listen, software dev MUST have a cut-off date. With something like an OPERATING SYSTEM you're BOUND to have hundreds of bugs, if not thousands.
As was mentioned many times before in other posts, if we were still waiting for a perfect bug free release, we wouldn't even have 10.0 yet.
I know that software must have a cut-off date. I study programming my self and I know how software is developed and that they always have bugs. I guess what I tried to say is that tiny and small bugs are OK to have in the final release, but that medium-to-large bugs should not.
Small bugs that do no real harm is acceptable, and that even unknown large bugs, but my point was that if you _know_ for a fact that your software has serious bugs, that feature is not ready and should not be enables/included in the final release.
When you know you have 38.000 bugs (internally reported), and where some of these are serious the application is rushed out with more features than it should.
To put it in another way. If Apple knew about the firewire issues with Panther and _still_ released it, they should have waited. But since this bug was unknown (I assume, based on my memory of the incident) at the time it was released, I guess its OK, but still a result of not testing your software enough.
As I said it depends on what you consider a "bug". If a bug is everything from major show-stoppers to something as trivial as spelling mistakes, I guess 38.000 is acceptable for something as large as an operating system.
[B]This was EXACTLY what I was afraid of in the other threads about this release.
So, we'll buy 10.4, and then shortly after have to download 10.4.1.
Most likely, yes. But that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. There's going to be an OS X point release about every 2 months, as there always has been.
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This makes no sense. They have until the dev conferance the first week of June to get this out. It takes two weeks to print after GM is declared.
As long as the bugs aren't show-stoppers, it doesn't really matter if they're pushed back to be fixed. Perhaps they're not show-stopper bugs, but the fixes have the potential to cause problems. Note that the severity of a bug to the user often has little relevance to the difficulty of the fix. Perhaps the fix would require extensive testing that would push it back to way beyond any proposed launch date.
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So they have until mid May, at least, to work on this.
As mentioned, this may well not be enough time. The fix may take upwards of a month to test thoroughly if it's in a section of code that affects many areas. However, the bug itself may not be so severe as to be a reason to delay an April release.
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Why should we buy a release that they know has bugs that they have to rush to squash? What are they going to do, release the OS and the update at the same time?
Who said they're rushing? They've declared 10.4 as GM. The developers don't then sit around picking their noses for a few weeks... they crack on with the next update. We may well not see that version released 'till June.
Quote:
This is the worst I've heard since X came out.
Huh?!?
Quote:
Or has Thinksecret and AppleInsider been duped?
This is really not a staggering revelation.
"NEWS AT 11: Developers complete one release -- begin work on another!"
Quote:
What bothers me even more, is all of those new Mac buyers. What are they going to think when this happens?
Absolutely nothing at all. These days you've got to be crazy to see the requirement to keep software updated as some kind of weakness. It's just a fact of life.
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I don't understand the rush. They can announce at NAB, and state "for delivery in early June". They've done that before.
With no idea what the bugs are, and what the fix for them entails, we simply cannot make any such statement of fact.
Here's the scene:
Developer 1: "We've still got this bug in [icon rendering] to fix.
Developer 2: "Do we have a test-case?"
Developer 1: "Yep -- it's pretty intermittent, but we know where in the code the bug is - it's some low-level stuff in Quartz"
Developer 2: "Any chance of a fix before NAB?"
Developer 1: "Well, I could fix it in a couple of days -- but it's so low-level that we'd have to re-do QA on 90% of the graphics subsystem before we could declare it fixed"
Developer 2: "How critical is this? Data loss?"
Developer 1: "Definitely not. Cosmetic only."
Developer 2: "Leave it for 10.4.1. Then we can test for as long as we need".
Quote:
Jobs has said that this is the biggest release of X since 10.0 itself came out (and that, we are probably all agreed upon, could have waited).
You have to draw the line somewhere. And again, we're in no position to decide whether launch should have been delayed without any idea what the bugs are or their fixes entail.
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This is going to be compared to Longhorn, and if it needs updating as soon as it's out, it will be the butt of quite a few jokes. Does Apple need that?
