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You probably don't remember when Tiger Was New... Or any of the previous new versions... I remember upgrading to Tiger and having far more problems then with previous version Dashboard was killed my system it just filled all the RAM, Spotlight made the system run poky. Some programs crashed etc... The issue is a lot of Mac Users got Mac OS when it was mid cycle 10.4.5 or so. Also Tiger has been around so much longer up to 10.4.11 (Perhaps even a 12) So even if you have suffered from Tiger in its early phases the Pain has left your memory and just remember what worked well. But because of the exponential growth of Apple means most people never used an early version of OS X so they assume that it was always at the same quality.

I haven't had any Major Issue with OS X Leopard after the second install. (It didn't take upgrades to well)

I know exactly what you are talking about. Tiger was, for me anyway on my several systems, WAY buggier then Leopard. So far I have yet to run into the glitches that I ran into on Tiger.

Bottom line is that there are always going to be a few exceptions to the rules when it comes to problems. The blue screen for instance can be caused by a haxie, which Apple never support and the very design of these "applications" do not adhere to standard programming conventions used on the Mac. They often are the cause of broken systems at upgrade time.

There is no way to predict every variable in producing an OS. I have no doubt that by time 10.5.3 roles out most of these problems will be dust.

For the majority of users I don't think there will be issues. They have sold millions of copies and we are hearing of only a small handfull of those millions that are having these serious issues. There has to be something about there configuration that could be non-standard or some app/extension causing a conflict.

Just my 2 cents having been through upgrades since OS 7.5. And believe me compared to some of those upgrades, like 8.0, and others, this is a cake walk!

Yes it's interesting.

When I installed Leopard my thoughts were not "this is bug-free" my thoughts were "this is less buggy than Tiger.0 was"

And so it is I believe.

At this stage Leopard.1 seems more stable than Tiger.1 was.

How can you be disappointed with something you haven't used yet?

I've read some negative stuff about Leopard, but honestly, I haven't experienced anything but happiness with Leopard.

I purchased a family pack license on release day, went home and installed it everywhere, and other than Adobe Photoshop's retarded insistence on a case-insensitive file system (which is Adobe's mind-numbing stupidity and not Apple's), I haven't had a single issue or complaint.

Leopard has been extremely stable for me and a pleasure to use; on all my machines.

I agree.

I've had very very little problems with Leopard, and I really give it a good workout day after day.

And I installed it as soon as it was released.

I've had far more problems with Vista (My Home machine) than I have Leopard (Laptop I use for work).

They all have their quirks.

Some people in this world just like to whine about anything and everything.

Put emphasis on the word *I* and you can see why your statement is more or less irrelevant.

They say that Leopard is buggy on SOME hardware. YOUR is working OK so be thankful for you are happy.

Also you might just not use the bugged functionality, your settings might be set so you avoided bugs etc.

Saying "it works here so what's the problem" is actually pretty ignorant don't you think?

Edited 2007-11-25 12:19

Oh please.

I'll expand, I've installed Leopard on Macbook Pros, iMacs (Old and New), iBooks, Macbooks, you name it, and it's been fine on all of them.
With a lot of different people using them in different ways.

So you've assumed because I'm not having problems, and a lot of other people aren't, that's irrelevant and Leopard is bugged.

Ever think about it the other way? He's the unlucky one and the other large majority of people aren't having any problems at all.

Of course, that wouldn't make for good news would it? =)

As someone said, the problems that guy was whining about was either A.) Fixed already, or B.) Wasn't even related to Leopard.

No OS is perfect, and there will be quirks, but currently , Apple are fixing those a SHIT load quicker than Microsoft are on Vista.

Edited 2007-11-25 12:26

Installation problems for an OS that is only developed for a specific subset of hardware is a "quirk"? Please. Installation is a very basic thing they need to get right.

And exactly what installation problems was there?

I noticed that on 1 of my machines, the hard disk took a while to pick up.

Now people thought this was a bug in Leopard, when in reality, opening up the terminal and looking at what was happening underneath, there was an fsck running on the disk.

Now that's to check that the disk is good for installation, which is fine, why install on a dud disk.
And because everyone has more stuff on computers, different status's etc, it took longer for some people.

Should there have been something saying it was doing a check, yes, probably would of been nice to see a "Checking Disk for errors" but there wasn't, then again, it wasn't that big of a problem for all the other installs I did.

//Apple are fixing those a SHIT load quicker than Microsoft are on Vista. //

And do you supposed that might be due to the fact that there are THOUSANDS OF ADDITIONAL HARDWARE OPTIONS for Windows users, than there are for Mac users? Thus making bugfixes MUCH MORE DIFFICULT to fix for Microsoft that they are for a closed-system like Apple?

No. You probably never considered that. Most Mac fanbois don't.

"Saying "it works here so what's the problem" is actually pretty ignorant don't you think? "

This however is also true the other way around, isn't it? I haven't seen any statistics presented in the article that the author's problems are somehow a mass phenomenon..

I've personally instlled Leopard on a new alu iMac, an older white (intel) iMac and a G4 mini, 2 of which were clean installs and 1 was an upgrade. I've had a grand total of 0 problems. I think that covers a good size chunk of the hardware on which Leopard is supported.

