Submitted by In a PC Magazine opinion piece, Oliver Rist makes note of some deficiencies in Apple’s new OS, declaring, “Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror.”
In a PC Magazine opinion piece, Oliver Rist makes note of some deficiencies in Apple’s new OS, declaring, “Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror.”
I’ve had Leopard on my MacBook since day 1, and I haven’t any any kernel panics. The only thing that’s crashed has been Safari occasionally, but that sometimes happened in Tiger. I suspect a faulty Flash plugin.
I run tons of stuff on my MacBook, and I use this thing all the time. Leopard does have some bugs, but they’re minor spit-n-polish problems that Apple will certainly fix over time. As a major upgrade, this has been the most problem-free one yet. Comparing Leopard to Vista is laughable — I can run almost anything in Leopard I could in Tiger. Can’t say that for Vista.
You are a forgiving user, but it should not be the way while dealing with a paid product. Simple: they must not publish misbehaving products, it results in losses for many.
Releasing an OS to the public while knowing it contains plenty of bugs – is just unacceptable. Having competitors that perform worse is not an excuse.
Edited 2007-11-30 19:54
“You are a forgiving user, but it should not be the way while dealing with a paid product. Simple: they must not publish misbehaving products, it results in losses for many.
Releasing an OS to the public while knowing it contains plenty of bugs – is just unacceptable. Having competitors that perform worse is not an excuse. ”
I think this is totally the wrong way, to wait until you know that your product is bug-free. Nobody is going that way (not Linux, not Windows), why should Apple go that way? I think there must be a reason for that
Every product ever made has problems that happen after the initial sale. CPUs, semi conductors (ship with errata docs), Cars, DVD players, TVs etc. and some that are known before hand and are not considered critical or show stoppers.
I strongly suspect you are not involved in any soft of product development with such a narrow view.
I agree with u, but again we living in the world which not always as perfect as we think. In reality, take example of Ms XP and it is very mature product, but still having plenty of bugs…the worse things is Microsoft soon to discontinued XP product and forcing the Vista to go market which making business partner not quite happy, but this is reality.
At the end, as user, we all know what is the errors/bugs, but since you depends on them (OS X, XP/Vista) therefore you just need to wait for patches and bug fixes. but as the vendor of product, they need to put the product to market and gain some profits from it and put the bug fixed later in few weeks…
Sorry for bad english…
It’s not about being a forgiving user. Most people simply don’t have any problems whatsoever with Leopard. I haven’t had a ton of experience with Vista, but I have had some and I know a lot of people who bought it. It just isn’t that great of an OS. I know a lot of people who are bailing on Vista for Linux, XP, and OS X. You simply don’t see that with Leopard.
The only people trying to make a “suckiness” comparison between Windows and OS X are jaded Vista users; it seems.
You are a forgiving user, but it should not be the way while dealing with a paid product. Simple: they must not publish misbehaving products, it results in losses for many.
-and what do you know about keeping a large codebase bugfree?
besides, or rather to the point, the only way to ensure non-misbehaving tools is to make them yourself.
that doesn’t mean I want to encourage you to take on a life as programmer, only get you to notice that perfection is a hard to reach goal that can never be achived in a complex product. at least not if it has a deadline to meet
Releasing an OS to the public while knowing it contains plenty of bugs – is just unacceptable. Having competitors that perform worse is not an excuse.
-well, it’s working good enough for us to build large databases and complex networks and those work just as well on tiger, panther, leopard, gnus, hell even on windows. so what’s the fuss about?
if you want stability use a stable os like freebsd who doesn’t care about meeting a profit margin.
if you want “the coolest new thing” try leopard or use windows, but don’t be disappointed at crash. they happen. in a system that has billions of bytes to calculate with a huge number of subroutines, somewhere there’s GOT to be glitch. and if the glitch is in plain sight you’ve looked the horse in the mouth and ought not to buy it. simple as that.
so try to get a grip
software isn’t everything, hardly perfect and certainly not worth buying. not. ever.
// I can run almost anything in Leopard I could in Tiger. Can’t say that for Vista.//
Such as … what? Examples?
– Older Office Versions
– VS 2006 without SP1 (SP1 changes the compiler and breaks some code)
This are just the two I had problems with. Remember that there is still lots of old Software out there. Especially in companies.
“- Older Office Versions
– VS 2006 without SP1 (SP1 changes the compiler and breaks some code)”
Firstly what the hell is VS 2006? We have Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, and I don’t think by 2006 you mean 2005 SP1.
In my personal experience I’ve had zero problems with VC++ 2005 under Vista but that is basically what I use Vista for, no idea about other software.
And back to Leopard, three of my problems:
1- VLC while playing videos full-screen, brings system to a halt, more frequently if I press Next/Previous, the keyboard/mouse stop working and I have to hard-reset; that didn’t happen with Tiger.
2- Newer issue is with sleep on my MBP, in fact waking up from sleep, the trackpad/mouse starts acting weird, the pointer, instead of moving smoothly, it just jumps from one point to another, the only fix I found is to restart the machine. It doesn’t always happen and as much as I tried, wasn’t able to find out what’s the source of the problem. Anybody has a similar issue?
3- I frequently get disconnected from school’s wireless network and have to turn airport on and off to re-join, no such problem with Tiger.
There are other issues, but so far not troublesome enough to make me go back to tiger, especially since I can’t live without Spaces.
Edited 2007-12-01 00:56
I think it’s safe to assume he meant VS 2k5. However, both of the apps he mentioned will run just fine in Vista. The only issues I’m aware of aren’t compatibility, but privilege issues, depending on usage (IIS ASP.NET debugging in VS 2k5 RTM, for example, IIRC). Simply running the app as admin solves those issues.
Actually, there is a patch for the debugging issue. You still need admin if you add an asp.net project as a website though, since it needs interacts with the IIS admin stuff.
> waking up from sleep, the trackpad/mouse starts acting weird, the pointer, instead of moving smoothly, it just jumps from one point to another, the only fix I found is to restart the machine
Same problem on my 17″ mbp 2.4 Santa Rosa; a co-worker has it as well on his 15″ 2.4 Santa Rosa, whereas our two co-workers on first-gen MBPs do not have the issue. It was an issue in Tiger, Leopard, and 10.5.1. We have tried to come up with some sort of reproducible pattern but have yet to identify one.
