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MacChat: 2009 - The age of the Twitpocalypse
29 Comments
John O'Brien
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:00amTEN years ago, when the Windows world was scrambling to head off the looming millennium bug, Mac users just sat back and snickered. Macs already used four-digit years, so there was no need to fear a system crash.
Apple even ran a TV commercial starring the sentient computer HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which said: “It was a bug, Dave. Only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly, saving billions of monetary units. You like your Macintosh better than me, don’t you Dave? Dave?”
Now Mac users have had their comeuppance with a modern day Y2K, but it hasn’t brought down airliners or triggered nuclear armageddon. It’s just been inconvenient for several million Twitter users.
The so-called “Twitpocalypse” has affected several Mac and iPhone/iPod Touch Twitter clients, which run on variants of Apple’s OS X platform.
These include the desktop version of Twitterrific, and both versions of Tweetie. TweetDeck, which runs on Adobe’s AIR platform, was also affected. Bug fixes were quickly issued for Twitterrific and desktop Tweetie, but the fixed version of Tweetie for iPhone/iPod Touch is still awaiting Apple App Store approval.
The Twitpocalypse was triggered by the number of tweets posted on the social networking service exceeding 2,147,483,647 – in maths, the limit of a signed integer.
There are now about three billion tweets, increasing at a rate of more than 150 a second.
Most Twitter apps affected by the Twitpocalypse displayed the regular timeline correctly, but had trouble displaying search results.
While the Twitpocalypse was a minor annoyance compared to the millennium bug, it showed that Mac users are not always immune to flawed code.
Ironically, while the Mac was not threatened by Y2K, the Mac OS is now based on Unix, which had some vulnerabilities to the millennium bug, and faces another threat in 2038.
Jobs gets new liver
APPLE CEO Steve Jobs is back at work after six months’ medical leave, during which he received a liver transplant, according to reports.
Jobs was spotted on the company’s campus in Cupertino, California, and Apple released a press release in which Jobs touted a million sales of the iPhone 3GS on its opening weekend in the US.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Jobs had received a liver transplant in Tennessee two months ago.
The man largely credited for Apple’s design sensibility had been on medical leave since the start of the year, following dramatic weight loss in 2008 that sparked speculation of a return of the pancreatic cancer he beat in 2004.
Jobs had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable, but can require an organ transplant.
It is believed Jobs had the transplant in Tennessee as it has a shorter waiting list than other US states. It is unknown if he is back in a full-time or part-time capacity.
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John O'Brien
John O'Brien writes the MacChat column for The Courier-Mail.
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For those who are interested, 2,147,483,647 is actually the limit of 32 bit signed integers. Using 64 bit integers gives programmers billions of times more headroom… Roll on Snow Leopard!
Wed 24 Jun 09 (07:58am)
Care factor? Dude there are far more intersting tech stories to report on, take your apple blinkers off.
Thu 25 Jun 09 (10:04am)
Fri 26 Jun 09 (01:43pm)
Joe...you do realise this column/blog is called MacChat, right? Maybe it’s just me, but I think that means it talks about stuff to do with Apple.
Perhaps not as blindingly obvious an observation as I thought that might be.
All 7 Mac users back in 1999 sniggered at the so called Y2K crisis?
Thu 25 Jun 09 (10:36am)
Fri 26 Jun 09 (08:24pm)
All 7 nice… Made my day
Sat 04 Jul 09 (10:26am)
LOL! nice 1
Dodgy app equivalent to a dodgy OS? That’s drawing rather a long bow. The threat of the Y2K bug was a threat because of how the whole operating system dealt with dates, potentially affecting every app that called on the OS for date handling functions. An app crashing because of crappy code is an app crashing because of crappy code. OH NOES WURD FREEZED UP I BETTER CHUCK MY WHOLE MACHINE.
Next thing: And do ya really think the Apple programmers won’t change a thing or two between now and 2038?
Thu 25 Jun 09 (12:19pm)
To be fair to Windows, Win2K wasn’t just a Windows problem.
The biggest concern were ageing Mainframes and applications which were controlling major public infrastructure and transactional systems banks and big corporate were still using at the time.
Fixing Win2K compliance for Windows based systems was relatively easy. Fixing it for hardware built in the 70’s/80’s and applications that were written where most of the original developers had long retired was a much harder task.
Thu 25 Jun 09 (12:25pm)
Congratulations windoze users, you can now enjoy your twitter bug free system. Personally I’m much happier with my Mac’s immunity to the literally hundreds of thousands of viruses that windoze is vulnerable to - but hey whatever floats your boat!
