Version: 2008

Comments on: Leopard early adopters suffer for the rest of us

The dust has mostly settled following the release of Apple's Mac OS X Leopard operating system, and while several problems were reported, that seems to be the price of admission to the early adopter club.

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One early adopter who is happy
by jscott418 November 2, 2007 4:18 AM PDT
I for one am one adopter who had no problems upgrading to
Leopard. I am sure some of the problems relate more to older
applications and third party software that was not updated to
run Leopard. I really think a OS upgrade is a big deal and people
should do more homework about compatibility with their system
before jumping in. We all know Apple ditches older compatibility
sooner than Microsoft. This is a good thing for a OS. One reason
Microsoft has so much trouble with Windows. But it can leave
people scratching their head as to why Leopard did not install.
Reply to this comment
Whoa! Hold it!
by vulpine November 2, 2007 8:16 AM PDT
Ok, I'm really glad you didn't have any problems; as one of the
first adopters (I received my copy before 10am on Release
Friday) I had absolutely no problems with the upgrade process
on two iMacs.

However, your comment about ditching older compatibility
sooner than MS? Come on now! Here we are in 10.5 and only
now dropping Classic? Granted, we're also dropping the G3 Macs
from the process now, but the G3 is almost as old as Classic
itself. My G3 iMac died of old age 2 years ago, though I admit
my G3 iBook is still going strong. Even Vista forced significant
upgrades to even currently available PCs when it came out; you
can't say that about Apple.
I'm currently running 10.5.1 and very happy
by frank bruce December 5, 2007 6:45 AM PST
I had some minor issues after running the upgrade (not clean install) I had issues running the Disk utility, and found some modified files. I downloaded the upgrade (file) and run it again and most of the problems with the files are now gone. Apple has acknowledged this is a problem; I will be waiting for a fix for it.
Why I?m not worried? What I need to do has not been interrupted, or put in jeopardy, both Macs (my mom and mine are working pretty well, even with old hardware like my USB Sound Sticks)
Still, I'm very happy with the new OS X (Some windows users will say that Apple charges too much for service packs, bla, bla, bla...) but still I feel it is a solid upgrade of OS and the functionality will only get better as the OS matures.
-Frank
Seconded - Very Happy
by jeph4e November 2, 2007 4:25 AM PDT
No problems here
Reply to this comment
Some like a challenge
by rostrom November 2, 2007 4:47 AM PDT
I am en early adopter because I like the challenges of the cutting
edge. I had no problems with my upgrade install of Leopard (other
than the known incompatibilities) but I sort of wished I had more.
Solving problems is a fun challenge and a measure of one's
knowledge and skill.

I guess computers are more than just tools for some of us... they
are also a hobby!
Reply to this comment
Hope this will work.....
by aaydogan November 2, 2007 4:52 AM PDT
Every apple machine in my home and office has been having
problems....my 15" G4 Powerbook has been both a hardware and
software mess. My intel 20" iMac has slowed down to a crawl.
Safari is a piece of crap....almost at bad at IE.

The only machine that is operating without any problems, but is
amazing slow is my 12" G4 powerbook. Every machine I have is
maxed out on RAM, has plenty of hard drive space and has
nothing but mainstream, licensed software. My guess is that is
Apple is releasing software products with a very sloppy QA
process and uses the post release period to fix "the wheels that
squeak the most!"

Now, I am hoping that Leopard will install OK and will help to fix
some of the software related operating issues.

If the hardware doesn't improve I am in a real quandry as to
what to buy next.....I hate Wintel machines......and I don't want
to mess around with Linux boxes.....but Apple's quality control
issues have soured my "fanboy" outlook.
Reply to this comment
Problems..
by DaiMac November 2, 2007 6:06 AM PDT
Two things, you need to probably do a full backup and wipe on
your machines, then reinstall your Apps one by one, testing to
see where your problems are. I'm running a variety of G4 based
machines at home and at work, all worked fine in Tiger and have
taken to Leopard with no problems, the only minor bumps were
3rd party drivers and such that couldn't handle Leopard.