Occasional super-long wake-up times (1 to 2 minutes) are the only other nuisance I have had with Leopard. Other than that, it’s been a painless in-place upgrade from Tiger, and system was/is rather heavily customized. I was on 10.5.1 when I had my permissions seriously wonky, crippling a bunch of apps, and no utility I had could properly fix them (I’m sure the issue was caused by a failed attempt to use the boot camp assistant) and had to do an archive/reinstall from the Leopard Disc. Twenty minutes later, I was back in business, all my apps worked fine, and all data was intact; didn’t have to touch my backup. That was rather impressive to me.
//// I can run almost anything in Leopard I could in Tiger. Can’t say that for Vista.//
Such as … what? Examples?//
Obviously not anything in Classic mode. (I still have some games that need it).
Also, Tiger isn’t exactly bug-free. As I type this, my desktop wallpaper is randomly changing every two seconds. I have the ‘change wallpaper automatically’ feature set to OFF, and no third party desktop-enhancing software.
Edited 2007-12-01 10:01
Comparing Leopard to Vista is laughable — I can run almost anything in Leopard I could in Tiger. Can’t say that for Vista.
I gotta agree with you! But then again, I also agree atleast with the point made by the author about Time Machine.. The most obvious place you’d look for preferences would be inside the app. And the strange Star Wars effect? It’s rather confusing and not in the least intuitive. Atleast that’s my opinion, haven’t made any real-world study about how even less technically experienced people would feel.
Operating system have so many users/groups of users that you simply can’t take ones experience(in this case yours). Because there will always be some claiming that he as no problem.
Many of his points are good. The problem is that he make the link by looking only at the flaw of OS X against Vista. To make a valid match, he would have better take the sum of goods and bads of both system.
I’ve had Vista on my HP pavilion dv9000 since three weeks after launch, and have yet to have the OS crash. The only serious stability issue at the moment is firefox freezes up an astonishing amount, but my guess is that it is firebug mucking with ajax sites.
I am a freelance developer, and as such I am constantly on my pc using professional software packages. The only bug in Vista I have really been affected by is that in some open dialogues, the order of my favorite links sidebar gets messed up. This is a minor issue though, and I’m certain microsoft will fix it over time.
This is really the first version of Windows I have ever actually liked. During the XP years, i used Java based platforms for my development so I could work in linux, and would dual boot or use WINE for the few things in windows that was part of my workflow. Now, I am fairly happy on it, I find it to be the most problem free environment by MS I have ever used.
I have Office 2k7, Adobe CS3 Web Design, Visual Studio 2k5 standard, and SQL Server 2k5 developer installed, and all my professional applications work flawlessly. In fact, I have yet to run across a single app that doesnt work after applying compatibility settings.
Comparing Leopard to Vista is laughable — I can run almost anything in Leopard I could in Tiger. Can’t say that for Vista.
AFAIK making Vista compatible with Tiger was never a priority for Microsoft.
I have a Macbook Pro running Leopard and have no issues. I’ve installed Leopard on several Macs without an issue.
The software used on my personal one is: Adobe Web Premium CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, etc), OpenOffice v2.x, Filezilla, Eclipse IDE for PHP, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Firefox 2.0.0.11, XAMPP with (Apache, MySQL, PHP5), Opera 9.x, Joost, GCC, etc.
Vista isn’t too awful. I can use it without an issue (just need 2gb ram). However, I hear a lot more bad things about it than good from customers.
Customers keep wanting to go back to XP and the most common complaint: Why does it keep asking me questions every time I want to play with the settings (control panel for one)? UAC you are a pain, but I understand your existence, but dang!
1. Wait For a Service Pack
I agree with JaredWhite. I’ve been using Leopard since day one on both a MacBook Pro and an old Mac Mini. I have been running apps like Nisus, Scrivener, Final Cut, TextMate, PostgreSQL, Subversion, Ruby on Rails, Photoshop CS3, several Omni Group products, etc. I have not had a single issue on either machine (with the exception of Adobe Photoshop’s retarded requirement of a case-insensitive filesystem — way to go Adobe developers!)
2. Needles Graphic Glitz
I like graphic glitz myself, but I can see why some people wouldn’t. Not liking it sells articles, for instance. However, I don’t think Apple has gone overboard, and some transparencies are actually a good thing. For example, when I’m working on a complex BASH script and and referencing a “howto” article on the web, it is nice to have my terminal transparent so I can read the web page through it as I’m typing. Also, today’s graphics cards are very powerful. If you’re not using it for games, why waste all that power on a Windows 3.1 style interface? Glitz makes your computer fun to use. There’s nothing wrong with that.
3. Pointless Interface Fixes
Personally, I like the new dock. It looks nice. I did darken the default to a charcoal gray and I think it looks even better that way because the blue dots show up a lot better, but other than that, it’s great.
I don’t use Cover Flow much. It is nice, but I just don’t use it. I do use QuickLook a lot though. Isn’t choice a nice thing?
4, Networking
I don’t use Windows, so I have no need to connect to Windows Shares. This may very well be a problem, but if you’re using Windows on your network, you probably have bigger issues than not being able to see Shares.
5. Time Machine
“Buried in System Preferences…” What? It’s right on the main page. It’s one click away. What is the author smoking? System Preferences is where you go to configure stuff. It’s called a consistent UI. Duh.
The author’s rant on Time Machine actually ruined all his credibility for me. All along he came across as an angry Windows user trying to show that his OS isn’t the only one that sucks and shouldn’t have been released, but I don’t think he spent more than a minute clicking around in Time Machine so he could whine about it in his article.
Time Machine has already saved my butt twice, it works as advertised, and it works well. Also, you don’t have to have a working Leopard install to restore from Time Machine. OS X’s installer will let you restore from Time Machine during an installation. Time Machine isn’t a disk imager, so one shouldn’t expect to do a bare metal restore from it. Bare metal restores are a waste of hard drive space anyway.
Conclusion
The author calls Leopard a “popped balloon of disappointment”. Nobody who actually uses Leopard says that. I have been a Linux user since 1994, and even I liked OS X enough to buy two machines. The author is just a scorned Windows user. At least that’s how he comes across in the article.
You have to admit, though, Vista does have the advantage with the block-based backup system. The author’s examples of the Entourage database and Virtual Machines are just two out of many examples where large files would cause extreme loss of disk space due to Time Machine’s backup method (and probably performance hits during the copying operation, as well.) The Time Machine method does have the advantage of the files being stored in their original form and thereby being accessible even without using Time Machine, but this really isn’t too much of an advantage considering you still need Leopard or a Leopard install disk to get at the files. They could have instead implemented it to look as if entire files are stored in the backup folder, while behind the scenes storing just the changed blocks and the references to the older versions.
