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Comment by bradgessler | Hacker News Reader

I too have become annoyed recently at really basic stuff not working in macOS, like I can't drag and drop a picture out of Photos app into Pixelmator to edit. In fact, dragging and dropping a picture out of Photos into any application is completely broken and doesn't work. Its as-if the Apple QA team no longer tests to make sure their applications play nice with each other in a way that has been fundamental to desktop computing since the desktop OS was invented.

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At the same time, Windows 10 on my Dell laptop will heat up, spin the fan noticably and something called "Service Host: Local System" will consistently use 48 - 52% of CPU when the laptop is sitting doing nothing at all, with no applications open. I really can't understand what it's doing but have a hard time taking it seriously as an operating system.

Check the resource monitor to see which service that corresponds to: it's likely Windows Update since they changed it to mine Bitcoin or something about a decade ago when it went from being I/O to single-core CPU bound.

This is just a guess -- being very late to the conversation -- but in case someone even later is curious, this may be the well documented case of the .NET framework recompiling libraries in the background after an update.

It seems like it will never finish, but it does ... eventually. However, the lack of any UI, any indication of its presence or its progress, and also that killing it will just make it come back later are all pretty hostile.

(Google for more info.)

I'm not sure what it is but it's amazingly inefficient: I notice it most when downloading VMs from https://modern.ie because as soon as I start a test VM the updater will run and then it's multiple hours + reboots before a browser in the VM is remotely usable.

Is this a serious statement, that windows update mines Bitcoin?

No - just my boggled speculation about the kind of work which would tie up a modern CPU for hours installing a few GB of files. (SHA-256 could hash each file in a couple seconds)

A MS engineer posted a lengthy blog post on why this is the case. The ridiculous time has to do with insane system state and dependency checking for every update and each one in history before it, since Windows Update allows you to add or remove every little update ever for the OS.

The Rollup updates that MS moved towards, even in Windows 7 now, is supposed to help this. However, a completely new solution is really needed to replace this antiquated one, like many other lingering parts of Windows.

Decompression. They probably weighed compression time vs file size and realized that every byte not downloaded is money saved on bandwidth.

No.

Come to think of it, that's actually an interesting monetization scheme. "You can use our software for free, but when your computer idles, we use x% of its computing power for mining cryptocurrency" (or whatever profitable endeavor). It's of course disastrous from an environmental perspective, but still interesting.

And if it doesn't idle enough, we'll make it.

This is very likely it from my experience as well.

Macs do the exact same thing

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/233061/maspushagent...

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/111197/runaway-dist...

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/150945/nsurlstorage...

There are plenty of other examples

It happens on OS X. Kernel freezes as well.

Svchost.exe is a bonkers bit of design that goes against the simple, basic separation of concerns that OS-level processes provide by running multiple "services" as DLLs loaded into one process. This makes it extremely hard to pinpoint which service is faulty.

Apparently the magic runes are

    sc config wuauserv type= own

Just go into Task Manager, Details tab, right click on the columns and add "Command Line". Now you can see what each svchost does.

That helps a little, but fundamentally the runtime of a module is still "billed" to the svchost.exe process as a whole - so if a particular one is at 100% of a cpu, you can't tell which module is causing the problem.

This kind of bug is not unique to Windows.

Seriously as I am typing this right now, on Mac OSX, the "kernel_task" is using 50% CPU for no apparent reason and fans have been running for > 20 minutes

> I really can't understand what it's doing

Probably backing up your files to government servers :-)

I used and loved iPhoto and then I had a great (first impression) of Photos until I tried to do the thing you describe: DRAG AND DROP. Apple forums provided an answer (I would call it a work-around) with their usual condescending tone: hold Alt while dragging, and you can at least get a copy of the photo/video of interest into a folder in the Finder.

I just tried it in Photos 2.0 (macOS Sierra 10.12.3) and it works as expected - drag'n'drop from Photos to Finder copies files into selected Finder folder.

I recently discovered the detailed and amazingly accessible Aqua Human Interface Guidelines from their golden years have been completely gutted and replaced with the macOS guidelines that cover only the basics. They've abandoned years of accumulated wisdom. Luckily the old versions still float around in PDF form, the first few chapters are just good timeless UI design advice.

http://interface.free.fr/Archives/AquaHIGuidelines.pdf In case anyone else is interested.

Photos overall is a trainwreck. Options are hidden and hard to find, anything beyond "tag this image with your auntie's name" is way harder than it should be... and this without ever mentioning the dreadful "I'll quit when I want to, not when you tell me to" backend process.

I've noticed this as well. I use a "workaround" in the form of Yoink: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yoink/id457622435

Yoink seems to trigger a file export in Photos. Why that doesn't happen with other programs is anyone's guess.

I put "workaround" in quotation marks because this is really how I do all dragging and dropping between programs in macOS, since I tend to run stuff in full screen.

Is it even possible to chose a photo out of your photo librry from a browser's file upload dialog? I don't think it is, when the photos are in iPhoto. How many steps does it take to get a picture off your camera, into iPhoto, then exported, and finally uploaded to Craigslist?

Scroll down to the 'Media' section in the sidebar.

Select 'Pictures'

There you'll find all your pictures in Photos

Photos should show up as an icon in the side-bar? Rather than navigating to the actual files I think you're meant to access them this way. It's a good idea and used to work better in my memory - these days it can be a bit finnicky to find the photo you want.

It is possible and very easy. Just drag the photo from iPhoto to the upload dialog.

You can't copy and paste an image out of Photos, either. It's really quite ridiculous.

1. Open Photos.

2. Select Photo.

3. Edit Menu -> Copy.

4. Open TextEdit.

5. Edit Menu -> Paste.

It is ridiculous. Ridiculously simple.

After some experimentation, it turns out my problem was that I expected - ridiculous, I know - that it would copy image data in some form that's comprehensible to Gimp, Firefox and Thunderbird. So I now rather suspect that Photos is using some new API, that Gimp/Firefox/Thunderbird aren't, and that this new API is, for no particular reason that I can see, not remotely backwards-compatible.

Feels like this forms a data point for the thread - since meanwhile, on Windows, I have a couple of programs in my bin folder that I use fairly regularly that I compiled in 2006.

Yes you can - I've just done it.

Instead of being condescending you could have explained how to do it.

Sorry, it really was a question of selecting a picture and the selecting copy from the menu. I wasn't trying to be an arse.

I know this isn't the point of the comment, but Yoink works perfectly as an intermediary for this. I use it dozens of times a day for various things but this one in particular is a lifesaver.

> really basic stuff not working

Try selecting text in a Windows dialog box, such as the "About" box. It doesn't work, it never did as far as I can tell.

But isn't it sad if MacOS has to be compared to Windows to relativize its flaws? People were using it because they felt it was BETTER than Windows, not because "both are meeh".

Also arguably, selecting text in a dialog box (instead of copying the whole text) is a lot less used feature than drag&drop of photos.

Ctrl-c works though.

Is dragging a photo to the Desktop and then into the app really a huge deal? Just curious, because that works fine for me.

It's not a big deal, but it's a death by a thousand cuts. These little things that used to be part of the refined experience of OSX are turning the "just works" part of their slogan into "damnit, why can't I"

That's called a work around. Its not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but its not something you'd call a desirable design trait for a desktop app.

And then deleting or moving the photo from the desktop afterwards. So, three steps as opposed to one. For a feature (drag n drop) that's all about convenience.

Ah, that Apple mantra. It's not hard because it's hard, it's hard because you don't do it OUR WAY. Do it OUR WAY and everything is easy.

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