More OS X software rot
Summary: Evidence of the quality rot in Mac OS X continues to grow. The latest is a hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-sad: typing "file:///" with a capital F results in many Mac applications crashing. But that's not all.
Since I'm writing this on a Mac, I can't spell it out as it crashes Notational Velocity, my preferred text processing tool. Read all about it at 9to5Mac.
Obviously, this could be used in an exploit to sabotage Macs all over the world. And that's bad.
But the real question: what the hell are the system software guys doing in Cupertino? It's past time to put down your lattes - they make fine ones at the Infinite Loop campus cafeteria - and stop embarrassing yourselves.
OS X is turning into a steaming mess.
Time Machine system rot A recent technical comment on an Apple developer mailing list documents more OS X stupidity. Thomas Templemann, author of the app Find Any File had some telling comments.
Mr. Templemann is a ". . . big fan of Time Machine, at least on the technical level." He went on to write:
Well, today, a friend showed me the horrors of Time Capsule: Saving a few 100MB of changed files to the Capsule can easily take one to two hours. Which is incredible, isn't it?
And why is that? . . .
. . . accesses to the SAME item are repeated 10-20 times. Each of them issuing a fresh network call. . . .
. . . Isn't anyone at Apple noticing that [Time Capsule] or any network-based [Time Machine] backup is so incredibly slow?"
Sure they are. They just don't care. Mac sales keep climbing anyway.
Too many network accesses aren't the only problem with Time Machine. I stopped using it years ago because if you have a lot of email TM has to break and remake thousands of symbolic links, an expensive process, after email deletions.
Time Machine slowed my Mac Pro to a crawl. TM just isn't intended for serious users.
And about HFS+ Some Mac fans pooh-pooh assertions about the low quality of HFS plus despite the fact that it's been documented in independent research. Apple did nothing. Microsoft hired the researcher and has implemented major improvements.
But you can see for yourself, if you're comfortable with the Terminal, that you can corrupt a volume and OS X's Disk Utility won't see it or repair it. Still think OS X is safe for important data?
The Storage Bits take I don't know what it will take for true believers to see that there is a serious problem with Mac system software quality. Maybe a Google search on Mac file corruption? Or worse, personal experience of massive data corruption?
What is worrying to me is that these issues get worse with each release of OS X. That says that the OS X software group needs adult supervision, much as Microsoft did when they brought in uber-engineer Dave Cutler to drive Windows 7 after the Vista fiasco.
It's time for Tim Cook to step up and make sure that whoever is responsible for system software for the Mac has the same commitment to quality and innovation that Steve imbued in the rest of Apple.
Comments welcome, of course. Still using my Mac, but I'm starting to look at Linux distro's.
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Talkback
Apple's sad lost child
Apple or the Mac are not yet heading for a fall but let's just say the signs of the start of the end of their glory days are showing. They need to be wary - Android is becoming the new Windows and it will be the early 80s all over again. They may maintain some significant share of market but a business savvy more open platform comes along and takes the growth.
And as for looking at Linux - my current favourite disti is Linuxmint. Downstream from Ubuntu and Dedian so well supported with software, drivers etc and a simple, performant, traditional GUI. Worth a look.
I have realy tried
To me OSX rotting or not just doesn't give me the same fizz that Windows gives me. There are probably millions of reasons why OSX should be better, but in the end, it is simply not as satisfying to use on a daily basis. Sorry.
OSX is losing in many ways.
huh?
Get off the pot!!
As for the iOS?
Nope you and polarcat didn't really understand my request.
Well...
The bigger issue seems to be that the RDF or whatever you want to call it, seems to be fading. People notice the problems more, and/or are less willing to overlook them.
I'd like to echo a few of these points...
And lately, I've been having issues copying files to USB drives, as well... the copy would quit mid-transfer, but leave an incomplete "ghost" copy on the receiving drive that I have to reboot in order to delete.
And I know Apple is a "look and feel" company, but some old-school software engineers should address a lot of these ongoing issues.
Sure you do. /s
No, the point was...
Now I understand that every system and company can have issues... but if the only official response is to "buy newer Apple gear", then it becomes an issue to me.
Kill the messenger to surpress the message?
you have to reboot to delete file from removable drive
No operating system can work reliably with flaky hardware, so this must be checked first.
Just saying...
It's happened more than in one place...
So, did some Apple executive
But, what the heck, it makes OS X look bad, so you'll just run with it.
RE: OS X look bad
That pretty much summarizes what’s driving the current wave of Apple jackassery: start with the “fact” that something has gone wrong with Apple, then speculate about just what that is. Apple has real problems, isn’t perfect, and faces numerous serious competitors — but it, like every company, has always had problems, has never been perfect, and has faced serious competitors. The error in this line of thinking is that something has “gone wrong” for Apple in the last year or two. The truth is, most things have gone exactly right for Apple for the last 10 years.
I'd be more impressed . . .
Gruber knows enough about software to understand what I, Lloyd Chambers and many others are saying about Mac OS X.
If HFS+ were so great, why did Apple start to replace it with ZFS 5 years ago?
Robin
apple never intended to replace HFS with ZFS?
What Apple could have ultimately done is implement HFS on top of ZFS storage, just as the POSIX file system is already implemented. Then they would be able to use all the niceties of ZFS... Except, there were few "drawbacks". Still, I believe they eventually may implement it, one day.
I will list some of these for you to know and keep in mind for future Apple bashing.
- Apple has never be en really into servers, but ZFS is primarily server focused solution. ZFS works best when there is redundancy, which means every Mac should have at least two physical disks. Apple's computers still do fin with one relatively small size disk.
- ZFS is very heavy user of memory. Until recently, most Intel CPUs of the class used in Apple computers had hard time managing more than 8 GB RAM. And this much RAM is barely enough for ZFS to perform reasonably. More memory costs more and the benefit for the user in single-user system is questionable.
- ZFS uses SSDs only for caching and improving latency. None of this is relevant in non-server environments, because it takes plenty of database, network file serving etc sync load to need latency improvements and also plenty of drives. Caching the cache also requires lots of RAM. The solution Apple came with, which borrows some ideas from ZFS and known as Fusion Drive, makes more sense in consumer systems.
- If you have huge drive subsystem, nothing prevents you from running it on ZFS capable platform with plenty of disks and connecting via Thunderbolt, or iSVSI etc - Apple simply does not make any such systems. The mass-market, non-ZFS solutions like the Thunderbolt attached Promise Pegasus obviously do the trick for users.
Just for the record, all of my (many) UNIX systems run ZFS only - from the desktops, to huge storage servers.
Data integrity IS a function of a file system
The technically astute can use ZFS today on Macs using the Zevo version from Greenbytes. As they note on the Zevo webpage: "Our custom ZFS memory manager is finely tuned to work with the Mac’s simplistic memory model." Memory usage is much reduced. Don Brady, Zevo's lead developer, was the lead on the Mac ZFS platform, so he understands the kernel issues.
Robin
One more thing.
Need I say more?