I can see advantages and disadvantages to both Time Machine’s mechanism and a block-based backup system.
In my opinion, Entourage is a piece of junk, and if you are using it for email, you have much bigger problems than the amount of disk space its backups require. Also, you can exclude Virtual Machines and Entourage database from your Time Machine backup (although I wouldn’t recommend doing so for Entourage given its proclivity to database corruption). I keep one copy of my Virtual Machines on an external drive. There’s no need to do more than that, so they get excluded.
Also, while you do need Leopard to create a Time Machine backup since Time Machine is new on Leopard, you do not need Leopard to access your backed up files, which is one of the nice things about it. You can take your external drive, plug it in to another machine (running Tiger, for instance), and access the data. My experience with block-level backups is they require the software that created them in order to access the files. With hard drives being cheap and large, I don’t mind wasting some space for the convenience of not being tied to a particular software to restore my files.
Also, regardless of the pros and cons of Leopard’s backup mechanism (Time Machine) vs. Vista’s, you’re forgetting one important factor. In order to use Vista’s backup utility, you have to be running Vista, and that is a sad, sad situation to be in.
I’ve had Vista on my PC since day 1, and I haven’t any BSOD, I haven’t any issues. It runs great.
I think Vista and Leopard are so very good that linux-boys are trying to spread a lot of FUD.
Edited 2007-11-30 19:54
linux-boys are trying to spread a lot of FUD.
What the heck does Linux have to do with this?? No one mentioned the word “Linux” before you, not in the comments or the article! In fact, the author states he’s been using OSX for a while now and I got the impression he’s been using XP before that.
Now now, Casuto; the Linux camp uses that acronym as a justification. Pointing out that said acronym better describes their actions is a sure way to draw their vitriol.
Bump from -2 to -1 for you. I’d bump higher if I could. Too bad folks don’t want to hear how Vista “just works” for some people.
Edit: and in the time it took to post this originally, someone bumped you back to -2, and I’m sure it will fall even more, which merely re-enforces my point….
Edited 2007-11-30 22:17
The post was off-topic flamebait, and should in fact be modded down as such, irregardless of whether you agree with the poster or not.
Note that commenting about moderation is also off-topic, thus your post (and this one) should be modded down as well.
Ugh. -1 for use of “irregardless”.
Sorry, English is not my native language and I still make the odd error now and then. Peut-être préfèreriez-vous continuer de débattre cette question en francais?
All joking aside, this is waaaay off-topic, and so we should stop now.
Mod -1 for being a grammar fascist. OSAlert is a very international site; all you’re doing is serving to create a culture of elitism that discourages the participation of people who can’t speak English perfectly. Get over it. And stop encouraging the modding-down of people based on their grammatical mastery, rather than the actual points they are trying to get across.
For reference English is my native language. And I will fight to the death for the right of every internet user to abuse and break its grammatical conventions.
Edited 2007-12-02 12:59 UTC
“[T]his [post] should be modded down…”
Your wish is my command….
Score -1
“‘ve had Vista on my PC since day 1, and I haven’t any BSOD, I haven’t any issues. It runs great.
I think Vista and Leopard are so very good that linux-boys are trying to spread a lot of FUD.”
How is this comment deserving of a -3 rating. I guess that should you disagree with the MS hate and claim Vista to work as advertised, then you do deserve to be modded to obscurity. Vista on my laptop (sitting nicely beside Kubuntu) works like a charm, and I have to say I’ve had no problems with software compatibility. I really do prefer Vista to XP.
This deserves to be modded down because it is off-topic flamebait. As someone else already pointed out, this has *nothing* to do with Linux. The original article doesn’t mention Linux at all, and the author certainly isn’t a “Linux boy”, to use casuto’s immature expression.
Also, being dissatisfied with Vista isn’t “MS hate”. This would imply that those who don’t like the product are acting solely on an emotional, irrational basis. I find that attitude a bit simplistic.
Just for the Record folks this is being bumped down cause of the part about Linux, as it is off topic this story was about Vista and OSX.
I have been wildly swinging back and forth on whether or not time machine is a Cool Thing.
When I read about it, it sounded very cool. Implicit versioning is a sweet feature, and I figured apple would do a better job of the UI then MS with shadow copy. Then I saw the UI and was horrified. But then I saw vids of the UI, and figured it wasn’t so bad. Then I read that the versioning applied ONLY to backups, and you HAD to use an external harddrive. That baffled me, as a programmer I know the benefits of versioning, and I didn’t know why apple would deliberately gimp it by tightly coupling it with backups. I do freelance work on my laptop, and even though I rsync it to a network drive every night, I don’t know what I would do without my local svn repository. But I read about how you could install it to another partition, and figured that would nt be so bad.
Now I read that when it versions, it doesn’t just do diffs, it stores multiple full copies of the same file. IMHO, the only thing about time machine that is really any good is the whole “I plug my firewire drive into my computer, it asks if I want to set it up for automated backups” thing. Other then that, time machine is in the stone ages as a backup solution, in everything from technology to flexibility to user interface.
Time machine does not do diffs, and I thought that was a bad thing too (backups take more space for sure, etc.). Until you actually start using it and you realize that the way Time Machine does things is actually ingenious and very useful.
Every backup is a complete copy of your hard drive using hard links, so you can browse any previous state of your system using the Finder without using Time Machine. Also applications such as iPhoto and Adress Book (and any other) can show you previous states in *real time*! This would simply not be possible using diffs. So yes it would save more space, but then again recovery would be slow, impractical and you would have to use Apple’s solution to recover file (in the current way, you could restore your files manually or eventually through a 3rd party solution, Time Machine is just a GUI but is not necessary to restore your files because no undiff is needed). It’s brilliant and it’s the way that personal backups should be implemented (but perhaps not corporate backups). So I give it full points and more.
Except that ZFS can in fact do it differentially and still show you the different snapshots of the filesystem in real time. Hopefully Apple will adopt that approach in the future.
Apple’s target market isn’t developers. It want’s to make things easy. If you have ever used a versioning system, you can understand the difficulty average users would have with merging conflicts should they arise, can’t you?
Considering Apple’s target market, I can understand why they did things the way they did.