Thu 25 Jun 09 (01:54pm)
Sun 28 Jun 09 (02:55pm)
I’d be just as happy with a twitter-free environment
Thu 02 Jul 09 (01:02pm)
I was laughing at a colleague just yesterday who went and bought a Mac. The 2 advantages of a Mac - good for graphic design, and yes, the lack of vulnerability to Win-based viruses. Lets look at those....1) graphic design, if you don’t do it then there’s no advantage, and 2) Win-based viruses are there because the dweebs in their dark rooms write them for Win, not because Win is succeptable to them, if they spent their time they could write just as good viruses for Mac (and every other Unix-based sys) and it only affects Win on such as scale because 89.85% of the world use it! I’ve used Win for 14yrs and never had a virus affect me (got them yes, but not been affected). They infect people who don’t look after their PC. And you Mac users can say goodbye to the plethora of free apps to do a variety of things, and if you’ve gone from Win to Mac then good luck spending the next 10yrs getting used to the lack of 2 mice buttons. Not to mention the huge amount of money you just spent compare to buying a Win system. Enjoy Mac
Fri 03 Jul 09 (12:15am)
Jibbler - Only 2 advantages of having a Mac? You’re having a laugh! What about the fact that it has OSX? That is the best part - no Windows! That in itself is the only reason needed. I can list at least another dozen for you if you like… What would you need 2 mouse buttons for? I have had Macs for 18 years and never needed two, so why start now? Your argument is flawed.
Sat 04 Jul 09 (05:18pm)
the less virus argument is a bit old.. alot of “windoze” users have antivirus protection (and if their smart they didnt pay 4 it freeware)
I havent had a virus since using avast yonks ago!!!
more so why go to apple over “virus protection” when the same can be said for linux OS’s??!!
Sat 04 Jul 09 (05:22pm)
MY GAWD!!! u r kidding right??!! Apple only has 1 mouse button???!!! how on earth do they use programs? google earth?? this does remind me of my friends mac from the 90’s how things haven’t changed (after all can’t u get windows on macs now *snicker* SELL OUTS!! ROFL
Mon 06 Jul 09 (11:05am)
What about the fact that is has OSX? That’s not a reason to get it. All that proves is Apple couldn’t write an OS to save themselves so borrowed UNIX and stuck ‘Windows’ on top of it.
You don’t see VMWare specifically writing & selling Fusion to support Mac on Windows do you?Yet they sell Fusion to support Win for all those users running Mac.Because even though people may use/like Mac,people still need Win.
As for the 2 mice buttons,I can sit back and forward/delete/mark-as-read/move/print an email, create a new folder/shortcut/document, change my viewing options, refresh screens, add to zip, send file to email, select to play/open a file in any number of different apps all using my right mouse button. Using a Mac I’d need to use my Apple/Ctrl/Alt button AND my mouse just to do all that. I wasn’t aware they support 2 mice - woohoo, I’ve changed my mind and now will buy one just for that...not.
And how is my argument flawed? It’s good for design, I admit that and accept it’s part in the world for that purposed but if you don’t design then that’s no good for you. At least Win users accept/acknowledge that Mac has it’s benefits. Mac users are (generally) slightly biased in their view of the world however.
I’d like to hear you’re other reasons to get a Mac tho. I could do with filling in a good 5secs of reading
Macs have supported two mouse buttons since the ‘90s, though they didn’t ship with multi-button mouses until the Mighty Mouse. Jibbler did well to fit so many Mac myths and misconceptions into the one post!
John O'Brien
Sun 05 Jul 09 (01:23pm)
Might have been an interesting article if you had got your facts straight. Just as well it was an article not an add otherwise you would have had to face truth in advertising laws.
Thu 25 Jun 09 (03:48pm)
The article mentions exclusively Mac and iPhone Twitter applications. I thought this was an issue with Twitter protocol. Were twitter applications on windows effected by this? Oh right no one writes applications for windows anymore ...
Thu 25 Jun 09 (04:38pm)
Fri 03 Jul 09 (01:16pm)
I think you should get out a bit more, the only people that are writing applications for windows PCs are 95% of the worlds programers.
Luckly you and your ghey mates on the north shore are in a minority when it comes to spending an extra $500 to have an apple logo on their computers.
This is an issue with the twitter apps created not the operating system it was running on. This should be directed at the developers responsible for building these apps that failed.
Thu 25 Jun 09 (05:22pm)
This is a very lazy article:
Not all twitter users are mac users.
Why precisely do mac users deserve a ‘comeupance’, does their popularity bother you? There is a definite anti-mac tone I’m detecting here.
The ‘Twitpocalypse’ affects *all* twitter clients which were not programmed using a datatype larger than an Integer to store tweet-id’s. This is not a Mac-Only issue. Its a direct result of Twitter’s popularity and its increasing userbase.
Finally, the last paragraph about Steve Jobs is completely off topic and frankly utterly irrelevant to Twitter.
