Computer behavior hate of the week
During this week, I’ve encountered some computer problems and I just felt the need to share my frustration. And in all fairness, I have one hate about Apple and one about Microsoft; you decide which one was worst. 
Apple MacBook Pro sleep annoyance
At home I use a MacBook Pro. Overall, a wonderful machine and I like Mac OS X more and more. However, as with almost all products, not everything works as supposed to. When working with it, I usually just close the lid when I’m done and let it go into sleep mode. However, a lot of people have had various problems with the sleep functionality on MacBook Pros, so the other week Apple issued a firmware update.
Naturally, I downloaded it and thought no more about. Until the other night, that is. I closed the lid and it just wouldn’t go to sleep. I cursed, and tried again. No luck. I cursed some more, tried yet another time, but it just didn’t work. It did, however, work just fine if I chose Sleep from the Apple menu.
So, I Googled around for it and found lots of people with the same problem (of course). A result of this is that I started to have doubts if it was configured correctly, if I should follow people suggestions for going into the Terminal and write “sudo fix-this-fucking-shit -i” etc. In the end, though, I went with just restarting the computer and open the exact same applications and documents to see if it in any way was application-related. Of course, sleep worked just fine when I closed the lid after a restart …
Seriously, how hard is it to make such functionality work?
Windows Update, I hate you
At work, I have a Dell laptop that I’m doing all my work on, and it is set to automatically get updates from Windows Update and install them. The other day, it did just that and after the installation was done, it said that I had to restart the computer for the changes to take effect (it seems with Windows that, like, as soon as I move an icon, I have to restart the f**ker…). The two options in that dialog was “Restart now” and “Restart later”, where I opted for “Restart later”.
What’s annoying about this is that it keeps reminding you with a set interval, like I forgot or something, and there’s no way to turn this off. Anyway, I had to go into a meeting so I locked the computer. When I got back from it, I saw that the computer had restarted. Apparently, if you have a pending update you have just performed, which needs a restart, it will automatically restart if you lock the computer. What the hell! I had about 20 programs open with lots of different setups, documents being edited and so on.
I genuinely hate the Microsoft “don’t worry, we know what’s best for you”-behavior that is becoming more and more common in their programs. Maybe it’s like that because a majority of Windows users are computer illiterates, and that’s fine, but please offer more advanced options for more tech-savvy people.
So, those were my computer hates for this week. What were yours?
18 Comments/Reactions
November 24th, 2006 at 9:36
Do you have Parallels running when it refuses to go to sleep?
November 24th, 2006 at 10:06
Phil,
Nope.
November 24th, 2006 at 10:41
Sometimes i get the same sleep problem with my powerbook – but then if I lift the lid up it goes to sleep! I’ve never noticed any correlation with certain programs being open, but it does tend to happen when it gets very hot.
I wouldn’t like to say which is the worse out of the two, but I know that those speech bubbles and ‘helpful’ restarts is the reason I no longer use windows…. why does bill care if i have unused icons on my desktop anyway?!
November 24th, 2006 at 11:18
The sleep problem is a known issue for sure. After work I usually closed the lid when taking the computer with me – but nowdays I make sure it goes to sleep or shuts down.
At home I’m generally playing music on it while reading a book or so before going to sleep so then I just use the remote controll to put it to sleep.
November 24th, 2006 at 11:58
Your Microsoft hate is exactly the reason why I recently bought a Power Mac.
Microsoft can be such a pain in the ass due to their constant interference in my everyday work. Especially because most of Microsoft’s ‘helping you’ is just plain irrelevant (like Nick said: unused icons on my desktop? Who cares? :s).
November 24th, 2006 at 12:47
RE: The sleeping MacBook. I find that if I just close the lid, and leave the machine for an hour or so, that the battery has been used up almost as much as if it had been fully on…
RE: Windows. My pet hate of Windows, and an everyday aggravation (I use a pc at work) is if I open an app and try to continue what I was doing, then as soon as that program finishes loading, it suddenly comes to the front of all my open windows.