This guy complains about the technical issues of Time Machine, i.e. no bit level backup, etc. Then talks about Windows having the same functionality. He, and others, need to get past the spec sheet and look at the results. I know 4 non technical people using Leopard that now backup hourly! I know zero windows users doing the same. Why is that so hard for people to understand? Apple should be praised for making backup available and usable by the average Joe; that my friends is huge!
As to Leopards stability, I see no real change between it and Tiger, or Windows XP/2000 for that matter.
Start–>Programs–>Accessories–>System Tools–>System Restore. Follow on-screen prompts to create a system backup.
Boy, that’s hard to do.
The Windows users you know must ride the short bus.
Sorry, but that is not a backup.
//Sorry, but that is not a backup.//
True enough, I stand corrected.
Still, though, I think Windows users need to investigate the features of their OS a bit more. System Restore would have saved dozens of borked systems I’ve come across. Much like Time Machine likely will. If folks use it.
…and pretty much every experienced (i.e., not first- or second-line support) Tech Support person I’ve spoken to will tell you not to touch System Restore with a bargepole because it’s known to cause all manner of problems with on-disk files being completely out of sync with registry entries.
Unless it’s been updated in Vista (it might have been, of course—feel free to correct me if that’s the case; I don’t have it installed any more to check) System Restore is for a very specific class of problems, it’s not a generic rollback tool. That’s what Volume Shadow Copy (IIRC) is for
So this is what they call a backup eh, your hard disk fails, what next?
Even Microsoft wouldn’t class this as a backup and from what you’ve said you have no clue what a proper backup is.
Why don’t you learn how to read, asshat? I responded that, indeed, System Restore *wasn’t* a backup, and that TimeMachine *was.* I mis-read his post, and acknowledged my error.
FYI, I was making backups to Verbatim 5.4″ floppies when you were a twinkle in your unborn mother’s eye.
Apple market Time machine as the next big thing. They make video, that shout how revolutionary it is. No wonder users knows it’s there an what to use it.
Microsoft were so much concerned with sideshow and aero, the never market the backup utility. Windows user just aren’t aware there is such utility.
Marketing is often more powerful than technology. But it doesn’t withdraw credit from Apple, while it’s an crucial feature, it is somehow a marketing/information responsibility that MS didn’t take.
Edited 2007-11-30 21:07
“Apple should be praised for making backup available and usable by the average Joe; that my friends is huge!”
Ok, not owning one, but just a guess here. Buy any of those network storage backup device type things, and it will come with perfectly useable backup software useable by the average Joe. And Windows home server will have something similar no doubt.
God why is that whenever Apple does something that it is suddenly seen as “innovative”, even though its been done before?
On the Mac…
Buy ANY external USB drive plug it in. A OS X asks you if you would like to use the disk for time machine. You say yes and your done. (Beauty is, even if you had no intention to use the drive for a backup it asks you and gets you thinking about backups)
When you need to restore something, click on time machine icon and find the file in a familiar finder interface. Click restore.
On the PC…
Think to yourself hey I need to backup my stuff and find a USB drive that has backup software. Plug it in. Install the software. Configure what files to backup and set a schedule. You find out the backup software is a lite version, which will not allow you to backup network drives or other computers or requires you to remember to press a button on the drive to start a backup.
When you want to restore from the external drive provided software, you have to remember what was the name of the funky backup software? Find it in the start menu. Start the application. Figure out the 3rd party restore function and, most likely, pick only the last available copy.
Now chances are next time you buy a external drive, you will get a totally different set of backup software or you have to decide I only want to buy drives from manufacture X.
Which scenario do you want your grandma/mother-in-law/cousin/neighbor using? If you say PC than you probably have too much time on your hands or enjoy getting calls on the weekend. Oh and by the way each of your callers will have a different backup program installed.
i own a macbook pro and a dual g5, i really like apple and felt every os upgrade so far added new features which improved the os.
leopard is different, leopard changed things which did not need changing, the dock is the best example. the reflection and “3d” view add absolutely nothing to the usability, it actually made it worse. i always liked the eye candy in osx serves a purpose, like the genie effect for minimizing (you see where the app goes to). also the dock shows the the name of the application when you hover over it, any interface designer will tell you this is a extremely bad idea. why the hell did they change the icon of the system preferences that much? man, i could go on and on. how the gods of interface design have fallen..
To make dock 2D go to terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock
To make dock 3D
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO
killall Dock
Granted it should be a preference item, but why does everyone whine so much about this?
Perhaps because the 3D dock is ugly as hell and apparently there is no way to easily revert to the old dock??? Just a guess…
You can get utils to use the 2d dock, it’s a simple case of using a dashboard widget to change it. People like their 2d dock which has worked well since 2000, no need to cry about it.
Because it means Mac OS X is not ready for the desktop. Or at least thats what many want us to believe if you need to open a terminal in Linux to do something like this. Then again, every time someone wants network information in Windows as well, they are also told to open cmd at almost every tech support place I’ve heard of, so I’m not sure if we have a OS ready for the desktop yet.
Hear hear!
Because they aren’t used to that on Apple. This isn’t better than messing with the Windows Registry or GConf.
Beyond the fact that it involves a mechanism that most mac users don’t even know exist (the Terminal), there is the issue that it doesn’t put the dock back the way it was in Tiger. It takes up more space for no reason.
People whine for two reasons:
1) It was a pointless and horrid addition; it adds nothing and makes usability worse. Heck, I was spending a few seconds when trying to place an application the dock whether it was ‘in the dock’ before releasing the button.
Why didn’t they stick with the glass one? the general consensus by people around the web as that it was the prefer option – so why not?
2) The fact that it requires a hack when it should have been a visible option in the dock preferences – rather than having a broken concept rammed down our (end users) collective throats.
I agree, my point is that this is such a minor ascetic part of the OS (along with the translucent menu bar) that I just don’t get why people spend so much time talking about it. Can’t we move on to something more substantive? Like why is resolution independence is not included?
IMHO, it seems like people are grabbing for stuff to complain about. And they aren’t trying very hard if the dock and bar is the major complaint. This reminds me of the tactics used by political parties i.e. lets attack something minor, repeat it over and over, until the populous thinks its a real problem. This goes for any minor attack on Linux, Windows or OS X.
Edited 2007-12-01 15:48 UTC
Well…… yeah.
I don’t think they’ve really fallen, but the change for the sake of changing, on the dock and on the menu, were pretty lame. I’ve tried the -noglass hack on a laptop I had access to and it improved the looks of the Dock considerably. There was already a 3rd party utility that painted a white strip on the top of the desktop image, so the menu looked pretty sane and sober already.
