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Comment by jared314 | Hacker News Reader

I thought there was a way to report these issues to Apple without a public letter. Also, the use of "embarrassing" to describe an unfortunate bug makes this feel like a disingenuous PR stunt.

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We reported this to Apple (that's what the rdar:// link is for, to add to the Radar bug tracking system). The "embarrassing" perhaps stems from our frustration and months of dealing with similar issues, but is something that should have easily been uncovered if apple did dogfooding of the technology before forcing it on developers.

I wrote it up as more of a public service announcement to other Mac developers who might be encountering the same issue.

>The "embarrassing" perhaps stems from our frustration and months of dealing with similar issues, but is something that should have easily been uncovered if apple did dogfooding of the technology before forcing it on developers.

The technology was obviously tested by Apple --they didn't just put something out there--, and it was also available for third party testers to test with the betas.

If nobody had found it at that point, why would Apple? Maybe it's not as common as you think.

There is a way. The bottom of the page and the end of the video link you to rdar://problem/12801387 . However, that is not a public site.

I do not agree with your assessment of what "embarrassing" means. This could as easily be an irate developer as a PR stunt. I believe the latter interpretation is more likely.

Here are some other examples of how "embarrassing bug" is used, in a style which is similar to what is used here:

Cloud computing: Amazon suffered a highly embarrassing bug last spring when part of its much vaunted cloud service went down. Client websites such as Quora and Reddit were temporarily forced offline because they relied on Amazon’s servers - The Independent.

Microsoft's command-line utility for copying files, 'copy', has an embarrassing bug. If you command it to copy a folder into a new location, it instead copies the contents of the folder, and ignores the folder itself. Therefore, it does what you didn't tell it to do, and doesn't do what you told it to do. Therefore, that is an egregious, unforgivable, and incredibly embarrassing bug for Microsoft. -- http://nicholas.rinard.us/2012/07/embarrassing-bug-for-micro...

Incrediblly embarrassing bug CS4 -- http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/945614 (with autosave on, it does not save modified work on exit or ask if the work should be saved)

MICROSOFT`s EMBARRASSING BUG -- http://www.cbronline.com/news/microsofts_embarrassing_bug (2.01 - 2.00 = 0.00 in pre-Win95 versions of the desktop calculator)

As you can see, these aren't all written as PR stunts.

To fanboys it's only 'embarrassing' when it's the other sides problem. WWGS? (What would Gruber say?)

Also when I used to be a Mac administrator, the Apple private databases/forums would drive me mad. God forbid if you could do a Google search for what you are experiencing and find some discussion! Bugs? What Bugs?

There is indeed a way, but you'll get a better response by stuffing a message in a bottle, and throwing the bottle in an ocean. OTOH, if your issue gets some media attention, an Apple engineer will call you.

It's nice to have a blog post and video demonstrating the bug clearly. If I was confronted to this problem trying to save a file, I'd love to find it on Google.

I don't really care whether or not they call it embarrassing or use their own product as an example.

Not being able to handle legal file names is pretty embarrassing as bugs go these days. Path name handling is very testable, and a known source of problem since forever.

Yes. You can report bugs to Apple:

http://bugreporter.apple.com

It is a web interface for Radar and all bugs are triaged by the dev teams pretty quickly. Unfortunately you can't see outstanding bugs or track their progress.

You should also post to Open Radar, which is for that exact purpose.

http://www.openradar.me/

I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a PR stunt. It's an add that essentially says - look how smart we are, and this is our product. I mean no disrespect, but it smells.

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