@betalogue@toot.community
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betalogue

@betalogue@toot.community

Notes from an unfinished world.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

betalogue, to random
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

Hey, @MonaApp, just saw this “CryptoKit” notification in the macOS Notification Center on my Mac. Not sure what it means, but FWIW, I am still not getting regular Mona notifications on my Mac, even after updating to macOS 14.5. (It broke after the Mona 6.2.4 update.) Not sure if the two are related…

betalogue, to microsoft
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

Can someone at #Microsoft be kind enough to remind us again of the reason why, in #macOS, when you quit and relaunch #Word, it refuses to remember which documents were opened and to reopen them automatically, even though the “Close windows when quitting an application” option is NOT enabled in System Settings?

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jmfd I’ve heard this before. However, I use a variety of apps and, if the APIs are indeed terrible, then clearly all those other developers have made the extra effort required to make restoration work, in spite of Apple’s lack of support. Microsoft is the outlier here.

I am not excusing Apple here. My readers know I have plenty to say about the poor quality of their software products. It just feels like Microsoft doesn’t care. (Same thing with Adobe, unsurprisingly.)

betalogue,
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@jmfd My (long) experience with Adobe and Microsoft is that they never really embraced platform-specific standards and conventions. E.g., Acrobat Reader STILL doesn’t support double-click-and-drag for word-by-word selection.

I can do without most Adobe products these days (except for Acrobat Reader, sadly), but my work forces me to continue using Office. Hence my never-ending frustration. How can Microsoft not realize that restoration is an important feature for users?

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

As this example demonstrates, that stranglehold on office work is not conducive to innovation or usability improvements. Add to that the fact that Microsoft's big corporate customers are clearly allergic to ANY change (even for the better) and you get the mess we’re in. I am sure those corporate users have to quit and relaunch as often as the rest of us. But they are probably used to it all, and just don’t know any better. (3/3)

betalogue,
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As for the figurative sense, Microsoft has a stranglehold on office work that makes its products unavoidable. (I use Nisus Writer Pro whenever I can, but I can’t always do that.) (2/3)

betalogue,
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@jmfd Quitting (literally) and relaunching is often needed due to OTHER bugs and flaws (when it’s not forced by a freeze or crash). So the user gets “punished” twice: once by the bug that forced him to quit, and a second time by the fact that Word doesn’t restore properly after the relaunch. (1/3)

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jmfd In many respects, Nisus Writer Pro is exactly what Microsoft Word should be. It is more powerful than Word, while also being leaner and faster. (It is, however, limited in its level of Office compatibility by what the open-source conversion filters can do, hence my need to still use Word.) But there is no pressure on Microsoft to compete with Nisus, because they effectively operate in different spheres altogether. And one-man shops are always highly vulnerable.

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

Logitech’s Mouse Software Now Includes ChatGPT Support, Adds Janky ‘ai_overlay_tmp’ Directory to Users’ Home Folders
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/05/06/hackett-logitech-mouse-driver

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@gruber @timbray John, if your main reason for using a third-party driver is “fine-grained control over the speed and acceleration of the pointer”, this leads me to think that, because you have had this need for a long time, you might not be aware that macOS now has a built-in feature called “Pointer acceleration” under “Advanced” in the Mouse settings panel. I have a Logitech MX Master 3S and LOTS of screen real estate, and I find that this works well enough. YMMV.

image/png

jorijn, to random
@jorijn@toot.community avatar

It's been an amazing journey since I started toot.community. However, due to personal commitments, I'm stepping down. The community deserves undivided attention, which I can't provide anymore. So, I'm handing the reins over to the reliable hands of the Fedihosting Foundation (https://fedihosting.foundation). I have confidence they'll keep treating you the way you deserve.

I'm grateful for the connections I made here, and I'd like to thank you all for your support and trust in me. It means a lot. ❤️

betalogue,
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@jorijn Thanks for your work. Please clarify the recommended path for those of us who have setup a regular donation via Patreon.

betalogue, to macos
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Gave up on #macOS #Mail long ago myself and am a happy #MailMate user, but my wife still uses Apple’s software. Yesterday she complained about having to manually flag as junk a message that got through the cracks, and the simple act of selecting the message forced her to see a graphic picture of an enlarged penis.

I went to check how to stop Mail from auto-loading embedded pictures and I found this UI. So now you can no longer block remote content without DISABLING “Protect Mail Activity”?

betalogue, to macos
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I've got to say that, when you are trying to activate the “Advanced Data Protection” safety feature in #macOS #Sonoma, the level of attention to detail on the part of Apple's software engineers is really confidence inspiring. I mean, wouldn't YOU trust those guys with the safety of your data?

(And let's just not mention the couple of times where System Settings just conked out on me when I was in the middle of typing important information.)

