Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion - experience and bugs

After about a year of preparation, and six months of running Mountain Lion on my relatively new 11" Air, I upgraded my @2009 27" iMac from Snowie to ML.

 

I'll add to this post as I get more experience with the transition. For now, I'll list some early impressions, some bugs and what I did to transition.

 

Impressions

• I've had worse upgrades, and I'm glad I was able to skip Lion -- the closest Apple has come to a Vista-class OS X debacle.
• Mission Control and Full Screen are made for my 11" Air, but they're a bit awkward on my iMac. I might change my old and unloved "Magic Mouse" to Apple's Magic Pad. A lifehacker article helped with changes to Spaces, but this tip in comments is key: "You can assign applications to a space without any addons. Just right click on the item in the dock, and do Options > Assign To > This Desktop". Not all apps have this ML-specific feature; Aperture does but iTunes doesn't. [Turns out this is a bug, iTunes should have the option. See below.]

Preparation

• Ran Mountain Lion on a secondary machine for a few months. So I know I can adjust to the mouse direction inversion.
• Upgraded or abandoned a number of apps based on experiences with the Air prior to transition. FileMaker Pro and VMWare Fusion of course, but I looked at all the apps I use and either removed or upgraded them. Brought everything from App Store up to date that could run on Snow Leopard. Removed Rosetta apps (obsolete games for kids mostly). Removed Spanning Sync (no longer useful).
• Uninstalled all PreferencePanes.
• I should have removed all Login Items but forgot, created minor issues (below).
• Disk Utility Verify Disk.
• Uninstalled Citrix apps, my wife relies on that. I have a somewhat ML compatible version I'll install soon.
• Uninstalled Magic Prefs, an app I've used to make the Magic Mouse somewhat tolerable
• Attempted iCloud migration, that was a fiasco. I'm getting ready to retry with teeth firmly gritted.

Upgrade issues and bugs

• Ran into a known bug with Login Items (see below) - esp. “SpeechSynthesisServer.app".
• I had multiple failures with downloading Mountain Lion and a known bug with App Store "unknown error occurred" messages. (See below).
• I was unable to save the Mountain Lion installer. (below)
• When opened in it's Snow Leopard 'space-2' the iTunes Doc context menu was missing its 'Assign To' options. They were shown in other Spaces. I had to use those options in another Space to restore the menu in all Spaces. Looks like a bug with converting SL space-assignment prefs.

Known Login Item bug

 

This bug has hit a few people going from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Details below from an Apple Discussion thread I contributed to: 

The document...: Apple Support Communities

… The document SpeechSynthesisServer.app could not be opened because it is damaged or incomplete….

… I think this bug may hit people whose user accounts have gone through a few versions of OS X AND are going directly from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. In my case my user account started out with 10.2 - so it's picked up some cruft.

There are several items in my non-admin user Preferences:Users and Groups:User:Login Items that are not in my Admin account user including an item called SpeechSynthesisServer. It had a yellow warning triangle next to it and the data type was unrecognized.

I removed it from Login Items, logged out, logged in, and the bug was gone. The LoginIn item is referencing a system app, that app is still present post upgrade: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A /Frameworks/SpeechSynthesis.framework/Versions/A.

I suspect the app is still important. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING IN SYSTEM/LIBRARY. Just leave it alone iTunesHelper was also on the one user's LoginItems and I removed it.

I think there are a couple of bugs with the Login Item migration from SL to ML. For example, a disk image I mounted showed with a yellow icon too. I removed it, added it back in, and it was fine.

The known App Store "unknown error" bug and a probably App Store download bug

I was unable to successfully download the Mountain Lion Install from the App Store; two attempts failed with an App Stoer error message "An Unknown Error Occurred". I'd saved a copy from upgrading my Air, so I had to use that. During this process I ran into a bug with App Store error messages. I think there are two bugs here:

• If the "an unknown error occurred" error appears after a failed App Store download, it will prevent future downloads. The fix is to use App store menu item for logging into your account and click the button to reset app store warnings.
• I wonder if under some conditions a failed download can get "stuck" and block future downloads. I haven't yet down this, but I wonder if cleaning App Store caches would help [1].

