NSLog();

I recently had reason to do two things:

1. clear my entire ~/Library/Cache folder
2. convert my day-to-day user to a non-admin user (and to create a new admin)

I also switched to a backup partition due to a hard disk failure, and renamed mdimport "mdimport.bak" temporarily so that it wouldn't fire up and "use" the disk I was trying to repair.

Turns out I forgot to rename it back, and one of the questions I was going to ask here was "why don't I see dimensions for my JPEGs and GIFs in column view anymore?" They've already begun to show up, so, that answers that question before I can even ask it.

At any rate, one problem in particular has surfaced: Safari has gotten super picky about favicons. Both this site (NSLog();) and The Sand Trap have favicons, but Safari is choosing not to display them. They appear as you would expect in various themes in PulpFiction, yet I cannot get them to display in Safari. This not only affects the location bar, of course, but bookmarks as well. I'd like to force them to re-appear. I can load the Favicon directly in Safari, but visiting a page won't load it. They load in OmniWeb and Firefox, too. Grrr…

The other minor annoyance: replacing applications. I'm not an admin, so I have to authenticate first. What's annoying is that the sequence goes as follows.

1. Dialog saying "you have to authenticate."
2. I click "Authenticate"^*
3. Dialog asks me to "Stop" or "Replace."
4. I click Replace.
5. Dialog finally prompts me for username and password.

Now, because I am an admin, this is fine. But imagine a user who isn't being asked to replace something they won't have the privileges to replace. Why not flip the order in which those two dialogs appear?

As for the ^*, this has to be one of the most poorly written dialog boxes in all of Mac OS X:

There are several problems here, not the least of which being the outright lie: I can modify "Applications." I just have to authenticate first to do it. Other issues:

• "OK" acts like "Cancel" by dismissing the dialog and forgetting about the copy (in this case, dragging a new version of an app to the Apps folder to replace and old one).
• The dialog times out and takes the non-default action ("Authenticate").
• "OK" is not a verb.
• I'm never asked a question or informed what the "Authenticate" button might do.
• Shouldn't "Authenticate" have an ellipsis in it?

At any rate, what would be so wrong with this:

The "Applications" folder can only be modified by administrators.
Would you like to authenticate as an administrator?
[Authenticate] [Cancel]

Seems to make a whole lot more sense to me. And I'm not sure I'd have it time out, either.

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