
Mac: Keyboard Shortcuts Killed by Bug - bkudria
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/03/03/last-week-on-my-mac-keyboard-shortcuts-killed-by-bug/
======
jacobsenscott
I doubt it is developer apathy. It smells like a management issue. iOS is
where the money is. I don't know anyone at apple, but here's how I imagine it
is there:

Every OSX engineer probably has more bugs on their plate than can be fixed in
one career, in addition to feature development tasks. The OSX team is severely
understaffed both because it is not a priority at Apple, and because it is
getting harder and harder to find engineers that are able to/willing to work
on this kind of code - a Byzantine labyrinth of C flavors that's been
accreting lines for decades.

The OSX team is in a desperate fight for recognition and status against the
iOS team. They believe (and are probably right) that the only way to gain
executive mind share there is to build out new visible features, no matter how
useless. Witness dark theme, stacks, dynamic desktop, siri on the desktop, a
steady stream of useless iPhone integrations, etc. All the troops are ordered
to march relentlessly toward feature development. Stability and bug fixes be
damned.

It bet it takes at least three weeks of focused effort and red tape macheteing
to fix this bug and it is way down on someone's list. Even if you fix it the
change won't make the next OSX key note at the annual IOScon or whatever it is
called, so it won't help your career one iota.

Again - this is just how I imagine it is there. I don't really know.

~~~
Bahamut
There's no "OSX team" at Apple. That would go against Apple's whole corporate
structure.

~~~
anbop
Surely there is some team that develops OS X. That is the OS X team.

~~~
thelopa
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but they are right. there isn't an OSX
team. Apple doesn't slice things up that way. If there were an OSX team then
surely there would be a manager for that team, right? The only person that
could plausibly fill that role is Craig Federighi... but he arguably fills the
same role for iOS, too.

In the Scott Forstall days, there was a distinct iOS team (Scott) and a
distinct OSX team (Craig). now there isn't.

~~~
anbop
Sure, there is one exec, but there must be someone under him who is
responsible for OS X.

~~~
shuckles
Nope. Craig’s directs are responsible for apps and all the platforms those
apps ship on or cross-platform technologies that power apps.

~~~
skywhopper
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. macOS is a product. With
releases, features, etc. Someone or some group of people must necessarily make
decisions about what makes up "macOS 10.14.5". Even if that team is "Craig and
his direct reports" or whatever, and even if that team has other
responsibilities.

~~~
shuckles
For example, I believe if macOS had a dedicated VP with specialized software
teams like the type we are speculating here, my guess is we would have fewer
bugs of this sort than we do now.

~~~
russh
This is my take as well.

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freditup
It's a bug for sure, but conclusions like this are over the top for a single
small bug:

> This isn’t an Apple which has any concern over the quality of its products,
> or for its users. It’s just another leviathan corporation which has stopped
> caring or taking pride. One small bug reveals a deep and pervasive problem.

I'd rather see a more measured approach to drawing conclusions from a single
anecdote.

~~~
falcolas
Straws break camel's backs. You can be sure this isn't the only, the first, or
even the last time this particular developer has found a major bug. It's also
safe to assume that past bugs they have reported (especially small usability
bugs like this) have languished, or been closed as "will not fix".

At some point, the back is broken, the developer gives up on trying to help an
obscenely profitable company QA their own products, and rants about the lack
of care being shown.

~~~
sixstringtheory
The process for even submitting bugs is time-intensive, so much so that I
started keeping a TODO list of bugs to report, which I never found the time
for and wound up stopping even writing new bugs on it because I couldn't keep
up.

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js2
This bug is much more subtle that the author describes. I use keyboard
shortcuts semi-regularly so I would've noticed this bug, especially if it had
been around since 10.13. I never noticed it, but then I realized the author's
screenshots are all dark themed. I use the light theme and cannot reproduce it
under 10.14.4 with light theme.

If I toggle to dark theme, I can reproduce it, but not in a consistent way.
Depending upon how I add and remove shortcuts and toggle themes, I can get
just the last shortcut to display incorrectly, or all of them to display
incorrectly, or none of them to. It's some odd interaction between dark/light
themes and this panel.

~~~
smnscu
I mean, they also had this bug for ages:

> There is, still, a long-standing MacOS bug where your balance may drift when
> volume buttons are pressed while CPU is under heavy load.

[https://github.com/jamsinclair/ballast](https://github.com/jamsinclair/ballast)

[https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/](https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/balance_lock/)

~~~
on_and_off
ohhh ! that's what happened ! I had this happen to me a couple of month ago. I
thought that my headphones were busted until I realized that OsX had decided
to mess with the balance for no reason.

