Reasons to wait for OS X Leopard 10.5.3

Rob Griffith has five reasons to install Leopard now and 5 reasons to wait. He works in the Mac business, so he's obliged to pretend it's an even proposition.

He's not trying too hard though. It's clear that the scale tips to waiting, and he didn't even mention the inevitable OS bugs that we're only starting to discover (see update 10/5/07). Indeed, reading his review, I'm thinking 10.5.3 sounds pretty good. That would probably be the summer of 2008.

I was familiar with most of his list, but surprised by some of the loss of customization he describes (emphases mine):

Macworld: Editors' Notes: Upgrade or not?

... More so than any other OS X release, OS X 10.5 controls the users’ ability to customize their environment. Consider many of the interface elements I’ve listed above. Given that some of these are polarizing features, it would be nice if users had control over them. But they don’t. Don’t like the 3-D dock? Sorry, you’re stuck with it, unless you move your dock to the side, where it morphs into a 2-D dock....

Want larger text in the Finder’s sidebar, because you’ve got a high-dot-pitch screen? Sorry, can’t do that. Do you prefer Tiger’s docked folder behavior over the new Stacks in OS X 10.5? Sorry, not an option. (Hint: if you like the old behavior better, check out DragThing, which lets you easily create hierarchical folders in docks.)

Want Time Machine backups to run more often or less often than hourly? Nope, not easily possible. Want to view more than the Name, Kind, and Date Modified columns in your Spotlight search results? You got it, not possible. Dislike the spacey 3-D interface on Time Machine, and wish you could have something without a flying star field? Get used to hyperspace, as it’s here to stay. Dislike the blue-gray folder icons? You can change them one at a time, as you could in previous OS X releases. But changing the default folders takes much more work and help from a third party. Mail has a cool new notes feature…but if you create a to-do out of something on that note, that entry is then highlighted in a garish orange color. Hopefully you’re a fan of garish orange, too, because you can’t change it. Want to change the size or typeface of the fonts in iChat’s Buddy List window? You got it—nope...

When 10.5 was delayed from Feb 2007 I was pretty darned sure it wasn't going to be ready until Feb 2008. When a project that big slips, it usually slips by at least a year. So I was very surprised when 10.5 shipped in October 2007 -- as predicted and to pretty good reviews. Apple's developers must have busted three guts to hit that date. I'm hoping the missing user options is a sign of smart engineers throwing everything non-essential overboard, rather than deluded product management. If it's indeed a measure of informed desperation we will see better user support by 10.5.3.

The inability to adjust font sizes particularly bothers me. Every year there are more decrepit boomers with crummier vision, and more LCDs with finer dot pitch. We need as much font adjustment as we can get. It looks like we're still at least a year away from resolution independent UIs in OS X, so Apple shouldn't be locking their font sizes.

I'll add yet another 10.5.3 motivator to the list. Tiger has long had marginal support for Windows file shares. The UI for specifying a workgroup is very obscure [1] and the SMB browser often fails [2]. OS X 10.5 was supposed to do much better, but in 10.5.0 it's about the same:

Special Report: Mac OS X Leopard Cross-Platform Issues:

Daniel Hoit:

"Samba based services are updated to reflect revisions to the open source Samba project in Leopard, and are not a step backwards. The addition of packet signing alone is a huge and welcome addition. As for the poster's complaints regarding WINS workgroup and Finder browsing, the options are still there in Leopard. You can configure the WINS information in System Preferences/Network/ Advanced/WINS section. Choose a workgroup, and choose a wins server if you have one on your network. The sidebar also has an 'All...' option that should be the equivalent of Tiger's 'Network' browsing option in the Finder. In my experience, network browsing has always been a little iffy. Its almost always been more reliable to access SMB servers through a command-K connect to server dialog, and then bookmark the server for easier access later. YMMV, but in the least Leopard doesn't downgrade anything in the SMB services area....

I'll probably have to upgrade FileMaker Pro 8 when I go to 10.5, so it's going to be an expensive proposition. The cost of updating older but perfectly functional apps is another reason to wait for 10.5.3.

