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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!'"
I am blind and use a screen reader, and I find Leopard's screen reader, Voiceover, will randomly freeze for a couple of seconds when browsing web pages. It is extremely annoying, but not as annoying as the extremely clunky keyboard interface. Hardly anything is automatically read, you have to use the shitty keyboard interface to find everything.
Like Microsoft, Apple claims their half-assed screen reader has improved. Like Microsoft, they've hardly done anything.
NOTE: I don't actually own a Mac, but I have an Apple fanboy friend who owns a Macbook with Leopard.
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Upgraded from Tiger - in place upgrade.
Not a single crash.
Upgraded to 10.5.1 - still all good.
But I'm just one guy - and come to think of it - so is this guy.
I have been using Leopard since 12 hours before it was officially released. I have had two kernel panics. Both panics were my fault. (As in I explicitly loaded a kernel extension that caused the crash. Both times.)
Three or four of my friends have been using Leopard since it came out and have had no crashes at all.
My whole family's been on Leopard since it came out and has also had no crashes at all.
Clearly, LEOPARD HATES YOU!
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
I was amused and delighted by the article (given my dislike for fanbois and Mac fanbois in general) but i stopped at the following part in the article:
XP Pro pre-SP1 crashed all the time, and Microsoft owned up to it--mostly. XP Pro post-SP2 crashed once in a while, and we sighed and kept working while Microsoft looked embarrassed and yelled at someone to work faster on SP3
Now (at work) i have 4 Linux boxes, 1 Solaris workstation and a windows XP machine that i no longer use actively (keep it around for compatibility tests). However i've used XP since it came out in 2000. It didn't crash always pre-SP1, it didn't crash frequently post XP-SP1 and after XP SP2, i've had the box be up for 180 days before i had to power it down for a memory upgrade and then the box was up for 328 days before i moved offices. I am all for Vista bashing - i am all for Mac bashing and once in a while Linux as a desktop smacking but that section above there makes him lose all credibility.
All i can tell him is L2UseAComputer, tard. Mod me down but you know there's truth in this post.
I concur. Leopard has SERIOUS problems. It is more than a "point upgrade"as the author states and has some nice new features and enhancements, but firewall breaks all sorts of things abd is as annoying as the Vista mother-may-I prompts giving warnings even after applications have been placed on the white list. DHCP doesn't acquire addresses properly and firewall must be disabled, airport turned off then back on for it to work again.
I've had 2 kernel panics in 2 days (I never experienced a kernel panic under tiger). I have also had the OS go unstable and Finder et al will crash randomly until restart. Final Cut Pro 6.0 crashes all the time doing things as simple moving the timeline. Spotlight crashes and reloads while doing searches sometimes.
Disk Utility can't repair disk permissions or recognizes them as incorrect when they are not (not sure which).
Java is completely screwed! No java 6 yet and javascript commands in safari do bizarre things sometimes like launching outside applications such as finder instead of doing what they are intended to do within the application!
Apple has some serious work to do if they want to keep Leopard installed on users' machines - and they had better do it fast!
Get a web developer
10.5.1 is out and it only fixed some of the issues I've had. I've found using OnyX to delete all caches (including the system cache) has helped, as in it's been 2 days since and hasn't crashed. But Leopard wasn't crashing every day or two, so only time will tell.
One thing I have noticed, the Intel systems I use crash (and have other bugs), but the PowerPC systems I have (including one at the very low end of Leopard supported systems) are stable. That was also reflected in the size of the 10.5.1 updates--the Intel update was over 150MB and the PowerPC update was about 35MB (IIRC the numbers, of course).
And it never cras
Apple incremental 10.5.x updates aren't even in the same ballpark as Microsoft service packs. 10.5.1 is more easily compared to Windows update or patch Tuesday when Microsoft roll out a bunch of changes. And as someone who uses Vista and Leopard (dual boot Mac Pro) I can assure you the Vista updates have been coming just as thick and fast. I have no allegiance to Bill or Steve, and I'm a reasonably satisfied customer of both their products (Vista isn't nearly bad as most people who've never even used it would have you believe), but if you want to mindlessly bash Microsoft, at least make sure you're not basing your argument on a complete fallacy.
