I'm really beginning to hate Apple and their Mac App Store

I've been an Apple Macintosh user since 1993.  I'd been using various Atari computers and played with a IBM L40SX laptop computer for about two years when the PS/2 mouse port died.  At that point, the US$6000 laptop computer that I bought for roughly $1500 was too expensive to repair and the contract required a solution.  They gave me $1000 and asked me to give them the computer.  I agreed.  Windows 3.1 had been a royal pain and DOS, more of a pain.

I eagerly went to OfficeMax and bought a Mac Performa something or other.  In any case, it's been a long time and several machines.

Before the PowerPC years, they were stuck because Motorola couldn't deliver a more powerful processor than the 68040.  The System 7 operating system because Mac OS 8 after they couldn't figure out what they were doing and scrapped the real Mac OS 8.  Mac OS 8.5 was a substantial difference, as were 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2.  Unfortunately, the MultiFinder architecture for cooperative multi-tasking was ancient.  Steve Jobs' return with NeXTStep made a difference.  Thanks go to Ellen Hancock.

It has been a horribly bumpy road and as Mac OS X hit 10.3.4, it became good enough to forget dual-booting into Mac OS 9.2.2 forever.  Unfortunately, 10.4.10 was probably the last full quality release.  Sadly, Windows of the time wasn't good and Linux was only usable by people who enjoyed frustration.

As of Mac OS X 10.7, Apple started to bring the frustration and Windows 7 started to bring ease-of-use.  The whole Mac App Store and downloading the operating system was messed up and still is.  It's amazing how I can download system software smoothly but the applications from the Mac App Store are usually problematic in downloads.  Apple doesn't test for real life, apparently.  When I had contacted the Mac App Store support, it was a problem with two or three applications, with other applications working fine in the downloads between the problematic ones.  I was told that whatever problems I was having was my problem, not theirs.

My latest mid-2012 MacBook Pro is working on 10.9.5, even though it started on 10.7.  It wasn't easy to get there.  I was going to drop off my machine at the Apple Store to be updated to 10.10.5 but I waited a bit too long and they removed the option.

Unfortunately, all this mess with the Mac App Store has left me in a mess that I found today.  I can't open my spreadsheet files that the current version of Numbers has been updating.  Somehow, the files were somehow upgraded to a newer version than what I have, in a failed download from the Mac App Store just after I updated to 10.9.5.

I was trying to update my spreadsheet with serial numbers.  Now, I only have a .pdf version of it.  As well, my Pages files complained but they worked.

Now, I have a machine I don't trust much.  I'm wondering if anything else has gone wrong.  Thankfully (and hopefully), I'm limited to Apple's applications and their ridiculous application store.

Given that I recently picked up a Windows 10 machine, I'm thinking that Apple could lose my business.  I'm betting that Corel wants my money for office software, as well as, creative software.  Phase One already has Windows versions and besides, the newest version for Mac doesn't run on anything but the latest 10.11.x operating system.  I think my Apple Care plan has been finished, so I don't have any easy way to upgrade the operating system.

I'm not saying that the US$750 machine could replace my US$2300 machine for speed but functionality probably isn't a problem.

I never thought that I would say that any version of Windows was smoother than Mac OS X but it's pretty much the truth.  Windows 7 proved that Microsoft could make Windows get out of the way when you just wanted to work.  It wasn't foolproof but it was much better than all of the previous versions.

Windows 10 seems to greatly improve on that.  The Windows App Store works brilliantly well.  Being able to use touch-enabled displays is interesting and it works but it doesn't seem great yet.  Folding the laptop computer into different shapes works well enough, but it doesn't automatically switch enough automagically.  They'll probably get there.  They want the desktop back.  I might be willing after all these years.

Update 2015.12.30: I was trying to download Evernote several times--at least, 6, from the Purchases pages, since it wouldn't work from the Update page and I noticed a problem with Numbers--from last year after my computer was updated to 10.9.5.  It never completed while inside of the Apple Store on their network.

Having been at the car dealership for service today, I used their network, which isn't any faster than my mobile hotspot to update everything but it worked.  I know that I shouldn't trust open networks, but it worked, rather than my safe mobile hotspot.  I can access my spreadsheets again.  Apple needs to test in real-life situations, not just the best, easiest situations.

