My Top Ten Bug List

[griffman]

Do I enjoy using OS X? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Was OS 9? No. Is any OS? No. Are some of these actually "feature requests" and not bugs per say? Yes, but heck, it's a Wish List forum, right?

With that disclaimer, here's my personal Top 10 Bug List. These are all items that I hope are addressed in future updates. These are not in any particular order, and they are not all Apple bugs. But they are the ten things that 'bug' me the most at the moment. Mouse speed amnesia: I switch between my Mac and a (gasp) PC regularly, and they share a keyboard, mouse and monitor via an IOGear MiniView USB switchbox. Whenever I switch back to the Mac, the mouse speed is at its lowest setting, regardless of where it was when I switched away from the Mac. This also happens after running an OpenGL game like Quake3.

Keyboard navigation in Open and Save dialogs: This was one of the nicer UI features in OS 9, and now it's gone. Simply type a few letters in Open and Save dialogs, and you can easily navigate the entire volume. In OS X, you have to use the mouse or drag and drop the target folder onto the dialog box.

Self-adjusting column widths in list-view folders on the desktop: Create a new folder directly on the desktop. Put some stuff (aliases, whatever) in it. Change to list view. Click on a column heading. Click any other column heading. Watch the name column shrink. Repeat until the Name column vanishes; boom, end of usable folder!

Epson print drivers that don't require manually restarting each job: With my Epson 890C, if Classic is running when I submit a print job, it fails to start. Manually stopping and restarting the job causes it to print successfully. All is fine if Classic is not running.

Support for multiple-level rules in Mail.app: I would really like to be able to have a filter with some "and" and "or" conditionals in it.

Spring loaded folders: I don't even care if they make it to the entire Finder (but it would be nice). I just really want them back for folders on the toolbar and the dock. I would love to be able to bury anything anywhere on my disk just by dragging it to an icon in the toolbar or the dock.

Multiple Get Info windows: As much as I like the one-window Get Info change that was made in OS X, there are times when I want more than one of them open. Give me the option to open as many as I wish, perhaps by holding down the shift key when doing Get Info.

A "clean install" option: I'd like to be able to tell the OS X installation program to do a clean install, wiping the existing installation and starting fresh without formatting the hard drive. Right now, the only easy way to accomplish that is to format the hard drive during or before the install.

Recognition of gaming devices: Apple finally has an OS with a great OpenGL implementation, but right now it can't easily use joysticks, gamepads, or other tools of the gamer's trade. Games sell a lot of computers, and Apple would do well to improve support for gaming periperhals.

Make creating shared folders easier: One of the things I liked in OS 9 was just how easy it was to create a shared folder. Highlight the folder, choose Sharing, set the options, and you're done. In OS X, you need a third-party program like SharePoints (http://homepage.mac.com/mhorn/) to accomplish the same thing. This should be a core part of the OS.Is OS X unusable due to any of these bugs? Hardly, otherwise I wouldn't be running it full time on three machines. I could (and have in the past) make a similar list for OS 9 or Win2K or Win98. But this is the OS X Wish List forum...

So how about it? What bugs would you like Apple to address? Or if you know how I can work around any of mine, please let me know!

-rob.

[DrJerph]

OK, I have to Macs at home. Whenever I do a 'Connect to Server' and login as an administrator (NOT 'Root') from one Mac to the other, I have UNLIMITED (!!!!) access. IOW: I can access other users' home directories, look in the home directory of 'root' on the machine I'm connecting to, etc.... Pretty strange considering that the same addministrator account doesn't have these permissions locally

[Phil St. Romain]

I've noticed that as well, DrJerph, and I kind of like it at home. It's similar to sharing your entire hard drive in OS 9.

Bottom line on that one: don't let anyone know one's admin log-in and password if we don't want to give them the run of the place--same as the admin has.

----------------

Agree with Rob on the need to have an easier time of it sharing folders and setting permissions about this.

Some of the things on your list don't strike me as bugs, Rob, but as missing features, or even new features. Spring-loads and Clean Install options would fit the former, while multiple Get Info windows the latter.

