Bugs to fix in OS X 10.9

Mail  & Spotlight:

Allow separate Control Panel > Spotlight entries for:

"Mail messages"
"Mail attachments" (not currently there)
"Chats"

Currently, one can either index bodies and attachments (and chats), or neither. I'm not the only one who would like to have Spotlight for the messages but not the attachments. Does it harm? Yep. Mail takes CPU time doing the indexing (open 'Actions' window to see).

Elsewhere on the net:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4198130?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_stop_spotlight_searching_my_email.html

Currently (OS X 10.8.3) one has only a single Spotlight entry for both Mail (bodies & attachments) as well as Chats (probably iChat?).



Calendar bug when traveling:

Caught on OS X 10.8.4.

I noticed this on a trip from Finland to India, having a repeating calendar entry using U.S. Pacific time zone.

What happened is that after changing the computer's time zone (manually, it didn't detect it automatically for some reason) the U.S. event was still shown in Finnish time. I could have been fooled, but India is a funny 30 minutes apart from the rest of the world, so it caught my eye.

I also found a workaround for this, to get the dates properly updated.

Here's the calendar entry. Repeats weekly, on Tuesdays, 11am U.S. Pacific time.

Now, how to get that to be 23:30 as it should? 

I ticked the below checkbox off and back on. That did it! (Calendar > Preferences > Advanced):

Now, the item is shown properly:

I haven't tried reproducing this bug. Maybe it has something to do with the specifics on how I got here (i.e. could be India specific, could be manually changing the time zone, could be anything). If it is a common bug, covering everyone using Macs and traveling, I cannot believe it's there.

Maybe, if Apple was more open about collecting bugs, these would get better ironed out (this is somewhat controversial though - I use OS X over Linux because things usually Just Work on the Mac). So Apple - if you're reading this - you can do better. You can be more open. You can actually discuss bugs with users instead of this one-way OS X feedback form.

Numbers - two small features

Since Numbers is so great, I'm using it a bit on "uncharted" territory as well, namely doing a language dictionary of Kannada words.

Two small features would make it ideal:

1. Ability to mark certain cells (a row) to take text in a certain language (with a certain keyboard layout)

Now, I must manually change between Kannada (Indian) and Qwerty keyboard. If I could make the Kannada cells know that their type is "text with selected keyboard layout" this would happen automatically. This means integration with the Keyboard selector on the top bar, so that the current input type would be shown there, of course. You are Apple - you know how to make this Right.

2. Embedding audio recordings

I didn't find an easy way to make a cell carry audio. I'd like to embed the sound of each Kannada word, spoken out by someone. Ideally, also this could be a cell type so that external tools are not needed to be used (and no files need to be saved). The feature could be useful for many other cases as well.

I filed these requests on Aug 14th 2013 on the Numbers feedback form.



TimeMachine not shutting up

Caught on OS X 10.8.4.

As many of us, I increasingly use Dropbox for file storage and syncing between my Macs. It simply is more manageable than iWork.

Since those files are anyways backed up, I have excluded ~/Dropbox at the Time Machine preferences.

I would expect this to completely ban TimeMachine from scanning and storing stuff within the ~/Dropbox folder, right?

Nope.

Recently, I noticed a Numbers file I store there had the File > Restore > All versions ... menu item enabled, and I had a look. Yep. All the earlier versions are there, nicely stacked.

What should I make of this? 

There are 28 versions stored of this document. Did I ask for them? Nope. Did I ask to exclude versioning / backups? Yes. Why are they there?

I presume "exclude" for Time Machine just means exclude from backing up. It should also mean exclude from even creating local duplicates / versions. What if this was a really, really big file (which it is not). Say a video. 

I'm seeing this as a bug that Apple should fix.

At the same time, I have a nice list of 123 versions (the full history) available on Dropbox. 100kB each. Isn't Dropbox marvellous? :)

Lighter gesture for Touchpad one-finger-stationary, another moves

The above may not ring any bells, but if you've used the Touchpad (= any recent Macbook), you have used it.

Press the pad by one finger (so that it clicks). Now move another, while keeping the finger down. Text, or icons get selected.

It's neat, but rather heavy duty compared to most (all?) other usual gestures, where the pad "click" is not needed. It's also straining on one's thumb.

I wonder if Apple has considered leaving the click out. That is, it could work like this:

- touch the pad in one place (don't click, just a gentle touch), keep the finger touching

- move a second finger up/down/left/right anywhere on the pad

This doesn't currently do anything (if you move both fingers it's a scroll gesture). Can I select somewhere that the 'click' would not be needed?

Not that I find (Preferences > Touchpad). So, Apple, please...? :)

+ One bug in Kannada font / keyboard mapping

This one might or might not be on Apple. It may as well be a Unicode bug, or a bug in the Ashwin Kumar's amazingly useful Kannada keyboard layout for OS X. Apple carries two Kannada keyboard layouts by default, but they are the 'official' Indian ones and suit badly to Qwerty thinking. Ashwin's fixes this.

