4 Mac OSX/IOS issues in 1 day

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
32,665
Never really used Macs before and preferred the Linux + windows combo for work and pay respectively.
Last month I won an Ipad and initially really enjoyed it. Started a new job 2 weeks ago and was given a mac because some aspects may involve programming an iphone. I wad initially was very impressed also. I have slowly ironed out some of the annoyance, remapping home and end keys to my liking, etc (anyone know how to remap the delete key to actually delete a file in FInder, file deletion is already sandboxed by having a trash can, i don't want 2 ke presses to do a simple delete, I mostly use rm form the terminal so having a Trash can is plenty safe enough for me!).


But now my initial feelings are fading as experience more and more issues. In 2 weeks I have experienced 2 kernel warnings from the mac, I could go 2 years in linux and not get an issue.

Take today as an example. Tried to use Facetime with my girlfriend through my ipad, and after 10 minutes the sound cut out so I don't hear a thing. A quick google confirms it is a known issue.

For work I need to to quickly look at some ESRI Shapefiles so looked for a free viewer. The general advice seems to be install bootcamp/parallels + windows and take your pick, or just buy a windows machine. Great. Im used to this using linux a lot, hence I have a windows install also when working or at home. Seems running a Mac doesn't circumvent the lack of software support.

Found some software called QGIS which seems to be very, very sluggish, and then the OS says that it will need to be restarted. Issue number 3 of the day.

A reboot and an hour later (doing other things, mainly just using TextWrangler to view code, nothing taxing) and for some reason the Dock has frozen. Luckily firefox was open i the background, a quick google confirms a known problem, by double luck the terminal was still open so I moved Dock Preference file, found the Dock PID and killed it. It respawned and we back to normal. But really, is the true Mac experience?


On going issues with getting a lot of stuff compiling. Lots of the dependencies my software requires are designed for a straight linux system and there is always a lot of work to get things to compile. The package systems available in Mac are a far cry form apt-get.


Will give Mac OSX another few weeks of fair usage and if this keeps up I will turn my new 27" IMac into an Ubuntu + windows XP machine through bootcamp.


I was really impressed with both the pad and imac but slowly my faith is being eroded. :(
 
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It makes me wonder what's really going on at Apple now. I came to this part of the forum with a question about the future of Mac OS X but thought I'd comment in here.

So, are Apple just giving up slowly but surely with OS X? Have those days where they would announce lovely new projects such as Grand Central, Quartz Extreme, etc. gone? Just browsing on Apple-orientated forums it seems as if Final Cut Pro X is not that good, Quicktime X needs updating but isn't being, OS X is still using the janky HFS+ filesystem and no word on anything to replace it, etc. And the PowerMac hasn't been updated in 18 months causing misery in the professional arena.

Why are they bothering to make Lion more iOS-like when nobody really wants those features like Mission Control. Are they eventually going to do away with all computery stuff and just concentrate on iPad/iPhone? It seems Mac OS X has more market share now than ever before so why are they being so lacksadaisy with it?
 
PowerMac doesn't exist, but the Mac Pro is rumoured to be replaced in the not too distant future in line with Sandy Bridge E Xeon processor release.

Mission Control is great - has no resemblance to iOS either... Are you sure you don't mean Launchpad? I'm not a fan of the latter as I launch apps much quicker via spotlight tbh for those not in my dock.

I don't think they would ever give up on the Mac, it's their core product. Many would disagree with you there, as Mac is arguably the best its ever been.
 
LOL, you can tell I don't use Apple/Mac OS X, can't you? I'm looking to buy a Macbook for my next computer though so that was what prompted me to query the status of OS X.

*By PowerMac, I did mean Mac Pro and Mission Control should be Launchpad.
 
Cant comment on the more technical issues, as my iMac is only used for uni stuff (photo, video, some animation)
but i've never since i purchased it in mid 2010, had any issues with either FaceTime (used once or twice a week) or the dock locking up.

I did have issues with Firefox, which would lock the entire machine up, but switching to Chrome solved that issue.
 
Try Cmd+Backspace to delete files.

The dock problem is likely due to non-Lion compatible software. There was a bug in an older version of Parallels that cause the problem you described.

As for ESRI and QGIS you're speaking double dutch.
 
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