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OS X El Capitan: Disk Utility “designed by morons” design ethic + RAID Support Removed + Wanton Bugs

Apple has destroyed Disk Utility functionality with the release of OS X El Capitan. MPG recommends that RAID users turn to SoftRAID.

The most important thing of all in an OS is not losing your data. Can we count on that from Apple any more? The changes in OS X El Capitan to the crucial Disk Utility application are troubling.

Make it garish, dumb it down, don’t add useful functionality, and make sure the window cannot be resized, since everyone has just one drive anyway, right? Oh, and scare the heck out of your users for good measure, by removing RAID support and inserting obvious bugs.

Memo to Apple: Disk Utility is not an iPhone; it’s a technical tool, a crucial one.

I can’t see most of my drives and volumes any more without scrolling. This makes getting any view of what is there quite difficult (let alone relationships between drives/volumes/partitions), but worse it increases the risks of making a mistake (data destruction) by selecting the wrong disk. But there are gratuitous bugs also, not just crippled visuals.

Disk Utility has always been a tool to format disks, make a RAID, etc. Now it’s a lobotomized garish display of space usage conflated with highly technical info that casual users neither need nor understand. Remember, all but one drive are not the boot drive. There generally won’t be any Apps on those volumes, so how is this helpful? And anyone using 2/3/4 or more volumes is not going to be a novice. So how exactly will non-novice user have any use for the lobotomized hard-coded space-usage graph?

Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan is the worst piece of garbage yet to appear in OS X. MPG even rates the kitchen-sink mess that is iTunes higher.

The judgment shown here is scary. But not a surprise—Apple has been working up to this level of malpractice for years now, making ill-conceived workflow-destroying changes steadily for years. I’ve suffered every day with OS X Yosemite bugs for many months that impair my work. But wait, it gets worse, so keep reading.

Disk Utility window: cannot be resizes to see volumes

RAID be-gone, 14 “Untitled” something

There are 14 “Untitled” somethings listed under one “Untitled” something — huh?

This is scary incompetence taken to putrid new Apple Core Rot levels.

There is no RAID tab any more, and look at the wonderful display of all these Untitled volumes (none of my volumes are called Untitled).

Clearly, this software was not even tested. Rip out RAID support, and hope for the best? This is not just incompetence, it is malpractice, perhaps by a summer intern learning XCode in his/her spare time?

MPG recommends that RAID users turn to SoftRAID.

Disk Utility window: 14 “Untitled” volumes listed one one “Untitled” drive — huh?

Scrolling way down past the 15 “Untitled” nuisances, I find my RAID volumes. Disk Utility does not see fit to indicate the type of RAID (stripe or mirror), or its status (say, a failed mirror drive).

Disk Utility window: RAID-0 stripe volume selected
(DU does not show the type of RAID, or which drives/partitions, or status)

Joe M writes:

Lloyd, this regards your commentary on the El Capitan Disk Utility. You are absolutely spot on here. You were *not* over the top, if anything more restrained than the idiotic situation warrants.

I just got off the phone with an Apple Sr. Enterprise Support Tech. I wanted to hear with my own ears they have no solution -- no KB article with Terminal steps to reformat a RAID0 partition -- nothing. He directed me to the Terminal man page??!! Of course I can figure that out -- I've worked at the system level for decades. What about everyone else?

I reminded him this is an immediate issue, not limited to forming new RAID partitions. If the system crashes and you need to run verify, this is no longer possible from the GUI on a RAID0 partition.

I reminded him Apple is still actively selling RAID0/1 drives which require OS X or other software RAID to work. e.g., G-Tech G-RAID. On Apple's web site it says: "Plug-and-play setup on Mac OS X". This is bordering on false advertising.

Besides the idiotic decision to pull this functionality, I cannot believe the slipshod El Capitan Disk Utility. The column separator between the drive list and the info pane is broken! The cursor turns to a reposition symbol but nothing happens. This is a high school programming error. It should not happen on a mainstream utility from a large tech vendor.

Years ago it was considered a big advance when operating systems moved to longer filenames and identifiers. What is the purpose of those if junky utilities like DU truncate the name? We may as well go back to 5 or 8 character identifiers!

I also cannot believe the mealy mouthed trade press comment on this situation. They act like it's no big deal. It is a travesty -- besides the impact itself, it reveals very poor decision making and awareness on Apple's part.

I just don't get it. Does nobody there have any pride in their work? Many one-man software shops would never dream of shipping something this screwed up.

MPG: Disk Utility is the tip of the turdberg—minds with juvenile (at best) judgment are in charge at Apple (is Eddy Cue the problem?), and the press are almost all intellectual whores to Apple, afraid to lose their preview privileges for new products, hence nothing more than mild stultified criticisms are published. My view is that Apple is now in decline, and these Apple Core Rot symptoms are merely the first lesions to appear (in both iOS and OS X), but the problems have their genesis at a far deeper level. With the loss of Steve Jobs, a leadership vaccuum was created, which has not been filled.

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