Sorry, but that's nonsense. By the looks of things, Apple are on track to deliver a feature-complete, (hopefully) critical bug-free major update to their operating system. On time. Criticising ANY system for simply needing updates is utterly pointless. The only reason Microsoft gets so much flak (from me, anyway) is how their patches are like band-aids on an axe-wound. Their patches are all about addressing vulnerabilities caused by half-assed design decisions. Apple's (and, indeed Open Source projects') tend to be more of the bugfix variety.
I know that software must have a cut-off date. I study programming my self and I know how software is developed and that they always have bugs. I guess what I tried to say is that tiny and small bugs are OK to have in the final release, but that medium-to-large bugs should not.
It is impractical and imposible to test every feature on every possible configuration before release of anything, be it photoshop, FCP, Windows, *nix, mac/os, mac osx or anything of any great scope, that is why developers can make point releases and patches availible, to fix undiscovered bugs.
lol... the very existance of this threads says something about how eager we all are to get our hands on 10.4. Funny thing is, the news story that sparked this thread is more like common sense for software developers.
Work always continues both on the current and previous major releases even after the new major release is declared GM. Developers just don't stop in their tracks when a build is finally good enough for public consumption. They continue working, introducing code they'd been sitting on into the dev tree. While in the final candidate stage of development, minor fixes are frequently left out of builds because it is possible that these fixes could introduce even more bugs. Once GM has been declared, a flood of fixes pours in and work on a releasable 10.4.1 begins.
lol... the very existance of this threads says something about how eager we all are to get our hands on 10.4. Funny thing is, the news story that sparked this thread is more like common sense for software developers.
I don't know, I see no reason whatsoever to rush out and get tiger. No exciting new features. 10.3 actually works for all I use it for (hardware/software/etc), which was hard to say prior to 10.3. If I was a Mac programmer (for fun or profit), I could see the urge. But besides that, unless there's something in there that's going to wow and amaze, or even something as simple as make my workflow that much better, I'll be sleeping in on release day.
To me, the biggest excitement is wondering how Apple has screwed around with the system preferences this time around (and you know they have, because they ALWAYS screw around with system preferences. "Hey, I know, let's move 'login items' as a tab under the 'users' panel, that makes more sense! And who wants a pane to tell you what to use as a default browser or mail client. Anyone who's looking for those options are going to want to set it up in Safari or Mail anyway, so let's just get rid of that. "
I'm a college student, so I don't have the money to be camping out on release day, but I'll get Tiger as soon as I can afford it ... which means this summer. I would expect Tiger to come out by then and 10.4.1 to be on the way. (I'm really waiting to see the initial response as to how cool this OS really is...)
My question is, wouldn't you need consumer AND developer feedback for the OS before working on any 10.4.x update? Also, if they're working on a .1 update, wouldn't that mean the DVD's have already been stamped, otherwise they could just fix the bugs before sending it off?
Anyway, I do see an announcement this month with a late April or early May release - especially if it's been declared GM and they're working on updates. Can't wait to get my hands on it this summer...
There should be many things that the developers could work on prior to the GM release. Once the GM is out in the wild, however, all sorts of new bug reports should start trickling in and they'll have lots of new things to work on too.
I think that some of you guys are missing the point.
I test for Adobe. I've been testing Photoshop for about ten years. Adobe is VERY serious about catching bugs. It is, in fact, one of the cleanest programs out there.
Adobe has a very large in-house and (outhouse?) external testing program.
From thew people I know in Apple, it seems that their testing program is not much larger than Photoshop's is.
Considering that a modern OS is much larger than any program being used in it, the testing program should be much larger.
Apple is so concerned with security that they limit the program too severely.
This is why Filevault and Firewire problems crop up. No tester can test more than a narrow portion of the OS. We all concentrate on our areas of expertise.
Some bugs are inexcusable, though. The above two are among those. How could Apple have missed the fact that Firewire drives would get corrupt during an update? This is something that should have had special attention called to it during the process. I lost three drives myself, and I'm not an amateur at this.
I once beta tested a publishing program (which shall go nameless, though it's not around anymore) that couldn't print, even it was almost at release status. When I asked about that, they said that they assumed that it would, and had not thought to test for it!
Believe me, I'm not praising MS, but most OS's are released in beta form long before release is due, so that a larger portion of the public can run down these otherwise untested for bugs.
Apple has released software many times before that required a new update or upgrade that wasn't out yet. That happened to me twice with FCP alone, so it wouldn't be surprising if it happened now.