Now I do really want the 10.5 screen control features, but I've noticed that nobody boasts about how fast and elegant this is, and nobody compares this to Microsoft's superb Remote Desktop Protocol. That tells me the performance is as crummy as every other VNC implementation I've seen. VNC is a joke compared to RDP [3]. So it's still going to be very good for maintaining my mother's Mac Mini, but it's not absolutely compelling (yet).

Now I think 10.5 will be a terrific OS, but 10.4.10 is pretty darned good. Unless Apple does something amazing with iPhone-specific features in 10.5 I'll keep moving my upgrade date further into 2008.

Footnotes.

[1] Utility:Directory Access application

[2] You have to hit Cmd-K in Finder and create an SMB shortcut: smb://abaton;jfaughnan@montreal/c$ is the shortcut for accessing my C: drive in Workgroup "abaton" machine "montreal" with username "jfaughnan" - keychain remembers the password but you can also add it cleartext in the shortcut.

[3] I think there's some relationship to Citrix code in there somewhere. Citrix/RDP are two areas in which the Windows world spanks OS X. Windows has some other advantages: speech recognition software and server virtualization. That's about the end of the Windows advantage list however.

Update 10/5/07: Speaking of bugs to be discovered:

In a quick test here at MacInTouch, we have confirmed a critical data-loss bug in Leopard's Finder.
In our test, we used Command-drag to move several large folders from a MacBook internal drive to an attached FireWire 800 external drive. While the folders were copying, we disconnected the FireWire cable. The folders disappeared from both drives...
This bug was documented by Tom Karpik...

Yep. 10.5.3.

Update 10/6/07: Macintouch has more details on the move bug. They'd found a similar bug in a version of OS X 10.1. Hmm. 10.5.4?

Removing the Adobe Acrobat Toolbar from Outlook

Adobe products are reasonably obnoxious bits of software. I've removed all traces of Adobe Acrobat from my Macs, but I use Acrobat extensively on my XP boxes. So I need to live with Adobe's insanely broken updater there, but the stupid Adobe toolbars drive me batty. It appears in odd places in Outlook and IE, eating up precious vertical space.

You can't use the Add-In control to eliminate this sucker, and Adobe obnoxiously refuses to respect the "toolbar off" setting. (Could be Microsoft's flaw too -- MSFT can't do toolbars.)

Here's how to remove it:

Removing the Acrobat Toolbar from Outlook

Tip: you can use this method to remove other toolbars, such as the Avery toolbar (AveryAddIn.Connect).
When you install Adobe Acrobat, a toolbar is added to Word and Outlook. This toolbar can prevent you from rearranging the toolbars in Outlook (your arrangement won't stick between restarts) and for most people, serves no useful purpose. You have two ways to deal with this...

The Add/Remove modify install option is the standard, but the article describes regisry edits that may work for other obnoxious products.

Python has Apple Events support - from Apple

AppleScript: Scripting Bridge is an Apple product for sending Apple Events from Python.

I wonder how Python compares to AppleScript now as an OS X scripting language. I certainly prefer Python's syntax and scoping rules.

Also, Apple has at last updated their AppleScript documentation site. It was about 8-10 years out of date until recently. I'd assumed Apple was giving up on AppleScript, perhaps replacing it with an Apple version of Python. They've obviously decided to make another go of AppleScript, but it will be interesting to see how well Python and Scripting Bridge work.

Update: Be sure to check out the comments on the historic third party support for Python Apple Events and the associated links.

Geek prn: Annual iPod and iPhone buyers' guide

I like the pictures.

Download Now: Our 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide

Mugr: searching for a missing person?

Looking for someone who's seemingly vanished?

It happens to families more often than one might imagine. Often the missing person is dead, but sometimes they've decided to take a very long walk.

One day soon you'll fire up a product like Mugr and let it work for a while.

There are a lot of images on the net.

Good and bad, of course.

