More on Tiger: Firewire drives that are mounted disappear when you do a fast user switch and back; the "unrecognized keyboard" bug is driving me crazy - anytime any one of us logs in, our gen-yoo-ine expensive Apple keyboard prods Tiger to blast this large dialog (using all of Aqua/Core image's cool features) "You are unfaithful! This is not a RECOGNIZED keyboard! Tear up your Apple Pro Card!" (I think the issue is that there is a USB hub between the G5 CPU and the keyboard), and following the DB's instructions puts you into a loop (thank heavens it's not modal - just dismiss - but stupid anyway).

Mail's new look? Neither as good as Apple thinks, or as bad as many observers have noted. It is different: I've been using Mail for years, and I keep mousing to the wrong thing - clearly the media player school of design has taken hold at Apple - and we all know how many VCRs are still flashing 00:00. Appreciate that the awkward drawer is gone, as are weird mailboxes. Really appreciate that I can FINALLY forward an HTML email from a Mac without shredding it in the process. Thank you, Apple, even if it did take you 5 years to fix this bug - you beat MS, anyway, to the punch.

Despite having a 23-inch monitor, Spotlight truncates filenames making it hard to read similar names where the distinguishing info is toward the end of the name. Spotlight has a mere 2 feet of screen to the left... can't it move everything over an inch?

NetNewsWire, an app I use daily, is broken badly on 10.4 - very frustrating crash on launch, solved by wiping out your user prefs, only to go back to crash on launch. Ouch. Yuk. Just ranting. Tiger will probably be a worthwhile purchase once Apple gets the bugs out... quality-wise, this release is not dissimialr to the famous 10.0 'Public Beta'... but I think Apple only cadged $20 for that release...

Comments 8:00:05 PM    

But at least part of the problem on the commercial software side is self-inflicted, IMHO. Apple ships free or cheap software for almost every major business or consumer use of the Mac: Safari browser, Mail application, iCal calendar, Address Book, iPhoto, iTunes, iWork, iMovie, iDVD et al. Apple even has its own media standards in QuickTime and AAC.

So what incentive is there for commercial developers to develop on the Mac? It's pretty hard to beat free, and Apple has a head start because they own the operating system, and their app developers work side by side with their OS developers. It's a mini-Microsoft situation.

So, of course Google isn't bothering to port the very nice Picassa photo management application to Mac, because iPhoto ships free on every Mac HD. Which means no competition, so there's no incentive for Apple to fix the performance of iPhoto. It also means I'm stuck paying $100 a year for 220 MB on .Mac to share family pix, instead of enjoying a free 2 GB over at Google. Ditto for Yahoo Music and iTunes.

There's also Apple's rather ugly grab of ideas like Watson and Konfabulator (which became Sherlock and Dashboard widgets). Doesn't seem to be a good way to build a developer community. Apple has even managed to annoy the open source community, which seems to be really dumb, considering that the whole operating system sits on FreeBSD. Apple missed being Microsoft by holding their technology too closely, and they may be holding back the Mac now by limiting the choices available to Mac users...
Comments 8:19:49 AM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures