The Unknown Admin™

December 5, 2011
by System Admin

Safari just keeps getting worse...

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 last week. The update claimed to have addressed the excessive memory usage (something which I've experienced and documented) as well as the pages which flashed white, Well I can report after several days use that neither of these have been fixed here on my systems. To be frank, things have gotten worse where Safari slows to a crawl, tabs go unresponsive, or the whole browser beach balls. Previously, my swap and paging would balloon slowly but now, all it takes is around 30 minutes of Safari to grow my swap file usage to 12GB. Absolutely RIDICULOUS! And this is after having pared down the amount of tabs I have opened down to less than 30. Camino with its now 50 tabs, happily occupies 512MB of memory.

To add insult to injury, the white flashing still occurs and with even more frequency. I presume some of this might be attributed to the fact that I'm still on Snow Leopard and that most of these problems have been addressed with Safari 5.1.2 running under Lion. I say "most" because I don't think I've encountered the page flashing yet on my MacBook Pro (which is currently in the 10.7.3 seed). But the excessive memory usage is still there though since it quickly ballooned the swap file to 2GB even though I had just 3 tabs opened and was barely doing any heavy web browsing at the time. When I quit Safari, the swap file(s) eventually went back down to one 256MB file.

So I decided to try and import my Safari settings (this was a full import including bookmarks, cookies, history, passwords) into the latest version of Firefox (8.0.1 as of this writing) and loaded up the same tabs that I have opened in Safari. Memory usage (which includes my usual staple of NoScript, Greasemonkey, DownloadThemAll, and a few other addon's) has Firefox sitting at around 680MB of memory. After an hours worth of browsing, memory usage hovers near 700MB and there is no noticeable sluggishness in the UI (something which was a pet peeve I previously had with Firefox (the last version I had installed was the 3.6.x series) -- which is why I only used it occasionally for just a few sites where NoScript was a must or I made use of Greasemonkey scripts.

There are still some things that I do not like about Firefox when comparing it to Safari. For example, this post is being performed with Firefox, and there are times when the cursor has a mind of its own and returns to the starting point. Another is when copying a webpage and pasting it into a TextEdit document where it does not retain styles and formatting. Then there are the minor UI things where it still does not look and feel like a native Mac application. But these are minor quirks now compared to the craptacularness that Safari is turning into, where it alone has the ability to transform this 3.3GHz 6-core Mac Pro into a flailing slug. Maybe this also explains why mobile Safari in the current version of iOS (5.0.1) is such a big pile of shit as well where it is constantly crashing on my iPad (the crash logs attribute it to a lack of memory -- no shit sherlock). The previous "windowed" version was rather reliable; this tabbed one is a steaming piece of turd.

The worst part about this is many of us have been filing BR's and diagnostics to get this thing fixed. To be honest, I'm sick of dealing with Safari and have resigned myself to not using it unless I really need to. So I guess I'll be finding out Firefox's limitation as I use it over the long haul.

1 comment

October 22, 2011
by System Admin

Poorly designed iCloud toggle settings

I only noticed this now when playing around with the off/on toggles for iCloud. I can see where this really poorly thought out design will end up biting some people in the ass.

This 1st screenshot is the iCloud settings where you toggle off/on whatever you want to be saved to the cloud. The only settings I have enabled are Mail and Documents & Data:


In this 2nd screenshot, this is the dialog which occurs if I decide to turn off Documents & Data. Notice the dialog warns me that all my documents and data which is currently stored in iCloud will be deleted off my iPad (I selected cancel because I didn't want to delete all my documents that are on iCloud off the iPad):


In this 3rd screenshot is the settings for Pages (the same would apply to Keynotes and Numbers). This is where I can enable or disable its use of iCloud. When it is on, all my documents are also pushed up to iCloud and anything uploaded to iCloud from another device is pushed down to my iPad. When it is off, all the documents are only stored on the iPad and never sent up to iCloud. Plus anything else sent to iCloud from another device is never pushed down to my iPad. In otherwords, turning this off makes Pages act like the way it did before iCloud:


