PC Mag - Leopard is the new Vista

Most of his opnions I disagree with. I am not having the troubles he is experiencing, particularly after 10.5.1. I find Leopard to be more responsive than Tiger. Sure TM and the dock need a little work but that is clutching at straws.

I agree with a lot of his points. But he failed to mention the serious lapse of functionality between ACLs and POSIX. In this instance of OS X, Apple has protected the user just a little bit more from his own folly, leaving power users out in the cold. This is understandable given the skill level of the average computer user, but at the sake of your loyal user base that kept you solvent through the thin years?

Until 10.5.2 is released, I'm not going to waste anymore time on Leopard.

He failed to make a point that he was going from very mature and stable Tiger to freshly released Leopard. He did say that, but didn't think it was a big deal.

law guy said:

This is not glowing - but it is very specific as he goes through his frustrations as a Mac user.

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I'm totally with this guy. Long time Apple user here. I've had to hard reboot my Power Mac more times since Leopard than I have since I bought it in 2003. Leopard is junk. I'm going to hang in there though in hopes that 10.5.2 will fix it up. I'm thinking that might not be the case though...

Personally, I've found Leopard to be a big improvement over Tiger... in almost every way. My MacBook Pro has been much more stable with Leopard, I like the more subdued interface. And, at least on my machine, its been faster than Tiger.

Does that mean there hasn't been problems? Of course not. Any new OS release is bound to have issues. Its simply too complex a piece of software to not have any. But overall, I'd take Leopard over Tiger any day...

The only thing that I can agree with in this article is the issues with windows shares not appearing, even after setting the workgroup in the network properties. It is an annoyance, though I do not really share that many files with my windows boxes to my mac...

From my limited experience, I can only comment on the author's comments regarding the UI. I totally agree with his and arstechnica's assessments, and they are the sole reason I lost interest in the up(?)grade to Leopard.

I also have had very few issues with Leopard. I would dare to say I've had problems just as frequently with Tiger vs. Leopard. Its so strange to hear some people rant about how terrible Leopard is when I've had almost no trouble.

He mentioned in the article that Vista in and of itself was stable, and its bad reputation was earned through 3rd party software not working right. Is that the case also in Leopard? I can say for sure that the biggest problem I've had was with Parallels, and therefore presumably not with Leopard.

As far as the windows share thing, without doing anything at all, the windows PC's in my house showed up in my sidebar in Leopard. They worked when I poked around with them. While perhaps there was a more stable implementation in Tiger, I never even knew it existed and figured it would be a tremendous effort to try. Now it works perfectly.

I suppose this is sacrificing power-user security to provide normal-user level functionality. If it is really a problem, perhaps it will be fixed and we could then all use it.

Leopard is awesome, i haven't had any problems with it at all. It's faster and less of a RAM hog compared to Tiger, I thought I would have to upgrade to 2GB of RAM for Leopard to run but i didn't!! I think the key to getting Leopard to run perfectly is to do an erase and install. Create a bootable backup of Tiger on an external hard drive and use migration assistnat to move your settings and files over and it simply works flawlessly.

f1 said:

Leopard is awesome, i haven't had any problems with it at all. It's faster and less of a RAM hog compared to Tiger, I thought I would have to upgrade to 2GB of RAM for Leopard to run but i didn't!! I think the key to getting Leopard to run perfectly is to do an erase and install. Create a bootable backup of Tiger on an external hard drive and use migration assistnat to move your settings and files over and it simply works flawlessly.

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I did an archive and install and its been really good for me as well.

Let's see, Tiger crashed—oh yeah, NEVER.

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Maybe in his experience but I've read plenty of threads where people had issues. Although, Tiger was definitely stable but in my experience, so is Leopard. Also, let's not forget how many people had problems with Tiger when it first shipped.

Presently it seems IN to bash a new OS and forget the history of the ones before.

And yes, I've actually used Vista and you know what? I like it better than XP. I couldn't care less for the glitzy UI (although it's still better than grey or blue and green) but instead like how much more powerful and easy Vista is to use.

On last note: My "upgrade" to Leopard was flawless. Everything I used in Tiger, with the exception of Saft and Pithhelmet (which now work), worked right when it booted up for the first time. Everything was exactly where I left it. I highly doubt the same is true of a Vista upgrade.

Even more:

Okay, Cover Flow I like, but at any normal resolution that's about as much preview capability as I need. So why add that two-clicks-down QuickLook deal?

