Bugs posts

NPR posted the other day about an app that promised to simulate a sitar, the stringed instrument used mainly in Indian music. So just for you, dear readers, we downloaded it [iTunes link] and gave it a shot. The verdict? If you can already play the sitar, you'll probably find it a reasonable approximation. Just like the guitar simulators on the iPhone, there are various strings on screen that you can "strum," and the notes are labeled under the virtual strings. As for actually learning the sitar, however, you're probably out of luck. There's one instructional page, and links to eHow videos, but there's nothing solid in terms of actually learning the device.

And unfortunately, the app just feels pretty cheap -- there's a large part of the screen taken up with a one-hit sitar sound, and quite a few times, we'd try striking different strings and get the same notes, as if the app had bugged out and gotten stuck on one file. Of course, I can't play the sitar (though I'm pretty respectable on the guitar), so maybe I was just doing it wrong. But even a little experimentation with the app didn't bring up an easy way to do it right.

Still, NPR has a point -- you can't always carry your sitar around with you. If you want to pay 99 cents to have a Pocket Sitar around, this will app will probably strum your chikari.

Reports of an odd bug affecting downloaded files in Snow Leopard have been circulating Apple's discussion boards recently. As reported by TidBITS, the issue appears to be affecting all computers running Snow Leopard.

While different users have reported varying symptoms and differing circumstances, it essentially boils down to this: if you download a group of files, and then attempt to open the entire group of files at once (rather than opening each file individually), chances are either some or all of the selected files will not open.

My initial response to this was that it could possibly be one of those "it's not a bug, it's a feature" ordeals. We have already seen some indications that Apple is working on enhanced security and virus protection in Snow Leopard, so it stands to reason that the operating system may be simply trying to prevent what it thinks is malicious activity by imposing restrictions on what you can and can't do with a newly downloaded file.

Of course, that's just my theory, but I'm apparently not the only one who has explored that possibility -- a reader on the Mac OS X Hints forum discovered some hard evidence supporting that theory. In OS X, newly downloaded files are flagged with a "quarantine" attribute, which remains until the file is opened. If this attribute is set when the file is launched, and the file is an application, you would receive the typical "This application was downloaded from the Internet" confirmation before the application is allowed to continue launching. This is nothing new in Snow Leopard, but it would seem that the additional protections and scanning that were added to Snow Leopard most likely prevent opening multiple files so that each file can be individually checked before it is launched.

Whether or not this is a serious bug or a minor inconvenience depends entirely on your workflow. Personally, I find that I don't often open multiple files from Finder, as most of the applications I use have the ability to select multiple files from their Open dialog. I can easily see where this might pose significant problems, however. For example, if you do a lot of work with graphics, you might download a several photos from a client, highlight them and open them with a custom tool that automatically resizes and processes for you. With this bug in play, that task would become much more difficult if you had to open each file individually.

So what about you? Is this bug bugging you, or is it a non-issue? If you are affected, feel free to chime in with your experiences on the discussion boards, and be sure to let us know in the comments!

If you were contemplating buying one of those shiny new 27-inch iMacs, maybe don't pull the trigger just yet: according to Engadget, many proud new owners of the computer have become annoyed new owners, reporting pronounced problems in particular with Flash playback.

The problem doesn't appear to be a few isolated cases, as two separate threads (here and here) have popped up in the Apple support forums, nor is it a pandemic, as Engadget reports their iMacs are fine. The suggested causes have ranged from a corrupted Snow Leopard build, to a bug that spins down the hard drive, to the nebulous "bad permissions." In the meantime, though, those big beautiful 27-inch screens are playing video like a 128K trying to run Crysis.

A user on the first thread reported that Apple phone support said the problem was with the graphics card, and that it should be fixable in a software update, though another customer who opened a ticket was instructed to exchange the computer itself. Is Apple going to have to smack down another of its chip partners? We shall see.

For the past several weeks I've noticed some rather strange behavior with Adium, the free and open-source multiservice IM client. On random occasions I suddenly appear invisible or offline to contacts in my buddy list while logged into my AIM account. And I'm not alone. Not a day goes by that I don't find myself asking a friend or co-worker why they are not online, only to learn they share the same problem. Either that or they're all making this up in effort to avoid conversing with me -- I have that effect on people.

The only cause to this problem, or pattern to its occurrence, I can come up with is a loose theory that it happens during periods of inactivity. My hunch is that when you appear "idle" AIM somehow misinterprets this as a disconnect. Locally you remain logged in, but AIM thinks otherwise. Luckily I may have discovered a workaround.

