File Creation Dates Hosed Copying from Mac to Windows

I just wanted to draw some attention to a potentially fairly nasty Finder/Mac OSX bug that hasn't gotten the attention it probably should. A few days ago I posted on the latest Tiger release, what it fixes, what it doesn't. And in the comments section of that article, two people wrote in about a problem wherein the Finder loses the creation dates of files saved to MS-DOS formatted disks. That is, any file saved to a Windows formatted disk (and I don't know if this only applies to fat-32 disks or all Windows formats, but I would suspect the latter) will lose its creation date, which will be set to nothing. It will simply be blank, from my understanding of the problem. And please be aware, I have not experienced this problem myself. But a number of people have. We don't hear about it much in the Mac community, because much of the Mac community tends to work only on Macs. To be affected by this bug, you'd have to be both working from Mac to Windows, and have a serious need for file creation dates. This is not everyone, but it is a serious problem nonetheless, and Apple should hear about it. Though I have not personally suffered from this problem (yet), I sincerely sympathize with folks who need to get things to work cross-platform. I have the need myself, and it can be a real bitch. But when basic functionality like the preservation of file creation dates begins to fail when working cross-platform, it's way more than a bitch. It's a fucking nightmare. A lot of people turn to Apple for cross-platform compatibility, because -- let's face it -- no one else is doing half as good a job as Apple in this arena. But sometimes it seems like it's the cross-platform arena that gets the short-shrift when it comes to Apple's priority list. This is understandable, I suppose. We're the minority. Still, when basic things go wrong, Apple should hear about it, no matter how small the affected group may be. And they should fix it. Promptly.

So, if anyone out there in Mac-Land is having a problem with this, I say go vent. If you want to do it here in the comments section, by all means, be my guest. But you may want to take a moment and let Apple know about your problem as well (and trust me, they don't read this blog). There are a few good places to do this:

1. Apple's Mac OS X Feedback Page
   Here is the best, and most appropriate, place to lodge a complaint or report a bug. Keep it business-like and polite, but specific and thorough. Vent someplace else.
2. Apple's Discussion Forums
   Here you might actually find some help for your problem (though I think this particular problem is up to the Apple Developers at this point). Help notwithstanding, enough complaints on the discussion forum are likely to escalate the problem in the queue of stuff-needs-doin'. So it's worth a shot.
3. Call AppleCare (1-800-275-2273)
   Again, a good place to get heard. It might be a pain. You might get put on hold. A lot. But if you've got the time -- and, of course, your machine is still under warranty -- this could escalate your cause up through the ranks of the Apple engineers. As always, be polite but firm. You may need to explain your problem to -- and humor -- a number of lower-tier help-desk types before you get someone knowlegeable. But it might pay off. Don't do this, though, unless you've got some time and patience. Trust me.
4. Finally, spread the word
   That's what I'm trying to do with this post. Start writing to forums and blogs of some prominence. MacOSXHints is a good one to post on. There's also The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Hell, there are a ton, and they're all more prominent than this one. Start hitting them up. No one likes bad press. Least of all Apple. The more noise people make, the more likely they'll be heard.

So, anyway, hopefully this does somthing to draw a tiny bit of attention to an easily-overlooked, but non-trivial problem. I'm pushing for you kids. If anyone hears of a solution, please post it here in the comments. I'll do the same.

Now go start pestering.

The Death of Metal

Well, I finally got bored enough and bothered enough to mod my Tiger install to look the way I want. Essentially, I wanted to get rid of brushed metal and go more towards the "Unified" look. There are some utilities and what-not floating around out there that do a really nice job of this. I've been using the excellent UNO, but for my needs, even it took things a bit too far, and in the process created some rather bothersome visual artifacts. I had no idea I was so picky, but apparently I am.

Turns out, if you just want to do what I wanted to do, you need only modify one small but important file, which can be found here:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras.rsrc

(This should all be on one line. BTW, anyone know the right way to post long lines?

UPDATE: Got it! At long last! -Jan 11, 2006)

So that's exactly what I did.

