In trying not to get so backed up with ABF's, I'm gonna try to get back on at least a monthly schedule for Apple Bug Fridays. And I'll also try to get them out actually on a Friday; this time was pretty close, I'm just under four hours off. :)

So here are 4 bugs for April:

XC: The Finder's "Go to Folder" dialog/sheet autocompletes paths even when there are two possible autocompletions. There are two problems with this. First, when doing the autocompletion, the sheet doesn't select the autocompleted characters, which means it's a bit annoying to undo the autocompletion if it was incorrect. Second, there's no way to cycle through the possible correct autocompletions. (Try this out: select "Go to Folder..." from the Finder's Go menu, type "~/M" and then press tab. It'll complete "~/Movies/" for you, even though "~/Music/" would have been just as valid.)

The reason I've noticed this is that I often go to ~/Library/Preferences/ using this sheet, and it aggravates me every. single. time. when the sheet autocompletes ~/Library/PreferencePanes/ instead of ~/Library/Preferences/ . And yet I still can't shake the Command-Shift-G habit. Filed: 5150870.

XCI: When the frontmost application doesn't directly accept actions from Apple's IR remote, iTunes picks them up. This is handy because it means you can use the remote to quickly change the songs without using the keyboard or mouse. (The keyboard requires iTunes to be frontmost, and the mouse requires you to specifically target the buttons in iTunes. The remote requires neither, so it's much faster. I've mentioned this before, but my remote often stays right by my left hand because it's so much faster to change songs using it.)

Anyway, when first discovering the uses of the remote 1.5 years ago when I first got my iMac G5 (well, my replacement iMac G5 :) ), I quickly found out that the remote could be used through the screen saver, even if it was locked. This was really, really nice, because it meant I could keep iTunes running, and switch songs without having to put in my password every time. I also sometimes go to bed with some music on, and if I hear some song that I really don't want to listen to while falling asleep, I can quickly change it with the remote without having to get up and put in my password.

But there's one annoying thing about this: if the authentication panel for the screen saver is displayed, button presses on the IR remote won't be passed through to iTunes! Arg! This is aggravating because if you leave the computer alone for too long, pressing a button on the remote wakes up the computer and then immediately activates the screen saver authentication dialog. Bah.

I thought, at first, that this might be some sort of "security feature" that prevented attempted malicious access to the security dialog, but then I tried it with other authentication dialogs. iTunes happily responds to button presses on the IR remote immediately even when these authentication dialogs are open. It's only the screensaver's authentication dialog that does this, which is weird because it seems to be a standard authentication panel. Filed: 5150924. (By the way, is "screen saver" one or two words?)

XCII: When you have scripts in iTunes' scripts folder (~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ -- create one if it doesn't exist), the icon used for the script menu is cut off at the top. Compare the actual Script Menu menu extra's icon (on the left) to iTunes' script menu icon when zoomed in:


You can clearly see that the top 4 pixels are cut off. The icon for iTunes' script menu has slightly darker pixels overall, but the top row of pixels are definitely missing. This one has been bugging me for unknown reasons for a long time, but I only recently realized the cause. :) I wonder how many other people have noticed this -- surely I can't be the only one. Filed: 5150937.

XCIII: Preview doesn't update the information panel with the correct file size after saving changes. If you open a picture in Preview, open the information panel, crop the picture and save it, you'll notice the file size in the info panel doesn't change (even though the physical dimensions of the picture do). Only when you switch to a different picture in Preview or to another application and back does the file size change. Filed: 5150938.

(Getting close to 100 ABFs! Only 7 more!)


Oh, and here's an update on the status of the 22 bugs presented last time I did an ABFM entry, since we probably won't get another Mac OS X update anytime soon. (My money's on it being named "Mac OS X 10.4.9 Update 2" rather than "Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update".)

Two have been marked as "behaves correctly". And, of course, one of them is with regards to iTunes. ABF LXXI, which describes how you can't start playing shared videos at an arbitrary point in the video like you can with any other video stream, "behaves as intended based on Apple standards and specifications." I'm done being indignant over these kinds of lame-ass responses. No, wait, no I'm not! I'll probably refile this one.

The other one marked as "behaves correctly" is XXCIX, which describes the fact that Preview defaults to the "PNG" format when saving files, rather than the last saved format. The response was that this behaves correctly, because Preview is actually choosing the format that provides no loss in data whatsoever. I disagree, because both "TIFF" and "PNG" are lossless formats, and so both could be a valid choice given that criterion. Given this, it makes sense to introduce another criterion, that of the last saved format.

Six other bugs have been marked as duplicates. They are LXX (viewing a downloaded TV show terminates the download), LXXVI (iTunes doesn't respond to AppleScript calls if the info window is open), LXXVIII (Software Update requires a trailing slash at the end of a URL for a Software Update server), LXXIX (AppleScript persistent IDs for user playlists in iTunes are not unique), XXCVI (Front Row has no "Video Playlists" subsection of the Video module), and XXCVII (file in use dialogs do not tell the application using the file).

Incidentally, though, I found out that you can actually watch a TV show in iTunes while it's downloading. But, at least in my experience, that only works on my MacBook. Is this feature tied to your CPU speed or something -- does Apple think that an iMac G5 cannot handle playing video and downloading some files at the same time?

All of the other 14 bugs are still open.