About the original release 10.0. to be surprised that I'm saying that it was released too soon is in itself surprising. you don't remember that far back if you are surprised at that. The 10.0 release was called the final beta by most of us who had bought it. It worked, but was by no means useable for anything except browsing, and even there it would have problems. So many needed features were left out to push it out the door that half the developers I spoke to said that they couldn't release software for it. Finally 10.1 came out. Many thought that was what Apple should have waited for. So yes, that was horrible.
Understand that the difference between pros and enthusiasts is that Pros will wait until a new OS update or Upgrade is certified to work with the software they need every day, while the enthusiast will rush to install it immediately.
In my business, and at home, A machine set aside specifically for new software testing is mandatory. Those who don't have that luxury have to either wait, or cross their fingers and jump in.
I'm not concerned about the small bugs that are there, we all know that they can't get everything. I'm concerned about those that are serious, and got by the testing program because it isn't adaguit, was cut short, when they had more time.
The truth is, that most everyone here expected it to come out at the dev conf, and not a day sooner. Is an extra 4 weeks or so going to make such a difference in your lives? Or is it that you just can't wait?
There should be many things that the developers could work on prior to the GM release. Once the GM is out in the wild, however, all sorts of new bug reports should start trickling in and they'll have lots of new things to work on too.
I would just like to say that the idea of what a GM and a final release candidate is seems to be misunderstood.
A final release candidate (FRC) is just that, a candidate. It may still contain bugs that should have been caught. It supposedly is what the company THINKS can go GM, but might not.
The final release is the last of the series of FRC's. It is the one that will be declared GM.
The GM is not sent out for further testing. It is the one that goes for print and distrb.
The in-house testers continue to work on features and bugs that were left for an update release. Hopefully they CAN be left, and aren't of overriding importance. Sometimes features must be taken out at the last minute, during a FRC test run.
I think that some of you guys are missing the point.
I test for Adobe. I've been testing Photoshop for about ten years. Adobe is VERY serious about catching bugs. It is, in fact, one of the cleanest programs out there.
And yet Adobe releases x.0.1 updates for most of their apps shortly after release.
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Originally posted by melgross
About the original release 10.0. to be surprised that I'm saying that it was released too soon is in itself surprising. you don't remember that far back if you are surprised at that. The 10.0 release was called the final beta by most of us who had bought it. It worked, but was by no means useable for anything except browsing, and even there it would have problems. So many needed features were left out to push it out the door that half the developers I spoke to said that they couldn't release software for it. Finally 10.1 came out. Many thought that was what Apple should have waited for. So yes, that was horrible.
It's all politics. Apple had to release something to show results and to get the developers started in porting their apps.
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
The truth is, that most everyone here expected it to come out at the dev conf, and not a day sooner. Is an extra 4 weeks or so going to make such a difference in your lives? Or is it that you just can't wait?
Those 4 weeks won't make Tiger perfect. Perhaps they would have fixed a couple of bugs, and perhaps the code they are putting into the tree now for the 10.4.1 update breaks new stuff that means that they won't be able to release Tiger within their 2H time frame.
Releasing Tiger before WWDC makes perfect sense since developers have a chance to use the final version before attending the sessions.
What surprises me is that 8a428 is NOWHERE to be seen on the, uh, back channels. I wonder if this is because of fallout from recent Apple legal activity. Anyway, if its not, nice going Apple, you seem to have contained leaks!
I stumbled upon what looks like to be build 8a425 last night. i can't be sure yet because i haven't tested. But based on the size of the file it could be.
[B]Most likely, yes. But that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. There's going to be an OS X point release about every 2 months, as there always has been.
BRAVO!
Smartest post in this thread (which sorely needed it!)...
And yet Adobe releases x.0.1 updates for most of their apps shortly after release.
It's all politics. Apple had to release something to show results and to get the developers started in porting their apps.
Those 4 weeks won't make Tiger perfect. Perhaps they would have fixed a couple of bugs, and perhaps the code they are putting into the tree now for the 10.4.1 update breaks new stuff that means that they won't be able to release Tiger within their 2H time frame.
Releasing Tiger before WWDC makes perfect sense since developers have a chance to use the final version before attending the sessions.