All in all, those are the two things I can single out as lame on Leopard. Everything else was peachy, and I’ve not encountered a single victim of the .0-itis in person, but heard news of a poor soul acquaintance of mine experiencing a weird share of glitches. Ouch
Tiger did this, I think. The difference is now it’s on a black background so you can read it easier. You’re the only person I’ve read about who’s had an issue with this… seriously, what’s wrong with it? I don’t always remember what my dock icons are and it’s hardly intrusive.
Back to the article… As far as Windows shares not working properly, this is a pain, however, no operating system I’ve used functions properly in this respect, including Windows.
I’ve not had Leopard crash on me yet, though since using it, I’ve had my remaining Tiger system crash twice. I think, as with any operating system, some people are going to have more luck than others. I’m certainly having more luck with Leopard than I was with Tiger. It resumes from sleep faster, crashes less frequently and is more reliable at dismounting and mounting my USB drives. Overall, it’s been a great upgrade for me, and I’m appreciative of most of the UI changes.
I have to say though, in my fairly limited experience, Windows Vista has been far more unreliable than OS X.
Some specific points from the article:
Either he’s being pedantic or he needs glasses. Infact, I do need glasses and I can still see it just fine without my glasses on. If he doesn’t like the new dock, he can disable it, but it’s not that bad… perhaps a little unrequested though.
Not everyone uses coverflow, particularly on every folder, and of those who do, you might want a closer view. It’s not like it’s adding any negative features or causing problems… if you really hate it, you can get rid of the icon from Finder and not think any more about it.
If you hate it, you can change it to a fan. Admittedly, they probably should have added an “open in finder” option as well, but I personally like the stacks, and I’m using them for those “suites” of applications you get. The subfolder issue doesn’t really matter, since I only ever look at stuff one level deep in there and don’t really have the inclination to do otherwise. Had they put the subfolders opening in “substacks”, you’d probably get more people complaining about that.
It’s a non-issue in the dock stacks, since when you actually put something in the folder, the icons change to the contents of the folder. As for the icon within the finder, it’s just a preference. I like the visual consistency of the new icons over the old ones, but some people don’t. Maybe the solution is an “Icon theme” option. Though I don’t understand the “nonintuitive” criticism…
?
Not even an argument that time, just that he wasn’t waiting for them. Sometimes eyecandy is nice.
I have a different view. Many people follow the “if aint broke, don’t fix it” way of doing things. That’s all good and well but the product doesn’t end up evolving much.
“Change for changes sake” is not a bad thing sometimes. Even if it means you figured out a new way of doing something wrong (does that makes sense?
)
lastly, I like the new preference icon!!
I use a plain-vanilla OS X Leopard (Virtually no customization on my part except Backgrounds) and it is very very stable.
What’s my secret? Here it is:
– No Kernel Extension/Module
– No Kernel Recompilation
– Use Apple built-in software (Apple Mail, Safari, iWork, iLife, etc.)
My only non-apple software is World of Wacraft and it is even more stable than ever before (It used to crash every 2-3 hours on Tiger).
As for Vista, it is stable, it just slow.
//- Use Apple built-in software (Apple Mail, Safari, iWork, iLife, etc.) //
Er … that’s great if you never need to interact with users of other OS’s. But many of us do, so we have to install OTS software.
Sorry. I forgot to say that I also use some open-source/free software like:
– Adium ( Instant Messaging with the whole world)
– Handbrake (To transform my DVDs in an iPod Touch format)
– Firefox (For the plugins)
– Thunderbird (For RSS Feeds)
– Eclipse (Java Dev Environment)
I guess my point is that I do not do anything special or out-of-the-ordinary my iMac.
I am not saying that you should use your Mac as I use mine because that would plain stupid. “Do whatever works for you” is my motto.
I use a plain-vanilla OS X Leopard (Virtually no customization on my part except Backgrounds) and it is very very stable.
What’s my secret? Here it is:
– No Kernel Extension/Module
– No Kernel Recompilation
– Use Apple built-in software (Apple Mail, Safari, iWork, iLife, etc.)
In other words, it works because you know what you’re doing, to the extent where you realize that “if I do X using OSX, bad things might happen.” There are similar rules on Windows machines as well, such as don’t install Norton anything on your machine, ever!
I don’t run Vista myself, but I’ve talked to a few power users who don’t have any problems with it. The biggest issue they had was slow copying of files across the network, but I believe that has been fixed.
Many of the issues I’ve read about where people are having problems with Vista is because they were doing stupid things (at least in the Windows world), like trying to install Vista over an older version of Windows (instead of doing a clean install), and/or trying to run an old version of Norton something on Vista. (Actually, the fact that you have installed Norton anything on your machine is a good indication that you’re clueless to begin with.)
People who have been around the block a few times know better than to do things like that, so they don’t have many issues. I can’t speak from personal experience yet, but I don’t anticipate any major issues when I decide to finally switch from XP.
Also, in terms of ‘major’ upgrades, comparing Leopard to Vista (as some have been doing) is not really fair. I think it would be more fair to compare Mac OS Class -> OSX to XP -> Vista. Though admittedly Vista wasn’t that big of a jump, but certainly a lot bigger than Tiger -> Leapord.
…machines running Leopard that I am responsible for are fine; in fact, great.
There is one MacBook which refused to wake properly from sleeps and could only be rescued via a hard restart.
The client lost faith and sent it back to Apple. If the option had been there to switch to Tiger then they would not have been hit with their own restocking costs and I would have a happy client.
If Apple refuses to sell machines with Tiger on whilst Leopard is not proven then it will hit their bottom line and be a PITA to managers with groups of Apple based users.
As for this article I think it summed itself up with the line:
>> Okay, I probably had a little too much coffee this morning, but …
Comparisons like this will always generate heat rather than light but if you are a journalist then that might be half the point.
Oh I did not know that I just can activate my leopard every three month, and I just can install it on one machine.
Oh right, Vista contains CoverFlow? I didn’t know…
*ironic modus off*
and ehm, my macbook is just faster than with tiger. This can not be the new vista…
// my macbook is just faster than with tiger. This can not be the new vista…//
What, what? He said *Leopard* is the new Vista, not *Tiger.*
oh a mistake,
I meant: My MacBook is faster with Leopard than with Tiger
You didn’t make a mistake. That was what you said. Leopard was implied in your original sentence.
