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Leopard is driving me crazy.

lamina

lamina

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 9, 2006
1,757
69
Niagara
My Leopard experience:

I pre-ordered Leopard the split-second it was available. I waited gleefully for it to arrive. While I was waiting, I backed up all my important data (as I do every week), so that I could do a full erase and install.

After it installed, I was very excited about Stacks, Spaces, and the new Finder. QuickLook is awesome too.

The past few weeks have been pretty bad. Sluggish performance, intermittent freezes when using Safari, and seemingly constant hard drive grinding are the major offenders. Why does it have to access the drive so freakin' much? I have 2GB of RAM in my PowerBook, and there aren't many page-outs happening.

I think... ahh.. the .1 update should polish this off nicely, fixing most of the problems.

Nope. But now I am privileged enough to have Disk Utility work properly. What an honour. Although it takes about 25 minutes to repair permissions.

Anyway, repair permissions didn't work. Tried resetting PRAM... hey, it's worth a shot.

Nope. I have to actually reboot my computer once every day or so. This was something I was used to back in my Windows days (been a Mac user since early 2006, so I'm not a total noob), but I have learned to expect more from OS X.

So, after my exams are finished, December 13th, I will be doing an erase and install of Leopard again, and installing the .1 update directly after installing. I will give it a good chance. I really like the features of Leopard... QuickLook, Mail (absolutely awesome), Spaces...

But if Leopard doesn't prove itself, I will be forced to 'downgrade' to Tiger.11. The .11 update sounds like it really solidifies an already near-flawless OS. I will then wait until the X.5.2 update is released to consider re-installing Leopard.

Sorry for the length of my post. It would be interesting to see if others have the same experience as me. Look in my sig to see the specs of the PowerBook I am referring to. The iMac seems to be doing just fine...

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

PS: This isn't a 'troll' post. Look at my post history to see that I'm not some guy trying to incite angry responses or trying to convince people that Leopard is junk. It's not, it's just not up to par with my Tiger experience.
 
I did a clean install of Leopard on a brand new Macbook Pro and I'm having some of the same problems.
I've had more operating system crashes in the past two weeks--an average of one a day when Safari or a DVD locks up and takes the whole system with it--than I had in the last five years on my ibook and imac combined.
And FWIW, I moved the data manually rather than migrating potentially corrupted settings from my old machine, and there's no third party software on the machine except for Office and Firefox.
It's not quite to the point that I'm considering uninstalling, but it does remind me of the bad old days with Windows machines.
Leopard Just Works. Not.

best
Allen
 
Yeah Leopard needs more polish. I usualy wait intil .2 updates to change my OS but this time jumped early.

Mail.app is pretty unstable and buggy for me mainly.

The rest of Leopard is ok and looks a little nicer, and I like some of the new bits and pieces.
 
I'm not an up to date upgrader. I do it only when I have to and Tiger works like a charm for me. No problems at all. If you take a poll - sounds like there are more unhappy customers than there are happy ones.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Just for anyone reading this, it's not all bad for Leopard... For me, Leopard is way more stable then Tiger ever was.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to try to talk people out of it. I am just kind of venting my frustration with Leopard.

Leopard is like a 25 year old intern. Sure he gets the job done and he's got some great ideas, but he's not as reliable or polished as he should be. Tiger is a 57 year old department manager who's seen it all, and is mature and reliable. He even looks pretty spiffy in his corduroy suit, outdated as it is.
 
I have had very few problems with Leopard.

My essential apps work with it, I like stacks most of the time. The download folder makes me happy (previously I had already set Tiger up to do this, now it is integrated). I love QuickLook. I have had no freezes or crashes (other than a few 3rd party apps - for which Leopard cannot be blamed).

( ! ) [but...]
Disk Utility does not work properly for me (it takes a long time to gather the disk information, and the menu bar buttons disappear).

I have been receiving an error that reads something along the lines of:
"You have inserted a disk that cannot be read by this computer" -- and I have the option to ignore or eject. This occurs on startup, and when a user logs in.

There are no volumes other than the HD showing up in the menus [GO | GO TO FOLDER] "volumes" (typed in to go to volumes)

I will defeat this issue and share my soulutions (if) (when) I find one. If any of you have had these problems and resolved them, please do share.
 
I just find that now that the 'ooh' and 'aah' is over, it's just not polished enough for me.

Now, I could be totally wrong. Maybe something is wrong with my installation and I will just have to re-install it after exams and all will be well. But should I really have to?

At this point I'm leaning towards installing 10.4.0 (Bought that launch day too) and installing the .11 update directly on top, then iLife and all my other apps.

Also, does anyone notice that their hard drive space is mysteriously disappearing under Leopard?
 
Initially, I Archived and Installed Leopard on my MacBook Pro. Things were awful and I couldn't connect to my school's 802.1x network cause of a bug. So, I downgraded to Tiger a day or two later. Everything worked fine. Then, over the Thanksgiving break (and the release of 10.5.1), I decided to give Leopard a try once again. But this time, I totally Erased and Installed. Now, things just feel faster and much more stable. Still several bugs and I still can't connect to my 802.1x wireless network (I had to get Internet Connect off of my Power Mac G4 running Tiger in order to do so).

I also had to change that horrible menu bar for me to be satisfied. I found a Terminal code that will let you change it to black, white, or any variant in between. I also found an app that restores the menu bar's rounded corners. Now, I'm just waiting for a Tiger-style Dock.

So, overall, I recommend an Erase and Install. If not, definitely Archive and Install. I never use the Upgrade Mac OS X option.
 