Personally, I think the guy's trolling for hits. The "article" contains no information whatsoever.

Edited 2007-11-26 18:24 UTC

I've installed Leopard on several systems, and I haven't seen any problems.

In situations like this, the squeeky wheel makes a lot of noise. I'd bet there are MANY, MANY more people who are using Leopard without problems, than there are people who are having problems.

And I'd bet the problems are mostly from upgrading existing copies of Tiger rather than blowing the system away and installing onto a freshly formatted system.

I agree. I have installed across dozens of systems since 10.5.1 came out and have had zero problems. And this is across multiple systems, from G4, G5, Intel Core, and Core 2 duo. This also includes various software packages too. I guess Apple and (Microsoft too) can not plan for every possible contingency and have people expect perfection.

Same here. Not a single system failure or glitch.

It appears the exception is being presented as the rule, again.

"forced"??? get a life!

Vista - about 25% of the users have serious problems and most of them have compatibility problems.

Leopard - About 5% report serious problems and 20% report minor compatibility problems.

Big difference.

KDE shows some little crash avery 5 minutes (thought usually you cant tell what crashed) and its apps are as buggy as hell. GNOME is better in overall stability but some of its apps (ie. gPhoto/gThumb) are essentially unusably buggy.

Everything has problems but some have more than others.

"Vista - about 25% of the users have serious problems and most of them have compatibility problems.

Leopard - About 5% report serious problems and 20% report minor compatibility problems.

Big difference.

From where are you getting these numbers? (I was tempted to say, "From what orifice are you pulling these numbers?", oh, I just did. :p)

I'm sure that Leopard works fine on the vast majority of systems; you're always going to hear about problems more than about "no problems here", because the problems are more likely to be reported. But Apple fans should remember that when bashing non-Apple products based on reported problems.

That being said, I have to post these links, because they're pretty funny:
This is a post by Rob Hyndman, telling of the nightmare that his Leopard upgrade has been, calling it the "without a doubt this upgrade is the worst OS upgrade experience I've ever had."
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/14/ive-been-attacked-by-a-leopard...

Now, the problems he describes are interesting, but what's really interesting is that the Jobs worshippers came out in full force to rip him to shreds. Then, a couple days layter, Rob Hyndman calls out the Jobs worhippers for their irrational behavior:
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/15/your-leopard-is-eating-my-self...


Another blogger, Scoble (whom I can't stand, since he's the typical "know-it-all" tech blogger) posted a few entries on how Leopard trashed his system, and taking Apple to task for their "brand promise" and smugness. But eventually he says he's staying with Macs because he's locked himself into Apple software (vendor lock-in, anyone?). (note that Scoble worked at Microsoft a couple years ago, but since then became a big Apple consumer, buying multiple Macs, multiple iPhones, multiple iPods, AppleTV, Apple's high-end video software, etc; he has fully embraced the Apple lifestyle):
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-apple-restart-hell/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/the-brand-promise-of-apple/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/twitter-reactions-to-apples-os-upd...
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/20/why-im-buying-another-mac/

Edited 2007-11-25 19:53

I wonder that, too. In my experience it's north of 30% of the people I know having problems with Vista, and perhaps 5% of the people I know reporting ANY problems on Leopard. Granted, none had an Intel iMac, let alone one with that particular ATI card.



Well, since I do a lot of end user support as well (in addition to telling the machines on the lab to behave -- while sporting a menacing gaze), I don't really think I'm suffering from the echo chamber effect... Given that even my own laptop decided not to connect to the wifi network anymore (which is so weird, since everything works great at home, and both are set up with WPA2)... I just can't vouch for Vista's smoothness.



Whoa, someone had upgrade problems. News at 11.



Please: "Jobs worshippers"?! Poor Sculley, JLG, Amelio; as if there was ZERO brand loyalty back when they ran the company.

There's more to Apple then the showman. You should know -- AFAICT you use their products.

I can't control the behaviour of other people, but I can tell you, without a shadow of doubt, that I don't advocate Apple products out of snottiness; they get my job done, faster, and with a fairly low share of menacing gazes.

(That said, I still don't have a single grey hair, even after experiencing Win95 (RTM, OSR2), WinNT4, Win98, Win98SE, Win2k (RTM to SP4), WinXP (RTM, SP1, SP2), Win2k3 (RTM, R2, SP2); so either my pain threshold is really high, or the fact that I've made money fixing those computers offset having to experience the weirdest issues first hand, at home, as well)

(P.s.: I *liked* DOS and Windows 3.x. I was a wizard at configuring EMS and XMS. I loved being able to load plenty of TSRs and still have over 612+kb of low memory available. And no, I didn't resort to memmaker or QEMM, despite actually liking Quarterdeck's stuff. And of course I ran the one and only Stacker, not the MS ripoffs. And Praise the Lord for DOS4GW and CWSDPMI!)



Forgive me to going completely off-topic here, but this just triggered something I wanted to say for a long time now.

