Leopard and new Mac apps are bumming me out
Let me preface this post with the fact that I have been a sworn Mac user since 1995. Let me add that a few weeks ago I tried to use Windows just for my trip to Japan, and I bailed out after one painful day. I even had our IT guy kill a perfectly good Thinkpad with Ubuntu I hated Vista so much.
When Leopard came out a few weeks ago (it was a Friday) I went to the Apple store in San Francisco to buy it immediately but got spiked until the 6 p.m. grand reveal. So, the next day I went downtown first thing and picked up both Leopard and the new iLife. Easy enough.
I expected a few bumps in the upgrade of the OS and the applications. Sure enough, that happened but it was nothing major.
It has only been after a few weeks of usage that I find myself experiencing both OS and application crashes reminiscent of the mid-'90s when you had to obsessively save your work since you knew your Mac was going to crash at some point. I was bred into a "save early, save often" Mac culture at my first job in NYC where people would occasionally lose hours worth of work.
That was then, this is now. Or so I thought.
With the arrival of OS X much of this crash-y behavior stopped dead. Not only was the new interface a pleasure to use, but the OS was also rock solid. And the applications themselves seemed to crash far less.
Enter Leopard, and I now have at least one Apple brand application crash every few hours. It seems to be primarily Mail.app and iCal, which offer some must-have features for business users--for example, Todo's and Notes--that can sync across multiple computers, Blackberrys, etc. The applications are great, except when your computer keeps crashing and your calendar gets corrupted. I also find myself restarting multiple times a day when the OS slows to a crawl.
On Sunday, I learned the "calendar cache" lesson wherein my calendar simply wouldn't update even after I blew it away and restored from the backup.
And on Monday, I learned the hard way that Garage Band is highly unstable. After a few hours of just being on GB, it starts to slow down and crashes repeatedly until I reboot. Maybe it's because I loaded the Remix DVD (another $100 out the window), but the application is almost unusable and I lost my musical masterpiece.
All that said, I will still tell everyone in the world that they should use the Mac OS instead of Windows. My Mac issues don't even come to close to the screwiness and nightmare that Windows can be (and usually is).
I just wish that Apple would focus a bit more on computers instead of iPods so that the truly devoted can stay that way.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
Are you really dumping on Windose while writing an article about how much of "nightmare" leopardspots is? You're lack of win is in direct proportion to your overabundance of fail. So trusting were you of AppleJobs that you hosed up your precious iSmackdown by installing outofthepigpen firstgen betaware. And this is your first post on your new blog?
Let's hope you can do a Conan O'Brian and become a(n) hero.
"I like my iMuc, but I'd rather dunk it in a pool full of excrement than install unproven betaware and hose it up to the point of fail. I'll now bank the money I saved by not upgrading or use it to buy an Amazon Kindle."
Fix'd
Never tried a mac and I know they work good for some folks, but your stories of crashes as common occurance and having to save your work all the time being the usual operating procedure really turns me off to it. I've never known anyone with a windows comp having those sort of issues that weren't directly related to something they themselves had messed up.
I have read about the crashes but haven't seen it. Don't know what would cause it.
I have run Windows on desktops and laptops since 3.1. I have owned Windows up to XP Professional. I found it clumsy to use but Have not found it crashy (except Millenium). It always seemed bloated, Always requiring more hardware than you had to get the best out of it. But it did do what it was supposed to do at some level.
Linux was better with hardware and less bloat but remains less elegant, less simple to use than OSX.
a fresh install and reformatted the disk, since then all is well.
permissions before iPhoto, Xcode, etc will operate properly with the copied files.
And I suspect that if I had set up names more identically, that wouldn't be
happening either. Otherwise, Leopard and all apps seems to be working
flawlessly, and faster than Tiger did on the 3 machines I have it on (two intel and
one ppc). I did install the update that came out last week or so. Also had to
install the patch to iWork apps to allow them to run on the ppc machine.
The whole it crashes every few hours, but I'd rather have it than a bulky but stable windows. Come on, you are kidding right?
(unfortunately)
OS since the beginning. It is unstable and peculiar. (How could Apple botch
permissions repair, for God's sake?) Apple's aesthetic decisions, such as translucent
menus, are juvenile. Imagine a book publisher who decides that its readers need
paper that allows the print on the back side to be visible from the front.
Not only is Leopard fragile, but since I downloaded Safari 3 for Tiger (on another
Mac) it unexpectedly quits constantly. Goodbye quality control.
My theory is that Apple didn't delay Leopard to concentrate on the iPhone, but to
insert more bugs and mindless crap. One of the negative effects of Apple not
having much corporate presence is that it is free to concentrate less on
productivity and more on goofball. I expect that Apple will increasingly emulate
Fox Sports in adding useless eye and ear candy. It's a consequence of targeting a
young demographic.