XP shortcuts display path in NTFS Extended Attribute Comments

NTFS supports metadata for files that are stored in NTFS extended attributes. This includes Title and Comments. Sharepoint 2007 may read this data and use it, but I primarily use it as a modern version of the Dirnotes.com utility PC Magazine created for PC/MS-DOS in the 1980s. [1]

To display title and comments in file view RMClick on the explorer column title bar and select the attributes you want to see. Then set all folders to the same view.

There are some problems with these EAs. WinZip, at least by default in the version I have, doesn't zip them up. Some backup software will ignore them. The workflow for creating and editing them is very awkward (right click, properties, click tab, edit).

Today I discovered a feature however. If you view Favorites with comment enabled, you see the path to the original. That's handy.

Now if only someone would create a drag and drop utility such that if I dropped a Favorite on it I'd see the original pop up. Hmm. I wonder if there's a way to do this using ancient DOS Batch files ...

[1] Update 5/21/09: This may have unexpected consequences esp. on Windows 2003 server -- due to a very dark and old Microsoft hack.

Access 2007: It's really bad

I'm very unimpressed with Office 2007, but there are some good things. Word 2007, if you use the new lock-in proprietary never-extract-your-data nobody-can-read-it XML file format has some fixes to its primeval style and formatting problems. Excel 2007 is still Excel. Outlook 2007 fixes some ancient bugs (if you sort a category view it no longer breaks the view) and is only somewhat more sluggish than Outlook 2003. It might even work better with Sharepoint 2007. PowerPoint 2007 is as frozen in time as every version of PowerPoint since 1997 or so. [1]

And then there's Microsoft Access 2007.

I've been using this software intensively for months now, and it's really bad. We're switching back to Office 2003 and Access 2003. (Shades of everyone's Vista to XP regression, but we weren't dumb enough to do Vista.)

The way I use Access makes very heavy use of complex queries and some embedded functions with large data sets. In this domain Access 2007 added nothing of value and has some serious regressions. Access 2003, for example, had some ability to fix-up queries when column labels or even table names were revised. Access 2007 more often breaks the links and destroys the query builder view.

All the problems with Access 2003, like the fragility of links to external data sources (no relative links for example), remain. The only minor advantages are better handling of Sharepoint (SQL Server) 2007 exotic data types.

It's probably a bit slower too.

I've seen some regressions in my day, but Access 2007 is the biggest regression I've run into since WordPerfect bombed its Windows transition (with a bit of help from Microsoft of course).

Don't use this turkey.

[1] How could they not fix the "custom slide show" UI? PowerPoint source code must be seeded with antimatter mines.

Problems with made in China had drives?

The events of the last six months make it easy to believe that "made in China" is bad news for hard drives.

Data recovery firm sounds Mac hard drive damage alert | Reg Hardware

... Clarke blamed the problem what he described as 'poor quality control in Chinese hard drive factories' - an issue he maintained affects other hard drive makers in addition to Seagate. He also warned all hard drive buyers to avoid HDDs manufactured in China...

I buy it. I'd much prefer Thailand, Singapore, etc.

OX 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review

Mandatory reading for Apple geeks, all of whom will mentally underline one paragraph

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review: Page 4

...Why, Apple? Why!? Was there something horribly wrong with the existing menu bar—something that could only be fixed by injuring its legibility? Like the folder icons and the Dock, it's not so much a fatal flaw in and of itself. It's what it implies about the situation at Apple that is so troubling. What in the holy hell has to happen in a meeting for this idea to get the green light? Is this the dark side of Steve Jobs's iron-fisted rule—that there's always a risk that an obviously ridiculous and horrible idea will be expressed in his presence and he'll (inexplicably) latch onto it and make it happen? Ugh, I don't even want to think about it...

Jobs gets the blame for most of the horde of bizarre UI decisions. We can only hope, like the last minute Dock overhaul, that they'll be fixed -- maybe by 10.5.3.

Meanwhile even Apple enthusiast sites are suggesting anyone with a life should wait for 10.5.1. My friend Andrew, who is usually blessed by the OS gods, spent the weekend rebuilding his laptop post a 10.5.0 update and he grudgingly admits his core apps are significantly less stable under 10.5.0 than they were under 10.4.10.

Personally, I'm thinking more of 10.5.2 -- and I like 10.5.

