Leopard's Terminal Tabs

As I shared yesterday, I love tabs. One of the few good things that MacOS 10.5 Leopard brought, was enhanced Terminal application. A basic feature - Tab support - that was missing in Terminal for way too long, was finally added, and Terminal app became finally usable for anyone who spends a great time of the day working on the command line.

Before Leopard, I used iTerm, but there was just something about it that I didn't like, but the availability of tabs made me get over it. Now with Leopard there is no need for iTerm any more.

Just to point out that Apple seems to be unable to get anything 100% right these days, there are two flaws in the Terminal's tab implementation.

The first flaw is that you can't easily switch between tabs using keyboard shortcut. All you can do is to use cmd+{ and cmd+} to switch to previous or next tab respectively. What a "wonderful" choice of keys that require use of right hand or both hands. Most importantly, one can't use the handy cmd+1, cmd+2, ..., cmd+9 shortcuts (or anything similar) to switch to one of the first nine tabs. Maybe Apple doesn't want to overload us with new features and is planning to add this to Terminal in MacOS 10.6. :-) Fortunately, the cmd+{ and cmd+} shortcuts can be remapped via System Preferences.

The second flaw is that Terminal doesn't let you name the tabs or configure how the tabs should be named. This is a useful feature that many other terminal applications have, but Apple decided that using the name of the program of the currently running process is good enough. Well, this is what it looks like:

People are doing all kinds of crazy things to work around this issue. Including using hardlinks to change names of programs or creating dummy processes that carry the tab name.

I would be very happy if Apple did something similar to what xterm does - using an environmental variable to set name of the tab dynamically. But I have a feeling that we'll see MacOSX Trash go 3D sooner than properly working Terminal tabs. :(

10 Things I Hate About MacOS X Leopard

Almost everyone is hyped about the new release of MacOS. All those great new features. Auweeeeee! I'm a an Apple fan, for now - I'm starting to struggle to justify it. Leopard does have a lot of nice features, but it is missing a lot as well. Considering the delay of the OS, I'm disappointed mainly about these ten things:

1. JDK6 is missing - WTF Apple!?!?!?
2. Only read-only support for ZFS, unless you count the developer preview version at ADC
3. Where is Xray? - The neat DTrace GUI that used to be promoted on Apple.com website a few weeks ago Update: The app is now called Instruments and is part of developer tools. Thanks Ron and Barry for pointing this out to me
4. JDK6 is missing!!!!! Are you kidding me? Even James Gosling who liked to work on Macs, left Mac for Solaris
5. MacPorts break here and there - This might not sound like Apple's fault, but considering that Fink and MacPorts are the two main ways to get unix apps installed on Mac, Apple should have cared more about making sure that "things will just work"
6. Case sensitive FS is still only a second class citizen - I'm sick of all the dupes that iTunes and iPhoto creates, I'll be migrating to case insensitive FS soon
7. Mac Mini and possibly some other Macs, currently come with "upgrade only" Leopard DVDs - this means that if my Mac goes fubared, I'll have to install Tiger and only then I can install Leopard. Lame!
8. Why are Spaces one of the major features of Leopard? If I were Steve Jobs, I'd have added it long time ago, or if I added it only now, I'd be quiet and try not to attract too much attention to my past failures
9. JDK6 is still missing! - Seriously how much longer do we have to wait?!?!?
10. Why did Apple bothered to include built-in Ruby on Rails? Or should I say broken Ruby on Rails!?!? There was nothing wrong with installing Rails via MacPorts, but the one from Apple is already outdated and when I tried to upgrade it, it broke

MacOS X Leopard is "the most impressive Mac OS X version yet"? It's pretty good but hardly the most impressive without the latest Java.

No Mustang for You Tiger! - JDK6 Only in Leopard

There are times when I hate to be right and today is definitely one of those days.

Just a month ago I wrote an entry "Where is Apple JDK6", in which I proposed an explanation for the sudden stop of releases of Apple JDK6 developer previews.

Today I read some news coming from WWDC, that proves my theory.

the fact that Java 6 will take advantage of new features only available in Leopard and the fact that the latest Java 6 preview requires the absolute latest Leopard preview confirms the suspicions many have had: First, Java 6 will not be released for OS X until Leopard ships. Second, Apple is going to continue its trend of forcing you to upgrade to the latest version of OS X if you want to use the latest version of Java.

Well, thank you Apple! As if the delay of Leopard due to some phone was not enough. :-/

One would hope that after Java went open source, it would be easier for Apple to integrate it into MacOS without any big delays. But apparently that's not the case.

Apple probably needs JDK6 as a feature of Leopard so that they can claim that Leopard has 300 new features. Without JDK6 the number would be 299 which doesn't look good in marketing presentations.