There are several versions of the iWork applications since then, and they show up in Incompatible Updates, along with the latest version (4.0.0) of Twitter.  How is it that they could be incompatible when they shouldn't be tied so closely to the operating system?  I'm remembering how Microsoft Office was using hidden APIs to make it faster than the competition and yet, the DoJ under George W Bush ignored this kind of thing and wanted to watch their accounting practices instead.

Apple seems to be just as back-handed some days.  Why should Safari updates require a restart when Chrome and Firefox updates don't.

In any case, the road is smoother but it will become bumpy again, I'm sure.

Update 2016.01.27: Since upgrading to 10.11.3, the Mac App Store seems somewhat better.  I'll wait to see how it handles non-Apple applications before saying that it's running smoothly, but I have hopes.

OK Google vs. Siri

In the late 1990s, I used my Mac Clone with Mac OS 8.5 and PlainTalk to dial the modem, get my e-mail, start my web browser, and keep me current without touching a keyboard or mouse each morning.

It seems as though we've gone backwards since Mac OS X and while I have a built-in microphone, I don't use it much.

Then came Siri, with all the canned advertising requests.  It seemed that Siri worked beautifully, if you asked it the correct questions.  As the service became available in Japanese, I tried it both in English and Japanese.  At the time, I thought that Mac OS 8.5 did a better job.

A few times, I've used OK Google with the Google app to show me relevant information and it's not always okay, but it usually understands me and finds what I want.

I was concerned about tornadoes tonight, as the sirens were screaming for a couple of minutes.  Siri didn't know where I was and wanted me to access privacy settings.  I re-stated the request with a zip code.  It told me that it didn't look as though there would be tornadoes today.  Oops, that wasn't what I wanted to know.

The question wasn't that difficult but I suppose it could have been slightly vague.  However, OK Google had given me results for several news articles related to the area a few minutes earlier.

I also asked both for the location of San Jose State University and I got various information from OK Google, and again I got "I don't know where you are." as Siri pointed me to privacy settings again.

I could understand if it had trouble with names, but I saw the text and it had written "San Jose State University" just fine.  Then, it cleared the display and told me about privacy settings.

I disabled Siri again.  I might try it in Japanese again.  There might not be as much confusion, except that I'm not in Japan now.  I just tried OK Google in Japanese.  You must tap the microphone icon, as the "OK Google" phrase does not seem to work, but the results were as impressive as they are in English.

Update 2013.11.26: I saw an announcement today that Honda/Acura have added Siri Eyes-Free to certain models, as Chevrolet did earlier.  I hope those users have more luck than I did.  It's certainly an interesting idea.  My 2012 VW Golf TDI has phone-related voice commands but I don't have navigation as part of the car, so I would imagine that would enhance the experience quite a lot.  Buick's voice control over music seems as childish as their advertising but it might be useful.  I sometimes wish Apple would implement voice search but it would have to deal with multiple languages and they're not ready for that.

Update 2013.12.08: I've been using voice search a bit on the Nexus 7 tablet.  Apple said that Siri required the iPhone 4s' special noise reduction chip and that the iPhone 4, with its more primitive technology from the same company couldn't do the job correctly.  Why is it then, that all these Android-based devices work so well?  I doubt Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro processor has such technology nor did my (now ancient) LG Optimus S.  Of course, Apple wants you to ditch the old and buy the new, but it's probably not just about the money, Apple's developers probably can't get things to work correctly.  There are occasions where OK Google doesn't work with certain names, even when I'm quite crisp with my enunciation.  However, it seems to work better some days with UK English selected instead of US English--my accent drifts quite a lot.  Using UK English tends to get results from the other side of the ocean, which isn't always helpful.

Update 2013.12.17: I've tried to use the new Chrome plug-in for searching by voice.  I couldn't stop laughing at the horrid results.  It rarely got any of the words correct, and I was using it on a rather powerful MacBook Pro with a 2.6 GHz i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and an SSD.  Imagine the results for a lower end machine with a 5400 rpm hard drive.

WWDC -- iOS 7 -- 1984 is back!!

I'm both shocked and amused at the visual changes to iOS with version 7.

