I've been an OS X user for about 6 years, and I've noticed a change in the past 6 months or so: Apple software is starting to suck.

It's not terrible, definitely more "good" than "bad", but relative to itself a year ago (or longer), Apple software has really taken a turn for the worse. My guess is with increased popularity they've lost focus on what's really important for good software.

I think it's the same pattern that affects most musicians who make that transition from "nobody" to "big star" - the first album is amazing and blows people away, the 2nd or 3rd one is alright, then every album after that just plain sucks. Dave Matthews, Sting, Ben Harper. Or maybe it's more of a gentle transition, several albums are great, then somehow everything turns to suck (Paul Simon, Van Halen). Anyway, I think that's happening to Apple now.

When I left Windows for OS X in 2002, it wasn't because I could buy TV shows through iTunes. Instead, I was leaving an unstable OS (Windows) with inconsistent UI and insane usability patterns, and moving to a stable, fast OS that was simple, intuitive and powerful. Unfortunately I now have several examples of instability and un-usability across several Apple software products. I think I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a list like this with OS X 10.3 or 10.4, but sadly it took ~10 minutes thanks to Leopard 10.5. I could probably take a little more time and come up with more. It's like Sammy Hagar just joined Apple to replace Steve Jobs. Depressing.

Safari pegs cpu at 100% if you paste large amount of text into html textarea. Camino handles this fine, but Safari becomes unresponsive and eventually have to kill it. Seriously, it's just text...

Safari's RSS feature sucks. I've stopped using it altogether, using NetNewsWire instead. The point of an RSS feed is to load something in the background before I read it, then show me an indicator saying "1 new post" or whatever, then I read it when I have time. In Safari, when I try to read the supposedly-pre-loaded-and-cached-update-from-RSS, I get the spinning beachball and unresponsive system (not just Safari) for 5 to 15 seconds. What? It's just handful of RSS feeds for friends' blogs! I haven't found a way around this yet, so I just don't use Safari for RSS anymore. In fact, the RSS reader was the last thing keeping me on Safari at all, and now I don't use it. It used to be fast. Now it sucks. What a disappointment. I'm tempted to delete Safari altogether just to have it off my computer.

Safari recently fixed a bug where server redirects didn't work, but this was such a basic bug (general browser specification) which should never have made it onto the list that I have to include it. Not only was it basic, it was broken for several months. Some websites would send a redirect to Safari... "you asked for page X, but I'm telling you to go to page Y, so go there"... but Safari would basically ignore it, crap out, then leave you stuck on an error screen. This was a dumb bug, and even though they fixed it they still deserve to be beaten up about it. I might have left it off the list if I could reliably paste text without killing the browser. Or if RSS feeds actually worked.

Overall system responsiveness in OS X is noticeably more sluggish than pre-Leopard. I don't know what they did underneath the covers, but I notice various 1 or 2 second lags constantly. Leopard feels slow and crappy like Windows. Tiger 10.4 was awesome, I rarely noticed the system "thinking" about anything, but not so wth Leopard. Every time I notice this I start thinking about downgrading from 10.5 back to 10.4. Or maybe I can trade in Time Machine for Speed Up My Computer?

I rarely saw system crashes with 10.4, but I see them all the time with 10.5. I've been on OS X since 10.1 - so that's 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and now 10.5 - and 10.5 is hands down the most unstable.

Leopard Spotlight is slower, this one speaks for itself. Is 4gb of ram not enough?

What the eff is up with the Leopard SMB client? Go ahead, set up an open guest share on a remote server, then try to connect from Leopard. Suprise! You can't. This worked fine in 10.4.

iTunes deletes track data when I play certain tracks. I have a track with artist "Ricky Ryan", so I double-click to play it. In one motion, iTunes starts playing the track and deletes the artist field from the song itself. It was "Ricky Ryan", but now that you've started playing it, the artist field is gone. This bug is so insane I'm convinced nobody will believe me, so I might try to record video of it happening. I'm scared to listen to music through iTunes now because if I'm not paying attention, I might erase more track/artist data and not notice. I only listen to music through my iPod now, even when sitting in front of my computer. Note: this bug doesn't affect most of my music collection, but it does happen with several tracks (8 that I've found). I think this bug is pretty terrible.

Leopard Mail has a bug that, over time, results in increasing time delay when composing new emails. Initially, composing a new message is fine, you type text, it appears on the screen as you type, nothing strange. But give it a while and response time seriously degrades, eventually getting bad enough you can type 20 or 30 characters then remove your hands from the keyboard and watch as characters slowly appear on the screen. If you've ever used a 300 baud modem, it's like that. Only this is, like, 20 years later. The only solution I've found is to quit + restart Mail (something I do every few days), which leads to...