Apple 10.4.9 Software Update follow-up

Today, I got an email from Apple Tech Support:

Dear Apple Customer:

You've expressed an issue on Apple's Discussions forum with the recent Mac OS X 10.4.9 software update.

Apple would like to investigate the issue by collecting some data from your system.

If this is acceptable to you, please run the attached "Capture Data" application. Then, simply attach the file that's generated into a reply email (to this email) This file will contain logs, configuration information etc.

Thanks for your support in assisting Apple Inc.

It seems that they have noticed my activity on Apple support forums, where I was helping users to resolve the problem with the latest 10.4.9 software update, that I wrote about last week.

The good thing is that Apple is interested in knowing more about this issue - hopefully with the intention to prevent similar problems in the future.

The bad thing is the way they are doing it. How do I know that this email really comes from Apple? How can I be sure that it's not a Trojan horse mass mailed by some malicious person who's trying to misuse my willingness to help?

Attached to this email email is a binary application, that I'm supposed to run. I don't know if it's just me and my strong sense of self-preservation, but isn't it something like rule #1 in all "security for dummies" books not to run applications coming to your email from unauthenticated sources?

I think that Apple should have just send me an email pointing me to an apple.com website where I could download the application from or they should have signed the email and the attachment with a key which certificate was pre-distributed with MacOS X.

Besides, if all that Apple wants to do on my computer is to gather some data, they could have used a script that I could easily review instead of a binary application that can do a lot more than just "capture data".

I'm not pleased that my blog has turned into a Apple complaint site. I really hope that Leopard will bring enough excitement to have me forget about all of this.

UPDATE: I sent an email back to the Apple Tech Support asking them to publish the application on their website.

UPDATE2: An Apple engineer contacted me regarding the email. I ran the application and reviewed the content of generated dmg file. It contained all the system logs present on the computer and some extra files, like output from the top and ps commands.

One think I really don't like is that I had to agree to this License Agreement that protects Apple, but I haven't seen a single sentence mentioning how Apple is going to protect my private information contained in the logs. :-/

End of the MacBook Problem Saga?

Back in November I wrote an entry about all the problems I had with a MacBook, that I bought for my sister and how I returned four MacBooks before I finally got a fifth that actually worked (see "A Basket of Rotten Apples").

After posting the entry I though that my troubles were over, but had no idea how wrong I was. Only one week later the battery on that MacBook died.

There were no signs of problems before, the battery performance was good and it was already formatted according to Apple's instructions. MacOS X failed to recognize the battery and the charger would not detect it either. It look as if there was no battery in that notebook. There was just a battery crossed with an X and text "No batteries available" in the menu.

Since at that time, I was already in Slovakia (my home country), I was happy to find out that the 1 year complementary Apple Care warranty program had worldwide coverage. After browsing a little I found out that it usually takes no time to get the battery replaced. With all this information I called the closest Apple dealer and explained to him my situation. I got an estimate 4-6 weeks!!!

It seems that Apple has no direct representation in Slovakia and thus all the service parts as well as regular orders are being handled via a Slovak company that is somehow connected with Apple in some other EU country. The whole thing is very confusing, nontransparent and worst of all causes enormous delays in orders and repairs. The Apple dealers in Slovakia are pretty unhappy about this whole situation, but as one of them told me, there is nothing they can do about this.

So I waited and waited and finally on the last day of January (about 6 weeks later) I got an email from the dealer that he finally got my replacement battery. So I borrowed my sisters notebook and went to visit the dealer. New battery worked fine, but during this repair I noticed yet another problem - the infamous MacBook Discoloration!

The dealer was kind enough to order a new keyboard cover immediately, but he wasn't able to give me estimate on this repair.

Only one week later, my sister called me and told me that the second battery had just died - in a same mysterious way as the one before. So besides the keyboard cover, yet another battery replacement was on my repair list.

According to discussion on this blog, there is a bunch of people who had two or more batteries replaced, one after another due to the same issue. Apple claimed that that this was not a notebook, but rather battery related issue.

Another month went by and I finally got my sisters notebook fixed. It has been more than two weeks now and the battery is still working and there haven't been any new issues so far. I don't want to be premature, but I hope that this is it - end of the saga!

All the problems are fixed now but I still feel ashamed for all the trouble I had with a notebook that was supposed to be great.

MacOS X 10.4.9 Update Killed My Mac!

The same problem can occur with update 10.4.10 and 10.4.11 and the same instructions can be used to resolve it. See Update9 below.

Today I tried to install the 10.4.9 update for MacOS X that Apple has just released. Unfortunately something went wrong when installing the update and I got an error message saying that the installation was unsuccessful and the installer was moved to the Trash. After that I was prompted to restart, because of other updates.

