, if you have a Windows license/cd and an Intel Mac, it takes about 3 screens (5 clicks) to start your Windows install. Of course, then you're busy installing Windows for the rest of the afternoon, you'll wonder why you even started. I do not kid, I do not kid.

I manage Mac in a professional environment. Some new dimwit hated Mac (Microsoft fanboi) and required Windows so he could play with Visual Studio. I got the box in the late morning, by noon the Mac side was totally set up for all our NFS shares and LDAP directory, network accounts, Matlab and Office. Before lunch started the install of Windows XP, after lunch the Windows side was in an endless reboot loop. Apparently Windows XP doesn't like startup partitions to be secondary and larger than 32G? Tried again, took forever, finally finished up (although Windows set up the firewire network instead of the ethernet during installation) and then had to install Visual Studio 2008, 2005, 2003, 6 in that order to get all components (backwards compatibility anyone?) and Office 2003.

The kicker: now that I showed him how to switch between the environments he hardly uses the Windows side anymore.

Re:You mean it installs Windows XP?

[syousef]

This is going to sound harsh but there's no better way to put it.

I manage Mac in a professional environment. Some new dimwit hated Mac (Microsoft fanboi) and required Windows so he could play with Visual Studio.

I'd re-check the definition of professional, if you're publicly calling your users dimwits. Are you sure he's just playing and that it's not just part of his job?

Before lunch started the install of Windows XP, after lunch the Windows side was in an endless reboot loop. Apparently Windows XP doesn't like startup partitions to be secondary and larger than 32G?

I grant you that such limitations are annoying and silly. However it's your responsibility as the IT guy to know enough about the software you're installing to do it properly. If you're just learning about Windows install limitations then treat this as part of the learning process. How would you react to a guy trying to install MacOS on a non-Mac computer? You're complaining about something almost as bad.

? Tried again, took forever, finally finished up (although Windows set up the firewire network instead of the ethernet during installation)

Sounds like your Ethernet wasn't recognized (did you need drivers). Windows sets up firewire and any Ethernet it recognizes with IP addresses, but without drivers what's it going to do?

Seriously it sounds like the problem is your lack of experience installing Windows. I imagine I'd have similar problems with Ubuntu or MacOs for sheer lack of familiarity.

had to install Visual Studio 2008, 2005, 2003, 6 in that order to get all components (backwards compatibility anyone?) and Office 2003.

Agreed this is silly.

The kicker: now that I showed him how to switch between the environments he hardly uses the Windows side anymore.

Perhaps he had a specific requirement, addressed it, and moved on. You talked about a professional environment. You're there to help him get his job done, not judge him. That's his boss' job.

Re:You mean it installs Windows XP?

[Ash-Fox]

Apparently Windows XP doesn't like startup partitions to be secondary and larger than 32G?

Fat32?

then had to install Visual Studio 2008, 2005, 2003, 6 in that order to get all components (backwards compatibility anyone?) and Office 2003.

Yeah, I just install the platform SDKs to get the components I need...

Re:You mean it installs Windows XP?

[NMerriam]

Apparently Windows XP doesn't like startup partitions to be secondary and larger than 32G?

Fat32?

1024k cylinder boundary, has nothing to do with disk format, just the use of 1970s technology to manage the boot process.

Pre-emptive Feature deprecation as a good strategy

[goombah99]

IN general apple tends to remove old features/ ports/ connectors when it adds replacements or equalivalents. Apple is a first mover in many areas: parallel ports? ADB, Floppy disks, ....
Then it adds them back if there are howls.

It's a good strategy in many ways. First, it allows one to keep the idea that there is one-primary-way-for-novices-to-do-something on most mac. When you go to another mac, it behaves the same. (e.g. Life is a box of chocolates with linux. when you sit down at someone elses terminal, focus might follow the mouse, it might auto-raise, god knows what happens when you launch emacs (xterm or text, context colored or not, etc...) Uniformity is viewed as good mac land because ultimately by not having to think too much or memorize short cuts you can just focus on getting the job done and the computer is more appliance like than tweaker box like. It's not that you can't customize a mac, it's just stupid to try in general.

It also allows them to introduce new lower level mechanism that break old higher level mechanisms. Such as the clean/dirty file tracking used for Time Machine.

I don't know why they deprecated your MP3 file moving. My guess however it was the opposite intent. they were trying to put in speed bumps--apples view of the best DRM seems to be to simply use invoconvience rather than prohibition when they can. I rather like that approach philosophically.

Re:Any New drivers in it for hardware that is not

[Christopher Rogers]

Once you install 10.5.2 another update becomes available that updates various video drivers. Some animations seem "snappier" now, particularly Expose and Spaces.

How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

* Restore the ability to have folders remember their views.
* Run each Finder window in a separate process, so it doesn't lock everything up when one window gets busy. Particularly when hitting network shares.
* Restore the pre OSX "staggered" icon layout option.
* Give us an option to completely eliminate the sidebar without having to go back to "spacial" windows.
* Move the "FTP" support from Finder to Safari, so we don't have the overhead and security issues of file-system-like operations when accessing remote high-latency servers.
* Bring back the Shelf from NeXTSTeP.
* Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well...
* Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[644bd346996]

Are there any Shelf features that are still missing from the Dock?

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[amake]

* Restore the ability to have folders remember their views.

You can still make them remember views by clicking the checkbox in the View Options (Command-J) window. I agree that this is annoying.

* Run each Finder window in a separate process, so it doesn't lock everything up when one window gets busy. Particularly when hitting network shares.

You mean break the entire application model that Mac OS has used since forever, which is that each window is not its own process? How about just making the Finder more multithreaded, which they've been doing fairly well. I haven't had the Finder in Leopard hang on me relating to network shares.

* Move the "FTP" support from Finder to Safari, so we don't have the overhead and security issues of file-system-like operations when accessing remote high-latency servers.

You could just not use FTP in the Finder. There are plenty of good, free FTP clients out there, like Cyberduck.

* Bring back the Shelf from NeXTSTeP.

What? Have you ever actually used the Shelf from NeXTSTEP? I haven't, but I've never heard anyone who had anything good to say about it. I think we've moved well beyond the need for such a feature, what with Expose and all. What specific problem would you like the Shelf to solve?

* Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well...

You can't Cut files or folders because what you're expecting to happen (based probably on similar functionality in Windows or other systems) is fundamentally different from what Cut actually is. Cut (for text, the original and default context for this feature) erases the selection entirely and puts a copy in the pasteboard. The copy in the pasteboard is lost as soon as you copy or cut something else. "Cut for text" is also undoable. "Cut for files," on the other hand, does not erase the selection until you paste. It does not delete the selection in the pasteboard if you copy something else. It is sometimes undoable, but is rarely guaranteed to be so. It's also not obvious what happens if you Cut, then modify the selection, and then paste (which version is pasted, the old or the new?)In other words, you don't want Cut; you want a copy of the Windows feature that is inappropriately named Cut. Well, it's not there, and probably shouldn't be (since it hasn't been implemented "correctly" in any system I've seen). I know, I know, who cares about nit-picky crap like this? Well, Steve cares.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[onefriedrice]

* Restore the ability to have folders remember their views.
Hasn't this always been possible in Mac OS X?

* Run each Finder window in a separate process, so it doesn't lock everything up when one window gets busy. Particularly when hitting network shares.
100% agree. I have hated this in Puma, then hated it some more in Jaguar, continued to hate it in Panther, and now I'm still hating it in Tiger. I had read that Finder was much improved in this regard in Leopard. Is this not the case!? (I haven't been able to really try it out yet.) If not, I really think Finder should be Apple's #1 priority, and hopefully it happens before the next major release. Finder only seems to improve in very small increments, and it has also decreased in usability in many cases, like when they didn't have spring-loaded folders in OS X for way too long.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[earnest murderer]

Are there any Shelf features that are still missing from the Dock? You mean the feature that doesn't render all of the screen real estate to the left and right of the Dock useless?
Nor is it useful for file transfer operations.

The dock was pretty much Windows taskbar with a trash icon and no tray.
The shelf was useful for manipulating files.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[edbulldog]

And while they're at it, they can return Preview the abillity to run animated gifs.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

Bring back the Shelf from NeXTSTeP.

The shelf was there in previous versions of Mac OS X, but turned into the sidebar.

* Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

How, exactly, do you propose doing this? Incidentally, most places where a right-click makes sense have a gearbox menu that allow you to select something and choose the option from the gearbox menu, so the presence of a gearbox menu already functions as making it obvious.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

At least you CAN do advanced things in OSX. Try using GNOME on a Linux box some time and you'll wish you had Advanced options!

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Restore the ability to have folders remember their views."
"Give us an option to completely eliminate the sidebar without having to go back to "spacial" windows."

God, yes. Both of these used to drive me to distraction on a daily basis. Fix them, and I may re-install 10.5.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Anonymous Coward]

It had always been possible until 10.5.0.

This comment is typed on Leopard, so obviously I think there's enough good to be worth using, but there are some places where they broke things in really annoying ways, and this is a prime example.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[NMerriam]

You mean the feature that doesn't render all of the screen real estate to the left and right of the Dock useless?
Nor is it useful for file transfer operations.

I'm not sure what you mean by either of these. You can pin the dock to a corner if you like, and you can use the space around it just fine. I have one utility I nestle to the right of my dock.

No, it's not a temporary storage location, all it deals with is aliases. But there is plenty of software to make it useful for file manipulation, it's just not the sort of thing every Joe needs.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[tooth]

* Option to turn of the 3d dock (yes, I know that are hacks to do it, but I still think apple should have had this option from day 0.)

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[NMerriam]

I had read that Finder was much improved in this regard in Leopard. Is this not the case!?

99% of the really annoying stuff in Finder was indeed fixed in 10.5, don't let everyone's desire for perfection fool you. It would be awesome to truly get every Finder window and operation as a totally separate process, though.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Paaskonijn]

Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well... Select a file in Finder; Command+I; Click on its icon (top left); Copy; Select another file; Command+I; Click on its icon; Paste.
You can now "Cut" this new icon to revert to the default one!

As far as I know, that's the only reason "Cut" is there.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Richard Fairhurst]

* Give us an option to completely eliminate the sidebar without having to go back to "spacial" windows.

Give us an option to go back to spatial windows.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

* Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

How, exactly, do you propose doing this?

Some small visual clue - eg. a small triangle pointing down and right, which is what was used on KDE (may still be -- I haven't used KDE for a while).

Rich.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[dcemt]

* Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well...