Anyways, the problem is with foreign-origin words (which Kannadigas use a lot, unfortunately). If they end in a consonant, they are marked with a 'crossed' character s.a. ಕ್, ದ್, ಹ್ etc. You get the pattern. So should 'r' but instead we get ರ್. Shit now it worked.

If I do the same in i.e. Numbers, I get this (depending on font):

With Kannada MN (a built-in OS X font) I get:

With Helvetica Neue I get:

Neither of these is correct. The "mirrored 3" character is 'r' but it's never used alone. It adds an 'r' prior to the character that it is preceeding (yes, figure out that logic, us westerners... we have it easy). Anyways, it's in the wrong place here and should be the 'ರ-crossed' character instead.

Go Unicode nerds. Who is at fault? Unicode, Apple, or Ashwin Kumar??

Another possible fault or inconsistency with the OS X Kannada Unicode font is in the 'mo' and 'moo' syllables:

The part marked red is not there in a book that uses 'mo'. It doesn't need to be, because a similar syllable 'vo' gets its tail drawn from "the butt" (really - I think that's how they teach it here). Anyways, OS X "mo" and "moo" are understandable, but different from the books that I have.

Also, it seems the preference is to write 'v' with the top line, always (Helvetica Neue leaves the top out for 'va', 'vu' and 'vuu').

Maybe this is simply of different styles of writing. Maybe it's a bug. Please comment if you know better. Thanks. :)

Addendum 2-Sep-2013: 

Did some more testing on this. Here are the three detected trouble cases in three different fonts:

Helvetica Neue does all the three cases 'wrong' (but is generally usable even so).

Kannada MN (built-in OS X font) does 'va' correctly, but gets completely confused with 'mo' and 'cut-ra'.

Kadage (an addon font from here) does 'va' correctly, 'mo' wrong in another way (these may be taste/dialect issues as well?), and 'cut-ra' correctly.

On the correctness, Kedage seems to be winning. It would be great if Apple fixed these issues in the built-in fonts (both Helvetica Neue and Kannada MN) in upcoming OS X versions.

Dashboard World Clock

A bit on the side of things, but wouldn't it be nice to:

- See the difference from current time in hours (and half hours for India); now I find myself often calculating that manually

- Having selectable background color / material for the clocks (on their reverse side, behind the 'i' button). This would allow customizing a set of clocks and easily seeing which is for which area. Now all clocks look alike, only the title tells where they point to.

Ideally, one could change the colors differently for the up/down portions, thus reflecting i.e. the flag colors of a country.

Oracle - how to be More Believable on OS X

Recently, the baton on Java on OS X was passed from Apple to Oracle. From Java 7 onwards (i.e. now), updates come from Oracle. Also, integration with operating system has changed in various ways.

Most of this is good.

And then there's this.

Instead of nicely integrating the Java Control Panel into where the rest of the settings are (i.e. within the topmost window), Oracle chooses to launch the one below.

There's a plethora of user interface issues here.

1. "About" is topmost on the Control Panel window, on the first (default) pane. It's the *last* thing a user needs. Move it!

2. It simply looks Bad and Boring. This is not in line with the coolness that JavaFX tries to bring to Oracle. Put some meaningful graphics on the first pane?

3. *All* of the four buttons on the first pane have "..." in their captions, meaning you can do *nothing* in this pane alone. Too deep organization.

The reason for this, of course, is that they want to run the Control Panel in Java (it looks just the same in Windows). That's probably a valid excuse for the first OS X version. Not for the long run.

So let's fix this. :)

Don't launch anything new, make things fit in the OS X usual Control Panel (hire some consultant to do it in Objective-C, it's not contagious).

We can probably use the same tabs, but some would benefit from a renaming. Let's check them one by one (sorry that I haven't made any UI sketches on this - have other things to do):

General tab

Drop the "About" from here (moves i.e. to under "Update" where it's more relevant).

Drop "Network settings are used when making Internet connections." *Anyone* (anyone who found the Control Panel, anyways), does know that. Less is more and this simply makes Oracle (the boss within Oracle who demanded this text) look Stupid..

Since you're saying "only advanced users should modify..." why exactly is *this* on the front page, then?

Pressing 'Network Settings...' gives:

This should imho be a "Network" tab of its own, just prior to the "Advanced" tab. You said it yourself. For advanced users. = moved.

Temporary Internet Files has the same "only advanced users should".. mention. By having these right on entry page of the Control Panel you make the occasional Java users (who are millions) think Java is "only for advanced users". Unnecessarily. Move this, too.

There's enough in there to grant a separate, top-level tab (within the real OS X Control Panel area). Let's put "Temporary files" (or "Disk cache") before "Advanced".

Then there's the "View..." dialog of the initial page (yet one very advanced thingy).

Or actually, it turns out to be almost like a separate application within the Control Panel (which is within the OS X Control Panel). Way too deep - I bet most people never knew this even exists? I did not. :)

It's three things.

"Applications" shows which apps are taking disc space for their cache files. This is great, but... the icons on top allow one to i.e. launch these programs and look into their source code. Someone in charge of this wanted more than one icon, and got it. *Completely unnecessary* within a Control Panel.

Let's make this into a "Cache" tab (for brevity) and just keep the possibility to list the apps and remove their cached data.

