I hope to resolve these some day and get back into the swing of things again. Thank you for your support and kind words.

I certainly can understand when people get frustrated with their computers and the lack of attention that a certain feature that may not work correctly is getting. However, there are proper channels to go through to try to solve those problems. In many cases, Apple simply may not be aware of the issue.

The good news is, there is almost always a workaround of some form. The problem with this issue was that I never could really figure out what the problem was, in order to possibly try to address the issue with a workaround.

You can not make all the people happy all the time, so we try to make as many people happy as possible. The above discussion was simply spiraling out of hand too fast, and taking away from the focus os the site and this post.

Hopefully as spare time opens up for me we will be able to get back to more regular posting, and also offer up a set of forums for all of our users that are useful and helpful.

There are a lot of Mac forums on the internet now, though I find none of them are catered to new users, and none of them take much time to explain things in the detail needed to be of real help.

I want more than just the answer. Telling someone to do steps 1, 2 and 3, to solve their problem is awesome. I think it is even better to explain why steps 1, 2, and 3 led to solving their problem. This is highly valuable, as it teaches core troubleshooting techniques that can be applied to a multitude of computing problems that will eventually happen to us all. If all you know is following the steps, you are at the mercy of waiting for someone to write down the steps. If, in the other hand, you have been given the steps with detail as to what those steps are doing and why, there is a good chance those steps can be applicable to many other common problems.

Hopefully, by setting the tone of the forums with the first 100 posts or so being being highly detailed and explanatory, the community will pick up on that and the entire tone of the forums will be of a highly detailed and helpful nature.

As soon as enough funds come in from the ads we run on the site, we will be able to set up these forums. I have looked at using some of the open source forums and “free” offerings (ie: phpBB et al), but none offer what I am looking for. Add to that the near weekly maintenance to the forum software, and it quickly becomes cheaper to lease a hosted forum solution where someone else worries about the security, load, and functionality of the forums, and Mac OS X Help can concentrate on the content within those forums.

As long as you are subscribed to our email newsletter or our RSS feed, when this happens, you will be notified.

Thank you for your comment, it is good to know I was not out of line in my actions.

As to the modem issues, you have not explained enough about it for anyone here to be able to help. Unless Apple makes a BlueTooth modem that I am not aware of, then I would never hold Apple responsible for any problems a 3rd party product was causing, in the same way I do not blame the auto manufacturer when a Diesel will not run in a Hybrid. It could very well be Apples core BlueTooth driver, but I do not have enough information to debug that scenario, so I would not be willing to make any statements as to who is to blame at this point.

We have maintained the sites civility towards you, and I have done my best to help answer your questions with the little information I have been given. We will no longer be able to accept posts from you in this particular comment form.

It is our policy to make it publicly known when we make these decisions, and not delete any posts so the users can make up their own minds as to where the communication issues were happening. In this case, the scope of your posts is beyond that of which will help any of our new beginner users, and while we will not be taking any particular action at this time, we would appreciate it if this particular topic of conversation ends here, now.

Thank you for your understanding.

Apple shouldn’t promote a developer OS release as one for the
general public. Cosmetic bugs are the easiest for them to fix, and
users shouldn’t have to do Apple’s work for them. On a MacBook
running 10.5.8, F4 brings up a calculator, a clock, a weather
forecast, and a calendar giving correct date-stamps for the Jewish
calendar, yet displaying incorrect tables of dates for that month.

Under Preferences>International>Formats one must choose “Hebrew” to
get the Jewish calendar, yet the two varieties of Islamic calendars
seem to be properly implemented. The Hebrew calendar is the lunar
equivalent of the Julian solar calendar, in that each has been
superseded by other calendars. No change in the OS display language
was necessary to change calendars & date-stamps.

Should my language be US-computer in order to have Unicode text as
the default across all apps? Non-unicode text will sometimes fail
to copy over from one terminal window to another. Setting both windows
to “lossless ASCII” or Unicode doesn’t always avoid that bug. But in
this case I’m not expecting Apple to be able to fix that bug for
all possible scenarios, so I’m willing to employ a work-around
for my specific situation, thus making it “my” issue instead of
Apple’s.

I think I will close with doing what I can to answer your final questions. Beyond that, perhaps there are other forums you can find that are more suitable for venting.

On Mac OS X Laptops, the F4 key is generally the volume down key. It can differ from laptop to laptop, and on other keyboards, it can control other things.

I have no idea what application you are referring to when you speak of a calendar. I have, as mentioned before, looked at iCal, and F4 is not a key that controls anything in that application. I can only guess you are using F4 to activate the OS X Dashboard, which is usually reserved to key F12.