Some people just can’t apply the context of what they’re reading. Probably from spending too much time programming rather than communicating with (average) humans.
and ehm, my macbook is just faster than with tiger.
Really? It seems every OS and DE claims that the newer version is faster than the old, but I never see it. Any perceived gains come from hardware upgrades. Without those, most any OS I’m familiar with just gets slower.
Addressing Tiger vs Leopard specifically: my grandfather held off ordering a mac mini until it would come with Leopard. Of course, it came with Tiger preinstalled and a Leopard install disk (awesome?). We messed around with Tiger before I installed Leopard for him. On the relatively limited Mac Mini 3d hardware, Leopard’s UI (which is after all what users will notice) was perceptibly slower.
Too anecdotal? On my machine, with xbench I got 530 in the “User Interface Test” section with Tiger. With Leopard I get 350. My machine is significantly faster than the mini so I can’t say I notice the difference like I do with my grandfather’s machine, but xbench sure does.
It’s not all a loss: my score on the Text section of the Quartz Graphics Test went up significantly. But the UI speed is down, and it becomes noticeable to me on the Mini. It doesn’t ruin anything, but I’d hardly call Leopard undoubtedly faster. I’d be curious to hear your xbench results, but it’s such a pain to install an old version of an OS just to run a test that I can hardly ask it of you
Really it’s like he’s looking for any small flaw or feature he doesn’t like, then tries to make it look like it’s a catastrophe and everyone hates it.
Calling it “Leoptard” as if that was witty, raising “Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually” as a point against it when only 10.5.1 has been released…
But I suppose that’s why it’s an opinion piece, he doesn’t have to know what he’s talking about.
At least java 6 runs on Vista! (not that I have any interest in vista).
I’m beginning to think, no java 6 Leopard is a blessing in disguise since I haven’t upgraded my macbook yet.
First, Vista was a complete pile of turd. I uninstalled it after battling with it for about 6 weeks because it was so infuriating. Two steps forward, three hundred steps back.
My Leopard upgrades have been relatively painless. A few niggles, but nothing major.
The author of the article used, at the earliest, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.4—his first Mac was a MacBook Pro. Had he had the misfortune of using 10.4.0, he would have had a somewhat better sense of perspective. Moreover, why couldn’t he have held off on buying Leopard at all if it was that worthless to him? This is supposedly a smart guy, yet he bought a product apparently without researching it in the slightest, and then complains that it doesn’t seem to do what he thinks it should. Huh?
I have to say, Leopard isn’t flawless, but I’ve yet to actually meet (rather than read about) anybody who’s had any real problems with it. Yes, it’d be great if .0 releases were completely bug-free, but even .10 releases often aren’t.
Either way, it’s leagues ahead of Vista from my perspective (relatively small sample-set of about ten Macs, some PPC, mostly Intel). There isn’t a single application that I use now that either wasn’t updated to support Leopard within a few days, or didn’t need updates at all. Despite the egregiously long development cycle that Vista had, there are still plenty of Windows applications that just plain don’t install, let alone work, properly under it—especially if you don’t want to disable UAC and log in as an Administrator all the time.
Nice try. The misery that is Vista would love company, but I’m afraid that OS X Leopard is not it.
Level 1: You don’t like Leopard.
Level 2: You need to tell everyone about it.
Level 3: You write a big incoherent rant in which it is revealed that you don’t really understand what’s going on and what you’re talking about, and that you have a lot of misconceptions about how things really work. But somehow you’re angry.
Level 4: You hate Leopard so much that you’re “pissed off”
You had already lost me at 3. My advice: relax, take a vacation and stay away from computers in general, or stick with Vista, the “half-baked” OS that you’re able to tolerate somehow because it took longer to develop, or something (I admit I didn’t really get that part). Life’s too short to be pissed at such truly insignificant things. Some of us are glad that Leopard was finally released and are enjoying it a lot. Leopard is a superset of Tiger, so I’m not sure how you could logically like the latter and not the former. (As for your crashes, it’s not Leopard but some kernel-modifying buggy 3rd party utility you probably installed and shouldn’t have, Apple can’t prevent you from doing that.)
Life’s too short to be pissed at such truly insignificant things.”
Oh, yeah? So, why are you venting your frustrations with his article so much?
is rather odd on how he does it in the beginning of the article.
How so? The version of Tiger that came with his MacBook Pro is near the end of Tiger’s release cycles.
Version 10.4.11 is stable and yet still has a few glitches here and there.
Every OS at it’s most mature state still has a few annoying bugs.
Leopard should not have been released until this January.
This would have allowed them to iron out the rest of their Installer issues, preferences, Time machine with wireless router features and more.
I’d expect 10.5.2 or 10.5.3 to be available by January.
Hopefully, the next retail stamped DVD will be 10.5.4 or greater so that when I plop down $199 for a Family Pack I don’t get the “Essentials Package” error prohibiting me from installing off of DVD.
I’m not in the mood to buy more RAM to randomly solve this problem, or to buy an external drive to then Restore the Image to and try to buy pass something that still breaks even if I partition my drive 120Gig Drive.
The Installer with Essentials package checking is broken and it breaks randomly from the G4 to the Core2Duo MacBook Pro with stock RAM configurations.
Solution:
Further SQA cycles are necessary before this baby gets stamped out.
Second solution since there are some interesting issues with non DVD DL read-only drives: Offer the option of buying multiple single layer DVD copies of Leopard.
At the beginning of the cycle, Tiger was skittish. Apple brought back some USB-related bugs and if you detached a USB device, there was a kernel panic. Many things didn’t work until 10.4.2 but Tiger didn’t run smoothly until 10.4.8 for me.
I expected to wait for 10.5.3 before upgrading to Leopard and, while 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 have been very stable, 1 kernel panic so far, it’s not been very good or very bad. Third party software compatibility being the worst problem and to a point, Apple is responsible. I still find the swiss cheese-like firewall to be a big mess for most people.
However, Time Machine is brilliant for most people and the consistent user interface is quietly harmonious. Some people just want to use the computer, they don’t want to know how technical it can be. Once the bugs are out, Leopard will be everything they promised.
