Re: Warning: 10.4.3 Preview app. Hang on to the old one!

In article <Di4df.2806$43.2163@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!nnrp1.uunet.ca>,
clvrmnky <clvrmnky-uunet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 11/11/2005 10:42 AM, Emma Grey wrote:
> > In article <101120050822110860%star@xxxxxxx>, Davoud <star@xxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Emma Grey:
> >>> After much fuss and a fair amount of hot air, I have 10.4.3 back, but
> >>> with the 3.0.1 Preview application running instead of the updated
> >>> 3.0.3, and quess what? It works perfectly. QED.
> >>>
> >>> And for all those who barked at me, if someone had posted eaxctly what
> >>> I posted, I could have saved myself quite a bit of time. What is it
> >>> with you guys? Don't you like a simple solution?
> >> Nobody barked at you; people only pointed out that you were a bit silly
> >> in "warning" us that there is a problem with Preview.app when there is
> >> not.
> >>
> >> Regression may be a simple solution, but it is not necessarily the best
> >> solution. If you bought a brand new car and it turned out to have a
> >> very tiny problem -- a brake lamps was burned out, perhaps -- would you
> >> get rid of it and get your old car back? Most people would not. I would
> >> fix the problem or find someone else who could fix it. Maybe a plea for
> >> help on the Usenet car group, maybe the Genius Bar at my local car
> >> store, e.g. I certainly wouldn't go on-line and warn the whole world
> >> not to buy that model of car.
> >>
> >> Davoud
> >
> > Preview is not a car, it's a string of code. It can be changed and
> > unchanged and the reunchanged, ad infinitum (in principle) in a way a
> > car cannot be ­ for a car is a object in the physical world that cannot
> > be regenerated. My car currently has an electrical problem, and as much
> > as I would like to, I cannot restore the conditions that were reality
> > last week when it was working (without paying some greasy dude to make
> > a physical change to it). But that is exactly what I can do with
> > Preview. I can go back to a subtle combination of last week and this
> > week. It works, and I can continue to edit my accumulation of jpgs,
> > without annoying interruptions.
> >
> > Preview 3.0.3 caused problems for me (define them as you will) 3.0.1
> > does not. That was all I ever said. I warned others. Crash logs were
> > sent to crApple, and maybe they'll have sorted out whatever the problem
> > is by 10.3.5.
> >
> > End of story.
> >
> Unfortunately, many people see this as an egregious hack. What you see
> as "barking" at a perfectly reasonable solution to your problem others
> see as a band-aid solution that is just waiting to bite you in the
> proverbial someplace down the line. And it really doesn't prove
> anything to backrev an app, so those who like closure with their bugs
> are missing that, as well.
>
> Some folks who have lived, worked and played with computers for any
> length of time sort of automatically recoil at this kind of tweaking.
> It's a learned response, and we can't really help it!
>
> It is also the exact kind of thing that a lot of people forget to
> mention when we are called upon to troubleshoot a problem. I cannot
> count how many times I've been in this exact situation. I tend to be
> very Bad Cop when troubleshooting things now. Basically, I've learned
> to treat problem reports as bad witnesses, asking the same question in
> several different ways to catch them in a web of their own lies and
> assumptions.
>
> So, sometimes that comes out a little wrong. Don't take it personally!
>
> Of course, I think one set of barkers simply took umbrage with the fact
> that you warned against using an app that, by and large, works just fine
> in Tiger. That is, there is no provable bug in Preview that can be
> duplicated as reported here.
>
> > Incidentally, why are the most expensive violins those that were made
> > in 1720's? Almost 300 years of 'development' seem not to have impressed
> > the punters.
>
> Completely off topic, but among luthiers and other instrument makers
> there is a common notion that violins, because the design has been
> around so long are somewhat "ideal" for the kinds of sounds they are
> intended to make and how they are intended to be used.
>
> That is, the design and construction of (traditional, acoustic) violins
> has been (pun intended) so well tuned over the many years that it is
> harder and harder to improve upon the basic design any further. Another
> way to look at this is that the incremental improvements they can make
> are getting smaller and fewer over time. The size and shape is also
> relatively ideal for the action of turning kinetic energy into sound of
> a specific timbre and frequency range. This has been determined over
> centuries of observation and empirical evidence.
>
> Well, most of the energy is still dissipated as heat, but it's hard to
> get around those pesky laws of thermodynamics.
>
> Contrast this with the (acoustic, traditional) guitar, which is a much
> younger design. Several key parts of guitar design and build borrowed
> from other instruments have been radically modified over the last 100
> years or so, and is still under a fair amount of change even today.
> There isn't really a consensus on the "correct" size and shape, though a
> lot of that is due to the fact that the guitar design is a loose
> collection of related designs because the people who play them have very
> different and modern ideas of what they would like to hear. The violin,
> on the other hand, was under far less stress in this regard.
>
> I guess OS X is more like a guitar in that respect. I'm not sure there
> is a consumer, end-user operating system that is any different.

Well, clvrmnky, I'm not looking for more disputes, and we are drifting
*wildly* off-topic here, but according to my sources (mostly
Geiringer), the development of the guitar (in 16th century Spain)
predates that of the violin (in Italy) by about a 100 yrs. If we
overlook the stylistic subtleties between, say the Amarti and
Stradivarii, the violin seems stuck at v.1, while the guitar has
entered almost exponential development in the last 50 years. There have
been a few Barcus-Berry experiments (including a 5 string viola-violin
hybrid I played once ­ with a resonator body) but they've not attained
the mainstream 'upgrades' like the guitar.

So, if you figure OSX to be the guitar, I just wish Apple would p[ay a
little more attention to the tuning before offering us their latest
axe!

In terms of 'tweaking', I'm a pragmatist, and since I use computers for
a creative purpose, and not for computational fun, I'll always go for
something that works. That's what Apple used to do so well, design
intuitive systems that exerted a minimum drag on the creative process.

Emma
.

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