Ok so I've been using every version of Mac OS X since it's release all the way back to before it was called "Mac OS X" when it was called Rhapsody, when it was called Mac OS Server, and when it was NeXT Step and Open Step. I've used each one all since their release to the public and there's one problem with them all that I just cannot stand. The problem seems to be at the core of the OS and also seems to have never been addressed or mentioned. I'm talking of course about Mac OS X's inability to choose a random Desktop Picture ACTUALLY at random...

Apparently a google search for "why does mac os x random desktop-picture suck so bad?" yields nothing very useful. As far as I can tell the OS seems to use a really "dumb" random algorithm that's based on some commonly reoccurring seed value or something; like the last digit of time represented in binary... In my collection of 191 desktop pictures, the OS's random chooser function seems to always pick the same pictures very frequently. I have 2 displays on my Mac and both are set to randomly choose a new image from the same folder of 191 pictures every 30 minutes. In a given day I've seen the same picture get chosen 2-4 times. Each display in theory uses it's own random selection. THis happens with such frequency that when I do happen to look in the pictures folder, I realize that there are some pictures that I've not seen in months, and basically forgot I had.

This issue seems to affect more than just the Desktop Pictures. It seems to also affect iTunes' random/shuffle function. I'm sure it's a different randomizer function, but I bet it's based off the same initial code. It seems to want to choose the same songs and the same albums over and over again. Who knows why?

Additionally, Today I got locked out of the http://developer.apple.com website when I tried to log into my account. When you do fail at typing your password 3 times your account is "locked for security reasons" offering no way to unlock it. Locking after 3 failures is nothing new, but there's no indication it will lock after 3 attempts. The only option once it is locked, is to "contact us" and fill out a whole descriptive form... It seems logical to me that their system should send an email to the account's registered email address with information about a failed login attempt and instructions on how to unlock it. That way, if you were legitimately trying to log in, you could continue to, and if you weren't, that prick trying to hack your account would just be locked out. Why is this such a foreign concept? Come on guys, it's not government secrets' it's the iPhone SDK and a bunch of useless documents on WebObjects and the Core Audio update from 2001...