I have to look at the keyboard when I type, and if I am in the middle of typing something while said program is loading, then I often find that I have typed a couple of sentences only to see that the program I opened has been sitting open (at the front of all the windows), and everything that I have typed has gone to waste! ARRGHH …
November 24th, 2006 at 17:38
The biggest problem I have at the moment is my Mac Mini freezing up for no apparent reason. I have no idea why, but it freezes up every 1-2 days, usually after it’s gone to sleep, but sometimes just when it’s running screen saver. Seriously, it happens more than Windows, which has been quite stable for me (very surprising, I know). I have no idea what’s causing it or what to do about it.
November 24th, 2006 at 19:03
I’ve managed to switch my iMac G3 for a powermac G4 recently, so for now I’m on a natural mac high
So no complaints there for the moment.
as far as windows is concerned: you’re absolutely right about the microsoft attitude: very condescending. But I sometimes wonder if many problems aren’t often hardware related rather than os-related:I’ve had a HP laptop until a 1 1/2 ago, and it froze constantly and generally worked unreliable. I changed it for a packard bell laptop since then and it hasn’t given me any problems what so ever, and is runs the same os and software.
November 24th, 2006 at 20:50
Rob, if it slept fine when you used the menu option, sounds like the lid clasp switch (or whatever it’s called) was playing up, not the OS.
Regards windows updates, I’ve set mine to request permission to install, that way it’s easy to f*ck them off until you’re not in a hurry, then the inevitable reboot isn’t such a problem
November 25th, 2006 at 9:22
I’ve got the exact opposite issue with Windows Update: It won’t go away!
Let me just say that my connection is poor, with a 300mb download limit, so if I was to let Windows Update run, I’d go over the limit downloading just the first XP service pack. After that it’d take days to download the rest and my internet connection would be totally unusable since 5Kb/s only goes so far.
Unfortunately, they won’t let you disable it, so whenever I start the computer/change screen resolution (open/close a game) it nags me.
November 26th, 2006 at 5:13
I’m with you on Windows Update. There does seem to be a setting somewhere to change this behavior: on the locked-down computers at my school the dialog lacks the “Later” button. The only option is to restart immediately.
A tip: dragging the dialog off the side of the screen seems to stop it from taking any action, at least immediately.
November 27th, 2006 at 14:22
Thanks for your comments, everyone. Not sure if I’m glad or sad to hear that you share my sentiments.
November 27th, 2006 at 17:24
There IS a way to modify that rotten Windows update nag !!
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
You can configure how often it will nag you or completely disable it (not really recommended)
November 27th, 2006 at 18:59
Diane,
Great, thanks for the tip!
November 28th, 2006 at 8:47
I don’t like how OS X handles network shares and mounts at all. I don’t find their solution intuitive at all. The system does not give any indication on wether it is looking for shares, if there are none or if the network “is not ready yet”. I also think that it is really quite slow.
I always find myself sitting there, clicking the Network-button in the Finder. Repeatedly.
Maybe there’s a better way to do it (save mount_ntfs)?
December 5th, 2006 at 9:13
Wow-It makes me feel better when I read that this happens to people who know backwards and forwards
Window’s quirks.I thought that this was just one more thing that I didn’t know how to stop from happening. Thank you-I feel less dumb now
December 6th, 2006 at 2:22
At least, changing this Windows behaviour will be easier in Vista: Restart Screen.
January 6th, 2007 at 9:09
you are right. i had crazy problems with the “restart later” on windows update…. restarted himself and i had to travel to the office cos windows update change your exe files, so you need to accept again the packtes with the firewall, then i left not able to connect with my vnc remote control….
that is the reason i hate microsoft word… “we know what’s best for you” , i used to be happy with Word Perfect 6.0 !
feliz año 2006
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