tewha.net

Another oversight by Apple, another third party Quick Look plug-in. This one is for .webarchive files saved by Safari. It isn’t great, but it’s functional.

If you make a text clipping in Leopard, you’ll be surprised to discover that QuickLook can’t generate a preview for it.

A surprising omission by Apple, given that Leopard still generates these when you drag text to the desktop. But Google found HetimaClipping.qlgenerator, which fills the void:

Audio MIDI Setup is a pretty moldy corner, really. Click to see it in motion:

Even the question and button names at the end are worded in a way that conflicts with generally accepted Mac standards.

In addition to the Time Machine security issue I reported (radar link)¹, Apple has also fixed Time Machine being almost unusable on my Core Solo Mac mini due to poor graphical performance (radar link). Prior to 10.5.2, the star field animation was too taxing for the little guy. With 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update, it zips along at a perfectly respectable rate while leaving my Mac responsive enough that I can select files without needing something to keep me busy between clicks.

Unfortunately, Apple has not fixed the problem where the Leopard’s new (and totally awesome) menu search can point to the wrong problem (radar link). Still, at least the arrow is close enough. I love this feature.

Two out of three is pretty good, especially considering the one left unfixed is relatively minor.

The bugs that were flagged as duplicate also seem to be fixed. Sadly, my biggest Finder pet peeve (radar link) is still present (click the image to see it demonstrated in a QuickTime movie):

I’m pretty sure this one predates Leopard.

I’m one of those who thought that 10.5, even with its bugs, was a better OS choice than 10.4. However, with 10.5.2 I can finally recommend 10.5 without even a hint of reservation.

1. You won’t be able to follow this link; it’s in case anyone from Apple stumbles across this post and wants to look up these bugs. See rdar:// urls over at the red shed if you’re interested in this. [↩]

Apple claims to have fixed the issue where applications could run automatically out of a Time Machine backup. Look for CVE-2008-0038 in Apple’s About the security content of Mac OS X 10.5.2 and Security Update 2008-001 .

Thanks to Apple for mentioning me. I certainly would have reported the bug regardless, but it’s a nice bonus.

The only thing I wish had happened differently was an earlier acknowledgement from Apple that they realized what I was describing and agreed it was a security problem. I didn’t find out Apple considered it a problem until January 22nd, when they asked how I’d like to be credited for discovery. Most of that time I wondered if I should file more details in an attempt to convince them it really was a problem.

Note: I’m saying “claims” only because I haven’t installed the update and verified the fix yet. I have no reason to disbelieve Apple.

I consider Stacks the very worst feature Apple’s ever added to Mac OS X (or Mac OS before it). Even QuickTime auto-play could be turned off! So I was very pleased to see a report that 10.5.2 fixes stacks (in the same way people fix their dogs). Hooray! (via Daring Fireball.)

The Finder is generally pretty good at reformatting the data column to show dates without truncation. Give it enough space, and it will display the date as “Friday, November 23, 2007, 12:52 PM.” A little less and it is supposed to drop the Friday part. A little less and it switches to a numeric format.

Unfortunately, it seems less than perfect. Sometimes it keeps the long format with columns that are too narrow, as seen in the following picture:

Why? I don’t know. It seems they put so much effort into this already, it’s hard to imagine why they didn’t make the final push to make date columns always usable.

Radar #5612934.

Mac OS X Hints describes how to make Leopard’s menu bar opaque. Much easier on the eyes.

Okay, I don’t like Leopard’s stacks. In fact, I could go on a large rant about all the deficiencies compared to putting a folder in the Dock in Tiger. That doesn’t seem to matter, though; they’re here to stay.

Instead, I thought I’d talk about something completely different.

Namely, stack art. Here’s what came up today after I cleaned up my Downloads folder of everything except the files I wanted:

If you’re curious, the acorn is Acorn from Flying Meat¹ and the leaf is Coda from Panic². Both of these are applications I’ve been meaning to try out, but haven’t really had the chance yet.³

Of course, this was complete luck. Still, it makes me wonder: What have you seen on your Dock that was interesting? Did you do it on purpose, or did it just happen?⁴

1. See also: Gus Mueller’s blog. Gus is the developer of Acorn. [↩]
2. See also: Steven Frank’s blog and Cabel Sasser’s blog. Steven and Cabel are the founders of Panic. [↩]
3. Come to think of it, not only do the icons go together well, but so would the applications. You three should talk! [↩]
4. It counts if you do it on purpose, it just counts slightly less! [↩]

Here’s what it looks like:

Latest backup failed, I see. So what’s the latest backup that actually worked? You can’t tell here. And what failed? You can’t tell that, either.

“Click that red icon!” you might think. Here’s what that does:

That’s not very helpful. It could at least tell me if the error occurred when reading, writing or in internal logic. That’d be a start.

There’s a little more information in the console log, of course. What actually failed? It looks like Time Machine tripped on an email. Nothing special about that email that I can see. But how many end users are going to look in there?

Here’s hoping 10.5.1 fixes a few things about Time Machine.