Submitted by “Leopard started out with a generous share of first-version glitches, but almost all of them have now been resolved by the second of two automated updates, which brings Leopard up to version 10.5.2. Finally, Leopard is extravagantly overdressed for the jobs that it’s designed to do, and its pervasive eye-candy starts out looking dazzling but soon becomes distracting. Fortunately, from the beginning, the OS started out with options that let you put it on a low-eye-sugar diet, and the latest update has even more.”
Conservative Rush Limbaugh pleaded with the liberals running Apple to fix his problems that didn’t get resolved with 10.5.2 upgrade.
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9871348-37.html?tag=newsmap
Edited 2008-02-21 15:40 UTC
it’s by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers
No it is not. It may be a very nice OS. It may be the best thing since sliced bread for everyone with suitable Apple hardware to run it on. But the best OS for most people, it ain’t as long as it involves them in a total hardware replacement to get it. Because Apple hardware is not the best hardware ever shipped for the vast majority of consumers. So an OS that forces them to get this hardware to run it simply cannot be the best for them.
What we see emerging here is a marketing slogan originating in Cupertino for mindless recital by the faithful in puff pieces masquerading as reviews and articles. Like many or most marketing slogans its a wild distortion of the facts. Like most Cupertino ones, and like the Party Line about OSX being in some way open source, it is a wild distortion, but it also has cultish overtones which make it more unpleasant than most.
Macs are fine if you like that sort of thing. They are indeed the right choice for a rather small minority of people. What they are not is the best computer ever made for the vast majority of consumers, and its quite gross to hear people parroting this sort of thing over and over again. It is in fact counterproductive for this reason. For every faithful follower who nods his head reading this sort of thing, there will be 10 or 100 outsiders who will say to themselves, no, not for me, Steve. Not like this.
I dont see a issue with Apple(or any vendor) making a OS that runs optimally on the hardware they choose, it means they can properly use SSE3 optimizations to get the best performance rather than having to rely on memory caching /prefetching so it works fast with any hardware.
If your in any doubt about OS X not being fast on other hardware I can tell you now it’s simply not true(see hack*ntosh).
I think the new stuff in 10.5.2 is great, it didn’t take them long at all to fix and add features which people asked for or moaned about. People like you should get over the money and hardware thing, Apple is proprietary, they can set up a business how they like with what hardware they like and one things for sure, you know your going to have to pay more for Apple stuff which is a fact, dont like it dont buy it.
“”it’s by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers””
“No it is not. It may be a very nice OS. It may be the best thing since sliced bread for everyone with suitable Apple hardware to run it on. But the best OS for most people, it ain’t as long as it involves them in a total hardware replacement to get it. ”
Actually, you are missing the point of the authors statement. The fact that it requires Apple hardware does not negate what he said. It probably is the best OS for most users. The fact that it would be the most expensive option does not change that.
I have spent a lot of time helping people with Windows problems, mostly for free as I am retired, and I can tell you with certainty that most would be far better off with OS X for what they use a computer for. It surely would make my life easier if they would switch.
And before you blow me off as an Apple Fanboy, I will admit that I do use OS X after more years than I care to mention of using Windows. I will also say, though, that having learned computers using vacuum tube systems many years ago I have experienced many different OS’s. And speaking from that perspective I have to agree with the author.
BTW, this is being written on my BSD machine. I am an OS junky, I suppose because I like using just about anything but Windows. 🙂
I concur with the statement that OSX is the perfect OS for the majority of users. I also buy that it’s trumped by the fact that it’s only licensed to run on Apple hardware (albeit, we all know its possible to run it on non-Apple hardware).
I come from the perspective of having used about 25 different operating systems over the years and there’s good and bad points to all of them. OS X offers the most unobtrusive and efficient environment for what I would consider average home and business use, as well as more advanced media-related uses.
Despite saying that (and using OS X as my desktop environment at home and work), I have more affection for Linux than OS X. OS X does what you’d expect it to, and it does it efficiently and elegantly. Linux, does what you tell it to, sometimes elegantly, and with brutal efficiency (given that you know what you are doing).
Windows is a mixed bag. The OS (Vista or XP) works well, but has far more annoyances and unexpected behaviors overall. It supports a wide range of hardware. Linux supports more, but Windows supports new hardware earlier; Linux hardware support tends towards maturation (works better with time), whereas Window hardware support tends to stagnation (no improvement, often dropped completely with time. Windows’ strength is the quantity of software available, though my experience is that the quality/reliability is highly variable and on average less than its peers.
