AIAI! - Another Idiotic Apple Idea - Automatic Termination

The last few months I have been frustrated by TextEdit, which has kept crashing on me. Often when I ⌘-TAB from TextEdit to another application, TextEdit inexplicably crashed on me, and I had to go to find the application icon and start it again. The same has applied to Preview.

It turns out that this irritation is something Apple consciously inflicts on their users. The "logic", if one with some superhuman will can call it that, is described in their Developers' Programming Guide in the section The App Life Cycle. The section could equally well have been called The User Near Death Cycle, as its description of Termination is written to drive the user mad.

The introductory phrase "Automatic and Sudden Termination of Apps Improve the User Experience" is clearly an ugly lie. It goes on:

"Automatic termination eliminates the need for users to quit an app. Instead, the system manages app termination transparently behind the scenes, terminating apps that are not in use to reclaim needed resources such as memory."

However, I do not want the system to transparently mess up my workflow behind the scenes. TextEdit is one of my most used applications, and I never close it. I always want to have it available, and I want to be able to quickly ⌘-TAB to it at any time - with or without open documents.

Apple, in yet another attempt to stifle my creativity with bad design, prevents ⌘-TAB by closing the application whenever I'm not looking. "Transparently". "Behind the scenes". Or as one could also phrase it: "Behind my back". "Transpiercingly" stabbing the user's back.

Luckily I discovered a command to disable this blot on the art of software engineering. Just open the Terminal and type:

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool TRUE 

A restart seems necessary to activate the change, but the peace of mind is more than worth it.

Is it Time to Boycot our Beliefs?

"Twenty years ago, I started boycotting Microsoft, because they dominated operating systems and office software so completely. At about the same time I started boycotting IBM and Intel because of their scary domination of the computer hardware. A few years later I started boycotting Netscape, which imposed random design decisions as web "standards", and then I began boycotting the Linux vendors for their bait-and-switch practice of giving away software but then charging for any support to make it actually useful. Then came the time to boycot Apple. First their iPods, which clearly were overpriced compared to the competition, and then their computers, which are designed so people cannot tinker with them and adapt them to their real needs. Not long after the iPhone was launched, I started boycotting it as it made it impossible for me to install non-approved software. Then came the turn to boycot Myspace, Twitter and Facebook, which did not respect my privacy and triggered a lot of spam. Flickr was something I could not tolerate as it removed old pictures, when I uplodaded new ones, and Picasa requires a Google id. Did I mention that I started boycotting Google for collecting data from searches and matching it with IP addresses, cookies, Google docs, Google Drive, Google Mail, Google Plus, Blogspot and Youtube? I boycot Amazon, their Kindle and other e-books, because the whole system depends on Digital Rights Management which leaves the customer without control of his purchases. I boycot Wikipedia for the deletionism applied by pretentious editors who do not understand their own subjects, and I boycot mbl.is because they have pages on Facebook. I thought about going back to writing on paper, but I boycot the paper industry to save the world's forests. It is important to live according to one's beliefs."
Message from an old school friend, who sent me that outburst via telepathy.

Trying not to Care about Facebook's Privacy Issues

When I started using Facebook four years ago, I decided that I had no privacy. It was something I accepted to live without. The convenience of getting back in touch with people from the near and distant past was more than worth it to post some things about my private life to a large group of people.

I also accepted that my photos could be seen by everyone in the world with access to the right url (like this), even though the photos clearly were labelled as "Shared with: Friends". (Clearly "Friends" did not imply "only Friends" but "Friends and everyone else in the world".)

However, I wanted to know exactly what my information looked like to other people, so I spent quite some time creating one fake account which I befriended and another fake account which befriended my fake friend, so I could see exactly how much information was leaked out to friends and friends of friends.

I wanted to be in control.

The first time I got upset, was when I installed the iPhone app. A big clear message appeared on my wall telling everyone that I had started using Facebook's iPhone app. It was not a a secret that I had bought an iPhone, but I wanted to be the one to judge whether it should be announced to the world or not. Facebook had decided otherwise.

Further annoying things were all those messages from different apps that clearly were not intended for me - not by the originator at least, but by the spamming app creator. Farmville. Angry Birds, Spotify, Daily photos… Certainly sources of joy for many, but did Mary really want me to know that she was reading about dieting and low self-esteem on the Guardian's website?

I managed to block the applications, one by one. When I tried to access the article about dieting (just out of curiosity, of course), I was asked to let the Guardian access my personal data, and to let the Guardian spam my friends with that same information. It all reminded me of chain letters or virus.

Then came the location information. Facebook started telling everyone where I was with every post. I managed to block that functionality, and I deleted a dozen of old posts, where I discovered that Facebook had already decided that I wanted my friends know where I was without telling me.