In my experience nearly everybody who complains about Leopard being unstable is running some sort of unsanity app (or the logitech drivers). Nobody else really has a problem.
As for the rest of his article, it seems pretty bullshit to me.
Vista Similarity #1: He claims that it's unstable. Most people disagree, a small but extremely vocal group agrees.
Vista Similarity #2: He whines about graphics overload, but then references things that work on even ancient low-end Macs with shitty graphic cards, and claims that everybody is showing them off. I don't think they are.
Vista Similarity #3: He tries to draw equivalence between putting basic network settings three menus deep and Apple deciding that if the dock is on the bottom, that it should have a subtle reflection. Then he complains Apple's new "Cover Flow" is good enough for him, and thus Quick Look was unnecessary. Perhaps he could try not using it, then. To each their own, y'know.
Vista Similarity #4: He claims that Leopard drops packets and loses connections. I have a bunch of Leopard machines on both wired and wireless networks and have seen absolutely no evidence that this is true. He also claims that SMB shares come and go. Again, I'm on networks with SMB shares and have seen absolutely no evidence that this is true.
Vista Similarity #5: He tries to claim that time machine is awful, because it does file-level, not block-level incrementals, it doesn't work on network shares by default, and it defaults to backing up the whole system. Time Machine could use improvement, but it's useful and it will get a *lot* of people backing up their machines for the first time in forever.
Honestly, #5 is the only complaint that has any air of authenticity to me (I've had similar complaints), but it's not like it's a horrific detriment.
There are two options here:
Option 1) This is Ziff-Davis MSFT flamebait.
Option 2) The author of the piece is an idiotic fuck who screwed up his install.
My money is on Both.
At least Canonical has a reason for it to suck though: Microsoft and Apple intended to put out decent operating systems.
For the people I know:
- Vista owners are installing XP,
- Gutsy owners are installing Feisty, and now, apparently
- Leopard owners are rolling back to Tiger.
It's a fucking banner year for the OS. I hope 2008 is better.Put identity in the browser.
I don't know about Tiger (haven't upgraded yet) but the recent Quicktime 7.3 update is a pile of crap.
I'm not a power user, and I really just use Quicktime for porn, but it definitely took a major step backwards in this release: the select/copy/paste functionality has been removed from most movie types. Also the A/V controls (brightness, contrast) no longer work on many formats. These were things that _worked_ in 7.2 and have been _disabled_ in 7.3. I don't know what they're trying to do, but it seems like they're trying to make Quicktime completely useless. Those little features were the only reason I used Quicktime at all (instead of VLC, for example).
Poking around online to try and find a downgrade path, I found that a lot of Final Cut users were totally screwed by this update as well. And the downgrade path is to reinstall the OS from scratch and selectively update around Quicktime 7.3.
Meh... Apple is doing a lot of things right. And they're doing a lot of things wrong. I'd like to see them understand which is which, and hold on to the right things and work on improving the wrong things. Is that really too much to ask?
Bugs and such I understand, but who the hell thinks it's a good idea to disable existing functionality?
Cheers.
This guy needs to post his kernel panic log. I'm curious to see what's causing so many panic events.
One thing I'll say for Windows users - if you say you have a problem, someone will always pop up and say "Yeah, me too, and this is how to fix it."
Linux geeks still tend too much to attack the newcomer, or shout "Read the friggin' man pages!" Still as a community they are maturing and learning to help people rather than flame them.
Make a complaint about an Apple product though and you run headlong into a wall of denial a mile high, with everyone either claiming that your problem does not exist, that you're an idiot when you point out some of the more bizarre UI choices Apple makes, or most frighteningly, arguing that any deficiency, no matter how severe, is somehow actually a wonderful feature.