Cut works perfectly well. It's only grayed out when it's not applicable. Highlight something on this page that is not in a text box, cut will be grayed out, then reply to this comment, highlight some text, and cut and copy will both be available.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[pizzach]

I'm pretty sure he wants to "cut" a file and paste it somewhere else to move it in the Finder. At present, you can only copy and paste a file. I never got into doing things that way, but Windows users do it all the time.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[That's Unpossible!]

I disagree completely.

What "Cut files" does on Windows is better than not having that functionality at all in Mac OS. And yes, I use Mac OS most of the time now. If I want to move a folder in Mac OS right now, I have to drag the thing where I want it -- and hope I don't drop it somewhere else by accident along the way. (The screens are so large now that moving a folder can often mean picking up your mouse -- while holding the button down -- in order to be able to cross over to where you want it moved.)

I think the way Windows implements it makes perfect sense. When you cut a file, it doesn't disappear, so it's obvious you can do something else and it will still be there later. It just dims a bit. A visual cue that it's ready to be pasted/moved. And the edge case you mentioned happens to me -- never. How often do you cut a folder to move it, and then decide you're going to edit it instead. And in that tiny fraction of ever, how often do you just "wonder" what will happen when you paste? Never. You just cut it again to make sure you have the latest version for pasting. (In reality, if you are familiar with the underworkings of the windows clipboard, you will know that only a reference to the file is saved, and you do not need to cut it again, since the reference is the same.)

You can think of this as a "Delayed Cut," but I think most people understand how it works if the visual cues are done properly.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

Cut works perfectly well. It's only grayed out when it's not applicable.

You mean "it's only greyed out when APPLE thinks it's not applicable".

It should be possible to cut files and folders as well as text. If they're not going to allow cut, then they need to bring back the shelf so you can suspend a "move" operation that way instead.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

The shelf was there in previous versions of Mac OS X, but turned into the sidebar.

No, it wasn't. There was no place to drag a file to and then drag it back out of... you could drag things into the toolbar in Jaguar and earlier but you couldn't drag them back out to complete the move... you'd just remove it from the toolbar. Unless you mean it was there in Cheetah (the earliest version of OS X I used was Puma).

How, exactly, do you propose doing this?

I don't propose any mechanism, they have lots of smart people who are better at that kind of stuff, though things like changing the pointer come to mind.

Incidentally, most places where a right-click makes sense...

I'm not talking about right click. Right click is a (mostly) consistent operation that gets a context menu that you can safely ignore. I'm talking about all the special cases where you have to know that alt-click or command-click on a menu or button or object, or holding alt when using a keyboard shortcut, does something magically different, *and* that something is not always non-destructive so you can't really experiment.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

You mean break the entire application model that Mac OS has used since forever, which is that each window is not its own process?

That's an implementation detail. It's not something that users should see or care about. It's not even something that programmers should care about... there's nothing magical about processes. Many applications run multiple processes (not threads, processes) even for a *single* window... like Disk Utility. But, wot the hell, if Apple can magically fix multithreaded applications so a single thread can never hang the whole application (which is something that I've never seen done successfully, but maybe the reality distortion field can fix it) fine, but if they can't pull off a miracle they need to make Finder a special case. It's too central.

You could just not use FTP in the Finder.

That would be appropriate if it wasn't a security design flaw.

Have you ever actually used the Shelf from NeXTSTEP?

Yes, and I use XShelf in OS X to do its job on the Mac. It's not perfect, it's not super well integrated, but it does the job. Finder should really be doing it though.

Babbling about the purity of cut

I don't care if they come up with another mechanism (like, the shelf) to interrupt move operations, or violate Cut's precious bodily fluids, but they need to make it possible.

ie: Steve's wrong. It happens. Get over it.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

I'm not sure what you mean by either of these.

You could drag files onto the shelf, go to another folder, and drag them back off the shelf onto that folder, and it was just like you had dragged it from one folder directly to another. It's not a "temporary storage location" where files are moved to, it's a suspended file operation that is completed by taking the file back off the shelf and putting it somewhere. A suspended move of some kind is necessary, whether it's handled by the shelf or by cut-and-paste, and Finder doesn't have one.

As for rendering the space beside the dock useless... that depends on the application. Some applications simply refuse to let windows stay down there. Sometimes they pop right up, sometimes they pop up later on when you're not expecting it.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

I'll buy that. They should have maintained the Finder and NeXT File Manager as separate programs, instead of trying to merge two programs with such separate behaviors.

Either way the fake spatial windows are horrid.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[whyde]

I'm more peeved about Finder spinning up every sleeping external drive when I've not asked to look at them. It should only stat things that are being accessed, in my opinion, especially if the OS is aware that they may be sleeping.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

Try using GNOME

Oh, great. "Stop complaining about Apple because Gnome's even worse"? Blow that for a joke... I don't expect Gnome to be worth using, but when I'm paying 40% more for a computer that's less capable than the cheaper one I would otherwise buy just to get an OS that doesn't suck... I think I have a reason to expect it to not suck.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

Oh you mean like how you right click on a drive so you can eject it, and you have to wait for it to spin up before you can spin it down? "Wake up! Time for your sleeping pill!"

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[644bd346996]

The dock can be used to transfer files. Just hold down the command key when you drag the file off the dock, and it gets moved.

As far as screen space goes, the Dock doesn't use or render useless any more space than the NeXT dock did (provided you put the OS X dock on the side like the NeXT dock).

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

The keyboard shortcuts that use the option key have a symbol in the menu that indicates that option is used. I'm personally unaware of places where command-click and option-click actually do much (outside of Safari) so I can't comment on the other cases.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

I'm not talking about keyboard shortcuts that use an option key, I'm talking about keyboard shortcuts that do not appear in the menu, or where an option key changes their behavior in a way that doesn't correspond to any menu operation.

For example, in iTunes, the keyboard shortcut "delete" is not indicated in the menu as a shortcut for the delete operation key. It does, however, delete the currently selected item from a playlist, and option-delete deletes the currently selected item from your iTunes library.

There are other examples of these kinds of non-menu shortcut keys and modifiers, as well as buttons that change behavior when option- or command- clicked. One has to learn about these by googling. Which is why I thought that perhaps there might be some such magic combination in Finder for the capability I was missing.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

I'm not talking about keyboard shortcuts that use an option key

Forgive me, I thought you were talking about:

...holding alt when using a keyboard shortcut, does something magically different

but I was mistaken.

For example, in iTunes, the keyboard shortcut "delete" is not indicated in the menu as a shortcut for the delete operation key. It does, however, delete the currently selected item from a playlist, and option-delete deletes the currently selected item from your iTunes library.

Ah, that's what you meant. The information you're looking for, in iTunes, is under "Keyboard Shortcuts" in the "Help" menu.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

The information you're looking for, in iTunes, is under "Keyboard Shortcuts" in the "Help" menu.

If I wanted a computer that I have to go look up random shit in "help" all the time I can get that a lot cheaper from HP or Dell.

What the hell happened to Apple's "discoverable" user interface?

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

Pretty much everything you can do is "discoverable". For instance, I never knew, and it never really bothered me that I didn't know, that option-deleting a song from a playlist deletes it from your library. However, it's intuitive for the delete key to delete things, so selecting a song in the library and hitting "delete" works pretty much as anyone would expect.

If you have concrete ideas about how this could be improved, I might be inclined to agree with you. I suspect that you're really just trolling, though.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

If you have concrete ideas about how this could be improved, I might be inclined to agree with you.

Oh christ, there's all kinds of options. Here's two.

Get rid of the extra complexity (unneeded complexity is bad, OK) of multiple non-standardized metakeys that are not discoverable, and use contextual menus consistently and reliably, everywhere. The historical reasons for all the funky metakeys on Mac OS go back to the single-button mouse and the original antipathy towards contextual menus at Apple... with the resulting decision to use more and more special keys on the keyboard as "extra mouse buttons". We finally got contextual menus, but they're an afterthought in too many places. THEN if you want accelerators for contextual menus, add them, as an expert option.

That's one possibility. Another would be the one I already suggested, having the pouse pointer change (with, say, a little command or option ghosted next to it) when there's a metakey alternative available.

This isn't brain surgery.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

Or...since you already have contextual menus, you could just choose not to use the other features they include. Honestly, I had spent my entire life up to this conversation without it even occurring to me to hold down the option key while pressing the delete key with a song selected in an iTunes playlist, and I think I can live the rest of my life without ever doing that--knowing what that did never really mattered in my life. So maybe I don't understand.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

Or...since you already have contextual menus, you could just choose not to use the other features they include.

If I didn't care about the user interface I could also choose to use a much cheaper and more powerful computer running an operating system other than Mac OS X.

I had spent my entire life up to this conversation without it even occurring to me to hold down the option key while pressing the delete key with a song selected in an iTunes playlist

That is, of course, my point. That these features are not obvious. They are obscure, needlessly so. It's something that I would expect to run across in some novice's My First Application, not an Apple product.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[nuggetman]

This annoys the shit out of me, I'll open Safari or Adium and for some reason my USB drive spins up (and no, Time Machine is not starting up)

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[The One and Only]

I guess my point is that, even absent these hidden features, the UI is perfectly usable and discoverable. The hidden features are just shortcuts on top of it for power users. There's no need for you to learn and use them and if they just stripped them out it wouldn't make any difference in my life, nor I imagine yours.

The difference between that and a novice's first application is that a novice would implement obscure controls and give you no other way to replicate their function. Apple's UIs usually have three or four ways to activate the same function, most of which are blindingly obvious if you look through menus or hover over buttons, some of which are less obvious to pick up (keyboard shortcuts for menu options) but still doable if you understand the pattern, and some of which probably require looking it up in help.

But, Apple's UI isn't necessarily perfect. either, and maybe there are good ways of making these things more obvious.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

The hidden features are just shortcuts on top of it for power users.

No, they're not.

The ONLY way to delete tracks from your library without actually switching to the Library (and losing the view of the tracks you want to delete) is option-delete. There is no menu option to do it, either on the menu bar or in a contextual menu.

a novice would implement obscure controls and give you no other way to replicate their function.

That's precisely what Apple does.

maybe there are good ways of making these things more obvious.

I've listed two or three possibilities so far.

My Anecdote

[djdavetrouble]

My Dual G5 took hella long to update, but is definitely a bit snappier now.

Send window to back? please?

[forty-2]

Yeah yeah, off-topic, go on, I know you want to, I've been missing this ever since I switched from linux ~5 years ago. I've given up the ghost on "sloppy focus follows mouse / click to raise" but I'd pay real money for a right click on the title bar to send a window to the back of the stack. Has anyone come across this? I've been searching for years to no avail.

