DP2 Buggy as all heck

3282868 · Apr 9, 2012

My OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G got friend over the weekend, had my "Snow Leopard" and "Lion" partitions on it. Thankfully OWC is replacing it (think the Sandforce controller fried), but now I'm using "Mountain Lion" DP2 on my OCZ Vertex 2 (which I highly recommend over OWC, even thought OCZ customer service sucks). I've never experienced so many bugs in an Apple beta/developer anything. My 12-Core 5,1 Mac Pro freezes after an hour in stasis even though my energy settings are putting the system to sleep. Graphics glitches, Safari is the worst release from Apple yet, constant crashes and sometimes links aren't clickable requiring page refreshes, iTunes crashes, Game Center is a joke - I'll never use it, and "Mission Control" is still "Lion" based (c'mon Apple, give us the option for 10.5/6 Exposé and Spaces, this iOS swiping on two displays is atrocious). Haven't had any issues with programs not running, PS 5.1 and 6, iStat Menus, etc all work. I've filed so many bug reports with engineers my hands hurt from typing.

Makes me wonder who is running the OS X department? QC in OS X has been a "bag of hurt" for a while now.

(thankfully the developer at ReSpace has a new beta out that is fantastic, coming along nicely bringing 10.6 Spaces and soon Exposé to 10.7 and 10.8)

chenks · Apr 9, 2012

Breaking News - it's a pre-release beta!

3282868 · Apr 9, 2012

chenks said:
Breaking News - it's a pre-release beta!

Yup, I'm well aware. As an Apple Developer since 10.2 I've been testing out beta's back when you had to burn a new one on DVD almost every week. I've never experienced a beta build as buggy as this recent release and I've tested a heck of a lot. I certainly hope DP3 is much better. As Lion had so few releases, I believe only four official DP's before going GM, I'd be very surprised if that holds true for "Mountain Lion". Previously, beta builds were released steadily. I still have 10.5 beta's with iChat's "Answering Machine" feature that allowed you to leave a recorded video away message which never made it to commercial release (that would have been cool for the deaf, and in general).

Discaciate · Apr 9, 2012

I'm gonna have to disagree with you.
But of course, that's a matter of personal experience and opinion.

In my case, Lion DP 1 and 2 were much worst in terms of bugs.

3282868 · Apr 9, 2012

Discaciate said:
I'm gonna have to disagree with you.
But of course, that's a matter of personal experience and opinion.

In my case, Lion DP 1 and 2 were much worst in terms of bugs.

Agree with you there

, but previous to Lion beta's have never been this buggy. Suck that my OWC SSD with 10.6 and 10.7 fried. Have to reinstall them on another drive. Sigh lol

ATC · Apr 9, 2012

Keep filing Bug Reports. To me ML DP1 and 2 so far seem more buggy than last year's early builds of Lion but IIRC all the bugs, at least those that I submitted, were addressed by the final release. Here's hoping for the same thing this year.

That non-clickable links bug in Safari is a real PITA. There's a large thread about it in the AppleSeed forum, and it's been really hard to pinpoint the cause, as there seems to be no pattern to it. Refresh the page and all the links suddenly work. I filed a BR on it and you should too. The more they hear from people about it the better the chance of squashing it.

In any case, hang in there. IMO, ML is showing promise on many fronts. Bugs notwithstanding, I'm getting more done and faster using it now than Lion.

solace · Apr 9, 2012

ever think it might depend on what hardware you're testing it on somewhat too?

i've had pretty minimal issues with DP2 on my 27" quad core iMac or 2009 13" MacBook Pro and i've been running it as my main OS.

not had any freezes or OS crashes at all yet.

that said, i hate Safari so I rarely use it (i'd agree it sucks so far in the 10.8 betas) and I don't use iTunes. oh, and I much prefer Mission Control to 10.5/10.6 Expose + Spaces (which i never really used as a result). heh.

jameslmoser · Apr 9, 2012

solace said:
ever think it might depend on what hardware you're testing it on somewhat too?

i've had pretty minimal issues with DP2 on my 27" quad core iMac or 2009 13" MacBook Pro and i've been running it as my main OS.

not had any freezes or OS crashes at all yet.

that said, i hate Safari so I rarely use it (i'd agree it sucks so far in the 10.8 betas) and I don't use iTunes. oh, and I much prefer Mission Control to 10.5/10.6 Expose + Spaces (which i never really used as a result). heh.

