[Spliff]

Tiger has been in development for months and months, and yet, when it was released, it broke dozens of apps. Retrospect couldn't backup 10.4 systems; Snapz Pro was partially broken; Entourage corrupts attachments; DAVE and VPN software are broken; Popcorn, busted. And the list goes on, with some developers whining and pointing the finger of blame at Apple.

Now, I understand that a lot of developers didn't received the final version of Tiger until the day it shipped or after. But so what? Was the Tiger GM so vastly different than the previous build that it broke so many things?

The developers must've of known what had changed in Tiger. Why did they wait until after Tiger had shipped before they started fixing bugs?

[Parky]

Same problem with the Speedtouch USB modems.

Are Speedtouch not part of the Apple Develpment group? or do they just buy a copy when it's released?

Day 1 of Tiger they should have updated drivers ready, but no, all the Speedtouch USB users either have to wait to use Tiger, or lose the modem!

Ian

[alphasubzero949]

Look at Alsoft. Their support promised DW by the end of the week (and on their site, in "just a few days during the first week of May." Well, it's the end of the week.

[typoon]

Popcorn is also fixed. They came out with the update yesterday. 1 week to wait isn't too bad i feel.

[osxisfun]

you are not a developer are you?

As our preznut says: "Its hard work"

There are just so many things that go into a new rev of a softare program. It takes time.

[Grrr]

Originally Posted by Parky

Same problem with the Speedtouch USB modems.

Are Speedtouch not part of the Apple Develpment group? or do they just buy a copy when it's released?

Day 1 of Tiger they should have updated drivers ready, but no, all the Speedtouch USB users either have to wait to use Tiger, or lose the modem!

Ian

With all due respect, USB modems, particularly those speedtouch ones have always been god awful on Macs. For a number of reasons.. I had one and got shot of it after a week.
Ethernet ones are dirt cheap now, and it really is the way to go. Or wireless of course.

Back to the main subject.. Relatively speaking, Tiger broke very little I think. Certainly less than 10.3 did from 10.2. Apple did very well, and most developers did well also.
A few casualty's however are inevitable, and i'm sure they will quickly be updated/fixed. If not, then it demonstrates that those particularly developers are not worth your HD space anyway..

[goMac]

Apple made a few nasty changes to Cocoa. A lot of developers without ADC accounts had no way of fixing their software before the final version of OS X. I did some updating work for some developers as I had pre-release access.

And even though our company had pre-release access, one of our developers refused to install Tiger until the final was seeded in order to update his software. The final was seeded the day of release. Usually Apple seeds about a week beforehand. I didn't matter much, as the software in question isn't released yet, but some developers may have also waited until final.

I've been coding under beta since the beginning of the year, and I didn't get some bugs fixed until Monday. Why? Developers aren't allowed to talk about the betas, so finding people to help you work through problems is hard. Apple offers no official forum or email list for developers working under the betas. There is no one to help you examine bugs.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by goMac

Apple made a few nasty changes to Cocoa. A lot of developers without ADC accounts had no way of fixing their software before the final version of OS X. I did some updating work for some developers as I had pre-release access.

Did they make those changes at the last minute in the GM? I'm not really talking about the small developers. I understand the limitations they have. I'm talking about the big developers like Dantz, Microsoft, Thursby, and Ambrosia. They have many resources. It seems weird that they wouldn't be ready for the day Tiger shipped. I'm not bitter, just curious.

Apple offers no official forum or email list for developers working under the betas. There is no one to help you examine bugs.

That is an unfortunate policy.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Now, I understand that a lot of developers didn't received the final version of Tiger until the day it shipped or after. But so what?

So let me get this straight, developers are supposed to just whip something out right after Tiger's release, needing only about a week to test their software and make sure it actually works properly on the final build of Tiger?

Keep two things in mind:

1. Not all of us have the money to afford those expensive ADC accounts that give you pre-release builds.

2. Those that do afford the ADC accounts can often be those commercial apps you're mentioning, which are complicated and really do take a lot of time, especially in testing. Do you really want a version of DiskWarrior that randomly trashes your hard drive, because the developers thought it more important to make some "early May" deadline than to make sure the thing actually works properly? I know I sure don't.

