Leopard the New Vista?
This post was published 2 years 3 months 18 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.I love when Apple haters get on their soapbox and rant about how Apple gets away with such sloppy and buggy work. This is the gist of an article written by Oliver Rist.
I’m not sure what ticks me off more about Leoptard (I can’t take credit for that nickname—some Brit coined it): the fact that so many of the semi-important changes don’t work, the fact that Apple turned a stable OS into a crash-happy glitz fest, or that the annoying, scruffy Live Free or Die Hard actor infecting my TV (and our Web site, by the way) is pretending that Leopard is better than Vista. It’s not better than Vista. Leopard is Vista. And Tiger is better than both of them!
I had to be talked, wined, dined, and peer-pressured into buying my first MacBook Pro this past January. But once I plunked down the bucks for the slightly less hardware oomph per dollar than I’m used to, I was impressed by one thing: Everything. Just. Worked. Period.
Tiger just works. End of story.
But Apple marketing has the swinging pair of crabapples to actually print “Leopard Just Works” on its Web site. Hey, at least Microsoftreps have the decency to look a little abashed when you point out their product’s screwups. Apple reps just glare at you like they’re daring you to say something. Well, I’ve got something to say. Several somethings.
Over at PC world they have the rest of the article. Agree with his points?
I’m not really sure if I agree or disagree with his points. Sure, Leopard has it’s flaws, but as does every OS or application that adds new features. Tiger works because it’s been through the trials and been patched 11 times. Once Leopard grows a little longer in the tooth, it’ll be just as stable as Tiger.
That said I’m still content running Tiger, even though I’ve had a legit copy of Leopard since its launch day sitting right next to me. Maybe in another month I’ll take the time to do a full clean install.
I agree 100% on his overlying theme…which is the hubris that Apple and their fans possess. I am an avid Apple user, and love it…but have stated many times that the single most negative aspect of the Apple core is their zealotry. Not only does it make the whole experience distasteful, it does the whole community a disservice by apologizing and rationalizing Apple’s mistakes and issues on a constant basis.
Apple does possess innovation, they just don’t possess humility or pragmatism.
I am having no problems with Leopard. In fact, it’s working better than Tiger. Leopard has so many excellent features it makes Tiger look like a hack OS. Visually.
I’ve been using Leopard with no issues – on an aging G4. The parallels he implies to Vista’s forced hardware upgrades are unfounded. Leopard just works for me, minus a couple of the “ooh-ahh” effects like the animated Time Machine background and translucent menu bar (no big loss). Speaking of Time Machine, I doubt it’s the greatest backup software ever made, but it’s the first I’ve seen that works so thoroughly and transparently that the average person will actually use it – and that’s half the battle. Some of his comments aren’t completely true (that it only backs up to a USB or FireWire drive), and talking about getting a free copy of Retrospect with a NAS isn’t really in touch with the average user. Personally, I don’t really use Cover Flow because I feel it wastes screen real estate, but I like QuickLook to pop up a quick preview of a document from my normal Columns view. Spaces are also handy. I also much prefer Leopard’s networking – now my Windows machine pops up in my sidebar when I turn it on, with the shares instantly available. Overall I find Leopard to be speedy, stable, and the cumulative effect of all the new features makes me more productive throughout the day.
leopard has been purring for me since day 1. as a power user of many mediums it is the best os for heavy processing. i’m loving it.
to each his own though…
peace.
bv.
I LOVE OSX and have been having nothing but problems with Leopard. It seems like once a week I have to completely reinstall Leopard because my MacBook just won’t boot, I actually just wrote a post about my horrible experience with Leopard, if you want to read it check it out here:
http://cybersurge.org/2007/11/30/i-second-the-motion-leopard-makes-me-mad-too/
my Leopard runs fine on my Macbook pro and my Hackintosh… (yes, you read it right it even runs fine on my Hackintosh)
Don’t tell me Tiger didn’t have its slight issues in its launch! Leopard is working amazingly for my iBook G4!
I am compelled to point out that Tiger was buggy as shit until 10.4.3 .
Early adopters get bugs, it’s a universal truth.
I’ve had maybe 2 “problems”, and one was the installation of Parallels. I found a workaround for that that forced it to install and now that works perfect. I LOVE leopard.
While I do enjoy using Mac OS X quite a bit, I do find the Mac “fanboys” quite annoying. Sure, it’s a great OS, but you don’t have to start ripping on someone because they’re using Windows. The piece, though, sounded like he didn’t get enough sleep the previous night — he was bitching about everything, both Leopard and Vista.
That said, Apple didn’t really impress me too much with Leopard. A lot of the UI fixes (the new dock, the transparent menu bar, the rounded corners on menus) either didn’t matter or made it a lot worse (cough dock cough). So I’m still on Tiger.
@ROBIN
agreed, but most of the fixes you really benefit from aren’t seen :D Most notably for the daily (UNIX loving) users.
