Macs suck at fonts now?

Just spent an hour trying get my damned Mac to install a font. The system is smart enough to identify both the PostScript and TrueType files as fonts in the Finder -- and it even loads a preview! But try to "Add Font" in the system's Font Book application and you get a SILENT failure.

No dialog. No diagnostic message. And no font added.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one with this problem. A known bug. No response from Apple. 

UPDATE2: Just add the files to ~/Library/Fonts. Works fine that way.

Del.icio.us ruined as professional tool

A note on the new version 2 of del.icio.us: We actually use it extensively at work as a professional tool, to share links with one another (and thus to suggest or assign posts and various other things). However v2 dropped timestamps on all bookmarks -- only dates are provided. This has made it about half as useful. And there's not even an option to turn timestamps back on!

Lesson: If your design assumes people will use your app as a kind of casual toy, you will probably foreclose serious, hard-core use.

Drawing A Circle In Photoshop Elements: PhD Required

Even with these directions, I couldn't make it work. And Barbara Brundage/Dave Pogue/Tim O'Reilly's "Missing Manual" isn't helping either. What a waste of money this program has been.

Previously.

iPod weak for podcast listening

Hey iTunes: If I'm halfway through an hourlong podcast, please don't delete it off my iPod because you think I'm done with it. If you're going to monitor what I listen to, at least do it right. Right click/mark as new + resync is getting really old.

One day, Apple will learn to make a reliable MP3 player

My iPod freezes multiple times per week. (Most recently, five minutes ago, as I tried to rest after a night of paperwork.)

I use it strictly to play music.

Some day, Apple will learn to make one of these portable music thingamajigs that doesn't crash. They just need some more time to iron out the kinks. They've only had seven years so far.

The attached image is a Google search showing how common this problem is. The second hit is from 2004, The third hit is an Apple doc on the topic, linked to a movie they made on the topic.

iTunes sucks at importing burned CDs

I've been cleaning out my physical home office inbox, and importing to my Mac a bunch of mix CDs given to me by other people. Every time, iTunes asks if I'm sure I want to import a CD that's not in CDDB or whatever it's called these days (Gracenote?). Uh, yes.

When I click "Yes," that would be a good time for iTunes to ask me to name the album. Instead, it doesn't, it just starts importing the CD, so I end up with a bunch of tracks named "Track 01" "Track 02" etc. and with blank album names. So I can't tell apart one imported CD from another and the tracks become lost, one mix CD indistinguishable from another.

The workaround, by the way, is to select all the tracks on the CD (don't wait for them to be imported, this works with an import in progress), select File/Get Info, say "Yes" to the scary confirmation dialog, then enter the name of the mix into the album field and hit "OK." Now you'll be able to pull up the mix CD just by typing the name into the iTunes search field while browsing your music library. If you feel like naming the tracks, you can do that later, whenever.

Amazon's crappy checkout design

No, the checkout would be the wrong place to tell me your partner store is entirely out of stock of what I ordered, Amazon. Thanks for wasting my time.

Crappy Apple design, first in a series (no doubt)

I'm just not even going to say anything.

Crappy GMail design

Continuing the Weekend of Inane Web Design, GMail has decided email it sends itself must be spam.



Backstory: If you want to be able to send email using an alternate email address in GMail, GMail first sends an email to the alternate address with a link to verify you own the account.





I did this earlier today. My verification email would be coming straight to my GMail account, which receives all messages sent to the alternate address.



I kept waiting, and waiting, and the verification email never came. After about 10 minutes, I checked my spam folder. Guess what GMail thinks is spam? GMail's own administrative emails. Click for the larger version:





I went ahead and opened the message and clicked "Not Spam." That way, you know, they might eventually figure out their own email is not spam, though the miracle of Bayesian technology.

Crappy Linksys design

Let's say you're trying to join a WEP-encrypted wireless network (despite the security issues), and you need the password in hex format, since plain text passwords often fail to work.



So the dude who runs the network goes to look up the hex password, and sees the following when he connects to his Linksys router in his Web browser:





Oh, cool. The hex password is "6D68E02B33F2BCACC".



But, gee, why can't my MacBook connect to the wireless network? Why isn't the password working?



Because that wasn't really the password. The fool who designed the interface for my Linksys router made the hex password field way too short to show the password!



There are nine password characters hidden by the end of the password field. Here's what the password field would look like if it were designed properly:







The whole hex password is visible here.



This design flaw bit me at Thanksgiving, when our guest could not connect to the network even after I pulled up the hex password via our Linksys router interface. And I suspect it is behind some of the online wireless questions involving Linksys routers and Macs that no one can resolve.



Linksys' design is especially stupid because every single 128-bit (really 104-bit, but whatever) hex password ever used for any WEP connection is the same length: 26 characters. It's just the way the WEP standard works. And Linksys knows this, which is why the HTML form field for the hex password limits you to 26 characters:



Once you're aware of this issue, it is possible to see the nine hidden characters by carefully manipulating the mouse in the Linksys hex password field and scrolling to the right. But you shouldn't have to do this. The password field should be properly designed to begin with.