Comments like this are one of the annoying things about developing software!

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

So let me get this straight, developers are supposed to just whip something out right after Tiger's release, needing only about a week to test their software and make sure it actually works properly on the final build of Tiger?

Comments like this are one of the annoying things about developing software!

It's a legitimate question. And no one has answered my other question: how much did Apple change in the GM from the previous build?

As for DisWarrior, Alsoft is always late (very late) with their updates.

[osxisfun]

It does not matter how much or how little. Regression testing as well as sending to at least a small circle beta testers as well as no way of know how long a bug fix will take; makes for delays in the release of products. small GM fixes or no.

>It's a legitimate question

In the same way, "Why hasn't IBm been able to make a G5 for the powerbook?" is...

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by osxisfun

It does not matter how much or how little. Regression testing as well as sending to at least a small circle beta testers as well as no way of know how long a bug fix will take; makes for delays in the release of products. small GM fixes or no.

That's the answer I was looking for.

[frankiec]

There's no excuse for a big house like Roxio to have Popcorn and Toast* be non-functining on Tiger. These apps aren't controlling power stations, overseeing the launching of space shuttles, or auto-vectorizing my granny's a**. They couldn't afford the ADC cost? A big BULL****! I'm not alluding to any sort of conspiracy, I just think it's nothing short of pathetic customer service.

My future purchases are going to support the Good Guys:
Tiger Software Update Summary

* I haven't heard as many reports about Toast as I have about Popcorn, but there's still been a few I've seen. Toast's MPEG2 encode worked fine for me on Panther -- not on Tiger.

[OreoCookie]

Read the arstechnica review. There are a lot of under-the-hood changes concerning how the kernel communicates with the outer world.

[osxisfun]

Originally Posted by frankiec

There's no excuse for a big house like Roxio to have Popcorn and Toast* be non-functining on Tiger. These apps aren't controlling power stations, overseeing the launching of space shuttles, or auto-vectorizing my granny's a**. They couldn't afford the ADC cost? A big BULL****! I'm not alluding to any sort of conspiracy, I just think it's nothing short of pathetic customer service.

My future purchases are going to support the Good Guys:
Tiger Software Update Summary

* I haven't heard as many reports about Toast as I have about Popcorn, but there's still been a few I've seen. Toast's MPEG2 encode worked fine for me on Panther -- not on Tiger.

YAH! SHAME on roxio for not being able to predict the future and know to a microsecond how long each and every fix will take.

for shame.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Spliff

It's a legitimate question. And no one has answered my other question: how much did Apple change in the GM from the previous build?

No, Spliff, it's not really all that legitimate. For all but the most trivial programs, testing takes anywhere from several days to several weeks. In most good organizations, testing takes longer than coding does, and so every bug the testers find will mean that even more testing needs to be performed. This is not to say that coding is easy; the actual coding part is, but figuring out exactly how to solve your problems and do what you want is not. To use the Cisco example, they've been working with Apple for literally months trying to get everything straightened out. Developers and testers are smart people, but we are not supermen. Some developers are lucky, and the stuff they've done doesn't turn out to need major changes or even any changes. Other developers, however, are not so fortunate, and end up having to do a lot of work.

As for your other question: nobody knows for sure, but not much. However, it doesn't mean much. Not all developers are part of Apple's seeding program, and there are a wide variety of reasons for this. Even among those that are, new builds can mean bugfixes, but they also mean you're chasing a moving target. It's quite common for a build which fixes some bugs to cause others. Getting things to work takes time and patience.

As for Alsoft, give them all the time they need. They make one of the few products that absolutely, positively must work perfectly, because any flaw can lead to severe if not total data loss. They do some of the best QA in the industry, because they have to. Yes, it delays their products, but who cares? A delayed program will eventually be good, but lost data is lost forever.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by frankiec

There's no excuse for a big house like Roxio to have Popcorn and Toast* be non-functining on Tiger.

There are plenty of excuses. Among them, the fact that Roxio is by no means a 'big house'.

[alphasubzero949]

Actually, Toast seems to work fine under Tiger for most basic burning needs. I haven't come across any showstoppers other than crappy media *cough* Memorex *cough*.