Re:Send window to back? please?

[misleb]

Some way to manage windows from the total pool (or even better just what is in your current "Space*) instead of just switching between windows within the current app or switching between apps, would be very welcome indeed.

Re:Send window to back? please?

[theurge14]

In the meantime, the following may help you:

You can Command-drag a window by the titlebar that is not in the focus without bringing it to the front.
You can also Command-drag to resize a window that is not in the focus without bring it to the front.
You can press Command-` to cycle through all the open windows in the current application.
You can press Command-H to Hide the current window in focus.
You can press Command-M to Minimize the current window in focus.
Command-Tab will bring up a list of all open applications. You can use your mouse while holding Command-Tab to select an application to switch to, and furthermore while you have your mouse pointer over the application you can press H to Hide that particular application or Q to close that particular application.

Per Apple's Developer Connection applications do have an API in Cocoa to use methods to manipulate the Window Z-order, so I would imagine there might be some applications out there already that could perform more specifically what you're looking for.

Re:Send window to back? please?

[Dusty101]

Ask & ye shall receive...

Try Witch:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25871

Secure Empty Trash

[themadplasterer]

is still broken, a single file in the trash being deleted still results in a file count of 11 or 9 files being securely deleted. I'll have to stick to Permanent Eraser for a while longer it seems. You'd figure Apple would have dealt with this by now.

Re:Secure Empty Trash

[Ledgem]

I don't have this issue, nor do I have it on any of the five Mac systems I administer at work. I doubt it's an issue unique to you, but it certainly isn't unanimous to the OS.

Bah

[adamruck]

I administer an apple x server at work, and I haven't been impressed.

I'm running ubuntu on a PC, so I can't use the server admin, or workgroup manager tools. Also, apple doesn't come with a standard VNC server, instead it uses VNC with some proprietary shit built in, so I had to install vine server to get a remote desktop. Of course, vine server sucks as well, because I can't get it to start on boot, without logging into the server with either the native server admin tools, or locally with a KVM. Oh wait, the X Serve doesn't play nice with a standard KVM. I have an extra mouse and keyboard setting in my rack just for the X Serve.

Once you manage to get in the damn thing, if you have any sort of complicated setup at all, you simply CAN'T DO it using the server admin tool. I've usually had to bust into the config files just like any other Unix system. Take a look at the SQL section of the Server Admin tool, its a fucking joke. Also, even if you do start to do some things by hand, shit still doesn't work right.

See one of my bug reports here.

http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-server/298314-samba-shares-hfs-extended-attributes.html

The mailing list / blog / colander stuff is also less than impressive. Why the FUCK should I have to wait 15 minutes for my changes to take affect. It this 1982 or some shit? Some changes seem to take much longer than that as well. I waited a whole day for one of my groups to show up. Why is it that the "recent changes" section of each group shows group emails, even if I turn the mailing list feature off?

Oh yeah, last but not least, the server crashes. It responds to pings, still responds to local terminal input, but anything that requires authentication is dead in the water. So that leaves mail, netbios, ssh, server admin, work group manager, etc etc all dead. I think the LDAP server is crapping out, but I haven't been able to prove it yet. I've had to hard boot the server half a dozen times in the last two weeks.

My last rant. WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE QUICK TIME UPDATES, AND THE REQUIRED RESTARTS. Jesus christ, it's like I'm working with windows NT.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

I too run an OS X 10.5 Server at work and I have found it equally as frustrating. However, just one correction about VNC. You can enable standard VNC viewing by going to System Prefs > Sharing > Remote Management > Computer Settings... > VNC viewers...

Also, krdc is 10x faster than the standard vnc-viewer in Ubuntu.

Here's to another 1-week of uptime with OS X Server.

Re:Bah

[metallic]

Also, apple doesn't come with a standard VNC server, instead it uses VNC with some proprietary shit built in, so I had to install vine server to get a remote desktop. Of course, vine server sucks as well, because I can't get it to start on boot, without logging into the server with either the native server admin tools, or locally with a KVM.

You can get a standard VNC client to connect to the built-in VNC server that ships with OSX. It takes some very specific settings, but it can be done. I've done it using TightVNC and UltraVNC on Windows before I finally switched to a Mac on the client side. If you Google around a bit, you should be able to find them.

Oh wait, the X Serve doesn't play nice with a standard KVM. I have an extra mouse and keyboard setting in my rack just for the X Serve.

Are you sure your KVM is standard? I have a 16-Port KVM complete with terminal, keyboard, and trackpad that works fine with the 6 XServes in the rack as well as with the FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows boxes in the rack.

Once you manage to get in the damn thing, if you have any sort of complicated setup at all, you simply CAN'T DO it using the server admin tool. I've usually had to bust into the config files just like any other Unix system. Take a look at the SQL section of the Server Admin tool, its a fucking joke. Also, even if you do start to do some things by hand, shit still doesn't work right.

That's what really sucks about OS X Server. Unless you have really basic needs that Apple envisioned, the GUI tools are useless. On top of that, you can't really customize anything that Apple has provided with the server. I tried compiling a custom PHP5 and installing the module on the stock Apache server only to have it crash Apache. I called Apple Support, and while they said it is technically possible to do what I was trying, they wouldn't provide any support for it. I ended up just compiling my own copy of Apache and PHP5 and saying to hell with the GUI tool.

On the other hand, OS X Server is awesome for managing a network of Macs. That's all about I can really recommend it for.

Re:Bah

[adamruck]

"You can get a standard VNC client to connect to the built-in VNC server that ships with OSX. It takes some very specific settings, but it can be done. I've done it using TightVNC and UltraVNC on Windows before I finally switched to a Mac on the client side. If you Google around a bit, you should be able to find them."

I'm trying to connect from an Ubuntu machine. I tried for about a day before I gave up. You don't happen to have a link handy do you?

Re:Bah

[Pecisk]

I agree that OS X is rather nightmare for admin, several notices though:
1) VNC can be easily used in such way - first, in Sharing enable Remote Desktop, then customize it and "Allow to guests to view desktop" and enter password. Then fire up your VNC client, set color to Full, disable all clipboard sharing features, and enter IP/hostname of your server. This should work, used by me on everyday basis;
2) I can't fully agree about Server Admin. It is nice tool, however limited for very advanced setups. Yes, you have to go to config files then, but they are usually standard .conf files;
3) If it is 10.5 who crashes, it is no wonder. However, 10.4 server was very stable, at least for me;
4) And I fully with you in your confusion about Quicktime updates. WTF. Can't they make it less prioritary for servers? Jesus. I think they update it about several times in a month :)

In concludion, I think honeymoon is over between geeks and Apple. Harsh reality kicks in, and when you find out that OS X is kinda limiting, Linux and BSD feels like a bliss. And yes, I am talking about servers, NOT professional workstations.

Re:Bah

[misleb]

Agreed. OS X really sucks as a server. We've had nothing but problems with AFP and scalabilityI. Get 80 or so users (all pulling their desktop from the server) on our quad core Xserve and suddenly AFP goes haywire and you have to kick everyone off and restart the process. You might say "that's what you get for running a new major revision of an OS." I wouldn't have made Leopard our main file server if we weren't having the same shit happening with our dual G5 Tiger server. I figured I didn't have much to lose by trying Leopard. *sigh*

I tell ya, I really love OS X on the desktop, but Apple really needs to get their shit together if they ever want to get any respect in the server market. If it weren't for the way Workgroup Manager integrates with the clients and the fact that Netatalk has apparently stalled in development, we'd be using LInux servers.

-matthew

Re:Bah

[HSpirit]

I'm somewhat relieved to hear it's not just me. When the small business I work for (3x Windows and 1x MacOS X clients) recently expanded I recommended MacOS X 10.4 Server, believing the Apple claims that it was the perfect cross-platform workgroup server for our needs. Like you, what I have found is that for all but the most trivial tasks one needs to delve beyond the limited built-in GUI administration tools and administer via the command-line and text configuration files - even Apple's own PDF documentation acknowledges this at many points.

While I am confident with the command-line (I enjoyed learning *nix on MacOS X 10.1-10.4 client and the experience also made me confident learning OpenBSD which we now use for our firewall) no-one else in the business is confident doing so, which is most likely the case in many small businesses I expect. I must say I consider Apple's implementation of their workgroup server is very much half-baked, particularly for the cost of the licence.

Re:Bah

[chrome]

*pat* *pat*

If its any consolation there are probably at least another 5 or 6 people who run OS X Server. And I'm sure they hate it just as much ...

Re:Bah

[simong]

I've never been convinced by OS X as a server. Apart from in low admin environments where you can effectively set it up and walk away, it just isn't going to be useful. Most sysadmins will have their preferences for OS builds, apache builds, mail configs and so on, and applying Apple's Just Works principles to that level of management is going to lead to conflict. OS X is still good as a desktop (although I can see that my next refresh will be a decently specced small laptop running Ubuntu) but XServe would have been better with something more open.

Re:Bah

[Graff]

I believe the only thing I had to do was add this line to my .tcshrc file:

setenv DISPLAY :0.0

For you bash users out there you can probably put this in your .bashrc:

export DISPLAY=:0.0

I don't know if this setting is still necessary, I set this way back in 10.0 or 10.1 and my 10.5 system still seems to work well with VNC clients.

Re:Bah

[lidocaineus]

Uh, Vine Server runs fine from the command line. If you can't figure out how to start it manually, script it out from an external server to start it over ssh... not that I think OS X is a great server environment, but even I knew this one.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but Linux hss many of these same exact "problems" you are griping about. LDAP is an utter piece of junk when compared to active directory, servers stop responding to authentication requests, blah blah blah.

I'm not defending the XServe, because I think Apple's business offerings are complete junk, but I have seen all of your problems on Linux boxen.

I happen to disagree with your assessment about the VNC server OS X uses. I use plain old VNC viewer to administer one of my headless macs from a linux box quite frequently. (It's too bad that if I reboot the same headless box, I have to connect a keyboard to it, and that makes it a piece of junk for a media server)

All that being said, Server Admin tool is complete and utter garbage, XServes ARE junk, and somebody should shoot whoever decided to run your business on an XServer.

Re:Bah

[sketchydave]

That is absolutely hilarious as I sit here looking at the Mac OS Server I have to configure.

