Tag: Mac OS

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OS X unstability, Mavericks is just unfinished!

I am really really disapointed by Apple, and for more than just one reason. Here below is my list of  growing concerns with the company and especially how they molest OS X.

First of, when I have a stable running system, the last thing I want to hear is that there is availability of an upgraded OS version which, on top of providing new features, is correcting several security flaws which won’t be corrected on the current stable OS release!!!

Imagine a world where Microsoft would have stopped providing security updates to Windows XP the day Vista was out, even if it had been for free, would you have done the upgrade right away? No! You want to wait that the new OS gets stable enough (in Vista’s case that meant waiting for Windows 7) before you upgrade.

Well bad luck, Apple decided last October to provide OS X 10.9 (a.k.a Mavericks) to everyone without providing further supports (at least in terms of security updates) to previous OS X versions. Giving this upgrade for free was just the sweet juice to cover the bitter poison taste.

I analysed the vulnerabilities in our current OS X version and decided that I could wait for OS X 10.9.1 before upgrading, hoping that Apple would also see that stopping security updates on previous OS X versions was plain stupid. This did not happen and shortly after OS X 10.9.1 was published I did the jump and upgraded.

The upgrade was bug free, but not the use of OS X since then. For the past month we have been struggling with the following problems:

  • Impossibly slow to switch users (my wife and me are sharing the same and unique MacBook, so we do use quite often this feature)…
  • …when it does not simply hang in the process of switching!
  • The screen, mouse and keyboard freezes randomly, often this is related to the insertion of the Thunderbolt network adapter, other times it is out of the blue.
    Note: sometimes pulling out the Thunderbolt plug unfreezes the Mac, sometimes not.
  • Mail App crashes often or the geometry of the window keeps on changing to the weirdest form. I simply stopped using it.
  • Launchpad should support keyboard input to quickly filter the list of application, so that typing “Con” would propose you “Contacts”, “Console”, etc.. But since Mavericks this handy feature does not work everyday.
  • WiFi needs router reboot to get IP address after the computer was asleep. It is a bug from iOS that has been carefully ported to OS X. Now I can also enjoy router reboot because I just want to use the WiFi! Yeah!
  • App Store updates which get lost: I got notified that I had 1 possible updates, I fired up the App Store app and clicked on Update. I saw that Evernote had an update but then the computer froze. I waited 5 min after which I shutted down and restarted. The App Store shows no update to perform (even after search for them) but looking for Evernote shows that it can be updated! That’s a reliable update mechanism!

Giving upgrade for free is no excuse for the unstability and little testing that this OS X Mavericks has received. Take the example of Ubuntu and their Long Term Support release, that is serious work done and they also provide their upgrades for free!

So I really despise Apple for bragging so much about the 200 new features coming along with OS X Mavericks. Well I have seen a myriad of bugs, if they count as new features then yes they probably are not far from the 200 ones. But apart from an application which provides maps (where is the web version of it, I don’t want an app for that!), another one for reading books (like a MacBook is the most handy reading machine, sure!!) there are close to no visible features to the end-users. Ho yeah I forgot tags, like I am going to tag the 1 TiB of data I own just because I can!!!

Really Apple, stop wasting so much of your developers time into just providing what looks like a new skin for iOS 7+ and invest some valuable effort into bringing back OS X to the stable and professional OS it was!

Addendum – 2014-02-05: Today I tried to rate the OS X 10.9.1 application in the Mac App Store, my rate was one star, I clicked on it but got the following message “To rate this app, you must have purchased it from the Mac App Store”?!? Well it is true that I did not “buy” OS X 10.8, it was bundled with the laptop. So I only upgraded it to the “free” version from the Mac App Store using the Mac App Store.You can't give negative feedback ;-) So I did not technically buy it, true, but I own it! You can see a screenshot on the right-end side.

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Flash Player “Square” is out on preview for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 64bit

Adobe released yesterday a preview of Flash Player “Square”. It includes native 64bit support and IE9 hardware acceleration enhancement. Yes, you’ve got it! Adobe is again supporting a 64bit release of their plug-in and for all 3 platforms: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

I have updated my previous article on surfing the web in 64bit with the new details.

To get more information, jump to Adobe Labs.

Note: there is a free (libre) alternative to Adobe Flash product called Gnash, however it is still far from being stable enough on all web sites to be widely use. But anyway, it is a highly interesting project which have made recent huge improvements towards reliability and speed. You should try Gnash first and if it doesn’t work for you, then go for Adobe.

Update: Flash Player “Square” is now Flash Player 11, and there is a second beta released this August 2011.

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Testing DNS response time

Since Google released its Public DNS, I was curious about how it would really perform. Thus, I have looked around and I have found a script on the internet that I ran at home, here are the results:

+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| Domain           | My ISP | Google | OpenDNS|
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lifehacker.com   |  17 ms |  68 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| facebook.com     |  18 ms |  69 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| manu-j.com       |  19 ms |  79 ms |  70 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| reddit.com       |  58 ms |  88 ms |  66 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| tb4.fr           |  16 ms |  64 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| bbc.co.uk        |  55 ms |  65 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lemonde.fr       |  58 ms |  63 ms |  78 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| dailymotion.com  |  58 ms |  66 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| faz.de           |  57 ms |  65 ms |  99 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| gmx.de           |  56 ms |  62 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+

Google Public DNS and OpenDNS performed quite similarly. However, my own ISP is still quicker to respond, a possible answer is that Google DNS in Europe are located in Frankfurt, Germany.

N.B.: these tests were performed on a wireless link under Mac OS X Leopard in Toulouse, France. If you want to run the script on a Mac, you should change the first line of the script to #!/bin/bash

Update 2009.12.10:

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Re: Why I love Windows 7, hate Linux, and think the Mac is lame

Source: ZDNet.com | IT Project Failures

The article on ZDNet is about why Michael Krigsman (CEO of a IT consulting company) loves Windows 7, hates Linux and thinks the Mac is lame. The article is pretty short and gives 3 reasons to be satisfied by Windows 7, by presenting an old screenshot of Linux to present it in a miserable way and displaying a fake version of Apple Mac vs. PC advertisement. All a good laugh if it was not serious.

After reading Michael’s post, I cannot help but remember this: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

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Avahi – discovering services a network offers

Avahi - LemurAvahi is a protocol implementation that is using the Zeroconf protocol specification to discover services available (and advertised) on the network. Avahi really does simplifying the configuration and use of certain services that are supporting it.

The number of application integrating support for Avahi is everyday growing and you can even interoperate with client of other protocol implementation like Bonjour from Apple.

Of course, Avahi is integrated with Ubuntu and it is pretty easy to activate it.

In the Gnome main menu “System” -> “Administration”, there is an item called “Services”. Simply launch it and scroll down the list of services until you find Multicast DNS service discovery (avahi-daemon). Select it and close the application.

Application like Rhythmbox, Gaim/Pidgin, etc. will now be able to use this service. You can for example share your music on the local network. So, your siblings can access your music library and listen to it too. I will write a short article on it soon.

On some of my Ubuntu systems, I had to tweak a system file before it was working. Continue reading if you are in this case.

Continue reading “Avahi – discovering services a network offers”