I have noted before how Spotlight sucks. Well, it still sucks.

I can rarely launch the intended app, as it either never gets selected or it changes before I hit enter.

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While posting the last entry about the sucky Withings experience, I wanted to upload a few screenshots I knew were on my system somewhere. I pasted the filename into Spotlight, and it popped right up.

spotlight.png

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I’m constantly baffled by strangeness in working with Files on Apple operating systems. Even after using OS X almost exclusively for years now, I still find file operations to be unintuitive or plain silly. This could be a laundry list of issues, but I’ll just mention a few …

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When I message a new person using Messenger, I frequently want to copy and paste the phone number elsewhere once I have begun talking. This is maddeningly difficult and requires me to either copy and paste the number before I hit enter upon first entering it, write it with pen and paper or fully open the Contacts app and locate the contact and number.

Once a conversation is started, double clicking the number or the contact name produces a little popup with the contact info. You would think you could copy the info easily, especially since you can highlight portions of it. But the copy function does not work at all here.

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I try to launch an app by starting to type its name, and sometimes it initially shows up in the list, but then disappears. The name still prefills, but hitting return key has no effect. I must wait some seconds for the app list to populate again and let me launch the app.

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The following screenshots were taken within 10 seconds of each other after restarting the AirPort Utility app.

Sometimes launching OS X's AirPort Utility from a wired computer on the network shows a correct layout.

Other times the layout is squashed and therefore I don't have much confidence it's right even when it doesn't look squashed.

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One third of four multiplied by three is not four, according to the OS X calculator. I know this quirk is due to behind the scenes floating point arithmetic, but it’s interesting Apple hasn’t found a way to cosmetically fix this considering this calculator might be the most commonly used one in the world!

4/3*3=3.9999999999

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Since I bought my first (Micron) computer when I was 10, I’ve had a thing for desktops and customizability. I did buy a giant Dell laptop in around 2003, but after that, I always built my own desktops.

Moving across the country in 2012, though, started convincing me to try to make a laptop work as a primary computer. I had to fit everything I owned in a small SUV, and desktops take up a lot of space! MacBook Pros around that time were starting to get sufficiently powerful to use with external monitors and play movies and everything else, so it seemed it was time to chuck the desktop. Also, all the travel I’ve done in the last two years was infinitely more feasible while using a laptop as a primary.

The 2015 MacBook has only one port for USB and power, so you need a special adapter. This one didn't work, though, even to connect to my SSD. The 36 inch cable caused too much power loss to keep the drive connected, and it didn't work at all with the power plugged in. I was only able to access data while using a six inch USB2.0 cable and no power. USB3.0 caused intermittent disconnects.

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I'm running a fresh installation of OSX Mavericks on my MacBook Pro. My mobile phone is an Android, and I listen to music exclusively with Spotify. I therefore believe I have no need for iTunes, and wanted to remove it. OK.

sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app

Not so simple.

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