snow leopard - ex posto facto - appletalker forum [apple mac discussion and troubleshooting]

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-04, 10:51 #46

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

In reply to post ID 15159

Quote by shmooler:
...Isn't that ironic that something that works ok for everyone else here doesn't work for madra

... and that i'm the only person for whom quicktime *does* [or did] work well

Quote by shmooler:
BTW Madra how much disc space did you actually save after installing SL compared to Leopard?...

not sure. see this post for my very unscientific guesstimates.

[Image: http://www.appletalker.com/grafix/madrasig.png]

madra at work | madra at play

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-04, 11:19 #47

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

one positive side-effect of snow leopard, although not directly related to the OS itself, that i've noticed:

firefox 3,5 now launches [and more importantly quits!] almost instantly. previously it would take about a dozen bounces to launch and an equally long time to shut down [as measured by how long the white dot stayed next to its icon in the dock]. now it shuts down instantly and launches after one bounce and about a second of waiting for the window to appear. :thumbsup:

madra at work | madra at play

Oisín 2009-09-04, 14:10 #48

since Feb 2006 · 1236 posts · Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Group memberships: co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

Ah, that would indeed be quite nice. Firefox has always taken ages to load here as well (on both Tiger and Leopard).

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-07, 12:53 #49

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

In reply to post ID 15155

Quote by Gamoe on 2009-09-04, 08:20:
Quote by John Siracusa:
...Duplicating the functionality of a continually developed, 18-year-old API will not happen overnight. It will take years, and it will be even longer before every important Mac OS X application is updated to use QTKit exclusively...

by which time of course apple will have abandoned quicktime X in favour of some other newer shinier protocol, which will spend its first few years being crap too. :doh:

madra at work | madra at play

Gamoe 2009-09-07, 22:20 #50

User title: Mac user since 1994
since Feb 2006 · 2367 posts · Location: Mars Colony I
Group memberships: co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

Quote by madra:
by which time of course apple will have abandoned quicktime X in favour of some other newer shinier protocol, which will spend its first few years being crap too.

You got it! :thumbsup:

It does seem to me like we're always in a transition or two.

PowerMac 6100 (1994) - Unibody MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-10, 21:26 #51

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

further to my post a page or so back about quicktime X's inability to handle AVI files, one further annoyance to add:

not only does QTX loop infinitely with a 'loading movie...' window, but the finder preview pane also loops infinitely with with the circular progress bar when trying to load the preview.

this was in the preview bar before i watched the 30min sepisode and still there when i closed the QT7 window after watching it:
[Image: http://www.appletalker.net/grafix/SLAVIpreview.png]

[Image: http://www.appletalker.net/grafix/SLAVIpreview.png]

now, even if you're prepared to cut apple some slack in the grounds that QTX is so new, they havenae had time to build in support for every vid format out there [even the most popular one on the web :doh:

] as some people have argued in this thread - surely you must agree that failing to even build anything into QTX that gives any useful feedback to the user, when it encounters an AVI file is just ... well... crap, really.

how much hassle would it have been for apple to have QTX throw up a dialogue saying 'AVI format is not currently supported in quicktime X. please insert your snow leopard installer disc to install quicktime 7, which does support AVI' [or words to that effect], when trying to open an AVI file in QTX? - or show a generic icon in the finder preview pane [as the OS does with other unsupported files] when an AVI file was selected, rather than this never-ending 'loading' bollox?

really really shoddy. :thumbsdown:

madra at work | madra at play

Simon 2009-09-10, 22:10 #52

since Feb 2006 · 1803 posts · Location: in front of my Mac
Group memberships: co-owner

Show profile ·

Link to this post

In reply to post ID 15160

Quote by madra on 2009-09-04, 10:47:
Quote by Simon:
...They probably focused on getting the basics into QTX Player...

depends on your definition of 'the basics'. for me, with a video player that would be being able to open the most common formats found on the web. for apple, these days, it always seems to mean adding some visually impressive looking feature that hardly anyone will avail of.

