When it’s about commenting tech, we have to remember tech is a tool and a means for an end, not an end in itself.
The difference of perspective informs the use case, which informs the comment. When all the comments are turned into an echo chamber with similar perspectives, the comments lose value.
Yes, but in this instance we are talking about a very specific, technical issue; the bugs or lack thereof in macOS Catalina. The background (apart from technical/professional) or life experiences of the commentator play no role in his/her opinion on the issue and so are irrelevant to this particular discussion.
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Their use cases play a huge role. Also how they typically interact with the software.
I almost never hit any bugs in LambTracker. I designed it, I coded it and I know the details of the underlying structure so I don’t even think to try or enter in things in a way that causes problems. If you are a person who constantly tries every option, pushed the limits of the system then to you, you may find more bugs in a new version than the person who would have been just as happy with the existing system and never really hit any issues due to not exercising all the various options etc.
Here’s a Mac example. Lots of folks bemoaned lack of proper Dark mode support for apps, odd behaviors etc. over a bunch of different apps. I don’t care. I never use dark mode, have no use for dark mode and think it’s a total waste of programming effort. So I’m never going to even see any bugs because to me the entire concept of a dark mode IS the bug.
Because, in some cases “It’s not a bug it’s a feature.”
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Sort of agree with you @Ajay, I address wolfie.
But these “old guys”, John Gruber for example are younger than me @Wolfie 
and John is, furthermore, a denizen of my adopted home, Philadelphia, The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection 
, it is as lively and as blue collar as Swansea though I confess still famous for throwing snowballs at Santa, hardly a ‘comfortable’ environ? Yes John is younger then me even and I am 68 years YOUNG this August. All of us ‘tend to move in the same circles’ too, for multiple reasons, including radical firebrands, I certainly did when I was one.
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Absolutely right and reflects my own experience exactly. As I said elsewhere; in my own case a minor bug affecting LaTeX install would be devastating for me while I might not notice even if Photos did not work AT ALL. The freeware LaTeX programs are, indeed, very much ‘at your own risk’ software. I take your point about Dark Mode too. I like it but I see your point on this one and, in fairness, regarding other software we have disagreed about in the past.
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You make an interesting point, @OogieM. Would you say though that most glaring bugs, such as the ones that @Timo describes, are likely to impact users regardless of their background?
I agree that a more diverse set of users will flag more bugs as they are likely to interact in different ways with their Macs. However, the lack of diversity in a group of reviewers doesn’t negate their opinion on obvious bugs (not features that others may consider to be bugs!)
I think the way people interact with their tech differs more based on their interest (which has a direct correlation to their proficiency) than on factors such as race, gender, sexuality, social background etc. I doubt if, amongst power users for example, men and women use their gear very differently from one another.
None of this is to say that the wider tech world is perfect or that tech shouldn’t be more inclusive.
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Is that meant as an opinion and a point of view from one perspective only, might I even say the “productivity first echo chamber” point of view? Because it is debatable to say the least. I, for one, get a lot of fun and joy from ‘tech for tech’s sake’.
Much early work on computing was done with a ‘for it’s own sake’ ethos too. Some of it unexpectedly had an important life saving practical use during WWII regarding encryption and so on and this helped, I admit, to drive development. Much of it though continued to be ‘blue skies’ research: to date in fact.
I actually consider, though we are not going to thrash it out here, the ‘…means to an end…’ point of view very limiting and and a view that meshes with a view of work and life that is highly in-conducive to a satisfying work life. Life is always elsewhere if one gets too attached to that view and/or one takes it literally. Few people do in fact, even if they say they do. It might look in retrospect, to use another example, as if modern biology was developed in order to produce the amazing medicine we now have: it wasn’t; it was all ‘blue skies’ for decades, Centuries even you might argue.
However your point has some weight and the problem you highlight is real. The issue though is whether the ‘echo chamber’ characterization of these guys is fair and accurate. I don’t think it is and that they have similar careers is not enough to establish that Marco, Gruber etc. are in an echo chamber. Are the people who think of them that way an ‘echo chamber’ in their own right? A point worth pondering and reflecting on along the rough lines of Aristotle’s Peritrope argument which has continued, unresolved, for two millennia.
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it is debatable to say the least. I, for one, get a lot of fun and joy from ‘tech for tech’s sake’.
An absolutely fair point, well taken. Cycling is fun in its own right and doesn’t necessarily need to take you somewhere. 
What I was trying to get at with this particular point is that many writers in the tech or productivity sphere are doing only that: writing about tech and productivity. It’s a self-feeding practice, which is to be expected, but I think it loses value when the commenters fail to look beyond the horizon because there are people who use these tools to produce things with them that are not about talking about these tools. Moreover, that is going to be the majority of people. This is where the variety of perspectives is valuable.
For instance, as a writer of multi volume sagas it kind of irks me when a tech commenter gives talks about writing workflows when they’re doing nothing more complex than blog articles about writing workflows for blog articles. I’m not demeaning their work - it’s just that, hey, writing goes way, way beyond that use case and sometimes it seems like this is lost - hence the echo chamber effect. It seems like this slant happens often in the Apple podcast sphere, which is why I much prefer MPU episodes about sheep farming (even though I do nothing of the sort), which is a very real use case of using the tools, than hearing John Siracusa yet again.