"Resources" has things that come from the Internet. Maybe it can be selected like above (show) but maybe the two lists could be put in one, i.e. Apps on top, followed by Resources. 

"Deleted applications" is completely unnecessary. Someone in some meeting wanted to play safe and duplicate a trash bin. Don't Do That. Stick to simplicity. Though Java (well, JVM) is gorgeous, you don't want it to explode on people's faces. They already have enough stuff to take care of. One can always re-install an app from the original place. Trash.

That covers the first, "General" pane, and - nicely - nothing remains on it. I would claim that the proper title for the pane should have been "Miscellaneous" since these really were things that didn't fit anywhere else. Too bad they were placed on the *entry* place of the Java Control Panel.

Update

What a waste of empty space.

Merge this with the "about" popup that comes from the General tab. 

I would bet that the *most* frequently used feature of Java Control Panel is to check which version you are running and possibly upgrade. Make this the entry page (it already has the nice graphics). Don't hide it behind an "About.." button.

That covers the "Update" pane, which now functions as the nice entry page within the Control Panel.

Java

It's kind of awkward to have a "Java" pane within a "Java Control Panel", isn't it? If this pane is "Java", what are the others?

Again, you probably noticed the (lack of) use of empty space, and making people push yet another Button... (A copy of this pane alone would make for 15 minutes of teaching at a University Usability Course - if people would learn by bad examples, which they don't). :)

Ok, let's be humble and press the "View..."

There comes "Java Runtime Environment Settings".

Let's forget about the unnecessary interim "Java" tab and call the tab "Runtimes" at once.

However, knowing that in the Oracle way of distributing Java for OS X there is only one runtime at any one time, I wonder what's actually the point of all this. Apple had a similar list where one could manage multiple Java Runtimes. Oracle itself has said this was a very, very bad idea. So .... what is this for?

Security

"Use certificates to positively identify .. certifications." Yeah, right.

- empty space

- button...

Just call the whole page "Certificates", and have this (what pops up by pressing the button) right on the topmost level:

Certificates is probably an even more advanced issue than Network and Temporary Files and therefore deserves to be listed after them.

Advanced

This can probably remain pretty much as-is, since the name anyways implies you should know what you're doing. A tiny help pane on the right side for getting info on the settings might not hurt (especially since the OS X Control Panel would have more horizontal page available).

Maybe reduce the font size a bit. It's advanced. There are many options. Smaller font size means I can get a better overall view at once.

Altogether, now

So the current (Oracle Java 7 SE) Java Control Panel organization is like this:

General

   About...

   Network Settings...

   Settings...

   View...

Update

Java

   View...

Security

   Certificates...

Advanced

The proposed flatter organization is:

Update

Network

Temporary Files

Caches

Runtime   (if required)

Certificates

Other

Since essentially all the entries (except for 'Update') are advanced (already declared so in the current Control Panel implementation), it is probably in place to re-title the earlier "Advanced" as "Other".

The Theory

I've developed a theory (mainly by observing XBox/Zune and other Microsoft mess-ups) that the internal structure of an organization is traceable in the software it produces. That is, unless a special effort is taken to smoothen such borderlines from the eyes of the user. I bet that the issues mentioned above are not coming from developers. They reflect something within probably Sun and not Oracle that caused this kind of approaches to be taken. It is sad if such usability failures are allowed to live further over the years, since *this* is what most people will feel when they touch Java. Is it flat, easy and good-looking. Or is it unnecessarily structural, hard to handle, and aging.

Oracle, please decide.

Apple *always* lets you down!

I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and expected to get laptop/desktop/phone integration. That's what they had publicized. A more "iOS" experience, also on the desktop. Yeah. Right.

Got an alarm just a few minutes ago. Clicked it "shut" on my desktop. What the h*ll... It's still ringing on the phone in the entrance!

I genuinly thought they'd make the things *integrated*. You react to a message on one device, it gets handled on the others as well.

Nope.

Apple always leaves something for the next update. But this one they should have covered.

While whining, how about incoming SMS'es. If I'm working on a computer, let me see the SMS'es there, and react to them. INTEGRATE.

Currently, SMS'es are still confined only to the phone. No technical reason they would need to be so.

I'm beginning to think Apple is losing the magical "it just works" that they were known for, in the time when using PC's was hard. Losing their innovation mojo. Please - do better!!!

App Store should meet Bonjour (= local caching of downloads)

http://twitter.com/bmdesignhki/status/231451046185148416

Some more details on that.

It feels stupid that after one 4.3 GB download, each family computer under the *same* App Store license must perform the exact same download again, from who knows how far on the Internet.

A better approach would be for App Store agent to keep a cache of recent downloads (or even partial downloads) and expose that cache to any other computers on the same network, via Bonjour. Technically, this should be easy.

Authentication would still happen via the actual App Store servers, just as now. Only once the download begins, local caches would be preferred over the actual server seeds on the Internet. This is much akin to torrents, but not quite. It would reduce the server load that Apple is getting by some (maybe 10-15%). 

What do you think? I find no down side to Apple doing this, starting in some future version of App Store. Luckily, we only have two Macs at home.