4 months of Snow Leopard, I've had enough

[cjmillsnun]

I would have to say from what it seems, people with the first versions of the Mac Pro, like myself are better off running 10.5.8. Since we have the EFI32 it is pointless running 10.6 which I found was very memory hungry. I would see it go through my 6G of memory like it was nothing, & in 10.5.8 I haven't seen it use past 3G. I too went back to 10.5.8 & haven't had a problem since. Perhaps when we upgrade our systems to something with EFI64 then perhaps we would have a better chance with Snow Leopard, otherwise save yourselves some headaches.
That's my 2 cents worth.

In what way are you better off running 10.5.8? Kernel 64? Big deal, it doesn't run by default on any of the workstation hardware including the latest Mac Pro.

That is the only potential difference EFI64 would make. Memory management is down to the OS, not the version of EFI you use.

Now for saying that Snow uses more RAM, I believe you are right there, and I use an EFI64 Mac. I think its memory management could use some more tweaking.

 

[TonyK]

Don't like sports, but if I am going to quote, the quote should be accurate. A "bunt" is not a strike.

I was mostly hoping Apple would hit a homerun and improve Snow Leopard's ability with older software. They bunted for a third strike instead.

Just upgrade my early 2008 Mac Pro to SL on Sunday. Took me months to ferret out software, make upgrades and other details to ensure a smooth transition. REALVIZ Stitcher 3.1 did not work. Poof, deleted.

Have not tried to print to my Epson R800. But it and the Canon Scanner are connected to a G5 running Leopard so that won't be an issue in this house.

Regarding Office and Templates, why can't one import the 2004 Templates in to 2008?

 

[TheAshMan]

You hurt your own credibility.

LOL, Office 2008 has less templates, and sucks more than Office 2004. Hence my rigidness to keep "outdated" software. Yes I tried Open Office, it's a nice option, but just wasn't as featured as Office 2004.

You mock someone who points out a glaring and telling fact and fail to recognize your own poor judgement. I understand personal preference, but it is human nature to look for evidence that confirms our own beliefs and biases. I would wager that these issues you are having are more related to the flaws in your own set up. I have a very similar printer and have not had any issues with it.

Blaming OS X SL because you are running 7 year-old software that was designed and written designed on Power PC Panther OS X 10.3 in 2003 is ridiculous. That is THREE operating systems ago and spans an entire processor architecture change. If the MS Office suite 2004 version is the most important thing you care about, then you should be running it on a PowerPC with OS X 10.3 Panther.

Sorry to be a pain, but "sucks" to describe Office 2008 is a too generic and useless term which contributes nothing to any non-happy hour dialog. Less templates? It has a bunch built-in, and there are a TON of templates online. Try here: http://www.artofoffice.com/ and here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/templates.mspx. Microsoft created a community on the Internet where many people can share their creations and work in the template arena. A lot of them are very good.

I encourage you to start from scratch (nuke and pave everything) and take a second look. I think your life would be easier.

 

[AAPLaday]

Hopefully the next update will address most of the niggles people are having with it. For a large percentage of people its been fine but theres no doubt theres people out there having genuine problems with it. Computer literate people as well not just 'average users' .

 

[HellDiverUK]

Heh, weird that Snow Leopard works fine on the three machines I'm running it on. Mac Mini, a Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v, and the MacBook Pro.

Then again, I run modern software that isn't 6 years old like Office 2004, and my printer was made in this century.

 

[AAPLaday]

Why is that weird, i think it would be weirder if no one ever had any problems with any software

 

[pcs are junk]

I'm surprised MS hasn't run a commercial to make fun of SL, like Apple did with Vista.

because microsoft owns 40% of apple, every apple product you buy, ms gets 40%

 

[Gav2k]

I'm sorry op but I'm with the others. You can't slag apple off for this one. Your office is well out of date. Ms won't do nothing for you because they want your money. Same goes for your printer. They want to make you buy a new one so support for yours will be somewhat lacking.

Yes apple slated ms for the vista thing but let's face it sweet fa worked with vista when released unless it was fairly new even then it wasn't supported fully. Apple hasn't really done this they just left ppc behind (and about time) if people can't handle that then visti Microsoft.com or buy a dell. Trust me well see you back here very soon.

 

[cjmillsnun]

because microsoft owns 40% of apple, every apple product you buy, ms gets 40%

Since when did MS own 40% of Apple?

MS bought non voting Apple stock in 1997 and then sold it 3 years later. They own 0% of Apple.

 

[Fast Shadow]

I also regret going to Snow Leopard, at least as much regret as wasting $29.99 can bring. I can't tell any difference. And Final Cut Studio 2 does not run as well. I have weird problems importing AVCHD clips that didn't happen under Leopard. So it's a net step backward for me, personally. At least it's only a small step.