Leopard Mail occassionally decides to re-do the entire layout, redefine column widths, change window sizes, etc. It usually does this after I restart Mail, and is classic Windows UI garbage. "You didn't really want things to look like that, did you? Don't worry, we'll fix it..."

Pages (iWork '08) performance is crap. Try opening a 20-page Word document. Or maybe 40-page document. Go get a coffee while you wait. I love the layout, features, and usability, but the performance is just terrible. Really, really terrible.

Numbers (iWork '08) performance is beyond crap. It's so bad that, for any real spreadsheet needs, it's utterly unusable. Someone sent me a 20,000-line spreadsheet that I opened in Excel 2004 -- 4 year old software from Microsoft, and non-Universal at that -- that opened in maybe 2 seconds. Then I tried to open it in Numbers and... about 4 minutes later, after the cpu went to 100% (and kicked on the fans from excessive heat) and I couldn't really do anything with my computer in between because it was so preoccupied with Numbers... only then did it finally open the document. Seriously, 4 minutes. And I'm using 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo with 4gb ram. I cannot believe they charged me for this. (Or that I paid).

The iWork '08 "document" format is awful. It's not a file, but instead a directory with multiple files. How do you email contents? How do you handle updates with version control software?

Best. Ringtone. Ever. It's the theme song from Arrested Development.

I just discovered that string comparisons in MySQL ignore trailing whitespace in strings, CHAR, and VARCHAR fields (but not TEXT) - in short, use "like" instead of "=" for literal string comparison.

The strings 'a' and 'a ' (same thing followed by single space) are considered equivalent by MySQL, because trailing whitespace is ignored. But leading whitespace is significant, so 'a' is not equivalent to ' a'.

Why?

This is the kind of subtle, no-idea-until-you-discover-it behavior that makes Perl suck, and I'm disappointed that MySQL has behavior like that, too.

Principle of least surprise, anyone?

mysql> select 'a' = 'a ';
+------------+
| 'a' = 'a ' |
+------------+
|          1 | 
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select 'a' = ' a';
+------------+
| 'a' = ' a' |
+------------+
|          0 | 
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Using LIKE is a workaround.

mysql> select 'a' like 'a ';
+---------------+
| 'a' like 'a ' |
+---------------+
|             0 | 
+---------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Click to enlarge

My all-time best game of Brickbreaker came to a depressing end when the ball shot off the screen. I could still control the paddle, but with no ball it effectively ended the game in a way that prevented me from submitting my high score. This photo is all that's left.

I guess McCain is going to win Ohio
Missing votes spark lawsuit Columbus Dispatch Politics

I've just discovered something enormously entertaining - digging through the "missed connections" section of craigslist personals. If you haven't seen it, it's like... I guess I can't really compare it to anything I've ever seen, but here's an analogy: "missed connections" is like putting a message in a bottle, throwing it in the ocean, and hoping it finds its way to one specific person.

Here are some highlights from the "women 4 men" section.

This one is pretty mushy. Assuming the guy found it, what the heck would he do? "Damn baby, I know things didn't work out between us, but I did not know you cried for 3 days. And then you ate a Kashi bar! Clearly, I have done you wrong, and for that I am sorry."

I still don't know why you had to end it with us. I thought we were happy in our little routine of skating and bowling and all the things we both love to do. My only thought is that maybe you are going to follow your dream, the one you told me about that night when we stayed up all night over at your place and I cut my foot on the broken piece of glass on the driveway and you held me all night. I wish you knew that I would not have ever tried to stop you from that. I would have supported that dream. But all that is over now. You have moved on and and I did nothing but cry for three days straight until finally my landlord had to come over and bring me cranberry drink and a Kashi bar. I don't hold it against you. I can't make you love me if you don't. But it doesn't change it that I still love you no matter what you do or where you go.

This is just the epitome of pointless. Every dork who thinks he's hot, or likes blondes (or both) will write back to her.

You are smokin' hot That's all. -the blonde.

This one is just stunning... just go talk to the guy!

I saw you today. You look right through me! I know you don't know me, but you are really attractive. I don't know what these feelings are, but everytime I leave I have to sit in my car for a second and calm down. The feelings over take my body and I feel like one day it will be real. I know your only a gas station attendant, but sometimes you find love in the simplest places. I love you. I don't know what this is. Maybe it's love. Maybe it's lust. Maybe its you, you see me, I see you. See you everyday, until I wake up to you.