Update: this is part of why I like 10.5:

...In the screenshot above, I've scaled the remote computer (a Mac running Tiger and Apple Remote Desktop) to an extreme degree, but it's still fully functional and surprisingly usable even at this tiny size. The preferences dialog in the front belongs to the Screen Sharing application, as does the toolbar with handy "Send to/from Clipboard" buttons on it.

The Screen Sharing application is hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices, but can be launched manually and used to connect to another computer if you know the IP address. You'll be prompted for a username and password, with the option to explicitly request permission to share the screen...

I was disappointed to read that 10.5 screen sharing was VNC based. This scaling stuff is not part of any VNC client I've tried (and none of them worked well on OS X anyway). Sounds like there's more to it.

WiTopia personalVPN

We all know that it's trivial to intercept unencrypted 802.11 wireless communications.

Happily most cafe net sessions are too boring to interest the average hacker, but there are always kids with too much time on their hands. So I'd been thinking for a while I needed a personal VPN solution.

Personal VPN also comes in handy if you ever have to deal with an overly aggressive "webwasher" type environment -- the encrypted communications goes through a remote proxy, so if the proxy isn't blocked (big if), and if the right ports are open (bigger if) then you can bypass the "washing".

I decided to do a 30 day trial of WiTopia personalVPN. I paid the $40 for the one year subscription, I have 30 days to get my money back. I picked them because Tidbits recommended them as an OS X friendly solution. Their web site is improving quickly, a week ago it was pretty confusing. There are basically two products you get when you sign up for the personal VPN:

• PPTP VPN: This is built into OS X, though in 10.4 it works through the peculiar "Internet Connect" application rather than the network preferences (where I looked for it). Easy to use, requires no additional software. This style of VPN is disdained by experts for some security issues, but of course it only has to be better than nothing -- which is what everyone else at the Hotspot is using. It's the old "park next to the better bicycle" theory.
• SSL VPN: This requires a client installation.

The SSL VPN is their core product, the PPTP is a bit of a freebie. This is what they say about it (the writing could use some work, they are confusing IPsec and SSL VPNs, I think they left out a sentence somewhere):

... With the widely praised openVPN™ software at its core, our service deploys a 128 bit encrypted SSL VPN using the powerful and efficient Blowfish™ cipher. Depending on other factors, higher levels of encryption may simply bog down your processor without providing the security you might think. Versus an SSL VPN, PPTP based VPNs have their limitations and have been shown to have vulnerabilities. IPsec VPNs are superior to PPTP but suffer from tremendous complexity that can affect reliability and security. [jf - this is where they need to say they took a 3rd approach -- SSL VPN]... 

Lastly, we set up our own Secure Certificate Authority and "sign" your unique public key during setup. The private key is never released and resides on our secure systems. These must match before the service will activate and no one can ever see your data without possessing both keys This adds a step in the setup process, and was additional work on our part, but is superior to static or shared key approaches. Beware of any VPN service that skips it. [jf: The certificate security means WiTopia has to create a custom install for each customer. So if you want to use SSL VPN on OS X and XP you have a problem.] ... 

personalVPN™ is not just a VPN service. It's an Internet privacy solution. Beyond encrypting all your data to our gateway, we exchange your IP address for one of ours. To everyone on the Internet you are an anonymous user whose traffic originates in our data center....

So far I'm sticking with the PPTP solution. It took only a minute to setup on OS X, though I had to run Help to figure out how to do it. I haven't tried the SSL VPN because I don't like installing this type of software if I can help it. It runs too close to the hardware and is often flaky.

Apple has built Open Document support into the OS

I wonder if Nisus will now be able to import and export OASIS Open Document files -- at least on 10.5:

Matt Legend Gemmell » Blog Archive » Get rid of your code with Leopard

...The text systems deals with OASIS Open Document files and ECMA Office Open XML files, and a newer version of Word files too, so you can add a few more Import and Export options to your app for free....

Nice to see ODF support at the OS level.

It's silly to install 10.5.0: exhibit 10

Honest, I'm going to stop posting these soon.

