Crotchety Old Man

pedz

pedz

Registered
Do others feel like I do? Apple and Mac seem to get more convoluted and less intuitive. I get more frustration with Mac OS X today than I use to. Here is an example:

I start iTunes. It says there is a new update. Ok. Get me the update.

In the past, it would just go get the update, install it, and be happy.

But now it starts App Store. App Store churns for a rather long time because I have a pencil thin internet link and then reports "Install Yosemite". What? Ok... no bother. Lets just search for iTunes in the App Store. I find a page full of hits but no iTunes itself.

The same is true with system updates. It goes through the App Store which has to do the search again to find what updates I need.

The second example is iTunes itself. With each update, it does less and less of what I want it to do. The UI seems less obvious to me. And generally, I don't remember waiting on it like I do today.

Is it just me? Have I become another crotchety old man or is the Mac actually getting harder and harder to use with each update for others?

Sorry for the rant. I tried to keep it clean.

Perry
 
My rant is getting alerts that there are update downloads ready for me. I am not ready for Yosemite yet I am alerted every day to download and install. There is no choice of ignore, just remind me tomorrow.
And just like Perry, every time I start up Pages, I get the message that there is an update waiting. The kicker is that the Pages update will not show until I install Yosemite, which I don’t want right now.
 
Last weekend I installed Yosemite and I'm sorry I did. The computer is definitely slower than it was with Mavericks. I have a 3.06 Core 2 Duo and run Parallels almost every day. It uses up a core. Sometimes I also run EyeTV at the same time as Parallels. It also uses up most of a core. With Mavericks the system could handle that but with Yosemite the EyeTV skips enough frames that it's unwatchable. I note in Activity Monitor that Window Server is using a lot of CPU time. Sometimes when EyeTV and Parallels are both working, it uses up to 60% of a core.
 
If you upgraded to Yosemite then use the free application EtreCheck. It will scan your Mac and look for outdated services, etc. and show the path to them to delete/upgrade that service. Just remember to restart after deleting a service.
 
I've been feeling crotchety since 10.o was first released about 15 years ago. Crotchetiness increased considerably with Lion, waned a little with Mavericks, and is back to new heights with Yosemite. I am at critical crotchety levels now.

I fought the App Store as long as I could. I had MacUpdate, and before that VersionTracker, and I was perfectly happy downloading and installing apps myself. The App Store is supposed to make people feel safe, yet I feel like everything there is a scam. Part of that is merely my perception, I'm sure, but there's no denying that the culture surrounding the Mac and Mac development has changed.

I disabled Notification Center within about an hour of upgrading my OS. Unfortunately, it's gotten to the point where too many apps use it for things I actually need (TextWrangler, whyyyyyy?). Apple has successfully ported over one of Windows' most irritating features -- the pushy notification bubbles. I don't feel like the master of my Mac anymore. Mac does what Mac wants now, and I just hope that jibes with what I need to do.

And don't even get me started on flat UIs. Oy! The entire industry is following Microsoft, and it really is as bad as that sounds!
 
Interesting... I'm a Unix guy starting with BSD 4.2 in 1984. So when Mac finally went to OS X, I was really happy. It was a real operating system with real protection between processes and a real file system and a real interrupt structure. I also like how Apple will cut off the old baggage. OS 9 is not supported at all...zero. The 68000 is not supported at all. The Power PC is not supported at all. During each of these, there was a somewhat graceful transition period. I think this helps Apple's stability. I don't know but I believe MS does not do the same thing. They still support (much like Linux) lots of old gunk that needs to just be dropped.

So it is interesting that Mikuro did not like 10.0. The rest of what he says I agree with. My Mac does less and less of what I want and more and more of what it wants. Remember the feature where the default was to reboot and try to restart all of the apps where they last left off and then each app would try to re-open ever document that was open when they were last closed? I'm still fighting against that at times. Sure, I bet a lot of people love it. And I don't mind opt'ing out. But the opt out frequently doesn't work. I can't get Preview to not reopen the last set of documents it had open when I closed Preview. QuickTime has the same problem.

This may be basic 21st century marketing. Rather than finding a need and filling it, the new business model is creating a need and filling it.
 
Oh, no doubt OS X was a much-needed advancement on the whole. However, it was dog slow and not very refined until Panther, and parts of the UI were a mess (the Finder is still a bit of a mess, to be honest; there were many things the OS 9 Finder did better). I loved the consistency and thoughtfulness behind the classic Mac OS's interface design, and that was lacking in OS X. At times it seemed like Apple was fighting itself -- like the NeXT guys and the Mac guys were at war for dominance of OS X.

There's no denying the technical superiority of OS X. It's the design that gets me feeling crotchety.

I agree completely about the re-opening feature. I've never once found this helpful, and it's often been a thorn in my side, despite my doing everything I can to opt out.
 
