Mail Keyboard Lag in Yosemite

Lag in Typing in Yosemite’s Mail w/ External Ap… | Apple Support Communities.

Mac people, we have an issue here. In Yosemite 10.10.1 (and earlier) there’s a problem with typing in the Mail application. If you are a SLOW typist you may never notice, but for the proverbial “rest of us”, this is a major annoyance. It’s like working on a slow Dell and waiting for the icon to highlight on the Windows desktop before you can rename or move it. If you expect a quick response from a computer and are impatient (my hand is up!), this kind of LAG will result in mistakes and irritation (more on that some other time…).

Composing a message in mail, typing fast, and watching the screen, you see your first few characters, maybe even words, and then? Nothing. There’s a rift in the time space continuum. I know I typed those characters. Didn’t I? Do I need to type them again? type them again?…okay, I guess not. I’ll just wait. Or maybe I’ll just paste my message into Mail after typing it in Word for Mac 2011? Right. “Word”, because the characters appear on the screen as I type them in a four year old program written by Microsoft. Apple folks, this is not Apple Quality. Maybe spend a little less time flattening the interface and a little more making sure the program functions as expected?

That’s all. If you experience this issue and want to encourage Our Friends at Apple to fix it, please send a bug report using Apple’s page. Although people love to rant on the Apple Discussions, Apple officially does not pay any attention to those. So file a bug report, folks. Please.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Lost in the Cloud

How did we get here?

Many years ago, before there was yet a new millenium—much less a generation to be named after it—Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates had clearly dominated the desktop computer marketplace with their super-successful Windows operating system and Microsoft Office combination. They had done very well, but not everyone was using Windows. That pesky Steve Jobs was still chipping away with his “non-business” Apple products. Especially in the Education market – that is: schools. Bill kind of enjoyed watching Jobs to see what he’d come up with next, but not Ballmer. He wanted to crush Apple. Period.

Turning their attention to the education market, Bill and Steve opted for the best and fastest way to compete. Philanthropy. They gave away Windows and Office to schools. This polished Microsoft’s image in the press. And at low cost. Microsoft’s many corporate clients had already financed Windows and Office, and with little competition, were locked into complex licensing agreements for years to come. This was great; Bill and Steve could write off the education donations at their full retail value—hundreds of dollars per unit. But, this wasn’t good enough for Ballmer. The problem was, it still cost Microsoft to ship boxes with disks, and manuals, and marketing materials to schools. “There’s got to be a better way!” He told Bill.

Bill thought about this. And then, he brought up a new idea with Ballmer: “What if we just gave them the ‘software license’? They can download and distribute it themselves. No disks, no manuals. We just send them a fancy postcard with a number on it. They’re responsible for the electrons. We just host the stuff on our servers. What do you think?”

“Brilliant!!” Ballmer beamed. “Full retail price tax write off for the cost of a post card!!”

And so began Microsoft’s ventures into electronic software distribution, to be rapidly followed by the “subscription model”.

To be continued…

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