G4 PowerBook to a newish MacBook and none of them are crashing. My
friends and colleagues who have upgraded experienced similar success. I
suggest that you not accept what you have experienced as the norm and
figure out what's wrong. BTW, I used the Archive and Install method for all the
computers at home.
the external interface unusable, it's fixed now), I have had no issues with
Leopard in regards to crashes or overall system instability. If anything, my
system has been more stable than it was before.
This is another situation where a few people complaining is heard more than
a thousand people lauding Leopard for its new features and their lack of
problems with the OS. I will agree that there are some issues in the execution
of some new features, but I have to tend to doubt the people that claim to
have installed it and have suddenly lost the entire contents of their hard
drives.
And to the person that claims their Windows box is so much more stable,
comparing yourself to one user who is having issues with their computer
doesn't make Windows any more stable. You might not be having issues with
your install, but I can guarantee you that many more people are having
problems with their XP and Vista installs than those who have upgraded to
Leopard or are still using Tiger (or Panther for that matter).
Leopard has been great.
Did you do a clean install? If not, you probably should.
I've been an Apple user since System 7.0, and I have to say that it is really sloppy of Apple to not have their big new hardware (iPhone) fail with a major OS upgrade.
D minus for Apple.
woke up and moved to Apple. People that complain about Leopard will always
complain about something, in fact I bet if you look at their life in general they
probably complain about a lot of things.
Leopard is better then 10.4 and thats to be expected, no crashes at this end...
Ed
on my dual g4 1.2ghz tower has been the nightmare of install nightmares.
after an initial install, which wouldnt restart, i installed 10.4 on another
partition and archived and installed...i was able to get my user data, etc.
whew. but it doesnt reliably start up, sometimes no finder, when it DOES
start, multiple programs fail, iChat just goes away, the computer wont wake
from sleep, and i restart at least 5 times a day, when in 10.4.x i hadnt
restarted in weeks, if not occasionally months. it wont even put the
computer to sleep unless i TELL it to sleep... several times its come back
from sleep with no security window, with a never ending spinning status
start up wheel on the right monitor!! i have to do a button shut down and
restart, losing every change in every application, docs i was working on, etc.
Cisco VPN client wont work, even with multiple installs.
i reboot into another 10.4.x partition sometimes to enjoy the old feel of the
mac os reliability, but cant get my user prefs, prog registrations, etc, w/ the
migration assistant, as my orig partition is now corrupted to Leopard, and
mig assistant cant go backwards...
and this is not just our experience, everyone i know that is a semi power user
has the same issues, login not working, no security, no wake from sleep,
multiple apps dying, constant "core audio" non responsiveness. and the
constant loss of permissions of non system disc folders! the keychain loses
passwords EVERY restart. amazing!
10.4.x is much much faster as well.
i have recommended to all my users to NOT upgrade to Leopard until
significant improvements are made. i had hoped the 10.5.1 would solve
some of the issues... but to no avail.
this has been a nightmare. though i have always used macs, and will always
support them, i have lost a great deal of confidence.... i will never go
windows... but i will not early adopt an OS upgrade again.
not to mention that Leopard looks cheesy... small fonts, like windows...
Apple took my incredibly reliable machines, and for 129$, turned them into
pseudo windows boxes.
You can change the fonts that are used, I'm really not sure what you're even referring there here. . .
I did notice that I need to hit a key on the keyboard, rather than just move the mouse, to wake the computer from sleep now. However, I have cats, and to me this is handy, as it stops them from constantly waking it up. Bug or not, I'm ok with it. . .
nine machines now (everything from Mini to MBP to iMac to G5 to Macbook)
and everything's running quite smoothly, including Boot Camp installs of
Windows XP on three of those, one with pure Boot Camp, two using VMWare
Fusion's virtual machine.
From previous experience, I've gotten in the habit of only using "Archive and
Install" installations, never using the simpler "Upgrade" option. Eliminates
most major problems.
There have been a few wrinkles with the iWork '08 apps, which I've traced to
font issues - deleting Courier and Helvetica obliques of any stripe (use only
italic) and deleting HelveticaNeue fractions from all systems has helped.
- Here's your baby rattle
- by close5828 November 26, 2007 7:33 AM PST
- I'm sorry, but if you can't figure out Windows (XP, Vista, or otherwise), you should have your head examined.
- Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 3 pages (90 Comments)I'm not a fanboy of either platform and I own both, but seriously--"I hate Vista so much". There's journalism at its finest.
Ubuntu is nice but certainly not a Windows or OSX replacement (yet).
I think that you look up your local community college, take a few point-and-click classes, and figure out how to use a computer before pointing to Microsoft or Apple for your being a moron and not knowing how to use a computer.