Comments on: Leopard the New Vista?

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:20:52 +0000

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.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:29:34 +0000

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.

By: Per-Erik Broz

Per-Erik Broz — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:10:15 +0000

iBook G4 – 1.33Ghz, 768MB, 40GB – Leopard. No troubles other than I had to replace Safari with Firefox.

By: crave10

crave10 — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:58:17 +0000

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.

By: Soraya Soch

Soraya Soch — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:05:40 +0000

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…

By: G . H I S C O T T

G . H I S C O T T — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:16:07 +0000

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.

By: Ruddy

Ruddy — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:53:15 +0000

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.

By: Rick

Rick — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:37:17 +0000

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

By: chad

chad — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:29:44 +0000

@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 ;)

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:31:51 +0000

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.