In this 4th screenshot, I've turned off using iCloud for Pages just to show what happens:


In this 5th screenshot, this is the resulting dialog displayed after turning off the use of iCloud for Pages. Notice the difference from the warning provided in screenshot #2. If I disable Documents & Data (as per screenshot #2), all that information stored on iCloud remains there but is completely deleted from the device. In otherwords, that setting is a global setting which means, you no longer have any of that data stored locally (its all up in the cloud). However, if you disable the use of iCloud on a per application setting (as per screenshot #4), you can still retain your documents on the device by selecting the first choice. The second selection is self-explanatory and will remove any local Pages documents from the device (it differs from turning off Documents & Data since this Pages setting will only remove Pages documents -- the former removes all documents and data that are on iCloud from the device). Continue Using iCloud merely sets the Use iCloud setting for Pages back on:


Not quite clear? Confused? If you had to read this several times and it still doesn't make sense, then it is clear that the software engineers who made these design decisions did not do a good job. iCloud in general should be designed to be simple and easy to understand considering the target demographic. When a complete technophobe is presented with a warning saying all my documents and data will be DELETED from my device when turning off that iCloud setting, it seems counterintuitive because to most people, turning off that setting means you want to have your documents and data saved on your device because you are turning off using iCloud for your documents and data. Furthermore, it isn't clear to the user that there is another toggle for turning off and on the use of iCloud for individual applications (and even this isn't consistent because not all applications have a pane in Settings). Personally, I think the ability to toggle an apps use of iCloud should exist right inside the program (a small iCloud icon can be displayed in bar at the top; the icon would also indicate state as to whether iCloud is on or off; and touching the icon will bring up the ability to toggle it off or on).

I'm not sure if some of the document vanishing issues is in any way connected to this convoluted structure of settings. Because what I have now is working fine (where its saving both locally and to iCloud), I'm going with my gut instinct not to even try fussing around since I've been bitten too many times in the past trying stuff out of curiosity only to get my head handed to me on a shiny silver platter.

Again, not having a wider testing audience for iOS 5 and iCloud at least 2 months before they were released is one of the reasons why the above sort of situations exist. What currently exists may make complete sense to developers and engineers but not necessarily to the broader base of users. In this regards, iCloud in its current incarnation is un-Apple like.

0 comments

October 22, 2011
by System Admin

iCloud losing data?

In my photo sharing travails with my Apple TV, I came across several threads regarding people losing their documents being stored on iCloud. Since the 10.7.2 seed is closing today, I jumped onto the seed portal to check the forum before it closes and noticed some testers also having issues with their documents disappearing. Others are also experience different problems like duplicate/missing entries (calendar, addressbook), e-mail rejections

So I did a quick test myself using Pages on my iPad by creating a document (iCloud is turned on in Pages). Logging on to the iCloud website, my document showed up in iWorks without any issues. I then created a documents with Pages on my test Mac which runs 10.7.2 (again, my main systems are still on 10.6.8) and uploaded this document via the web. After a few seconds, the document popped up on Pages on my iPad where I was able to load it without issues.

I let this sit for a few hours and returned to both Pages on my iPad and the iWorks web app. My documents were still there. So just from this simple test, the issue isn't happening consistently to everyone and seems to be specific to each individuals configuration. In the event anyone comes across this, my iCloud account was setup new during the seed and I previously was not a MobileMe user. In the iCloud preference panel, the only two things I have enabled is Mail & Notes and Documents & Data.

I did mention previously that I was a bit wary of iCloud when taking into account Apple's poor history regarding its online web services (Apple does a lot of things right but their online initiatives were not one of those; it seemed it was designed and supported as afterthoughts). From 2000 (the original free iTools), I was familiar with the downtime of the different services, slow iDisk speeds, the initial absence of any sort of system status (which was later addressed with some laughable set of indicator graphics in .Mac), and the general poor value of the service (the total yearly cost in 2002 for an account with 1GB of disk space was $460 but that dropped to around $150 by 2004). The main advantage was at the time, there were no bandwidth limits which was great since I hosted my own QuickTime media files for progressive streaming (back then, YouTube did not exist and other video hosting sites were virtually non-existent; the ones that were around only supported Real or Windows Media). My paid stay with .Mac ended in 2005 due to the number of intermittent outages and lack of any recourse (since Apple didn't even guarantee any form of uptime).

