After deleting text, Mac automatically selecting text of the same length (yes, in mm) as the deletion - So that you can immediately overwrite what you don't want to

Haumeax wrote:

• Dear Apple developers

This is a user-to-user technical support forum. There are no Apple developers here. I recommend you file an official bug report using this site: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/

Note that the link above is the official bug reporting system. Apple also has a "product feedback" site that unfortunately also uses the word "feedback". Don't get your hopes up about the bug report, but at least it isn't a total bit-bucket like the product feedback site.

When I highlight some text and delete it, the selected area stays selected, i.e., SELECTING THE NEXT SET OF CHARACTERS OF THE SAME LENGTH AS THE DELETED TEXT. When I continue typing after deletion, I overwrite the unintentionally selected text.

Normal function would be NO text selected and the cursor simply remain at the place of deleted text.

It occurs regardless of...

OS X (I experience it at least from 10.8* through the current Sonoma 14.5);

• MacBook type and year (I experience it on both MB Air and Pro from 2010 through the current 2023);

• app/website you are typing in (I experience it in any app integrated in OS X or installed from Appstore – I experience it right now when correcting the current message).

I have no statistics as to the exact proportion of deletions when it occurs vs. when it does not.

Yes. I have experienced this same bug for about the same timeframe.

are there any RULES OF ITS OCCURRENCE so that I can try to avoid it?

It is not reproducible on demand. That makes it very difficult to experiment with. It is just a regular annoyance when it does happen. It seems more common in web-based contexts, but I have seen it in apps too. All I can do for you is confirm that you aren't crazy. This most definitely happens.

You're not talking to Apple here, only other users like yourself. Apple do not praise to read anything here.

For bug reports and other feedback:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Two small comments. Been using Macs for more than 30 years and never had the issue. Also, best to say what apps you're seeing the issue in.

dialabrain wrote:

Which apps?

It only happens sporadically. It isn't common enough to identify specific apps as being more likely to show the problem. It is more common in web sites like this discussion forum and other sites where one would type text. But I've definitely seen it happen in apps too. It is possible that it's a WebKit bug, as many apps are actually web apps underneath.

I would think after using Macs for nearly forty years I would have run into it at least once.

Given how frequently macOS has evolved over that time, you have much less experience than that. MacOS X was first released in 1999, so that's 14 years of your experience gone. Then that OS was ported to the phone, and then back to the Mac. This particular text problem does seem to correspond to when iOS components first started getting ported back over. TextKit 2 was introduced in 2021 and was made the default text engine for all apps as of Ventura.

Haumeax wrote:

still no help after such a long time...

It's just not a big enough problem get attention. Try not to let it get to you. Problems like this simply never get "fixed" per se. Entire frameworks will be regularly rewritten using whatever hip new language or asynchronous paradigm is being pushed that year. When that happens, it changes everything. As I said before, that happened with text only a few years ago.

Software is just smaller version of society as a whole. There's always a budget for building fancy new things, but never enough for the ever-expanded maintenance that all these new things need.

etresoft wrote:

Given how frequently macOS has evolved over that time, you have much less experience than that.

Perhaps you meant it didn't occur the entire time. I have exactly 39 years of experience with Macs.

dialabrain wrote:

Perhaps you meant it didn't occur the entire time. I have exactly 39 years of experience with Macs.

Had I meant something else, I would have said something else.

The Mac that you may have used in 1985 shares no software and no hardware with modern devices. The only similarities are related to user interface behaviour. But even those have evolved.

Curiously enough, this specific bug involves one of the few user interface behaviours that hasn't changed in 39 years. Perhaps you simply haven't written, and revised, enough text to have noticed it.

Yer_Man wrote:

Perhaps. But I did do a Masters and a Ph.D in that time, so I think I can claim to have revised a lot of text :)

Congratulations on the PhD, Dr. Yer_man! I know how much work that is.

I'm not sure which of the different timeframes mentioned in this thread you are referring to. I've only noticed the problem in the past few years.

I don't understand why it's such a big deal if one person notices a problem that someone else doesn't.

I don't understand why it's such a big deal if one person notices a problem that someone else doesn't.

It's not. I merely added my addendum to demonstrate to the OP that the problem is not - in my experience - universal, that's all.

Yer_Man wrote:

It's not. I merely added my addendum to demonstrate to the OP that the problem is not - in my experience - universal, that's all.

That tactic isn't going to work on me any better than it did on the OP.

etresoft wrote:

Yer_Man wrote:

It's not. I merely added my addendum to demonstrate to the OP that the problem is not - in my experience - universal, that's all.

That tactic isn't going to work on me any better than it did on the OP.

It’s not a tactic, just another data point.

etresoft wrote:

Yer_Man wrote:

It's not. I merely added my addendum to demonstrate to the OP that the problem is not - in my experience - universal, that's all.

That tactic isn't going to work on me any better than it did on the OP.

Apparently once you've made your mind up, nothing works.

Barney-15E wrote:

It’s not a tactic, just another data point.

It's totally a tactic. 😄 Has nothing to do with data.

dialabrain wrote:

Apparently once you've made your mind up, nothing works.

You see? That's the point being made here. It's all in my (and the OP's) mind.

It's like if I go to a (different) doctor with symptoms of the plague. He says he's been in practice for over 30 years and has never seen a case of the plague. Ergo, I can't have the plague. It's all in my mind. I still don't feel so good. But he's the doctor, so I go back to work at my job as a prairie dog wrangler in western Colorado.

Of course, the plague is rare. Doctors are human too. Sometimes they make mistakes.

Luckily for me, a well-trained pharmacist sees me trying to buy aspirin, notices my symptoms, and sends me to the ER. I survive and that should be the end of it. But no, the doctor and his golf buddies double-down and keep arguing with the pharmacist about the existence of the plague.

Tactic?

The OP wrote with some confidence that this is a widespread and long standing bug. I offered him the link to report it and - as an aside - suggested that he include in his report the apps where he sees the phenomenon, and also that I have not personally observed it. Nowhere in that do I say “it’s your imagination and the bug doesn’t exist”.

It's like if I go to a (different) doctor with symptoms of the plague. He says he's been in practice for over 30 years and has never seen a case of the plague. Ergo, I can't have the plague. It's all in my mind.

And that’s exactly the same flawed inference. That this particular doctor has never seen a case of the plague simply reflects his/her experience. It has no implications for the existence of the plague or the likelihood that you may have it. I have a profoundly disabled daughter. No doctor we have met in my city has managed a case of Rett Syndrome before. They all have told me so at first meeting. But none of them suggested, implied or stated that therefore my daughter does not have the condition.

That you see a tactic here is, frankly, amazing to me. Keep this up and I’ll have to insist you start calling me Dr. Yer_Man going forward.

:)

Yer_Man wrote:

Nowhere in that do I say “it’s your imagination and the bug doesn’t exist”.

Yes - tactic. And by now you should realize that it isn't working.

That you see a tactic here is, frankly, amazing to me.

It shouldn't be. It was pretty transparent.

Keep this up and I’ll have to insist you start calling me Dr. Yer_Man going forward.

I was just joking. For all I know, your degrees are from diploma mills. The problem with leveraging credentials is that they don't work with anonymity. Their validity depends on their verifiability. If you choose to be anonymous (which is a very smart idea) then you can't use credentials, or claims of experience, for that matter. You can only use logic.

Logically, the bug is plausible. I confirmed its existence and offered what little help I could provide. The OP supplied additional citations. That should have been the end of it. The logical course of action is to observe these developments and say to yourself, "hmmm...perhaps this is a problem for some people." But that didn't happen, did it? 😄