No offense, I just don't understand how anyone could like Mission Control over Space and Expose. Apple took two programs that did something specific and did it very well (Expose, window management. Spaces, virtual desktops) and combined them into something that did neither well.

solace · Apr 9, 2012

jameslmoser said:
No offense, I just don't understand how anyone could like Mission Control over Space and Expose. Apple took two programs that did something specific and did it very well (Expose, window management. Spaces, virtual desktops) and combined them into something that did neither well.

i come from a Unix/Linux background... the way Mission Control currently works is much more like *nix VWM's of the past, which I've always perferred.

i have no use for what Expose previously did (i really don't layer windows on top of each other, nor do i use apps full screen really ever). the only Expose thing I used on very limited occasions was the "Show Desktop" one, which you can still do.

it's simply just personal preference. just because it seems like a lot of folks on MR may not like Mission Control, i'd imagine there are plenty like myself who never really cared for Expose in the past and found Spaces kind of pointless the way it used to work (i alway used a 3rd party app called Hyperspaces previously, up through 10.6).

I also personally have never found Dashboard widgets useful in the least, going back to the earliest 10.x builds that had them. i usually just disable dashboard completely via command line. waste of resources, no matter how minimal.

pdjudd · Apr 9, 2012

Yea, we all know that DPs are buggy - thats the point. Water is wet too. They are buggy, things get reported, and bugs get fixed. We are still really early in the process - I have seen other DPs that are as buggy or worse in the past.

But honestly, unless you have specific things that you have already reported to Apple (assuming you are part of the developer program) and you want to discuss constructively, just saying this is buggy isnt going to help things and really sound whiney. DPs are not stable. They get better and the more changes you make, the shakier things will be. Apple knows what they are doing here. They know its buggy! We know its buggy! Honestly, we have covered this ground before. I think its far to easy to judge things yet.

jameslmoser · Apr 9, 2012

solace said:
i come from a Unix/Linux background... the way Mission Control currently works is much more like *nix VWM's of the past, which I've always perferred.

i have no use for what Expose previously did (i really don't layer windows on top of each other, nor do i use apps full screen really ever). the only Expose thing I used on very limited occasions was the "Show Desktop" one, which you can still do.

it's simply just personal preference. just because it seems like a lot of folks on MR may not like Mission Control, i'd imagine there are plenty like myself who never really cared for Expose in the past and found Spaces kind of pointless the way it used to work (i alway used a 3rd party app called Hyperspaces previously, up through 10.6).

I also personally have never found Dashboard widgets useful in the least, going back to the earliest 10.x builds that had them. i usually just disable dashboard completely via command line. waste of resources, no matter how minimal.

I come from a unix background. Primarily bsd and Linux. I have yet to see anything like mission control for those OSes. Spaces has many nearly identical apps, however. So I still don't see where your coming from. It would have been more unix-like to keep the apps separate. Unix has lots of small programs that just do specific things, but does them well. Sed, awk, cat, echo......

3282868 · Apr 10, 2012

pdjudd said:
Yea, we all know that DP’s are buggy - that’s the point. Water is wet too. They are buggy, things get reported, and bugs get fixed. We are still really early in the process - I have seen other DP’s that are as buggy or worse in the past.

But honestly, unless you have specific things that you have already reported to Apple (assuming you are part of the developer program) and you want to discuss constructively, just saying “this is buggy” isn’t going to help things and really sound whiney. DP’s are not stable. They get better and the more changes you make, the shakier things will be. Apple knows what they are doing here. They know it’s buggy! We know it’s buggy! Honestly, we have covered this ground before. I think it’s far to easy to judge things yet.

Yes, I am and have been for many years an ADC member. Yes, I have reported many bugs with "Mountain Lion", some bugs reported with "Lion" during beta phase are still opened and recognized as known issues. I have stated what app's work in ML, what isn't is a long list that I avoided and have already been discussed.

My point to this post was that this is the first time I have experienced such a bad beta release from Apple. Yes, it's a beta, and I know that there are bugs, however ML DP's have many more bugs that I have never experienced from Apple beta's.

