Text clipping without plugin

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:

With Hetima

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.