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Mountain Lion Bugs

Bugs: Finder selections do not stick. Add ‘label’ to a list view, sort by label, after a restart the machine, you may need to add it again. With Lion and prior, hitting tab and entering password worked. With ML, hit tab, enter password misses the first character. Interestingly, this works just fine on a Hackintosh. […]


OS X 10.8.1 And Backup

Successfully updated one machine to 10.8.1. In order to move the installer to my second machine, I connected my three-partition drive to the second machine. My backup partition on that drive is encrypted. I entered the password (I know, I know, not necessary since I don’t need that partition, but what could go wrong, right?) […]


Finder 10.7.4 Bug

I have noticed yet another ‘new feature’ that I believe negatively impacts usability. I believe it was implemented probably in the most recent system software update (10.7.4). I am running my own application on more than one machine simultaneously. This application (let’s call it MyApp) writes its own application support file as: /Library/Application Support/MyApp/MyDataFile.txt When […]


Past Peak Apple?

Just to chime in my 2¢ regarding Apple’s announcements. Don’t care about retina display. Sure, I like more pixels just like the next guy. But I cannot see them, especially considering that I am not 20 anymore. I do like my 17″ MacBook Pro, because it has the highest density of pixels before retina, and it […]


OS X Regression

I attempted to download the 10.7.4 combo update. Downloaded 1.16G out of 1.4G at a 1500 Mbit/sec in a matter of a few minutes. Then Safari got hung up there for 45 minutes for no reason. Scratch head, run ShaperProbe to see if my ISP (TWC) started throttling. Nope, have full bandwidth. Start looking for […]


Boot 32 bit EFI With a 64 bit OS X?

It is possible to boot 64-bit OS X (with 64-bit-capable CPU) with 32-bit EFI, if you use Hackintosh tools, namely Chameleon. (In reality, Chameleon sidesteps the EFI, and uses the Boot Camp BIOS to achieve this.) While not for the fainthearted, it is possible. See: http://netkas.org/?p=978 and http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1123.0.html. I recommend the latest version of Chameleon instead […]


Apple Product Usability

As a person who has set-up organizations on usability for more mundane products like milk cartons, it is my opinion that the efficiency and effectiveness of the OSX user interface has fallen down to unacceptable levels. Efficiency (time it takes to perform a task) and effectiveness (number of mistakes committed during the task) are typically […]