Problem with saving the Mountain Lion Installer

 

i'm not sure if this is a bug or a change Apple made recently.

 

When I upgraded my Air from Lion to Mountain Lion from an Admin account the installers were initial saved to the Applications folder. If I quit the install procedure I could save it, then run install (original is deleted).

 

When I upgraded this iMac, starting from a User account I tried the same thing - quite the Installer. This time, however, it was not in Applications. After this my subsequent downloads failed with an "Unknown Error". So either Apple has changed procedures or there's a bug here. Probably both.

[1] from Apple Discussions, C Samit

… try deleting the cache, cookies, and preferences associated with the App Store. Quit the App Store if it's open. Now open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder Type or copy/paste: ~/LIbrary/Caches/com.apple.appstore Click Go then move the Cache.db file from the com.apple.appstore folder to the Trash. Type or copy/paste: ~/Library/Cookies Click Go then move the com.apple.appstore.plist file from the Cookies folder to the Trash. Type or copy/paste: ~/Library/Preferences Click Go then move the com.apple.appstore.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Trash.

Update:

After installing Mountain Lion I tried the App store download -- again using my User account. Again I canceled and it did not appear in my Applications folder. So either Apple has changed the download, or the trick for getting a local copy of ML only works for Admin accounts. This could be a permissions issue.

Also, I had to restart Google Earth so it would add its Login Item back.

Lastly, like all updates this one forces Spotlight to reindex. The combination of Time Machine/Capsule backup and Spotlight reindexing brings my system to a standstill. I recommend letting Spotlight finish before reenabling Time Machine.

Update 2: A major regression with Slideshows.

Mountain Lion includes many new slideshows, but only the "classic" supports dual monitors by showing different images on both displays. The new shows show the same image on multiple displays. That's bad enough, but Slideshow no longer supports nested folders (!). That's really stupid.

Updates

• Auto-correct is annoying and buggy - it causes my cursor to periodically vanish. I disabled it and I disabled auto-character substitution. i think this was causing Citrix issues. Needs to be disabled for every user.
• Spotlight activity can lockout user interaction. I've seen this in Lion too. This is bad enough to qualify as a bug.
• Sceensaver/slideshow CPU use is ridiculous. An app.net correspondent suggested they were embedding Rosetta to run PowerPC code. Seems plausible.
• So far Mountain Lion is substantially slower than Snow Leopard for many of the things I do on my 2009 machine. It's not intolerable, but I would have liked more optimizations.
• Apple has not updated the Airport Express 5.6 installer to run on Mountain Lion, it's needed to configure older devices. This is a sh*t. I used Pacifist to install the app and configure the old express I use to for music.
• Front Row is gone. I didn't notice this since I didn't use it. Still, disappointing for many.
• Many users report power issues with Snow Leopard laptops.
• It is exceedingly annoying that Save dialogs default to iCloud.
• RSS support is gone from Mail.app. I expected that and didn't use Mail RSS, but an issue for some.
• You can turn off horizontal scrolling on the Magic Mouse. Almost worth the update by itself. Two finger double tap for Mission Control is essential. Mountain Lion makes my old Magic Mouse tolerable.
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Client is not officially supported in Lion or ML (must be end-of-life)
• I thought ML was doing better than SL as a print server, but then my Brother HL-2140 printer stopped working. A search turned up a range of printer dysfunctions in ML. Truly, the CUPS experiment was a failure.

Excel 2007 and 2010 can save multicolumn sort order criteria - but only for tables

The sort order amnesia of Excel 2007 was one of the odder regressions in the history of Microsoft Office. After decades of remembering the last set of sort criteria, Excel forgot them.

Sometimes, if you had a data range with headers and no gaps, and if you clicked on a header in the table, the sort order seemed to stay with the header.

Maybe.

