Snow Leopard Annoyances

[ajbrehm]

This is a list of the most annoying things that Snow Leopard did to me. At the moment I didn't experience any advantage over Leopard yet.

All of these things happened on usually both my desktop machines: Cyrus, a 2009 Mac Pro Octocore with 8 GB and Xerxes, a 2007 (I think) iMac Core 2 duo with 3 GB. I didn't install Snow Leopard on my MacBook yet.

1. Within hours of installing Snow Leopard, the Finder was hanging on Cyrus. I thought it had been rewritten, but it still behaves as in the old days. The usual way I dealt with this was a script I wrote named "flogoff" which killed my login session and returned me to the login screen. But in Snow Leopard I cannot kill "loginwindow" any more, even though the process is mine. I consider this a bug since a process owned by me should be killable by me. Finder also hangs occasionally on Xerxes. Getting out of that situation now requires sudo because of the kill bug.

2. It became clear again that Apple design but don't test. Quicktime Player 7, which I set to appear in all spaces, "forgets" that setting every time it is switched to fullscreen and back. This is extremely weird since Quicktime Player 10 and VLC are not affected by this bug.

3. In iTunes the green button no longer shrinks the window to small player size. It merely jumps it around on the screen a bit. This might be an iTunes 9 issue though. (And if Apple had testers they would have noticed.)

4. The kernel and most of the UNIX tools have PowerPC code in them. Seems like Apple removed PowerPC support even though much of it was done. This just sucks. There are many people who own very competitive G5 and Apple seem to abandon old machines sooner than they used to. (I myself got rid of my last G5 a few months ago.)

5. In System Preferences the boot disk selector does not have an option to boot the 64 bit version of the Kernel.

6. Spotlight now indexes the hard disk at random moments even when I am using the machine. The disk activity happens at the most inconvenient moments. I was installing DivX whose installer causes far too much disk activity anyway and then couldn't use my very fast Mac Pro for nearly 20 minutes because, as I found out once the machine reacted again, mds decided that would be a good moment to index the disk a bit. I think mds is the Spotlight indexer. This is ridiculous! I'd rather have the machine slow and unresponsive when I am searching something than at random moments during the day.

All-in-all Apple haven't done a good job. With Apple it always comes down to excellent design and a complete lack of testing. Most of these things could have been found if Apple employed testers.

And don't tell me that they do employ testers. I am sure they do have nominal testers. But what I mean are testers who actually succeed at testing correctly. And Apple very obviously don't have those and/or fail to have sufficient test processes.

I wouldn't recommend Snow Leopard to Leopard users now.

My recommendations:

Tiger PPC -> Leopard PPC
Leopard PPC -> stay or buy new Mac
Tiger x86 -> Snow Leopard x86
Leopard x86 -> stay

Snow Leopard was worth the money, but only because it cost 49 quid for five. Maybe once VMware works on 64 bit the 64 environment will be much better.

 

[maflynn]

1. Within hours of installing Snow Leopard, the Finder was hanging on Cyrus. I thought it had been rewritten, but it still behaves as in the old days. The usual way I dealt with this was a script I wrote named "flogoff" which killed my login session and returned me to the login screen. But in Snow Leopard I cannot kill "loginwindow" any more, even though the process is mine. I consider this a bug since a process owned by me should be killable by me. Finder also hangs occasionally on Xerxes. Getting out of that situation now requires sudo because of the kill bug.

Sounds like Cyrus is the problem and no SL while I can see it being a problem, clearly the authors of Cyrus need update the app

2. It became clear again that Apple design but don't test. Quicktime Player 7, which I set to appear in all spaces, "forgets" that setting every time it is switched to fullscreen and back. This is extremely weird since Quicktime Player 10 and VLC are not affected by this bug.

QT7 is depricated in favor of quicktimex so much so, its only included for those that want it and only by selecting it at install. I don't expect QT7 to play nice only because apple is basically dropping QT7 in favor of the newly rewritten app QuickTimeX

3. In iTunes the green button no longer shrinks the window to small player size. It merely jumps it around on the screen a bit. This might be an iTunes 9 issue though. (And if Apple had testers they would have noticed.)