There was an update to the iPad application, and the chat functionality was impossible to switch off, so everyone could see exactly when I used the app. Annoying, but ok, I could live with that.

Then, I suddenly noticed that my posts once more had started to publish my whereabouts. I was convinced I had disabled that functionality, but back it popped. At this instance, I realised that I had no control whatsoever over what Facebook wanted to do with my data. Giving up my privacy was one thing, but losing control over it and not knowing what was published to whom about me was not anything I could accept.

I'm childish in that way.

Today, I saw the permissions for the Facebook Android app.  It is probably just a formal thing - especially if you trust Facebook, but it is still something to think about. The app is allowed "at any time to collect images the camera is seeing." Also "to read all of the contact (address) data stored on your tablet" and "to modify the contact (address) data stored on your tablet." And of course to "modify/delete sd card contents".

This is nothing particular to Facebook and Android, unfortunately. LinkedIn had a similar intrusive "feature" with their iOS app, which uploaded calendars to LinkedIn's servers.  And the iOS app Plaxo started synchronising all my contacts with their contact list as soon as I started the application without asking for any permission at all.

It is impossible to avoid risks. All applications, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS X, MS Word, Yahoo, Gmail, Photoshop, BibleReader, all have access to some of my data, and I have very little control how it is used. Unless one wants to get completely disconnected, the best thing one can do is to hope for the best and stick to companies one has some sort of confidence in.

Right now, Facebook is not one of them.

Some more Facebook bashing, just because I'm in that kind of mood today:

• The Facebook Fallacy
• If Facebook dies 
• Facebook to pay $10 million for violating users' rights 
• Facebook falls in customer satisfaction (2012)
• Facebook damages your reputation with feature - not a bug

Some fun things to do to slow down your friends' productivity

Sometimes you notice that people you are in contact with work far too quickly. It can be an over-zealous boss or an over-ambitious employee or your brother in law who is organising a pub quiz you do not want to attend to. Here are some hints how you can send data for feedback to them to keep them busy for a long long time.

• If your Word document contains complicated tables, export it to PDF.
• If your Word document contains text only, it is unfortunately far too easy to extract it from a PDF with ctrl-A ctrl-V. To increase the challenge, use the encryption options for PDF and choose the option "Cannot Copy". You can do that in programs like Adobe Acrobat Pro, Indesign or Mac OS X's built in PDF export.
• Export PowerPoint documents as JPEG files. (Yes, there is a Save As option to export every single slide as JPEG!)
• For complex Excel formulas, copy them and then paste them as pictures in a mail.
• If you are lucky enough to use Microsoft Outlook as Mail client, send all mails with the option "Prevent Copying". Note that it only is fun, if the recipient has the same mail client. Other recipients will be able to copy the text like a normal mail.
• Share your data in HTML on some website, and use some of the methods described for example here to prevent copy from the site. That is not fool proof fun, however, as there are plenty of ways around the methods, like simply disabling javascript. Use only for computer neophytes, who are just learning to hate their computers.
• Pay special attention to long codes and IDs like ISBN or keys to WiFi networks - always send them as inline images, so the recipient has to retype them. It is all the more fun, if the rest of the text, which has no importance whatsoever, is normal characters that can be copied.
• Whenever you send text as images (and that should be often), make sure the text is slightly too small to read comfortably. If the reader easily can tell the difference between "H" and "N", you should probably decrease the font size.

If you only follow these simple rules, you will have plenty of fun with your friends. Not only that, after a very short time, you won't have any friends left to bore you.

Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks

It seems that the available content with Amazon and Apple is roughly the same, so which is the better product - Kindle or iBooks?

Some features that are better with the Kindle:

• You can read books on a Kindle device in bright sunshine. Reading in bright light is difficult with any iBooks enabled device.
• You can read your Kindle books on any of the following devices: Kindle (Keyboard, Touch, Fire...), Windows PC, Apple Mac, Android Phone, Android tablet, Windows Phone, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. With your iBooks books, you can only read them on the last three devices.
• The Kindle has a built in French - French dictionary, if you read French but need help with some words.
• The Kindle has a built in Italian - Italian dictionary.
• The Kindle has a built in Portuguese - Portuguese dictionary.
• The Kindle has a built in Spanish - Spanish dictionary.
• The Kindle has a choice of UK or US English dictionary. iBooks only has one English dictionary, as far as I can tell.
• Pages turn quickly and the application loads fast in the Kindle readers. iBooks is substantially slower in my experience. On the iPhone 4G, iBooks is hardly even usable.

Some features that are better with iBooks:
... This section will be updated as soon as I come to think of any.

Google Drive and vim - two very good friends

This is a day I feel I have been waiting for ever since I got my first computer.

I managed to seamlessly share a text document between Windows XP and Mac OS X with vim using Google Drive. And it even works offline.