The thing that I hate about Mac Server is the lack of books, sites, and walkthroughs on how to actually USE it. I need it for QuickTime streaming and since we run a Mac shop its easier to interface with. Makes sense for us, but I would never use it otherwise. I've configured Fedora servers and Ubuntu servers so much easier. I am not afraid of the command line. What I am afraid of is the pretty GUI menus that give me a ton of options with no explanation of what they do or how to do it or why the hell it isn't working. Right now the only options is the PDF manuals on Apple's site that tell me about the features, but not how to apply them in a way that makes sense.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have no problems controlling my own servers using the built-in VNC service that comes with Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server from a Linux (or Windows) machine using RealVNC. I just have to define a VNC password in the Sharing system preferences.

As for filing "bug reports", posting them on some web site that doesn't get any attention from Apple developers doesn't count as a bug report. Why don't you do everyone a favor and report these to Apple developers? You can do this for free at the following URL: http://bugreport.apple.com/

As far as setting anything complicated up in the GUI - that's the breaks if you want a simple, easy to use interface. If you want UNIX style power, that comes with the price of having to edit the configuration files. For the record, I've been a UNIX administrator since '88 and I think that Mac OS X Server is damned nice for basic servers.

Instead of complaining on a public message board about the stability of the platform, have you tried calling Apple for help?

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm running ubuntu on a PC" There's your problem right there.

Why no charge for new features?

[JHromadka]

Where's the Sarbox excuse? Apple adds new features and doesn't charge for the update? It sucks that my girlfriend has to pay 20 bucks to unlock those new features on the iPod touch she got for Christmas.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[mr_matticus]

OS X isn't a device, and it is long-established custom that installable software is not a part of full-blown computers and so the computer doesn't make the software count as a "device." On the other hand, mobile devices running software that isn't available, say, as a separate SKU, aren't considered to be running installable software.

Software updates to a software product don't pose a problem.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[p0tat03]

It's all about revenue claim. After Apple got bit by the whole 802.11n driver thing, they've started claiming revenue for their laptops and iPhones in a staggered way - instead of all at once. This allows them to justify releasing significant new features on those platforms (as opposed to merely bug fixes).

My guess is that Apple never intended to release those new apps for the iTouch, and was caught off guard by all of the backlash and bad press... Unfortunately for them iPod revenue is probably claimed in entirety at sale.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[illumin8]

Where's the Sarbox excuse? Apple adds new features and doesn't charge for the update? It sucks that my girlfriend has to pay 20 bucks to unlock those new features on the iPod touch she got for Christmas.

10.5.2 is an update that fixes bugs and problems. It doesn't add new features so there's no need to charge for it.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[mr_matticus]

They are not recognizing notebooks on a subscription basis. No one else does, either. If you have a source on that I'd be interested to see it, since it would break with trade usage.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[p0tat03]

Hmm, I have no link for you, but I do recall reading an interview with an Apple exec, who claimed that the 802.11n thing is something they would like to avoid in the future. I assumed at the time that he meant subscription revenue.

All in all I'm still unhappy with Apple. If this was purely an accounting thing, then why can't they charge $2-3? Enough to cover the accounting costs, but not enough to really profit, like they did with the 802.11n enabler. Seems like a quick money grab to me, and that always saddens me. They need to release these apps like they did for Apple TV2. Reward early adopters! Don't punish customers who are traditionally your strongest support base! It's code for fuck's sake, there's no per-unit cost to this.

Update the update

[BRSloth]

As someone pointed somewhere else (sorry, I have several Mac things, since I'm a new Mac user), there is an Graphics Update update after you upgrade the system. Just in case, open the software update again and check if there is something new.

Re:Update the update

[ceoyoyo]

I'm downloading now, but it looked to me like the graphics update was another restart. Two reboots in a row? Are we learning a bit too much from Windows?

Re:Update the update

[Titoxd]

Does anybody know what that update does? The 10.5.2 upgrade has some detail on the Apple site, but the Leopard Graphics Update is conspicuously devoid of information.

Re:Menubar! how to make it not completely obnoxiou

[chromatic]

Mac OS X will never be ready for the desktop while it requires users to use the command-line to... oh, too easy?

OS X 10.5.2 is here while Vista SP1 STILL isn't

[crovira]

There's something prophetic there...

How long were the PCers of the corporate world promised Vista (when they clearly didn't want it or need it?)

I started on OS X 10.1.0 (admittedly mot the greatest [but still a lot better than OS 8.x]) back in 2001.

Its now 2008 and I have had every point update (okay, I've spent around $500 over the past seven years but I didn't MIND it.)

Now I just installed the update without any pain.

In the same time my ex-employers and clients would only change to a new version of Windows when the old one was EOL'd.

Now that people WANT to upgrade (maybe NOT for the of best of reasons,) they CAN'T.

One of us is happy.

One of us must be starting to feel like a real schmuck by now.

I was immune :)

[pavon]

I would just like to take this time to rub in the fact I never once had to see that transparent menu. At first I just thought that it might only be slightly transparent, and that the beta users were just exaggerating the problem, so I tried it with a checked background, and sure enough it was completely solid. The reflective doc was there in all it's shinyness, but no pixel were leaking through my menu bar. I don't if it was a PPC/Intel thing or if Apple just deemed my video card too pathetic to get the see-through goodness, by my Leopard install has had an opaque menu since the day I installed it.

So, neener-neener :P

Re:I was immune :)

[leenks]

Likewise here, but this is a macbook with GMA950. I think the Mac Pros have it though - I'm sure the menus look different - so maybe it is something to do with the graphics hardware as you say. Or I suck and forgot that I changed something from the command line that I can't remember! :)

Re:I was immune :)

[mihalis]

Likewise here, but this is a macbook with GMA950. I think the Mac Pros have it though - I'm sure the menus look different - so maybe it is something to do with the graphics hardware as you say. Or I suck and forgot that I changed something from the command line that I can't remember! :)

I have an original black macbook with gma950 and the transparent menu bar was working for me, until just now when I installed 10.5.2 and installed it. Thanks Apple!

Re:I was immune :)

[Ilgaz]

I would just like to take this time to rub in the fact I never once had to see that transparent menu. At first I just thought that it might only be slightly transparent, and that the beta users were just exaggerating the problem, so I tried it with a checked background, and sure enough it was completely solid. The reflective doc was there in all it's shinyness, but no pixel were leaking through my menu bar. I don't if it was a PPC/Intel thing or if Apple just deemed my video card too pathetic to get the see-through goodness, by my Leopard install has had an opaque menu since the day I installed it.

So, neener-neener :P It is not a thing to be happy about :) It means Leopard decided your graphics card is weak to do transparent menu opengl thing. It is same deal on my Mac Mini G4 too and guess what G4 is connected to? A Plasma HDTV.

A logical explanation to transparent menu bar: Apple had reports of "screen burn" because of a white menu on top of the screen 24/7, decided to do it so as wallpaper changes hourly (generally on plasmas, good trick), the menu bar will change too.

You also notice the top menu bar is dark grey, it is the most friendly thing to Plasma and LCD if you have to display a thing 24/7.

Deal with Plasma is: It is good with moving images but if you show an image at exact location with exact colours for a long time, there is a huge possibility to get "burn in". Burn in can be recovered by full white or moving grey pattern but... If you really meet with the "real", evil burn in, there is no recovering back. No guarantee cover either.

LCD has the same problem but it must be days or weeks to occur. Also their "move image 4 pixels" trick is designed for TV station logos (see below), it is near worthless for Apple menu.

Your TV station doesn't do "colour cycle" or "slightly animated" or "almost transparent" logo for nothing, they do especially for Plasma owners so they won't be watching "same channel" in case logo burns there. :)

root account

[Anonymous Coward]

The root account is still broken.
All of you \tard's who say; "Don't ever run as root.", can get bent. Hard.
The root account's desktop icon positioning is still broken in this release. Has been since 10.5.
PDF services in the print dialogs are still broken in this version and have been since 10.4.2; no fix in sight.
Maybe next time.

sure hope it fixes mounting of SMB shares

[johnrpenner]

leopard broke SMB server mounts (when tiger worked fine).

sure hope this is fixed - its a deal breaker for adopting leopard.

2cents
j

Re:sure hope it fixes mounting of SMB shares

[Swampash]

I personally have no problems with SMB under Leopard - what are you experiencing?

Re:sure hope it fixes mounting of SMB shares

[Jesus_666]

I experience hell on OS X.

Ah yes, the hell bug. OS X occasionally mistakenly assumes you're a Microsoft UI developer and sends you to hell. If you dualboot your Mac, try removing all files related to Visual Studio from the Windows partition; VS sometimes sets off the "MS UI developer" trigger.

I hear they're working on the bug but the fix wasn't yet ready for 10.5.2.

Leopard Delays

[shmlco]

OS X Leopard's release was originally scheduled for the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007". And as of March 23rd, Leopard was still supposedly on track for a spring release. Then on April 12, just 20 days later, Apple announced that Leopard would be delayed. The reason? Apple needed to "borrow some key software engineering and QA resources" and put them to work on the iPhone in order to meet that product's promised June release.

But the revised release date for Leopard was October 26th, 119 days after the day the iPhone would ship and those "borrowed" developers could return to work on 10.5. Four months put back into the timeline, not two. And in actuality the postponement gave Apple over six more months of Leopard development time, counted from the announcement on April 12th to the revised ship date on October 26th.

Apple had only borrowed a few key people, remember? Presumably the rest weren't just sitting around waiting for the others to get back to work.

Even with the extra time, Apple didn't have enough time to fix all of the problems. So as the October release date loomed, Apple rushed one more final candidate past developers, patched and polished a few last-minute issues, determined that it was "good enough", and shipped OS X 10.5 Leopard to the public.

So short was the time frame that few outside of Apple saw the gold master. Even major software development firms like Adobe received their final copies at nearly the same time as everyone else.

Is that the profile of a company that isn't rushing a product to market? Nope, 10.5.2 is what Leopard should have been.

Re:Leopard Delays

[bsane]

Release early, release often :-)

What's included?

[djupedal]

What's included?

This update delivers several improvements for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs (as well as improvements provided in the Mac OS X 10.5.1 update.)

Active Directory

* Addresses issues which could hinder or prevent binding Mac OS X 10.5.x clients to Active Directory domains.

AirPort

* Improves connection reliability and stability
* Includes 802.1X improvements.
* Resolves certain kernel panics.

Back to my Mac

* Adds support for more third-party routers, as detailed in this article.

Dashboard

* Improves performance of certain Apple Dashboard widgets (such as Dictionary).
* Addresses an issue in which Dashboard widgets may no longer be accessible after switching to or from an account that has Parental Controls enabled.