Well. I in turn am staying away from Leopard, period. I've read too many experiences and articles showing major problems with Leopard. The thing that is a deal breaker for me, is that for the first time since the original OS X, this iteration is actually slower than the last.

Leopard is significantly less efficient than Tiger for many users.

The other thing that's a deal breaker for me, is that I don't like the UI changes. Folder icons are anonymous ugly tiny little blobs like something from 1985, the dock is a joke: it actually shows less - squished 3D - than the Tiger dock, is less readable, the stacks idea is implemented really badly, you can't navigate the dock folders like you could in Tiger etc., etc., etc.

Finally, I just don't find any of the features compelling enough to switch. Stacks, TM, Spaces - meh.

All in all, I'm staying with Tiger - it does all I want, is stable for me (except for the new Safari that came with .11), and it "just works".

Ideally, I'd like to skip Leopard entirely, until the next cat. Unfortunately, I may not be able to avoid it, as I'll probably buy a new iMac next year. Oh well, maybe I can install Tiger on it.
 
I did an upgrade install on my core duo macbook, no issues for me whatsoever. Coverflow and Spaces are smooth, Disk Utility works fine. The only thing that bugs me is that I get occasional pop-up boxes alerting me of things that Tiger didn't do (like if I download an app, I get a message telling me I downloaded this app from the web, do I want to run it?). Sorta reminds me of the Vista Cancel or Allow commercials, it's not "quite" enough to annoy me yet, but hopefully it's not a glimse of things to come with future releases.
 
Overall, I just feel that Leopard is a bit young. Tiger is at its 11th (!) major update. The must have ironed pretty much everything out by now.

I will miss Time Machine though. Big time. But I guess I can always schedule backups over then network, similar to Time Machine, right?

PS: I wish we could disable that stupid galaxy interface for TM. What a waste of resources.
 
Same here, clean install and all is well. I made certain to use Disk Utility to completely erase, reformat and install Leopard. No system crashes, Safari has no issues at all.
Sorry to say this but sometimes people have issues based on the EXTRA software they have installed, example, haxies to change the UI look, beta software, 3rd party apps that have not yet been updated for Leopard and downloaded movie files that may have been corrupted. If none of the above and you have a Disk Utility clean install then all should be well. Leopard is very stable.
 
"The thing that is a deal breaker for me, is that for the first time since the original OS X, this iteration is actually slower than the last."

The opposite is true for me on four machines upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, noticeable improvement in speed (and stability). Seems to be commonly reported as improving performance for most.
 
seablue said:
If you take a poll - sounds like there are more unhappy customers than there are happy ones.
Click to expand...
I highly doubt that, if every person that did not have a problem came to these boards and others and posted a new thread about how much they love leopard and how they are having no problems, then the entire 'New Posts' board would be covered in these posts. People only feel needs to vent when they have a problem.
 
JML42691 said:
I highly doubt that, if every person that did not have a problem came to these boards and others and posted a new thread about how much they love leopard and how they are having no problems, then the entire 'New Posts' board would be covered in these posts. People only feel needs to vent when they have a problem.
Click to expand...

Yep... even the posts are 50/50 at the VERY worst, with tons of happy people using the product and ignoring the boards entirely.
 
I have Leopard running on the Power Mac in my sig. No problems and it actually runs faster than Tiger. I will say this:

Lack of an abundance of page outs combined with hard drive noises may be evidence of a hard drive failure coming soon.
 
* update *

I backed up to my firelite external drive (songs & other itunes related downloads). Then I did an archive / reinstall.

The Disk Utility menus and tool bars seem to be functioning "normally". I have not received the unreadable disk insertion error.

I will come back after I run this configuration for a few days and let everyone know how it is working.

Tiger ran great on my PB... Leopard typically runs great as well -- Really, I don't think anyone can expect completely flawless 'wares. Luckily, when there are problems, Apple acknowledges user input and then they give us updates to resolve them.

:) Don't give up on Leopard... they will work out the unforseen issues in no time.
 
All New Operating Systems Work Poorly!

You can't compare Leopard 10.5.1 to Tiger 10.4.11, you can compare 10.5.1 to 10.4.1. Because apple does not beta test anything nothing works like it should when it is first released. But, like all oses it does come into its own around the .4 upgrade or so and then when we get 10.6.1 we'll be yelling that 10.5.11 was so stable, everything worked, etc. but it's apples (no pun intended) to oranges. But yes, I do agree it is buggy as hell.
 
Well, I re-installed Tiger.

Then, I missed all the new features in Leopard. So I clean-installed Leopard.

Everything is great so far (knock on particle board). Just couldn't do without Time Machine and Spaces.

I reinstalled Leopard, and before anything put the .1 update on, and now it seems to be working great.

Thanks everyone for your input.
 
I'll try and be nice about but it's not fair to other people who want to try out Leopard to view the OP to venting out frustrations and then mention that he/she is going to do a clean install later on. I understand anyone that has frustrations if they have tried everything first but the OP hasn't so while it's too late now it would have been better to do the full erase and install first and then report to the forums on the experience afterwards.

When I got Leopard I didn't even have to think about it, I backed up everything and did a full erase and reformat through Disk Utility and installed Leopard and all is great. I am having zero issues. I play Quake 4 in OS X and run several heavy applications and not even one problem.

Again, I'm not trying to slam the OP but be fair and do all you can before you scare others and even noobs that want to try out the Mac and OS X Leopard.
 
I installed Leopard on my Mac Pro on the day it came out. I bought a Macbook Pro that was delivered Monday - it was supposed to have Leopard on it, but didn't. So I installed Leopard on it too (B&H acknowledged their error and are sending me a new Leopard install). In both case I just did a default install, no erase, no archive. Works great on both machines - no issues.
 
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