I think that Apple users are doing themselves a disservice by not holding Apple to a higher standard. By pretending that hardware or software issues don't exist, and by attempting to shut down those who raise legitimate complaints, they allow Apple far too much latitude to do the same.
This will of course be modded as troll or flamebait by the first fanboy who reads it.
Three Squirrels
> But if I had to turn back time I'd wait until some time next year to order my copy.
Wait a second. I thought Leopard came with a time machine?
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Apple's using BSOD icons for Windows network shares in Leopard makes this all the more embarrassing for Apple.
So what icons does Windows use for representing Apple filesharing protocol shares?
Wrong: Windows XP got two free updates Microsoft calls Service Packs. Over the past half decade, the company worked hard to deliver a major consumer update to Windows, but was unable to do so as planned in 2003. It then failed again in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It officially shipped Vista in January as Windows 6.0 for $200-500.
Apple delivered reference updates to Mac OS X in 2002, 2003, and 2005, along with a transition to Intel processors in 2006 and a port to ARM for the iPhone in 2007 and a new reference release as Leopard for Macs. That's four paid releases, which adds up to less the cost of Vista Ultimate and a de-malware checkup. In between, Apple has released over 35 free minor updates that fix issues and add significant new features (such as IP over Firewire, or file system journaling).
Ten Myths of Leopard: 2 It's Only a Service Pack!
Ten Myths of Leopard: 10 Leopard is a Vista Knockoff!
Vista is the most expensive consumer OS ever, but offers very little to PC users. Leopard, like every OS ever released, has issues. Tiger had issues, and new Macs running Tiger have issues. There will never be a perfect OS, and if there were, third party apps would have issues for it. But Leopard is a solid upgrade over Tiger, and fixes issues in Tiger.
The fact that Oliver Rist--a complete Microsoft shill who has minimal experience in small business selling Windows software, yet writes a column on "Windows in the Enterprise" for InfoWorld--has written a "Leopard has Vista-like problems that ever Vista doesn't have!!" should be of no surprise. The Windows Enthusiasts have all been trying to associate all of Microsoft's problems upon Apple lately.
Rist's last flamebait was an article titled "Does OS X Suck!!!?!?" where he tried to suggest the idea that Mac OS X is just FreeBSD with some custom icons painted by Apple, talked about "Apple jihaders," and tied in the hard drive failure of his MacBook as a problem with Mac OS X Tiger. Now suddenly he views Tiger as rock solid, and Leopard as something that suffers regular kernel panics? Rist even won a Zoon Award for his rant.
The August 2007 Zoon Awards for Technical Ignorance and Incompetence
Leopard, like Vista, is unlikely to suffer from kernel failure unless bad hardware in involved, or problematic kernel drivers have been installed. The problems with Vista are largely related to an inefficient, version 1.0 graphics compositing engine that assumes the presence of a high power GPU; a new driver model that fails to support a lot of common hardware; a flashy new interface that sacrifices usability to look interesting; and the lack of many practical new features.
Leopard doesn't have any of those problems (aside from some that don't like the look of the Dock, which is easy to change). Leopard has some minor issues with some apps and some new kinks to work out, problems that Vista also shares. Leopard has a mature graphics compositing engine that has been refined over the last 7 years and can scale down to work on less than stellar hardware; a largely unchanged driver model; and lots of new practical features, from visual backups to virtual desktops to UI refinements, file viewers, et cetera.
Ten Myths of Leopard: 1 Graphics Must Be Slow!
Ten Myths of Leopard: 8 No Hidden New Features!
It is unlikely that Rist has any real understanding of what Leopard even is.
I act as a moderator of a big german mac-board, and I've not heard of one single Leopard-user switching back to Tiger. In fact, most of the Leo-crashing-problems stem from people using older versions of "hack-the-OS" - apps like application enhancer (APE).
Leopard is stable for the majority of all its users.
this sig is useless
As it is now I jumped the gun on ordering and I upgraded a bunch of clients to 10.5
Remind me to never come to you for any sort of consulting. This is just plain negligent.
This guy's the limit!