Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Something Apple Never Acknowledged as Broken, to Credit They Don't Want, is Fixed.

I recently had to send the following to Apple via their feedback* page:

I just got an APC Back-UPS ES 750G to use with my MacMini4,1. Store.apple.com recommends EXACTLY this product: http://store.apple.com/us/product/TY121LL/A?fnode=5a .

The UPS tab does come up under the System Preferences Energy Saver pane. But no settings on the pulldown once the "Shutdown Options" button is clicked are honored under OS X 10.10.1.  Others have experienced this problem, with no solution yet: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6734517 .

I've reset both the SMC and the PRAM. No luck. As it is, I have to use a Raspberry Pi with the more configurable (though less sexy) apcupsd, until Apple fixes this.


I've heard others have had to send similar.

Luckily, now the issue that I and untold dozens, at least, of Internet denizens were experiencing appears to have been fixed in OS X 10.10.2. I just tried it by telling the computer to shut down after a minute on battery power, and it worked exactly as it had under OS X 10.9.5. That is, as advertised and correctly. I haven't tried other shutdown settings, but a successful one at least bodes well after not working at all.

Of interesting note, however, is the fact that this fix is mentioned nowhere in Apple's OS X 10.10.2 release notes (on http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204210 under "About the update"). I guess they didn't want to acknowledge that one of their most relied-upon, deep-and-long-established-in-the-system data safety features had ever had a problem… even once fixed.

I wonder how this bears out for their security. That's all I'm going to say about that, because [redacted]. Kidding (kind of)!

* For those (Ha: I assume there are more than… well, zero, who may be reading this!) interested in where to go to give Apple feedback, try here: http://apple.com/feedback . You need to select which specific Apple hardware you're commenting on, whether or not the issue is either more general or software-specific.  I don't mean to say "Give 'em hell!" because all companies are staffed by people who are just that; people, like you. But if you have a problem or even kudos (in the body of your text; see #2 below) to pass along, they'll hear it. They won't respond directly, but they will hear it.

On the flip side of that however, I'm posting this here because:

1) I think more people should know about major feature changes in software by the world's most profitable company, good or bad.
2) There's not actually a place on their feedback form to tell them that your feedback is positive; they appear to assume the worst. So I give due credit here, whether they want it or not.

For the moment, I am nonetheless keeping things running on the Raspberry Pi. Oh, the power savings & self-teaching opportunities!