The technical changes are of more interest to me, but I was rather shocked looking at the revisions to what is usually eye candy.  It feels as though the original Macintosh operating system interface has been given a renewed life.  Back in 1984, we had a white with black interface, but iOS 7 is getting a white with colour interface, for whatever reason.

After seeing it, I can say that it's not blue and it's not silver/brushed metal/whatever.  The huge emphasis on blue since the original Mac OS X public beta in 2000 drove me mad.  If you're going to use a colour, use one that I want.  i.e., make it flexible to my whim.  However, Apple only once was ready to give us that ability and they pulled it away from us after displaying it--Themes in Mac OS 8.x.

Monday's announcement and images show us something different.  They said that they ran out of green felt for Game Center.  Okay, we get it, you didn't like trying to mirror real life because it would only be a pale (or perhaps, over-saturated) comparison.

The variety of colour in the latest screenshots make me wonder if Apple will be supplying iPhone in multiple colours to match iPod touch.  What I've seen doesn't seem completely good with the current black or white phone bodies but might be considered sufficient with a variety of colours, and black and white.

I read that Apple put their marketing people in charge of the new icons somehow.  I thought that they either hired the laid-off Nokia artists who made the child-like icons for their phones prior to Windows Phone or Apple copied elementary school children's art work.  They've said that it's a work in progress.  The last time I remember knowing marketing people who were in charge, our product was named Computron 7000.  Never, ever let marketing people do anything unattended!

I'm not sure about the rest.  Control Center sounds good but how do they know what we need and will it be flexible?  I don't care for their calculator, so if it cannot be replaced, I'm probably going to go to mine.  I already have a flash light app, so I could go to that also.    My point is that Apple, in their desire to provide the best experience (and that's important) for the majority of the people, don't always get it right but they, and we have to live with their decisions.

I'm thrilled that they've figured out how to put more things in a folder 6 years later.  It feels a bit like they're making the same mistakes over and over and over again, from Apple II to Mac OS to Mac OS X to iOS.  It's good that they've re-worked Notifications.  I'm still getting notifications hours later, after I've seen them and dismissed them.  I may be assuming too much, but I'm guessing that iOS 6 will never be fixed.  I wonder if iOS 7 will just give us a new nightmare.

This might sound incredibly negative.  I'm actually pleased that they're making progress but adding things like multi-tasking for all apps, support for game sprites in 2D games, and an official set of APIs for physical game controllers.  I'm thinking that Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall stood in the way of functionality.  I'm with Steve Jobs that the customer should have a great experience, and the user interface needs to be honed, but without progress, you will find your competition winning at something you hold dear.

Update 2013.09.25: I've had iOS 7 on my phone since two days ago.  It really reminds me of the early Macintosh days when everything was white and black, but with a bit of color added.  Of course, flat means that graphics can be rendered more quickly than detailed, more 3D graphics can be.  Also, ending the fuzzy green card table look in Game Center or the leather-bound calendar or the notepaid with poor perforations helps to make things go more quickly.

The experience is better and will eventually be smooth once version 7.1 is out, but it looks like crap on my iPhone 4S.  It looks like the first release of software, not the seventh version.  The slide down notifications works a bit better and the slide up Control Center is somewhat convenient.  However, the grab and pull down method of getting a search window seems inconsistent.  Funny, I complained about all the blue and now, it's all the white.  It's like a device they'd designed for the movie THX-1138.

(Mac) OS X 10.8.4 seems to be much better

Call me a skeptic and call me cynical but I've been deceived so many times that Apple has fixed things that I don't believe anyone else.  It's my belief that by 10.x.4, the version of the operating system is finally stable.

Mac OS X 10.3.4 finally had a decent amount of functionality and stability that I could abandon Mac OS 9.x, for instance.  10.4.4 and 10.5.4 signalled some great stability, although 10.5.x was a step backward for PowerPC-based machines.  The speed and stability was in 10.4.10.

I pretty much considered Leopard (10.5.x) a disaster.  It improved the pathetic performance on Intel-based machines to fair, while ruining it for PowerPC-based machines.  It was about this time that Avie Tevanian left the company.  If he was frustrated with Scott Forstall, I could understand that.