 

[akutad]

Yes fanboys, flame on…

LOL..... So true and yet so funny at the same time.

 

[macrem]

Snow Leopard rocks!! Really slick & great polish work that streamlined Leopard. SL is the antithesis of Vista.

 

[Silas1066]

Using MS Office and old Epson printers is guaranteed to cause problems.

I am not going to soil my OSX environment by introducing MS products into it--even within virtual environments.

Go get NeoOffice instead, and see how that runs. Then upgrade the printer.

 

[alleycat]

I can understand your frustration. I had a lot of trouble trying to get my canon pixma pro 9000 MKII printer working with SL.

Overall for me, the OS has been a solid upgrade, aside from the printer issue. If the OS is giving you tons of headaches or isn't doing what you need to be done. Downgrade back to 10.5. At least you have a solid OS.

I don't get the allusion to vista however. Two different situations, MS over-promised and under delivered an OS that was not only buggy but also impaired the user from working with the wacky UAC and high system requirements. Vista universally sucked.

With Snow Leopard, a minority of people are having a problem, and while I can feel for the OP's problems he's not in the majority. Most of us have a well performing OS that was not over promised or under delivered. Apple was clear with what features the system would have - most of it is under the hood.

Like Vista, if you don't like it, then use a different OS.

Snow Leopard and Vista have more in common when its comes to older drivers. The newer OS just couldn't handle them, and the ones that were supplied in place of the manufacturers were terrible. A lot of people reverted back to Windows XP, and so for some of us back to regular Leopard.

I would have to say from what it seems, people with the first versions of the Mac Pro, like myself are better off running 10.5.8. Since we have the EFI32 it is pointless running 10.6 which I found was very memory hungry. I would see it go through my 6G of memory like it was nothing, & in 10.5.8 I haven't seen it use past 3G. I too went back to 10.5.8 & haven't had a problem since. Perhaps when we upgrade our systems to something with EFI64 then perhaps we would have a better chance with Snow Leopard, otherwise save yourselves some headaches.
That's my 2 cents worth.

Agreed. I feel there's a conspiracy against EFI-32 to phase it out before it's time is even really done. I upgraded my RAM to 4G's just in anticipation of Snow Leopard requirements. It ran okay, but again the drivers became a big issue.

You mock someone who points out a glaring and telling fact and fail to recognize your own poor judgement. I understand personal preference, but it is human nature to look for evidence that confirms our own beliefs and biases. I would wager that these issues you are having are more related to the flaws in your own set up. I have a very similar printer and have not had any issues with it.

Blaming OS X SL because you are running 7 year-old software that was designed and written designed on Power PC Panther OS X 10.3 in 2003 is ridiculous. That is THREE operating systems ago and spans an entire processor architecture change. If the MS Office suite 2004 version is the most important thing you care about, then you should be running it on a PowerPC with OS X 10.3 Panther.

Sorry to be a pain, but "sucks" to describe Office 2008 is a too generic and useless term which contributes nothing to any non-happy hour dialog. Less templates? It has a bunch built-in, and there are a TON of templates online. Try here: http://www.artofoffice.com/ and here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/templates.mspx. Microsoft created a community on the Internet where many people can share their creations and work in the template arena. A lot of them are very good.

I encourage you to start from scratch (nuke and pave everything) and take a second look. I think your life would be easier.

Thanks for nothing. I'm sure you're an example of somebody who has endless pockets of cash or perhaps is in debt every year buying a new Mac Pro. Some of us have to make the older stuff work, and are depending on Apple to support it through easier use of the older drivers. The manufacturer drivers are just fine, it's Rosetta that had a terrible time making the printer drivers work. Mine didn't and I was stuck with Gutenprint which was bad enough. My color accuracy was always spot on with the Epson drivers which never loaded in Snow Leopard.

I'm sorry op but I'm with the others. You can't slag apple off for this one. Your office is well out of date. Ms won't do nothing for you because they want your money. Same goes for your printer. They want to make you buy a new one so support for yours will be somewhat lacking.

Yes apple slated ms for the vista thing but let's face it sweet fa worked with vista when released unless it was fairly new even then it wasn't supported fully. Apple hasn't really done this they just left ppc behind (and about time) if people can't handle that then visti Microsoft.com or buy a dell. Trust me well see you back here very soon.

Uhm no. Thanks for nothing again! You can send me a newer printer at your expense through if you feel generous.

 

[nefan65]

<<<Enter the theme from Price is Right when the price is wrong: Da Dumm Da Daaaaa>>>

No issues with SL here, at all. Had one printer issue after update. Removed, and added, and all was well...

