Lars Pasveer wrote:
I have left info at Mac OS Feedback, including tech details and so on. But by Apple's own admission they will read that, but probably not reply. So it's basically a memory hole you drop your support request into.
If you want to look at it that way, Discussions is an even bigger hole: it isn't for support requests to begin with & it is filled with user speculation, off-topic diversions, vague & incomplete information, & often Subject headings so broad or obtuse that they are practically guaranteed to accumulate posts about many substantially different issues. It is at its most useful when a topic concentrates on one user's issue, at its least when dozens of users add a bunch of "me too" comments without specifics that mostly confuse things instead of clarifying anything.
Which brings us to this forum and whether or not Apple reads it. Recent antenna reports on the iPhone 4 were heavily redacted and some threads were even removed, so there is al least some conscious editing going on.
It should come as no surprise that the forum moderators edit posts or remove threads that do not meet Discussions guidelines; it may be a surprise that a large number of requests for moderator attention come from forum users -- anyone who reaches level 2 or above has "report this post" links below every post to do that. The number one reason posts are removed is for violating the terms of use, a frequent occurrence when users are more interested in ranting than posting anything constructive. That is very annoying to many users that volunteer their time to help others, not to waste their time wade through a lot of useless venting, so the most blatant posts tend to get reported very quickly.
I just find it curious that it takes a year of reports on this topic, with nearly fourty thousand views and there's still no solution or indication Apple is working on it. It is a genuine, recurring problem people have.
Views don't mean much. I subscribe to dozens of topics & read every new post even when my interest is in helping solve an issue I don't have. Many others do the same. Others are just curious or are looking for issues that might apply to them. What really counts is the number of unique users posting that they have the identical issue & you can't get that from either the view or post count.
Aside from that, it is well known that Apple almost never comments on an issue until it has a solution, & when it does you are likely to find out about it in Discussions only if some user posts a reference to it.
This is only something Apple can fix and not something I'm eager to try myself, with kernel, kernel extensions and other low-level tweaks.
Apple usually fixes what it breaks, & occasionally what third party software does. But an error like a channel timeout exception is not necessarily due to a fault in the OS X kernel or an Apple-supplied kernel extension. Exceptions occur all the time; the robustness of a kernel is measured by its ability to recover from them. If a particular app is the only one causing them, chances are good that the fault is in the application's programming; if several of them cause them it is more likely an extension is involved, but not necessarily an Apple-suppled one.
This is why it is important to include comprehensive info -- what may seem to be the fault with something Apple supplied may or may not actually be the real culprit.