As to the hardware issue, I own a Mac Pro 5,1, 12-Core Westmere with 16GB RAM, Radeon 5770, two 24" Apple LED LCD's, a solid state drive booting "Snow Leopard" and "Lion" and another HDD booting the current ML DP2. 10.6, 10.7 run well, no issues. ML crashes when not in use for ~ an hour, "Time Machine" has graphical issues on my main display when opened, Safari crashes consistently and links sometimes do not work which requires refreshing pages, Finder freezes, I have my power settings set to keep HDD's from sleeping, turned off screen saver and display sleep and only put my displays to sleep using a hot corner. Over night I wake to a kernel panic. I stripped down app's that may be interfering with the system, even did a clean install. Also have it running on my current gen 15" MacBook Pro, same issues.

I have never experienced so many bugs in an Apple beta. Lion was released with only four DP's, while previously Apple released beta builds on a much more frequent basis and for about a year before GM. Apple seems to be rushing OS X to compete with iOS releases, and if ML follows the same release pattern for a summer launch I would be surprised as it needs much more work.

pdjudd · Apr 10, 2012

bedifferent said:
My point to this post was that this is the first time I have experienced such a bad beta release from Apple. Yes, it's a beta, and I know that there are bugs, however ML DP's have many more bugs that I have never experienced from Apple beta's..

So complain to Apple. We cannot do anything about the build qualities of DP's.

If you have specific question's that's fine, but try to avoid ranting. It is not going to accomplish anything. Apple does not pay attention to people complaining here. We are very early into the process. It's only been two months. Be patient.

3282868 · Apr 10, 2012

pdjudd said:
So complain to Apple. We cannot do anything about the build qualities of DP's.

If you have specific question's that's fine, but try to avoid ranting. It is not going to accomplish anything. Apple does not pay attention to people complaining here. We are very early into the process. It's only been two months. Be patient.

Well, I wasn't ranting and I have another post in which I ran tests between Lion and Snow Leopard which many have found helpful:

"Snow Leopard" and "Lion" comparison on 12-Core Mac Pro

I'm sorry you mistook my concerns in order to help others who may be on the fence with Lion and Mountain Lion as a "rant". My apologies. However, if you do not appreciate my post why comment and not just move on? It would be beneficial to those who do appreciate the information/opinion I have provided, and let's face it, sometimes it's good to rant.

solace · Apr 11, 2012

jameslmoser said:
I come from a unix background. Primarily bsd and Linux. I have yet to see anything like mission control for those OSes. Spaces has many nearly identical apps, however. So I still don't see where your coming from. It would have been more unix-like to keep the apps separate. Unix has lots of small programs that just do specific things, but does them well. Sed, awk, cat, echo......

was thinking of Enlightenment or XFCE window managers...

the VWM's in those (it's been nearly a decade since i've used any of 'em however) remind me of how I used to use those.

i prefer the side to side swiping to desktops anyway though, i rarely actually use MC (or even less so, Expose/Spaces previously) anyway.

as i stated, I rarely allow my windows to overlap on my desktop setups, so I hardly ever need to switch to or find a specific app window i guess.

----------

bedifferent said:
As to the hardware issue, I own a Mac Pro 5,1, 12-Core Westmere with 16GB RAM, Radeon 5770, two 24" Apple LED LCD's, a solid state drive booting "Snow Leopard" and "Lion" and another HDD booting the current ML DP2. 10.6, 10.7 run well, no issues. ML crashes when not in use for ~ an hour, "Time Machine" has graphical issues on my main display when opened, Safari crashes consistently and links sometimes do not work which requires refreshing pages, Finder freezes, I have my power settings set to keep HDD's from sleeping, turned off screen saver and display sleep and only put my displays to sleep using a hot corner. Over night I wake to a kernel panic. I stripped down app's that may be interfering with the system, even did a clean install. Also have it running on my current gen 15" MacBook Pro, same issues.

I have never experienced so many bugs in an Apple beta. Lion was released with only four DP's, while previously Apple released beta builds on a much more frequent basis and for about a year before GM. Apple seems to be rushing OS X to compete with iOS releases, and if ML follows the same release pattern for a summer launch I would be surprised as it needs much more work.

strange... still not seeing any OS crashes/lockups for me here on DP2... guess i'm lucky.

xgman · Apr 11, 2012

What I don't understand is how is going from a fairly stable OS to a buggy one which uses the same underpinnings as the old one make any sense? Improvements seem to take 3 steps back. It's not like they redesigned from scratch. I don't get it. Seems sloppy to me.