If you haven't already, please bring your issues to the forums at
sites like www.macobserver.com and macfixit.com, the people
there will be happy to help you if at all possible.
View reply
You need to clean up
by swift2--2008 November 4, 2007 4:06 PM PST
If your machines are slowing down so much, you undoubtedly
have installed a lot of cruft, and you need to run DiskUtility, and
Disk Warrior for starters. I had a friend who complained to me
about this, and when I looked at his machine, it was clear he
was a software addict. He had just about every kind of crap
installed, all over the place, with no idea as to what he was
doing to his machine. Look, for starters, at your startup items.
Cut as many of them as possible, and start them when you want
to run it only. Look at your running processes. Empty caches.
Learn how to maintain your machine.

Within two weeks of my looking at my friend's machine, and
putting it into some order, everything was running fine. Two
months later, he had loaded it up with crap again.
And I thought...
by thetruth1960 November 2, 2007 5:11 AM PDT
only Microsoft Windows would have problems. By the press Apple gets, including here in News.com, you would think Apple never does anything wrong.
Reply to this comment
Nothing wrong...
by vulpine November 2, 2007 8:21 AM PDT
You don't read the bloggers I read. Seems like half of them say
Apple can't do anything right and should follow Microsoft's
lead... or just give up and let Microsoft have it all.

In all honesty, every new version of an OS is going to have its
teething pains; some more severe than others. It seems to me
that, at least for me, there were fewer problems in the OS X
upgrades than there were in each and every version of Windows
produced, with the exception of XP Pro. Yes, some people will
have problems, but the majority of them haven't and won't, I'm
sure.
We are Saints
by Lee in San Diego November 2, 2007 5:14 AM PDT
As you said MOST Leopard installation are not having problems.

Maybe if developers could adhere to the NDAs then Apple wouldn't
be so iron-fisted.
Reply to this comment
Leopard is fine
by iceblue03 November 2, 2007 5:21 AM PDT
I rarely upgrade with the first release of a mac OS, but I did this
time and haven't had any problems.

I am a web designer who looked forward to the next release of
Safari, that is why I installed the operating system so soon.

I have installed bad OS updates with previous Mac operating
systems. (10.2) I think with any update you just have to be sure
to have your HD backed up and get ready for a bad OS update
and problems. That is just reality. You may have bad hardware
or software that could cause problems.
Reply to this comment
Not suffering
by blmlwd November 2, 2007 5:24 AM PDT
Your article is a bit over the top. True, any 1.0 version of anything
is going to have a few kinks to work out. But please. The look of
the folder icon? I find it hard to get worked up about it. "...some of
the icons are more confusing now than in Tiger..."?? It really
sounds like someone told you to write an article that focussed on
the negative. For me, this was one of the smoothest transitions
from one OS to the next that I've every experienced. I think most
people would say the same.
Reply to this comment
Folders
by Lee in San Diego November 2, 2007 6:07 AM PDT
"The look of the folder icon? I find it hard to get worked up about
it"