Sometimes Adobe releases a point update quickly. The last time they did so for Photoshop was because they somehow forgot to remove the GM timeout code.
CS 2 has an installation problem sometimes because of an OS bug that causes a timeout in the installer when formatted text is left in the clipboard.
Developers have the final release, they don't need a boxed version on the shelves. They've been working on their programs for months.
Let me give you an idea of what I'm talking about. That is, why pros are concerned with every new release.
When 10.3 came out, there was a major flaw that affected every commercial photo (such as mine) and print house out there.
Apple broke SCSI. Pure and simple. Yes, drives still worked, so those who had them didn't always notice a problem.
But SCSI based scanners and printers didn't. Now, inexpensive scanners haven't used SCSI for some time now, and so home users may not noticed this either. But if you had a scanner at home that was older, and did work through 10.2, you probably found that it didn't work in 10.3.
People in that position usually blame the manufacturer for not updating their drivers, and thus not supporting the new OS. But that wasn't true. It was the OS that was broken. This didn't just affect low price Umax and Microtek units, it also affected my $30,000 Creo. Not Good.
My Fuji Pictography 4500 also wouldn't work. Every time we tried to print, it would go well, and as soon as the transmitting window closed, we would get a kernel panic. Nothing Fuji could do worked. Fortunately, they had come out with a $275 SCSI to Ethernet adapter that let us use it, but SCSI is more than twice as fast.
We ended up using our scanners on a 10.2 machine that we didn't upgrade. This problem exists through 10.3.8.
By the way, Firewire just isn't effective with high end peripherals. Manufactures, in response to my questions, reply that they have tried, but there are too many problems.
Of course, the question here is whether Apple cares about this problem, which is serious, or that it was deliberate. Apple has been trying to move us off SCSI for a while now.
I don't care how many bugs MS releases in their products. I am a confirmed Mac user, and intend to remain that way. Apple has an uphill battle.
Ever since Jobs, a few years ago, when he came back, announced that the enterprise wasn't his customer, the largest dumping of Mac's occurred in that sector since the '95 fiasco.
Now that he is trying to get them back, the better the product, the faster it will happen.
I don't know why some think that an update every two months is ok. It's not. Every six months, maybe. Look at all the problems XP2 has caused. Do you know that only 40% of business's have even upgraded to XP from 2000? and that only 25% of XP business's have gone to XP2? MS is now going to force it. A lot of protest there.
The same thing is true of Apple's business's. Only about 50% have gone to 10.3. There's no rush.
Unfortunatly, I have to leave for a few hours, so I won't be able to respond.
Portable Home Directories isn't the same thing as the "Mobile Accounts" feature of OSX 10.3 Server, is it?
I sure hope that doesn't get cut, because that's what all our machines here run on for Open Directory authentication (remote authentication with local home directories)!
I agree, frequent updates aren't a bad thing. Yet they aren't neccessarily a good thing either.
Granted, it does cost apple to finalize each releasable version. Fewer versions means that they can spend more time eliminating buggy minutia from each free upgrade. However, it also means that bugs will go longer before a patch is available to the public.
I would tend to characterize Apple?s track record as good and I am not on the quality-crisis bandwagon. There have certainly been major flaws in Apple OS releases and upgrades. Yet compared to the industry as a whole, Apple?s upgrades have been quite good. This isn?t much consolation to those who lost data in the firewire drive disaster, but this type of problem should be put in perspective.
Is a user of an apple machine more or less likely to suffer lost data and time than if they were running another OS? I tend to be of the opinion that we?re safer running OS X. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that windows users experience far more complete system failures and associated data loss.
Is it possible for an OS upgrade to be considered commendably safe and stable despite some users experiencing catastrophic data loss? I vote yes. Sad but true, software as complex as OS upgrades will result in catastrophic data loss for some users. This is why IT professionals get paid to manage backup plans and the risks associated with upgrades.
Comments
Originally posted by ZO
listen, software dev MUST have a cut-off date. With something like an OPERATING SYSTEM you're BOUND to have hundreds of bugs, if not thousands.
As was mentioned many times before in other posts, if we were still waiting for a perfect bug free release, we wouldn't even have 10.0 yet.