The calendar widget in DashBoard probably does have a bug in it as you suggest. Those widgets are nothing more than html and css with some javascript. I would imagine if you found forums that catered to Dashboard Widgets, someone could easily explain to you how to change the name of the calendar.

Is this the calendar you are referring to?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/340087/drops/02.25.10/db-caledar-e0360396-194325.png

If not, what calendar is it, where did you get it, and how are you changing the behavior of it? Are you not running US English as the language for the OS? Or is this a localization change that is just for this calendar?

If F4 does not bring up the Dashboard, then I am at a loss as to what calendar you are referring to.

I will emphatically state, no one here has made any accusations toward you. If you were to read our FAQ, you would see that goes against a core principle of why I even started this site. Any such behavior is not tolerated.

Remember, everyone’s computer is configured differently, and to their own liking. While some things are the same, others are not. In order to get the help you seek, or a workaround, those that are offering help will need to first be able to replicate your problems.

When I press F4, my volume goes down, so I obviously am not on the same page as you, and am not able to replicate your issues.

On a semi-related note, while the Genius Bar employees, are indeed well versed in Macs, there is in all honestly, not a time I have been in an Apple Store, which I have not witnessed first hand, the dishing out of false information. It is a clear attempt to create an analogy, or an explanation that is “good enough” to move the customer along, so they can move alone to the next customer. And of course, as with anything technical, they can make mistakes, and are prone to simply not understanding everything 100% accurately.

I would not be so quick to point the modem error at the OS. If it is a 3rd party modem, and I am not aware of Apple making any BlueTooth Modems, then I would lean on it being a firmware issue, or software issue of the modem itself. Again, it is not possible to say without looking at the logs, or taking a physical look at the system. As it is now, I am not even aware of the brand, make, model, etc, of the modem.

It is largely debatable as to who is at fault when a system is stuck. On one hand, the OS should never allow any application to hang the system. On the other hand, bugs happen, and programmers can in fact do things deep into your system that will cause it to hang.

The Genius Bar gave you false data in regards to something not being running under the OS if you can not force quit said application. I could name 100’s of sub processes that can not be force quit that are indeed applications that are in fact running.

Yes, you could find a way to restart the modem, though it would require digging into the terminal and looking at how it works.

What modem is this? Is this just a BlueTooth bridge to a PPP type internet connection? Then at some point you get a message that something is wrong, and you have to perform a reset? Actually, before I make more conjecture, perhaps you can explain in as much technical details as possible, specifically what the modem is doing wrong.

Unfortunately, you are experiencing front facing software bugs. This post was mainly about the performance gains you will see from 10.6, not the bug fixes, for which there were very few to my knowledge.

I do not see F4 attached to any of the menu items in iCal, so I can not test what it is you are mentioning. I believe to see what you are talking about I would have to change the language of the OS, is that correct? I am also on a laptop, and F4 is the volume down key for me. You will have to explain in more detail what your issue is for those who are only familiar with a US-English layout.

For the sake of correctness to others reading… There is no bluetooth code in the kernel. I am not really sure what the issues are with your BT modem, as in your first post, you were not happy, and now you seemingly state things are faster.

Users here, and myself, can try to assist, but it works better to have detailed technical data, over what we are getting now. Good luck with your troubles, I hope they work out for you with a software update some time soon.

Your issue with the bluetooth modem, I would only be curious as what makes you believe it is a Mac OS X issue, and not the vendors issue for their drivers? BlueTooth also maxes out somewhere around 1Mb/s, which is slower than most internet connections.

On your #2, I would need more detail. I am not aware of F4 being a shortcut in relation to any calendar aspect of OS X.

#3 I would suggest you file a feedback report with Apple. That is the only way to make them aware of these issues.

All in all, relatively small issues for an entirely new update to an entirely new OS that breaks the 32 bit barrier and moves almost all aspects of it into 64 bit land.

It is all rather painless. Also, keep in mind, the chances of you buying a copy of 10.6.0 are slim, Apple makes sure to restock with the most current version they are shipping, so you more than likely will be buying 10.6.1 at least, maybe even 10.6.2.

As to the compatibility issues, you did hear correct, but most of those claims were probably a little exaggerated. If you look in the post, you can see we linked to wikidot, which has a breakdown of which apps will run on Snow Leopard, and which will not.

Thank you for the long time support.

Happy new year from Hamburg(GER)

I am happy to have this latest update. You have been missing for over 20 months! Are you back for good? I convinced my brother to get a mac – well his wife bought it for him for Christmas – a 24″ refurbished iMac and he loves it – BUT HE NEEDS YOUR TIPS. He’s driving me crazy!

Also, I heard that Snow Leopard had a bunch of issues with compatibility with other programs (read about them months ago) and wonder if you know if these issues have been resolved, or what issues still remain?

Thanks!

Judie