Tabbed Terminal
Spaces (Multiple Desktops)
64 Bit Architecture (This ones a biggie for me, my machines boot in under 10 seconds and are ready to run in most cases… and I don’t mean wake up… I mean boot)
the other 297 questionable improvements don’t really matter all that much from what I’ve seen… the Dock fan/grid directory viewer is a nice touch
@E.TCOOK
it’s hard to not feel a touch of superiority when your OS and Machine are this damn good… I work for a very large and scoping (which will remain nameless) internet based company… full open source… over 400 servers all running flavors of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and some Gentoo installs… dealing out more content than you can shake a stick at… the only windows machines are in the Accounting Dept. (and some in the Design Dept… if that isn’t Irony i dunno what is!) Any who, most everyone on the Dev team, Sysadmin Team, and Helpdesk/Support team run OS X, or Ubuntu(waiting for a Mac to trickle down to them in most cases). Bottom line it IS without a doubt the BEST OS ON THE MARKET… that’s like telling Neil Armstrong to eat a slice of humble pie when you tell him he isn’t pedaling fast enough.
Jokingly the other day the head Help Desk/Support guy was talking about how much he loves Windows… because if it wasn’t as buggy as it is… he wouldn’t have a job ;)
I’ve been using Leopard since the first weekend and it’s been an almost perfect experience. The Archive and Install worked beautifully and it’s fast than Tiger (even with all of the plugins and hacky stuff).
The only (major) flaw was several kernel panics the first few days, but after Googling the issue it was Azureus that was contributing to the issue. I’ve been crash-free since then. Thankfully, Transmission finally grew to a viable alternative around that time.
- RickFu
I actually find myself being a lot more productive with Leopard, features like spaces and quicklook have saved me a lot of time and effort. All the apps I ran in Tiger are running perfectly on my Leopard.
It just works.
Vista is a flop (after several release slips) and leopard is a fine product. If you don’t agree, stay on tiger until the chin first people find all the problems and Apple works it out. The negative reports are likely from the Microsoft sycophants who are starting to dabble in MacOSX and are frustrated. They are not representative of the consumer PC marketplace.
I for one, am at odds with Leopard.
With my Macbook Pro it is a perfect experience. Nothing to say.
But…
With my iMac 2Ghz, with 1.5 Gb, it is the worst experience I have ever had with an OS. Any OS.
I have reinstalled it 3 times, and finally downgraded to Tiger, where I couldn’t be happier…
What was the problem? On a newly installed (freshly formatted) system, Leopard slows down to an unusable level. I click on a submenu, and 40-50 seconds later it opens. Safari bounces about a dozen time, before stopping bouncing, and still, no Safari available… iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes don’t even start up.
I know Apple said that Leopard would run slow on “older” machines… but this is ridiculous…
the only problem i had with mine was that i couldn’t burn a CD but it was fixed the next day in an update. it still have problems in the verification process but the CDs work fine.
iBook G4 – 1.33Ghz, 768MB, 40GB – Leopard. No troubles other than I had to replace Safari with Firefox.
I’ve been through both migrations. I feel like I have solid, non-anecdotal experience with upgrading both OSes. As with all things technical, your mileage may vary. For me, the bottom line is one thing, a week after the upgrade, am I more, or less effective on that machine than I was before the OS upgrade.
Now to be fair, I don’t think I am a typical computer user. I have a ton of apps open all the time, I require a lot of RAM, and I work very fast and get frustrated when the machine limits the speed under which I can do my tasks.
With Vista, the OS is a pain in the ass, and it’s slow. XP is positively zippy by comparison. I did not have any major issues upgrading my machines, and the machine I bought with Vista pre-installed was the same way. Slow. Terribly Slow. Slow to boot up, constantly asking me for permission to do things, getting in the way of getting work done. I shouldn’t have to buy a top of the line machine just to run the Operating System…. Also, small things, like the inability of the 32 bit version of Windows to address over 2 Gb of RAM in 2007, drive me nuts. I can get more done in the same time with XP, so XP wins and Vista loses. Might be different for you, but that’s how it is for me.
With Leopard, I have experienced more stability than I did under Tiger, again, your mileage may vary. The machine does not seem slower, or faster, but it crashes far less. Safari crashes far less. So I get more done, I don’t have to reboot two times a day. So I get more done in the same amount of time than I did with Tiger, so Leopard wins.
Now this article. Lots of opinion, incredibly little substance. You do us a disservice by even linking to it. He talks in probably’s and sometimes. He tries to indict the whole OS on updaters and two features? He’s either not very good at making a case, or he just can’t make one to back his opinion up, because there doesn’t seem to be much steak with the sizzle. Were I writing the same article from the same point of view, it might be littered with facts that show I ACTUALLY USE BOTH OPERATING SYSTEMS. Terrible technology journalism from a source I have come to expect to be mediocre.
Robert, if you are experiencing crashes in OS X on a regular basis, then something is wrong. Out of the box, both Tiger and Leopard should be rock solid (they have for me on every install). The only times I have run in to stability issues (system based mind you, not app based), the following were factors:
1. Bad RAM. If you are experiencing hard freezes (or kernel panics) start here. If you have third party RAM, try reverting back to the RAM that came with the Mac and see if that fixes it.
2. Wrong permissions on your disk. Run Disk Utility, select Repair Disk. Then, select “Repair Permissions”.
3. Do you have any 3rd party programs installed that use a kernel extension? Like Cisco VPN? Older versions of that software can cause kernel panics on new versions of the OS.
For app crashes (particularly Safari) – do you have any input managers installed? Apps like Safari Stand, Inquisitor, Saft…? Those apps, while providing extra features, will make Safari as unstable as Joan Crawford with a closet full of wire hangers.