Okay, firstly it was too much to quote but I accept most of thing you said wholeheartedly. Now for this part of your post that I quoted, please be realistic. That's situation is not guaranteed and I get really annoyed that some of the FUD spreading posters here use that argument to try and make SL look like the crap that ISN'T. Hardly anyone on the net has reported lost files from adding more user accounts to SL.
Apple has acknowledged that this CAN happen, but it certainly hasn't happened to many people or we would see more posts about it, as this forum is excellent in terms of complaining.
Now, explain this, according to your phrasing of people having problems but not installing any haxies or corrupted files, how would it be possible for 2 people to have the same computer, same OS, SL in this case, same files installed and one guy will have problems and the other guy will not? It's just not possible unless the guy with problems has hardware issues.
I definitely recognize that Apple's OS has issues. It always will, there's no such thing as perfect, but for some of the people here that are reporting a long list of problems, those problems lie mostly on the user or hardware problems. You can keep on saying it's all Apple's fault, but it's not.
For the record, I am power user and I always do a clean install for the hell of it so I can move on. It has nothing to do with my inability to solve issues, I just prefer to USE computer and not sit around fixing issues from corrupted files I might have to that don't work with my upgraded OS.
I don't think SL is crap. Which explains why it is on most of my machines right now. Do I think there are issues? Yes. Do they need to be fixed? Yes.
And I think the reason for there being few cases of the guest account bug is due to the fact that the guest account simply isn't used very often. It is still a major issue though.
To answer your question: Two people with the same computer, same OS and same files installed. This is very vague. Same files? Do that mean the exact same contents in the files? We are talking about hundreds of plists. The chances of them being the same very remote. Maybe I prefer list view in Finder, but because of some bug in SL that causes Finder to crash, whereas the other guy uses icon view and all is well.
Simply saying same files doesn't get us anywhere. Now, if you want to say exact same configuration. Sure, I can agree with that. But the chances of that being the case outside of some artificially created situation is slim. Maybe there is an issue with Airport and Belkin access points that causes a kernel panic. The other guy has a Linksys so all is well.
If however
everything was exactly the same, sure I think it would be fair to say one person has a hardware problem. But as I stated above, the same is nearly impossible outside of a created situation.
Do I think many problems steam from user installed applications, etc? Of course, take a look at my post history, I have done my fair share of solving these issues. However, there are some problems that are simply there because of the OS. Even if there is an incompatibility with CS4 and Snow Leopard, ad maybe this wasn't the case with Leopard, why would the user shift the blame to Snow Leopard?
The fact is, people had things working and they stopped working properly. When the only new piece of the puzzle is Snow Leopard, it is completely rational to suggest that the issues are because of Snow Leopard. Is this assumption correct? Of course not, but for the general user this will always be the case.
I prefer to use my computer as well, but I don't do so in a vacuum. And since I am in IT, I love the challenge of solving a problem. This is of course not the case for everyone, which is fine. But as you say, people need to take responsibility for their computers, but a clean install in just the opposite. People will repeat the same mistakes if they simply think a clean install will solve it. If they need some piece of software, they need to figure out what is wrong with it.
Part of my issue with your notion of a clean install is that you seem to be against anything that does not come with Snow Leopard. If I need Office 2008 and it doesn't work, it seems as if you are suggesting I not use it. As if Office 2008 was a "haxie." Your requirements for a person complaining about a problem are unrealistic and frankly absurd.
As you say, people want to use their computer. And they should be able to do so, and if it was working before Snow Leopard, the most obvious thing to say is "Snow Leopard is buggy."
