Mojave

seems on a month's experience to be a relatively solid and unexciting update (which is what he wants--no adventures from which to downgrade). As noted here, he had already installed Mojave on an old tower MacPro that continues to be a workhorse. For his back-and-forth-take-to-meeting MacBookPro machine (what? you still use paper instead of putting all the documents online?), the Spy was still a little paranoid about this one, given recent experiences, so he copied his boot partition to a backup, ensured that copy would boot and run, then updated it, leaving his original intact just in case. BTW, did you know that you can only resize partitions if you boot from an external drive?

Apart from almost daily warnings that some piece of software on the system will not run on the next update (the system seems to pick on one at random every time) this "update" appears to be functional. What about features? Well, the dynamic desktop, which varies from a lighter palate to a darker one depending on the time of day is novel, but nothing more. The means of creating dynamic wallpapers is not yet available.

Dark mode is interesting, and may be easier on the eyes in the long run, but is not supported by all applications. Desktop stacks may be useful for people with cluttered desktops, but that does not include the Spy, whose desktop has only disks and the trash. Improved screenshot capabilities are no doubt useful for people writing software documents, but the Spy rarely takes screenshots. The continuity camera, that allows scanning by an IOS device into a Mac could be useful once the Spy's Epson document scanner packs it in, but not yet.

Running IOS apps in a compatibility layer may turn out to be useful when all apps, including those from third parties, can so run, but at this point, the feature is best termed "experimental". The upgrade App Store is certainly an improvement. For a major software player, the old software was a bit of a disgrace--hard to navigate, awkward to use. The new is a few steps in the right direction. Finally, there are some minor finder upgrades that may be a harbinger of a major rewrite. Stay tuned on this one. Finally, Safari supposedly is improved. One guesses. It is no more compatible with some sites the Spy can only browse with Firefox than any of the last ten or twelve iterations--great when it works, and a major annoyance when it does not. The main issue is with popups, which often simply do not function. Give this upgrade an A- for stability, and a B- for innovation. It's solid, but not amazing. Perhaps that's a good thing. It means that despite the recent deterioration and neglect of its no longer amazingly great hardware line, Apple still knows how to write sound software, which few do.

On the other hand, Microsoft

has insisted one must upgrade office 2011 to the 2016 version. As the loyal reader of this space well knows, the Spy rates PowerPoint behind Keynote for versatility and beauty, Word behind nearly every possible competitor whether past or present (nonintuitive, not a proper Mac app, has difficulty handling documents with pictures and charts, and cannot work well with very large documents).

Excel, on the other hand, he has often touted as the single best instance in the most important software category of all. The spreadsheet created the small computer market, and the Spy believes he may have bought the first copy of Visicalc ever purchased up here in the frozen north country. (Later he switched to The Spreadsheet, but never used the bloated Lotus.) He's got four decades experience building, automating, and using complex spreadsheets, and daily relies utterly on Excel.

This is true at work as well, where faculty budgeting and financial management is done in Vena, a large package of add-ons to Excel for enterprise accounting--slow and non-intuitive, but powerful when you're used to it

To now, Excel's only major drawback has been that VBA is the poster boy for how not to design a programming language--non orthogonal, poorly documented, and hard to use. (Programming language guru mode off.)

But Excel 2016 takes a series of major steps backward from the 2011 version. First, it has a new tendency to slow or freeze in a variety of situations. This is usually temporary, but sometimes one must terminate it and start over from the last time one saved the working document. Third, it still has the bug where it crashes after a long series of data entries. Save early and often because you will lose data. Solution: periodically save, quit the program and start again. Memory leaks. Sheesh!

Third, functionality has been removed. One can no longer tear off a menu item to a standalone strip, nor can one customize the ribbon. Apparently there is an enterprise version one must buy to retain that functionality. But the fourth and worst problem is that VBA macros that worked flawlessly for years are now broken--the main problem being that VBA dialog boxes no longer function properly.

The Spy has by the usual VBA method of trial and error (lousy documentation) rewritten one piece of code so it works, but two others resist all his efforts so far. Perhaps it is time to look at a freeware replacement and rewrite his entire 4M of macros. OTOH, contrary to MS statements, Excel 2011 does indeed still work in Mojave, so he may switch back to it and forget the Mac 2016 product until the next product iteration. On the third hand, how on earth can a major company of such reputed stature introduce such a wretched downgrade, and after two years still not have it properly operational? Like so many of the Dilbertized aspects of modern computing management, it defies all uncommon sense. We have known the principles of sound software engineering practice for decades. Why do so few practice them?

Oh, and the Spy has other upgrades in process with a view to the day when 32-bit software will no longer run. Sigh. More progress. He'll let his reader know. TTFN.

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a. k. a. The Northern Spy) is professor of Computing Science and Mathematics, Interim Dean of Science, and Chair of the University Senate at Canada's Trinity Western University. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several organizations, and participated in developing industry standards at the national and international level. He is a co-author of the Modula-2 programming language R10 dialect. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His articles, columns, and papers have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals (dead-tree and online), and he's a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce have lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. since 1972.

URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: http: //www. TheNorthernSpy. com

opundo : http: //opundo. com

Sheaves Christian Resources : http: //sheaves. org

WebNameHost : http: //www. WebNameHost. net

WebNameSource : http: //www. WebNameSource. net

nameman : http: //nameman. net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: http: //www. arjay. ca

Publisher's Site: http: //www. writers-exchange. com/Richard-Sutcliffe. html

The Fourth Civilization--Ethics, Society, and Technology (4th 2003 ed. ): http: //www. arjay. bc. ca/EthTech/Text/index. html

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