Launch iChat (quitting Adium is not required) and go into Preferences. Click on Accounts. Make sure your AIM account is selected, then click on the Security tab. Changing any of the settings in this options panel, then returning them to their original state, somehow magically vexes the problem, at least so far as I can tell.

I don't know whom to point fingers at in this case; AIM or Adium. Both begin with the letter A, so that makes each of them equally culpable in my opinion. Wherever the guilt may lie, I just want the problem fixed ASAP.

Something seems rotten, at least for some Mac users, with the Apple Mail program. Apple support boards are lighting up with reports of email messages being downloaded multiple times. This problem seems to be mostly with POP mail accounts, but even IMAP users are seeing it. There is another Apple support thread here with 10 pages of comments from unhappy Mail users.

I've noticed it myself twice. In the morning I bring up Mail and read what's come in overnight. Then a little later I re-open Apple Mail and the same messages download again. Of course my POP account is set to delete everything from the server, and my settings have not changed.

This is the first really bad behavior I've seen from Apple Mail since OS X came out in 2001. This most recent glitch seems to have popped up in the 10.6.1 update. There are enough people reporting it that it seems like there is an issue for some users, but obviously not everyone is seeing it.

There have been some suggestions posted, but while they worked for some they did not work for all. Are you seeing this strange behavior? Did it start with 10.6.1? Let us know, and hopefully Apple will kick the code for the next update and put this bad boy to rest.

Thanks to Mark for the tip.

The latest festival of issues with Snow Leopard alongside a round of people unhappy with the latest iPhone update both suggest that Apple might need to work a little harder on pre-release testing.

One thing Microsoft does rather well is gets a lot of people testing software releases in extended public betas. Of course that didn't go so well for Vista, which was a mess for many people, but it seems to have gone better for Windows 7.

Apple, secretive as always, doesn't get really wide testing of new software builds, and when those updates finally get released there seems to be an ever increasing, ever louder response from customers that things aren't going swimmingly.

Snow Leopard was supposed to be a cleanup of Leopard, but it appears that some people are having lots of issues. In my own case, some fonts were pretty messed up, and Keychain was jumbled pretty badly. The fixes in both cases weren't onerous, but they were nasty enough that it made me wonder how thoroughly the release had been tested. I still don't hear new mail sounds from MobileMe, a problem that has been going on at least since Leopard was released. I'm not alone in this, but not everyone has the problem.

Most of the people I know had flawless upgrades, and of course here at TUAW we are more likely to hear about problems, which is also true of the Apple forums where people are able to report the smallest or the largest bugs.

Therefore, from my perspective it's hard to say for certain if things are slipping away from Apple quality control, but it's starting to look that way. Apple was quick to release 10.6.1, which was a good effort, but it is not quieting down the roar of users who don't think that this latest release of Snow Leopard 'just works.' What's your perception? Does Apple have some work to do?

Ahhh, Labor Day - the weird U.S. holiday that celebrates work by encouraging people to take the day off. Since it also coincides with the beginning of September, many Americans associate Labor Day with the end of summer, which isn't until 3:18 PM on September 22nd. Since the colder temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere will soon mean no more picnics, it's a great day to get out and have one more al fresco meal.

Like a picnic, where a good time can be spoiled by a group of aggressive little ants, my first ten days of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard have been a lot of fun, interspersed with some tiny, nagging annoyances:

• Preview, an app I use constantly to resize screenshots for TUAW, crashes way too frequently
• Without having changed any preferences, the OWC Mercury Elite Pro 1 TB drive I have attached to my iMac now spins down between Time Machine backups (this actually saves power, so I'm not complaining -- I just find it strange that it didn't happen before!)
• An unexplained kernel panic the other morning when I woke up my MacBook Air by opening the "lid"
• Having to reset the synchronization between my two Macs, MobileMe, and my iPhone after duplicate calendar entries began to multiply
• Occasionally having to physically remove and plug back in the USB receiver for the Logitech wireless mouse on my iMac when the mouse refuses to work upon waking up from sleep
• Exports from iMovie '09 to YouTube aren't working properly for me

There are no real show-stoppers here, just those little oddities that have kept life with Snow Leopard from being pure bliss. What are the ants that are showing up at your Snow Leopard picnic? Leave a comment below.

It was pretty quiet at the ole' Apple Store here in Tucson. I got there just at ten, and while there were stanchions to organize the crowd, they weren't needed and just sat off to the side looking lonely. There were plenty of people in the store, and about half were buying Snow Leopard. Supplies were plentiful, but I was there early.

Installing on both a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro were two different stories. On the laptop, things were ducky. Everything worked, mail accounts were there, bookmarks, the usual.