Dock

* Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.

Desktop

* Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
* Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.

iCal

* Improves iCal so that it accurately reflects responses to recurring meetings.
* Addresses an issue in which a meeting may remain on the calendar after being cancelled.
* Addresses stability issues related to .Mac syncing of iCal calendars.
* Resolves an intermittent issue in which editing an event with attendees would cause the event to shrink and not register that the event was updated.

iChat

* Addresses an issue with simultaneously-logged in accounts in which iChat sounds generated from one account might be heard in another account.
* Fixes an issue in which iChat idle time is affected by Time Machine backups.
* Improves connectivity when running iChat behind a router that doesn't preserve ports.
* Enables logged chats from previous versions of iChat to open faster and more reliably.
* Addresses an issue with text chats in which users may be unable to receive messages from the sender.
* Addresses an issue that may prevent rejoining an AIM chat room without reopening iChat.
* Addresses video chat compatibility issues with AIM 6 and third-party routers.
* Fixes an issue with case-sensitivity of AIM handles.

iSync

* Adds support for Samsung D600E and D900i phones.

Finder

* Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when displaying folder contents in Column view.
* Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when accessing Users and Groups in a Get Info pane.
* Resolves an issue that prevented setting permissions on a folder alias.
* Resolves an issue in which the Eject command could write to a disc in the optical drive.
* Fixes an issue in which the scroll bar might disappear when deleting a file within a folder that includes files that are out of view.
* Fixes an issue in the Sharing & Permissions section of Get Info windows, in which the gear icon appears to be gray/disabled after authentication.
* Addresses an issue in which the Show Icon Preview preference might not be not sa

Re:What's included?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Addresses issues which could hinder or prevent binding Mac OS X 10.5.x clients to Active Directory domains.

Still doesn't bind to our AD though, not that I'm surprised.

I think that it's Directory Services support is pretty broken anyway and will hopefully get less and less broken with each new release. I only pray that the problems get fixed some time before the release of 10.6

Re:What's included?

[Nimey]

AD binding still doesn't work. It complains that my user/pass are incorrect.

Did they fix Spaces?

[onemorechip]

Spaces has a very annoying behavior, much worse than translucent menu bars IMO. Say you're working in workspace #1, and you launch an application that you've set up to always launch in workspace #2. You keep working in space #1, and all of a sudden you're jerked out of it into space #2. This is theft of focus, plain and simple, but allowing it in spaces just makes it twice as aggravating. The rule should be: Only change spaces when the user requests the change.

I don't see it on the list. Please, Apple, fix this problem!

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[k2r]

> you launch an application that you've set up to always launch in workspace #2.

You launch an application and it gets focus and opens a window. This is expected behaviour.
Since this window is on a different screen, OSX switches to this screen and does not leave the user wondering where the applications window hides. Feels right to me...

k2r

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[Jimithing DMB]

Hmm.. that does sound like a bug. Without spaces when you launch an application then switch to something else the windows for the new application will typically come up underneath whatever you switched to. It's a nice little feature so you can start a hefty app starting while you go do something else.

Have you filed a "radar"? Simply log in to https://bugreport.apple.com with your Apple ID and fill out the information as accurately and concisely as possible. Don't be a dick about it. Just calmly explain that it is interrupting your workflow and that you would suggest it have the same behavior it does when not using spaces. That is to say that the app opens silently if you've proceeded to do something else on the system since deciding to launch the app.

You may not get a resolution anytime soon and you may not get any feedback for a long time. Generally a bug that stays open for a long time means that the Apple developers are working on it. Unfortunately you cannot see any comments they make to each other but such is the nature of things. Most likely, your bug will be filed as a duplicate. That's ok, it just means that Apple is already aware of it and already has an active bug report for it. By reporting it though, you let Apple know that you care about it.

Unless you report it, Apple cannot know. They don't go trolling slashdot for comments like this.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[p0tat03]

It doesn't sound right to me. One of the (many) reasons I left Windows for OSX was to get away from the incessant focus-stealing that Windows apps like to do. It's incredibly annoying. OSX apps are generally good abut it, but in this case IMHO if I start an app, but then *switch away*, there should be NO way that app should be able to steal its focus back.

Heck, even quitting applications - in OSX if you quit an app and it pops up a dialog box asking you to save, that DOESN'T steal focus, thankfully!

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[Jesus_666]

Some apps can be real pests in Spaces. VMWare Fusion is determined to have you watch the progress bar while it freeses/unfreezes a VM.

You tell VMWare to freeze and exit, then switch to another Space.
VMWare brings you back so you can watch the progress bar.
You switch back to your intended Space.
VMWare brings you back so you can watch the progress bar.
You switch back AGAIN.
VMWare brings you back so you can watch the progress bar.
You give up and watch that damn bar until VMWare is done writing the VM's state to disk.

It's like playing Progress Quest in a singletasking environment.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[k2r]

> start an app, but then *switch away*,
> there should be NO way that app should be able to steal its focus back.

I agree that an application should not be allowed to steal back focus when you switched to another screen while it starts.
However, I can imagine that a lot of not so computer-savy people would have a problem with starting an application hey have /locked/ to a specific screen and seeing no window of it because they happen to have switched to another. Most people (felt statistics :-) would startup eg. mail.app when they want to use it, so switching to the screen it's on makes some sense to me.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[onemorechip]

Focus-stealing is just plain stupid. I launch an application, I return to the application I was running and begin typing. Suddenly I'm typing in a different window, to a different application. That's not expected behavior (unless like sheep we just give up and welcome the GUI overlord, instead of the user, dictating what activity will be in the foreground). It's just not right.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[onemorechip]

Thanks for the link. I had searched around Apple's site and couldn't find a bug reporting page. Now, why should I need a freakin' id to file a freakin' bug report? And do I really have to "purchase technical support incidents" (a negative bounty?) to help *them* find out what's wrong with *their* product? Bug reporting should be free, and it should be readily linked from their home page (or at most two clicks away), with just an e-mail address.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[Jimithing DMB]

This is not bug reporting for random people. This is bug reporting for people who develop software on OS X systems. To use it you need an Apple ID and I believe you need to specifically sign up for at least the free ADC account (which is like two or three clicks if you already have an Apple ID) in order to use the bug reporter.

They mention purchasing tech support incidents because if you are a software developer and have a more immediate need to talk with someone at Apple then you need to buy a support incident. Bug reporter is a 1-way street. You tell them. It's free. That's it. If you want to get advice on how to work around it then you need to buy the support incident.

Of course you get 2 incidents included with even the base ($500 annual) Select package which also includes a 20% discount on system hardware (limited to 1 complete system) and a 10% discount on accessory purchases made at the same time. So if you are a developer this is great because you almost always want the super-fast hardware that costs enough (e.g. > $2500) that your Select membership pays for itself and you get 2 support incidents and a bunch of other stuff (seeds, etc.) for free.

As I said, be respectful since this is like a semi-direct line to Apple's developers. It's for one developer to another.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[onemorechip]

But I'm not a developer, I'm a random person.

As I said, be respectful since this is like a semi-direct line to Apple's developers. It's for one developer to another.
 
...and I'm not sure why you feel Slashdot is the place to be schooling folks on etiquette.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[p0tat03]

Then clue the user in. Flash an icon of Mail.app with an arrow pointing to the desktop that houses the window, if the user isn't on the space already. There are many possible ways to let the user know what's going on without stealing focus.

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[Jimithing DMB]

But I'm not a developer, I'm a random person.

I figure that most people on Slashdot have written at least a shell script or two in their life. Besides that, you don't have to qualify or anything to get an ADC account. I'm just pointing out that non-developers can use the service but that if they do they should follow the implicit rules and act like developers.

...and I'm not sure why you feel Slashdot is the place to be schooling folks on etiquette.

Because from the looks of things around here, the majority of slashdotters are in need of a serious etiquette lesson?

Re:Did they fix Spaces?

[k2r]

While I'm not sure about the expected behaviour with an application locked to a specific screen I agree that there is no reason to
switch to a different screen and / or focus after the user has switched to a different screen / window.

As you say: That's just not right and leads to big pain.

Linotype Font Explorer causes Dock to freeze

[Anonymous Coward]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4943779 Really, FE has worked great since it came out in the mid 10.4s, so I blame 10.5.2 for this. Thought I'd save some headaches for those who can't believe FE would be a problem.. :)

Re:Linotype Font Explorer causes Dock to freeze

[dal20402]

Not just the Dock. It causes any app or system process that asks for a non-system font to freeze. This includes SystemUIServer and virtually any application that displays text.

You can fix the problem by 1) quitting FEX and 2) force-quitting and relaunching affected processes, including the Dock and SystemUIServer.

I like the Time Machine menubar thingie...

[bennomatic]

Click backup now, and the arrow spins around counter-clockwise, and the clock goes backwards in time. Nice little illustration. I hope whoever designed the icon gets a raise.

Fonts fixed yet?

[Trogre]

Have they done anything about the crappy font smoothing yet? I had someone insist I'd broken their monitor when I gave them a new Mac.

People often gush over how pretty things look on a Mac but font rendering on current Apple offerings can't come close to my humble linux box.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[vertigoCiel]

That George Ou article is worthless. He's just another flame-baiter like Dvorak, whose only purpose is to draw hits. I have yet to meet a Mac whose font rendering actually looks like Ou's "examples" - the rendering on my Macbook Pro looks tons better, and subpixel is turned on by default. Graphic and type designers make up a significant amount of the Apple user base, and if OS X's font rendering actually looked as bad as he claims, those users would be making a stink about it.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[KonoWatakushi]

Font rendering on the Mac is great, and one of the primary reasons I stick with the platform. The article you cite is nonsense; if you examine the images, it is clear that sub-pixel rendering isn't even enabled for the Mac. (The pure greyscale font images make that plainly obvious...)

It may not be as readable with 4 point fonts, but that is a better compromise than poorly rendering all fonts.

Perhaps most importantly though, the Mac actually comes with good fonts. I don't know about the other languages, but the Japanese fonts in XP are horrendously bad.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[GaryPatterson]

Please.

George Ou is not a good person to quote as an authority on fonts. He's not a graphic designer and he happily uses the wrong information whenever it makes his point.

His examples of OS X font rendering are just poor. There's an update which shows something, but none of the images reflect the default font smoothing on OS X.

