Has ’1984’ come to Apple’s Macintosh?

The first Macintosh ad was for the 1984 SuperBowl.  You can find many copies on YouTube such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw.  The final line was “why 1984 won’t be like ’1984’.

The whole idea of the original Macintosh was that you didn’t need to type in complex instructions to get anything done.  You selected your choices from a menu and you got a window.  In the window you got pictures to look at and icons for any warnings.  Whether disparagingly by PC users or lovingly by Mac users, it was called WIMP.

Several years later, Apple produced the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads.  These stressed the multitude of fun things that could be done on a Mac right out of the box and implied it was difficult to do these things on a PC without add-ons.  You can see some of these at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs.

To me, as an almost 30 year user of Macs (September 1984), the Mac was a delight to use and program for.  Then the new whiz kids decided that it should be programmed in C rather than Pascal.  To me, C stood for complex, and I had programmed mainframes with line-at-a-time assemblers.

It is mind-boggling how much more I can do now than thirty years ago, but with OS X things seem to have gone downhill.  Or rather it is an uphill job to figure out what is going wrong.  The response time seems to get worse with every new operating system.

I’m not alone with this judgment.  Apple’s “Community” seems filled with complaints about things that don’t work correctly.

Advice to correct the problem includes:

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R

In the 1980s it was said that Mac users didn’t read manuals.  I often found that the only reason I needed a manual was for how to type letters with diacritical marks, such as å, é, î, and ö.  Now I find I am going to the “Community” at least once a month for some problem.

These kind of problems may be happening to users with two or more year-old computers; Apple’s programmers are likely to be using computers that are less than a year old, and they probably don’t have the time to test the new software on older computers than those on their desks.

I may be on to something here.  My wife’s iMac is a year newer than my MacBook Pro.  Other than updates within a major level, she is still using the same operating system that came with her computer.  Meanwhile, I’ve updated two levels since I bought mine, skipped one level because of the problem I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then fell for the enticements to move to the latest OS, Mavericks.  This had many benefits, but I keep wondering if they do outweigh the problems.

Software systems working incorrectly? What's new?

I'm cleaning up lots of old notes and I found this feedback that I sent to Apple on 2002-12-18.  Sorry, the referenced article is not available on Yahoo.com anymore.  You can find it at http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=728071 with lots of sarcastic commentary.

Beginning of feedback

I concur with Mike Berman's article at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20021218/bs_nf/20277.  Although I don't have the degree of problems he has, there are many things in OS X and software written for OS X that definitely do not provide "seamless" operation.

Instead of putting flashy new interfaces or applications into OS X, I wish Apple would devote far more resources to making OS X a truly effortless operating system.  For example, when I select a server to access a computer connected to mine by a single Ethernet cable, it takes a long time and then OS X starts dialing the phone!!!!

Second, it would help users greatly if Apple certified third-party software as being "seamless".  For example, Microsoft does not have a consistent handling of text among Office products (Word to Entourage is worst).  For example, I can click on Send Messages in Entourage and it will connect with Internet Connect and wait for the connection.  If I select a site from Favorites in Internet Explorer, it starts the connection but says the server can't be found when the connection is made.

Third, it would help if Apple would certify major web sites as being "seamless" for Macintosh users.  Try using Ameritrade.com with a Macintosh; many of the fancy features just don't work or can be erratic.

I don't see any point to upgrading to OS X 10.2 at a cost of $200 for two computers for features I don't have any great need for and I don't have any guarantee all the little gotchas in 10.1 have been fixed.

Apple has been a leader in user friendly software for 18 years.  I hope Apple will now turn its focus to being a leader in software reliability.

End of feedback

Has it been eleven years since I learned to be a late adapter? Well, I haven't completely learned my lesson.  iOS 7 had a huge learning curve, and I still encounter many annoyances.  And in 29 years they still haven't learned to "do it right" on the first release.  And people expect the ACA systems to work seamlessly on the first day?

How much corporate nonsense can I take in a day?

I received an email about a sale of Adobe Photoshop Elements 12.  Since my old Elements expired long ago, I decided to give it a go.  I clicked on the button in the message and a webpage opened with an ad for Elements 12.  It required me to sign in before continuing.

When I did so, it said that I needed to use a new password.  They would email me a temp password.  That came in a short time.  I used the temp password and created a new password.  That verification came in a short time.

Finally, I could order Elements 12 and I did.  I went to my cart and was ready to whip out my credit card.  Fortunately, I read the details of the order before I checked out.  It was for a Windows version!!!  No matter what I looked under, I could never get a Mac version.

I was going to give up, but somehow I clicked on Chat Now!  I explained my problem to 'Selena' and after a few minutes, she gave me a link to the Mac version of Elements 12.  Then I looked at the download times and decided to pass.  Besides, the time for this simple chat was almost ten minutes!  Total time trying to order must have been over 30 minutes!

I have been slowing moving my email from one provider to another.  Sometimes we can tell an organization our new email and it is changed in minutes.  Some organizations say it will be updated in 10 days.  Sometimes we tell an organization and our email is only updated for one department; email from other departments goes to the old email address.

And sometimes we get a doozy of a notice:

"Your primary e-mail address has been updated.  Please note that if you deleted your e-mail address, you are no longer eligible to suppress your account statements…"

"Suppress" our account statements?  What country was this task outsourced to?  Didn't they mean "access".  And why so wordy? 

I have a Monster iCarPlay FM transmitter that I use to play podcasts in the car.  Somehow the tuning goes out of whack and I have difficulty finding a unused frequency.  I know I have the instructions buried somewhere, but I could not find them in the car.

I went to the monster.com to look for the instructions, but all I found was a flyer (called instructions or directions).  It described what one could do but not how to do it.

With a few more searches, I found the PDF of exactly just the piece of paper I can't find.  But it was not at monster.com!  I put those directions on my iPhone and will use them next time I want to drive and listen to a podcast.

I think I dealt with  a couple of other websites or programs that did not operate as one would expect, but it has been such a hectic day, I can't remember what they were.  Oh, yeah!  Blogger "crashed" on me while I was posting a blog entry.  At least, it didn't lose any of my text.

Technological irony

Apple placed one of its cute "I'm a Mac; I'm a PC" ads in today's online New York Times. The initial banner ad was "Vista - one of the biggest blunders in technology". Unfortunately, Safari 3.0.4 would not complete loading the page; it stuck on 88 items of 89. Safari 3.0.4 is included with Mac OS 10.4.11, the latest update to the OS prior to OS X Leopard. Firefox 2.0.0.12 did load the page successfully.

I used the "Report Bugs to Apple" feature of Safari to report this situation.