I know that software must have a cut-off date. I study programming my self and I know how software is developed and that they always have bugs. I guess what I tried to say is that tiny and small bugs are OK to have in the final release, but that medium-to-large bugs should not.
Small bugs that do no real harm is acceptable, and that even unknown large bugs, but my point was that if you _know_ for a fact that your software has serious bugs, that feature is not ready and should not be enables/included in the final release.
When you know you have 38.000 bugs (internally reported), and where some of these are serious the application is rushed out with more features than it should.
To put it in another way. If Apple knew about the firewire issues with Panther and _still_ released it, they should have waited. But since this bug was unknown (I assume, based on my memory of the incident) at the time it was released, I guess its OK, but still a result of not testing your software enough.
As I said it depends on what you consider a "bug". If a bug is everything from major show-stoppers to something as trivial as spelling mistakes, I guess 38.000 is acceptable for something as large as an operating system.
.:BoeManE:.
you think people are gonna make jokes because Apple cares about both shipping software early, and fixing problems quickly?
Mind you, totally opposite behavior by Microsoft is the main reason they are a laughingstock.
Originally posted by melgross
[B]This was EXACTLY what I was afraid of in the other threads about this release.
So, we'll buy 10.4, and then shortly after have to download 10.4.1.
Most likely, yes. But that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. There's going to be an OS X point release about every 2 months, as there always has been.
This makes no sense. They have until the dev conferance the first week of June to get this out. It takes two weeks to print after GM is declared.
As long as the bugs aren't show-stoppers, it doesn't really matter if they're pushed back to be fixed. Perhaps they're not show-stopper bugs, but the fixes have the potential to cause problems. Note that the severity of a bug to the user often has little relevance to the difficulty of the fix. Perhaps the fix would require extensive testing that would push it back to way beyond any proposed launch date.
So they have until mid May, at least, to work on this.
As mentioned, this may well not be enough time. The fix may take upwards of a month to test thoroughly if it's in a section of code that affects many areas. However, the bug itself may not be so severe as to be a reason to delay an April release.
Why should we buy a release that they know has bugs that they have to rush to squash? What are they going to do, release the OS and the update at the same time?
Who said they're rushing? They've declared 10.4 as GM. The developers don't then sit around picking their noses for a few weeks... they crack on with the next update. We may well not see that version released 'till June.
This is the worst I've heard since X came out.
Huh?!?
Or has Thinksecret and AppleInsider been duped?
This is really not a staggering revelation.
"NEWS AT 11: Developers complete one release -- begin work on another!"
What bothers me even more, is all of those new Mac buyers. What are they going to think when this happens?
Absolutely nothing at all. These days you've got to be crazy to see the requirement to keep software updated as some kind of weakness. It's just a fact of life.
I don't understand the rush. They can announce at NAB, and state "for delivery in early June". They've done that before.
With no idea what the bugs are, and what the fix for them entails, we simply cannot make any such statement of fact.
Here's the scene:
Developer 1: "We've still got this bug in [icon rendering] to fix.
Developer 2: "Do we have a test-case?"
Developer 1: "Yep -- it's pretty intermittent, but we know where in the code the bug is - it's some low-level stuff in Quartz"
Developer 2: "Any chance of a fix before NAB?"
Developer 1: "Well, I could fix it in a couple of days -- but it's so low-level that we'd have to re-do QA on 90% of the graphics subsystem before we could declare it fixed"
Developer 2: "How critical is this? Data loss?"
Developer 1: "Definitely not. Cosmetic only."
Developer 2: "Leave it for 10.4.1. Then we can test for as long as we need".
Jobs has said that this is the biggest release of X since 10.0 itself came out (and that, we are probably all agreed upon, could have waited).
You have to draw the line somewhere. And again, we're in no position to decide whether launch should have been delayed without any idea what the bugs are or their fixes entail.
This is going to be compared to Longhorn, and if it needs updating as soon as it's out, it will be the butt of quite a few jokes. Does Apple need that?
Sorry, but that's nonsense. By the looks of things, Apple are on track to deliver a feature-complete, (hopefully) critical bug-free major update to their operating system. On time. Criticising ANY system for simply needing updates is utterly pointless. The only reason Microsoft gets so much flak (from me, anyway) is how their patches are like band-aids on an axe-wound. Their patches are all about addressing vulnerabilities caused by half-assed design decisions. Apple's (and, indeed Open Source projects') tend to be more of the bugfix variety.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
OS X Server build numbers are never on par with OS X Client.