Thank goodness, I hated that "feature" I want iTunes to behave like every other app, click the green button and it maximizes the window or shrinks it back to a smaller size, not turn on the small player.

4. The kernel and most of the UNIX tools have PowerPC code in them. Seems like Apple removed PowerPC support even though much of it was done. This just sucks. There are many people who own very competitive G5 and Apple seem to abandon old machines sooner than they used to. (I myself got rid of my last G5 a few months ago.)

Give them time, its not hurting anything sitting there. Its not like you can execute it, and if there wasn't some threads about it, I doubt anyone else would have noticed.

5. In System Preferences the boot disk selector does not have an option to boot the 64 bit version of the Kernel.

Agreed, but I think 10.6 is a transitional OS and since too many drivers seem incompatible, apple played it safe. I think having a preference would have been a safer and smarter move. Now you need to hit 6+4, or edit the plist or issue the nvram command.

6. Spotlight now indexes the hard disk at random moments even when I am using the machine. The disk activity happens at the most inconvenient moments. I was installing DivX whose installer causes far too much disk activity anyway and then couldn't use my very fast Mac Pro for nearly 20 minutes because, as I found out once the machine reacted again, mds decided that would be a good moment to index the disk a bit. I think mds is the Spotlight indexer. This is ridiculous! I'd rather have the machine slow and unresponsive when I am searching something than at random moments during the day.

Never noticed that, my spotlight only indexed the hard drive once

I wouldn't recommend Snow Leopard to Leopard users now.

Why because iTunes behaves normally, one of your apps doesn't work and one of apple's depricated app doesn't play nice with spaces (as does many other apps)

My recommendations:
Tiger PPC -> Leopard PPC
Leopard PPC -> stay or buy new Mac
Tiger x86 -> Snow Leopard x86
Leopard x86 -> stay

Well for PPC macs, it makes sense to stay where they are, but the features and improvements on SL makes too much sense. If you want to go back, then that's your business but clearly the majority of people have upgraded and had little problem and are enjoying SL.

Snow Leopard was worth the money, but only because it cost 49 quid for five. Maybe once VMware works on 64 bit the 64 environment will be much better.

A new OS, that runs better, takes advantage of multi-core computers is a foundation for 10.7 is not worth 24 bucks (or 49quid). Suit yourself but you are in the minority.

 

[eckndu]

6. Spotlight now indexes the hard disk at random moments even when I am using the machine. The disk activity happens at the most inconvenient moments. I was installing DivX whose installer causes far too much disk activity anyway and then couldn't use my very fast Mac Pro for nearly 20 minutes because, as I found out once the machine reacted again, mds decided that would be a good moment to index the disk a bit. I think mds is the Spotlight indexer. This is ridiculous! I'd rather have the machine slow and unresponsive when I am searching something than at random moments during the day..

im seeing this too. the system is randomly reading my idle external hard disk, I can tell by the light flashing.

 

[sanPietro98]

3. In iTunes the green button no longer shrinks the window to small player size. It merely jumps it around on the screen a bit. This might be an iTunes 9 issue though. (And if Apple had testers they would have noticed.)

This is an iTunes change, not a SL change. Apple made iTunes behave like every other App with respect to the green button. I admit that it's taking me a while to adjust to this, but in the long run, I'd rather have the consistency across the OS over convenience. But if you hold down [OPTION] when you click the green button, it will change the view to the mini player view.

 

[ajbrehm]

Sounds like Cyrus is the problem and no SL while I can see it being a problem, clearly the authors of Cyrus need update the app

"Cyrus", as I said, is the computer. The same thing happens on "Xerxes". How on earth would a bug in the kill command be an issue with a third-party application anyway???

QT7 is depricated in favor of quicktimex so much so, its only included for those that want it and only by selecting it at install. I don't expect QT7 to play nice only because apple is basically dropping QT7 in favor of the newly rewritten app QuickTimeX

I don't care how deprecated an application is, it should not counteract Spaces. If Spaces says "appear in all spaces" the program should _appear in all spaces", regardless of how old, deprecated, new, or fantastic the application is.