I was one who initially didn't like the look of the new folder icons,
and the transparency of menus, but after 6.5 days of using Leopard
I am in a new comfort zone.
Come on , tommy knows how many complained
by Sniche November 2, 2007 5:45 AM PDT
this is why he wrote the story, he loves to put things or people
down.
Reply to this comment
Your fool if you don't try it
by Sniche November 2, 2007 6:07 AM PDT
It is Great
Reply to this comment
seems to be a straight shooting article
by mpitogo November 2, 2007 6:10 AM PDT
anyone with an opinion usually tend to be biased one way or
another but it seems fair compared to the rest of the cnet mumbo
jumbo. I am glad to have been lucky with all three of my machines,
PM G5 home office, MBP C2D home laptop and MacPro office. All
three have gone through the upgrade without a hitch. Only
affected app is Photoshop 7 RIP, long, long EOL before even CS1, 2
or 3...
Reply to this comment
Leopard drop easy CUPS shares from Linux
by krosavcheg November 2, 2007 6:47 AM PDT
The only problem I've come across so far is that Leopard drops out of the box support for printers shared from Linux - http://mcdevzone.com/2007/10/28/printer-fix-for-leopard . It's a pity but I guess that's what you get for not going Apple all the way - I'll know to stick to only Apple computers next time.
Reply to this comment
Drops CUPS shares?
by vulpine November 2, 2007 8:29 AM PDT
Really! Then I assume that you didn't know that Apple owns CUPS
and goes out of its way to support CUPS shares. Maybe you just
didn't configure it right?
Leopard uses CUPS
by ershler November 2, 2007 1:25 PM PDT
If you know enough to run CUPS in Linux you should have known
enough to change the CUPS settings in Leopard.
Few unexpected issues here
by afterhours November 2, 2007 6:49 AM PDT
Already knew that Photoshop 7 wouldn't work... GraphicConverter does what I need for that. Lost the ability to use ARD v2 -- perhaps a reinstall will be needed, or an upgrade to ARD v3. The vast majority of the apps we use are fine in Leopard: GoLive CS2, Illustrator 10, Filemaker 6 (yes, 6), InDesign 2, BBEdit 8.7, Transmit 3.6, Quicken 2007, Vuescan -- the Apple apps, Firefox, MS Office 2004 and NeoOffice. The 'upgrade' was more of a treat, 'though it took two hours. I wanted this to run on a Powerbook g4 867 and not lose Tiger. Split the 160 Gb hard drive into two equal partitions, kept Tiger on one, installed Leopard on the other -- and used Leopard's very cool 'import user from another volume' tool.

The only unexpected bug was early on. Sound would stutter upon playback of DVDs or iTunes music. This has since gone away on it's own, perhaps due to Spotlight indexing at the same time? While we have told all of our customers to hold off until Christmas, about 5% insist on being early adopters, so we had to as well. And so far, none who have used the Archive and install or clean install to a new second drive (then import settings) have experienced issues. No Blue screen, no loss in data.
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Oh, and Spotlight finally works right
by swift2--2008 November 4, 2007 4:19 PM PST
n/t
Works for me
by nouser November 2, 2007 6:56 AM PDT
I dutifully made a bootable backup prior to loading Leopard, just
in case. Yesterday I erased it nd made a full back-up of my new
operating system, Leopard. Not a single glitch.. It worked 100%
for me. It feels more responsive than Tiger and I love the new
features.

Unlike the author of this piece, I don't get upset because a
"FOLDER ICON CHANGES", so maybe he considers this a critical
issue but I don't.
Reply to this comment
A few minor issues and a few benefits
by sparcdr November 2, 2007 7:26 AM PDT
Firstly, I've adopted Leopard mainly for its advantages. As a Sun
customer and Solaris user, I can see the advantages of using ZFS
even on non-root volumes. Apple's implementation however as
with Sun's, only works correctly on 64-bit systems, as there are
glaring performance problems for those using it on 32-bit
platforms. I am using it on a Core 2, so I don't have the
performance issues. However, there are obvious implications to
those using it in place of /Users, namely finder glitches with
how paths are determined, and how the volumes show up as if
they were an external volume. (IE: you must command + drag to
move even though it's the same disk) It is a beta, and the
implementation was started around half way point in Leopard
development. ZFS is hardly unstable, but don't use it for your
home, it mounts last, so you'd need to disable autologin, and on
top of the Finder bugs, applications like EyeTV can't work with it
because either a bug in the Cocoa I/O or the ZFS
implementation itself hinders correct self-awareness of location.

