It Just Works

The phrase "it just works" is most closely associated with Apple since Steve Jobs repeatedly used it in his WWDC 2011 keynote. He was talking specifically about iCloud but the slogan has been used to describe just about everything Apple, both in positive and negative ways.

In my experience, 99% of the time it is quite an accurate description. Right now, I'm at the alternative Apple Harvest HQ, with about 75% of my full HQ infrastructure set up. Mavericks 10.9.2 is now out of beta, and all my apps, plugins and drivers all seem to be "just working" fine.

Even some of my long term bugbears about iTunes seem to have disappeared since my last post. My "Discrepancies" playlist which is set up to catch the iTunes Match error whereby a song has a last played date but 0 play counts, and "Discrepancies 2" which catches songs with a play count but no Last Played date have been empty for a few weeks, and even the old bug where play counts didn't get updated if the Crossfade Songs preference was turned on has been fixed.

Mail 7.2 is fully operational with my favourite add-ons (with the sad exception of DockStar) and the UI modification apps, Flavours and DockMod (both previously mentioned in this blog), have both been updated to work properly with 10.9.2.

Now that all is rosy in the Apple Harvest garden I've decided that the MacBook Air will no longer be used for beta versions of OS X - a very timely decision since 10.9.3 has just been seeded to developers this very morning!

(Rant Alert) It's easy to knock Apple when bugs appear in the OS regardless of which version it is. But I do get angry when people use inappropriate language to slag off developers. OS X is an incredibly large and complex system, which ultimately has to run on an infinite set of configurations. There will be problems with some set-ups, just as there are with Windows and other operating systems. And it's not unreasonable for frustration to take over from time to time. What is unreasonable is for people who have no idea of the effort that developers put in to creating their work to make unpleasant accusations. Sadly some people are never going to be mature enough to realise that trolling on the internet serves only to highlight their own ignorance and insecurities. (End Rant)

Two great new games made it onto the iOS devices this weeks - Lyne and Threes. Both are cerebral, pattern matching games (for want of a better description), and both are highly addictive. I've had to put a limit on the number of games in succession I have on Threes because it's making me light headed! It's also a serious battery gobbler.

You've been warned!