Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Weird Safari doings

Artie these shortcut problems are sounding more an more like symptoms of a common problem, not individual issues.

• Is there any Safari shortcut that works the first time you try to use it?
• What about shortcuts in applications other than Safari?
• Are there any other applications open when these shortcut issues are occuring?
• Are you certain Safari has the focus and isn't just the window that on top of the stack?
• Is Stage Manager on or off?

As far as I'm concerned, the overriding consideration here is that absolutely nothing has changed on my end. The only thing that has changed, and, presumably, given rise to my problems, is Safari itself, although I guess macOS may also be involved.

And your being able to reliably replicate one of my issues doubles down on that.

I'm therefore going with the possible common problem being Safari itself, and rather than trying to troubleshoot it, waiting for an update or two to see what happens.

Rather than possible, I should have said "likely."

Agreed!

You've got an awful lot of experience with the developmental aspect of software, so I'm curious about how you feel about this...

Before the advent of computers, innovation was pretty much about making things better, but computer software - hardware is obviously excluded from this conversation - has injected a new "angle" into innovation, namely, change for the sake of change.

As I see and experience it, there's an underlying force driving software development, and that's the idea that each new version needs to be different, even if it's not necessarily better.

And I think that concept has evolved into teams sitting around dreaming up new bells and whistles for no reason other than to justify their own existence.

And when you're dealing with perhaps millions of lines of code, each of those bells and whistles has got the potential to screw up something that worked just fine yesterday.

Which is why macOS and its attendant apps now need to undergo multiple levels of beta testing: By the code writers themselves; by third party developers; by power users such as you; and, finally, by everyday users such as me, upon whom are sprung the largely untested, as respects the "real" world, bells and whistles.

And quite frankly, I'm getting awfully sick of having to do Apple's homework for them simply because their imaginary need to pump out a new version of the OS every twelve months necessitates their creating reasons to do so, rather than reasons creating the necessity!

More accurately stated, "there's an underlying force driving software development, and that's the idea that there needs to be a constant flow of new versions, regardless of whether or not they're necessarily better, or, for that matter, even necessary."

The primary underlying force has a name, COMPETITION and that is undergirded by MARKET SURVIVAL. Without that your computer would likely consist of a few rolls of papyrus and a sharpened stick dipped in a mixture of charcoal, water, and gum arabic.

The ISSUE for most of us is not change (a.k.a. progress) per. se. Rather it is the RATE of change, which has been dramatically increased by the computer and the internet. We are living in an industrial revolution on steroids. Some discomfort and displacement is inevitable. It is natural to want to control the rate of change and perhaps slow it down to a rate we are comfortable with, but that is like an ant on a railroad track trying to signal the high speed freight to stop or slow down.

From my viewpoint as a developer I view the turmoil of bleeding edge change as an expression of creativity — artistry and science in equal parts. That is where the FUN is. The kind of fun where you walk out of the building at the end of a day and realize it is 6:00 AM not PM and realize you have worked through the night and instead of being exhausted, you are already looking forward to the new day's challenge. (OFF TOPIC: That is the vibe that attracted me to the Arc browser project.)

Yes and no.

Hardware will always evolve, competition will force innovation and drive that evolution, and therein lies what changes the game, Apple's hardware suite being an extraordinary example thereof.

I don't see enough evolution in Apple's annual software releases, though, to change the game in much more than the least, if at all.

Rather, I think their recent "upgrades" haven't, to a large degree, done a heck of a lot more than fulfill people's irrational need for something new - address their feeding frenzy, so to speak - even if it's no more than something old disguised as something new, and I think their constituents would be far better served by their addressing the long list of longstanding bugs in the OS rather than rearranging System Prefs/Settings for the umpteenth time.

Your viewpoint as a developer - which I've experienced to a minimal degree - gets us to territory that you and I have covered more than once: You're the guy who's waiting outside the music store door at 10 PM to be the first one to get your favorite band's new CD, which you've never even heard, when the doors open at 10 AM, while I'm the guy who knows that out of 8-12 cuts, no more than 2, maaaybe 3 will even be worth listening to, and would prefer to wait another year or two for something that does more than just pay homage to a contract and satisfy a feeding frenzy.