Java is a big issue, I have one good thing to say though, the look
and feel of applications such as Deskzilla from ALMWorks which
used the ugly brushed metal in Tiger looks perfect in Leopard.
That's the end of the praise though, Java 6 has been available as
a release and for early adopters for 2 years. Java 6 offers
numerous performance enhancements and visual fixes, as well
as being a full open-source implementation, still able to be
used commercially, and Apple failed to adopt it as they are
pushing their native framework and Objective-C. While I agree
the performance suffers with Java, and Objective-C is bare
metal, let the developers tune their applications and let them
suffer if it's really that bad. Many enterprise customers are still
using 5.0, so it's less of an issue than people think, and it has to
do with stability and Apple specific portions of the
implementation.

Finder got better and worse at the same time. Extract a zip file
for example, and the extracted file overlays the other to the
lower right underneath the archive. This is just retarded, Tiger
didn't do it, no other OS has this dumb of a glitch. Finder still
doesn't sort directories first, and I found out it has something to
do with HFS+ because there's times where FAT32 volumes don't
do this. Performance is better with large file copy operations,
but is slower when copying lots of small files.

Spotlight's indexer is obtrusive, forceful. It's not very smart to
force users to index disks, even those they're borrowing from a
friend, or pendrives. Pendrives have a limited write capability,
and spotlight will degrade its life by constantly indexing. The
indexer is faster and it shows more information when running,
but this doesn't fix the qualms of it being ran without option to
disable on anything and everything local.

Mail indexes and copies every single message on a POP3/IMAP
mailbox, there should be an option to ONLY check Inbox. It's
very annoying especially for dial-up or satellite users, or those
with temporarily high latency to deal with it indexing the whole
mailbox.

iTunes is the same one in Tiger, and there's visual glitches with
theming in preferences.

The only applications that seem to be tried and true without
major annoyances are iChat and Terminal.

I applaud them for making iLife 06 work, cause iMovie 08 is
gimped with its abilities for some reason. Most applications still
work, granted they're not interfacing with the kernel through
kexts, as the only application that worked which wasn't for
Leopard was EyeTV 2.5, released about a month before GA.
Devices such as keyspan are still using PowerPC portions for
some dumb reason, as with others (MIcrosoft) so it's a sad story
to tell.

I feel it was dumb on their part to force developers to wait till
the same time customers bought the OS, they needed that extra
2-4 weeks to test on the GA, but couldn't. You can't imagine
how annoyed some developers are at having to scramble.
Customers rightfully are complaining, but they should be
complaining to Apple.

Now about Microsoft, RDC is STILL in beta, Microsoft Office is
never going to have a public beta even though they already don't
have enough QA people for the MacBU. They won't release until
Jan, 2008, leaving people to run Office 2004 on Leopard when
they need it, suffering even more issues than Tiger on Intel
users. Silverlight the oh so great Flash killer as they call it still
doesn't work on Safari 3, even though they've had a beta for 6
months to get it working.

All in all, small issues, aside from Java, which is a problem
because I doubt they want to distribute it with Software Update.
The Finder sorting issues will never be fixed, as they haven't for
the whole lifetime of Mac OS X. Every GUI ever implemented
with a file manager sorted directories first, and Apple's way of
doing things isn't always right.

Apple must listen to customers or the recent flurry of adoption
will halt and might even rewing.

DO I hate Leopard? No. It's fine for my users, and I am smart
enough to make workarounds for most issues, but I still want
the source to fix them, it's their duty, I shelled money to keep
them innovating, but quality is even more of a concern.
Reply to this comment
Short quibble re: your comment on sorting in Finder
by grtgrfx November 5, 2007 10:35 AM PST
Mac OS has sorted by file type, alpabetically, for as long as I
remember, and in that case, directories are top of the sort order.
So I don't know what you refer to.

-- sparcdr said:

The Finder sorting issues will never be fixed, as they haven't for
the whole lifetime of Mac OS X. Every GUI ever implemented with
a file manager sorted directories first, and Apple's way of doing
things isn't always right.
Pure Cnet
by thomcarl November 2, 2007 7:49 AM PDT
I had Leopard installed and running by 10 am on the 26th, the only
pain I've had is reading really stupid articles like this one, but thats
what I expect from Cnet.
Reply to this comment
I agree
by Timbo39 November 4, 2007 3:46 PM PST
This is typical Cnet! I'm surprised it wasn't written by the biggest
Apple hater, Molly Wood!