Nice troll though. You link to a Dvorak-wannabe, use his bile to spit on OS X and say how good your "humble" Linux box is. You've missed the chance to slap Windows though, so your troll is a bit weaker than it could've been.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[Trogre]

Oh good. Then please tell me how you did it. Every Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and iMac I have installed with Leopard (5+ so far) has had crappy font display. With sub-pixel hinting enabled it's always horribly blurry, on any monitor.

And it's apparently not just Ou and me who have noticed.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[Trogre]

Wow. I guess I struck a bit of a nerve there. I wasn't trolling at all - this is a real issue that people have complained to me, a system administrator, about.

If you want some further references, see my other comment in this thread.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[GaryPatterson]

Sorry for the over-reaction. It was late, I was tired and let some irritation creep through.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[Knara]

I also greatly prefer how Windows machines render fonts. The themes for OS X are really nice, but (not unlike Linux), eyestrain for me is much more pronounced with OS X than XP. This "Ou" guy is not out in left field on this, though I suspect its more a subjective preference than objective failing.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's apparently not just Ou and me who have noticed. But if you look at the poll at the end of Ou's article, you will notice that of almost 6,000 readers 66% prefer Mac OS's rendering. I know I do, by very far. I guess it's just a matter of taste (something Ou lacks, but that's another issue ;-).

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[vertigoCiel]

The Coding Horror article you linked too is pre-Leopard (and actually shows screen shots of Safari 3 on Windows), and the forum post is, well, a six-sentence forum post. Every Macbook, iMac, and Macbook Pro I've installed with Leopard (6+), the font rendering looks exactly the same as on Tiger. I've yet to see, in person or online, any evidence that Leopard has changed/broken font rendering.

If you see the Safari screenshot in the Coding Horror page you linked to as "horribly blurry" (personally, I like the way it looks), then you just prefer the way Windows renders text over OS X. Windows will adjust the text so that strong lines sync up with pixels and sub-pixels, while OS X will just render the text without shifting it around. This gives Windows' text a sharper-but-thinner look which some people prefer, and some don't. The drawback to this approach is that the shape of the text is often distorted, and the width and height of the text does not scale linearly (here's a good side-by-side comparison of Windows' text scaling to OS X's). On the Mac, where a lot of graphics-layout gets done, it's preferable to have consistently scaled text, even if some will think it's blurry, while Windows has made the opposite decision.

If you still maintain that Leopard has broken font rendering, then perhaps you could post some screenshots of it.

An Apple product every week of '08?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody pointed out last week a comment jobs made in his keynote about having released a product every week in 08 so far (at the time it was only two, the mac pros and the macbook air/appletv2/etc). they've kept this going to now (ipod touch/iphone refresh, pink nano, 10.5.2) and presumably they'll drop the iphone sdk next week. I'll be very eager to see how long they can drag this out for

Don't overwrite your Leopard copy of Terminal.app

[the JoshMeister]

Great tip, but make sure that you don't overwrite your Leopard copy of Terminal. When you copy the Tiger version, be sure to rename it from "Terminal.app" to something else like "Terminal (Tiger).app". If you don't do this, you could potentially have issues with future patches that are released for Terminal (bug fixes, security updates, etc.) and the installer will naturally look for the Leopard version and might cause problems if the Tiger version was there instead.

Promiscuous mode.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain to me why you can't put Airport Extremes into promiscuous mode? Is it a problem with the hardware or the OS?

Re:Promiscuous mode.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop sniffing out WiFi keys.

It's a 5th degree felony, and we are setting up HoneyPots.

Get a life.

Another OS X Update....

[Anonymous Coward]

...and another mutual masturbation session over an image of Steve Jobs for all the Apple Users.

Nothing to see here...

Just use iTerm

[daBass]

http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ - tabbed terminals! \o/

Not the same as what you did, but I find it extremely useful - often having multiple terminals, some to do work, so to tail -f log files.

Re:Just use iTerm

[bball99]

WoW! you just made life a *lot* easier for me!

thanks for the link to the nice term.app!

Hey !

[bytesex]

Hey ! Now that I'm in the company of macintosh fans; how do I make a quick-link/shortcut/menu-item on the desktop/menu/dock to connect to an SAMBA server anonymously ? I run Linux at home (with one central linux based NAS) but my wife has a macbook. I can easily configure my X-desktop to contain such links (one link opens a nautilus window to the right SAMBA path), but I cannot for the life of me find out how to make such a thing a one-click event on her machine. It wants you to take the full route of browsing through layers of network namespace and then you cannot make it accept that one doesn't need an account without expressly leaving options blank. Too much trouble for her - she hardly uses it. But I want her to use this storage because it gets backed up. Please mac-fans ? How ?

Re:Hey !

[Anonymous Coward]

off-topic, but write a shell script to do what you want. Then use automator to run the shell script. You probably want to use /sbin/mount_smbfs to do the actual mounting part.

Good luck

Re:Hey !

[GaryPatterson]

Now I've not done this specifically, but I do have a Dock shortcut for an Applescript that connects to my backup drive (an AFP share). I can't find the original code I used, but you should find something at http://www.macosxhints.com/ - they've got people who actually know stuff (ie not me) there.

Have a look here or here to start with.

Good luck.

Re:Hey !

[am 2k]

Connect to the share, press cmd-shift-c in a Finder window to get to the volumes view, then cmd-alt-drag the share to the desktop to create an alias (This alias can also be added to the dock). Kinda non-intuitive, but it works best.

Another option would be to write out the whole URL (smb://<ip>/<share>) in TextEdit, then select it and drag it to the desktop, creating a URL clip.

I'd advise against using mount_smbfs, since the Finder wouldn't know about this volume.

Re:Hey !

[bytesex]

Only the last approach works, but then it still requires authentication. And I don't want authentication - the server is in my house and I trust everyone in my house.

Re:Hey !

[bytesex]

I forgot to say: thanks.

Re:Hey !

[Anonymous Coward]

Connect to the share normally, but after typing in your name and password and before pressing OK to mount the share, check the box that says "Remember my password in my keychain".

Press command-option-C in a Finder window to get to the volumes view, then command-option-drag the share to the desktop to create an alias.

Since the name and password are stored in the keychain, clicking on the alias in the future will mount the share without asking for authentication.

MacBook Air USB peripherals

[nickovs]

Incidentally, 10.5.2 does contain drivers for both the USB Ethernet dongle available for the MacBook Air and also the USB-connected SuperDrive. The ethernet dongle works just fine (plugging it in prompts you to open the System Preferences to configure the new Ethernet port) but the SuperDrive does not. It seems that the SuperDrive device driver gets loaded but chooses not to fire up the rest of the Mass Storage device stack :-(

Re:MacBook Air USB peripherals

[Lucas.Langa]

I suppose you wrote this using another Mac (i.e. not MB Air). The superdrive for MacBook Air won't work with your hardware because the USB port in the MacBook Air is additionally powered.

MacBook Air USB Details

Re:MacBook Air USB peripherals

[Anonymous Coward]

Appleinsider indicates that's not the case: For some reason, Apple doesn't support the new SuperDrive on anything other than the Air. There's no obvious physical reason for this; our previous observation that Apple was using a higher powered bus to drive the SuperDrive turned out to be wrong. It uses the standard 500mA USB power, and when plugged into other Macs, it shows up as a recognized USB device (below, plugged into a MacBook Pro). Though their methodology for determining this is unclear.

Please the random systems seizures...

[Shivetya]

Damn if there is one thing I hate about Leopard is damn seizures the system has. I'll be fine and suddenly the system is locked up and the mouse is all flaky acting. About 15 to 30 seconds and its fine. It comes out of the blue. No data loss because of it, just inability to use the system.

Re:Please the random systems seizures...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I've had this once or twice, but only while using VLC. But it has fixed a similar issue where the mouse would go flaky for less than a second due to bogging the video card, so it could be related.

You actually can

[StarKruzr]

It's just unsupported.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

will tell Time Machine it can use all volumes visible to it, including network shares. I'm going to try this with sshfs tomorrow.

I have a hunch that it might have slow down the...

[arnoldo101]

Just downloaded the OS X 10.5.2 Leopard update. Apple says in includes loads of bug fixes, but I don't feel a real change. Actually, I have a hunch that it might have slow down the system. Did anyone feel the same? http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/6331/apple-releases-os-x-10-5-2-update

Mod Parent Up!

[GaryPatterson]

Can we mod the parent post +5 Lives In The Real World?

Is there a mod for that?

I mean, we may not like it in every single way, but it's the *real* world!

How about fixing Stacks?

[Jesus_666]

I'm annoyed to no end that the engineers at Apple managed to screw up Stacks. Again. Okay, so now we get a list view that sorta kinda works like it did in Tiger. That's a good thing. But unfortunately, the people developing Stacks apparently never heard of aliases and symbolic links. Yes, Stacks' list view doesn't resolve those, it just presents them as a clickable file. Thus, Stacks are marginally less useless than before but still mere fluff that just takes up space in the Dock without being of any actual value.

One would think that Apple's engineers haven't forgotten how to manage symbolic links and aliases since Tiger, but apparently they have.


Combine that with the "Num-Lock and Caps-Lock randomly get inverted at boot time" bug and 10.5.2 is pretty underwhelming.

Re:How about fixing Stacks?

[argent]

But unfortunately, the people developing Stacks apparently never heard of aliases and symbolic links. Yes, Stacks' list view doesn't resolve those, it just presents them as a clickable file.

Jesus, I use links in Tiger (and used them in Panther and Jaguar) for my "hot" applications dock item all the time.

Wunnerful.

Re:How about fixing Stacks?

[Jesus_666]

If the links point to app bndles, that will work. What doesn't work are links to regular directories; those will just be opened in Finder.

Re:How about fixing Stacks?

[argent]

That's how I use them, to point to directories containing the actual applications.

Brilliant.

Scratch that.

[Jesus_666]

Apparently someone at Apple also uses VMWare Fusion in a different Space - in 10.5.2 VMWare's progress bar now just causes the icon to bounce instead of forcing you to remain its Space.

hearhear!

[airdrummer]

all i want is the full path to be displayed in the titlebar;-}

VNC Server

[Anonymous Coward]

System Preferences > Sharing, Turn on Screen Sharing, click Computer Settings..., check VNC viewers may control screen with password, enter a password, click ok. Here's a picture: http://images.macfixit.com/images/ScreenSharingFigure2.jpg . If you don't like Apple's VNC server, there's also VINE, MacVNC and quite a few other 3rd party VNC servers.

Goatse!

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse!

Column resizer

[AlpineR]

Two other responders call you a liar, but I have the same problem in 10.4. Open Finder, go to List view, mouse over the divider between column headings. No resize icon until I click.

