Leopard, Part 3 - Bugs and Bitches
As much as I like Leopard…and make no mistake about it, I do like Leopard…there are, as you might expect with any new operating system, bugs that aren’t working right and things that Apple changed that just don’t sit well. In this part, I’ll cover the bugs I’ve seen and the bitches I have so you'll be informed of what you might encounter if you decide Leopard’s right for you.
Let’s talk about the “bugs” first.
The most noticeable problem is occurring only on my Mac Pro. The specific steps that cause the problem are: (1) start a movie or video in iTunes player window in the bottom left corner of the application, (2) double-click on the window to turn it into an individual window playing the movie, (3) allow the movie to play for a few seconds, (4) then pause the movie and close the window so that the movie jumps back into the iTunes player window. Now, (5) click on the window’s tiny “down arrow” to close it altogether. The window will begin to close but then hangs with about 20% to go. The spinning beach ball appears, and the application now hangs. Interestingly, I found I could clear the hang by swiping my mouse cursor up the Dock to make some of the Dock application icons magnify and jump back. For a “permanent” workaround, I've gone into iTunes’ preferences and changed them to always play video in a new window. I’ve had no problems with playing video in this mode. I’ve tried reinstalling the latest version of iTunes to see if that would fix the problem, but it had no impact. (The latest version, iTunes 7.5, also did not fix the problem.)
The second bug is one that is being widely discussed within the Mac community and has appeared on every one of my machines. When trying to “Repair Permissions” using Leopard’s Disk Utility, the utility goes into a “barber pole” mode that seems to spin almost forever before any permissions are checked; and once they are checked, the following warning message appears: “Warning: SUID file System/Library/CoreServices /RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired.” It also shows lots of "ACL missing" messages (Access Control Lists). While this problem has not interfered with operation in any sense, it has occurred on every Mac that has been upgraded to Leopard. Speculation is this will be fixed by Apple soon, though Apple has not made any official statement about the problem.
The third problem is also one that has occurred on every Mac upgraded to Leopard. Essentially, I believe the keychain structure within Leopard has changed, and the operating system the user keychain isn’t found and/or integrated. (The keychain on a Mac is the application that stores all user passwords in an encrypted form.) This manifests itself with an error message that says the user keychain can’t be found and it gives you two buttons, i.e., Cancel or Reset to Default. Fearing that “reset to default” would cause me to lose any hope of keeping my previous keychain together, I clicked on “Cancel”. Apple shortly thereafter published a software update to deal with the error, which I have downloaded and installed. So far, I have not had to re-input passwords to anything; but I also cannot access the keychain and find the old user keychain I used to be able to see.
Obviously, I don’t fully understand the technical details behind either of these, and I’ll write more about them as I come to understand them.
A really great new feature in Leopard is Boot Camps’ ability to now allow you to designate a hard disk other than the boot disk as the Windows hard disk. As a result I decided to modify the current hard disk configuration of my Mac Pro and designate my Bay#3 hard disk as “Windows-only”. The Assistant that accompanies the Boot Camp application states it will rename the Boot Camp hard disk “Windows” during the Windows loading process, but it failed to do this when I used Boot Camp to reinstall Windows. Instead, it left it named “Untitled”. I worked around the problem by booting into Windows and using tools within XP to rename the hard disk “Windows XP”.
I’ve only had a few applications that Leopard rendered problematic or useless. Juniper Networks VPN client crashes on launch. (To be honest, that was not unexpected. I had seen the same problem when Tiger came out, so I figured the company would be behind the power curve here.) Roxio states that Toast 8 is not fully compatible, though I have used it to add files to a CD being used to store updates. Adobe states that CS2 products may not be compatible, but so far we’ve had no problems with Photoshop CS2 on my wife’s iMac. Parallels 2.X seems to work problematically. It worked until I booted into Windows using Boot Camp but then declared it couldn’t find drivers it needed and to try restarting Parallels in a few minutes, something that never worked. (Parallels has a recent update to Parallels 3.0 that is Leopard compatible.)
That’s all for the bugs we’re experiencing. Let’s move onto bitches, i.e, those things I hate that are characteristics of the new operating system.
The Semi-transparent Menu Bar – Someone please tell me what a semi-transparent menu bar was meant to accomplish. It doesn’t look slick; it looks cheap. And Apple gave me no way to turn it off. Please, Apple, give me the choice of turning the thing of and making it take on the silver bar look that matches up with the other Leopard windows.