When .Mac was rebranded to MobileMe, I stayed away even though the value proposition looked more reasonable and came with a really nifty web photo gallery. Fast forward 3 years -- in an unsurprising Apple-giveth, Apple-taketh fashion with the move to iCloud, Apple is leaving some of its MobileMe customers SOL by not moving over some features like the web gallery, iDisk, web page hosting, and synchronization of things like the keychain. Fortunately, there are 3rd party providers like Backify, Dropbox, SugarSync, and Wuala (just to name a few) which offer seamless syncing and hard disk in the cloud type of services which work across a variety of platforms and devices (iCloud on the Mac forces one to upgrade to Lion which I am not ready to do on my main systems and as written before, likely won't until I have no choice like when upgrading to a new system). The ones who make use of iDisk for hosting a website will need to deal with a bit more complexity in moving to a hosting company.

It is these sorts of decisions (promote a service with features and completely abandon it later) however which explains why I'm wary of relying too heavily on Apple's services for anything critical. Their track record in online services and enterprise products (I've ranted about OS X Server enough) is not stellar so it takes a huge leap to trust my critical and important data to Apple's iCloud until they show over time, a better track record of reliability than what existed in the not so distant past. Because of this, I'm one of those who believes Apple has a very narrow timeframe to get these various iCloud issues squared away before peoples perceptions of the service is cemented in stone. Having some users documents randomly vanish is definitely not the way to inspire confidence. Then there are simple things like not having a simple way to delete unwanted photos in ones Photo Stream; something that is so braindead obvious which is yet another reason why Apple needs to open future iOS seeding to a larger demographic (the majority of iCloud testing was performed in conjunction with the iOS 5 seed and most of this was only available to those in either the Mac or iOS Developer programs).

0 comments

October 22, 2011
by System Admin

Apple TV2 Photo Sharing FAIL

Previously chronicled issues streaming video to my Apple TV (2nd generation). Decided to setup sharing a portion of my iPhoto library to it and the subject line says it all. Apple TV is running the latest update as of this writing (4.4). The objective was really simple: I just want to view the photos stored on my computer on my TV.

I first enabled sharing of selected albums in iPhoto (9.2 as of this writing). The total number of photos in those albums would be just under 10,000 (since according to those who have run into problems, noted it has problems when there are over 20,000). From the Apple TV, I selected Computers -> iTunes media -> Photos -> Albums. Seemed simple enough except when I navigated into various events, most of the photos had no thumbnails (just the default) so clicking on those only invoked the now infamous spinner. As usual, am not alone (there are of course more than these 3 threads).

Unsurprisingly, it is due to the way it is designed to work since it seems to be trying to transfer these photos to the 8GB of flash storage on the device, after which it is likely rebuilding the thumbnails. Simply put, it's a storage and RAM limitation issue. This could be alleviated if Apple would just allow these photos to be streamed since wasn't this device meant to be a streaming one anyway? I can see storing some photos for the screensaver but for photo libraries (which any software designer worth their salt would have a clue that there will be more than a handful of users out there with a couple of thousand images)? I mean, I can load the Photos app from my non-tv iOS devices and use AirPlay (streaming) to display the photos on the Apple TV without issues like missing photos or lengthy delays. Yet, Apple provides no way to stream photos from the device and only allows photo sharing via Home Sharing (which again, syncs whatever it can fit). And because of the limitations involved via this design and the resulting hoop jumping required, that defeats the purpose of one of the key features of the Apple TV since I'm not able to easily and simply access my entire iPhoto's library which resides on my computer and view them ALL on the television.

