Comments on: Snow Leopard’s Giant Step Backward

By: Karla

Karla — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:19:41 +0000

Don’t you have a way in the Mac to specify which extensions are opened with which applications? In Windows, in the File Types dialog box, you can map an extension to an app. e.g., if you want gifs to always open in PhotoShop instead of Microsoft Office Picture Manager. I would suspect if they changed the underlying code to open by extension, then they should have added that capability, too.

By: Ross

Ross — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:52:20 +0000

Peter, I think LaunchCodes will work great for you. I use TextMate every day, and I no longer have the problem of files opening in TextEdit.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:44:15 +0000

I am also annoyed. I use TextMate for all my text editing, and I do a lot of it. I use TextMate more than all Microsoft apps put together. I’ll use TextMate to create bits of router config and save it. When I double click on the file, it opens in Text Edit.

I’m nearly ready to delete Text Edit.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:20:13 +0000

Nick, I feel your pain. I think the handwriting is on the wall as far as the future is concerned; I don't expect Apple to cave in, no matter how much we complain. I really think the best solution right now is LaunchCodes.

By: Nick Bonoff

Nick Bonoff — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:05:10 +0000

Although I’ve had it for some time, I installed Snow Leopard only three days ago. I had a hunch that Leopard did everything I wanted, but I nonetheless followed Apple’s advice as I always have done. I always go for their upgrades. This time I’m really sorry. SnLeopard is painfully slow. Photoshop takes forever to open and close. ANd now there comes the crowning outrage. My Photoshop JPG files are no longer saved as such. This means wasting a lot of time. How can they be so stupid as to do away with creator codes?!!?
I work with different programes, image and text, and I’n damned if I want the versatility that I so admired in Apple taken away. Apple is hijacking other people’s brands in much the same way as Supermarkets do, and rebranding them as their own.
A petition might be a good idea……

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:08:41 +0000

Update: please see our post about LaunchCodes

By: cognonaut

cognonaut — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:56:08 +0000

For me, it looks that the creator code (of the resource fork) has been moved into the metadata of the file.
The problem is that TextEdit does still write to the resource fork, and leaves the metadata unchanged.
I agree Ross, this is a step backward, but it is to the applications to make the step, not to the OS.

When you manually change the “Open with” property, use `mdls` from the terminal shell to see the change.

So I ask myself: why does TextEdit not change this metadata property?
I may be ill-documented and badly announced.
That, in turn, would be a shame for Apple, indeed.

Could someone please comment?

By: Norman Preston

Norman Preston — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:46:06 +0000

Hear! Hear! I agree

By: BCC

BCC — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:28:40 +0000

I’ve never think of this as a problem before upgrading to SL, but yesterday when I finally upgraded to SL, I feel other people’s pain in this regards.

I often create forms in Acrobat. Before all I have to do is to Get Info on the PDF I created and choose “Open with” to Acrobat and I’m good to go, and the setting remains even after I edited and re-saved the file. I still like all the other PDF files to open in Preview because of the near-instant loading time.

Now in SL, if I do the same thing, those specific files I chose to open in Acrobat still open in Acrobat, while others open in Preview… UNTIL I opened and edited the file, and do a “File > Save”. Now those PDFs will re-associate themselves back to Preview.

I’m not a computer expert so Apple shouldn’t make me (and among many other users like myself) deal with workarounds or setting scripts to deal with this problem. This has to be fixed.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:58:42 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with you. This should be, at least, configurable through the Finder prefs, or the System prefs, but it’s really annoying. Maybe there’s a hidden defaults key/value one can change through the command line?