Recovery Key printout with instruction to “keep this printout stored in a”… and no end to the sentence.

betalogue, to macos
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

Still don’t understand why #macOS needs 30 MINUTES to “prepare” for an update. (Even though it never actually takes that long, it’s still a long process, which is rather annoying when you are trying to move on to other things.)

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@davidbures Sounds about right!

betalogue, to macos
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For years, I’ve had this occasional problem in #macOS where, while in an app other than the Finder, clicking on my desktop background behind all windows would fail to bring the Finder to the foreground. It just happened again, and this time I noticed something else: Chrome coming to the foreground, and some weird cursor changes. See the attached screen recording.

1/3

video/mp4

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

It turns out that the problem appears to be linked to a Chrome window minimized in the Dock. While the window is minimized, somehow its (invisible) ghost is still there on the screen and interfering with the mouse. In the recording above, the cursor changes to the ones for resizing the window. Here’s that “ghost” window as it appears when using the “Show All Windows” command in the Dock menu for Chrome. Normally, the minimized window should appear with a small thumbnail only (2nd pic).

2/3

image/png

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@ctietze Must be some low-level macOS bug that somehow gets triggered by a third-party app (possibly Chrome only?). I will have to do most testing the next time it happens, now that I am onto something (at last). For the longest time, I have just been dismissing this as a glitch (and switching to the Finder in a different way). But it’s definitely beginning to look like a bug. I can tell that reproducing it is going to be a challenge (as it usually is with macOS bugs these days).

peternlewis, to random
@peternlewis@mastodon.social avatar

@ivory double click and drag word selection behaves oddly in macOS. If I click on a post, it works immediately after it is displayed and then quickly stops working. Initially I assumed it was a catalyst failure, but the fact that it works initially and then stops work seems even more odd.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@ivory @peternlewis For what it’s worth, @MonaApp is also Catalyst, and I haven’t noticed any problems with word-by-word selection with the mouse under #macOS #Monterey.

betalogue, to random
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

Happy to see that my “premium” subscription for @tapbots’s @ivory for iOS has automatically become a subscription for BOTH the iOS and macOS versions of the app. Won’t be enough, however, to convince me to upgrade my Mac Pro from Monterey to Ventura, which is (disappointingly) required for Ivory for Mac. I’ll stick with @MonaApp, which is ALSO a Catalyst app, but which does NOT require bloody Ventura and living with the Settings app nightmare.

image/png

betalogue, to random
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn Hi. When viewing my timeline for this account in @MonaApp, I am missing all kinds of thumbnails/previews, like in the attached pic. Clicking on the affected post to display it separately forces the thumbnail to load. Is this because there is no one else in your instance following this account and I am the first one forcing the instance to load the thumbnail? I created another account on mastodon.social and it doesn’t seem to have the problem.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp Sorry, with the time difference and our respective schedules, we keep missing the window. If you want me to test something, let’s agree on a time. You can also email me: webmaster [at] betalogue.com. Thanks.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp OK. Let me know if you need me to test anything. Needless to say, I’d really like to get this sorted out.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp I really get the sense that we have more than one problem here. For example, a moment ago, I was scrolling up to right now in my TL in Mona and all kinds of media was missing: not just thumbnails, but also avatars. I tried quitting and relaunching Mona, and most of the media is now visible. Not sure what it means exactly, but my suspicion is that the issue is a combination of factors specific to the toot.community instance and Mona-related ones.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp For testing purposes, I have installed another #macOS Mastodon client (Mastonaut) and added my two accounts to it. I will leave it running and will compare between Mona and Mastonaut in real time to see if new thumbnails are missing in both or just in Mona.

Right now, after quitting and relaunching Mona, I have a thumbnail missing, and here’s the corresponding post in Mastonaut:

image/png

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp I’ve just tried with my mobile hotspot, and no dice. This post

https://toot.community/@openculture/110311866229029719

has no thumbnail in the timeline. Image URL is

https://static.toot.community/cache/preview_cards/images/007/436/431/original/f350395801d1bcb1.jpg

until I click on the post to display it separately, and then the thumbnail appears and image URL is

https://static.toot.community/cache/preview_cards/images/007/436/431/original/e4059661a1dabe9e.jpg

and then if I quit and relaunch Mona, the thumbnail is gone in the timeline again.

Happens to be a post from another toot.community user, but the problem affects all kinds.

betalogue,
@betalogue@toot.community avatar

@jorijn @MonaApp FYI, it might still be too soon to tell for sure, but it looks like something has changed server-side, which has caused the problem to go away for me, at least for the past week or so. I understand that the Mastodon software for the toot.community server was recently updated, so maybe the wrong image preview URL was a problem that got fixed in that update.

I’ll get back to you if the problem resurfaces :). Thanks for your cooperation.

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