On my desktop it was not so pretty. I kept getting messages that I needed to add a password for my MobileMe account, which I dutifully did. Problem was it kept asking. Then I saw some messages about the keychain. Whoops. Not a good message to see.

Well, the short version is that somehow my keychain was hosed. I tried to repair, but that didn't stop the problems. I finally threw away my keychain data and started again, re-entering my email passwords and a few other things. All is back to normal. I also saw a strange message about my iDisk, but I followed the directions and threw a rather large file away. It appeared to be a copy of my idisk for local use.

Other things pretty much work. My Sonos audio system is fine, Photoshop CS3 seems OK, and while it didn't get a heavy duty run through, it opens images, applies filters, runs actions, and saves properly.
Shut down is almost instantaneous, and I noticed I'd saved 14GB after the upgrade.

I'm seeing lots of little niceties. When I take a screen shot, it has a name that includes the date and time instead of 'picture 1'.

All in all, not too painful, but not completely trouble free. With keychain passwords gone I may wind up doing some extra typing for awhile on web sites where I have an account, but that's not too horrible.

Snow Leopard is clearly faster, trimmer, and a bit more fun to use. A good use of $30.00 and just a little bit more time than I planned in getting over a couple of glitches.

Users of the MozyHome and MozyPro online backup services who also use Apple's Time Machine and a Time Capsule for onsite backups were dismayed to find last week that their Time Machine backups were not working. A bug in version 1.4.1 of the Mozy software caused Time Machine backups to Time Capsules and other network drives to pause, and then freeze up.

A user quoted on the Computerworld website last week noted that Time Machine would no longer mount his MacBook Pro's sparse bundle file while running Mozy offsite backups, and that he had to wipe the Time Machine backup in order to get the Time Machine / Time Capsule combination working again. The problem did not affect Mozy users who were backing up to a locally attached hard drive. Part of the issue was that Mozy was attempting to back up the large Time Machine sparse bundle files.

Engineers at Mozy's parent company, Decho, worked with Apple to gain resolution to the issue, and a fix was made available for download last Friday as version 1.4.3 of the Mac software for MozyHome and MozyPro.

[via Macworld and Computerworld]

Update 7/22: AOL has responded to the reports of misdirected push notifications, and has confirmed that the issue is due to the use of a workaround for push notifications on unlocked phones.

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If you want to have a hot and steamy exchange with your sweetheart via AIM on the iPhone, you might want to think again -- if you have an unlocked or jailbroken phone.

CrunchGear reports that Till Schadde with Equinux has discovered an iPhone bug where AIM messages could be sent to random people without you even knowing it. Schadde discovered this when he was notified that a message he had sent to his iPhone version of AIM got intercepted by someone else. That person proceeded to contact Schaddle, sharing the screenshot shown at right with him. Schadde posted the screenshot and detailed the bug on Twitter after testing it once more from his computer.

The bug is being blamed on iPhone 3.0's push notification and seems to be limited to unlocked/jailbroken iPhones at the moment.

Edit (12:20 PT): Schadde has tweeted that he was contacted by AOL via phone this morning, and they are currently investigating the issue.

[Via CrunchGear]

More coverage of the ongoing Wi-Fi struggles of iPhone 3.0 users: In a discussion comment, Liam noted that he got full bars but no Internet using his iPhone 3GS until he turned off Bluetooth. After reading that, I wondered if Bluetooth is another suspect in the widening catalog of speed and signal problems reported with the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G / iPod touch combination.

I ran the DSLReport speed test on my iPhone 3GS and found that with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth both enabled, latency increased a bit, and download speed decreased by over a third when compared to running the test with Bluetooth disabled. Upload speed didn't seem to be affected.

A possible reason was proposed by Doug Hogg of Toy Kite Software, creators of the Bluetooth-enabled two person game iSamurai: Real Life Sword Fight. Doug discovered problems in playing the game after updating to iPhone 3.0 software, but found that turning off either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi solved everything. It seems that both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi share the same antenna, so when Bluetooth was made active in the 3.0 software, conflicts arose.

On the Toy Kite Software site, Doug was a bit more specific. The iPhone 3.0 software brought with it a service discovery process that switches between looking for another device on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth using the single antenna. While searching, problems can occur with already established connections that can cause lags and loss of data packets sent between devices. Apple is working with Toy Kite Software to correct all this, but I wonder how much speed and even signal strength loss can be regained by turning off Bluetooth when it's not being used. In my case the difference was substantial.

It's also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips were used.

