The Macalope: An Apple blog

In order to protect his good name, the Macalope now has a Twitter account.

"TheMacalope". Accept no substitutes, ask for him by name.

Well, assuming Twitter's up.

John Gruber finds a glorious nut of stupidity before the Macalope and gives it the appropriate treatment.

The Macalope doesn't really have a lot to add to the discussion going on over Tom Krazit's piece entitled Why do Apple customers care so much? -- Tom hits an even tone on an incendiary subject that's reached a crossroads of sorts -- other than to make two points.

First, it's fair to say that if one liked anything quite a bit -- chocolate, sex, liquor, sex with multiple partners, sex with multiple partners that included chocolate and liquor -- one might be inclined to promote that thing to others and not understand why others insist that that thing sucks, particularly when most of them have not even tried it and/or know little about it.

Second, it's an interesting statistical anecdote that while the Mac inspired a 13-year-old to shave an Apple logo into his hair, it was the Zune that inspired this dude.

So...

You know...

Let's not make too big a deal out of it.

On MacBreak Weekly, if you're missing your Macalope fix.

The Horny One's pick seems not to have made the notes but it was the MacSanta web site.

Every time Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogs about Apple, a kitten dies.

Well, on the inside anyway.

This time out, AKH starts by noting how similar Leopard and Vista are.

Like Vista is [sic] long awaited...

Yeah. Six years, two and a half. What's the difference?

Oh, that's right. Four Three [Gar! Antlers must be growing into the Macalope's brain!] and a half years.

...like Vista the launch was delayed...

The Macalope will just point out that Bill Gates originally stated that Vista would ship in 2005 and it didn't ship until this year. Leopard was delayed six months. Even if you're inclined to be charitable toward Vista, it was still later by a factor of more than two.

...and like Vista, I got the impression that Apple rushed a bit to get it out of the door because the Mac fanboys were getting restless.

And we all know how Steve Jobs likes to base his decisions around what Artie MacStrawman thinks.

Sure, it's not unreasonable to get the impression Leopard was rushed for an October release -- certainly Apple didn't want to miss its already bumped release date. Kingsley-Hughes is magnanimous in his willingness to allow that Leopard -- an operating system delivered in two and a half years after a six month delay -- would have roughly the same level of stability that Vista -- delivered in six years after at least a year-long delay -- has.

Now, the horny one might think one would expect the operating system that took 240% longer to reach its users to demonstrably more stable but, whatever.

In the Macalope's experience over the last week with Leopard, it has been as solid as any major OS X release. He's experienced only minor glitches with some third-party applications and once trying to set up a new printer. The Finder -- while we still may not be seeing Apple's best work here -- is better and faster than ever.

Isn't that odd? An operating system update that actually makes your computer faster?

That said, I have to admit that I'm surprised and a little shocked at the types of bugs affecting Leopard, not to mention the volume of people that appear to be affected.

Well, that's weird. Wasn't the Macalope just pointing out how no one knows how many people are affected and there just isn't a good way to tell?

Yes. Yes, he was. Is this thing on? Hello? Hello?

Oh, and let's not forget the new Mac Trojan.

Yeah! And what about Scarecrow's brain?! And where's Jimmy Hoffa buried?! And how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?!

The Mac Trojan really has nothing to do with Leopard's release. It seemingly affects all versions of OS X, with 10.5 actually having the sole benefit of letting you at least see the malicious DNS server the trojan adds.

I'm hoping that updates are released before any of this stuff becomes an issue for me.

Adrian, you've got one Mac. Are you planning on upgrading from Tiger to Leopard on it again? Then you're not going to get the blue screen problem which really seems to have been the biggest. The Macalope frankly is not sure what crashing and performance issues you're talking about since you provide no link and, as he said, his experience has been that Leopard is as stable as Tiger and, in some key operations, is faster not slower.

Again, have people upgrading to Leopard had some problems? No question. As is the case with any dot-oh release (or, in OS X's case, dot-something dot-oh). Is the remedy to simply lock yourself in your underground bunker until 10.5.1 is released? Well, no. For starters, 10.5.1 might not solve all these issues. But also, you might not run into these issues in the first place.

Read up on the affected third-party applications and other issues, do a full backup (or two!) and go for it if you want to.

