Ever since I first started using Mac OSX, I have been haunted by this strange behavior. On Windows, if I leave the machine to take a much needed break, or to take a phone call, go for a run, take a shower, etc. I can return to the machine later, with my work-in-progress intact, safe and sound. Or downloads in Firefox completed. Or whatever tasks that were left running, either still running or completed.

On the Mac, I have lost much work and time due to the Mac OSX intrusively restarting on its own. Drafts not saved? Say farewell – lost forever. Downloads disrupted – start over (unless resume miraculously works). This is especially exasperating, considering that Apple requires you to update the iPhone SDK/Xcode by re-downloading the whole package. Not patching, but re-downloading a 2GB+ file.

So, why exactly is the Mac restarting on its own, even when it is not idle such as having a download-in-progress?

Turns out that this is due to a rather useless Security feature. Ridiculously, the “Log out after 30 minutes of inactivity” setting is the culprit. So, to save yourself some agony, make sure you turn it off:

If your Mac has been suffering from this problem, hope the above helps!

Seriously, I have no idea what purpose this Security feature serves, other than to make you lose progress in your work. By comparison, on Windows, if the OS logs you out due to inactivity, it actually restores your session with your work-in-progress intact the next time you log in. You can even safely switch between user accounts on Windows, and log back into an account with its last session intact.

P/S: As far as security goes, you should just check the “Require password” option.

This post may come across as blasphemous to ardent Mac fanatics, but I am hoping that OSX users who are in the same predicament as me may find it useful.

I have finally disabled Spaces on Mac OSX. It’s a little painful to disable it, because I had considered it a very crucial feature, considering that without it the desktop gets cluttered quickly with the way the Mac OS presents applications and their respective windows (all mixed together in one very confusing bucket). However, the slide animation that occurs every time Spaces switches from one space to another has become really nauseating.

It was cool at first, but now it is painful to watch.

So much for Apple’s acclaimed emphasis on the “user experience”. Does nobody in the UX team ever stop to think that not everyone likes gimmicky animation stuff for frequent tasks, and there should be an easy way to disable such animations? Unfortunately, there is just no way to disable the animations – I hope to be proven wrong, but my searches have come up fruitless. A quick google visit shows there are other users who wish to get rid of the animation too (and apparently I am not the only one suffering from motion sickness, although most simply want to get rid of the animation just to save time, keeping multitasking slick and snappy).

So, now that I have disabled Spaces, what do I do now with the cluttered desktop? I am currently solving the issue with a little AppleScript and implementation of keyboard shortcuts via Spark – a free utility to create Hot Keys to launch applications and documents, execute AppleScript, etc.

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