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Inevitably, new iterations of an OS breed new bugs. Just as inevitably, Apple fixes the ones that are important to Apple. However, there is a class of bug that rarely gets attended to, bugs that persist over the lifetime of two or three versions of the OS.
For example, there's a bug in Apple's Java implementation that precludes the use of drag and drop in the UI that first appeared in 10.6. I have reported this via bug report.apple.com for 10.6, 10.7 and, now, 10.8. Apple sends me an email saying that it's a "known problem" and deletes the record of my report but nothing has changed in all this time. There are probably many manifestations of this issue but the one that impacts me is with the Java applet JFileUpload (http://www.jfileupload.com). We use this applet on a password protected server to enable faculty to easily upload audio, video, PDF and ePub files. Fortunately, there is a File menu that uses the somewhat unintuitive (to Mac users) GetFile interface that is at least functional. Windows users have no problems using the Java drag and drop UI.

flowney, on 10 August 2012 - 07:41 AM, said:

Java is now handled by Oracle.
http://jdk7.java.net/download.html

but yes, there are other areas that are Apple handled that haven't been fixed in several versions, or new changes (10.7.4 broke certain sync features that some programs used, and isn't likely to be fixed since it is deprecated, or the one introduced with Snow Leopard that is causing issues for video in screen savers like Save Hollywood)

You don't present any evidence - or even assert, other than in the title - that a bug in ML is responsible for Snapz Pro crashing.

On my iMac 2011 running Mountain Lion, every time my Time Capsule mounts on the desk top, if I invoke Dashboard, it won't work. Won't work using the Dock icon, won't work using Hot Corners, and won't work using Launch Pad. I must re-start my iMac in order for dashboard to work again.

If I don't use Dashboard while the Time Capsule is mounted, everything is fine. Major headache until I figured out what was causing Dashboard to "break" Now that I know, I just don't use Dashboard while Time Machine is mounted.

Ch1llP1ll, on 10 August 2012 - 08:36 AM, said:

I was wondering how long it would take before someone commented on this. As it turns out, not very long.

Yes, it would have been probably more accurate to say: "Two bugs that crash apps in Mountain Lion." I didn't think about this change until after I had submitted the article to be posted. After some thought, I decided the original headline was acceptable, as it could be interpreted to mean what I was intending. And it would be a minor hassle to request a last-second change. But, with hindsight, I agree it would have been better to make the change.

Various ML developer builds have been out for forever now. That Ambrosia hasn't stepped up to fix this for a $70 utility is an outrage. If this were freeware, or open source, OK. But this is expensive software.

It is also not compatible with the Retina display MBP which has been out for TWO MONTHS.

P

Snapz Pro X development has regularly been far behind the curve as compared to most apps.

I've been using SPX for many years and I'm very disappointed in this product.

It STILL does not support color profiles!!!!

LittleSnapper and the OS itself can do this... so why the h_ll can't Ambrosia.

Pathetic.

pubb, on 10 August 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

While I don't know about this particular case, sometimes Apple breaks things on the last iteration before release. It is entirely possible that Snapz Pro worked right up until the GM release of Mountain Lion. I don't think I can play devil's advocate on the Retina display issue though.

jdb8167, on 10 August 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

The Retina MacBook Pro issue is easy enough to understand: until ML came out, it was running a kludgy version of Lion as an interim measure. There's little point developing for an OS version that you know is going to disappear within a month. So, in reality, the Retina MacBook Pro has only been out for one month.

But that's not the end of the story: availability of the Retina MacBook Pro has been very poor until just recently. When it was announced, many people were being told they wouldn't receive it until this month! How is someone supposed to test and debug software on a computer they do not have, or have only just received?

As for the crash bug and KEXT problem in SPX: that may not necessarily be due to an ML bug, as such. It may simply be that the application was using an older API that has now been deleted. The audio subsystem does seem to have undergone a bit of an overhaul, so that could explain the KEXT issue. I don't know exactly how SPX is accessing the individual windows in OS X, but if they were using any hacks or workarounds to access them in older OS X releases, that could cause problems if those older APIs have now been removed.

Ambrosia Software is not a massive development house. They don't have hundreds of people working for them. It's just a small indie team who also have other applications to maintain and update. It's not really fair to expect them to be able to react quickly to major OS API changes within a few weeks and at least the other features still work. I'd be more irritated if SPX didn't work at all. I'm using it now for a technical authoring gig that also involves transferring the resulting screenshots to a certain Windows-only single-source technical authoring application running in a Parallels VM. Given how buggy and slow that application is, I'm inclined to cut Ambrosia a little slack. At least they're not charging me over a grand for an annual subscription!

For what it's worth, Adobe have also been caught with their pants down using an old API that was officially marked as deprecated way back in Snow Leopard! Given how much their apps cost, they really don't have any excuses.

Despite the fact that Mountain Lion looks like a relatively minor update to Lion on the outside, there are a lot of changes under the hood.

Interesting that MarsEdit and NNW, while maintained by different developers now, started as one program with a single developer.

Airplay Mirroring crashes - regularly. Cursor problems in Safari in zoomed fields. The fans in older MBP (Late '08) come on for the slightest reason now... *any* small video and they are spinning up. Momentary beachballs.

I found 2 bugs too. Create a sharing only account on a Mac. Use another Mac to connect AFP to that account and try to mount the user folder. The client will crashed (coz there is no user folder). Another is if you move out apps in launcher page 2 (if page 2 is empty), you will not see page 3 and beyond too even it is not empty.

There is another important bug: Its not possible to activate the small caps feature of opentype fonts via the typo panel in Pages 4.2.