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derefr
> This isn’t a subtle bug which only occurs in certain circumstances.

Sure it is. OP is an outlier in how they use this panel. Most people just use
it to enable/disable the built-in menu commands, or to modify their
accelerators.

One very common use-case for people who speak multiple languages is enabling
the keyboard switcher accelerator. I expect that they have extensive tests for
common use-cases like that.

On the other hand, I expect that the test suite they use probably only tests
creating one or two custom keyboard shortcuts using the panel; and doesn’t
give them overly-long names. UX integration tests, above the level of the
control library itself, aren’t usually concerned with being fuzz tests on what
happens when you have a whole bunch of something (long strings, many items)
loaded into a control. Normally the control library itself takes care of that
for you (and has its own trustworthy fuzzing/property-testing suite), so you
only worry about ensuring that your view controller gets the data into the
control’s data binding in the right way.

I would guess that this bug is there because the view controller is summing up
the lengths of the strings under a given section for some task; and then,
later on, accidentally using that sum-of-lengths as the determinant for
whether each string is too long to fit into its column and needs
ellipsis...ing (eliding? elision?), rather than using each individual key’s
length. Totally plausible bug, it makes total sense that this is an _old_ bug
that nobody discovered until now. It would seem that literally nobody has
tried to do this until now.

Still, this is the type of thing that’ll get fixed immediately if you file a
Radar on it. Whatever the underlying problem is, it’s on the view-controller
layer, and definitely a simple fix; and there’s no decisions or opinion
required on what the fix should be; _and_ it doesn’t require any specific
expertise (like having knowledge of the kernel.) It’s an “easy win” ticket
someone would likely knock out the same day you submitted it.

The fact that it didn’t get caught during any of the numerous betas since
Sierra, really, _really_ implies that nobody ever thought to try this—users
_or_ developers. (Because if someone _did_ report this bug in the beta, and it
was still in the prod release, you can bet they would have blogged about it
when that happened.)

~~~
diegof79
> The fact that it didn’t get caught during any of the numerous betas since
> Sierra, really, really implies that nobody ever thought to try this—users or
> developers.

There is another explanation. The author says that he was able to reproduce it
always, but I use this feature all the time and I don’t have that problem, so
probably there are other factors that cause the bug.

You asume that nobody uses this feature, because probably you don’t use it and
because the author says that the bug is easy to reproduce. But without
meaningful data is hard to say.

For example, most of the shortcuts that I put there are for Sketch, and AFAIK
many designers using Sketch use this feature.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Did you try it? It takes less than a minute. I found I was one under the
number of shortcuts necessary for the bug to appear.

------
peterwwillis
_> I cannot believe that they didn’t open this pane and test it, even briefly_

Does this author really think that every developer, after every code commit,
and before every release, manually goes through every single piece of
functionality in an entire operating system, in every possible configuration,
to ensure nothing regressed? That just does not happen. Either they write
regression tests, or they document a feature and have QC evaluate it. But both
of those can be error-prone, bugs happen, and there is absolutely no
indication that anyone knew about the bugs. Refusing to report them because
"they should have known about them anyway" is childish.

~~~
wool_gather
Agree; it's also not rendering the feature "unusable" or "killed" as
hyperbolized in the article. It's a bug -- it's a very annoying bug -- but
it's pretty middle of the road and doesn't actually prevent the user from
doing anything.

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wlesieutre
My complaint about this preferene pane - no wildcards in menu names.

macOS has a handy "Batch rename" feature in the contextual menu when you right
click on files. The renaming GUI gives you options for sequential numbers,
text replacement, prefixes, suffixes, inserting dates.

But the menu to open this is called "Rename X Items…" so you can't assign a
keyboard shortcut to it. Might be 5 items, might be 2914 items. Without
wildcards you'd have to make a different shortcut for every different
quantity.

~~~
kccqzy
You can make an actual Automator service to do the batch renaming and then
call it whatever you want. The Automator version also has more features than
the Finder one.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This, but I think the more general point here would be that the system
preferences panel is for dead simple stuff, and Apple does provide more
powerful tools (namely, Automator and Applescript) if you need them.

I _love_ Applescript. My entire home entertainment setup basically runs on
Applescript—each button on my Harmony remote triggers a different script.

There's no equivalent on Windows—you can use Autohotkey, kind of, but without
any sort of Apple Event-esque specification it isn't nearly as useful/nice.

------
jmull
I tried this and for me, it's a minor bug.

Upon adding the third shortcut, the display of the "menu" name, indeed, shows
as an ellipsis. But:

(1) the name is still visible through a tool tip (2) when I close the window
and reopen, thingS display fine. (If I start editing again, I can get some
weird ellipsis display again, though now by deleting items rather than add
thing them)

Anyway, definitely a bug, but at least for me it's pretty easy to work around,
so a pretty minor bug in a minor feature.

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rsync
"macOS is designed to be rich in features and highly adaptable to everyone’s
taste. It’s also designed to be driven in a variety of ways, including
extensive use of keyboard shortcuts."

Both of these statements are false.