So I restarted my MacBook Pro and let it run for some time. When I came back a bit later (at least 10minutes after the restart), I found the computer stuck at the blue screen, that appears just before the login screen comes up.

In hopes that another restart will fix everything I powered off the notebook and started it again. This time it got stuck on the gray screen with the Apple logo and a wheel spinning forever:



I tried the verbose mode:



As well as single user mode:



But both of them were unusable with this an error message appearing on the screen:

Load of /sbin/launchd, errno 88, trying /sbin/mach_init
Load of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 88

Fortunately I managed to fix this and this is the way to do it, just in case more of you get stuck with this issue:

• Use another computer (or a live CD/DVD OS) to download the Mac OS X 10.4.9 Combo Update from the Apple website: Intel, PPC
• Put the update on a USB key
• Boot from Mac OS X Installation Disc (put the disc in, restart and hold c key)
• When the installer starts, run Disk Utility and repair disk permissions
• Open a Terminal and copy the update from the USB key to your computer's hard drive

  cp "/Volumes/YOUR_USB_KEY/MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.9Intel.dmg" \
  "/Volumes/YOUR_HDD/"

• Mount the dmg file

  hdiutil attach \
  "/Volumes/YOUR_HDD/MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.9Intel.dmg"

• Run the update (for less experienced: the command has 4 lines, hit enter at the each line!). A GUI installer will start if the command was entered properly.

"/Volumes/YOUR_HDD/usr/bin/open" \
/Applications/Utilities/Installer.app \
"/Volumes/Mac OS X 10.4.9 Combined Update (Intel)/\
MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.9Intel.pkg"

• Restart your computer when prompted
• Delete the dmg file

Credits go to Mike Brooks who inspired me with his post in a forum discussion.

It seems that I'm not the only one who's having this problem. I wonder what is triggering this and why only certain users are experiencing these difficulties.

UPDATE: It seems that Apple doesn't like any discussion on this topic as two threads (1st, 2nd) on Apple forums discussing these issues were deleted/blocked by forum administrators. Come on Apple, that's lame!

UPDATE2: Some users claim that this issue is caused by messed up disk permissions. It is not a bad idea to repair your disk permissions before (and after) installing an update. I wonder why this procedure is not executed automatically before the system update.

UPDATE3: Many people are having problems with all the backslashes and forwardslashes in the commands, so I got rid of most of them by putting paths into quotes. I hope this will make it easier for people not used to working in the Terminal window.

UPDATE4: Apple has contacted me regarding this issue.

UPDATE 5: A friend of mine pointed me to this blog entry that provides a possible explanation to the software update issues.

UPDATE 6: Some users pointed out that you can fix a broken Mac by starting the computer in the target mode (requires second healthy Mac), running the update and selecting the broken Mac as the installation destination - this bypasses working with the terminal, which some users found difficult.

UPDATE 7: According to experience of some users, PowerPC Macs can't read usb drives formated as FAT. That complicates the recovery process quite a bit :-/

UPDATE 8: I put together a small shell script that runs all the command for you - no more pain for "average" users who don't live on the command line. Download the script, read the instructions in it, run it and provide feedback.

UPDATE 9:This issue happened to at least one user during upgrade to 10.4.10 (see comments for this blog entry). The same instructions resolved the issue - just replace MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.9Intel.dmg with MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.10Intel.dmg.

A Basket of Rotten Apples

Last week I went to an Apple Store in Santa Clara and I wanted to buy a MacBook as a Christmas present for my sister (It's a surprised so don't tell her about it!!!). At that time I had no idea what a terrible experience was that going to be.

I got the white box, paid and happily went home. When I unpacked the notebook, I put in the installation disk and was about to restart the computer to run custom installation when I heard that the DVD in the drive was getting scratched. Ironically I had the same and many others problems with my MacBook Pro. So I re-packed the notebook and the next day went back to the Apple Store.

When I arrived there, I grabbed a sales guy and told him about my problem. He asked me to demonstrate it to him, which I did. He had to admit that this was not a feature and took the notebook in the back office and came back with a new MacBook. After that, he went to the register, did some voodoo with the receipts and gave me the new box and a new receipt. I unwrapped the notebook in the store and checked if this one was OK. My test CD was unscratched after the test so I happily went home again.

When I arrived home I was going to do the custom installation again. After a couple of seconds of working with the notebook while having my palms resting on it, I noticed that this notebook was vibrating. The whole case was shaking as if the DVD was spinning at the maximum speed and the hard drive was doing some really heavy writing and reading at the same time. The thing was that at the time when this vibration was happening there was no disk in the superdrive and the hard drive was idle as well. With disgust I ceased all the activities with the notebook, put it into the box, and waited until I had the next opportunity to go to Apple Store again.