The White Dot on the Dock; Bring Back the Arrows! — In earlier versions of OS X, a black arrow points to an application on the Dock that is open or opening. In Leopard, the arrow has been replaced by a white dot that’s barely noticeable when the Dock is on the right or left side of the screen (when the Dock is 2D and dark) and invisible when the Dock is on the bottom (when the Dock is 3D and reflective). Bring back the arrows!
Arbitrary Change of the System Preferences icon – There are several changes that Apple appeared to make for the sake of change, and this appears to be one of them. The System Preferences icon has been for some time the white box with an Apple in the center of it. Now, it’s a silver gearbox. The icon makes sense, but I have to stop and think about what System Preferences looks like now.
Applications Folder/User Folder Confusion on Dock – In general, Leopard uses embossed folders to designate special folders such as Applications, Music, Downloads, etc. As Leopard boots, the embossed Application folder is what first appears on the Dock but is superseded by the Address Book which is stacked on top of other application icons that are barely visible. An embossed Applications folder stacked on top of the others in the user profile supercedes the User folder, which used to be represented by an easily understood House. This stacking and replacement creates a lot of confusion as well as the impression that Apple realized late in the development cycle it was creating a problem for the user. Put the House back and leave the Application folder embossed instead of making me look at an Address Book icon and making me tell myself it’s NOT the Address Book application.
Inconsistent Startup Disk icon usage – Earlier versions of Boot Camp placed a Startup Disk icon in both Mac OS X’s System Preferences and in Windows’ Control Panel. Leopard uses a “Startup Disk” icon in System Preferences but then uses a “Boot Camp” icon in Windows’ Control Panel. It’s inconsistent and confusing. I’d like to see “Startup Disk” in both places.
The Windows hard disk automounts on the Desktop – I like an uncluttered Desktop and allow only external hard or removable disks, optical disks, or connected servers to mount on it. Leopard mounts your Windows hard disk on the Desktop whether you want it there or not and gives one no obvious control to turn it off. Give me some control over that, Apple! It’s a pain in the butt to have to “Eject” it after every boot!
And with that, I’m going to stop here. If I did any more, you might get the impression I don’t like Leopard and I really do, and that’s even before I’ve had a chance to play with its really nifty features like Time Machine or iChat’s still photo or video backgrounds.
Let’s talk about the “bugs” first.
The most noticeable problem is occurring only on my Mac Pro. The specific steps that cause the problem are: (1) start a movie or video in iTunes player window in the bottom left corner of the application, (2) double-click on the window to turn it into an individual window playing the movie, (3) allow the movie to play for a few seconds, (4) then pause the movie and close the window so that the movie jumps back into the iTunes player window. Now, (5) click on the window’s tiny “down arrow” to close it altogether. The window will begin to close but then hangs with about 20% to go. The spinning beach ball appears, and the application now hangs. Interestingly, I found I could clear the hang by swiping my mouse cursor up the Dock to make some of the Dock application icons magnify and jump back. For a “permanent” workaround, I've gone into iTunes’ preferences and changed them to always play video in a new window. I’ve had no problems with playing video in this mode. I’ve tried reinstalling the latest version of iTunes to see if that would fix the problem, but it had no impact. (The latest version, iTunes 7.5, also did not fix the problem.)
The second bug is one that is being widely discussed within the Mac community and has appeared on every one of my machines. When trying to “Repair Permissions” using Leopard’s Disk Utility, the utility goes into a “barber pole” mode that seems to spin almost forever before any permissions are checked; and once they are checked, the following warning message appears: “Warning: SUID file System/Library/CoreServices /RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired.” It also shows lots of "ACL missing" messages (Access Control Lists). While this problem has not interfered with operation in any sense, it has occurred on every Mac that has been upgraded to Leopard. Speculation is this will be fixed by Apple soon, though Apple has not made any official statement about the problem.
The third problem is also one that has occurred on every Mac upgraded to Leopard. Essentially, I believe the keychain structure within Leopard has changed, and the operating system the user keychain isn’t found and/or integrated. (The keychain on a Mac is the application that stores all user passwords in an encrypted form.) This manifests itself with an error message that says the user keychain can’t be found and it gives you two buttons, i.e., Cancel or Reset to Default. Fearing that “reset to default” would cause me to lose any hope of keeping my previous keychain together, I clicked on “Cancel”. Apple shortly thereafter published a software update to deal with the error, which I have downloaded and installed. So far, I have not had to re-input passwords to anything; but I also cannot access the keychain and find the old user keychain I used to be able to see.