You're going to want to do those things anyway.

Seriously, these nattering nabobs of negativity who run around the silly punditsphere trying to scare people away from things they could use right now ("Wait for 10.5.1! Wait for the second rev of the iPhone! For god's sake, don't buy anything new and/or shiny!") positively drive the Macalope to fits of apoplexy.

This is not alchemy, folks. And Halloween is over.

Brier Dudley of The Seattle Times has taken Apple to task for supposedly rushing a buggy operating system out the door.

The problem with Dudley's thesis is that while there's certainly proof of bugs in Leopard, there's no proof of more bugs than in any other major OS release. See, there just isn't any non-anecdotal way to determine this because the "one need only peruse Apple's support forums" theory of applied statistics is about as useful as the "online polls say" theory but without the benefit of a bar chart. Simply put, forum postings and blog comments suffer from self-selection and are not a valid indicator of whether or not a piece of software sucks.

Perhaps a good-looking and technologically savvy reader can think of a valid statistical indicator as the Macalope is at a loss.

Dudley links to a post by Erica Sadun at the Unofficial Apple Weblog which is, frankly, ridiculously dire:

If you have only one computer and it's your production machine, don't upgrade. The 10.5 upgrade is a big one--not a small update, not a few bug fixes.

That's true and people need to take responsibility for their own decision to upgrade. You don't have to upgrade.

Lots of stuff gets broken...

This is pretty irresponsible. The Macalope--like most people--did the default upgrade and nothing was broken. Now, for some people some things may have gotten broken, and some of it may have been important or the breakage may have been severe. But the vast majority of upgrades went smoothly and "lots of stuff" is just an absurd exaggeration.

Apple didn't get its gold master out to third party developers in time for the upgrade path to proceed smoothly.

The same could be said of Tiger. That is, like it or not, Apple's m.o. But it's certainly not the reason for the biggest compatibility issues. The difference between the last developer seed of Leopard and the gold master in all likelihood means that some applications could experience minor issues at worst. If there is a single application that suffered severe problems because developers didn't get the gold master until Friday night, the Macalope has not heard of it. And his ears are particularly large and, apropos of nothing, rather furry.

None of this is to say that all those who upgraded to Leopard had a swell ol' time and that it was nothing but puppies, kittens, and flowers. But it's not like Tiger's release (or Vista's, or XP's or...) didn't have any problems. Let's try to keep it in perspective.

Of course Dudley's reliance on two "sources"--one a commenter who seems to have had an unusual (if not nearly fantastical) experience and the other a Cassandra-esque blog post--is simply silly pundit jackassery.

The latest edition of MacBreak Weekly is up, featuring yours truly.

The podcast almost literally collapses under its own weight this week, as too many Apple pundits are on and people start dropping like flies.

There's been a lot of noisy garment-rending in the Apple world recently as the combination of the iPhone price drop (since corrected), the change in iPod video output (still a mistake in the Macalope's eyes), the ringtones feature (really a problem with the industry) and the bricking of unlocked iPhones (boo-hoo-hoo) has apparently driven people insane.

The pointy one understands there have been some misaligned expectations about the iPhone, but what's so surprising is that they're coming from some usually responsible sources, and now he's a little concerned that it might be spreading.

After writing a piece the Macalope sure hopes wasn't about his real family, Macworld's Chris Breen (aka "The Bouffant of Knowledge") was a guest on MacBreak Weekly where he had this to say about Tiger:

Yeah, but I do think that people have expectations about Leopard and not because Apple is doing it but a lot of it is partly due to the delay. You know, it was supposed to ship in the summer and now they said "No, no, no, we're gonna wait until October because we need these resources." However, people would then say "OK, well you've had these extra months to really do something spectacular here."

What?! Chris, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. They've had those extra months to catch up, not make new features.

Mac users are the biggest collection of spoiled brats the horny one has ever seen. Who else can hear "delay" and think "more features!"?

Do people really think that Apple is going to reveal something vastly different from what we've already seen (twice!)? Leo Laporte seemed to think that there was pressure for Apple to release something as different from Tiger as Vista is from XP.

The Macalope loves him some Leo (and some Chris Breen, for that matter), but that's crazy talk. XP came out in 2001. Microsoft had six years. Tiger came out in 2005. That's, hmm, let's see, divide by X... multiply the derivative... carry the one... two years!