[Spliff]

Milleniumn,

Thanks for the answer. That's the sort of response I was looking for. I didn't realize that testing takes longer than coding.

[deleted]

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Milleniumn,

Thanks for the answer. That's the sort of response I was looking for. I didn't realize that testing takes longer than coding.

[deleted]

It all comes down to this question: Do you want a version of DiskWarrior that has been inadequately tested because they've only been able to bang it against the GM version of Tiger for a week, and that turned out not to be long enough? I don't. I like the data on my hard disk. Alsoft can take as much time as they think they need. Alsoft is an excellent company, and they know what they're doing. They also know that there will be disastrous consequences if DiskWarrior isn't really, really, stable.

People that whine about software delays are being selfish, spoiled brats. I'd rather have good software a little later than have horrible buggy software now.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Did they make those changes at the last minute in the GM? I'm not really talking about the small developers. I understand the limitations they have. I'm talking about the big developers like Dantz, Microsoft, Thursby, and Ambrosia. They have many resources. It seems weird that they wouldn't be ready for the day Tiger shipped. I'm not bitter, just curious.

I was working with a shareware developer on porting his software to Tiger. He did not have a seed key, and did not have Tiger. However, people who had tested his software on Tiger said it would not run. This was a program that compiled and ran fine on Panther. So I took it, recompiled it, and it still didn't work. It ends up Apple had made a huge change to Cocoa. They had changed the target method in Cocoa. For example, he usually did something like this:

NSMenu *myMenuItem = [[menu addMenu:foo] setTarget:bar];

Under the above line in Panther myMenu would be foo. setTarget would return the object instead of the target.

However, the same line under Tiger would make myMenu equal bar (which, as I remember, happened to be an NSDocument). This is because setTarget now returned the target instead of the object that the target is being set of. The code assumed myMenuItem was a menu item. It would make calls to set the icon of the menu, and enable and disable the menu, which worked great under Panther. Under Tiger it was sending those messages to the document instead, causing massive breakage.

This is already compiled code, that is now broken on Tiger. I had to go and change all this code to do things the longer way. Whether or not this is a proper correction is debatable, HOWEVER, changing a Cocoa paradigm on developers is not right.

I also had code that rendered an image. Cocoa under Panther would automatically determine how many bytes of data there would be per line of the image. However, under Tiger the code that determined the number of bytes of data per line broke. To complicate things, somehow descriptions of NSData also broke, so it looked to me the reason the image would no longer render correctly was because the data had somehow changed (which even made things more complicated because the data wrote out right which was even weirder).

There were a lot of weird Cocoa changes that inexplicably broke code. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely behind Tiger, but they changed a lot of stuff that broke applications.

As for builds changing from one to another, I was hoping that the image rendering bug would be fixed between the final seed and the GM, as the bug made little sense to me. But of course the GM didn't fix it. Thankfully I got the bug worked out by Monday. You can't rely on one build working better or worse than another. When I was using the WWDC build, Halo was broken. Many things break, and you don't know what to spend time on looking at in case it is fixed, or if something else will break.

Apple really needs to set up a better way for pre-release developers to talk with each other, and more easily and openly submit feedback to Apple.

[moki]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Tiger has been in development for months and months, and yet, when it was released, it broke dozens of apps. Retrospect couldn't backup 10.4 systems; Snapz Pro was partially broken;

[snip]

The developers must've of known what had changed in Tiger. Why did they wait until after Tiger had shipped before they started fixing bugs?

Here's what I've posted already -- you have no idea how many times Snapz was broken and fixed and re-broken during the development cycle. We finally just gave up, fixed the major architectural issues (in 2.0.1 actually) and decided to wait until we had a GM to test against.

.....

Regarding Snapz Pro X 2.x and Tiger (MacOS X 10.4), here's where we are.

We have been working over the last year to ensure that Snapz Pro X 2.x works properly under Tiger; indeed, we fixed a few issues at WWDC last year. The problem is that as a normal part of the development cycle, Apple introduces bugs that break Snapz, and then they fix them in subsequent developer releases.