That's a bit unfair really. For Apple the 'basics' meant transforming an 18 year old C API to a cutting edge Objective C framework. They did plenty of serious work under the hood. The fact that that didn't include codec support for AVI is a no doubt a shame from a user POV. Still, there was a lot of serious work that will benefit users. This has nothing to do with Apple preferring to waste time on superficial nonsense or as you put it "visually impressive looking features that hardly anyone will avail of". Siracusa's review (p.6 actually) has a lot of information on what Apple actually considered important when they went to QTX.

Quote by John Siracusa:
This is just the start of a long journey for QuickTime X, and seemingly not a very auspicious one, at that. A QuickTime engine with no editing support? No plug-ins? It seems ridiculous to release it at all. But this has been Apple's way in recent years: steady, deliberate progress. Apple aims to ship no features before their time.

As anxious as developers may be for a full-featured, 64-bit successor to the QuickTime 7 engine, Apple itself is sitting on top of one of the largest QuickTime-riddled (and Carbon-addled, to boot) code bases in the industry: Final Cut Studio. Thus far, It remains stuck in 32-bit. To say that Apple is "highly motivated" to extend the capabilities of QuickTime X would be an understatement.

Nevertheless, don't expect Apple to rush forward foolishly. Duplicating the functionality of a continually developed, 18-year-old API will not happen overnight. It will take years, and it will be even longer before every important Mac OS X application is updated to use QTKit exclusively. Transitions. Gotta love 'em.

"resident grumpy old man"

This post was edited on 2009-09-11, 09:21 by Simon.

Oisín 2009-09-11, 01:03 #53

since Feb 2006 · 1236 posts · Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Group memberships: co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

In reply to post #51

Quote by madra:
this was in the preview bar before i watched the 30min sepisode and still there when i closed the QT7 window after watching it:

Speaking of … does Snow Leopard fix that ridiculous bug (oh, sorry—I mean feature) introduced in Leopard where previewing a video file in the Finder will give you only the option to play or pause a video, not fast forward, rewind, or choose a point in the time line to play from?

’Cause that is bloody annoying.

Simon 2009-09-11, 06:20 #54

since Feb 2006 · 1803 posts · Location: in front of my Mac
Group memberships: co-owner

Show profile ·

Link to this post

If you use Quick Look instead of Preview you retain those controls even in Leopard.

"resident grumpy old man"

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-12, 13:32 #55

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

there's definitely sommit wrong with the preview function in SL's finder. take a look at this:

it shows my downloading of a backup of the appletalker site from my server. as you can see in the vid, the finder is now intelligent enough to realise that this file is in the process of changing, so it keeps reloading its icon [previous versions of the finder would just have showed a static icon]. however, the finder is still pretty stoo-pid, because although it's apparently reloading the icon for the file every couple of seconds, it's not updating it to reflect the state of that file on disc. the progress bar isnae moving and the filesize stays stubbornly at 160kb [if you look underneath the finder window, you'll see the bottom of cyberduck's window behind it, showing the true downloaded/downloading size of the file.

so, in a way the new finder is dumber than the old one because, with the old one - even tho' it didnae continually reload the icon - if you clicked off it and back on again, it *would* update the icon's progress bar and *would* update the filesize.

i'm afraid that, so far at least, i'm finding that - cocoa tho' it may now be - in snow leopard 'TFF' has unfortunately not been 'F'-ed :hmm:

madra at work | madra at play

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-12, 20:44 #56

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

snow leopard's really starting to get on my wick today!

following on from discussion in this thread about the new itunes, i thought i'd fire it up for the first time since installing snow leopard and have a fiddle around.

i've got my itunes library on an external drive attached to my old G4 server, running tiger.

so i fire up itunes [holding down option] and point it to my tunes library on the server. it takes a few mins to 'update' the library and then everything looks hunky-dory.

then i notice that a couple of the recently added tunes need renaming to fit in to my naming convention so i rename them within itunes - nothing happens. the names stay as they were!

so off to the finder and i track down the tunes in question and 'get info' on them, only to find the dreaded:

[Image: http://www.appletalker.net/grafix/itunescustomaccess.png]

[Image: http://www.appletalker.net/grafix/itunescustomaccess.png]

... 'custom access'.