If people really think that, well, it's time for an intervention. Yes, Leopard should work and it should work well, but if you're expecting the unexpected, don't.

Like Chris, Leo is also hot about the iPhone. That's the second time someone has said those who aren't outraged about the situation suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. Frankly, that's insulting. It's also wrong. The Macalope would suggest that it's not he who's suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, Leo, but you who's suffering from Munchausen Syndrome.

(Ha! Take that, Mr. I Graduated From Yale!)

Look, there's a reason the Macalope tends to buy Apple equipment and it's not because the company ties him up and puts a red rubber ball in his mouth (let's leave that to Mrs. Macalope, shall we?). It's because their stuff works and looks better than other stuff. If someone wants to make stuff that works and looks better than Apple's stuff, well, the Macalope might have to have some plastic surgery, but he'll be happy to use it.

Leo, if the Macalope's not mistaken, didn't you crash your N95 all by yourself by installing third-party applications? Why is this mythical beast supposed to feel like some kind of psychological victim because he doesn't need that particular brand of aggravation? The Macalope didn't buy his iPhone thinking about all the great apps he was going to install on it, only to find out later that it was locked down and then have to justify his continued support for the platform. No, you bought the iPhone knowing it was locked down and are now upset to find out, no, there will be no peanut butter on your chocolate, chocolate in your peanut butter.

The Macalope's just a little baffled by why Chris and Leo -- after being told repeatedly that they would be given Hershey bars -- keep expecting Reeses Peanut Butter cups to fall out of the wrapper.

Chris also had this to say on Macworld's podcast (which was largely a collective rant about how horrible it was to brick the phones and remove applications) about the possibility that Apple would make a certification program for iPhone and iPod touch applications:

If Apple comes out in January and says, OK, we've got this handful of applications that we've approved and I look back to today when I thought I had that when they worked much better than what you're offering and you're charging me $11.99 per app when I got that stuff for free and it was updated every day and a half and you're never gonna update this, I'm gonna be bitter about it.

Leaving out the whole argument that Chris obviously bought the wrong phone and the fact that the hosts of the Macworld podcast are clearly not average consumers (a subject which Daring Fireball has already hit) and that Apple should probably pay more attention to the 90 percent of its iPhone customers rather than the 10 percent, two points:

1. Someone else on the podcast (possibly Chris himself) noted that some applications crashed their phones. Certainly, that wouldn't happen with a certification program. The quality of the applications would tend to rise, not fall, as Apple would be inclined to pick the better applications for certification.
2. How absurd is it to expect to continue to get iPhone applications for free? The reason iPhone applications are free is not because developers make up for it on volume, Chris. It's because Apple has published no APIs. Charging for an iPhone application now -- and some have tried this and had to end up giving customers their money back -- is developer suicide.

Let's say Apple does what everybody says they want and releases an SDK without a certification program and developers run joyfully through fields of posies as birds fly overhead and virgins dance around the Maypole. You're still going to start getting charged for applications, and rightly so.

Finally, a word of warning to John Gruber and John C. Welch...

We're apparently the only sane ones left. Don't fall asleep!

The Macalope has very little to add to this Daring Fireball post on David Maynor's crappy prestige for the MacBook wireless trick (part of the prestige is timing, David) other than to note that Mr. Gruber's "frog that can recite the alphabet" analogy misses the mark. Because the horny one can tell you categorically there's no such frog (he's been to all of the mythical creature meetings and he's never seen one) and -- despite the blatherings of numerous silly pundits -- no one outside of Slashdot commenters was claiming that OS X bugs didn't exist.

A better analogy would be someone who claimed they had something you knew existed but just hadn't seen before. Like maybe an Indian Head nickel. And when you asked to see it they said, oh, they'd love to show you but you wouldn't understand it because you're not a coin collector. And you were like huh? C'mon, stop being a jerk and show it to me. And they said they couldn't because the U.S. Mint might sue them. And then you said "What? That doesn't even make any sense!" And all of a sudden they stopped talking and their crazy uncle jumped in between the two of you and started screaming about "the gubbermint."

Something like that. That'd be a more accurate analogy.

If somewhat thinly veiled.