I've had zero issues as well... must have been a slow news day
leopard
by hightechadrian November 2, 2007 8:03 AM PDT
just great no problems
Reply to this comment
leopard
by kalison1 November 2, 2007 8:26 AM PDT
maybe i would want to upgrade to leopard and maybe i wouldn't
but it is really annoying that my mac is less than 3 months old and
it would cost me $199 to upgrade. how about some consideration
for recent apple converts--like a discount for us poor shmucks
who didn't want to wait for this new os
Reply to this comment
You took your car off the lot...
by NProszkow November 2, 2007 8:48 AM PDT
and now you want to add premium leather seats and a premium sound system? That won't happen and that shouldn't happen.

The same goes with computers. Technology always changes. Apple did a HUGE favor to the iPhone people when they gave credit to early adopters. The OS has been hyped and scheduled for release this year and you probably knew about it. If you want the latest and greatest you should have waited or you should shell out $200. Your quote of, "...like a discount for us poor shmucks who didn't want to wait for this new os." Says it all.

Apple is in buisness to sell HARDWARE not software like Microsoft. The point of Leopard was to sell more MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Pro's. $200 is just a bonus for their revenue.
This is the problem
by ittesi259 November 2, 2007 11:20 AM PDT
You bought a computer and made a major transition with no research. I knew a new OS was a few months away thats why I waited. And its not 200 dollars its 129. Get over it. The problem with the vast majority of computer users is the lack of research before they do anything.
Vista Ultimate 7.8 vs Leopard 8.0
by mailbox001 November 2, 2007 8:30 AM PDT
With all the Vista Bashing and Apple praising, I would think the gap would be bigger. Guess the only difference is Apple is over-hyped and over-priced. I'm glad I got two HP TX1000 instead of a Mac.
Reply to this comment
TX1000
by cary1 November 2, 2007 9:33 AM PDT
I saw this system in Circuitcity the other day. I can't believe I can get so much for a thousand bucks.

You know how Apple charges $200 extra for black mac-book, HP should charge 500 just for their design of TX1000

I have a Black mac-book (thankfully I didn't buy it) and it looks like an old dell laptop... and I use Windows on it, because for some mysterious reason, I can't connect to my wireless network in Mac OS
View reply
An empty wine glass so you can smell your own farts.
by dadsgravy November 2, 2007 9:45 AM PDT
"I'm glad I got two HP TX1000 instead of a Mac"

I'm glade you did too. If only I hadn't spent so much money on my
over hyped macbook, I could be just as technically ignorant as
you.
TWO COMPUTERS!!!!!
by oharag1111 November 2, 2007 9:57 AM PDT
What so one will go online get infected and taken over by malware and viruses, and the other one can be used for work. BWHHAHHAHHHWHWWHHAHHA

Seriously I had some PC dolt tell me that one time. I mentioned viruses and malware, and he proudly announced he has two computers. One online, the other not. He then went on to bash the Mac. I still couldn't get past PC dolts need to buy TWO FREAKIN COMPUTERS!!!!!!
View reply
Not Really
by Renegade Knight November 2, 2007 12:10 PM PDT
My Vista still sucks and still doesn't work. Tonight I found another major problem. Yeah, I bash Vista and will continue to do so until MicroSoft fixes the problems so their Operating System Operates as it should.
Typical Cnet FUD
by jeffgtr60 November 2, 2007 8:33 AM PDT
I installed Leopard on a Powermac G5, Mac Mini G4, Intel Powerbook Pro and an Ibook G4. All through the upgrade process, without a single hitch.

Cnet doesn't do unbiased reviews thats for sure. It just slants everything towards it's advertisers. There were a few hiccups with Leopard but nothing like the vista nightmare.
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