This is actually a bit harder than it sounds. A resource file of this kind is not something many applications can read. In fact, the only app I found that could view this file was the recently updated ThemePark. And read it it did. I used ThemePark to modify existing .rsrc files I had. The hard part, really, is that there are so many little tiny resources -- small pictures that make up most of the OSX GUI -- that finding the handful you want can take forever. So comparing and contrasting the original Tiger .rsrc file with the one that comes with UNO took some time and effort. But I was finally able to come up with something close enough to exactly what I want.

Now That's More Like It

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If you like what you see, well, today's your lucky day. I've decided to share the fruits of my labor. Here, in all its glory, for you to use, is my Modified Extras.rsrc file. You are free to use it as you see fit. Drop me a line if you end up using it or sharing it, and give me a little credit. Send people to the blog. That's all I ask.

Please note:

• This file goes in the aforementioned path, and should have the aforementioned name (Extras.rsrc).
• Make a backup of the original Extras.rsrc file.
• This is an important file. Using my modified version of the file could break your system (seriously).
• It has only been tested on Mac OSX Tiger 10.4.2.
• If you're uncertain about whether or not to use this file to modify the appearance of your OS X install, you probably should not attempt to do so.
• If you need further instructions, you should probably try something less risky like ShapeShifter.
• I am, needless to say, not responsible for any damage you incur on your system, or the systems of others, from your use of this file.
• I will provide no support whatsoever.

A Tale of Bad Media

I needed to pull a bunch of video projects from my DVD archives this weekend. These are regular old DV-NTSC Quicktime movies, made from Final Cut Pro. But attempting to copy them from the Finder in Mac OSX 10.4.2, I noticed the estimated copy time seemed inordinately long: 45 minutes for 3.5 GB? I can burn a disc faster than that. Then, about halfway through, the copy operation choked, and I got an error message that said that the copy operation couldn't finish because some of the data couldn't be read.

Copy Error
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Then I started scrolling through the files on the DVD, and as I touched them the files started disappearing before my eyes! Folder names also disappeared, but the folders were still there, but no longer navigable. Doing an ls in the Terminal showed everything intact. Copying the files using cp or ditto yielded complete and usable files.

Disappearing Folders
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After grabbing my data using the Terminal -- which not only worked, but worked quickly -- I decided to relaunch the Finder, and try copying one of the problematic folders. The folder appeared to copy, but the contents of the folder were incomplete. Only two of the thirteen original movies made it over in the copy. But this time, I received no error message. Then I tried copying individual files from the problem folder on the DVD. Some appeared to copy super-fast, and then just disappeared, while some copied fine, and at apparently normal speed. But the time estimation for some took a while, and for others, barber-poled indefinitely. In fact, the only way to stop the Indefinite-Barber-Pole-of-Death was to relaunch the Finder.

Indefinite Barber-Pole
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Fucked up.

More tests: I tried another DVD. Copying that data worked perfectly: fast and error-free. I also put the problem DVD in my PowerBook running Panther and tried copying the data. And guess what? Same problem. Better error message though. And no disappearing files and folders.

Panther Copy Error
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So clearly, something is wrong with my DVD. But it seems really strange to me that, while a simple issue of cp or ditto works fine, if the Finder encounters the slightest disc error, it just gives up. This raises some questions: If the command-line can handle it, and the Finder can't, what is the Finder doing wrong? Moreover, why doesn't the Finder use cp or ditto? Or something that can handle these sorts of errors? Or, at the very least, why doesn't the error message offer some sort of useful information about what went wrong and how, via Terminal, one might go about extracting the data?

Finally, and I took a look at the DVD surface itself, and I have no idea how this happened, but it was scratched to shit. Looked like a Blockbuster rental. Awful. Anyway, the moral of the story? I don't know, actually. I guess one moral would be, "Take good care of your optical media; it is by no means indestructible." Moral two? If the Finder can't copy it, the command-line, perhaps, can.

It pays to learn some UNIX kids. Without it, I'd be hard screwed.