Thank goodness, I hated that "feature" I want iTunes to behave like every other app, click the green button and it maximizes the window or shrinks it back to a smaller size, not turn on the small player.

The green button still works the other way around, from small player to big window. Currently the green button makes the big window jump a little on the screen and moves it a bit south. That is really what you actually want?

Agreed, but I think 10.6 is a transitional OS and since too many drivers seem incompatible, apple played it safe. I think having a preference would have been a safer and smarter move. Now you need to hit 6+4, or edit the plist or issue the nvram command.

Yes. I hope they update this.

Never noticed that, my spotlight only indexed the hard drive once

The indexer runs again every now and then in case you change the content of your disk. I copy many large files from machine to machine, sometimes causing Spotlight to index those files while coming in. That usually slowed the copying down to a crawl.

Why because iTunes behaves normally, one of your apps doesn't work and one of apple's depricated app doesn't play nice with spaces (as does many other apps)

Clicking the green button should NOT jump the window around a bit on the screen. It should resize the window to the smallest useful size.

The "one of my apps" that doesn't work is the "kill" command that comes with the OS. Mac OS X is a certified UNIX, it _should_ follow the standard and allow me to kill processes owned by me. That is a bug, not "one of my apps doesn't work".

And whether or not Quicktime Player 7 is deprecated (and the Pro version isn't!) has nothing to do with whether it works with Spaces or not. None of the applications I use, except perhaps a few that came with the OS, are specifically written to support Spaces, yet VLC and all other video players seem to manage to appear on all spaces, except Quicktime Player 7.

Well for PPC macs, it makes sense to stay where they are, but the features and improvements on SL makes too much sense. If you want to go back, then that's your business but clearly the majority of people have upgraded and had little problem and are enjoying SL.

What are those features and improvements? As I said, I didn't notice any improvements, but found a few bugs.

A new OS, that runs better, takes advantage of multi-core computers is a foundation for 10.7 is not worth 24 bucks (or 49quid). Suit yourself but you are in the minority.

I haven't seen that "better use" yet. I have two Xeons with four cores each. Should I have seen an improvement? So far "takes advantage of multi-core computers" is a buzzword bingo point, not a real advantage.

 

[ajbrehm]

Give them time, its not hurting anything sitting there. Its not like you can execute it, and if there wasn't some threads about it, I doubt anyone else would have noticed.

Do you think Apple left the PowerPC code in there accidentally??? That would be deeply stupid since all these binaries have been compiled from source again. Leaving the code in accidentally would be impossible as such. It's newly compiled.

The reason the PowerPC binaries are there is obviously because a user might run PowerPC applications that rely on Darwin and call the kernel and execute UNIX commands.

So yes, the code can be executed.

 

[ajbrehm]

This is an iTunes change, not a SL change. Apple made iTunes behave like every other App with respect to the green button. I admit that it's taking me a while to adjust to this, but in the long run, I'd rather have the consistency across the OS over convenience. But if you hold down [OPTION] when you click the green button, it will change the view to the mini player view.

Thanks for the info. That's a useful tip.

However, I don't find it consistent.

When I press the green button in other applications, the window size changes to display the smallest useful size (still showing all content). This works fine in Finder and textEdit, for example. But in iTunes, because of how iTunes organises content, the window size doesn't change. But for some reason the iTunes window jumps a bit instead.

iTunes 8 did reduce the window to the smallest useful size (as the mini player). While that wasn't consistent from a technical point of view, it was entirely consistent from the user point of view (big window contra smallest possible useful window).

 

[ajbrehm]

im seeing this too. the system is randomly reading my idle external hard disk, I can tell by the light flashing.

Yes, it's very annoying.

I somehow cannot imagine Steve Jobs being happy when he is copying video files and the machine hangs a bit because Spotlight decides to index incoming files and/or the disk at great expense.