Some of this stuff just seems so obvious that whomever is the project lead for the tv2 software should be fired for not getting something as basic as this correct in a shipping product (don't care if it is labeled a hobby). I can obviously stream content residing on my non-tv iOS devices to Apple TV. iTunes video media being shared via Home Sharing is actually streamed to Apple TV when being played so bandwidth isn't the issue. Hell, I can view photos albums stored on Flickr faster than the ones from my iPhoto library which is sitting on a computer not even 10 feet away from the Apple TV because of this piss-pour design. I suppose the software engineers in charge of the tv2 software don't shoot a lot of photos like most people do or when they do, figure that it is normal to perform all sorts of hocus-pocus on their computer. Maybe this thing just has not been QA'd properly.

The device has promise but before it can really tackle the living room, it needs a major redesign at the user interface level because the overall user experience of getting media to just simply work is turning out to be a dismal failure and un-Apple like.

0 comments

October 13, 2011
by System Admin

iOS 5 goes live, Apple's servers go out to lunch...

Lets see -- iOS 5 - check, iOS 4.4 for Apple TV - check, Mac OS X 10.7.2 update - check, iMovie/iPhoto/iWork updates - check, iCloud - check. Apple servers - err, sort of out to lunch...

To say that Apple's server and bandwidth were slammed releasing all of the above on the same day would be an understatement. Additionally, part of the iOS 5 upgrade required talking to Apple's authentication servers. When that portion of the process was saturated with requests which could not be handled, that left many seeing one of several error dialog boxes including: 1) The iPad/iPhone/iPod "insert name of your device" could not be restored. An internal error has occurred. (several of these messages included an error code including the now famous, 3200 error). 2) The iPhone "insert name of your iPhone" cannot be restored at this time because the iPhone update server could not be contacted or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. 3) iTunes has detected an iPad/iPhone/iPod in recovery mode. You must restore this iPad/iPhone/iPod before it can be used with iTunes.

Normally, I wait at least a week or so before jumping in but this time, I felt lucky. First thing I did was run Software Update (per previous postings, I'm still on 10.6.8). I had already updated to iTunes 10.5 the previous day. Thus the only updates I saw and proceeded to install were the Security Update 2011-006, Safari 5.1.1, and iPhoto 9.2. After those were completed, I did the usual routine of syncing (to back up) my iOS devices. I proceeded to update my iPad. I got the first error and after trying 3 times, I decided to leave well enough alone and waited. I tried again around 8 hours later and the upgrade and restore process finally went through but not without a glitch; most of my music and some of my photos were not restored. On the iPad, some of the artwork was missing which was the only indication that something didn't go right with the music restore. Opening up the album, the track listings are there but trying to play most of them does not work (same occurs if I try playing them off my iPad via iTunes). The only way I could determine which songs worked was randomly trying or using shuffle mode. Opening up the Photos app, I noticed many block rectangles in the Event view (opening them up confirmed the photos were missing). Yes, I did doublecheck to make sure synching was selected and I tried manually syncing several times without any success. I also deselected syncing and went through the process of allowing it to remove them from the iPad, then selected syncing again, and proceeded to restore with the same results. At this point, I should've known better....

But like an idiot who just wanted to come back for more, I decided to try my iPod touch next... manually synced it to back it up first, checked the music and photo settings to make sure they were set to sync, and proceeded with the upgrade. After around 2 hours of doing its thing, I went through the basic setup which occurs after the update to iOS 5 and found that once again, most of my music and photos were missing. For the music, I managed to find out the same songs were restored on each device. The missing photos on the otherhand were not consistent between the two (it seems I was missing a lot more on the iPad than the iPod). Somewhere before in another posting, I did mention "if it isn't broken, don't fix it...." Arggghhhhhh! What happened to "it just works" Apple?

Note that the original music (in iTunes) and photos (in iPhoto) are ok; they just don't seem to want to be copied to the device. Both have more than enough space. Video media (all 30GB of it) and apps were restored and worked without any problems on both; it is only the music and photos that are giving problems. As of this posting, I've no solution and searching on the Apple Support Communities for "iOS 5 photos gone" is slowly revealing I'm not alone. Unfortunately, spending any more time on this is on the backburner...

1 comment

Filter by Tag