Yes they are. Only a few times the server build number has been newer than the client version.
10.3.8 as an example is build 7U16 on both client and server.
Originally posted by melgross
This was EXACTLY what I was afraid of in the other threads about this release.
So, we'll buy 10.4, and then shortly after have to download 10.4.1.
This makes no sense. They have until the dev conferance the first week of June to get this out. It takes two weeks to print after GM is declared.
If coming Pro apps released at NAB require 10.4, Apple will miss some income on both until Tiger is "finished".
No mater when they release a version, they will be working on a .1 update the minute after.
Not all bugs are show stoppers, and there are always bugs.
Originally posted by BoeManE
I know that software must have a cut-off date. I study programming my self and I know how software is developed and that they always have bugs. I guess what I tried to say is that tiny and small bugs are OK to have in the final release, but that medium-to-large bugs should not.
It is impractical and imposible to test every feature on every possible configuration before release of anything, be it photoshop, FCP, Windows, *nix, mac/os, mac osx or anything of any great scope, that is why developers can make point releases and patches availible, to fix undiscovered bugs.
Originally posted by kcmac
Welcome to AI gorickey!
Haha, thanks...I'm still in retirement though! I won't reach 10k posts here...
Work always continues both on the current and previous major releases even after the new major release is declared GM. Developers just don't stop in their tracks when a build is finally good enough for public consumption. They continue working, introducing code they'd been sitting on into the dev tree. While in the final candidate stage of development, minor fixes are frequently left out of builds because it is possible that these fixes could introduce even more bugs. Once GM has been declared, a flood of fixes pours in and work on a releasable 10.4.1 begins.
Originally posted by dfiler
lol... the very existance of this threads says something about how eager we all are to get our hands on 10.4. Funny thing is, the news story that sparked this thread is more like common sense for software developers.
I don't know, I see no reason whatsoever to rush out and get tiger. No exciting new features. 10.3 actually works for all I use it for (hardware/software/etc), which was hard to say prior to 10.3. If I was a Mac programmer (for fun or profit), I could see the urge. But besides that, unless there's something in there that's going to wow and amaze, or even something as simple as make my workflow that much better, I'll be sleeping in on release day.
To me, the biggest excitement is wondering how Apple has screwed around with the system preferences this time around (and you know they have, because they ALWAYS screw around with system preferences. "Hey, I know, let's move 'login items' as a tab under the 'users' panel, that makes more sense! And who wants a pane to tell you what to use as a default browser or mail client. Anyone who's looking for those options are going to want to set it up in Safari or Mail anyway, so let's just get rid of that. "
My question is, wouldn't you need consumer AND developer feedback for the OS before working on any 10.4.x update? Also, if they're working on a .1 update, wouldn't that mean the DVD's have already been stamped, otherwise they could just fix the bugs before sending it off?
Anyway, I do see an announcement this month with a late April or early May release - especially if it's been declared GM and they're working on updates. Can't wait to get my hands on it this summer...
I test for Adobe. I've been testing Photoshop for about ten years. Adobe is VERY serious about catching bugs. It is, in fact, one of the cleanest programs out there.
Adobe has a very large in-house and (outhouse?) external testing program.
From thew people I know in Apple, it seems that their testing program is not much larger than Photoshop's is.
Considering that a modern OS is much larger than any program being used in it, the testing program should be much larger.
Apple is so concerned with security that they limit the program too severely.
This is why Filevault and Firewire problems crop up. No tester can test more than a narrow portion of the OS. We all concentrate on our areas of expertise.
Some bugs are inexcusable, though. The above two are among those. How could Apple have missed the fact that Firewire drives would get corrupt during an update? This is something that should have had special attention called to it during the process. I lost three drives myself, and I'm not an amateur at this.
I once beta tested a publishing program (which shall go nameless, though it's not around anymore) that couldn't print, even it was almost at release status. When I asked about that, they said that they assumed that it would, and had not thought to test for it!
Believe me, I'm not praising MS, but most OS's are released in beta form long before release is due, so that a larger portion of the public can run down these otherwise untested for bugs.