Please read: Information on events deleted from Google Calendar - Spanning Sync | Google Groups

...upon upgrading to Leopard and syncing for the first time, Apple Sync Services sends a 'delete' command for every event in every calendar being sunc...

OS X 10.5.0 is a big update. Only hobbyists and professionals should install it. Nobody else should install anything prior to 10.5.1. The truly wise will wait for 10.5.3.

The bad habits of two of my favorite OS X applications: They use Unsanity's Application Enhancer framework

Two of my favorite OS X applications are iPhoto Library Manager and AudioHijack pro.

Alas, both, I've recently discovered, use Unsanity's Application Enhance framework (APE) hack.

I don't recall either app ever providing "informed consent" of use of this hack -- though I think AudioHijack might have.

I still shiver when I remember the history of DOS TSRs (terminate and stay resident), and APE is the same sort of thing -- a way to hack applications that are already running [1]. The inevitable result of such hackery is that the applications become less stable [2].

A less obvious result of this kind of bad habit is that a major OS update can break big time:

Unsanity urges customers to make sure APE is current before upgrading to Leopard - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... has been the implication of Unsanity's Application Enhancer (APE) framework in some upgrade problems. APE has a long and sometimes controversial history, with some developers swearing BY it (Audio Hijack, for example, uses APE to enable the "Instant Hijack" functionality) and other developers swearing AT it (APE's ability to modify other applications at runtime, necessary to enable some tools, can also make app debugging more difficult)...

... Rosyna of Unsanity sent out an urgent email alert to mailing list subscribers (reproduced in whole below) recommending that APE be updated to the current version (2.03) prior to upgrading to Leopard, lest badness ensue...

The badness is that Leopard blue-screens on install. Archive and Install avoids the problem and that's what Apple is now advising blue-screen victims to do. It's what I prefer to do myself in any case.

One good thing about 10.5, even for those of us waiting for 10.5.1, is that it's going to kill APE. IPLM's author reported that he can do 99% of what he needs to do without hacking 10.5, and I think the same is true for AHP (Instant Hijack isn't essential).

I do wish they'd never used it to begin with.

[1] In the old days only one application could run at a time, so the TSR was simultaneously hacking the OS and the application. Excuse me while I try to forget.

[2] Incidentally, Microsoft's sanctioned Outlook plug-ins seems to have a rather similar effect on XP and Outlook stability!

Update 10/29/07: John Gruber has more details. Logitech's "control center" turns out to be a very bad APE offender. I still think it was a bad idea for IPLM to use an APE hack, but at least it was in a good cause -- getting around Apple's missing iPhoto functionality. Logitech had no excuse at all. Friends don't let friends buy Logitech.

Gmail won't let me email a zipped USB driver

I wanted to send someone a USB driver for an obsolete i500 phone. Gmail wouldn't let me! It said I couldn't send a zip containing an "executable file" for "security reasons".

Hmm. Maybe I really don't want to make Gmail my primary email environment!

I added an extension of .txt and Gmail let me send the email.

I don't like this.

OS X 10.5 Leopard: Cries of the Damned

Apple's Installation and Setup support forum for 10.5 (Leopard) now rings with the cries of the damned. The inevitable "wait for 10.5.1?" posts are appearing, but Apple is killing them within an hour of posting. (I tested this by commenting on one of them. It was gone an hour later).

This is not at all surprising. We see it even with only minor updates, much less a major OS transition. Apple is very secretive, and secrecy is the enemy of quality. Sure, the Vista update is much worse, but Apple controls the hardware and Microsoft doesn't. Given control of hardware Apple should have much smoother OS transitions, but the secrecy is lethal.

Most people will do fine. A number will lose all their data. They ought to scream, but I don't think Apple will change its ways.

Overall 10.5 looks to be a very promising update. Unless you're buying a new machine, an update like this is strictly for the foolish, the prepared geek (two backups, different methods, one a bootable image for quick restore), and those blessed by the Gods of Apple (Andrew).

I expect to be pretty happy with 10.5.1 and very happy with 10.5.4.

I wouldn't install 10.5.0 if you paid me.