Wish you could open a folder from the dock

[Anonymous Coward]

The "folder" option only shows the icon as a folder. You still can't
place a folder in the dock and have it open in finder by clicking on it.

Re:Wish you could open a folder from the dock

[Jerry Rivers]

Right click and select "open."

Re:Wish you could open a folder from the dock

[Anonymous Coward]

Why so complicated? I want a single click option to do so. Why can't actually
opening the folder (which I imagine is what most people want anyway) be an option?

Re:Wish you could open a folder from the dock

[Jerry Rivers]

Click and hold and select "open". Presto, one click open.

Java

[Billly Gates]

Does Java work properly now?

I suppose its too late as I purchased a vista machine when my old laptop died. But the fact that Java had some serious problems and not even JOptionPane worked properly is why I did not pick a mac this time. JOptionPane is kind of important if you write Java based software.

Re:Java

[LionMage]

Does Java work properly now?

Are you serious, or are you just trolling? Could you explain what you mean by Java not "working properly"? Java works fine for me. IntelliJ IDEA is snappy and responsive, and I can be productive under Leopard.

If you're complaining about the lack of Java 6 when Leopard first shipped, you should know that Apple has subsequently released an early access Java 6 for Leopard users -- it's a free download from ADC. (There was on older beta of Java 6 which predates Leopard, but that beta has been superseded by the newest one.) Eventually, Java 6 will be released generally for all Leopard users.

But the fact that Java had some serious problems and not even JOptionPane worked properly is why I did not pick a mac this time. JOptionPane is kind of important if you write Java based software.

Actually, Apple's Java engineers modified the behavior of JOptionPane so that it is consistent with native apps on the operating system. Apple has Human Interface guidelines which should be followed, and JOptionPane's previous behavior actually broke those. This is actually documented here (see Radar #4858198). There's more commentary here on the JOptionPane issue (which apparently all started because of an "ill informed rant" on javalobby.org which I remember reading), as well as general performance issues; the author of the Symphonious article even starts with this nugget of goodness:

The rumors of Java 5 being horribly broken beyond all usability on Leopard are, quite frankly, bullshit. It's faster, has better integration with the OS, the Aqua L&F is significantly improved, it has full support for 64 bit and a huge raft of bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements.

The goal of the Aqua L&F for Java on OS X is to insure that Java applications look as close to "native" applications as possible. If you don't like the Aqua L&F and don't care about your Swing apps looking like they belong on your Mac, you can change the L&F to something other than the default (which is Aqua on OS X). It's about one line of Swing code to set this.

As the Symphonious article points out, the rendering pipeline has changed, so if you rely on the Quartz renderer, you need to request it specifically or your GUI may suffer.

Re:Java

[Billly Gates]

so java 6 is actually supported?

I just read this article http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t102936.html and of course read all the flames here on slashdot with Leapoard and java.

I was under the impression that Jobs preferred Coca and java 6 was never going to see the light of day.

Its true there are usage guidelines but I have been reading not even eclipse would run on leopard and no one cared.

If I am wrong let me know as I hate vista with a passion.

You're an idiot

[SuperBanana]

I administer an apple x server at work,

Xserve, running OS X Server.

Also, apple doesn't come with a standard VNC server, instead it uses VNC with some proprietary shit built in, so I had to install vine server to get a remote desktop.

MacOS X Server does in fact come with a standard VNC server. You need to enable it and set a password.

Oh wait, the X Serve doesn't play nice with a standard KVM

See one of my bug reports here.

Samba is not in OS X Server.

The three xServes I've worked on over the years on 2 different KVMs have worked just fine- in fact, better than the HP rackmount gear- this includes high-end Raritan stuff and low-end "iogear" stuff. Maybe you have a crappy KVM, or you haven't configured it properly.

Oh yeah, last but not least, the server crashes. It responds to pings, still responds to local terminal input, but anything that requires authentication is dead in the water. So that leaves mail, netbios, ssh, server admin, work group manager, etc etc all dead. I think the LDAP server is crapping out, but I haven't been able to prove it yet. I've had to hard boot the server half a dozen times in the last two weeks.

Then stop whining and fix the problem, chief. Wipe the box and reinstall with a restore (easy to do with Time Machine) and then if that doesn't work, call Apple and have the machine serviced.

Go pound sand

[adamruck]

Xserve, running OS X Server.

My Mistake. I don't have the apple naming conventions down yet.

MacOS X Server does in fact come with a standard VNC server. You need to enable it and set a password.

Incorrect.

http://www.realvnc.com/pipermail/vnc-list/2006-September/055897.html

I've read its possible to get it to work, but it doesn't work out of the box with a standard VNC client. That kind of goes against apples "it just works" philosophy.

The three xServes I've worked on over the years on 2 different KVMs have worked just fine- in fact, better than the HP rackmount gear- this includes high-end Raritan stuff and low-end "iogear" stuff. Maybe you have a crappy KVM, or you haven't configured it properly.

It's possible. On my KVM I have two lights for each computer, one for "is it present", and another for "this is the one selected". Attaching the XServe to my KVM does not make the first light activate, even though it should. I've tested this against known good working ports, with known good working cables...

Then stop whining and fix the problem, chief. Wipe the box and reinstall with a restore (easy to do with Time Machine) and then if that doesn't work, call Apple and have the machine serviced.

So your solution to software bugs is to reinstall the OS? It sounds to me like you have spent too much time maintaining Windows machines.

Re:Go pound sand

[adamruck]

Oop's I should have previewed, I screwed up some of the html tags.

Re:Go pound sand

[SuperBanana]

I've read its possible to get it to work, but it doesn't work out of the box with a standard VNC client.

You're still completely wrong. GO INTO THE PREFERENCES. ENABLE VNC. ENTER A PASSWORD. CONNECT WITH A VNC CLIENT. WOW. LOOK AT THAT, PRESTO AMAZO.

It has been that way for *YEARS*. The post you're linking to refers to the *APPLE RDC PROTOCOL*. *****NOT APPLE'S VNC SERVER*****.

So your solution to software bugs is to reinstall the OS? It sounds to me like you have spent too much time maintaining Windows machines.

No, jackass. You're not qualified/experienced enough to do advanced troubleshooting, so it's a waste of your employer's time to have you spend hours futzing around on Google- especially since such a problem is extremely uncommon. If it's corrupted software, it'll be fixed with a reinstall, and restoring from Time Machine is quick and painless. If it's bad hardware, it'll still show up on a fresh install. If you try to get the machine serviced, Apple's first question will be, "so did you reinstall the OS from scratch?".

Maybe stupid college kids like yourself would be wise to listen to people who have not only been in your shoes, but spent 10 years getting wiser. Start reinstalling today, and the problem has a 50% chance of being fixed by 5pm. Keep going at your "whine on the intertubes" strategy, and you'll have a 100% chance of it still being broken.

PS:Ubuntu sucks. Everyone we upgraded had massive problems with network cards, graphics adapters, and printer issues. Not a single 10.3, 10.4, or 10.5 upgrade I have performed has gone sour, and I've done *hundreds.*

Dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I am really amazed at how stupid and ignorant some Mac users can be. Looking down your list reveals the wishes of a person who simply doesn't understand the brilliant design choices Apple has made. Seriously, stuff like the NeXT Shelf and staggered icons were removed for a REASON, and instead of bitching and moaning about them, perhaps you should just spend 5 damned minutes learning the proper way to do things that Apple spent so much time and effort figuring out for us.

Re:Dumbass.

[argent]

Sometimes I am really amazed at how stupid and ignorant some Mac users can be.

I know what you mean. The ones who assume that every decision that Apple makes (even the ones they later back down on) are perfect, and call people who actually have experience with more than just Apple's software "dumbass" are the absolute worst.

(Your post was a parody, right? Right?)

Oblig

[davesays]

Oblig "Don't call me Shirley..."

Airport improvements, my ass

[MBTA3247]

AirPort

* Improves connection reliability and stability
If by "improves", you mean "renders Airport unable to see the router sitting three feet away", then sure. I spent two hours today rolling back to 10.5.1 so I could regain my wireless capabilities. I'll wait for 10.5.3 before updating again, thanks.

No Preview Copy/Paste Fix

[Jerry Talton]

In Tiger, you could copy a section of a PDF and paste it into (for example) a Keynote presentation or a new (cropped) PDF document. Leopard somehow totally screws this up: try to copy a section of a PDF and you get the entire page instead.

Incredibly disappointing that this update didn't fix this. At the very least, I wish Apple would acknowledge the problem: it's a huge, huge bug for those of us who write papers or make lots of presentations.

THEMING for god sake

[plasmacutter]

Apple intentionally destroyed the ability to theme in leopard by radically changing the UI rendering system and refusing to release a relevant api.

this, along with the lack of options to turn off the safari/'downloaded app' nag screens and the removal of split term view, is a slap in the face to advanced users.

for god sake apple, even windows me had better theming support than leopard offers. At least make an API available to let third party devs offer theming tools, especially considering leopard is by far the UGLIEST os since os9.x If I want uniform grey i'll move back to detroit!

Re:THEMING for god sake

[Ilgaz]

Apple intentionally destroyed the ability to theme in leopard by radically changing the UI rendering system and refusing to release a relevant api.

this, along with the lack of options to turn off the safari/'downloaded app' nag screens and the removal of split term view, is a slap in the face to advanced users.

for god sake apple, even windows me had better theming support than leopard offers. At least make an API available to let third party devs offer theming tools, especially considering leopard is by far the UGLIEST os since os9.x If I want uniform grey i'll move back to detroit! Someone on Versiontracker called it "Ex Soviet block style" ;)

Well, they say Unsanity will ship APE for Leopard one day as well as Shapeshifter. So here comes the days of getting blamed for every single crash because you have dared to change your "Steve Jobs says it looks cool" look.

So, face the reality, Apple doesn't like people changing how their OS X looks. It looks like a PR or almost political thing rather than a technical issue. As result, you hack your dynamic library loader. Every idiotic developer who doesn't have a clue about "threads" will blame you for it. You will still have chance to disable APE and reproduce same crash to developers face.

All this because some suit at Apple doesn't like idea of unique OS X widgets. Funny is, they don't know the Apple history enough. It was always the same deal. Apple locks UI, some developer finds a way to change UI (Kaleidoscope), people download it enough to make it top download. Same people get blamed for hacking their UI in case a problem occurs.

