Appletell

This is part two of a series. Read Part One here.

What I Hate About Windows

1) The Taskbar - Windows users will crow on and on about the taskbar’s superiority, but it is crap. It has no one purpose, rather it is a poorly implemented strip that serves as the main control point for the computer. The place where this becomes the biggest issue is if you hide it. You may just want more screen space, or to just hide the start menu, but you have no choice. Everything goes. Your list of programs, your minimized windows, system notifications, everything, is gone. Which brings me to my next gripe. Why would all my windows be displayed in huge buttons? I can understand it if my minimized windows were, but the maximized windows are already there. No need to have them in the taskbar. The argument is that its easy switching between windows, but I don’t find it easy to try to decipher between three Internet explorer windows, or three any windows. In the taskbar they all look the same and that doesn’t speed up the workflow at all.

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Though most seem to be happy with Mac OS X 10.5.2, a select few, Steve Jobs apparently included, aren’t. Mac OS X 10.5.3 is on the fast track to release, as yet another developer build was seeded over the weekend.

While 10.5.2 had widely publicized bugs it was fixing, 10.5.3 has but one: WiFi issues, most recently exemplified when New York schools halted Mac shipments due to the issue. Two other issues it is known to have fixed are shutdown hangs and system mode issues. The others are anybody guess. Or anybody’s guesses, as the list of bugs fixed by this update is apparently longer than 170. This specific build, 9D22, fixes 15, and has no known issues.

Update: After this writing was finished, Apple released Build 9D23, adding 8 more fixes. Once again, no known issues.

Given the rapid succession of build releases, the consensus is that 10.5.3 will be available by mid-May. Perhaps this will give way for 10.5.4 in June?

Have you had any 10.5.2 issues? Or would you just like them to leave well enough alone? Sound off below.

Via [World Of Apple]

What I hate about Mac

1) USB Devices Always Wake the Computer - If my computer is sleeping, and I unplug my iPod to go out, why does my computer wake up? Why, why, why? Same if I’m unplugging my display/USB hub to use my computer as a laptop. The computer should NOT wake up.

2) USB Drives Can’t Simply Be Unplugged - In a similar vein to the first one, I should be able to yank out my USB drive and go. Why do I have to eject the drive first? I don’t on Windows…

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After releasing an update to Lightroom last week, they are now pulling it from their website and asking users to downgrade.

There are three major bugs. The first is an error with EXIF time stamps. “There is an error in the EXIF time stamp update technology that causes Lightroom to believe that the files are out of sync with the correct time stamp as displayed in Lightroom.” says Adobe. Essentially, it seems that this bug would shift all of your time stamps, which could be wuite a huge pain to return to their previous state.

A Windows only error involves DNG conversion. In Lightroom, Adobe has included technology that ensures the data in a DNG file is unchanged from the time of conversion to DNG. “Unfortunately,” says Adobe, “when converting to DNG using Lightroom 1.4 on Windows, the application will write an incorrect verification tag to describe the image data.” When Lightroom then tries to work with those files, it throws up an error because of it’s own mistake. Adobe recommends using the 1.3.1 converter to reconvert the DNGs if you have already done so with 1.4.

There is also a problem converting Olympus JPEG files in Lightroom 1.4

Users can download version 1.3.1 to downgrade to temporarily by following the link at the end of the article and using the download links there.

Read [Lightroom Journal]

Leopard is good. Very good. Super very good when compared to Vista. But it’s not without it’s flaws. It seems that Leopard is the main cause for Macbook and Macbook Pro keyboard problems. Appleinsider is reporting that many users are having problems with their Intel portable’s keyboard shutting down. This seems to happen at random times, and can only be solved by restarting the computer, or putting it to sleep, and waking it up again.

I for one have experienced this problem once on my new MacBook Pro. I was using 10.5.1, which is the latest current version of Leopard, and the keyboard randomly stopped working. Everything I typed had no effect. Keyboard shortcuts, volume control, everything. The rest of the computer though functioned fine. After a quick reboot however, I have never experienced it again. “I took my MacBook into the Apple Store today,” notes one MacBook owner. “I told [Apple’s Geniuses] about this thread and they basically dismissed the idea that it could have something to do with Leopard. [...] I think it’s strange that they don’t even want to listen to any ideas.” I hope Apple is working on addressing this internally, and will be released as a bug update via firmware, or part of 10.5.2.

Read [Appleinsider]

Everyone’s favorite FTP application, Transmit, received a nice update from the folks over at Panic.Version 3.6 is the largest update to the software in over 18 months, with the last release being 3.5.

The feature that stands out the most in this latest update is by far it’s new support for Amazon’s S3 service. That’s right, no longer is Transmit restricted to FTP, it can also upload and download files from Amazon, which has become a more widely used file storage tool in the last few months.

The update also includes a new “Copy URL” feature which allows you to copy a direct URL to your uploaded files if you’re connected to the remote server. This latest update also boasts oer 50 new fixes and improvements which can be viewed here.

Product [Panic] Via [TUAW]

There’s a new thread over at Apple’s Discussion Forums pertaining to bugs still present in the latest version of Keynote. Apparently, it will cause a Mac to suddenly reboot should a user press the “play” button or use the keyboard shortcut to start the presentation.

Despite being a fairly mature product that’s been in use at such great events like MacWorld and WWDC, it’s surprising to find such significant bugs lurking around. The problem seems to be isolated to MacBooks and iBooks right now; lets hope for a fix asap.

Read [Apple Discussion Forums]

Apple’s software is clearly not as safe as we think. When Safari was first introduced for Windows, bugs and exploits were discovered within the first few hours. It comes as no surprise that Symantec is now warning of an un-patched bag in Mac OS X’s implementation of Samba. Samba is the open-source application that permits file- and printer-sharing between Windows and other operating systems.

Despite being fixed by the Samba community, Apple has not packaged the patch to end users. Alfred Huger, vice president of engineering at Symantec said:"This is significant exposure for Mac OS X users. Samba is used in virtually every mixed environment where there are Macs and PCs, and the threat profile is much higher now that an exploit has been added to Metasploit.”

Symantec recommends users either shutdown Windows Sharing or try compiling the latest version of Samba manually until Apple fixes the problem formally.

Via [MacWorld UK]

What’s the first thing you did with your iPhone when you first got it? Showed it to your friends? Called your mother? Spent more than 40 hours looking for bugs? I am sure that not many of you did the last one, but that is exactly what Robert Kemp over at AppleHound did.

The first thing that Robert says when starting off his list is that the UI is extremely solid, and finding 68 bugs was quite difficult. Each bug has been tested on 2 iPhones and should be reproducible on any iPhone in use today. The severity of these bugs range from minor UI/interface bugs to full on application crashes. If you take a look in the comments you will also find even more than 68 bugs, though I’m not certain if each of the user-submitted bugs are reproducible.

The great thing about this post is that this guy could have come out and acted like a jerk. He could have went on about how 68 bugs in a “revolutionary device” is just unacceptable, but he didn’t. His post says that all bugs in his list have been submitted to Apple, so it is very likely that these will be resolved in future software updates.

Read [iPhone v1.0 Bugs]