Ask Different Chat

6:32 AM

@Rob on the suitability of those broad questions, I'm ambivalent only because they're rare. I should expect no more than one per year for OS X. In fairness I have found them useful in the past, and (for the benefit of passers-by) there are precedents that are not (yet) linked from what's on hold:

79

Q: What un(der)-documented features have you stumbled upon in Mountain Lion?

This question serves to share and collect the enhancements which are not documented by Apple, or documented poorly. Please justify your answer; if it is something that is well documented by Apple and elsewhere on the web, it does not belong here. Your answer should put the feature into context, ...

– for example.

@IanC. I probably referenced items within the example above umpteen times after Mountain Lion was released. It's a non-standard format, but the near-comprehensive collection of concise answers can be surprisingly handy. It is, amongst other things:

– a way of raising awareness of Ask Different (expect a first-time visitor to be impressed at how simple it is to get an answer, compared to a forum, and so on)

– a more reader-friendly alternative to e.g. forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1740187 ('all the little things' for Yosemite)

– likely to become more accurate than that MacRumors collection (a little thing that was true pre-release may be no longer true, or no longer entire post-release; and so it's proper to have the Ask Different discouragement from pre-release/beta stuff …)

7

A: Should questions about OS X Yosemite be allowed now it is in public beta?

No. Apple may have relaxed beta access but not in any way that lets you discuss it publicly with non-NDA people. From the beta FAQ: don’t blog, post screen shots, tweet or publicly post information about the pre-release Apple software Posting here about the beta would definitely constitute...

– and so on. That's a very agreeable no :-)

For what it's worth I'm more concerned about the relative lack of chat in chat. I recall when it was very pleasantly busy. I used to strongly encourage people to come and chat here. If people now stumble across those links, and then watch the tumbleweed, they probably wonder why on earth I made the recommendations.

Rob

6:51 AM

@GrahamPerrin hi

About this question; it should be removed

7

A: Should questions about OS X Yosemite be allowed now it is in public beta?

No. Apple may have relaxed beta access but not in any way that lets you discuss it publicly with non-NDA people. From the beta FAQ: don’t blog, post screen shots, tweet or publicly post information about the pre-release Apple software Posting here about the beta would definitely constitute...

as it's not in public beta anymore

btw, you can always highlight me

i wont always have chat open, but i will read it anyway

Graham Perrin

9:29 AM

@Rob thanks, I wonder whether it'll be closed and eventually reworked/reopened when the next public beta begins

Ian C.

2:49 PM

@GrahamPerrin I disagree with so many of the things you're saying! :)

@Rob removed, replaced with yes.

@GrahamPerrin except it brings people here and gives them exactly the worst format for Q&A that SE supports as the example of how to do Q&A here. I hate that our top-viewed questions are basically these long, non-SE format questions.

@GrahamPerrin and I disagree that the format is friendly because sub-searching questions here sucks. If there's 300 answers to an open-ended question like that, you have to click and read and scroll through a lot to see it all.

@GrahamPerrin they go as stale as anything else because there's no reason to maintain them. Even less reason than a news site really, since it's all written piecemeal by many people who don't revisit it and have no financial gain tied to it.

I hate the community wiki format; it is anti-SE IMO.

Graham Perrin

4:00 PM

@IanC. that's true

Ian C.

4:27 PM

@GrahamPerrin but I am fairly alone in my dislike of community wiki questions :)

bmike

6:32 PM

@IanC. I'm with Ian - they seem to be a (marginally) necessary evil.

@Rob I don't think removal is good in this case. Why says the public beta program is closed? The discussion still is germane even if it's about something in the past.

Graham Perrin

7:08 PM

@bmike germane: agreed. A good point of reference.

@IanC. I probably share each of your criticisms, but don't share the passion/hatred :)

@IanC. that's true. However, I have no recollection of being bothered by paging through the items. I did page through, but probably not frequently. In practice maybe I most often found an answer as a search result … and enjoyed the pulse of yellow, and so on.

bmike

7:44 PM

@GrahamPerrin Also, network wide, the "too narrow" close reason is gone.

Just ordered my iPad Air 2 - delivery still October 30 :-)

Graham Perrin

@bmike I'm putting through a requisition for a July model MacBook Pro this week. Sooner rather than later, and I guess you can guess why

bmike

@GrahamPerrin Not at all. Did you wait to see if it was getting revved again this fall?

Graham Perrin

8:00 PM

@bmike truth is, I intended to get a requisition in and authorised some time before this month's Apple event. But things got busy at work and I missed my own deadline. So it's just luck that I'll get one that does not require Yosemite.

bmike

8:33 PM

@GrahamPerrin Now I get the allure of that Mac. Gotta love getting a flexible N-1 bootable machine when things split widely on the OS front.

2

Daniel Lawson

What do you mean by split widely?

bmike

8:57 PM

@DanielLawson Things taken for granted like the function of the red/yellow/green buttons. Major UI decisions like a white menu bar. Increased reliance on the iOS ecosystem in terms of handoff, phone calls, etc....

Yes - many / most of these can be turned off, but why carry that extra weight if you really dislike or won't use most of the new features. Especially for a select few that heavily customize things like I know Graham does with ZFS and large open-source modifications.

(Or for people on older hardware where extra eye candy that needs lots of GPU will make the UI less responsive)

Graham Perrin

9:19 PM

So much of Yosemite is beautiful but the worst of the mistakes are, for me, simply intolerable.

No document/page title in the toolbar. Guidelines are mistaken; #Apple misleads people. #Yosemite #HIG #Safari #fail http://t.co/c68fdHuw6i

Tweeted by grahamperrin on October 18, 2014 at 8:40 AM

Finding BS in a WWDC presentation was bad enough. For the same BS to be incorporated into HIG is quite shameful.

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