Another annoyance in the Grand Robert application that I have been discussing on this blog lately is that, each time you launch it, the application displays a modal splash screen on top of the application’s main window, which has to be manually dismissed with a mouse click before you can start using the application. (The […]
This morning I got an e-mail from the Le Robert developers indicating that an official fix for the problem with the black fields was finally available. As an added gesture, they indicated that the fix included the very latest version the Grand Robert application, presumably with a few more entries and updates compared to the […]
Mac OS X 10.7.4 and Grand Robert: An even better workaround Last week I wrote about a temporary workaround for the incompatibility between Mac OS X 10.7.4 and the Grand Robert application. The workaround, submitted by a Betalogue reader, consisted of editing the css files inside the Grand Robert application package to force the application […]
Nearly three years ago, I wrote (in French) about the absurd design of the user interface for the Grand Robert and Robert & Collins CD-ROM-based dictionary applications, which uses the double-click as a shortcut from jumping from entry to entry in the dictionary, whereas the universal convention in OS X is that a double-click on […]
Last week I wrote about an incompatibility between Mac OS X and the Grand Robert application introduced by the 10.7.4 update. I then wrote an update about the fact that the Grand Robert developer is working on a solution. Since then, I have received some feedback from Betalogue readers, indicating that, since the Grand Robert […]
Last week I wrote about an incompatibility introduced by the OS X 10.7.4 update with the French dictionary application Le Grand Robert. I have since received a couple of e-mail responses from the developer, indicating that they blame the problem on Apple and on version 5.1.7 of Safari more specifically, rather than the OS X […]
With the release of the 10.7.4 update, I can now report on this bug that I have been living with for the past several weeks, with my prerelease copies of the update obtained via the AppleSeed program: Yes, that’s the search field in the top-left corner of the application’s main window. It’s the singlemost important […]
J’ai déjà eu l’occasion de parler des aspects extrêmement frustrants de l’interface utilisateur des logiciels du Grand Robert et du Grand Robert & Collins pour Mac OS X. Aujourd’hui, j’ai des solutions à proposer. Grâce à Keyboard Maestro, il est en effet possible de contourner certains des aspects les plus exaspérants de l’interface de ces […]
As a French translator, I make heavy use of my Grand Robert dictionary application for Mac OS X. It’s not a very good Mac OS X application (see this blog post—in French, sorry—for more information), but I am afraid it’s the only version there is. Sadly, Snow Leopard introduces a new cosmetic problem that was […]
En tant que traducteur professionnel, j’utilise évidemment beaucoup les dictionnaires. Les dictionnaires Le Robert sont pour moi des outils indispensables. Pendant longtemps, je me suis contenté des versions imprimées, en particulier parce que les versions électroniques soit n’étaient pas disponibles pour le Mac (dans le cas du Grand Robert) soit proposaient une interface d’une bien […]
As you know if you’ve read my recent blog posts, I’ve had a bit of a torrid time with my 2014 Mac Pro in the past few months, because of a recurring problem with random video freezes. It turns out that, contrary to what I had believed earlier on, the problem was not hardware-related, but software-related […]
I don’t know it is bad luck or something else, but I have certainly experienced my share of hardware flaws and failures with Apple products over the years. I am not talking about more or less predictable failures here, like conventional hard drives failing after a few years, or power adapter cords becoming frayed (although […]
There are on-going issues with Mac OS X’s Mail application when it comes to selection highlighting. Some of them date back to the first release of Lion. Others are new to recent builds of Mountain Lion. But they all are issues that Apple does not seem to care much about or be in any hurry […]
A few years ago, I wrote about using the Fluid utility to build a stand-alone browser (based on Safari) for the TERMIUM on-line terminology database. Since 2010, TERMIUM is actually a free service, which means that anyone can now use it without having to pay a subscription fee. Having a stand-alone browser for TERMIUM is […]
What’s the point of submitting bug reports? That’s the question I used to ask myself when it came to Microsoft and its crappy software, but I must say I am increasingly asking myself the exact same thing with Apple and its own software offerings. The two pieces of Apple software that I use the most […]