~~~
saagarjha
How so?

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vectorEQ
lol: "The bug has occurred because of a simple programming error using what I
believe Apple refers to as an Outline View. The error is that the first column
width, containing the command names, has been set too narrow, and isn’t
adjustable by the user either. In coding terms, it’s a trivially simple error
which should take a few seconds to fix."

that makes no sense at all looking at the behaviour described. if you want to
write an article complaining about someones business processes letting through
unacceptable bugs, make sure you understand what is a computer. then perhaps
learn to debug issues on it. once you can do that, perhaps you will be less
tempted to write such a mess.

~~~
michaelmrose
You began this post with with a sentence fragment and a massive quote from the
article everyone just read wherein no particular point required a reference.

You used "lol" in written communication which makes you sound like a 12 year
old girl texting her friends.

You then continued in mid stream and concluded a sentence that you never
began.

You said "make sure you understand what is a computer" which makes zero sense
whatsoever and joined several sentence fragments with periods.

Perhaps before critiquing someone else's communications it would be optimal if
you were to improve your own.

Your entire communiqe could have been written like do.

"The author does not appear to understand how the software he is using
actually works, perhaps he ought to clarify his understanding before writing
so unclearly about it."

~~~
JadeNB
> Your entire communiqe could have been written like do.

It's not clear what was gained by your point-by-point rebuttal (of
presentation rather than content), but it was worth it for this unproofread
line.

~~~
michaelmrose
That is funny and ironic.

------
JadeNB
What's with the author's apparent pride in not reporting this to Apple? Even
if you feel that developers shouldn't need users to report bugs—which seems
like a weird assumption—refusing to report the bugs that affect you hurts you,
not the developer.

(This is not to defend Apple's responses to Radar reports; I think probably
anyone here has one or two sore spots of years-ignored bug reports. But at
least they're there!)

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wDcBKgt66V8WDs
Tangent (or OT), something I've been struggling with as a new macOS user, how
do I get keyboard repeats working? I understand they removed repeats so that a
long press can offer accent characters.

I've done `defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 5` or something like that and it
kinda works but somehow doesn't feel "right" still. Am I missing something
obvious?

~~~
hollerith
I haven't experienced your problem on my Mac, but you might try adjusting
InitialKeyRepeat, too. I believe the old default was 15 (225 ms). (The old
default for KeyRepeat was 2 (30 ms).)

~~~
wDcBKgt66V8WDs
Wow significantly better, I was at 30/5\. I had tried lower settings (I think
10/1) at some point and logging in again was hilariously difficult so I
stopped messing with it out of fear.

15/2 is beauty. Thanks a lot!

------
ridiculous_fish
Very recently a Chrome keyboard shortcut stopped working. It was a bug and
they fixed it.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=892480](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=892480)

Bugs happen, it doesn't necessarily indicate anything systemic.

~~~
bla3
That bug was fixed in 14 days if I read that page right. The complaint here
isn't just that the bug happened, but that it happened long ago, is fairly
visible, and is still around a year later.

~~~
ampersandy
Because they actually bothered to file a bug report. The author thinks what's
obvious to them must be obvious to everyone so didn't file anything. Of course
it isn't going to be fixed in a timely fashion.

~~~
bla3
I have filed a few rdars. It's not a good investment of time in my experience.

------
tomcam
Apple used to be pretty good with Mac accessibility. Now, not so much.

~~~
jbverschoor
And overall power usage. I think I probably know more shortcuts and
optimizations on macOS than most people at Apple.

~~~
arthurcolle
Have any tricks you want to share? My MBP 15" gets 2 hr tops unless its
plugged in. Even with "mere" web browsing

~~~
jerf
Power usage, as in power user, as in "skilled user of software".

~~~
arthurcolle
Yikes I'm an idiot

------
gcb0
Lol. Even when that dialog worked as intended, it was total crap! It mostly
worked for certain menu items only.

Fun game: try to remap Ctrl+a to select all, Ctrl+c to copy etc to mimic
unix/windows. (or god forbid, to make your limited mobility device that cost
thousands of dollars several years ago to work on your work provided macbook
pro)

Every single app will behave differently and you will see how broken
usability/accessibility is on OSX. Some examples for Ctrl+c:

on Firefox, Ctrl+c will move the cursor to the end of the text area while
cmd+c will still work as copy, despite the menu hint showing Ctrl+c next to
edit>copy.