I’d like to see OS X embrace non-Apple hardware. I’d like to see checkpointable processes, a better virtual filesystem layer that plug neatly into Finder (think KIO), and user-settable AppleDouble / AppleSingle support transparently applied to filesystems (like CIFS and NFS) that don’t support multiple streams (like NTFS and HFS+ do), hooks into .Mac made hideable, and .Mac features supporting domain hosts of your choice.
“I concur with the statement that OSX is the perfect OS for the majority of users. I also buy that it’s trumped by the fact that it’s only licensed to run on Apple hardware (albeit, we all know its possible to run it on non-Apple hardware). ”
You make some very good points. I do a lot of Audio/Video work and simply put OS X is the best OS presently out there for this, unless you happen to have a few hundred thousand dollars to spend. As for the average computer user, they mainly do email, finances, and web browsing. All of which is pretty much seamless in OS X.
I agree, it would be nice if Apple would release OS X for any Intel based system. But, I think they should do so with the caveat that if you run it on non Apple HW do not expect support from them. I think they would more than make up for any lost HW sales from sales of the OS itself.
Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.
What’s so onerous about a hardware replacement? Most computer owners already do that every few years anyway, why would it be worse to replace a Windows machine with a Mac, rather than a newer Windows machine?
Leopard has been great for me on a Powerbook G4 12″.
This review does seem to take a pretty good stock of Leopard’s strengths and weaknesses. Apple did make some right moves with 10.5.2. Some of the areas he highlights as improvements can still be sticky areas for some users, especially networking with Windows. It’s always been hit or miss.
Some of the features of Leopard were not a big deal to me at first – like QuickLook – but have become more interesting as I have begun to use them. I am also going to have start taking advantage of the smart searches feature.
I guess the next question will be – what else does Apple have planned for the rest of Leopard development? Where do they go next? It will be interesting to see.
Lucky for you… Leopard wont even install on my 15″ Powerbook G4… keeps crashing to the “You need to restart your computer” screen. =\
If you’re using cheap third party RAM, you might consider something more stable.
It’s a mixed bag. I installed it on my 15.2 inch PowerBook G4 only to see performance drop in a big way, while Intel-based machines have seen the opposite.
I re-formatted the drive last night and re-installed and the performance drop is even more significant for some reason.
It’s a good operating system, but Apple often targets things they want, things that have little meaning to consumers. I don’t use Dashboard Widgets or Exposé but they certainly garner attention because of their visuals.
Surprisingly for me, on this little Powerbook G4, Dashboard is actually usable after the graphics update and 10.5.2. I’m not sure why exactly… but there is no lag when I open Dashboard now. Normally, I just turned it off as something that I couldn’t use.
However, I did end up wiping my hard drive and installing Leopard from scratch though. I did not upgrade. This also means I have a lot less system enhancements now than in Tiger.
Is it disk churning that’s causing the system to go slower, or is it response times? I’ve got a pokey MacMini G4, and I used Onyx to disable the OS animations (window, sheet &c.), which helps with snappiness.
Neither, it’s the fact that with 10.5.0 and 10.5.2, but not 10.5.1 + security update, the system won’t allow any single task to go above 90 % CPU usage. What they did during 10.5.1 and the security update, I don’t know, but they took it away. Even then, it was much more slow than 10.4.10 was.
Virtual memory looks just fine but it looks as if they’d installed a CPU governor to keep a single task from holding the CPU hostage.
General responsiveness seems reasonable for a 3 year old machine with a 4200 rpm drive and 1.5 GB of RAM but long running tasks take a very long time. I’ve been running folding@home for instance and it went from 36 to 69 minutes per percent after upgrading to 10.5.2.
Since the re-format/re-installation, 48 minutes is looking more like 90 minutes and it has the same level of system software as before the re-format: 10.5.2.
Oh that’s right! Kensington and Crucial are cheap third party RAM!
They work great in Tiger but they stink up the joint in Leopard.
Sorry: The Installer.app is BROKEN.
“Oh that’s right! Kensington and Crucial are cheap third party RAM!”
I believe he said “IF” and did not make a judgment. He was just offering a suggestion as to what you might look at. And what he said was correct.
