Reinstall / advice to Apple

My computer has been acting funny lately, little things here and there, so last night I did the essential full back up and this morning I did a full erase and install with Mac OS 10.4 Tiger. As opposed to my archive and install about a month back. It only took me 3 hours to get the system up and running with most of my apps working as before. This is record time. And this thing is so much faster. I love it. All that Panther junk gone. and hey look mah, no more Classic! woo hoo. I reinstalled all the “heavy” apps and just dragged and dropped the smaller ones. Mail is running 10x better as well as iPhoto and iTunes. Believe it or not, but the biggest problem I encountered wasn’t getting Microsoft Office to work correctly, or even Adobe’s CS1. The biggest problems I had were with Apple’s iApps: iTunes, iPhoto and Mail. they were pains in my ass (relateively speaking). So many little files scattered everywhere. Apple should keep all the files in one place and then all the user>library junk in one place. Like say: “User>Library>iTunes” instead of littering the various directories within User>Library with iTunes files. And while they are at it, Apple should acknowledge the fact that occassionally people will want to install a clean system and so they should have some kind of migratory app, similar to the one that transfers your files from your old mac to your new one. The interface should give you a list of your apps and another list of your directories that contain your files. You should be able to choose which apps’ files and prefs you want to copy to another disc along with your working files (assumably your user folders). The migration app copies all the files to another hard drive and then after you do a clean install, you run the app again, you point it to a restore file that it saved with the files and the app restores your files for whichever apps you specified.

This allows you to do two things: 1. To migrate the files and prefs you want for only a certain number of apps, without having to manually go into the very icky User>Library folder yourself 2. It saves the pain of having to move files, start the app, say “hey this doesn’t look right, what did i forget?” and then have quit the app, go back to the User>Library directory to rummage around some more, copy new files over and restart the app.

Basically, I want to move the prefs and files associated with my most regularly used apps plus my keychain etc… but instead of doing it manually, i want Apple to create an app that helps me, considering that many people do this on a regular basis.

While I’m on a rant here, I’d also like for Apple to have more intelligent diagnostic tools. I want the OS to tell me why it’s running slow. I want it to say “hey you, you’re running to many jenky bit torrent apps and when you quit the app it doesn’t necessarily shut down the streams” or “hey you, you have this font app installed, and even though it’s not running and none of the 7,000 fonts you have in the app are activated, it’s still pulling precious system resources, you might want to un-install it”. Is that too much to ask? The computer knows that after a fresh install it’s running perfectly, why can’t it tell me what’s wrong after i go and populate it with a million useless apps and files?

Oh and while I am it: Why are both iTunes and iPhoto looking more and more like MS Excel by the day. Just because iTunes is a database of songs in list format, doesn’t mean you can’t make the list look good. The iTunes interface isn’t long in the tooth, the teeth are so old, they fell out years ago and have been exchanged for dentures. Same goes for iPhoto. Apple could take a lesson in UI design from Macromedia, for sheezy.

Well, that’s my two cents. I love Apple. I can’t even imagine going through this process with the 2 PCs at work, when those things stop working properly we don’t do clean installs, we retire them and use them as foot rests. Oh by the way, my mom just bought a 12″ PowerBook G4, just like mine. All those curmudgeon mac rumor nerds that said that people won’t be buying new macs because of the impending switch to Intel are wrong. 90% of the population doesn’t care what processor they use, they just want the computer to work correctly. Albeit, that 90% are probably using MS Office 90% of the time.

Talk amongst yourselves.