Leopard as the New Vista?

ninja_assault_kitten writes "There's an interesting rant from Oliver Rist up on the PC Magazine site. He compares the catastrophe that is Vista to the recently released OS X Leopard. While clearly one is a lion and the other a cub, there do appear to be some frustrating similarities. From the article: 'A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times. That's six cold reboots for Oliver. Apple isn't even honest enough to admit that Leopard is crashing: The OS just grays out my desktop and pops up a dialog box telling me I've got to reboot. Like the whole thing is my fault. I even snapped a picture of it. After all, I HAD PLENTY OF CHANCES!'"

Comments

One thing that helps

[Paktu]

Even assuming that Leopard is just as much of a lemon as Vista (which I find hard to believe), Apple will have a new version out in, what, six months? Vista on the other hand spent more than half a decade in development and its successor is planned for (maybe) 2009.

Problem with his computer.

[mc moss]

The kernel panics are problems specific to his computer. The majority of macs don't have that problems so he should quit whining to us and talk to Apple. As for the other things he complains about, those are really cosmetic changes that some people like and others don't. The problems with Vista are more than just cosmetic. Unlike Vista, Leopard doesn't require 512 mb of ram to run all of it's features and still runner slow than the previous os. People aren't still running out and buying 10.4 instead of 10.5 in droves as they would buy xp over vista. Also compare the retail price (129-leopard, 200+ for all the different vistas).

Re:Obvious

[RobertM1968]

Apple users expect Apple products to be mature immediately, which is impossible. There tends to be a much shorter memory about Apple's tribulations then there are with Windows, so it just becomes commonplace to expect maturity with betas and all.

Keep in mind there may "be a much shorter memory about Apple's tribulations" because there is a much shorter time to get them resolved... as their recent bunch of fixes and updates in 10.5.1 (in about a month) prove in comparison to SP1 (in over a year) and Vista.

That seems a pretty consistent trend. Yes, users may expect Apple products to be mature immediately, but two things happen because of the situation I just outlined...

(1) If their aren't "mature immediately" then they will be quickly - which means it will be pretty quickly (months) that the machines in the pipeline ARE "mature" - compared to years for a MS based PC. That means a lot less people will experience issues... (to spell that out for you... if v10.5.0 has problems, that are fixed in a month... then only a month's worth of consumers experienced it... while if Vista has problems that are taking a year to be properly addressed (hopefully), then it is a year of consumers who are buying un-fixed/immature Vista/XP/etc based solutions - factor in market share and that makes a bigger difference... on an even market share, 1/12 of the Apple customers (compared to the Windows ones) would experience issues... the other 11/12 would be purchasing machines with updated code - based off MS's one year cycle, and Apple's one month cycle... then factor in market share... ).

(2) When people have problems with something, which are they more likely to remember longer?
- (a) "I had problems, but they were fixed in a month."
- (b) "I had problems, but it took a year to fix."
(pretending XP SP1 was a "fix" and assuming Vista SP1 will be)

Personally, I think none of it is a big mystery... it's (a) whether we are talking about computers, cars, or almost any other consumer product. People want their technology to work. Barring that, their next expectation is if it doesnt, it will be fixed quickly... when neither of those expectations are met, then people tend to have a much longer memory of the issues.

I saw it all the time with laptops... comes in broken... "We'll have you up and running in a few hours..." "OK!" (sometimes even followed with a letter of thanks to our managers for the good service we performed)... or "Sorry, it will take a month... it has to go to the manufacturer for a new motherboard, which they are out of stock on" (Toshiba Qosimo, anyone?) "Gee, that's ok!" (unlikely... usually it's complaints about the service and problems for MONTHS to come).

So perhaps that expectation you speak of is more of a combination of two factors/expectations that are co-joined that almost every consumer has: (1) It should work perfectly... BUT (2) if it doesn't, I expect it to be fixed quickly. Most consumers realize any complex device/software/whatever has the possibility of having issues from either day one... or shortly after... they hope it doesnt... and expect (knowing that it is still possible it does) that it will be fixed in an Apple-like time frame.

Re:Obvious

[countach]

I used Tiger for a year and probably had it crash maybe 4 times in that time. I've been using Leopard since it came out and no crashes.

I admit that some of the new stuff in leopard is a bit lame, but some of it simply rocks. The built-in VNC screen sharing for example, blows away 3rd party VNC in both speed and ease of use. Also Time Machine, while I'd prefer if it had more options, also rocks in terms of design and ease of use.

So I don't think the comparison fits at all. I've used Vista and I think the problems with it are deep seated. Leopard could do with a bit of maturing before it is perfect, but I don't see any great problem with it here and now.

Re:Obvious

[RobertM1968]

Dear Idiot Mod(ed me a Troll):

Ugh... let me summarize that for the idiot who modded it "Troll"...

There are less Apple users (that alone means the appearance of less complaints than Windows users)

Apple deals with issues quicker... meaning it is easier to forget those issues since you werent stuck with them for many months or a year.

Even if their market shares were 50/50... lets assume 12,000 machines sold in a year each... if Apple takes a month to release an update into the channel and MS takes a year for an equivalent update, then it affects 12,000 Windows users and 1,000 Apple users...

Since their market share is grossly different, that means (using the 24,000 total units in the above example) only 1/12 of 960 users will experience problems.

I think the post was quite fair and accurate... or maybe you didnt like the part that said (paraphrased) that since Apple has a small fraction of the marketshare, it means a small fraction of that small fraction (in a given year) will experience problems, making it seem that Apple users have shorter memory?

It's just math anc consumer expectations... there wasnt a single troll like comment in there... math is your friend... dont let it scare you into marking posts "Troll" (or learn to read).

Re:Clearly you're mistaken

[ozmanjusri]

And partly because macs are supposed to work without any problems. And frankly, there's no excuse for them not to.

They might have a slight excuse.

They are getting ready for the inclusion of a Win32 compatibility layer in OSX, so a little instability at OS level's not unexpected. At least those PE files will feel right at home...

When Vista is like Unix you will be right.

[Erris]

The problems of OS9 do not make Vista a modern or capable OS that has reached the 1993 design goals / marketing hype of NT. They still don't have adequate memory and process management, proper user separation, or a good network stack. This is mostly because they waste so much effort making things difficult for others to work with and the impossible task of digital restrictions. Sooner than later, M$ will be forced to use fresh BSD and or GNU/Linux code the way Apple did when they ate Next to make OSX. People expect more from an OS than M$ can deliver.