
Sierra PDF Problems Get Worse in 10.12.2 - itg
http://tidbits.com/article/16966
======
DoodleBuggy
Preview used to be a really great app. Similarly, Mac OS used to be a pretty
great operating system.

And then...

> "... Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no
> longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team,
> and most of the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the
> iPhone and iPad more power."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-
apple...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-
alienated-mac-loyalists)

The new PDF editing solution is to fumble around with our fat fingers on a
clunky oversized iPhone named "iPad Pro" , hooray.

By the way, when was the last time you heard something positive about the Mac,
Mac OS, or the Apple effort with the platform?

~~~
chmaynard
When I worked at Apple in the early 2000s, I used to wander over to IL2 for
Core Graphics meetings and occasional chats with some of the brilliant
engineers working there. John Calhoun, a former Mac game developer, had total
responsibility for the Preview app for a time. He was happy as a clam working
on Preview and he seemed very proud of his work. As I recall, Preview back
then was rock solid.

~~~
mjmsmith
Yep, the opposite of Collective Code Ownership.

------
hedora
Apple machines have been producing vaguely corrupt PDF's for years. I've had
downstream Linux tools print messages like 'this pdf is broken. Please
complain to the developers of the software that created it: <apple library
name>.'

Also, figures often render as black boxes on other machines (it embeds figures
with alpha channels where it shouldn't), and so on.

Still running 10.11 on my laptop, but I noticed that the pdfs are super blurry
on cinema displays. If you use the mouse to drag the image, it renders nicely
with proper subpixel hinting. When you release the mouse button, it does a
second antialiasing pass or something, blurring the edges of the fonts. This
doesn't seem to matter much one way or another on retina displays, fwiw.

~~~
JonathonW
> Still running 10.11 on my laptop, but I noticed that the pdfs are super
> blurry on cinema displays. If you use the mouse to drag the image, it
> renders nicely with proper subpixel hinting. When you release the mouse
> button, it does a second antialiasing pass or something, blurring the edges
> of the fonts. This doesn't seem to matter much one way or another on retina
> displays, fwiw.

Sierra's Preview.app appears to at least mostly fix that regression...
apparently at the cost of breaking everything else, but at least PDFs are
legible for viewing now.

------
nxc18
A more subtle bug: go to page broke. Before the update, going to page 100 in a
textbook would consistently get you to the page labeled 100. Now it takes you
to the hundredth physical page, which thanks to the cover, toc, etc. is
probably not where you wanted to go.

Not a huge deal, but just another thing it used to do better than the
competition and now doesn't.

~~~
coldtea
> _Before the update, going to page 100 in a textbook would consistently get
> you to the page labeled 100. Now it takes you to the hundredth physical
> page, which thanks to the cover, toc, etc. is probably not where you wanted
> to go._

Goto page has never worked reliably for me, even prior to the update.

~~~
snowwrestler
I don't have the details in front of me, but I believe it is dependent on how
the PDF is created. IIRC, page numbers must be somehow indicated to the PDF
reader client.

~~~
dom0
Correct; a PDF can indicate an arbitrary page number for every physical page.
Stupid PDF readers navigate in physical pages; more sophisticated readers use
indicated pages, even when taking user input (go to page _Intro-6_ ).

------
WalterBright
PDF support often regresses. The most common problem is forgetting the last
page read in one PDF if you open 1, 2, or 3 other PDFs. Early Kindles would
remember the last page read in each PDF. The latest Kindle only remembers it
for the last PDF. iBooks remembers it for 3. Foxit is 3. I can almost see the
hardcoded `history[3]` in their software.

------
kkylin
I was and am a heavy Skim user ([http://skim-
app.sourceforge.net/](http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/)) -- on Macs, I've
found it to be a quick and snappy alternative to Preview or Acrobat for
reading and marking PDFs. 10.12 broke the UI for text annotations (the bugs
mainly had to do with on-screen refresh). While 10.12.2 partially fixed these
problems, it introduced others.

Here's one: open any pdf in Preview in 10.12.2, choose the Rectangular
Selection tool, and try to copy a rectangle from your PDF. On my own machines
running 10.12.2 as well as the couple machines I've tried in the Apple Store,
inevitably this leads the whole page to go blank. AFAIK the file is not
affected, it's purely a UI thing, but bugs like this make the software very
annoying to use at the very least.

------
galapago
Interesting! Using our fuzzer, we found several PDF crashing Preview in
Sierra. For instance, this one [1], which is also crashing Chrome and evince.

[1]:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=670524](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=670524)

------
adekok
Preview has always crashed / hung occasionally for me, on random PDFs.
Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it just locks.

Apple is putting their money into iOS development. And in breaking things in
OSX which previously used to work...

~~~
rimantas
Yeah. I remember the times prior to 2007 when OS X had zero problems.

~~~
mbernstein
I hope that's sarcasm. There have been problems with macOS (OS X at the time)
all the way back to public beta including sluggishness pre-Intel transition.

It was (and still is) a great OS to use - but to pretend that pre 2007 existed
a time where everything was perfect and no problems existed is absurd.

~~~
pier25
I agree, although my anecdotal experience after a decade of using Macs full
time (and a few years part time before that) is that I've seen a lot more bugs
and problems since Apple switched to a yearly release cycle.

Yosemite was by far the worst macOS version I've ever used. I'm pretty happy
with El Capitan though and I won't upgrade until I really need to.