So we end up chasing our own tail to an extent if we try to fix every bug report we get under developmental versions of MacOS X, it often ends up being that the bug wasn't ours to begin with.

Developers were not given access to the final GM version of Tiger until today; the last build that was available to developers was several builds short of what the final shipping version is. As such, we haven't been able to do our final QA against the shipping version of Tiger until this week. Here's what we've found:

The "Record Mac Audio" checkbox is grayed out

This is a known issue; it's already been fixed, and will be rolled into Snapz Pro X 2.0.2, which is due out shortly, after we've put it through regression testing with the release version of Tiger.

The hot keys don't invoke Snapz Pro X

This one has us befuddled. Some users have reported that the hot keys do not work to invoke Snapz Pro X. Every install we've done here at the office on the final GM of Tiger works fine, so we're currently looking into what could be going on here.

Our suggestion is to try reinstalling Snapz, and if that fails, to open up the Hot Keys setting in System Preferences->Keyboard and Mouse->Keyboard Shortcuts and make sure that you have your screenshot functionality turned on.

Other than those two issues, we're not aware of any problems with Snapz Pro X 2.0.1 and MacOS X Tiger. Indeed, Snapz Pro X has been used to take screenshots and movies for many Tiger reviews!

[SMacTech]

Apple didn't fix a bug until 8a425 that affected the development greatly of my app. Mainly, a carbon API was broke and it went unfixed until 8a425.

I tried to work around it, sent Apple many bug reports and planned a complete rewrite to get around it. You don't know how relieved I was WHEN it finally was fixed.

These other companies often times get held up in one way or another and you just have to wait on Apple. It is one reason why I never thought they would release 10.4 when they did. It seems they implemented a great deal of small fixes in the last month.

[wadesworld]

I work for a large company.

There is absolutely no way we were going to put out our software until we had the actual retail version in our hands. No GM, no beta build, nothing but the retail version.

The software was written quite a while ago, but until testing could be performed with the true retail version, it wasn't going to ship.

Wade

[Big Mac]

Apple really should invest in a developer communication network. Corporate secrecy probably precludes much progress in that area, though.

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by goMac

NSMenu *myMenuItem = [[menu addMenu:foo] setTarget:bar];

Under the above line in Panther myMenu would be foo. setTarget would return the object instead of the target.

Uh, setTarget is declared as void

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Angus_D

Uh, setTarget is declared as void

It wasn't my code. The first thing I did was rewrite it to how it properly should be.

[Cadaver]

I've read somewhere that Apple will make no more changes to the main programming APIs. While they may (will) add features, I've read that they will make every attempt to not change anything that already exists.
In theory, this means that applications that run on 10.4 will run on 10.4.x and 10.5+ without any change.
Although I could be way off on this...

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by goMac

It wasn't my code. The first thing I did was rewrite it to how it properly should be.

That's irrelevant. Apple didn't "change a Cocoa paradigm on developers", the developer was relying on weird undefined behaviour which I am surprised even worked in the first place.

[moki]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

I've read somewhere that Apple will make no more changes to the main programming APIs. While they may (will) add features, I've read that they will make every attempt to not change anything that already exists.
In theory, this means that applications that run on 10.4 will run on 10.4.x and 10.5+ without any change.
Although I could be way off on this...

I believe that was a reference to the kernel APIs, not all MacOS X APIs

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by moki

I believe that was a reference to the kernel APIs, not all MacOS X APIs

Actually I think there was a general statement about all Mac OS X APIs, too.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Angus_D

That's irrelevant. Apple didn't "change a Cocoa paradigm on developers", the developer was relying on weird undefined behaviour which I am surprised even worked in the first place.

I don't personally code this way, but I have seen this style of coding done many times. For example, I've seen developers code something like this:

NSMutableDictionary *myDict = [[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init] setObject:@"Bar" forKey:@"Foo"];

It was assumed (and it worked) that when you apply a method such as setObject to an object, you would get the object back. That way you could do something like this, initialize and do a setObject on the same line. I don't know if the above line would still work on Tiger. I would post a direct example from the code I was working on (with innocent constants and variables names changed to protect their identity) but it's lost somewhere on my backup drive.