On Notes.app it will work fine and cmd+c stops working (correctly).

On safari, calendar and most apple office stuff ctrl+c just do absolutely
nothing. In some apps it shows ctrl+c next to edit>copy though, because why
not

~~~
simongr3dal
I'm not saying it is easy or logical, but it is possible.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > Modifier Keys...

In this dialogue you can remap what the modifier keys means, so you can make
the ctrl-button act as cmd and make the cmd-button act as ctrl.

Personally i use it to make the caps-lock key act as escape.

~~~
ggg2
now you have the problem of making your crap accessibility hardware closed
source firmware to send the caps lock key code instead of ctrl. Good luck with
that.

~~~
fnky
You can change modifiers for different inputs. If you have another keyboard
attached, it will give you the option to choose between that, and other
keyboards, such as the built-in. They can have different modifier overrides.

------
frou_dh
Bug aside, this from-the-outside-in way of creating keyboard shortcuts is a
cool feature, that I bet a minority of even Mac powerusers are aware of.

See also "DefaultKeyBinding.dict" for more keyboard behavior possibilities,
including stuff like ^W and ^U working in Cocoa text fields.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
One great thing about macOS is that Apple provides a couple of tools to extend
existing apps. The other really great one is Automator Services/Quick Actions.

------
btown
BetterTouchTool - [https://folivora.ai/](https://folivora.ai/) \- patches over
many of these "rough edges" in macOS, including the arbitrary-keyboard-
shortcuts-for-menu-items requirement of the OP. I think it's generally true
that while the polished-ness of Apple's own software has deteriorated
somewhat, the ecosystem of utilities largely fills that gap... except where it
comes to hardware, where the butterfly keyboard problems infuriate me daily to
no end.

------
Wowfunhappy
> What is more, as far as I can see, this bug has existed since macOS High
> Sierra 10.13.4, almost a year ago, in March 2018, if not before.

Hmm, I still have my main machine on High Sierra due to nVidia drivers (and
Mojave's Apple Event Sandboxing being a giant PITA), and I can't replicate
this on 10.13.6. The bug worked on my Mojave machine, however.

I wonder if the author is mistaken regarding how long the bug has been
present. Or maybe it was introduced in 10.13.4, got fixed, and then was broken
again?

------
passivepinetree
> In coding terms, it’s a trivially simple error which should take a few
> seconds to fix.

This is both a large assumption and a huge oversimplification. What about time
to regression test, QA, deploy through the various inner rings/dogfooding
groups, check accessibility, etc.?

It smacks of a writer who possibly has coded before as a hobbyist but never
professionally.

------
Wowfunhappy
Wow. Looks like I never ran into this bug because I have one too few App
Shortcuts set up (only two custom ones, as opposed to 3+).

And this has been in place since Sierra?! Wow!

I'm not convinced that Apple actually knows about this bug, but what does that
say about their software testing...

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talkingtab
"I can feel it Dave", except that it seems that Apple can't feel it. MacOS is
like HAL oe one of those robots that you see in movies that wanders around
doing things that no longer make sense. This appears true for hardware as well
- I used to long for the latest MacBook and now I am relieved that my 2012 is
hanging in there because I don't want to spend all that money for a bad
keyboard. Think about that for a minute - 2012 vs 2019!

Apple should open source their OS. They would not longer have to waste their
time and energy pretending that the MacBook market matters to them. Developers
would be happy with them - its a win win situation!!

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ilikehurdles
> Right now, if I open my list, it displays like yours, without any ellipses.
> If I add and then remove a shortcut, half of the list spontaneously turns to
> “…”. But if I close and open System Preferences again, I’m back where I
> started, with a properly displaying list

By the author's own admission (in the comments) this doesn't even seem like a
major bug. His refusal to report it isn't helping anyone, and it's a display
issue that's fixed by closing and re-opening a window. How was any keyboard
shortcut actually killed here? What a terrible clickbaity headline.

------
Jyaif
Related: ⌘-C randomly not working is one of my top issue with the new macOSes.
It used to work perfectly fine a couple years ago.

------
jxdxbx
Why does he assume that the responsible engineers are aware of the bug?

~~~
ilikehurdles
His comments are full of people unable to reproduce it, yet he assumes people
working on the OS are actively aware of and ignoring it intentionally.

------
flywithdolp
please fix the keyboard bug that make it hot like lava....

can't even touch my mac without gloves