Snow Leopard (10.6.x) for Intel-based machines only, was a step in the right direction, as it seemed to make one faction happy--the new (often iPhone-related ) Mac buyers, who had no legacy equipment.  I have a 2009 MacBook that works pretty well with it, especially compared to my hobbled late 2004 PowerBook on Leopard.

Blah blah blah...I'm trying to establish some background but I write too much that may not interest anyone.  Sorry!

Anyway, Apple developed Lion to be a little this, a little that and Mountain Lion to improve on it.

I'm still a little uncomfortable with Mountain Lion because as soon as I connect my trackball the interface changes and some applications have a dual mode to deal with the new scrolling and scroll bars, etc.

My number one gripe with Mountain Lion is the delay.  I've got a 2.6 GHz i7 processor with 16GB of RAM and a 480 GB SSD.  It's nearly as fast as you can go--and there have been huge delays from 10.8.0 to 10.8.3.  There have been delays starting applications and delays quitting them.  10.8.4 seems to erase the delays.  Update 2013.06.10: talking to a buddy with a MacBook Pro with nVidia 320M graphics hardware, there is no noticeable enhancement.

I'm interested to see how it handles when I have 1000 photos to transfer from a CompactFlash or SD card and then, attempt to process them.  Usually, the fans start running and the temperature rises to near 100 degrees C--too hot--unless it's iStat Menus that can't count.  That was with the cooling pad running beneath the machine.  I switched to a 3 fan cooler from Targus and it helps a bit more.

I suspect that this is next to the last update for 10.8, since WWDC is next week.  I wish they'd fix iOS 6.x because I hate seeing notifications that show up 13 hours later.  Instead, they'll foist an additional set of problems upon us, and those who can't upgrade will be lost without security updates even.  I'm not being cynical--that's just history.

Update 2013.09.03: Geez, waiting for an update to anything, despite security issues, can be hell.   It's been about three months, and I see weekly reports about 10.8.5 but nothing.  There have been a couple of security updates, but nothing much to fix bugs.  I've been finding more and more than the 2012 MacBook Pro and 10.8.4 won't work with my USB thumb drives.  There seem to be conflicts with USB drivers that weren't there before the 10.8.4 update.  As a backup, I tried the same thumb drives with 10.6.8 on the 2009 MacBook and it worked just as well as it did previously.  I just need to make the data available to multiple machines.

It shouldn't be a surprise that an operating system fix breaks as many things as it fixes.  In any case, September 10th is coming, and there is an expected announcement of the new iPhone models, but computers (other than MacBook Air, already updated) should be updated and operating systems should see updates.  There will likely be iOS 7.0, as there will be new devices, but (Mac) OS X 10.9 should be available also, and possibly 10.8.5.  I certainly need fixes.

Update 2013.11.25: Time has come and gone.  10.8.5 and 10.9 and iOS 7.0.4 are all out.  Updated devices came along and 10.9 will help immensely with battery life.  10.8.5 will help with overall stability.

I've been considering a change to 10.9.x but I want to wait until it's fairly stable, especially when doing such a large download.  I might put it on the 2009 MacBook.  It's supposed to be a bit more conservative overall, so it might work better than 10.6.8, though I have my doubts.  I'd rather test it on a not so critical machine than to upset my workflow, even though Mountain Lion could use some fixing.

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac Miracles!

Apple brought out the Mac OS X public beta around September 2000.  Back then, the Carbon application library and compatibility layer didn't function well, so they allowed a lot of the old Mac OS software to work on Mac OS X.

Yahoo! Messenger was one of those and I ran version 2.8.3 for the longest time.  Around 2005, Yahoo! announced the version 3 development project and the first two beta versions were rolled out that year.  After the second version release, I joked that they would finish in 2011.

There were two each year until 2009, when they released four beta versions.  I believe the same year, they increased the version number to 3.0.1, probably to make someone feel good, while they were popping out iOS versions right and left.  (Who says that Mac OS X and iOS are related?)

Just a few minutes ago, I saw Yahoo! Messenger version 3.0.2 (no beta!) show up and I'm running it now.  It looks very much the same, and really isn't that much different than 2.8.3 but we can hook up with MSN Messenger users--something else that's been somewhat neglected.  Besides that, the Buzz! feature has been working since 2005.  It's historic, or at least, hysterical!

Well done, Yahoo!