Tyrlone,
The guy was trying to help? I’m glad noone else tried to help, a war could have started – lol…
It could be the installer, but more likely, it is something the installer is trying to do that your machine fails to do…
Anyway, good luck if you try and work it out…
Edited 2008-02-21 21:39 UTC
Kingston is very good ram, it’s branded well known ram and if I had to put a computer together I’d put Kinston ram in(my custom made computer is and has)
The computer place I used to work at swore by it, rarely did they get any bad ram back and usually switched it with people having bad ram issues themselves. I may not be talking about Mac’s but they use the same kingston ram(assuming they do at all) and if the manufacture recommends it you have a case if anything goes wrong, unlike non recommended ram no matter how good it clams to be.
Edited 2008-02-22 12:58 UTC
Who said anything about those brands? Are you admitting to also being gjames, the person who first posted about being unable to install Leopard?
I’m always surprised when people say they don’t use Expose. After I moved to Panther, I couldn’t go back to Jaguar because I had come to rely on Expose. When I use Windows XP, Expose is the one thing I miss most. I haven’t used Vista yet so I’m curious to see how the new window switching feature works. I usually work on a laptop, mostly my aging iBook G4, and I navigate almost exclusively through keyboard shortcuts. Expose is an important part of that.
Run your Hardware Test on the original install CD you got with the machine. Could be bad RAM or a fault on the Logic Board.
Secondly, run a full disk repair from the Leopard disc, you could have mild corruption. This should always be the first port of call, I’ve seen so many problems simply related to HFS+ corruption. If you’ve got it, use something a little more powerful like Disk Warrior.
I have come to like leopard overall. While there was a lot of gnashing of teeth as a number of my smaller utilities and apps STILL don’t work at all with leopard, I think it was a little better than the upgrade to tiger.
One thing I’ve noticed is the abysmal video performance on my macbook (I know.) I got the driver update, but there’s still a lot of visual tearing, and what appears to be slow fill rate for repaint events. If you’re on a macbook, try this for me and see if it’s just me: Make sure no other window is open on screen, and open a really large menu that extends off screen (like a fonts or bookmarks menu.) Scroll the menu up and down really quickly with 2 fingers on the trackpad. Do you get blocks which are not filled in with white, but are transparent, and you see the desktop image. (!!) What’s the point of having a composited video system and pushing all the legwork to the back end when the back end can’t keep up? Tiger was fine here.
Aside from the video performance, I STILL have trouble stomaching a lot of the theme changes. It’s SO DRAB AND HEAVY. Anxiously awaiting progress on the themeing front.
I’m running 10.5.2 with the graphics update and I’m not seeing what you are seeing as I scroll through my history for yesterday.
I might be a minority though
“Do you get blocks which are not filled in with white, but are transparent, and you see the desktop image.”
Gen 1 Mac Book and no, I don’t get that.
is quartz 2d extreme (sorry, don’ t remember the new brand) finally enabled?
if not, there are rumors on it?
Applications can enable it for themselves upon request; Q2DE is not enabled system-wide by default because in some instances it actually slows down apps unless they are architected in a way that compiments heavy GPU offloading.
thnakyou!
by the way, did do you know if ms office 2008 can do that?
Office 2008 has still an old Carbon code base. Its GUI just has a modern look, but its inner workings are still relics from the stone age of Macintosh development.
I’ve probably used every single update since 10.0 . And its been a continuos improvement process.
People sometimes talk about the lack of “real” new features between major releases. But the fact is when you use the latest version you really feel the drag of going back to an earlier version. All the major upgrades are jam packed with tiny minute improvements throughout the system that make the real difference.
Like the author said 10.5.2 solved some issues I had with leopard. That default stack view for folders in the Dock was a royal pain the … neck.
The same writer did another article on the 15th on the 10.5.2 update. The article is so similar it even includes the exact same slides. It looks like they just edited the original 4 page article down to 1 page. It was also posted to OSNews, in fact it’s the first thing listed under related articles. Slow news day?
After installing leopard on both of my Macs(intel iMac”24 and intel MacMini, and friends powerbookG4)
DVD-R can’t be mounted. It insist rejecting the DVD out after few mins of trying to mount. DVD+R can be mounted but nor DVD-R and DVD+R can be burned. This issue occured on 3 of the Macs. And I’ve seen user having the very same issue as mine. We had a issue like that with the ‘eject’ button on keyboard for 2-3month on Tiger last year. Apple didn’t make announcement to inform user before, and not informing now.
I wonder how would it be if Windows user had the same problem with DVD burning.. i guess it would have been called a scandal. But Mac’s world, its silence. I love Mac’s and OSX, its a price I had to pay as it seems