Apple has released software many times before that required a new update or upgrade that wasn't out yet. That happened to me twice with FCP alone, so it wouldn't be surprising if it happened now.
About the original release 10.0. to be surprised that I'm saying that it was released too soon is in itself surprising. you don't remember that far back if you are surprised at that. The 10.0 release was called the final beta by most of us who had bought it. It worked, but was by no means useable for anything except browsing, and even there it would have problems. So many needed features were left out to push it out the door that half the developers I spoke to said that they couldn't release software for it. Finally 10.1 came out. Many thought that was what Apple should have waited for. So yes, that was horrible.
Understand that the difference between pros and enthusiasts is that Pros will wait until a new OS update or Upgrade is certified to work with the software they need every day, while the enthusiast will rush to install it immediately.
In my business, and at home, A machine set aside specifically for new software testing is mandatory. Those who don't have that luxury have to either wait, or cross their fingers and jump in.
I'm not concerned about the small bugs that are there, we all know that they can't get everything. I'm concerned about those that are serious, and got by the testing program because it isn't adaguit, was cut short, when they had more time.
The truth is, that most everyone here expected it to come out at the dev conf, and not a day sooner. Is an extra 4 weeks or so going to make such a difference in your lives? Or is it that you just can't wait?
Originally posted by Xool
There should be many things that the developers could work on prior to the GM release. Once the GM is out in the wild, however, all sorts of new bug reports should start trickling in and they'll have lots of new things to work on too.
I would just like to say that the idea of what a GM and a final release candidate is seems to be misunderstood.
A final release candidate (FRC) is just that, a candidate. It may still contain bugs that should have been caught. It supposedly is what the company THINKS can go GM, but might not.
The final release is the last of the series of FRC's. It is the one that will be declared GM.
The GM is not sent out for further testing. It is the one that goes for print and distrb.
The in-house testers continue to work on features and bugs that were left for an update release. Hopefully they CAN be left, and aren't of overriding importance. Sometimes features must be taken out at the last minute, during a FRC test run.
Originally posted by melgross
I think that some of you guys are missing the point.
I test for Adobe. I've been testing Photoshop for about ten years. Adobe is VERY serious about catching bugs. It is, in fact, one of the cleanest programs out there.
And yet Adobe releases x.0.1 updates for most of their apps shortly after release.
Originally posted by melgross
About the original release 10.0. to be surprised that I'm saying that it was released too soon is in itself surprising. you don't remember that far back if you are surprised at that. The 10.0 release was called the final beta by most of us who had bought it. It worked, but was by no means useable for anything except browsing, and even there it would have problems. So many needed features were left out to push it out the door that half the developers I spoke to said that they couldn't release software for it. Finally 10.1 came out. Many thought that was what Apple should have waited for. So yes, that was horrible.
It's all politics. Apple had to release something to show results and to get the developers started in porting their apps.
Originally posted by melgross
The truth is, that most everyone here expected it to come out at the dev conf, and not a day sooner. Is an extra 4 weeks or so going to make such a difference in your lives? Or is it that you just can't wait?
Those 4 weeks won't make Tiger perfect. Perhaps they would have fixed a couple of bugs, and perhaps the code they are putting into the tree now for the 10.4.1 update breaks new stuff that means that they won't be able to release Tiger within their 2H time frame.
Releasing Tiger before WWDC makes perfect sense since developers have a chance to use the final version before attending the sessions.
Originally posted by ZO
What surprises me is that 8a428 is NOWHERE to be seen on the, uh, back channels. I wonder if this is because of fallout from recent Apple legal activity. Anyway, if its not, nice going Apple, you seem to have contained leaks!
I stumbled upon what looks like to be build 8a425 last night. i can't be sure yet because i haven't tested. But based on the size of the file it could be.
Originally posted by displaced
[B]Most likely, yes. But that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. There's going to be an OS X point release about every 2 months, as there always has been.
BRAVO!
Smartest post in this thread (which sorely needed it!)...
Welcome to the club!
Originally posted by JLL
And yet Adobe releases x.0.1 updates for most of their apps shortly after release.
It's all politics. Apple had to release something to show results and to get the developers started in porting their apps.
Those 4 weeks won't make Tiger perfect. Perhaps they would have fixed a couple of bugs, and perhaps the code they are putting into the tree now for the 10.4.1 update breaks new stuff that means that they won't be able to release Tiger within their 2H time frame.