Next time, I hope you to do more than 5 minutes ‘googling’ to find out your ‘facts’.
Thu 25 Jun 09 (09:26pm)
Thanks Spoofy, it’s a refreshing change to be called anti-Mac! My point wasn’t that it affected Mac users only (I mentioned TweetDeck also), but that it was a Y2K-like bug that Macs weren’t immune to. Still, I couldn’t find much evidence online of Windows clients being affected.
John O'Brien
Fri 26 Jun 09 (11:32am)
twitter’s going hell on mac esp with the news of michael jackson having passed away.
Fri 26 Jun 09 (08:49am)
Any computer system, be it PC, be it MAC is prone to software bugs, viruses, successful hacks. You name something that can go wrong with a PC, and that same thing has the potential to go wrong with a MAC. Why is this? Well the software developers for both platforms are only human. All it takes for a bug to sneak into a piece of software is for the developer to mis-interpret how the code will operate under certain conditions, and \ or not have the ability to test every possible senario of their software. (eg you probabaly wouldn’t test pressing button A at exactly 12:23 on the 14th of August 2013, but in the code there may be something which will cause a bug to surface from that date onwards.)
Also, in regards to Y2K \ 2038, yes, they knew of Y2K back in the 1960’s. But it wasn’t until a couple of years out that they decided to fix the problems associated with it. Why would 2038 be any different?
Sun 28 Jun 09 (11:44am)
hey Drjibbler, good try mate, but dont you think some people would be, or might be making virus and other crap if they could, to take down osx and control it remotely? The answer is yes they would by the millions, but it seems they cant. As far as i can Apple keeps their OS updated and secure, MS on the other hand, well we all know their record. Wonder whay they spend all the money on? Certainly not progressing windows or securing it. Seems low-priority for microsoft. Maybe x box. lol
Fri 03 Jul 09 (12:49pm)
Sat 04 Jul 09 (10:36am)
Not true, those people fixing the problems have complete access to OSX because they know where to find the open doors, a hacker will stick with windows OS because the majority of people use it and therefore they knowledge will have more rewards on a windows based system, why would they bother learning a different OS to hack into 10% of the population, your also forgetting, elite hackers dont hack into the everyday persons computer and have fun messing with them, they aim for big organisations that make big dollars, and for some reason none of those organisations use mac, except for apple of course, and maybe a few Graphics companies.
Mon 06 Jul 09 (11:22am)
At least Khasiar is living in the reality of the world
Don’t I think that someone would be trying to take down OSX/UNIX? No, because it doesn’t affect on the same scale. It’s like saying someone will attempt to blackmail ‘Joe Blogg’s Cereal’ by saying they put something in the boxes - they won’t, they’ll blackmail Kellogg’s or Sanitarium because it will affect a massive number of people and get them noticed. Virus makers get off on that. They couldn’t care less if a few hundred thousand are affected, they want worldwide mass hysteria. So, the answer to your question is a big, resounding NO.
As for security, as Andrew points out above, programmers are only human. Nothing is perfect. And other programmers (virus writers) are also human and will look for those flaws to exploit them. And it’s a vicious circle, as virus writers are furiously searching for flaws to exploit, so are MS trying to find the same flaws to resolve them - heard of Windows Update? And a lot of problems arise when users do not keep things up to date and allow the problem to be exploited - heard of the slammer worm?? Fixed by MS 6mths before infection but users didn’t update the patch!!
why couldnt they just use a string value??? the code is like 3 lines longer but much more efficient in the long run
Sat 04 Jul 09 (10:38am)
Mon 06 Jul 09 (05:47pm)
I take it you haven’t written a lot of commercial database applications. Or if you have, let me know which so I can avoid them. String comparisons and indexing do not mix well, to say the very least. Perhaps they could have used an unsigned integer (double the capacity) or a 64-bit integer. I don’t think they’ll reach the limit even with such a growth spurt. “Twittering” is a new fad, and will only be as popular as the fad-of-the-season can be, before it morphs into something else.
Well I bought the G5 based on looks. Who could care if you want expansion ports and all the guff. At the end of the day no computer is future proof so you might as well have one that does what it says (Mac), lets you run software built on different platforms(Mac) gets rid of a big unsightly box that hums (Mac) and has everything built into a massive screen (Mac). Where is the wintel company making a wholely intergrated PC product? I rest my case. By the way I use a Microsoft 2 button USB mouse in Mac.
Wed 08 Jul 09 (10:34am)
Actually most of the Unix machines I admin already use a 64bit time_t, have done for a few years now and will have no OS level problems with the 2038 bug.
The issue will be with applications and some data file formats which will still store the date in a 32bit format. Oh - and macs...shrug
Wed 08 Jul 09 (07:39pm)