Off-Putting Off-Pissings

Friday, 2006-09-22; 23:05:00



Ugh. Scarcely 3 days after I file 13 bug reports against iTunes 7, no less than 8 of them have been marked as "Behaves correctly". This is completely ridiculous, and amounts to a "piss off" from Apple Engineering. *sigh*

The first thing that I noticed was the inconsistent way that the bugs were marked as "behaves correctly". Six of them have had their state changed to "behaves correctly". One of them was marked as "closed", but then said in the ADC Notes section of the bug that the issue behaves as intended. The last one was also marked as "closed", but didn't put anything into the ADC notes -- I received an e-mail saying that the "feature" that was broken is no longer supported.

What are the bugs that have been marked as "behaves correctly"? Bug L (that's 50 in Roman numerals), the one where iTunes 7's window can be resized partially underneath the Dock was the first. This really pisses me off, because this is clearly a bug and can't be construed any way else. I mean, look at every other fucking app in the operating system. NONE of them work like iTunes 7. Not one. Not even iTunes 6. The ADC notes read, "Please know that iTunes uses normal dragging behaviors. Please also note that this behavior is similar to that of the Finder, iChat, and other applications." Bullshit!

The Finder, of all applications that I expect to behave in an annoying, half-assed, inconsistent way gets this half-right, at least. No matter where you click on the resize handle, you can't resize a Finder window under the Dock unless you go around its sides. [UPDATE: Actually, now I think the Finder does this completely right. You can resize the window to be under the Dock by going around its sides in the Finder. If, however, in the same drag operation, you go around the side and then move your mouse to be actually underneath the Dock, the Finder window pops back up over the Dock. The only way you can get the resize handle to be obscured under the Dock in a single drag operation is to drag around the left side of the Dock -- assuming your Dock is positioned on the bottom of the screen -- in which case you clearly want to resize the window to be under the Dock, even though it's kind of a weird drag operation to perform.]

With iTunes 7, you can get a little bit under the Dock if you click and hold from near the top of the handle and drag directly under the Dock. [UPDATE: Perhaps I still haven't made myself clear about this bug. To illustrate it, here's a movie demonstrating the issue.]

Bug LI was also marked as "behaves correctly". It seems to me that the guy who looked at my bug report didn't understand what I was saying, because he says that you can remove the downloaded artwork by selecting "Clear downloaded artwork" from the contextual menu of the song. Only later does he say that artwork in the song always overrides downloaded artwork. Thank you for repeating what I already found out.

Notes for bug LII simply say that "this issue behaves as intended based on Apple standards and specifications." Note that I did mark the previous bug and this bug as enhancements rather than bugs per se, because they are kind of feature requests. But no, they are supposedly correct based on Apple's standards and specifications. (Perhaps they are crap-tastic standards and specifications. Ever think of that, Apple?)

This one is great. Bug LIV, where iTunes 7's selection color doesn't match the Appearance system pref pane, was the one that was marked simply as "closed" but has notes that say it behaves as intended. Oh, I didn't realize that applications were allowed to choose their selection color willy-nilly, now! Interesting! I think I'll make the selection color in my applications a puke green regardless of what the user chooses. Mmm, I'm sure everyone will appreciate that.

Bug LV was marked as closed because the hidden both-scroll-arrows-at-both-ends is supposedly not supported anymore. I didn't realize that it was now unsupported, because apparently all other Apple applications still do support it, except, of course, iTunes 7.

(Bug LVI wasn't closed or marked as "behaves correctly", but amusingly enough, someone changed the bug title so that it's now inaccurate. It now says "CB: horizontal scroll bars do not support 'at one end'". Bzzzzt, wrong! They only support 'at one end'.)

Bug LVII about modal dialogs has ADC notes that say "these items must be modal ecause [sic] of APIs that they use and behaviors that they do." Again, bullshit. There is no possible reason why a rebuffering stream from the iTunes Store needs to block user interaction. Same with changing video tags. Same with updating the iPod library -- there's already a progress bar for updating the iPod library! Why not use it? The only possible modal dialog which might need to be modal is the one which updates your iTunes library: it would probably not be good to make any changes while the library file was being updated.

Bug LVIII simply says that the "Remove authorization for Audible account" is located where it is because it's about content from Audible.com. OK, I can grant that that's a reasonable explanation, but it's still contrary to expectation. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the two "remove authorization" menu items together? Not only that, but it's not the "iTunes Store" menu, it's just the "Store" menu -- Audible.com is a store, no?

Finally, bug LX was also marked as "behaves correctly". Yes, I know it "behaves as intended based on Apple standards and specifications", but it was marked as an Enhancement, damnit! I want the fucking standards and specifications changed!


The modal dialog and selection color issues should clearly be fixed, and it really bugs me (ho ho!) that especially the resize bug was marked as "behaves correctly". So I decided to be an ass, and I refiled all 8. (I tried updating the closed bugs, because I've had success with that once before, but no one re-opened the bugs this time.) Here are the new bug numbers:

L: 4747296
LI: 4747297
LII: 4747299
LIV: 4747302
LV: 4747303
LVII: 4747305
LVIII: 4747306
LX: 4747307

(I put the idea of puke-green selection color into the repeat bug report for bug LIV. Just watch: when iTunes 7.0.1 comes out, I'll bet they'll have changed the selection color from black/blue to puke green.)

Also, if you have a Bug Reporter account, I strongly suggest that you also file bugs on the issues that were marked as "behaves correctly". You don't need to advocate for the enhancements that I've requested (like album art downloading replacing existing artwork, or the transfer feature applying to all music). But the resize bug, and the scroll bar and selection color preference bugs could use some other people reporting it.

"Behaves correctly" really is the worst bug state ever. Uli Kusterer calls it "designs as behaved"; that's a surprisingly apt way of putting it. Maybe I should get one of those T-shirts.

I must say, though, the one thing that I enjoyed about refiling these bugs was that this time, I had a right to be snarky, and I didn't hold back. :) Not the best way to get a bug fixed, I know. (That's partially why I encourage others to file these same bugs.) I do intend to refile these bugs again if they again get marked "behaves correctly" -- maybe not the artwork or transfer feature ones, but definitely the resize, selection color, and scroll arrows ones.

(And yes, I know, the fact that I get all riled up about bugs being marked as "behaves correctly" is funny as hell. :P )


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