Perhaps some should code a hardcore hack such as backing up OS files, replacing them with new ones for theme change. It _is not_ safe. It has never been. That is why APE exists or Kaleidoscope existed on pre OS X.

Windows 95 "Plus!" introduced the themes to Windows 95. Poor thing could change colour scheme, couple of icons, mouse pointer and wallpaper but it was Windows 95. The most advanced desktop UI on planet can't change a single colour scheme without getting hacked. Not funny even.

Can you elaborate on that?

[argent]

99% of the really annoying stuff in Finder was indeed fixed in 10.5

What, in particular, are you thinking of?

The most annoying features of Finder for me, in Tiger, are:

* No plain file name search - search always goes through spotlight, which means it misses files that spotlight doesn't like and finds erroneous files when I'm looking for a file by name. Forgot that in my original list. Bummer.
* Limited information about selected files and folders. "1 of 32 selected, 16 GB available" is nice, but I frequently want to know the total size of the selected files... more frequently than I want to know the free space on the drive.
* No way to eliminate the sidebar without going to the silly pseudo-spacial view.
* Icons pile up in the lower right corner of the desktop, even when there's plenty of room elsewhere.

Have they been fixed?

No?

What actually *has* been fixed in Finder in Leopard? Quick View is a new feature, not a fix, and the fact that it does an even worse job of tracking the current view of folders is definitely not a fix. So what am I missing?

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[NMerriam]

What, in particular, are you thinking of?

Wel, the major issues (manifesting themselves in a myriad of ways) were the problems with network connections.

In addition, they eliminated numerous file management issues (not being able to operate on one file because another file in the same directory is being operated on, spurious error messages due to other activity, etc).

Essentially it was an extensive retooling of the Finder to make more things operate on separate threads and not be as dependent on each other.

The things you're complaining about aren't, quite frankly, issues, just preferences. Numerous actual performance and data problems have been fixed. I certainly wouldn't expect Apple to "fix" being able to get rid of the sidebar other than the way it currently works, because they expect you to use it, or use the bastardized spacial view. I wouldn't expect them to make moving desktop icons around a high priority when there already exists an option to keep them arranged automatically. In dozens of threads about FTFF, I'd never even heard this mentioned before now.

I agree that getting more information on selected items would be great -- they seem to be slowly adding more along those lines to the Finder (the path bar, for example). In the meantime, you can command-option-i to get the collective information on selected objects. Certainly less convenient than putting it in the status bar, but hardly the sort of thing people have been bitching at Apple to fix the Finder about.

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[argent]

The things you're complaining about aren't, quite frankly, issues, just preferences.

They're broken. You can't move a file from one folder to another without having both folders open. You used to be able to, by putting them on the desktop, but the desktop isn't the desktop any more, it's just a folder in your home directory, so putting stuff on the desktop makes an extra copy of it.

Automatically arranging desktop icons? You can do that, but that wrecks the spacial finder even more... and it's their AUTOMATIC placement of new icons that's broken in any case.

In the meantime, you can command-option-i

Ah, another magic secret option key sequence that you JUST HAVE TO KNOW.

Numerous actual performance and data problems have been fixed.

They've made it faster and less crashy, but they haven't done anything about the broken design, and they've broken the design in new ways.

No, I don't expect Apple to fix broken designs. I expect them to come up with some new passive-aggressive hack to let you do what you used to be able to do automatically.

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[NMerriam]

They're broken. You can't move a file from one folder to another without having both folders open. You used to be able to, by putting them on the desktop, but the desktop isn't the desktop any more, it's just a folder in your home directory, so putting stuff on the desktop makes an extra copy of it.

Again, not broken, just not your preference for what the desktop should represent. If you want to place aliases instead of actual files on your desktop, go ahead. If you want to use your desktop as an intermediate storage space for moving files, go ahead. If you want to move files without opening two windows, there are a number of ways to accomplish it, including spring-loaded folders, aliases, the sidebar, etc.

Things changed from Classic to Mac OS X, and they aren't going to change back, so you better get used to it or move to a different OS, because they're mostly working as intended. You and John Siracusa can play all day on your Quadras under System 7, Apple isn't going to "fix" any of the "problems" with the "broken design" that most people don't think are broken and are working as Apple intended. The spatial Finder isn't coming back, applications aren't going to rely on creator codes in the resource fork, and the desktop is a folder.

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[argent]

Again, not broken, just not your preference for what the desktop should represent.

And what it represented in pre Mac OS, and what the Dock represented in NeXTstep.

If you want to place aliases instead of actual files on your desktop, go ahead.

Huh?

If you want to use your desktop as an intermediate storage space for moving files, go ahead.

Huh?

I don't think you actually understand what I wrote. I didn't say anything about aliases and I've made the point EXPLICITLY that there IS NO INTERMEDIATE STORAGE involved.

The spatial Finder isn't coming back, applications aren't going to rely on creator codes in the resource fork, and the desktop is a folder.

I'm not expecting any of that to happen, but if they don't provide equivalent capabilities (and they haven't) that's a "bug", not a "preference".

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[NMerriam]

I don't think you actually understand what I wrote. I didn't say anything about aliases and I've made the point EXPLICITLY that there IS NO INTERMEDIATE STORAGE involved.

place alias of folder on desktop. Drag file onto alias, congratulations, you've just moved the file to the folder you aliased without intermediate storage or two finder windows. Welcome to the cutting edge of 1991. if you learn about your OS every decade or so, you'll find that they create better ways to do things than existed in the days of 8-bit processors.

if they don't provide equivalent capabilities (and they haven't) that's a "bug", not a "preference"

yeah, good luck raging against that machine. I filed a bug report with Microsoft that they no longer support QEMM386 in Windows Vista. Until they provide equivalent capabilities, I'm considering it a bug. I have a bunch of RLL drives and ADB keyboards that Apple is not supporting, that's clearly a bug.

The provide plenty of ways to move files from one place to another. Of the more than a dozen different ways to accomplish that task, you personally prefer the method that was eliminated a decade ago when they realized that it was no longer necessary to provide workarounds for moving files from one floppy to another while only using a single floppy drive.

Re:Can you elaborate on that?

[argent]

place alias of folder on desktop.

That doesn't solve the same problem, it's equivalent to opening the destination window first... it doesn't help when you're updating a large number of folders infrequently.

yeah, good luck raging against that machine.

When did I say I expected them to fix it?

Of the more than a dozen different ways to accomplish that task, you personally prefer the...

Learn to read. I've described at least three alternate mechanisms for the operation they do not provide, only one of which is the mechanism you're referring to (and which, by the way, has nothing to do with floppy drives... it was eliminated as a result of an implementation decision porting Finder to Rhapsody), and none of which are equivalent to the alternatives you keep coming up with.

I admin OSX Server as well

[theolein]

I haven't had any of the problems you've had, since it actually does come with VNC, so your problem must be elsewhere with remote admin, and anything more complex than the simple setups of any of the tools can be done via the command line (all of this is in Apple's documentation. Every Gui tool has a command line backend which is more powerful and flexible than the GUI. Just calm down and read the manuals. I'm sure you'll find a solution to your problems.

I also have to admin Linux machines and they also have a learning curve, just like any server does, even Win2k3.

I'll tell you what pisses me off...

[Anonymous Coward]

...about OS X that hasn't been addressed in this update.

- The ability to set a DEFAULT style for Terminal. You can choose a style for the first terminal window, but Command+W more windows, and they all have that same basic retina-burning tiny black text on white background style. Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea? Obviously that designer was a graphics person, and not a CLI monkey.

- Address bar in Finder. Still waiting on this. Command+G or whatever it is isn't good enough. Give us a field to type in a path.

- Have network mount aliases available... somewhere! Again, Command+whatever and typing in the IP addr and directory isn't good enough. Give me an alias that will mount my drive for me. Making an alias of a networked drive will just turn into a fucking question mark when it's unmounted and you want to mount it again.

- While I'm on the subject of networked drives, stop leaving .shit everywhere. .Trashes is cute, but when I delete something from a networked drive, I want it deleted. Not moved. Same goes for removeable USB drives and the like.

- Enable cut or bring back the NeXTSTEP Shelf. I couldn't give two shits if the Mac cut is different from the Windows cut. Having a greyed-out cut is stupid.

Since Finder seems to bastardize everything, I spent most of my time manipulating files from the terminal. So only that theme fix is necessary if you don't want to pull your thumb out.

Fucking hell. And people said XP was Fisher-Price.

Re:I'll tell you what pisses me off...

[stephentyrone]

I don't know what you've done to your terminal preferences, but on mine there's a little button at the bottom of the "Settings" pane that says "Default". If I click that, then new windows will open with the selected style. This has been in place since 10.5.0, at least.

Well..

[Stu Charlton]

While I have heard of a number of problems with the initial Leopard release (particularly with Adobe products), I do know a large number of people, myself included, found the release to be fantastic and largely bug-free.

My only problem was with Keychains; they renamed the default keychain to "login" and created a new one since my old one was named after my user account. That took around 5 minutes to fix (just rename my old one to "login").

I do agree the industry should strive for better, but I think you're overstating the relative number of problems with Leopard compared to other major operating system releases.

Macbook Pro keyboard issues still not fixed

[log0n]

The intermittent keyboard 'drops' still isn't fixed. To those unfamiliar, the problem is akin to the keyboard going into energy saver mode prematurely (however the rest of the laptop is still going). You have to hit a key once for the keyboard to turn back on before the keyboard starts working. Very frustrating if you're reading a page of comments on slashdot and hit the space bar to scroll down a page, and nothing happens. (you then have to hit it again now that the keyboard is 'woken up')

Re:Any New drivers in it for hardware that is not

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Also seems to have fixed a problem that some of us iMac users were having where the mouse would get jumpy when the video card was bogged down, such as when using Aperture or watching a video while switching between other windows etc.

Oooh, X-Lite works again!

[NoseyNick]

Everyone's favourite videophone works again. Hmmmm.

Baloney.

[Scareduck]

Tell that to my wife, who got furious when I updated her iTunes to a more recent version that omitted that functionality.

Re:Don't overwrite your Leopard copy of Terminal.a

[BlacKat]

I named mine vTerminal.app, and also edited the Info.plist file to change the bundle ID so the preferences would also save in a different location.

I also changed Visor to look for the renamed bundle ID so now I have a nice drop-down terminal I can use at the press of a key! :)

Too bad they still have not fixed the wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking unbelieveable. Even Billy Gates fixed the fucking windows wireless bullshit issues faster than this Steven!
Get offn that fat cock and fucking fix this shit you turtleneck wearing motherfucker!