Obviously, I don’t fully understand the technical details behind either of these, and I’ll write more about them as I come to understand them.
A really great new feature in Leopard is Boot Camps’ ability to now allow you to designate a hard disk other than the boot disk as the Windows hard disk. As a result I decided to modify the current hard disk configuration of my Mac Pro and designate my Bay#3 hard disk as “Windows-only”. The Assistant that accompanies the Boot Camp application states it will rename the Boot Camp hard disk “Windows” during the Windows loading process, but it failed to do this when I used Boot Camp to reinstall Windows. Instead, it left it named “Untitled”. I worked around the problem by booting into Windows and using tools within XP to rename the hard disk “Windows XP”.
I’ve only had a few applications that Leopard rendered problematic or useless. Juniper Networks VPN client crashes on launch. (To be honest, that was not unexpected. I had seen the same problem when Tiger came out, so I figured the company would be behind the power curve here.) Roxio states that Toast 8 is not fully compatible, though I have used it to add files to a CD being used to store updates. Adobe states that CS2 products may not be compatible, but so far we’ve had no problems with Photoshop CS2 on my wife’s iMac. Parallels 2.X seems to work problematically. It worked until I booted into Windows using Boot Camp but then declared it couldn’t find drivers it needed and to try restarting Parallels in a few minutes, something that never worked. (Parallels has a recent update to Parallels 3.0 that is Leopard compatible.)
That’s all for the bugs we’re experiencing. Let’s move onto bitches, i.e, those things I hate that are characteristics of the new operating system.
The Semi-transparent Menu Bar – Someone please tell me what a semi-transparent menu bar was meant to accomplish. It doesn’t look slick; it looks cheap. And Apple gave me no way to turn it off. Please, Apple, give me the choice of turning the thing of and making it take on the silver bar look that matches up with the other Leopard windows.
The White Dot on the Dock; Bring Back the Arrows! — In earlier versions of OS X, a black arrow points to an application on the Dock that is open or opening. In Leopard, the arrow has been replaced by a white dot that’s barely noticeable when the Dock is on the right or left side of the screen (when the Dock is 2D and dark) and invisible when the Dock is on the bottom (when the Dock is 3D and reflective). Bring back the arrows!
Arbitrary Change of the System Preferences icon – There are several changes that Apple appeared to make for the sake of change, and this appears to be one of them. The System Preferences icon has been for some time the white box with an Apple in the center of it. Now, it’s a silver gearbox. The icon makes sense, but I have to stop and think about what System Preferences looks like now.
Applications Folder/User Folder Confusion on Dock – In general, Leopard uses embossed folders to designate special folders such as Applications, Music, Downloads, etc. As Leopard boots, the embossed Application folder is what first appears on the Dock but is superseded by the Address Book which is stacked on top of other application icons that are barely visible. An embossed Applications folder stacked on top of the others in the user profile supercedes the User folder, which used to be represented by an easily understood House. This stacking and replacement creates a lot of confusion as well as the impression that Apple realized late in the development cycle it was creating a problem for the user. Put the House back and leave the Application folder embossed instead of making me look at an Address Book icon and making me tell myself it’s NOT the Address Book application.
Inconsistent Startup Disk icon usage – Earlier versions of Boot Camp placed a Startup Disk icon in both Mac OS X’s System Preferences and in Windows’ Control Panel. Leopard uses a “Startup Disk” icon in System Preferences but then uses a “Boot Camp” icon in Windows’ Control Panel. It’s inconsistent and confusing. I’d like to see “Startup Disk” in both places.
The Windows hard disk automounts on the Desktop – I like an uncluttered Desktop and allow only external hard or removable disks, optical disks, or connected servers to mount on it. Leopard mounts your Windows hard disk on the Desktop whether you want it there or not and gives one no obvious control to turn it off. Give me some control over that, Apple! It’s a pain in the butt to have to “Eject” it after every boot!
And with that, I’m going to stop here. If I did any more, you might get the impression I don’t like Leopard and I really do, and that’s even before I’ve had a chance to play with its really nifty features like Time Machine or iChat’s still photo or video backgrounds.
posted by Andy Foster at
1:59 AM
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