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This guy has lost it if he doesn't think QuickLook is a huge productivity booster. Oh, and what about Spacebar?

I know the OS went to full-on 64-bits, but that's no reason to mess with the networking stack. Especially since Tiger's networking just plain worked.

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Tiger's never just plain worked for me! Leopard's, on the other hand, actually does.

if you want to kick off a manual backup, you've got to know to right-click on the Time Machine icon in the dock.

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Apparently Apple users don't know how to right click? Even so, if you have an external plugged in TM will backup things, wait for it, automatically! *Gasp!*

you can do an image-based bare-metal restore with the MS version

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Um, you can do that in Leopard too.

Okay, I probably had a little too much coffee this morning

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So that's it huh? And I thought it was because he was a moron.

this is not based on empirical evidence... but to me it seems that people with the newest computers have fewer problems than those running on a PPC

btw I have a new MBP and have had almost zero problems, only had to hard reboot twice since I got it (about a week after release)... which is the only big complaint I have had (hard rebooting is just to reminiscent of my windows days)

paul.b.davis said:

this is not based on empirical evidence... but to me it seems that people with the newest computers have fewer problems than those running on a PPC

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Most of the issues I've heard about are from PPC users but, on the other hand, I'm on a 12" PB (PPC) and have had almost no problems. And now that all of the programs that I use have been updated to support Leopard (like they had to do when Tiger shipped) everything just works.

On a related note, "Mustang Monthly" just did an article and they don't think the C6 Corvette is much of an improvement over the C5.

What a whine-baby.

seriously, i can't understand all the people who complain about leopard. it's snappier than tiger, as stable or more stable and only the little feature called quicklook alone is worth upgrading.

the dock can be disabled to 2d or altered (dockulicious.com), menubar can be set to non-transparent as well.

yes nothing is perfect but i think it's better than tiger (and since tiger is better than vista it's self-explanatory)

I agree with the networking part. Fix it Apple! I wanna see my Windows computer from my Mac without control-K-ing.

dL

MBX said:

What a whine-baby.

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His writing is a bit whiny-ish, but he does make a few valid points.

seriously, i can't understand all the people who complain about leopard.

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Well, as someone who's had a few Leopard problems, let me explain it to you :

it's snappier than tiger,

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Not for me (not yet anyways). An SR MBP with 2GB should be smoking the pants off of Leopard. Yet, I've noticed slowdowns in Office, iPhoto, Safari, and several other apps. The only app I've noticed speed up is Dashboard, which now loads about twice as fast as before. Other than that, some parts of Leopard have been down right dissapointing in terms of speed.

as stable or more stable

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Funny...I never had one kernal panic or random app abort with Tiger. Under Leopard, I've had a kernal panic, several random app aborts, and other random glitches (Coconut Battery no longer wishes to show the correct number of cycles).

and only the little feature called quicklook alone is worth upgrading.

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$130 for one feature? I think that's a bit extreme. I do like Quicklook, but Leopard is the sum of its parts, and with Time Machine, Spaces, Quicklook, and the other little goodies together, I'd say that Leopard was worth it (after we subract Stacks, because that feature is still not ready).

yes nothing is perfect

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I don't think anyone really expects it to be perfect, but from my own comparison, Leopard has been further from "perfect" than Tiger was/is.

but i think it's better than tiger (and since tiger is better than vista it's self-explanatory)

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I don't have enough experience with Vista, so I can't say whether or not Leopard is better than it. However, I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that Leopard is better than Tiger YET. Maybe after .2 or .3, Leopard will finally become better than Tiger; until that day, I'm only marginally happy with Leopard (compared to how Tiger worked out).

ha ha
This has to be the best joke of the day.
Back in 2003 when I bought an ibook with panther word was out who the hell buys a mac in place of xp with service pack 1 included free and service pack 2 just round the corner.
Have a good laugh over it and move on.
Apparently the latest ferrari is only as good as the last one or it is slower too.

yellow said:

I agree with a lot of his points.
Until 10.5.2 is released, I'm not going to waste anymore time on Leopard.

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Hmm, isn't that what you are doing right now??

His tone of voice says more about his objectivity than any of the words he says, therefore he should be ignored as someone saying something controversial just to fill magazine and web space; his review is a waste of paper and bandwidth on both counts. Like others I haven't experienced any of the 'problems' he is highlighting, no troubles whatsoever and I love all of the new features.