No I would not. Let’s take a deeper dive into the 2 bugs described:
On number 1, if you never use finder to copy large amounts of data (with no indication of what “large” is) then you will never see it. I thought I did a lot of data moving but Iv’e never seen Finder hang like that at all, ever.
On number 2, I make a bootable clone every night using CCC. I’ve just had the opportunity to test the clones and I don’t see that behavior. So I have no experience with that bug either.
Similarly, I have many bugs I see because I do not use iCloud. The presumption is everyone uses iCloud. Even my latest Calendar issue was directly related to Apple forcing iCloud onto me in spite of setting preferences to avoid it and the resulting CF to my data.
We’re skirting the shores of a very deep and divisive lake here but… I would say that in many cases and in many parts of the US at least, your interests are in many ways determined by your social background and your gender. Even now, women and girls are presumed to be interested in one stereotypical set of things compared to boys and men. If you are from one social class you are presumed not to be interested in certain types of subjects. It’s a built-in prejudice in our society that is pervasive and darned hard to combat because in many cases the people who perpetuate the stereotype do not even see the problem at all.
Exactly, the tools can, and in many ways, ARE fun to play with in and of themselves but the real thing is what you do with them. How I use, Scrivener, for example is entirely based on what I do. I don’t write in Scrivener because I am enamored of it. I write in Scrivener because it’s the fastest easiest tool for me to effortlessly create both short and long form writing and easily move stuff around and organize in in ways that make sense to me.
Thanks!
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Tried to upgrade to Catalina, but it doesn’t work because there’s apparently something wrong with my internal disk format. An error message is displayed, but Google provides no info about the error ID. I also don’t experience any issues with the disk. I expect I will have to nuke and pave the disk before updating. On the other hand, I have an external Catalina boot disk, but I don’t like alternating between boot disks, so I haven’t used it in a long time. I’m hoping to resolve this before WWDC.
I agree with everything you say here, which is why I ended by saying that “None of this is to say that the wider tech world is perfect or that tech shouldn’t be more inclusive.”
I’m excited to check out the episode on sheep farming which, I presume, features you!
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Let’s agree to disagree. I appreciate you explaining your point of view in greater detail. Unlike before, I sort of see what you are getting at but still disagree.
I don’t have the time, nor inclination, to do a study on bugs in Catalina. For me, the opinions of writers whose views I respect, and anecdotal evidence on a number of different forums, is enough to make a decision on whether I feel inclined to upgrade or not. All of us use our skills of discernment to sift through information and form opinions. IMHO, to challenge someone to come up with data for something said in passing on a hobbyist forum is a bit over the top. We are here because we are interested in technology and the Apple eco-system in particular. This is not an inquest!
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Production houses transferring large data sets of video saw this, with the finder hanging with multi-gig copies, in documented, reproducible behavior. The size threshold for triggering this bug is, to my mind, not nearly as important as the fact that there was a bug with copying files.
It’s important to note here that the problem appears to be fixed in 10.15.5. Outside-of-Apple software engineers identified the problem for Apple in their own investigations. Quoting from a SoftRAID support forum:
There is a serious issue with 10.15.4.
It shows up in different scenarios, even on Apple disks but is more likely when there are lots of IO threads. We think it is a threading issue. So while SoftRAID volumes are hit the hardest (its now hard to copy more than 30GB of data at a time), all systems are impacted by this.In our bug report to Apple, we used a method to reproduce the problem with ONLY Apple formatted disks. Takes longer to reproduce, but that is more likely to get a faster fix to the user base.
I hope Apple will get a 10.15.5 out quickly to fix this. Except for downgrading with a previously downloaded installed, it is very hard. (Time Machine is broken where “Snapshots” were not working, so the magic “go back” is not working)
As far as I know, there is no way to download a fresh 10.15.x, except .4.
If you can go back to 10.15.3, I recommend it, but it is difficult.
Other things are broken also, such as Time Machine, ssh have introduced bugs.
Elsewhere it is noted this bug was introduced in 10.15.4.
I hate to even remotely sound like e.g., Lloyd Chambers, who’s complaining and carping I dislike – but I think problems with basic file transfers and copying are more serious than say, Dark Mode not working. I echo OogieM, in that I don’t care about many of the bugs (except the alignment of the red, yellow and green dots in the upper left corner of every window, which really sticks in my eye, and at any rate predates Catalina), but I am concerned about bugs that might portend data loss or damaged workflows.
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I am on pretty much the same page. The same kind of evidence you allude to, from John Gruber among others made me cautious at a critical time about the analogous case of the Keyboards.