Satcomer said:
If you upgraded to Yosemite then use the free application EtreCheck. It will scan your Mac and look for outdated services, etc. and show the path to them to delete/upgrade that service. Just remember to restart after deleting a service.
Click to expand...
Thank you for you response, I did as you suggest and didn't know what to do with the result, so have been trying other things none of which have accomplished much. So I'm back, and these are the results returned by EtreCheck:

Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[running] at.obdev.littlesnitchd.plist [Support]
[failed] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Support]
[running] com.bjango.istatmenusdaemon.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper.plist [Support]
[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist [Support]

User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[invalid?] com.akamai.client.plist [Support]
[invalid?] com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Support]
[invalid?] ws.agile.1PasswordAgent.plist [Support]

One failed and three invalid? items. Nothing else was flagged. Do these items have any meaning to you?
 
com.adobe.fpsaud.plist is part of your FlashPlayer software, specifically to try to keep it automatically updated. You should double-check that your FlashPlayer is up-to-date (version 16, I think.)
com.akamai.client.plist - (probably) related to some software used on your Mac for downloading streams, or maybe to help with internet access. Various third party services use that to help deliver net-located files to you, or maybe stream files, etc. Hard to tell what software to check on, but maybe you know what that might be...
The com.google.keystone (etc, etc) is related to whatever Google apps you might be using, like Google Chrome, or maybe Google Earth, other Google apps. You COULD probably delete that line from your user/Library/Launch Agents folder without encountering any major difficulties.
And the ws.agile.1PasswordAgent.plist is easy - it's part of the 1Password software that you use to keep track of your passwords. Perhaps the only one that you REALLY need to check to make sure that your installed version is current. Today, that would be version 5.0.2

All that being said - my first recommendation that MIGHT help your Yosemite system is to boot to the Yosemite installer, and reinstall OS X. Some folks even need to do a "Backup your files, erase the hard drive, and reinstall OS X, then restore" - to get the system working more comfortably. Hope you don't need to get to THAT point, but it's worth considering. The simple OS X reinstall that I suggested is a safe path to follow, and you are very unlikely to encounter difficulties when you do that. Just wait for it to finish, then after a restart or two, check in the App Store for the update or two that the system has to reinstall.
 
DeltaMac said:
com.adobe.fpsaud.plist is part of your FlashPlayer software, specifically to try to keep it automatically updated. You should double-check that your FlashPlayer is up-to-date (version 16, I think.)
com.akamai.client.plist - (probably) related to some software used on your Mac for downloading streams, or maybe to help with internet access. Various third party services use that to help deliver net-located files to you, or maybe stream files, etc. Hard to tell what software to check on, but maybe you know what that might be...
The com.google.keystone (etc, etc) is related to whatever Google apps you might be using, like Google Chrome, or maybe Google Earth, other Google apps. You COULD probably delete that line from your user/Library/Launch Agents folder without encountering any major difficulties.
And the ws.agile.1PasswordAgent.plist is easy - it's part of the 1Password software that you use to keep track of your passwords. Perhaps the only one that you REALLY need to check to make sure that your installed version is current. Today, that would be version 5.0.2

All that being said - my first recommendation that MIGHT help your Yosemite system is to boot to the Yosemite installer, and reinstall OS X. Some folks even need to do a "Backup your files, erase the hard drive, and reinstall OS X, then restore" - to get the system working more comfortably. Hope you don't need to get to THAT point, but it's worth considering. The simple OS X reinstall that I suggested is a safe path to follow, and you are very unlikely to encounter difficulties when you do that. Just wait for it to finish, then after a restart or two, check in the App Store for the update or two that the system has to reinstall.
Click to expand...

Flash: One of the things I tried was uninstalling Flash. I just reinstalled it a couple of days ago so I know it's up-to-date.

Google: I am Google-free, as far as I know. I even use Bing as my default search engine, but do occasionally use Google Maps because of their on-the-street feature.

1Password: I am on 5.02 (502007)

Reinstall Yosemite: I usually do a clean install but this time I had let Yosemite install over Mavericks. A couple of weeks ago I made three backups, wiped the drive, reinstalled, migrated, and brought everything up to date.

I have tried everything I can think of except this: Someone recommended a program called LionSpeedMac. The claim is that the system priorities are changed in Yosemite and that is the source of my problem. This program promises to "reorder the priorities of your Mac back to those found in the former Lion OS." The program is hard to find; it's not on the Apple Store or MacUpdate. Yesterday I started a new thread and asked if anyone has heard of it or knows where to find it, with no response yet.
 
Yep! I'm right up there with you.

It's due to Apple having to pretend they've made another Great Leap Forward every year. Mainly by moving the furniture around and constantly changing the curtains.

Trying to detail just how many extra steps everything takes and just how many of those steps are concealed or really confused, seems to get you nowhere.

Apple really has got a right bunch now using Macs.

Everything is "Just great" and "Amazing". If you ask for specifics of why it is just great and amazing you get "It's the vibe" responses.

I've even had some of the "Amazing" new users describe a "new feature" that has been around forever, as the reason to upgrade!

It really is getting exhausting. Especially with all the built in incompatibilities every single "upgrade".
 
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