Apple Fixes Small Bugs in Favor of Large Ones

Topher Kessler seems to have gotten it right about the OS X 10.8.1 update to Mountain Lion. I would not dismiss the bug fixes as being merely cosmetic (nor did he); but he was certainly right to observe that “true” bugs (as he called them) would probably not be repaired. Thus, Safari is still in a bad way, often going into a coma while trying to load a Web page with too much (read “advertising”) on it; and all you can do is stop the load and try again. (Of course, you cannot do this when Activity Monitor tells you that Safari is not responding, which is basically what the spinning rainbow say. When that happens, you may have no alternative other than Force Quit.)

I suppose the most informative paragraph in Kessler article was his first:

Generally when Apple releases a major upgrade to OS X, it quickly follows with an update to tackle some of the immediate and outstanding bugs with the software. The time frame for this update has been between 13 days (for Snow Leopard) to 26 days (for Lion), and while Mountain Lion has gone for about a month so far in its initial release, the first update is now available and addresses pertinent problems with Thunderbolt audio noise and Mail accounts not working, among other issues.

My guess is that Apple has now gotten itself smart enough to know a “real” (thank you, Topher) bug when one surfaces. They may even be smart enough to know that they cannot solve these problems as effectively as they used to do. In other words they are now in a resource problem that they cannot manage, either because they no longer have the resources at all or because they believe that resources are more “cost-effective” when applied to mobile devices, rather than desktops and laptops. This may mean that Apple has seen the future and decided that people no longer write nor file stuff for later use any more. Has it come to the point that, when my PowerBook is getting ready to give up the ghost, I shall have to choose a vendor on the basis of whether or not I am viewed as a dinosaur fending off extinction?