Once you have installed Google Drive, the procedure is very, very simple.

First assume that you sit in a bus or airplane without internet.

1. On XP, open Cygwin, or whatever environment you use to run vim.
2. Navigate to the Google Drive folder.
3. Create a new document using vim.
4. Save and close the document.
5. When you get somewhere with internet just wake up your XP laptop, and wait for the synchronisation.
6. While you wait, take out your Mac.
7. Access the Mac's Google Drive folder using Terminal. The document is there.
8. Open the document in vim and enjoy.

I should perhaps add that I use vim because it is quick and simple and has no disturbing elements. You should be able to use Notepad or Ultraedit and TextEdit or TextWrangler and do exactly the same thing.

...

Update 18 October 2018: There are now many more options, of course. You can use any Windows version with cygwin or any other environment with vim. You can use any kind of shared drive, like iCloud or OneDrive equally well as Google Drive. Life is much easier than it was half a dozen years ago.

How do I type in UK English using a US English keyboard in MS Word 2010?

28 April 2012. Updated with a solution to the rant in italics below.

To solve a problem in MS Word, the obvious solution is to leave MS Word. In Windows XP, you go to the task bar > Settings > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options. Inside that control panel you click on the tab Languages > Details, and you come to the "Text Services and Input Languages" control panel.

When you Add English (United Kingdom) as Input Language, by default, XP installs the "Keyboard layout" United Kingdom. However, one can activate the choice of keyboard by clicking on the checkbox next to it. Then one needs to manually choose "US" as keyboard layout. To make it appear as default in MS Word and other applications, select the combination "English (United Kingdom) - US" as "Default input language".

I still do not understand why Word insists on changing language with layout, but it is admittedly not causing much of a problem any more.

....
I have no idea.


Usually, I try to come with solutions to problems in my blogs, and occasionally whining complaints. Today is the time for a desperate question.


I'm not American. Neither am I UKian, but I am used to UK English, and I want to go on typing UK English, as I have been doing the last forty years of my life.

My Windows XP laptop has a US keyboard. Every time I type in Microsoft Word 2010, the computer awards me a US green card or citizenship and the spelling turns into US English.


I have set UK English to default language of MS Office. MS Word proudly displays that language as default, when I start a new document. However, as soon as I actually type, it switches to US English.


I have tried the UK English keyboard layout, and then the text stays UK English. However, there are plenty of keys that do not correspond to the physical keyboard. Besides, I suspect one key is missing, as I cannot find backslash anywhere with a soft UK English keyboard layout.


Dear mr. Microsoft,


Am I really the only person in the world who wants to type UK English with a US keyboard? Is it really an unforgivable sin to mix the twain? If it is, can you not grant me absolution in secret, and let me, just me, type UK English with my US keyboard? It can stay between us. I could promise not to tell anyone else that you granted me this generous favour. Or favor.

A Thousand Weeks with Notepad

For every week a piece of software lives, the programmers have more time to remove more bugs and quirks. The fastest most widely installed text editor on Windows has been around since 1985, which means more than a thousand weeks. It is not a very sophisticated program, but it has a nice cuddly name: Notepad. After a thousand weeks, one would expect it to be perfect in every respect. That is not quite true. These are some problems with Notepad:

1. It has ghost text. Every now and then I discover that the blank space at the bottom of the screen actually contains text. As soon as I resize the window, the text appears as a happy surprise.
2. It moves the cursor position when saving. Almost (!) always when I press ctrl-S to save a file, the cursor moves three or four positions in the text, so I'm no longer at the end.
3. It copies line feeds/carriage returns. If I have word wrap on, to make the text easy to read, and copy text, it keeps the line feeds. This means that when I paste into word, I get unwanted line fees in the middle of the paragraphs. There is an easy fix for this, of course: do not use word wrap. So I disable word wrap, copy and paste the text, re-enable word wrap, and I lose the cursor position, which is reset to the beginning of the file.
4. Every file has to be defined as Unicode. Well, it does not have to. I can save as ANSI. However, if I want my files to be Unicode, there is nowhere where I can set that as default. For every single little text file, I need to start it with: File > Save As... > select UTF-8. It is not a big hassle for one file, but I have to do it for every single one.
5. It does not lock files. If I double click on a text file to edit it, make some edits, go to another program, double click on the file again, make some different edits, I suddenly have two open versions of the same file. Not only that, but there is no warning when I save one of them that it overwrites the other modifications. I wonder how many gigabytes of data mankind loses each year due to this quirk.

I know some of these problems are particular to my machine, as other people do not always have them. But the program is written in such a way that all these five problems can occur on at least one machine - mine, and after a thousand weeks, that surprises me. One would expect exception handling to be a high priority for the world's biggest software producer.

But... I can live with these problems. I'm sure they will be fixed one day. I can wait another thousand weeks.