I am glad I took what he said seriously. Data is not always as clear and simple as Wolfie implies at times either and there are other variables involved: the time they take to fix for example, that really matter to the user. My own view, as I have said elsewhere and I echo some of the pundits I think, is that the cycle that Apple is on is probably too tight. Again that is a movable feast. Data can be very hard to analyse and on some things we do pretty well by using our intuitions. Often without really being aware of how or what we are doing. We still do it well quite often. Quite often we get it totally wrong of course: the topic is interesting. Ironically ‘Data’, statistical Data especially, can be astonishingly misleading if not contextualized and indeed without a lot of interpretation. To mention one thing that, were one to actually set oneself the task of quantifying ‘bugginess’, would have to be decided on: would there be a weighting system for how long it took for a bug to be fixed? It would be interesting to know if anybody has already tried to quantify ‘bugginess’ for Apple OSes? I am sure they have something within the company to do that. I would be amazed if they didn’t. I am sure they had ‘data’ on the keyboards mind you 
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I made the jump to use the new reminders. I’d say Catalina is mostly fine. At this stage, I haven’t noticed any more or less bugginess than a typical release. Upgrade if you want a specific feature, but by the same token, don’t upgrade if you want a specific feature that’s been deprecated. As with everything, it depends on your needs/workflow more than anything.
Right, cause DRM is the biggest issue with one-time use cups…the environment doesn’t matter anyway. /s
Yup. I’m a fan of their work, but it is indeed a very specific demographic of users.
While I also never use it on macOS. My partner prefers it as an accessibility feature for their eye condition. So, it’s not quite as frivolous of a programming effort as you suggest for everyone. 
I agree. It’s more productive to share specific bugs/use-cases so others can decide if they are relevant to their own workflows. A generalized claim of an entire OS being buggy is not terribly useful without more specific information.
Not so sure. I hadn’t thought about it before I started on this thread. I upgraded to Catalina on release I think. Looking back over my experiences I feel it was ‘buggy’. On my new macbook 16 inch the touch ID has maybe worked one time in 30 if that. I don’t use it any more. Is that a ‘bug’ according to @Wolfie ? or according to ‘experts’? I don’t know. According to me though ‘bug’ will do. I am not, in fact, sure that we have a workable definition of ‘bug’. I am taking it roughly to mean something that doesn’t work as it is supposed to or the maker claims. Again as I said or implied several times that is not always a black and white issue. There is no way for an user at my level to know sometimes if the problem is with Apple or the Developer of an app either. I have come to think in some cases that Catalina has been the problem with some issues I have had with DEVONthink 3 and Keyboard Maestro. I gleaned this from their fora and friendly feedback; I couldn’t cite chapter and verse on it either and, you know, I don’t think I need to.
Sometimes I know there is ‘user error’ on my part, sometimes not though and again I am not always 100% sure; I have given Apple way to much leniency on that one regarding Catalina I now feel. In my own case I am not always sure though. Looking back Catalina sure felt buggy to me. As I said before I doubt if I could cite every example or indeed could be sure I had identified the problem in every case. Somethings we do well by “intuition”, how much to eat or drink for example; some things very badly, statistics notably. I am sure several commentators here, including myself and many pundits have made several statements unrelated to ‘bugginess’, as @Wolfie says. However their claim that Catalina is ‘buggy’ might still be accurate.
It would be interesting really as to how folk would categorize the total failure of touch ID on my macbookpro 16 to ever work. Bug? badly designed? “Doesn’t freaking work like you would expect it to”? In my own case I would describe Siri’s low abiltiy to ‘hear me’ as a ‘bug’, it is really a AI limitation maybe though? I am not sure what that distinction of mine is based on though. Careless or poor design and ‘buggyness’ seem to me to be concepts that merge into one another as a matter of fact or are intimately related.
I don’t know. It boils down to something that @MacSparky said that I agreed with. Something he ran up the flagpole really: that by and large it might be better to have a slower cycle. He described how a yearly cycle can only give you weeks to develop a feature while a two year one gives you months. It struck me powerfully. In regard to that kind of strategic point, general claims about bugginess are valid and relevant even if not totally accurate.
I totally agree the annual cycle is somewhat arbitrary and rushing development can cause problems. The major assumption of course, is that extra time is dedicated to polishing and stability rather than more and more features.
It doesn’t help that cross-platform features complicates the cycle, and I’m sure development at such a massive scale is incredibly complex.
But to your point, how you define bug matters too. If the system crashes at every turn, than yeah, maybe a general statement has relevance. Once you’re past the overall system stability phase, I think calling a system buggy becomes less helpful, since you’re dealing with more specific use-cases. I guess, all that to say, any claims about software should be interpreted as temporal and subject to change by use and context. Generalizing about anything is a slippery slope, but it’s sure fun to debate on a forum 
Sure, every release starts with bugs. But it looks like Catalina will end its run with bugs still intact.
Personally, Finder slowdowns are annoying, spontaneous power off is aggravating, and Bluetooth issues are a constant frustration. NONE of these issues plagued me before the upgrade to Catalina.
That’s on my late model Mac mini. I also used to own a MacBook Pro, but I sold that after Apple couldn’t get their collective **** together to solve an iCloud problem that rendered the computer effectively useless to me. I ended up selling it. Still waiting for Apple to call back over SIX MONTHS after reporting it.
In short, Catalina sucks.
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