Shattered Mac illusions

NetworkWorld ^ | 5/23/2005 | By Mark Gibbs

[Swordmaker]

I have been Macified. After not owning a Macintosh for more than 12 years I finally decided that the undeniable coolness and beauty of the hardware and particularly of OS X meant that it was time to get religion!

The beast, which arrived a couple of weeks ago, is a Power Mac G5 with dual 2-GHz processors and 1.5G bytes of RAM running OS X Tiger. What a gorgeous piece of engineering! It is an elegant design even under the hood: When you need to take off the side to, for example, add extra RAM, one latch frees the panel. And all the subsystems are plug-ins, making it incredibly easy to work on. Heaven.

Then when you run up OS X, again, wow. The operating system has a remarkable polish - just as if someone had thought about the design as a whole rather than finding and assembling a collection of spare parts and forcing them to fly in formation.

Anyway, back to the Macification: First I fooled around checking out all the cool new features. Tiger has a lot of really well-implemented new stuff that makes it significantly more powerful.

Next I decided to load my photographs into iPhoto. My photo collection is fairly large, weighing in at 14,618 files for a total of 18.7G bytes.

I copied the files to the Mac from my Windows desktop, an XP system that is misbehaving to the point where it is time to wipe it and start again. < digression > It is amazing that XP systems can get to a condition where it is easier to erase and re-install everything than diagnose and fix what's wrong. < /digression >

So now that I had the image files on the Mac I could start loading them into iPhoto. All seemed to go well with iPhoto doing its indexing and thumbnailing, then it finished - crash.

I restarted iPhoto. The program ran for a couple of minutes then, thud! I re-imported the photos. IPhoto finished the import, stayed up again for a couple of minutes, then thud. In the middle of this the 10.4.1 release of OS X came out, which apparently included some iPhoto improvements, but nothing I could find mentioned the problems I was seeing. I applied the upgrade and resorted to clearing out about 5,000 pictures and iPhoto seemed to become stable again.

Now, let's review: This was a brand-new machine, the system detected no problems and iPhoto hadn't been used before, but handling just less than 15,000 images made it blow up. And I thought Mac applications were generally considered to be better than Windows applications. Evidently this is not the case.

According to discussions I've had on lists and in Apple forums, there's no obvious explanation for my problems with iPhoto. According to Gary Stock, CTO of Exfacto: "From a Mac perspective, the surprising part is that iPhoto even tried, rather than warning you when you crossed some threshold or advising you to reduce the dataset."

Exactly! Which makes me think the problem is more fundamental than bad error-handling in the application, unless you are willing to believe that Apple's programmers are not very skilled.

From my experiences with Windows and now OS X, maybe when it comes to sophisticated, multimedia applications it doesn't matter what platform we're using. It may be the case that humans are not capable of creating stable software for the level of complexity required.

Maybe there's a sort of code-complexity limit that we have crossed in the latest generations of computer systems that makes software stability probabilistic rather than deterministic. If so, it makes for some interesting implications for systems engineering.

To begin with, managing systems in the future might be more like psychiatry than programming.

Despite these snafus I still love the Mac. It is just that my illusions are shattered.

Condolences to backspin@gibbs.com.

[Swordmaker]

"Macification" and iPhoto limitation...

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[jdm]

FYI, not sure if you're on this ping list.

[Swordmaker]

The iPhoto issue appears to be a problem with a corrupted image file. Several commentors on NetworkWorld reported similar problems that were traced to a corrupted file and one reported his iPhoto contained over 25,000 photos with no problem.

Another suggested holding down Option-Apple key combination while starting iPhoto forcing a rebuild of the library.

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... the problem is, people who use -- and program -- computers (in general, not just Macs) are so visually oriented, they only worry about how things look, rather than how they work. Oh, sure, I can't get the Trash to empty under OS X, but oooh, look at the pretty colors.

[jdm]

"The operating system has a remarkable polish - just as if someone had thought about the design as a whole rather than finding and assembling a collection of spare parts and forcing them to fly in formation."

That's a bit brutal. Fair enough to criticize an operating system, but not when you're really criticizing the computer itself, not the operating system.

[jdm]

I choose the "adjust for best performance option" in XP, myself. I conduct a little tweaking after that as well.