People here act like tiger or panther were great releases initially. They weren’t. I wasn’t a mac owner back when 10.4 first came out but I had a mac-mini in the office (1st gen) and when we installed tiger on it it was a mess. This wasn’t a production system so it didn’t matter and it was for testing purposes so the flaws were important to keep track of. The point is that Tiger and Panther were not flawless releases and any one here who thinks otherwise is naive and must be a newb because this is a matter of course for apple. 10.x.0 releases are ALWAYS buggy with major issues that get fixed in subsequent releases. The same crap will happen when the next major release of OSX happens. People will bitch about how 10.6.0 isn’t as good as leopard and that everything worked fine in leopard and the upgrade screwed everything up, that apple should do more testing ans should not have released the software, that they should have done this and not that. Its the same sorry story every release.
All these f–king articles are stupid. First of all vista on first release was a a nightmare. Software would not work. VNC wouldn’t work without major workarounds or hacks, citrix wouldn’t work properly, other major software that we used had issues, Firefox would crash when trying to access the media player. These issues have been resolved because both MS and the software vendors have been updating their software. The same thing will happen with Apple and has happened in the past. Get over yourselves people. Either learn patience or stop being a f–k an downgrade to tiger if it worked so well for you.
Edited 2007-12-01 00:05
“Vista was supposed to be a ground-up redesign, whereas Leopard is really just a juicy point release.”
Vista is a mid-tower high redesign as well as OSX 10.5.
There are thousands of changes on 10.5 under the hood never mentioned because they don’t need to mention them and they improve the quality of code a lot.
I’ve had a few issues with Leopard but nothing beyond a minor niggle really. I’ve only had one crash from OS and that was only the dock.
The apps all seem to work fine, I use a mixture of Apple and non-Apple apps, some of these are complete memory hogs and I often run them simultaneously so it’s not as if I treat it easy.
There’s always going to be some problems with a new release of an OS, but comparing Leopard to Vista is just plain nonsense.
Frankly these stories smell of a FUD campaign to me.
My life revolves around operating systems.
I use OS X and Linux at work as-well-as a virtualized XP install in VMWare. I have to run XP just because there is one legacy product that is Windows only and because I have to test out certain things for our Windows users.
I use OS X at home. Both installs at work and home are Leopard. Both installed without fail and have not suffered a single crash. I have a Mini at home and a 20″ iMac at work.
Do I go around hitting other computer users because one uses Windows another uses Linux, OS X, Solaris or another? No.
I believe several people here need to look into getting a life or taking Prozac. Maybe both.
In any case, the comparison in the article is not really accurate. There are going to be good installs of Vista as-well-as good installs of OS X. We’ve had several imaged Vista installs at work go down while the majority are rock solid.
Edited 2007-12-01 05:34
Open Terminal
Paste the following code:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer ‘EnvironmentVariables’ -dict ‘CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE’ 0.62
Probably you need to enter your password, to give MacOSX permissions to change the setting. Reboot and voila! 0.62 is a value that is rather bright. Try 1 for full white and 0 for a grey-ish look.
I have been using Leopard on 2 Macs since the day it came out, 1 at work, 1 at home. I have had 0 problems (knock on wood) with anything in Leopard – Time Machine has worked exceptionally well on both machines, as well as Spaces, the new Dock, Dock Stacks (which I use extensively), and the new iChat is bloody brilliant.
Vista, on the other hand, tested out so poorly with our in house applications that it is forbidden in the office where I work.
Vista, I’ve used Leopard: I know Leopard; Leopard is a friend of mine.
Vista, you’re no Leopard.
Do you happen to know the ways in which those in-house apps failed? What kind of apps are they?
I’m pretty tired of all this bashing of ANY Operating systems. Critisism is good but this ranting is pretty boring. And all these Operating system A vs Operating sytem B articles are as interesting and stupid as Freddy vs. Jason (http://imdb.com/title/tt0329101/) or “Who has the longest dick” battles
All these generalisation is pretty stupid too. My Vista doesnt work, so no other Vista can work either. My Leopard works fine, so no one else can have a problem either. Apple is great, Microsoft sucks, and Linux is only used by long-haired hippies….
The fact that it requires a hack when it should have been a visible option in the dock preferences – rather than having a broken concept rammed down our (end users) collective throats.
I don’t want to point out the obvious here, but Apple has always preferred to do it there way not necessarily the way their users want it. That is why die hard PC fans that stuck with Windows or Linux stay away from it. The company has always had a boutique-type attitude of “We know what you want. Don’t worry we are Apple.” Changes to the UI without easy theme alternatives to set is not Apple’s concern. They want it to look nice all together as they envision it, not their user’s tastes.
are the EXTREME case of YMMV – and for the most part it’s a craps shoot. It comes down to what software you use, what hardware you bought, etc.
Vista is saddled with an absurd amount of legacy hardware because you simply have more hardware choices. You get Vista on a new machine with specifications that actually MATCH what Vista really wants (dual core, 2 gigs or more RAm) and don’t try to do anything fancy using legacy win32 apps (vmWare, uTorrent) and don’t need legacy applications that just don’t work in Vista (IE standalones) you probably won’t have too much to complain about… Friend of mine uses Vista 12 hours a day the past three months, has not one complaint. I didn’t last 24 hours before the lack of being able to run stuff I NEED every day and the absurd instability of the OS on my hardware (like the headaches and instability of running a Ge7600 alongside a Ge8800GTS to run more than two displays at once – functionality I’ve expected since 1991) made me rip it out by the nerts for WinXP.
Leopard is the same thing – While the vista side has an absurd combination of hardware to support, Leopard has a much narrower install base to work with – too bad said base is Apple hardware, meaning some of the shoddiest piles of junk to come down the pipe. Only Apple could get away with selling e-machines castoffs at premium prices. (I say, I say, that’s a joke son). Maglock connectors that fray and catch fire, 18 bit displays being sold as 24 bit, cheapest hard drives they could get from Seagate that the heads become detached from the swingarm in less than three months use, Apple wouldn’t know cooling if it stripped naked, painted itself purple, hopped up on a table and started singing ‘oh look at what a big cooling fan I am’, etc, etc, etc. Every time someone holds up apple hardware as an example of quality, I feel like handing out a Darwin award.
That Tiger was as stable as it was given said hardware was quite impressive… But one has to remember HOW many problems were there at the transition to 10.4? 10.3? 10.2? 10.1? EVERY time they’ve had a baseline release of a major revision we’ve heard these same complaints. 10.4 was not ‘great’ until 10.4.3 – what are we up to now on that branch? 10.4.8? 10.4.9? Comparing a 4.9 branch to a 5.0 is like comparing an OS with six years of patches to an OS that hasn’t even had a service pack yet – oh wait!!!