Let's keep pounding the boards at
OS X Feedback (http://apple.com/macosx/feedback)

[Brad Nelson]

Rob, Default Folder is in beta and should cure some, if not all, of the keyboard navigation problems. There's apparently no cure for having to look at this new Unix path hierarchy but DF has a few trick up its sleeve to help with even this.

Bug: Often times the Finder will crash when control-clicking on the Trash window in the Finder to empty the trash.

In Column view you can control-click on an item in a column to the left but the action is tranferred to the right-most highlighted item.

[Phil St. Romain]

Rob and all, maybe you already know this, but Apple has numerous drivers for Mac OS X (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/) on this not-so-publicized page.

One of them is called Game Pad Companion. After installing this, my son was able to use his game pads and joysticks for games he plays on OS X. Before, they wouldn't even work.

Some of these drivers haven't come up in Software Update, so it's a good one to check out.

Phil

[Craig R. Arko]

5) The 3rd party vendor education is still pretty weak; I spoke with an HP printer rep. and they said "O-S Ten???"

4) Where's the rest of the advertising?? Who else knows about this?

3) Driver support is still lacking, particularly in SCSI and USB,

2) The Installer needs such a major overhaul; just do it :D

and the

#1) PRINTED Documentation, who else thinks the PDF-only approach is getting pretty old? Even if I have to purchase it separately, like I can with the OS X Server Admin Guide.

[Phil St. Romain]

Say Craig, did you get Time this week?

Apple has a very nice insert section on the new iMacs and OS X--about 8 pages, high gloss, and very well done, including a Q/A about how OS X stacks up against PCs.

We sure need more of this, but as Time is pretty widely circulated, I thought it a good effort. And I imagine it cost thema pretty penny!

[JBrown]

I would have to say that the most annoying bug for me in OS X is the Finder "Window Amnesia" bug. OS 9 was quite good at remembering I had set some of my Finder windows to open in specific places with specific views. For some reason, OS X refuses to store this information, so I must manually reset everything whenever I restart or logout. Bummer.

Josh

[JBrown]

I was wrong. There is a much more frustrating bug. I run a Software Base Station (NAT) and almost invariably, the host computer will turn OFF the computer-to-computer network that it is running after a varying amount of time. That is to say, that the name of the network that I set up is still under the Airport menu icon, but it is no longer selected. Errrr. This was supposed to be fixed in the last Airport SW update, but apparently was not.

Josh

[level9]

Originally posted by JBrown
I would have to say that the most annoying bug for me in OS X is the Finder "Window Amnesia" bug.I could be wrong, but I think a lot of people don't quite understand how to set windows so they'll stick, this is how I did it:
-hide all apps (easier to see)
-close all finder windows
-click on finder in the dock, a new window will open
-arrange window how you want it
-close window
That'll do it. Anytime you click on the finder in the dock, or cmd-n from the finder, your window will (should) open to that setting. Clicking on drives or partitions will open as you last had them though. Also, in the finder prefs, check off "Keep a windows view the same when opening folders in this window". I think that's everything, not in front of my machine right now.

[Opie]

session management.

In X Window environments like GNOME and KDE, and I believe in Windows, you have session management: there's things that are started by a script or whatever method (.xinitrc on X, Startup folder on Windows, login panel settings on OSX) but those items are static. They happen every time.

What I want is to have my regular apps - Mozilla, Terminal, iTunes, etc - as part of my startup, and apps that are started later be remembered as part of my session. So, in the event of a crash, power failure, or whatever, my desktop will be back to where it was. This includes window positions and settings.

the only problem with session management is that there's never been a "perfect" algorithm. How often do you save a session: when a new app starts, an app exits, manually, or what?

Just a thought.

[WillyT]

Waiting for Internet Connect to even start to connect while everything else is locked from doing anything.

If I could get DSL I would.

If I could get Cable Modem I would.

If I knew Satelite would work MAYBE I could afford it.

I really don't mind the speed (always around 50000) but not being able to do ANYTHING for minutes at a time sux.:mad: