What I’d Like to See in Tiger: Part 4, A Self-Repairing OS

I think that would cause some folks in the marketing department to tear there hair out. Part of OS X appeal is its “rock solid stability” a feature that repairs the OS would make a lot of people wonder about that. I mean the average mac user knows nothing of repairing permissions.
That said if they mixed it in a untrumpeted manner that would be pretty sweer. Note: I hadn’t reapired my permissions since August (at least) on the ibook, thanks for the reminder.

Hadley, you can add my name to the chorus on this one—except that the self-diagnostics/repair I have long had in mind comes closer to StarTrek than it does to the year 2005 and any UNIX-oriented OS. Still, in concept I’m with you on this 100 percent; this has long been a bugaboo of mine.

Also, contrary to the comments of a previous poster, I don’t think this would give the marketing department fits at all. First, this is the kind of thing which marketing is unlikely to advertise anyway, (after all, there are plenty of capabilities in OS X which are not promoted). Second, this doesn’t undermine the concept of rock solid stability at all—quite the contrary, it enhances it. To think otherwise is to think like the old-school executives of the American auto manufacturers who objected to seat belts (and later air bags) on grounds that it would send a signal that their cars were not safe, (when in fact all it would do is show the public they are that much safer STILL).

Journaling is a move in this direction, and the auto-disk repair procedure done at start up is another, (you know, the old /sbin/fsck -y -f thing). But we need an OS which aggressively examines and tunes itself for optimal performance (based to some degree on user-defined parameters and priorities).

I would like to see an integrity check of all system-related (and Finder-related) plist files. I would like to see automatic versioning built into the file system. I would like to see a robust system cloning and restore function as well—complete with an “instant-on” capability from flash ram or some such thing. The days of waiting for a machine to boot up should be long over by now.

OS X is in desperate need of being able to back out of network time-outs. Too often the OS goes into la-la land while waiting from an ack from a remote network device. The Finder becomes immobilzed for an eternity. This should stop. Better multi-threading would be a good start and OS X needs better management of networking when the network resources it is counting on are NOT present. Apple also needs to fix—once and for all—the damned wake from sleep problems that in myriad permutations bedevil users of certain models and configs.

But the StarTrek-level stuff requires AI technology. A truly self-diagnosing/repairing operating system would know that it failed to wake from sleep upon the last user attempt and it would then examine why this failure occurred. It would repair its own code with fixes on the spot.

Meantime, it looks as though I shall be manually deleting cache files when they go corrupt, manually running the shell scripts when I don’t leave my computer on during the night, manually running Disk Utility from time to time (and how do file permissions get changed in the FIRST place—without authorization?), and manually updating the prebinding, etc.

Let’s hope what you ask for is not too far away in the future.

-Jeff

Slopes,

You are so negative towards OSX, I’m wondering why you are using it at all?  Why don’t you go back to OS9 if it’s so superior, or get a Win box, then you can F5 all day long.

Yes, I agree, the Finder update problem is a problem.  But why are you sitting around waiting for it?  If you simply click on another folder, then click back (in Column View at least), the list usually updates instantly.

You say you’ve been working with OSX for over a year now, but you haven’t discovered simple work-arounds like this yet?  I’m starting to get the sense that you’re not really much of a power-user to begin with if these basic annoyances are such a problem for you, especially if you are habitually opening the wrong files and applications.

I’m not trying to start a flame here, but can we get back to a positive vibe in the spirit of this article to talk about improvments we’d like to see in Tiger?

-M

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars/1

John Siracusa’s sharp as a razor description is also something to laud - reading thru the muck of the last articles comments reminded me that JS had described everything that is good and bad about the Mac OS X interface.

I must agree with Slopes that Finder windows fail to update dynamically as well as they should. They DO auto-update but the implementation of this function is definitely short of the mark—no question about it. But I agree with Mark that to speak of sitting there indefinitely (up to two hours), waiting for the Finder window to update is either disingenuous or hyperbolic or indicative of a great lack of resourcefulness as a computer user (or all of the above).

Mark is right—you can stimulate a refresh of the Finder window by simply clicking on an item in it. On occasion it may be necessary to arrow down or up to invoke a refresh—but it IS that simple. To sit there and wait is patently absurd and almost pathological.

Now, again, the Finder DOES fall short in this regard and I agree with Slopes on another point he makes which is that Apple has had more than ample time to have cleared up this problem by now. But I’m very tired of his obsession with “eye candy” when I suspect he would be very hard pressed to give examples of it.

OS 9 was gray—all gray. We can call it platinum or silver all we want, but it was gray. Title bars—gray. Scroll bars—gray. Window borders—gray. Menubars—gray. Menus themselves—gray. Dialog boxes—gray. Unless the user resorted to the Appearance Manager (or whatever it was called) or a fine product like Kaleidoscope), all was gray. And so Apple decides to add some very conservative color to the OS X interface and people like Slopes squawk, “Eye candy!” Apparently it’s either to be all gray or eye candy and there is no middle ground for these people.

Time to be called to account. Give examples. What qualifies as eye candy in your view?

I don’t hold with those who believe that an intuitive interface is over here while aesthetics and appearance is over there. I think these things go hand in hand. People stare at their computer screens a LONG time during the day and it only makes sense that they should see a bit of color to break the monotony. Again, I find the OS X GUI to be muted and conservative in its use of color. It’s not the least bit garish or over the top.

Meantime, if Apple can’t improve the dynamic window updating of the Finder (while still keeping its cpu-usage low), then maybe it will have to bite the bullet and add a refresh command (a la Windows). But I do acknowledge that something must be done in this regard.

Dave, I couldn’t agree with you more on this. It’s absurd that any UNIX-based application, (which is what the Finder is, after all) would go off into la-la land in this way. Even if Apple wanted the Finder to have generous time-out values, the app should be multi-threaded enough as to allow for mouse/keyboard interrupts. I should still be able to call up windows and manipulate files and folders even if a sub-process (or child process) is still waiting to hear from a remote network device that isn’t there.

Apple needs to get some top engineers to fix this once and for all.

Mark -
If Apple would hire me, then I could do something about it =) Or if someone like Pathfinder, or another Finder alternative wanted to have an interaction designer - I am all theirs.

Altho there are others out there eminantly better than I to figure it all out.

If you are referring to “workarounds” for my day to day interaction with the Finder - OF COURSE I have workarounds for the Finder’s failings, and I don’t just sit there with a slack jaw. haha.

If I knew any better, me thinks I was just trolled by Mark with his last post. oh well.