~~~
rimantas

      > lot more bugs and problems since Apple switched to a yearly
      > release cycle.
    

The theory that I subscribe to, is that now there is less time for the version
to mature. Previously a version of OS X lasted long enough for the bugs to be
ironed out and people usually remember the last version they have worked with,
not the 10.XX.0 release.

~~~
pier25
I've stopped upgrading to major macOS versions until _at least_ 6 months have
passed if not 1 year (when the following major version is released).

This has worked more or less ok for me with the major exception of Yosemite.
Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion were the most stable and polished versions I've
used.

~~~
rom16384
I think this is now the safest way to proceed. When I used Windows I wouldn't
upgrade to the new version until the first or second service package.

------
DannyBee
Preview also now hangs forever converting most .ps files, where previous
versions worked a-ok :(

In fact, i haven't found a single .ps file it didn't hang on so far, but maybe
i'm unlucky.

(so, basically, when i go to open an older paper, i have to go kill preview,
run the paper through distiller, and then load it in something that isn't a
disaster once i realize preview is also highly broken for pdfs anyway)

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Could you clarify what "forever" means in this case? (I'm sure you meant you
timed out on the operation. I'm just curious how long you gave it.)

And out of curiosity, was the CPU busy or idle during the long-running
conversion step?

~~~
kccqzy
"Forever" likely means it takes a really long time to do the conversion. In my
case the CPU was busy. It's also really prone to failure, even for simple PS
with just text no graphics, such as the kind of PS generated by groff(1) on
man pages.

------
pducks32
I really hope someone at Apple is like "you know what, I'm done. This is
getting ridiculous let's make a concerted effort to make the mac awesome."
Because the people who work on it care I promise you it's just someone isn't
thinking and saying "this isn't up to the proper standard yet." So I hope 2017
is he mac's year.

------
felxh
They must have changed their CMYC to RGB conversion algorithm as well. CMYC
colors now look different in Preview compared to when rendered in Acrobat
Reader or using Ghostscript

~~~
tambourine_man
Could you post a screenshot?

I've had this complain (and bug filled) for a long time. They changed it a few
years ago, blacks are completely washed out.

But I haven't yet had the inclination to install Sierra.

~~~
felxh
Here you go
[https://gist.github.com/felixhageloh/37c4d091f4e40c4d19fa83c...](https://gist.github.com/felixhageloh/37c4d091f4e40c4d19fa83c094cf0ca9)

And you are right - this started pre Sierra already (can't remember which
version)

~~~
tambourine_man
Interesting, it's squashing the whites in this case.

------
0x0
I've encountered several dangerous PDF rendering bugs in Sierra. Vastly
incorrect colors on only some embedded images/vectors (in a
design/profile/identity guide no less!), blurry/lowres rendering that randomly
comes and goes as you scroll, or huge white areas/blank pages that fill in and
then disappears as you zoom in and out. This is really bad.

------
carsongross
To reiterate what I've said before: I hope that after a last gasp of pseudo-
innovation/rewrites-for-marketings-sake that the tech industry can figure out
how to become a more incremental, polish and improve culture, more akin to
craftsmen than randian heros.

It goes to the very heart of the industry, though: our self conception, so it
would be a very hard transition.

~~~
coldtea
First, this was not about marketing (wasn't even advertised or meant to be
known): it is about using a new common lib for PDF between iOS and macOS.

Second, the rampant rewrites are as much an issue in FOSS projects as they are
in the industry (and in fact Microsoft for one, besides introducing the
occasional new API has been careful with backwards compatibility to the point
of paranoia).

~~~
carsongross
Agree entirely: it is rampant across the entire industry. Look at Angular2.
(But then, on the other hand, look at VIM or Emacs. Hmmm.)

Again, I think it is a deep problem, involving the self conception of the tech
world (not only the marketing departments, although there is mixes with self
interest.)

~~~
coldtea
It's also in the physical world, and there it stems from companies wanting to
sell disposable crap instead of long lasting products and form factors, so
they have more repeat sales.

------
VeejayRampay
I hate to gratuitously disrespect a whole company like that, but how can you
mess PDF when you're Apple? There's most likely an ISO specification document
minutely describing the structure of a PDF document. Apple has the money, the
talent, hordes of customers depending on good PDF support but they're failing
at this.

------
ricg
One more anecdote: I distribute a macOS app that uses PDF icons in an embedded
WebView. Used to work fine, but since 10.12, scrolling the page up and down
quickly crashes the app. My radar was closed as duplicate. I was hoping that
this would be addressed in 10.12.2...

------
lanius
My decision to stick with Yosemite is once again vindicated. I actually
wouldn't mind upgrading to El Capitan, but the app store refuses to let me
download it.

------
xenihn
I ended up replacing Preview with PDFExpert because I was really annoyed with
the way that Preview apparently stopped pre-loading/caching pages (at least I
think this is why pages are blurry for a moment each time you go backwards or
forwards to a new one). It was pretty pricy, but I'm really happy with it.

------
robotmagician
This bothers me. What's a good alternative for a medical student on a paltry
budget (so preferably free)?

I still use Skim from time to time but the comment annotation UI being broken
in 10.12 was a deal-breaker.

~~~
oldmanhorton
Foxit is great on Windows, but it seems like their Mac and Linux versions are
both pretty limited by comparison. Still could check it out, though! (I got
rid of my mac a few months ago and only ever used Preview when I had it, so I
cant comment on its quality any more than that.)

