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Leopard Early Adopters Suffer For The Rest of Us
News.com tallies up the minor annoyances early adopters have experienced dealing with the newest version of OS X. From a change in folder design to install issues, and beyond to lack of support for Java 6, Mac users have had more to grumble about than usual in the last week. Just the same, the article notes, there have been no major problems and (compared to other OS launches) Leopard kicked off fairly well. "Let's give thanks to the early adopters, however masochistic they may be. You can do all the QA in the world before releasing an operating system, and it's not going to compare to what happens when the unwashed masses get their hands on the product. Microsoft's Windows Vista had years of developer releases, and was released to manufacturing several weeks before it went on sale to the general public. Still, compatibility problems cropped up because it's extremely difficult to anticipate what people are running, and in what combination. It's easier for Apple because it tightly controls its hardware and software, and because there are fewer potential combinations in the wild, but it's still a Herculean task."
I've installed Leopard on both my PowerPC Macs (yes, I got the family edition).
One install went very smoothly (though Leopard does run slowly at first due to Spotlight indexing everything again).
The other install ran into two separate problems. Firstly, I got the Blue Screen freeze (solution - reboot to single user mode and delete APE). Secondly, the Finder would hang on launch (solution - bring up a terminal and remove the divx support library).
Both of these I resolved fairly quickly with a google search, but the solution each time would be worrying to a non-technical user.
I got Leopard with a new MacBook Pro; previously I have been using Tiger since it came out. I've come to the current conclusion that of all the changes in Leopard, the good ultimately outweighs the bad. A huge chunk of this is due to massively improved networking in Finder -- the "Shared" section in the left-hand list makes networking with my several other machines (windows, linux or otherwise) so much easier, faster, and logical. For whatever it's worth, this is one case where coming closer to windows was an improvement. However, this particular one, like its implementation in Windows, still suffers from the problem of DNS updating -- it doesn't appear to cache entries, and there's no way that I can find to force it to update (note: I'm a bit of a newb on that stuff, so I might be misunderstanding it).
My friends and I were both worried we'd have to actually go back to Tiger, but I've adapted quite quickly to the changes and find the overall experience dramatically improved. The speed increases are downright monumental; using spotlight is actually a viable idea now!
--Ted
Limina.Log
I've installed Leopard on one of my Macs so far. I even did an upgrade install instead of the far safer "Archive & Install," which creates a new, pristine System Folder. I was amazed at how smoothly it went. It's pretty much gone as expected. Low level utilities and system customizations mostly don't work (although I had some pleasant surprises--Default Folder X seems to work OK) or have minor glitches). Applications generally work fine. The only major failure I've seen at this point is Photoshop 7, which now crashes on launch. On the other hand, some minor bugs seem to have evaporated.
Overall, I'm happy that I installed it. I am particularly pleased with Time Machine, which is far more convenient and intuitive than my current backup system, not to mention the additional safety of having hourly backups. I'm also beginning to use the built-in virtual desktop feature. I'd say that these two features are worth the price of admission
I'm not crazy about the esthetics. They certainly are no improvement, but they are not terrible. I'm giving the glitzy new Dock a chance--I've even put it down at the bottom of the screen for a while to see if I'll warm to it (I'm used to making it very small and stashing it over on the right). I have my doubts about the value of the feature that pops up icons of the files associated with a Dock item. I think I preferred the old list method, but I never used that much. I'm using the Finder again a bit, although I still prefer Path Finder for most actions.
Overall, I'd say it was a successful roll-out.
- The kernel no longer sucks. XNU is actually a pretty nice kernel now. When the open source release is done, I might even consider running OpenDarwin on some systems (Launchd is pretty nice too, and the new security frameworks are pretty shiny). This is the first OS X system that my mmap torture test failed to kill.
- The new unified look is definitely an improvement.
- Spotlight actually works. In Tiger it was a complete waste of space and resource.
- RAM usage is way down (or, rather, the new VM subsystem handles swapping a lot better). Leopard works okay in 512MB of RAM on an Intel system. Tiger felt a bit cramped in 1GB.
- Terminal.app is much improved. Bye bye iTerm.
- Preview is much improved. I can now ditch PDFPen (buggiest piece of crap I've ever had to use) and may AppleScript hack to reopen windows when I update a PDF from LaTeX.
Some of the bad:I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The X11 server shipped with Leopard is utterly broken for people who make heavy use of X (broken dual monitor support, no full screen mode, X11 Applications custom menu times do not work, X may not launch because it depends on launchd tricks, etc). If you upgrade to Leopard, do NOT install X11. If you've already upgraded, and X doesn't work correctly, there are instructions online to downgrade to Tiger's X11: http://lists.apple.com/archives/x11-users/2007/Nov/msg00005.html
I've yet to hear someone defend the problematic firewall.
OK, here you go! Start with this surprisingly level-headed thread over in the ArsTechnica forums. The c't article seems to have been written by people with a limited understanding of nmap and an axe to grind. The bottom line is the functionality Leopard firewall is no different from the one in Tiger, except that it adds a third setting which allows exceptions for ports to be added on-the-fly as applications request them. I do agree that the firewall should come enabled by default, but at least OS X has a very small number of open ports out-of-the-box, which mitigates the issue. But regardless, the hysteria over Leopard's firewall is unwarranted.
I was curious about this, so I looked it up: how long between Apple's 10.x.0 and 10.x.1?
.1 release followed a month later, rather than one where it followed 6-12 months later, if ever.
- 10.0: Mar 24 - Apr 14 (22 days)
- 10.1: Sep 25 - Nov 13 (49 days)
- 10.2: Aug 23 - Sep 18 (26 days)
- 10.3: Oct 24 - Nov 10 (17 days)
- 10.4: Apr 29 - May 16 (17 days)
To compare, I looked up Microsoft's track record with SP1 here:
- 95: Aug 24 - Dec 31 (130 days)
- 98 ("SE"): Jun 25 - May 5 (315 days)
- ME: no second edition (but made PC World's "Top 25 Worst Tech Products")
- 2000: Feb 17 - Aug 15 (181 days)
- XP: Oct 25 - Sep 9 (320 days)
- Vista: Nov 8 - 2008Q1? (~60-180 days)
I'm a Debian user, so I appreciate being able to get fixes the day they're checked in by the developer. But if I had to pick a proprietary system, I'd sure prefer one where the