[TheJoshu]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

I've read somewhere that Apple will make no more changes to the main programming APIs. While they may (will) add features, I've read that they will make every attempt to not change anything that already exists.
In theory, this means that applications that run on 10.4 will run on 10.4.x and 10.5+ without any change.
Although I could be way off on this...

Ars Technica review, I think.

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by goMac

I don't personally code this way, but I have seen this style of coding done many times. For example, I've seen developers code something like this:

NSMutableDictionary *myDict = [[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init] setObject:@"Bar" forKey:@"Foo"];

It was assumed (and it worked) that when you apply a method such as setObject to an object, you would get the object back. That way you could do something like this, initialize and do a setObject on the same line. I don't know if the above line would still work on Tiger. I would post a direct example from the code I was working on (with innocent constants and variables names changed to protect their identity) but it's lost somewhere on my backup drive.

No, that's just wrong and evil and bad. You'll get random garbage assigned to myDict. You might be very lucky and get what you expect, but I'd be surprised if that happened. I tried your suggestion with the following code (on Panther):

Code:
#include <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    NSMutableDictionary *dict = [[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init] setObject:@"bar" forKey:@"foo"];
    NSLog(@"%p %@", dict, dict);
    NSLog(@"%@", [dict class]);
    return 0;
}

spiffy:~ finlayd$ ./foo
2005-05-08 20:36:09.225 foo[7289] 0x400c foo
2005-05-08 20:36:09.229 foo[7289] NSConstantString

So as you can see, you're not getting the object itself returned, just some random garbage. I'm not surprised that the garbage changes spuriously as the code which sets it changes.

The fact that gcc doesn't warn you is probably a bug, though.

[TailsToo]

Originally Posted by Millennium

There are plenty of excuses. Among them, the fact that Roxio is by no means a 'big house'.

Actually, Toast seems to work fine for me.... should it not be?

[Angus_D]

Originally Posted by Angus_D

The fact that gcc doesn't warn you is probably a bug, though.

I have received confirmation that this was a bug in Apple's gcc 3.3 (which was introduced in their branch, and not present in the FSF version), and has been resolved in 4.0.

[msuper69]

Originally Posted by goMac

... I would post a direct example from the code I was working on (with innocent constants and variables names changed to protect their identity) but it's lost somewhere on my backup drive.

And that, my friend, is a perfect example of what Spotlight is all about.

[McMark]

Well with regard to Toast, and also Wiretap (Ambrosia software)
I am having probs with both in Tiger.
Wire tap wont record and has a greyed out rec. button
Toast won't accept the audio file anymore when mpeg2 mov. and AIFF audio files
are loaded into the toast window.
Anyone else noticed this prob.?

[Gavin]

I'm curious about regression testing.
Could someone give a brief overview of the process? I get the idea from the name that it's a russian doll kind of thing, but how exactly do you do it and what sorts of results does it give?
Is it a manual process? Is it a script you write? Do you need to leave hooks in your code? Does everyone have their own way or do you simply use a tool of some sort?

Thanks

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by Millennium

There are plenty of excuses. Among them, the fact that Roxio is by no means a 'big house'.

a friend of mine did an internship at Roxio a couple semesters ago.... like millenium said, its by no means a big house. Just because software is popular, that does not mean the producer of the application is a huge multi-million dollar corporation.

Don't forget, apple started in a garage, it took awhile to get to where it is now.

[wadesworld]

Originally Posted by Gavin

I'm curious about regression testing.
Could someone give a brief overview of the process? I get the idea from the name that it's a russian doll kind of thing, but how exactly do you do it and what sorts of results does it give?
Is it a manual process? Is it a script you write? Do you need to leave hooks in your code? Does everyone have their own way or do you simply use a tool of some sort?

Thanks

Regression testing is a process to ensure that new changes didn't break old functionality.

How it's implemented depends a lot on the purpose of your code.

Wade

[moki]

Originally Posted by McMark

Well with regard to Toast, and also Wiretap (Ambrosia software)
I am having probs with both in Tiger.
Wire tap wont record and has a greyed out rec. button

This has been fixed -- and a number of cool features have been added -- in WireTap Pro 1.1.0:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/

Grab it, it is a free update.