Sorry to hear you're having issues.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

We've got four macs here. First is an office issued MacBook with 10.4.11. It aint broke, so I haven't felt the need to "fix it" with SL. The same is true with our home iMac 20" which came with Leopard, and has since been updated to 10.5.8. I've suspected some minor issues with both Tiger and Leopard, but nothing disastrous or infuriating. Both of them did not support our Samsung ML-1610 printer. But after an hour of surfing, I found a linux driver that worked flawlessly. The same drivers worked with all our macs that followed.......

Next is my wife's MBA 1st gen that originally came with 10.5. After many months of procrastination, I installed MS Office 2004 and the HD went nuts. The HD eventually died completely after a week. I heard the same story from two friends with MBs. Three cases is not enough to prove MS Office 2004 was the cause for the dead HDs, but it does make me a bit suspicious. When our MBA came back from the shop last month, it had SL installed. I promptly updated it to 10.6.2, and did not put in MS Office anymore. It has been trouble free since then.

Last is my month-old Macbook 2.13 that came with SL. The only problem I've experienced is that it intermittently cannot copy entire folders to a FAT32 USB thumbdrive, or to my Mac-formatted external backup HD. I suspect a bug in Finder, and have read some threads in apple support suspecting the same thing. Office 2008 hasn't caused any problems, but I hardly use it, preferring iWork and NeoOffice.

Software, no matter how bad (hint hint: Microsoft) can cause direct damage to hardware. Your case is built upon a thorough lack of knowledge.

because microsoft owns 40% of apple, every apple product you buy, ms gets 40%

Microsoft wished they own 40% of Apple. Then they wouldn't suck 100%, but only 60%.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Snow Leopard and Vista have more in common when its comes to older drivers. The newer OS just couldn't handle them, and the ones that were supplied in place of the manufacturers were terrible. A lot of people reverted back to Windows XP, and so for some of us back to regular Leopard.



Agreed. I feel there's a conspiracy against EFI-32 to phase it out before it's time is even really done. I upgraded my RAM to 4G's just in anticipation of Snow Leopard requirements. It ran okay, but again the drivers became a big issue.

You still haven't understood that you can manually download a printer driver from Epson's website, install it and use that driver instead of SL's default ones.

As for the Vista reference, you seem to further prove that you lack enormous amounts of knowledge. When Vista was introduced, the adoption rate was single digit. PC vendors were forced to continue offering OS "upgrades" to XP for more than 2 years. Over 95% of the total Vista user population was through new PCs. Until SP1 was introduced, many people were still hanging onto XP. With the Leopard > SL upgrade, this isn't the same case. Lots of people I know personally waited in long lines at various Apple Stores to buy a copy of SL. Lots more people pre-ordered it online or got it through the UTD program (like me). Vista problems were widespread and blogged about for years and still continues to be blogged about, even when 7 was being released. SL problems are felt by a minority. You, that is the OP, can get out of that minority by downloading the latest printer driver from Epson's website and installing it. As for Office, there are alternatives other than the one you tried (OpenOffice I think it was?) but you refused to try them.

If the manufacturer doesn't provide drivers, then what does that tell you? It's outdated and go buy another printer. This entire thread is similar to PPC users complaining about SL not supporting PPC processors. People have to stop providing support sometime.

 

[Mlobo01]

Much to learn have we...

There are a couple of unrealistic thoughts here:"Apple doesn't seem to care about the first generation of Intel owners anymore...they are focused to sell as much hardware as possible, and make an OS which favors only the newest Macs" the first issue I can address in the Upgrading to a new OS: When upgrading to a new OS it is better to test the new version on a separate HD, one you can boot into and test to see if it works with all your peripherals, it is a shame that users get frustrated with the company or the software when in reality it has been poor upgrading practices that have been implemented, users get blind-sided by the pizazz of anything new, I have been posting a similar article since Jaguar (since Jaguar had some issues and there on to other versions) you keep the system that has been working and you test the new stuff separately away from your main OS, I was a beta tester for SL and by no means Im installing it in my main HD, why because of what I experienced safely on an external drive and what I been reading about SL prior to me testing it, I have a separate drive containing Tiger, because it is stable, You need to have better upgrading habits in order avoid frustrations such as these, more methodology and patience is required and leave the distorted thoughts aside, thats a distraction that prevents anyone from really being responsible for inefficient upgrading practices and it really doesn't help anyone, Thanks for reading.

 

[stainlessliquid]

Dont get me started on printer and scanner support for new OS's. Especially Epson. OS upgrades are pretty much the only chance they get to force people into buying a new printer since printers last so long, if theyre lucky the new OS will be incompatible with the drivers and they just wont make new ones. They also do the same with ink cartridges since not everyone knows you can use third party cartridges.

 

[alleycat]

You still haven't understood that you can manually download a printer driver from Epson's website, install it and use that driver instead of SL's default ones.