Couple days later I finally had time to go to the Apple Store. When I arrived I grabbed a sales guy again and told him my story. This guy told me that he has no authorization to do anything about this and that I had to see a Mac Genius with my problem. I guess that he saw that I was not very happy with his answer, so he took me to Mac Genius and asked him to look at my notebook immediately.

I explained the problem to this Genius, who took the notebook to the back office. In a few minutes he came out and told me that he needs to compare the vibrations from this notebook to the notebooks they have on display. For a second I thought that if all the notebooks are doing this then I'd get dismissed, but fortunately all the notebooks on display were making no vibrations at all.

After this the Genius sent me to the sales guy and authorized the replacement. I got the replacement accompanied with the receipt voodoo. The sales guy gave me the notebook and told me to enjoy it because that was my last replacement. I was little surprised to hear that and told him that I want to test the notebook before I go home.

I was pretty surprised to see that this one was doing the same thing!!! I showed it to the sales guy and he was pretty shocked as well. Another sales guy came to us and told us that it is normal behavior after first boot because "The computer is thinking". Duh, that was a bit of an offensive explanation for me and I dismissed the guy.

After this, the sales guy brought yet another box (my 4th MacBook!) and opened it himself. It was not that surprising to me that this one was vibrating as well. The sales guy almost collapsed when he realized that the whole batch of MacBooks that they have in stock might be suffering from the same problem.

After few phone calls to other Apple Stores in the area and talking to the store manager the sales guy opened yet another box and with huge relief called me and told me that "Hey Igor, we have a notebook for you!". I touched the notebook and it was fine, no vibrations at all!

The sales guy did his receipt voodoo for the last time and then I went home with a present for my sister. I still can't believe that I had to go through 5 (five!!) MacBooks to find the one that was working.

If Apple wants to increase the market share so be it, but I hope that it is not going to happen by becoming more like other notebook maker who's name rhymes with Hell! If anyone sees similar issues he should immediately go to the Apple Store and return / exchange the product he bought, for his own sake (don't waste time with repairs) and for Apple's sake as well; they must realize that Apple customers are not going to tolerate flaky assembly!

Does AppleCare?

I've bought a MacBook Pro in March after it was released in February and I totally fell in love with it. It's screaming fast, looks great and MacOS is simply the best desktop OS I've ever seen.

But every love brings some pain... and I have experienced this as well. I was warned about revision A of any Apple computers, but at that time I really needed a new notebook so I was not listening.

So even though I was in love with this computer I started noticing problems with it. I don't want to post list of all of them because it would be quite a long list, but among others, I had heat problems, battery life problems, and noises coming from LCD and CPU.

I made an extensive search for these issues on the Web and I found out that I was not alone. Many users tried to have these problems fixed right away, but most of them were just wasting time by shipping their notebooks to be repaired and getting them back with most of the issues still present.

After approximately 6 weeks of using the notebook, I got to the point where I called AppleCare and let them know about my problems, hoping that they would have already had solutions to most of the problems.

Most of the people at the AppleCare call center I dealt with were really friendly and put effort in helping me. The opposite is true of the so called "Mac Geniuses" at the Valley Fair AppleStore in Santa Clara, whose main interest was to get me out of their sight after doing as little as possible.

To my surprise most of the problems were unresolved after the first repair. So right after the time when Apple finally acknowledged the "CPU Whine" problem I had the notebook fixed again. A couple of issues were resolved this time, but new problems were added as a free bonus, so another repair followed. This one took extremely long (almost a month) due to delays in repair docks as well as shipping problems, but worst of the notebook came back as I sent it, unrepaired, because Apple "could not reproduce the problems".

When even after the 3rd repair the problems were still present and I "reproduced" terrible noise one of the fans was making to a AppleCare representative over the phone, I was given an option of getting a brand new replacement, which I happily took thinking that my nightmares were over.

To my great surprise the replacement had problems of its own: SuperDrive problems, system crashes and a problem with the trackpad button.

This whole crusade for getting a notebook that "works as advertised" has been going on for months now.. and I'm getting yet another replacement in the next few days. Hopefully this time it will be a notebook that has no major issues.

Does all of this mean that Apple products are not what I used to hear about them or am I being just plain unlucky?

And regarding the question: "Does AppleCare?", my feelings are mixed. I think the answer is that yeah they do, if you make sure they know about your problems, you are persistent and you manage to talk to the right people. But considering the money you pay for a premium product and support, I think that Mac Geniuses, the product QA team and repair technicians have a lot of room for improvement. I hope that Apple's growing market share doesn't mean decreasing quality of their products and services.