Kill Brushed Metal, Kill Brushed Metal

Some people really like the Brushed Metal UI of recent Mac OS X incarnations. I have to say, I am not one of those people. I also have to say, what is wrong with you people? Are you insane?

Okay, don't have to, but really wanted to.

Anyway, back in the Panther days I hated metal so much, I actually began to delve into the arcane world of theming. All I ever really wanted, though, was to remove the "Brushed" part of Brushed Metal, and perhaps lighten the color a bit. This was fairly easy, and I did it with great success and to my great pleasure.

Theming is a drag, though, and by the time Tiger had come out, I'd had my fill. But the Brushed Metal theme persisted throughout the OS. And themes that hack the resources of the OS have largely fallen by the wayside in favor of solutions that take advantage of ShapeShifter. I prefer the latter method: ShapeShifter slows down my machines and costs money, and my needs are so simple. I just want Brushed Metal gone. So resource replacement, for me, is the way to go.

Fortunately, there are now a couple of packages out there that can do just that. One is called UNO, and it seeks to apply the Unified Interface look of apps like Mail (referred to in this excellent breakdown of OSX interface styles as "Smooth Metal") to the entire OS, and also flattens the Finder toolbar. If you like Unified, you'll probably like UNO. The other is called Iridium. Iridium does essentially what I talked about earlier: It takes the texture out of Brushed Metal, and lightens the remaining gray. It has less of a gradient in toolbars than UNO, and slightly less contrast, but is otherwise quite similar. Included with Iridium is a variant called Iridium Hydroxide, which is exactly like Iridium, except that it retains the original, glossy Finder toolbar. I like all of these themes. The differences between them are subtle, but the nice thing is that, with any of them, the UI sort of goes away after a bit -- disappears like a UI should. And yet, they actually look rather pretty. And certainly prettier than Brushed Metal.

UNO 1.1: Minor Interface Glitches
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Some caveats:
1) These theme installers do mess with essential system resources. And, while they do back up your original resource files, it's conceivable that something could go wrong and leave your system in an unusable state. Read the instructions carefully, and use with caution. Backup your OS if you want to be really safe. That said, I've never had a problem with apps like these.
2) There are a few little appearance glitches you might notice: A small white highlight in Safari tabs can be seem, and the rounded corners of Quicktime movies are replaced by pointy white ones. Also, the small, dark divider line between the title bar and the document, in windows without a toolbar (like plain text TextEdit windows), is absent. Otherwise, the themes look pretty good and remain consistent with the original OS. And any of these glitches is far less offensive to my eye than the visual affront that is Brushed Metal.

I started off using Iridium Hydroxide, now I'm using UNO. I'll probably switch back and forth for awhile, as I like them both. But I'll keep using these until Apple figures out how horrid Brushed Metal is, and gives us something better. Which may be any day now, if the latest versions of apps like iTunes and Mail are any indication.

Here's hoping.

A Tiger Bonus: Keyboard Input During Wake From Sleep

I've discovered something I can really appreciate in Tiger. Finally. It's subtle, but wonderful.

In Panther and earlier, if your computer was asleep, after waking it up you'd have to wait maybe 5-10 seconds before the computer would accept any input from the keyboard. Typically this manifested itself like this: Wake computer; watch the login window until the mouse cursor pops up; finally, after the seemingly endless 5-10 second wait, enter login info and go. Was this ever a big complaint for me? No. Was it something that ever even bothered me? No. It's really not a big deal at all.

But in Tiger it's better.

Somehow, magically, Tiger will capture and retain keyboard input entered during that 5-10 second period in which the computer wakes from sleep. I was so used to waiting to enter keyboard input, I didn't even notice it at first, but the other day I was feeling very impatient, and began typing my username and password immediately after waking my machine. Nothing appeared to happen, but once the computer was fully awake, all fields were filled in with the information I'd just typed, and I was immediately logged in. How this works, I've no idea. But it works, and it's cool. If you put your computer to sleep like I do, this is a nice little time-saver. Just wake it up and start typing.