[jdm]

...and contrary to the masses, it is possible (very possible) to tweak IE so that it runs as fast as Firefox and/or Opera, Maxthon, Avant, etc. Of course you don't have tabbed browsing with IE, but the speed is there.

[general_re]

From my experiences with Windows and now OS X...

And now this silliness. What does iPhoto falling over have to do with the OS? I can write crappy software for any platform you can name, but that doesn't make my failings the fault of the OS or its programmers. If iPhoto crashes, blame iPhoto, not OS X.

[eno_]

I have had the exact same issue with Google's photo indexing tool on my PC. A corrupted image file was the problem.

[SolitaryMan]

Part of the problem with Mac is the limited software and games available for it compared to Windows. I have several thousand dollars worth of software that I use nearly every day that is simply not available for Mac. At the same time, publishers will not support these programs if they are running under some emulator.

Additionally, Mac has to run dual processors just to keep up with Intel P4.

[IncPen]

Of course you don't have tabbed browsing with IE, but the speed is there.

And by keeping IE you still get to hang out the convenient 'help yourself' sign that attracts spyware, malware, security hacks, etc...

[Spktyr]

Agreed. I've got a corrupted photo file that Windows XP SP2 will copy, move, delete, etc, all day long, but if you try to open it in anything but Photoshop, it's BSOD time.

[MarineBrat]

I just wish that MS would finally ship a version of Windows with multiple desktops like Linux has.

Desktop and taskbar gettign cluttered? Well, just have ANOTHER desktop with taskbar, and switch gears. It's such a beautiful concept that I can't believe that Winders hasn't done it yet!

[ElPatriota]

Just a comment: Why a MAC at all? I always wondered. unless it is for ideological reasons? I've always thought the apple/mac is the computer of the LEFT! [smile - I am sort of kidding here but at the same time... Why?]. It is true that Mac's has, for the most part, been the computer of choice for all people in the graphic designers field (very popular in San Francisco)teachers have it as well, and of course, for those why need something stylish [sarcasm]. True, that Apple was a better computer for these applications, but this was a long, long time ago. Today, the regular PC does everything an apple does and more. And you can also find in any possible configuration you want, ANY, including 'style and color' for those who need to be unique. I love regular PCs, currently I own my 5th or 6th PC, I lost count. My PC is about performance!... and I put it together myself with prime components, that would have cost me easily $1000 over what I paid for it. Have you noticed that in many movies in Hollywood, when a PC comes into view, especially a home PC, it's always an Apple, Mac, whatever? and they make sure to show you the logo.

I don't know what is the market share for macs, but it has to be a fraction of the PC. Seems to me, you would be much safer with a PC whose OS has been tested by millions and millions of users all over the world than by some 'boutique' computer & O.S.

Am I wrong? I ask you :)

[Swordmaker]

It's such a beautiful concept that I can't believe that Winders hasn't done it yet!

Especially since it was pioneered on the Amiga 1000 in 1985!

[Publius6961]

< digression > It is amazing that XP systems can get to a condition where it is easier to erase and re-install everything than diagnose and fix what's wrong. < /digression >

Another friendly and important reminder that every Windows XP system should have two partitions: One for the Operating system and installed software, another just for data...

If there is brain fade, after doing it wrong once, remember...
Ghost is your friend after a "rebuild".

[Swordmaker]

I can't get the Trash to empty under OS X

Sunk... pull everthing out of the trash and put it into a holding folder on your desk top. Put one thing at a time back into the trash and then empty the trash. Find the offending file; it will be the one that won't go away. Then check the ownerships and permissions on that file. This should solve your problem.

[Publius6961]

Exactly! Which makes me think the problem is more fundamental than bad error-handling in the application, unless you are willing to believe that Apple's programmers are not very skilled.

You are being tres unkind. After all, programming, its planning and its logic is a new concept. Only about 60 years old or so.
< /sarcasm >

The problem is to assume programmers are gods. They are as dumb as bricks, as witnessed by the abortions foisted on us constantly with "custom" applications. Unfortunately, I need to work with a bunch of those.

[Swordmaker]

and contrary to the masses, it is possible (very possible) to tweak IE

but the "masses" are not "tweakers", jdm. Just like it's possible to make Windows secure, it isn't easy for a non-techie average user to do it right... or even to know it has to be done or how.