Scoble is a moron. Or, in the fantastic words of the Macalope, HE's the one feeling entitled to whatever Apple never promised to anyone (there's a thing called marketing, you know? Or should I start to cuss Microsoft for not delivering me a computing experience akin to living on green pastures by a gentle, round hill, framed by a blue sky background? Or taking me to a lake at dawn to admire the Aurora Borealis(!!)?...), and really, claiming vendor lock-in to Apple is completely ridiculous. If his newfound mission in life after quitting MS is video editing, and he's so dissatisfied with Apple, he should just sell ALL of his Apple gear for good money and buy an Avid station.

The truth is that most of those bloggers that call themselves journalist have NEVER upgraded a single piece of OS on their own, except when it comes to Linux. I find it extremely suspicious that most reviews praising Vista were made based on review machines that came with it preinstalled, and most reviews dissing Leopard, whatever Linux flavour, and Vista itself, are those where the reviewer actually had the trouble to actually go through the actual upgrade process.

This absolute lack of depth is what makes me hiss and shiver at the idea that those bloggers are getting the same rights (and salaries!) as real journalists. Really, payment by the word, and being obliged to write 1500 per article has always been one of the worst ideas ever, and now that every news piece must have an online counterpart (most times written by God-knows-who), it really shows.

Contrast to Stephen Fry's week(end)ly online column at the Guardian Unlimited. Those are pieces of love, and what a great prose!


Edit: Got distracted and forgot to type two whole words in the middle of a sentence. w00t...

Edit 2: Nostalgia got the best of me, and I just had to add the remarks regarding DOS, Win3.x and the great tools we had back then that ACTUALLY empowered the user. *sigh*

Edited 2007-11-25 20:34

Oh yeah, Baratunde Thurston posted a comment to one of Scoble's blog entries, and pointed readers to his "I Hate the Smugness of Apple" video. It's pretty amusing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbLeFNjYeTs


Scoble also posted this video to his blog:
Apple flacks caught on tape acting like control freaks
http://valleywag.com/tech/great-moments-in-public-relations/apple-f...

Looks like an Apple backlash may be at the embryonic stage.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1016.html

The comic tells it all.

... and in other news 95% of statistics posted without a source are purely ficticious and intended only to prove the author's point.

"Vista - about 25% of the users have serious problems and most of them have compatibility problems.

Leopard - About 5% report serious problems and 20% report minor compatibility problems.

Big difference."

Nice statistics, wouldn't mind seeing something to back it up, because I believe your numbers on Vista problems may be inflated

Possibly the vista numbers are a tad inflated. My source was just an informal survey with among my friends - no big research.

forget??.... forget what?

Oh I remember 10.4.0 and the problems that my labs had, I used to have to unplug the Ethernet before booting to my G5s to start. I begged and pleaded with Apple but they just said "What problem?" guess they forget too

I have had NO ISSUES with Leopard installed on 5 machines ranging from a G4 DA with 1.8Ghz G4 to an Intel Mini and a G5 iMac and G4 Mini and iBook. Not ONE ISSUE. I did 3 upgrades and 2 Archive and Installs.

Edited 2007-11-25 19:33

Nor did I have any issues - but the fact remains there were problems, even for people who bought a computer, loaded nothing on the machine, and still found they had problems.

Yes, I am sure there are some nitwitts out there who go out of their way to make their computing experience more difficult than it needs to be, installing tweaker and hackware. With that being said, it doesn't negate from the fact that there are those who have experienced problems - even with all precautions taken.

You are definitely smoking something bad.

Except for there are millions of people who are not developers testing the product. If you had any software development experience you will know once the general public gets a hold of your software you will find a lot of bugs. he more complex the more bugs. Even with just very simple things... For example I wrote a program and I thought I got all the bugs out and I have tested it for weeks. Then when a user who isn't a developer got on it caused it to break in a second because they just clicked to get focused vs. using the Tab Key. Being Software Developers we tend to think the same way so when we test something we will use tab keys to navigate and use the keyboard more... The code was easy to fix, but I just never thought about testing it neither did the rest of the team.

Oh my god, an excuse for an company who sees itself as primus inter pares, as 'god-like' developers? Please get real, Apple spreads these legends and so people are justifying Apple according to these nonsense sayings. You're paying for this plus on quality, quality which makes people 'think different' =)

Closed OS, well I would teach you a thing or two about OS X but reading the rest of your comments I'm not going to even bother. Your comments say a lot, Vista really was a mess.

Edited 2007-11-25 16:33

Look at you trying hard to appear clever.

in any case, mv-ing a file across drives or partitions is MUCH more risky than cp-ing in ANY instance. Simple basic file-management procedures take care of it. NEVER mv a file across partitions or drives! Do a cp, check the integrity of the moved file, and then rm the original file if the copy is OK. Problem solved! And the world keeps turning.

Why? it should not be. If someone wants to MOVE a file then that is what the computer should do. If someone wants to COPY a file, then that is what the computer should to. When I give the command to move a file then the OS should make the requisite integrity checks, and if something is found be wrong then abort the procedure. That is what the computer is for. I mean seriously do I have to check it arithmetic too?