Seek Nuance

Apple’s OS X Lion is a great product. I’m glad I upgraded. But it’s got some annoyances.

My first Mac was a version 1, back in 1985. After that, I used DEC operating systems for a few years, and then used Microsoft Windows exclusively throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s. I switched back to Macs in 2008, when I bought a MacBook Pro with OS X Leopard.

OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard were fine, quintessential Apple products.

I’ve now upgraded to OS X Lion. Nothing in the earlier two versions made me clench my teeth, but some of Lion’s changes bother me. Someone surely had a good reason for each one, yet all but one are backward steps in usability. (I’m fence-sitting about one of them.)

I won’t prattle about why my opinion matters, but I’ll remind you that I’m really smart and what I say is always right.

Here’s my list of top OS X Lion annoyances.

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After I removed Flash from my MacBook Pro, I was annoyed by frequent “Safari can’t find the Internet plug-in” warnings.

It turns out that ClickToFlash makes those warnings disappear. Meaning: Yes it does this when you have Flash installed, but it also does it if you don’t have Flash installed. You’ll see the “Flash” image where the Flash media would be, and won’t get the annoying pop-up.

Hat tip to Joe for this suggestion.

Innerdaemon has a short, blunt list of suggestions for Adobe w.r.t. Apple. Money quote:

Some suggestions on what [Adobe] can do to get back in the game instead of whining like a teenager who got dumped for the first time:

1. Build your own damn tablet, optimized for Flash. Two kids in India built their own…Go buy them if you don’t want to build it yourself…
2. Start an intermediary transcode service for Flash. Don’t want to build one? Buy RipCode.
3. Fix Flash for OS X, and resolve CPU hogging issues for iPhone, iPad. Give us a reason to care.
4. Decide on a corporate strategy and execute… No company can serve all customer segments, target every market. What’s Adobe want to be?
5. If you can’t decide, sell yourself to Google.

Last night, I tried installing the latest Release Candidate of Adobe’s Flash plug-in.

It didn’t install correctly. I uninstalled it, searched for leftover installation files, and then reinstalled. Still didn’t work. I then uninstalled, tried something else, installed, uninstalled, rebooted, installed, uninstalled, tried one last thing, installed. Still didn’t work.

Then, I snapped.

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I’ve never been thrilled with Mac Mail’s default layout.

Letterbox is a free Mail plug-in that gives you a three-column view that’s more logical for wide screens. It rearranges the user interface into three vertical columns, so the message pane is to the right of the message list, instead of below it.

Three columns!

I’m running the latest Beta for Snow Leopard, and it works great. +1, highly recommended.

I’ve used the BumpTop 3-D desktop (Mac version) for a day. It’s a promising start, but not worth using, or paying for.

BumpTop’s visual metaphor is a 3-D desktop surrounded by four walls. It works with OS X’s Spaces, so each Space can be a 3-D desktop. This means each virtual desktop now has five surfaces (the desk and four walls) for icons. Application windows can exist only on the desk, while icons can be there or on any wall. This is useful, if you need more space for icons.

So: Think of an application window being attached to a Space, and a BumpTop 3-D background being attached to a Space. BumpTop represents your desktop icons. The application window and BumpTop aren’t aware of each other.

You can move icons (except for one kind, the “pile”) to any surface. You can swivel the view to bring any surface to the fore. (E.g., double-clicking the right wall will bring the right wall front and center.) You can slide an icon into a wall and watch it bounce off — Ooooo, physics!

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I’m trying a new 3D desktop, for Macs. It’s called BumpTop. I’ve only played with it a bit, but it’s interesting enough to keep it for the next couple of days, and see how I like it.

I already see one visual oddity… The BumpTop desktop is 3-D, but open application windows are 2-D.

I’ve wanted to replace EMC Retrospect 8 as my home backup application for some time. Seven months after its release, Retrospect 8.0/8.1 still has atrocious performance, buggy behavior, and no user manual.

I’ve decided on a simple solution. The primary backups will be Time Machine to a Drobo USB disk hanging off my Airport Extreme. The secondary (off-site) backups will use a online backup service, such as Jungle Disk.

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Cleaning the mental loft of some odds and ends…

An ex-colleague torpedoed my reputation with a start-up. I uncovered this from the timing of the company’s backing out, a LinkedIn update, and a third party’s casual comment. It gets better: I had been neutral about them, due to doubts about the company’s technical direction and market opportunity. OOTB they said TBNT, and a few days later I discovered the torpedo in the water. The epilogue: I’ve since learned things that confirmed my earlier qualms about the company, so it’s just as well (good for me, actually) that our talks are off. So to my anonymous known admirer: Thanks for helping me dodge a bullet! And, Bitter, party of 1: Your table is ready.

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Clearing the mental attic of some odds and ends…

A little bird told me that Fisher Communications is up for sale. I have no idea if this is true. But interestingly, Fisher filed an 8-K on August 24, notifying the SEC of changes in its top executives’ Change of Control agreements. From its preamble:

The Board believes it is imperative to diminish the inevitable distraction of the Executive arising from the personal uncertainties and risks created by a pending or threatened Change of Control, to encourage the Executive’s full attention and dedication to the Company currently and in the event of any threatened or pending Change of Control, and to provide the Executive with reasonable compensation and benefit arrangements upon a Change of Control.

IANAL, but the document indicates that in the event of a change in control, Colleen Brown will receive 2x her annual salary plus any optional bonuses then in effect, and other execs will get 1x their annual salaries plus their optional bonuses. These terms are generous, in my experience.

If you know anything about this, drop me a line at john at seeknuance dot com. Or if you prefer, tack on a comment to this post.

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NewsGator has released a Beta update (3.2b6) of NetNewsWire, which is their Mac syndication feed reader. I’ve used NetNewsWire for over a year, and before that I used their FeedDemon syndication reader on Windows. I’ve been very happy with their readers, so when I received the notice of the new version + impending change to their synchronization service, I immediately upgraded.

Here is a snap review.

The UI is unchanged and there are no new features. Q: What new development has Newsgator done with their syndication readers? A: Nothing.

The only change is that it now syncs with Google syndication reader, because they’re nuking their NewsGator Online syndication service. Essentially, it’s now just a front-end to Google Reader. A front-end with a dated UI.

As an extra bonus, it nuked 3/4 of my subscriptions. By, “nuke,” I mean that they flat-out disappeared. Gone. Pffffffffffffft. That’s 3/4 of the subscriptions I have lovingly built up over the years. Thank you, that was swell.

I can easily confuse it by creating folder names containing commas.

I know this is a Beta, but come on.

I’m looking for recommendations for alternative RSS readers. I don’t like web-based readers; I prefer a local application. Any suggestions?

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Update 7/30/09: The NetNewsWire Beta blog has a to-do list for version 3.2. It lists things that don’t work because Google Reader doesn’t support them. Like nested folders, and folders with names containing “certain characters.” The 3.2b6 Beta deletes them with no warning. Brilliant.