Poor Software Quality

I have been a dedicated Apple user since my first Mac in 1985. I have used every released Mac OS version since 1.0. In the recent couple of years, I have become increasingly disappointed with Apple’s software quality. Here is my gripe list:

• In OSX Lion, when you log in as root, and later when you try to log out, the log out dialog box is displayed in another account that is also logged in. As of Lion 10.7.3, this is still lingering as a bug.
• In large Numbers spreadsheets, when you are searching, a new search kicks in for practically every new character you type. Numbers goes out to lunch for minutes at a time. To add insult to the injury, most of what’s going on is single threaded. You may have 8 cores in your Mac Pro, but 7 will sit idle while you wait.

More »

Decline of Good Usability

Apple, in many respects, defined the gold standard of software usability. Ever since the introduction of Macintosh in 1984, usability has been in the center of all Apple products. Over the years, there has been a few pieces of Apple software that took short-cuts in usability, but in general, Apple software remained the most usable software around. That is until recently. Newest generation of Apple software, including OSX Lion and iOS, is showing a marked decline in usability. Some of the things that stand out are:
More »

My new 17″ Mac Book Pro showed up this morning. I had ordered the 128 GB Solid State Drive (SSD) with the laptop, and I have not yet played with it much, but it boots in just a few seconds. Check out the boot video below:

More »