[MW Forums]

Acknowledging that a computer that "just works" still produces its share of headaches, O'Reilly has published John Rizzo's "Mac Annoyances," which delves into many of the potential problems you might run into when using Mac OS X, the iLife applications, Microsoft Office, iTunes, Mail and more. Rizzo even tackles hardware issues and deals with such externals as Google searches and Web browsing. "Mac Annoyances" is 156 pages and sells for US$24.95. You can download a sample chapter, "iPod Annoyances," from the O'Reilly Web site. more

[Nobody]

I've been wanting to start a thread titled "The Good , the Bad and the Ugly" on this very subject but it is considered "off topic" by most moderators. It also gets tiresome fighting off the flamers who never quite read what is actually said before shouting "Deo, Ecclesiae, Patriae" and charging in defence of the Holy of Holies.
Any objectors have been thoroughly shouted down.
Unfortunately after 3 years of OSX there is plenty of annoyance left, and much of it seems here to stay.

[d00d]

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Unfortunately after 3 years of OSX there is plenty of annoyance left, and much of it seems here to stay.

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Everything has annoyances. OS 9 did. Windows does. Unix does. My car does. Heck, the socks I put on this morning do.
Sometimes annoyances can be explained by bugs, sometimes it's based on a difference between user expectation and actual design, and sometimes it's based on the lack of a feature that a user wants.
To be honest, this book looks to be a frequently asked questions book with a change of nomenclature (Annoyance instead of Question and The Fix instead of Answer).

[scotts13]

O'Reilly also publishes Karps Windows Annoyances. That, plus the many "Windows Annoyances" web pages, probably inspired the title. Personally, I think it's kind of funny that Annoyances.org deals exclusively with Windows woes.

[MacZilla]

There isn't enough web space on Macworld's servers to catalog the annoyances of OS X. After 4 years and 4 versions, it's still a work in progress, in some cases still not achieving the polish that OS 9 has.
1.) Finder performance. Still abysmal. Copying files, network performance, you name it. Slower than 9.
2.) iDisk. Garbage in, garbage out. Slow as slow can be.
3.) iTunes (and for that matter, the iPod) still can't play MP3 files without a slight pause
4.) Hacky Internet. No matter the Mac browser, video especially is hit and miss on the Mac.
5.) Virtual PC performance. Yes, I know this is not an Apple app, but the performance is hideous, and always has been in OS X. Virtual PC 4 on a 233mhz Bondi iMac running OS 9 is still 4 times faster than Virtual PC 7 running on a G5. It's because apps can hog the whole processor in 9 and can't in X. Very unfortunate for what is really a core app for a lot of people.
Do I love OS X? Yes. Can it get better? Yes, and I am hoping a lot of these areas will be improved in the 5th release next year, 10.4 Tiger.

[jmincey]

I think it's off base to complain about the performance of emulation software to any party but the developer of that software. The OS X kernel may come into play in regard to the performance of some other third-party apps, I grant you, but I would leave Virtual PC and other emulation software out of the annoyance list if I were you.

[MacZilla]

I hear what you're saying.
It's just so crucial to the platform. It's like back when Internet Explorer first came out for X, and the performance was so abysmal compared to IE on OS 9. Sure, on paper, it's Microsoft's problem, but who is being hurt the most?

[d00d]

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It's just so crucial to the platform. It's like back when Internet Explorer first came out for X, and the performance was so abysmal compared to IE on OS 9. Sure, on paper, it's Microsoft's problem, but who is being hurt the most?

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That's why I used Mozilla. Did you consider Safari the solution?

[MacZilla]

Well, at that time, no one considered Safari the solution, because it wasn't released until January of 2003.
Most people "in the know" spent 2002 using some Mozilla variant (Camino, etc.)
But back to the original point of all this. Apple should do all it can to the OS to help make Virtual PC work better, because it will sell Macs to switchers who need the reassurance of being able to run Windows. Based on the fact that neither Connectix and now Microsoft seem to be able to make any headway on OS X performance, there has to be something that can be done.

[d00d]

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Well, at that time, no one considered Safari the solution, because it wasn't released until January of 2003.

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But ultimately, that was the solution? Apple developing their own browser. So, any time a product for Macs doesn't perform up to user standards, Apple should make their own version? I can't agree with that. Sorry.

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But back to the original point of all this. Apple should do all it can to the OS to help make Virtual PC work better, because it will sell Macs to switchers who need the reassurance of being able to run Windows. Based on the fact that neither Connectix and now Microsoft seem to be able to make any headway on OS X performance, there has to be something that can be done.

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What exactly? Are you sure that Apple isn't working with Microsoft to make VirtualPC run faster? I think you're being a little pie in the sky about this.

[Steve_S]

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But ultimately, that was the solution? Apple developing their own browser. So, any time a product for Macs doesn't perform up to user standards, Apple should make their own version? I can't agree with that. Sorry.

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Just curious, what exactly do you recommend in these situations? Apple wants a best in class experience on the Mac. At the very least, it should be on par with the Windows equivalent. Now, when a developer (such as Microsoft) fails to deliver, what choice does Apple have? They can offer assistance to the developer that fails to deliver, but what message does this send? Apple would soon be put into a situation where it has to help all developers at some point with engineering man power. While I do think strong technical assistance should be made available, if third part developers aren't up to the task, then Apple has every right to step in and show them how it's done. Yes, there's often pain involved by doing this, but let's be honest, would you rather have Safari or Explorer (at least what MS was able to deliver for the Mac)? The same with Premiere vs. Final Cut Pro, etc. Really, it's a no brainer. Apple needs to be careful which market it enters, but when it does enter, it should do so in a strong way that sets the bar very high for competing products. In my opinion, things like Final Cut Pro, (and all of Apple's software for that matter) give the Mac platform a clear advantage over the Wintel platform that just wouldn't exist otherwise if it were left to third parties to fill in the gap. Apple chose key areas where Macs were to be regarded as first class citizens as opposed to third class and I applaud them for it.
Steve

[d00d]

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would you rather have Safari or Explorer (at least what MS was able to deliver for the Mac)?

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This argument completely ignores Gecko based browsers.
What I'm saying is that Apple needs to be extremely careful about what areas it might develop software for. There are several reasons for this.
1) They could start alienating third party developers (Watson/Sherlock, Konfabulator/Dashboard, etc.). Apple has been making great strides in attracting developers. They shouldn't retard their hard work in this area by alienating those same people.
2)It can be construed as monopolistic. Let's face it, Microsoft became what it is today by doing this very thing.
3) Instead of spurring up better competition, it kills it. Microsoft completely killed IE for Mac instead of fixing it.
Short run it seems good to the end user, but I think in the long run, it's a dangerous policy. There's a fine balance here and applying it to every situation would kill the platform. I'm still not entirely convinced that making Safari was necessary.

[KingKerry]

I think it's definitely unfair to blame the poor performance of emulation software on Apple when the emulation sofware is designed to emulate Microsofts OS. Especially when that same software itself is created by none other than Microsoft.
Whose interests do you think MS will serve. Those of the Mac users or those of the Windows users that run a wholly microsoft solution?

[Peter Cohen]

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the emulation sofware is designed to emulate Microsofts OS.

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Splitting hairs here, but the software is designed to emulate the hardware that runs Microsoft's operating system, not the operating system itself.
It may not be obvious, but Microsoft has a vested interest in making their virtual machine emulation technology run as quickly as possible, because they sell this software beyond just the Mac space. The core technology is also made available to companies that need to run software which, for whatever reason, have to run legacy applications that can't operate on newer hardware or newer operating system.