I have access to a crappy white plastic MacBook that runs Leopard without a hitch – then there’s the disaster area MacBook Pro that leopard vomits on three times a day that had to go back to Tiger… It’s a craps shoot with no rhymne nor reason.
I think the biggest problem both operating systems have though is that they are trying to sell goofy ****ing eye candy as valuable ‘features’ – the crap experienced users who want something to appear when they click on it NOT five seconds later after some bullshit animation would turn off (if they can – ****ing apple) – when frankly it’s garbage that they wasted absurd amounts of time coding and hyping instead of making sure the underlying technologies themselves worked. It seems ALL operating systems are increasingly guilty of this – Flip3d, expose, beryl/compiz – **** that nonsense – NONE of them provide any better functionality than the simple task bar! (because of course those four copies of a text editor I have open are so easy to tell apart as 200 pixel wide thumbnails at distorted aspect ratios)
Did anyone actually WANT a different UI in Vista or Leopard? How about instead of the goof assed eye candy they instead focused on making the underlying OS faster, leaner, more stable with better hardware support?
But at least Vista lets you turn all that bullshit OFF… Something OSX doesn’t let you do – and the third party crapplets that do let you disable rubbish like shadows add MORE overhead: BRILLIANT! (but then, I consider the Windows 98/2K UI the pinnacle of interface design, everything since then being little more than window dressing or worse, steps BACKWARDS)
Oh, and on the subject of goof assed eye candy… what happened to the USEFUL addition they promised in Leopard of actually letting you change/set font metrics? Get axed when they realized their legacy crapplets and bloated image based UI elements couldn’t handle the idea? They brag about this new ‘corefont’ and device independence yet you can’t do SHIT with it…
Edited 2007-12-02 00:47
Not to keep beating this dead horse, but I had to comment on this quote, “Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror.”
That is the most ill informed comment of the whole article. Let’s compare:
1) Vista delays are measured in years. Leopard’s in months.
2) Vista doesn’t run well on many brand new PCs. Leopard runs well on all new hardware as well as older hardware.
3) Vista’s UI has been drastically rearranged since XP, which confuses users. Leopard’s UI is consistent with Tiger’s. Old features are right where you expect them to be. Leopard’s new folder icon set doesn’t provide information about the folder as clearly as Tiger’s did, but at least things are in the same place.
4) Vista comes in one full flavor and numerous watered down flavors; and all are overpriced. With Leopard, you get the full experience for a very reasonable price. There is no retarded stripped down versions.
I don’t think it is possible to compare Vista’s horrific failure to please with the minor problems and complaints (like the new dock’s fuzzy blue buttons and folder icons) that people have had with Leopard (for which there are at least a couple of workarounds). Vista has been a deployment disaster with people begging for a downgrade. Leopard has not.
I’m afraid any attempt to make comparisons between the two with regards to their market failings is baseless hyperbole.
Apple, Microsoft, and some Linux Distros, are in such a rush to put out new features, or redesign/re-implement old ones, and appease the appetites of fanboi geeks, or appease media buisness partners, or entice upgrades, that they are putting out pure, bug riddled, bloated, unstable, dog poop.
That’s why I’ve grown to appreciate Linux distros like Debian (stable branch) and Slackware. With those distros, stuff just works, the system is efficient and stable beyond belief, and the overall user experience is awesome.
Point being, Fedora, Leopard, Vista, et al, are perfect examples of rush to feature bloat and the bugs that come with it. And it’s time for producers of software, proprietary and open source alike, just need to get back to basics, and strong QA.
BTW – I’m typing this on Debian Etch install – efficient, stable, easy, just plain excellent.
Give it a few months and we’ll see ‘KDE 4 is the new Vista’.
Some day, if Gnome ever do a revolutionary rather than evolutionarly release (Gnome 3.0), we’ll see the same about Gnome.
Gnome is stable, but damn is it conservative on features.
If I want to upload an image, I’d better have that directory’s window already open somewhere on the desktop so I can tell what I’m uploading.
I can have compiz, but an animated GIF for a desktop? Nope.
Individual screensaver configuration? You’ll be told flatly you don’t need that feature.
Consistent interface for wireless encryption settings regardless of chipset? They’ll wait for Novell to write it for them.
Hell, the printer wizard only changed because they imported KDE’s, lock stock and barrel (down to the same Apply/Save buttons).
Gnome 3.0 implies that there’s room for improvement in Gnome, and Gnome’s dev staff is miserly about admitting this.
10.5.0 did have some minor issues, so what?
Solved within 3 weeks, as we may expect from Apple.
Does ANYBODY still have issues with 10.5.1?
Apple is a receiving a lot of envy and pointless comments lately, but you can expect that being by far the most advanced OS.
but EMC’s Retrospect worked just fine under Tiger
Bahahahahaha no.
Retrospect had unicode problems that screwed the pooch on backups and they took at least a year to fix them. A misnamed preference file from Broderbund’s Kid Pix borked the entire thing because management at Dantz insisted cross-platform compatibility was more important than functionality.
As far as why Time Machine doesn’t do block-level backups… it’s a good idea in theory but a serious problem down the road for an OS designed to run multiple filesystems (and by multiple I don’t count FAT). Faster is not always better. It’s more desirable, I’ll give him that.
Oh, and I haven’t bothered to upgrade to Leopard either. Tiger was underwhelming enough as it is, crapped all over a major system update to the point of wrecking the HD, and in the past year I’ve been examining what I can do with Ubuntu Linux.
I have no idea why you don’t like it, people. I didn’t have any issues with it. I believe it’s just your stupidness.
Y’know, I love my Macs, and OS X, but if I have to hear one more dingbat go on about system crashes… well, I’ll just be really annoyed.
I haven’t seen a mainstream OS crash regularly since 2000. Windows has been pretty rock solid, in terms of stability since Windows 2000, and Mac since OS X. And for what it’s worth, I thought the whole Wndows crashing aspect of the “Switch” ad campaign was disingenuous. I mean, c’mon, nobody’s seen the kind of crashing they’re were going on about in those ads since Windows 98SE. C’mon Ellen, what’re you, stoned?
I run a pretty mixed shop with various flavors of Windows (including Vista), Linux, and Tiger and Leopard. And system crashes are about as frequent as hard drive failures. That is, it does happen, but hardly ever.
So, all you “journalists” writing about operating systems, and you ad people, lose the “crash” yap. It’s not an issue, really, and hasn’t been for nearly a decade.