Apparently this is true for Excel 2010. Microsoft documents this (emphases mine):

Sort criteria are saved with the workbook so that you can reapply the sort each time that you open the workbook for an Excel table, but not for a range of cells. If you want to save sort criteria so that you can periodically reapply a sort when you open a workbook, then it's a good idea to use a table. This is especially important for multicolumn sorts or for sorts that take a long time to create.

Tables are more special in 2007 than in prior versions of Excel. I found a description of how to do this in an otherwise obscure forum (maybe a splog?) by dFrank:

Why Excel 2007 doesn't save ... Data -> Sort ... settings?: 

It is amazing, but why such a simple question take ages to resolve? 

Why Microsoft didn't put a huge warning label that SORT ORDER in EXCEL 2007 is now behaves completely different from previous versions. 

For years now, I was under impression that is it just a bug, and nothing can be done about it. 

Finally, some super-small font on some supper-obscure web site whispers that you only can save sort on a table, but on on a range. 

What the h*** is a table. A table is LIST in previous Excel versions. Never heard of it. But we do not need to know about this. Let's just go thorgh the steps:
-01- Select a range of cells just a bunch of columns and convert it to table (Ctrl T);
-02- Remove annoying unneeded table formatting (Design --> Table Style --> Clear);
-03- Remove filters (Data - Filter);
-04- Apply a sort. 

Next time you are in the file, your sort is finally preserved.

In my limited testing I don't think you need to remove data filters, they are compatible with tables.

Crashy apps on iOS 6?

Several of my long used 3rd party productivity apps are less stable on iOS 6.01/iPhone 5 than they were on iOS 5/iPhone 4S. I've note seen this mentioned elsewhere, so perhaps it's a coincidental problem in several of the apps I use.

The apps are still usable, it's primarily an annoyance. I'm restarting the phone more frequently to see if that helps.

Sharing for what it's worth. I also asked on app.net.

iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 - upgrade experience with corporate Exchange security settings

I bought an iPhone 5 because I was out of contract, but for work reasons a cheap iPhone pay-go plan wasn't an option. That meant all of my fees were going to AT&T, instead of paying off half a new phone. On the other hand, if I bought a $700+ contract phone for $300 down then my 4S could go to my daughter and spare me the cost of an iPod Touch while serving as a reserve phone in case I lose the 5.

 

So I got the standard white 32GB. Very soon I'll get a 2nd cable then wait for the 3rd party adapters to arrive, pick up a cheap case and look for a good one in a month or two.

 

This post isn't about that however, and it's not about how light and thin it is, or the silly address book that can't be searched by source, or the over-saturated Calendar colors, or the cable, or the maps, or the Podcast app from Hell. it's about how the upgrade works when you go from one corporate Exchange Server authenticated device to a new one.

 

The corporate authentication process changes the way the phone works and it may make a backup/restore trickier. Among other things that are mandated (I can't change):

• The phone will wipe with 10 pw errors
• It auto-locks at 5 minutes (so many bicycling apps don't work well any more)
• Mandatory 6 digit passcode.

To add an extra annoyance, post phone update I have to wait a few days for the company to reauthenticate the new device. I can't complain though, they pay much of my bill.

 

I picked up the phone at the AT&T store so I wouldn't have to worry about home delivery; they activated it at 6.0 and I started the corporate account process. That locked down the phone, which is perhaps why the next step didn't work.

 

After I updated the 5 to 6.01 (among other bugs, 6.0 messes up some Outlook appointments) it showed in iTunes as 'iPhone'. Then I attempted a restore from my 4S -- but it stopped at a partial restore.

 

So I wiped it completely then tried again. Since my 4S backup was encrypted I expected it to store and restore my credentials. It worked with some quirks.

 

The restore had two phases. In Phase I it requested my iCloud account credentials (not same as my store credentials) and I had to set a "secure" 6 digit PIN. Then the phone restarted and went into Phase II, restoring about 150 apps, etc. This took about 2 hours.