As for the Vista reference, you seem to further prove that you lack enormous amounts of knowledge. When Vista was introduced, the adoption rate was single digit. PC vendors were forced to continue offering OS "upgrades" to XP for more than 2 years. Over 95% of the total Vista user population was through new PCs. Until SP1 was introduced, many people were still hanging onto XP. With the Leopard > SL upgrade, this isn't the same case. Lots of people I know personally waited in long lines at various Apple Stores to buy a copy of SL. Lots more people pre-ordered it online or got it through the UTD program (like me). Vista problems were widespread and blogged about for years and still continues to be blogged about, even when 7 was being released. SL problems are felt by a minority. You, that is the OP, can get out of that minority by downloading the latest printer driver from Epson's website and installing it. As for Office, there are alternatives other than the one you tried (OpenOffice I think it was?) but you refused to try them.

If the manufacturer doesn't provide drivers, then what does that tell you? It's outdated and go buy another printer. This entire thread is similar to PPC users complaining about SL not supporting PPC processors. People have to stop providing support sometime.

Well thank you very much…for nothing again! I don't think we need to start talking down to one another, but that is your choice.

I downloaded the Epson drivers from their website several times, and they still did not show up in my printer options in Snow Leopard. I had nothing but Gutenprint to select from. This was Snow Leopard's fault since Epson said they were compatible with 10.6+. I never got a decent print, and that's the bottom line.

There are a couple of unrealistic thoughts here:"Apple doesn't seem to care about the first generation of Intel owners anymore...they are focused to sell as much hardware as possible, and make an OS which favors only the newest Macs" the first issue I can address in the Upgrading to a new OS: When upgrading to a new OS it is better to test the new version on a separate HD, one you can boot into and test to see if it works with all your peripherals, it is a shame that users get frustrated with the company or the software when in reality it has been poor upgrading practices that have been implemented, users get blind-sided by the pizazz of anything new, I have been posting a similar article since Jaguar (since Jaguar had some issues and there on to other versions) you keep the system that has been working and you test the new stuff separately away from your main OS, I was a beta tester for SL and by no means Im installing it in my main HD, why because of what I experienced safely on an external drive and what I been reading about SL prior to me testing it, I have a separate drive containing Tiger, because it is stable, You need to have better upgrading habits in order avoid frustrations such as these, more methodology and patience is required and leave the distorted thoughts aside, thats a distraction that prevents anyone from really being responsible for inefficient upgrading practices and it really doesn't help anyone, Thanks for reading.

To be honest I had faith in Apple because they usually hit a home run every time. That's why I upgraded with high hopes because Apple's track record is very good. It's just too bad that Snow Leopard is one of their duds, again unless you have the newest in hardware.

 

[Winni]

I'm surprised MS hasn't run a commercial to make fun of SL, like Apple did with Vista.

That's because Microsoft is a professional company - they don't need to ridicule other products to promote their own stuff.

 

[spinnerlys]

because microsoft owns 40% of apple, every apple product you buy, ms gets 40%

Is that sarcasm?


If not:


From Apple's 2003 SEC filing


"In August 1997, the Company and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) entered into patent cross license and technology agreements. In addition, Microsoft purchased 150,000 shares of Apple Series A nonvoting convertible preferred stock ("preferred stock") for $150 million. These shares were convertible by Microsoft after August 5, 2000, into shares of the Company's common stock at a conversion price of $8.25 per share. During 2000, 74,250 shares of preferred stock were converted to 9 million shares of the Company's common stock. During 2001, the remaining 75,750 preferred shares were converted into 9.2 million shares of the Company's common stock."

found on https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/827054/
via http://ask.metafilter.com/30833/How-much-of-Apple-Computer-does-Microsoft-own
via http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=microsoft+shares+apple&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

[sidewinder]

This was Snow Leopard's fault since Epson said they were compatible with 10.6+. I never got a decent print, and that's the bottom line.

Snow Leopard's fault???? How can it be Snow Leopard's fault that printer software written by Epson for Snow Leopard does not work??

To be honest I had faith in Apple because they usually hit a home run every time. That's why I upgraded with high hopes because Apple's track record is very good. It's just too bad that Snow Leopard is one of their duds, again unless you have the newest in hardware.

Your problem is not your hardware. Until you figure that out, you will continue to blame the wrong party.

S-

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I had some sympathy up until here. Using outdated software isn't Apple's fault. :-\

Congrats! I only lasted 4 hours.

And re: Office 2004... I can run a game from 1995 on Windows 7. I think Apple should be able to keep compatibility in 2009 for a program that was sold until 2007...

 

[alleycat]

Congrats! I only lasted 4 hours.

And re: Office 2004... I can run a game from 1995 on Windows 7. I think Apple should be able to keep compatibility in 2009 for a program that was sold until 2007...

Or a three year old printer!

Bah, maybe I need to just start throwing my money away more often!