3282868 · Apr 11, 2012

xgman said:
What I don't understand is how is going from a fairly stable OS to a buggy one which uses the same underpinnings as the old one make any sense? Improvements seem to take 3 steps back. It's not like they redesigned from scratch. I don't get it. Seems sloppy to me.

That was/is exactly my point.

I know it's beta, but even beta releases from Apple have never been so universally sloppy and rushed. I fear this new 1 year cycle and less focus on OS X will lead to less quality control. Apple needs to stop moving engineers around between iOS and OS X and hire more engineers to meet the demand. Hopefully that will be the case when the new campus is finished, it's HUGE, you can fit their current HQ's in it numerous times over.

jabbawok · Apr 11, 2012

Despite having to use Chameleon as a boot loader to get DP2 to run on my unsupported 1,1 Mac Pro I'm finding it pretty stable and not that buggy. Safari is very quick and hasn't misbehaved on me yet.

3282868 · Apr 11, 2012

jabbawok said:
Despite having to use Chameleon as a boot loader to get DP2 to run on my unsupported 1,1 Mac Pro I'm finding it pretty stable and not that buggy. Safari is very quick and hasn't misbehaved on me yet.

You know, that is interesting. I'm finding older machines and less power hungry machines are running ML DP2 well while loaded, newer systems seem to have issues. My current gen MacBook Pro ran ML ok, still had the same bugs as my current gen Mac Pro but wasn't as bad with crashes. I wonder if the ATI 5770 card in my Pro and two 24" Apple LED LCD displays are causing some issues, as I am experiencing more graphics glitches on it. Plus I have 8TB's of internal HD space (although I stripped all but one out for some tests) and using an OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD. I booted off the WD HDD that came with my Mac Pro, of course was slower but overall had the same issues. It'll be interesting when DP3 finally arrives.

jabbawok · Apr 11, 2012

bedifferent said:
You know, that is interesting. I'm finding older machines and less power hungry machines are running ML DP2 well while loaded, newer systems seem to have issues. My current gen MacBook Pro ran ML ok, still had the same bugs as my current gen Mac Pro but wasn't as bad with crashes. I wonder if the ATI 5770 card in my Pro and two 24" Apple LED LCD displays are causing some issues, as I am experiencing more graphics glitches on it. Plus I have 8TB's of internal HD space (although I stripped all but one out for some tests) and using an OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD. I booted off the WD HDD that came with my Mac Pro, of course was slower but overall had the same issues. It'll be interesting when DP3 finally arrives.

I've got a 5770 in my mac pro too. I had an 8800GT when I tried out DP1 and it was very glitchy. It would go to bright white screen on display sleep. This was before I got the Chameleon thing working so I was on a hacked 32 bit kernel version of DP1.

One thing I found very interesting is that Safari 5.2 ran like utter crap on 10.7 with 32 bit kernel, on 10.7 on my MB Air which runs 64 bit kernel it was way better. On 10.8 with 64 bit kernel its very fast!

What would be really nice is if somehow Chameleon could fix the lack of HDMI Audio on the 5770 on early Mac Pros, when the exact same card supports the audio on newer Mac Pros.

Here's hoping.

unobtainium · Apr 12, 2012

bedifferent said:
I still have 10.5 beta's with iChat's "Answering Machine" feature that allowed you to leave a recorded video away message which never made it to commercial release (that would have been cool for the deaf, and in general).

What! I want that feature in FaceTime. Why did they scrap it??

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pdjudd said:
So complain to Apple. We cannot do anything about the build qualities of DP's.

If you have specific question's that's fine, but try to avoid ranting. It is not going to accomplish anything. Apple does not pay attention to people complaining here. We are very early into the process. It's only been two months. Be patient.

Actually, these forums are specifically meant for discussing Apple products in general, so OP is in the right place. Specific issues in the ML preview should actually be directed to Apple and/or developer forums. You have it backwards, IMO.

DP2 Buggy as all heck

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