10.6.2: Still Can't Get It Right

The table view is still børked.

Get It Try It

It's amazing. Really amazing. Here we have a standard industry-wide definition for selection behaviour that's also been a part of Mac OS X right from the beginning (and before that with NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP) and through to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger 10.4.11 and those table view dudes who børked it up with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in October 2007 still can't get it right again. Amazing.

There have definitely been changes. At least since Snow Leopard came out. (Leopard was a complete and utter wash-out.) And there appear to be changes in 10.6.2 as well. As if they're struggling in their cubicles somewhere to fix it. But they've almost made it worse than ever.

There have been reams written about this here and elsewhere. Here's what Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2's table views do (and don't do).

1. Start with a good long table view listing. Make sure you're using a table view and not a browser view.


2. Click a row about 1/3 of the way down. This selects a single row.


3. Skip a few rows down, hold down a shift key, and click again. This creates a selection range.


4. Skip at least two more rows down, hold down a ⌘ key and click again. This starts a new selection range.


5. Skip a few more rows down, hold down a shift key, and click again. This creates a new selection range.


The original selection range isn't affected. And it's not supposed to be. So far so good. Now try the following.

1. Clear the selections by clicking on that first row again.


2. Skip a few rows down, hold down a shift key, and click again. This creates a selection range as before.


3. Hold down a ⌘ key and click the row immediately below your selection range. It looks OK but hold on.


4. Skip a few more rows down, hold down a shift key, and click again. WTF?


There's even more wrong with the Apple table view but the above is a good start. And again: all these 'people' have to do is check the old code. And hopefully sometime before the next millennium (or before Steve Jobs goes into retirement and Apple file for chapter 11) they'll finally get it right.

Gargantuan feat.