so i fire up a terminal window and issue a sudo chmod -R 777 on my music folder.

the terminal command completes without giving any indication of an error, so i get info on one of the offending MP3s and again find:

[Image: http://www.appletalker.net/grafix/itunescustomaccess.png]

- this f***king shit was there from day one of the first release of leopard; as you all know, apple switched permissions models between tiger and leopard and caused no end of troubles for people making the switch and migrating their 'stuff' from tiger to leopard and for people working in mixed environments with some comps running tiger and some leopard. [just have a search on apple's discussion forums and you'll find literally thousands of posts about this]. i find it abso-feckin-lutely unbelievable that six versions [and ostensibly a new operating system on], OSX is still unable to fix these permissions cock-ups, which apple themselves caused.

after all the probs i had with leopard, i was hoping that snow leopard was going to be *the* upgrade that eschewed fancy new bells'n'whistles in favour of fixing the foundations of OSX and making it what apple's hyperbole claims it to be but i'm starting to think i've shelled out my £23 for a couple of icon changes and a broken new quicktime player coz, frankly, most of the underlying problems just seem to have been completely ignored.

now, dinnae get me wrong [i know this will come across as yet another 'madra rant'] - after the hell i had with leopard, SL has been [thus far] pretty solid for me. so i'm kind of happy with my purchase, as it's given me a stable reliable system back again [touch wood! :crossed:

]. but if i was one of the SL purchasers for whom leopard had been stable enough, but who were hoping that SL would fix a lot of what was broken under the surface [including the finder] i'd be wondering what exactly i'd got for my money.

:hmm:

madra at work | madra at play

i5m 2009-09-12, 22:13 #57

since Feb 2006 · 2110 posts · Location: Super Up North, UK
Group memberships: co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

Sure I've suggested it before, but have you tried using Access Control Lists to define the permissions rather than basic Unix permissions? It's how I've got my iTunes library setup, so we can share one library between all users.

i5m.co.uk

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-12, 23:43 #58

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

there dinnae seem to be any ACLs or extended attributes on the files in question. they list in a terminal without those pesky '+' or '@' symbols, when i run ls -ale but the permissions they have [read-only] just refuse to budge, even when i chmod them as root. :confused:

madra at work | madra at play

madra

(Administrator) 2009-09-15, 20:17 #59

User title: chairman of the bored
since Feb 2006 · 4938 posts · Location: the intarweb
Group memberships: benevolent dictator, co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

so far today:

added a folder of images to system prefs > screensaver: now every time i open the screensaver prefs and click on the image folder to set its options, system prefs hangs. [i found a couple of threads about it on apple's discussions forums this morning, but cannae track them down now ]

when i open my laptop in college after putting it to sleep at home, the finder still runs like molasses for about ten seconds, before throwing up a dialogue box telling me that it can no longer find my attached print server [from home]

copying several GB of movie files from one firewire drive to another earlier and the screen went black [screensaver mode kicking in i reckon]. wouldnae wake up again, no matter how much i tippy-tapped the keyboard. in the end i had to leave the comp in that condition and use the flashing LEDs on the front of the hard drives to tell me when the file copy had finished and then hold down the power button to force shutdown the comp.

my comp was connected to the GF's laptop by filesharing. after my comp went to sleep, she shutdown her laptop. my MBP then hung with the SBOD when trying to wake it from sleep.

i'm thinking of running a competition now to find a finder bug that snow leopard has actually fixed. because all the annoying ones i've come across before still seem to be there and it's looking more and more like i've forked out £23 just to have a slightly different name in my comp's about box. :thumbsdown:

madra at work | madra at play

i5m 2009-09-15, 21:31 #60

since Feb 2006 · 2110 posts · Location: Super Up North, UK
Group memberships: co-owner, happy snapper, hardcore appletalker, scrapbook monkey

Show profile ·

Link to this post

I thought those finder bugs were fixed in Leopard?! It used to annoy me like hell in the days I was mobile and I'd get on the train and that was it, hanging for ages because I'd forgotten to disconnect my iDisk before I'd left home. And that was back in Panther/Tiger days. I can't believe that crap still happens.

i5m.co.uk