Releasing Tiger before WWDC makes perfect sense since developers have a chance to use the final version before attending the sessions.
Sometimes Adobe releases a point update quickly. The last time they did so for Photoshop was because they somehow forgot to remove the GM timeout code.
CS 2 has an installation problem sometimes because of an OS bug that causes a timeout in the installer when formatted text is left in the clipboard.
Developers have the final release, they don't need a boxed version on the shelves. They've been working on their programs for months.
Let me give you an idea of what I'm talking about. That is, why pros are concerned with every new release.
When 10.3 came out, there was a major flaw that affected every commercial photo (such as mine) and print house out there.
Apple broke SCSI. Pure and simple. Yes, drives still worked, so those who had them didn't always notice a problem.
But SCSI based scanners and printers didn't. Now, inexpensive scanners haven't used SCSI for some time now, and so home users may not noticed this either. But if you had a scanner at home that was older, and did work through 10.2, you probably found that it didn't work in 10.3.
People in that position usually blame the manufacturer for not updating their drivers, and thus not supporting the new OS. But that wasn't true. It was the OS that was broken. This didn't just affect low price Umax and Microtek units, it also affected my $30,000 Creo. Not Good.
My Fuji Pictography 4500 also wouldn't work. Every time we tried to print, it would go well, and as soon as the transmitting window closed, we would get a kernel panic. Nothing Fuji could do worked. Fortunately, they had come out with a $275 SCSI to Ethernet adapter that let us use it, but SCSI is more than twice as fast.
We ended up using our scanners on a 10.2 machine that we didn't upgrade. This problem exists through 10.3.8.
By the way, Firewire just isn't effective with high end peripherals. Manufactures, in response to my questions, reply that they have tried, but there are too many problems.
Of course, the question here is whether Apple cares about this problem, which is serious, or that it was deliberate. Apple has been trying to move us off SCSI for a while now.
I don't care how many bugs MS releases in their products. I am a confirmed Mac user, and intend to remain that way. Apple has an uphill battle.
Ever since Jobs, a few years ago, when he came back, announced that the enterprise wasn't his customer, the largest dumping of Mac's occurred in that sector since the '95 fiasco.
Now that he is trying to get them back, the better the product, the faster it will happen.
I don't know why some think that an update every two months is ok. It's not. Every six months, maybe. Look at all the problems XP2 has caused. Do you know that only 40% of business's have even upgraded to XP from 2000? and that only 25% of XP business's have gone to XP2? MS is now going to force it. A lot of protest there.
The same thing is true of Apple's business's. Only about 50% have gone to 10.3. There's no rush.
Unfortunatly, I have to leave for a few hours, so I won't be able to respond.
I sure hope that doesn't get cut, because that's what all our machines here run on for Open Directory authentication (remote authentication with local home directories)!
Originally posted by melgross
I don't know why some think that an update every two months is ok. It's not. Every six months, maybe.
No one is forcing you to update, right? Just leave the updates sit for six months.
I'm security minded and I'd rather have all updates as soon as they roll off the assembly line.
BTW, that story of yours about SCSI devices is fantastic. They still haven't fixed what they broke at 10.3.0?
Granted, it does cost apple to finalize each releasable version. Fewer versions means that they can spend more time eliminating buggy minutia from each free upgrade. However, it also means that bugs will go longer before a patch is available to the public.
I would tend to characterize Apple?s track record as good and I am not on the quality-crisis bandwagon. There have certainly been major flaws in Apple OS releases and upgrades. Yet compared to the industry as a whole, Apple?s upgrades have been quite good. This isn?t much consolation to those who lost data in the firewire drive disaster, but this type of problem should be put in perspective.
Is a user of an apple machine more or less likely to suffer lost data and time than if they were running another OS? I tend to be of the opinion that we?re safer running OS X. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that windows users experience far more complete system failures and associated data loss.
Is it possible for an OS upgrade to be considered commendably safe and stable despite some users experiencing catastrophic data loss? I vote yes. Sad but true, software as complex as OS upgrades will result in catastrophic data loss for some users. This is why IT professionals get paid to manage backup plans and the risks associated with upgrades.
[edit: spelling and grammar]