OS X 10.3 downer


So I’ve been using the OS X Stickies app for a while. Its primary limit has always been scaling; it doesn’t track the z-axis ordering of notes from launch to launch, it doesn’t let you search notes, it doesn’t supply multiple note sets or 3M-style “noteboards”, etc.

With Panther, they added the title line of each window to both the Windows menu and the contextual menu on the Dock. This isn’t a bad thing, as such, but it definitely doesn’t scale! It also doesn’t work quite right, since it often inserts gratuitous whitespace in this menu (which will change every time you view it).

What I never noticed during any of the betas, and only spotted today because a third-party app managed to rearrange my Stickies so that some of them were offscreen, is that they’ve removed the “arrange windows” option in Panther. If it weren’t for Exposé, I’d have never been able to select them all to get them back on screen.

[I suspect Burning Monkey MahJong as the culprit; it insists on switching video resolutions on startup. blech.]

Another misfeature in Panther Stickies, which I did spot right away, is the use of tooltips to show you the creation date and time of each note when you hover the mouse over it. This frequently interferes with actually reading the note, and there’s no way to turn it off.

So, two steps forward, one step back, one step down.

[and before I forget, yes, the data format is still binary garbage]