 

The restore went pretty well, except for Reeder.app! As usual I had to reenter all my credentials. I think this is a Reeder.app bug, no matter what I do I seem to always have to start over. I also had to redo Google's barely functional and almost forgotten multi-calendar ActiveSync configuration via http://m.google.com/sync (from iPhone) but I expected that. It hasn't been updated in years, and it's awkward and all-bug-forgotten, but it still works. That meant I had to do my calendar color assignments too; fortunately I wrote down the rules I use to assign colors across the 13 calendars I currently sync.

 

It could have been worse.

 

PS. In my haste I swapped digits when I set my new passcode (twice). I got through 6 of my 10 tries before I made a wild-guess at what I did wrong and got in. I almost had to wipe the phone and start over again. Be careful!

Supporting old iPhones: Keep a local copy of older apps

It's not hard to keep an old computer running well -- just don't update. 

That's harder to do for old iPhones, especially for a family where every phone syncs with one instance of iTunes (and thus all share apps, movies and the like). If I accept all updates I find that perfectly good apps no longer work on old phones -- even the still Apple supported 3GS.

So I've copied all 1.7GB of apps from iTunes Music\Mobile Applications to a local store. When a valued app stops working on an old phone, I can delete the update and restore the older version. Going forward I'll accept the updates, and if something breaks I'll evaluate a reversion.

I wonder how this works for users who sync to the Cloud.

Retrospect Professional for Windows 7.7 bug: recreate backup set workaround

Dantz barely sells Retrospect: for Windows, and the version I use (EMC) is obsolete, so this bug workaround will probably go unused. Still, if you're the one desperate person ...

The normal function for recreating a Backup Set Catalog File (essential!) is broken. After clicking Recreate "to build a replacement Catalog File from the Backup Set's media" and choosing File Backup Set medium you get the open catalog dialog. Which, of course, does not exist.

The workaround is to choose Tools:Repair Catalog then select Recreate from disks (even though you are recreating from Files, which in Retrospect is not the same as Disks) then All Disks then navigate to the folder holding your backup files. It will take a very long time, but it will recreate a catalog.

Brother printer: check drum life before ordering new printer cartridge

I've ordered 3 printer cartridges since I bought my Brother 2140 a bit over two years ago [2]. Yes, we still print. It's a kid thing. The toner light is on again [5], so I'm toner shopping.

I don't mind buying them, the printer is reasonably economical and, ever since I set it up with an Airport Express print server rather than using my Snow Leopard iMac it's been trouble free. the cartridges aren't cheap though, a new cartridge is a good fraction of the price a new printer with its low capacity "starter" cartridge. [1] So I like to check the drum life first.

I thought I could do that through Printer Setup or CUPS (http://localhost:631/admin/?ADVANCEDSETTINGS=YES) interface, but I couldn't get it to work. This did:

How Do I Run a Self Test on a Brother HL-5240 Printer? | eHow.com

You can print a 'Printer Settings' page by pressing the 'Go' button on the front of the printer three times within 2 seconds. This page will provide information about the printer, such as its' media access control (MAC) address."

From the Printer Settings page I see I've printed 10,152 pages and I'm on my "fourth" (third really, first was tiny [4]) toner cartridge and the drum has 13% remaining life. That suggests a low cost printer drum is good for about four cartridge replacements. The current alternative is the Brother HL-2270DW or HL-2240D; they use the TN-450 printer cartridge; my current printer uses the TN360.

I bet I can get one more cartridge out of the drug, so this time I'll get the high yield cartridge [4]. After this cartridge is done, I'll get a new printer. [3]

[1] When you price a printer, always add the price of a standard cartridge to the printer price.
[2] Some scummy vendors are selling obsolete printers for about $300 on Amazon. I'm surprised the sleazy side of Amazon doesn't get more attention. 
[3] My LaserWriter 360 lasted about ten years, but I think it costs about $1000 @ 1992.
[4] I think I accidentally bought the standard rather than high yield cartridge with my last purchase. 
[5] If you tape over the clear plastic portal used by the toner level sensor, you can keep printing. There are many web pages that describe how to do this. The trick is to put the tape on the toner cartridge, not the carrier. When I put it on the carrier I tend to forget, and then run out of toner. This way I order a new toner, and wait until printing fails before I replace it.