If you are having any speed or signal problems, try turning off Bluetooth and see what happens. I don't think that this will solve everything, but until Apple gets its act together on fixing all of this, what we're left with is a rag-tag assortment of tricks that may or may not help.

Let us know if this one works for you.

Apple has just released a Knowledge Base document detailing a number of potential fixes for one of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth problems that have plagued iPod touch and iPhone handhelds. The article specifically addresses the inability to use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth due to not seeing the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi address on the device. This includes getting a Wi-Fi signal but not being able to access the Internet, not being able to pair a Bluetooth device, and having the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth icon grayed out.

Four solutions are proposed in a step-by-step manner. The solutions range from resetting the network settings to restoring the device back to a bare 3.0 install, which erases all data. No worries there, since you can always re-sync your device with the information on its host computer, assuming you have a current backup.

The fourth solution is a bit darker. Call Apple for service. If this doesn't do it, you are directed to a second article which talks about re-doing your network settings and turning the network settings off and then on again.

Neither article deals with the basic problems of speed and sporadic signal strength. Please let us know if these solutions do the trick for you.

[via iLounge]

Wi-Fi connectivity problems are not limited to the iPhone 3GS, not by a long shot. The iPhone 3G is widely reported to have connectivity problems that, according to the large number of people discussing it on the Apple Support Discussions, dwarf the reports regarding the 3GS.

In over fourteen Apple Discussion threads, over six hundred messages have been posted with the first one being written on June 17th, shortly after the release of iPhone 3.0 software. These threads have been read by thousands of users. Unfortunately, to date, a solution is not at hand.

The problem, verified by many, is that when updating to the new software, Wi-Fi connectivity on the iPhone 3G either decreased or vanished entirely. Those who were used to getting full bars of Wi-Fi connectivity now experience markedly less bars. Worse, even if some signal strength bars are displayed, often there is no Internet connectivity.

Many solutions have been proposed including resetting the router, changing settings (seemingly at random), and even putting the 3G in the freezer:

"Also i might note, I turned off wifi, turned off the phone, put it in the freezer (in a bag) for 10 mins, turned the phone back on, put the phone right next to my wifi antenna and then turned on wifi and it joined, it JUST joined and I couldnt believe it," says one forum poster. Several others report similar results, but this fix did not last long. In fact, blog posts have been written about possible solutions, but none of them seemed to pan out after using Wi-Fi for a short period of time.

Some writers have said that the 3.1 update will fix the problem while a larger number say that the new software release won't help at all.

VMware Fusion has now been updated to version 2.05. The release number is Build 173382. It is a free update to all Fusion 1 and Fusion 2 owners.

The update includes:

• Support for Mac OS X Server guest operating systems with Intel Xeon 5500 and 3500 series processors
• Experimental support for Snow Leopard Server as a guest OS (32 bit only)
• Experimental support for Snow Leopard as a host OS (32 bit only)
• Reduces CPU usage when a VM is idle
• Contains more than 80 bug fixes

I applied the update this morning and had no issues. You can get a look at the release notes here. Your Fusion app should update automatically on launch, or you can download the update from the VMware support web site.

Thanks to Martin for the tip

I didn't really take last week's Twitocalypse that seriously, but as you probably know by now, it turned out a little worse than expected -- we'd been told that Twitterrific (and, we assumed, most other Twitter apps) would be fine, and of course, as Craig Hockenberry explains on his blog, things ended up not-so-fine. Desktop app developers, of course, could publish updates as quickly as they could code them; iPhone developers were in a different situation.

When the Iconfactory's app stopped working, most people (including me) got an API error all weekend. Craig found the bug, then he and his team were able to leverage their contacts at Apple Developer Relations to help expedite the release; in short order, an update was pushed out to the App Store. I downloaded it yesterday, and can tell you that things are fixed... at least until the numerical limit on Twitter's tweet identifier raises its head again (or the Newton flips out, but that's another story).

Hockenberry also has ideas about how to keep issues like this from happening again. Not the actual issue of a variable overflow (that will undoubtedly happen again at some point, on Twitter or any other API that scales way faster than anyone expects it to), but the issue of iPhone apps needing a quick fix. He says that Apple should give every developer a number of "incidents" -- situations rarely used, in which a high priority fix can get sent out to apps in major emergencies. He says, and it's true, that for most developers, it's not a question of if you'll need to send out a critical fix, it's a matter of when. And support by Apple, obviously limited to one or two instances per developer, would help developers, distributors, and consumers.

Of course, it's up to Apple, and it's not like they've smoothed out the approval process so well already that they can start adding wrinkles to it. But clearly, given that the Twitterrific update went through quickly, there's room for exceptions to be made.

[via DF]