A lot of people are complaining about features in Mac OS X Leopard being buggy. And, they do have a point… some features are buggy. However, I think people are missing an important point: The vast majority of issues are surrounding features that were not in Mac OS X Tiger.
For example, there are significant issues with Time Machine. It does bug out at times, it has trouble backing up over the network, and yes, Apple should carry through with demoed AirPort Disk backup. But, was Time Machine in Tiger? No, people were left to fend for themselves to backup. Does A2DP Stereo Bluetooth work well? No, it doesn’t. Also not in Tiger. Is Java 6 missing? Absolutely… but it was only a developer preview for Tiger.
My point is, you shouldn’t fear upgrading to Leopard. You shouldn’t fear 10.5.0 just because it hasn’t clocked over to 10.5.1. Rumors of new directory issues are not really founded (though some issues that were supposed to be fixed in Leopard from Tiger still aren’t). Apple throughly tests these upgrades, and any show-stopping issues are fixed quickly… and were within 48 hours of Leopard’s release. I watch people, who do not regularly backup, say “well, I’ll wait for them to get the bugs out”. I just can’t shake the fear that I’ll get a call from them saying “my computer’s not starting up, please please get my files back for me”. Especially with potentially faulty hard drives lurking in half the Mac fleet… my response is: Get Leopard now, turn Time Machine on, and use Mozy as your backup for your backup.
I’m sorry, but this simply isn’t true. The majority of the bugs in Leopard are in pre-existing technologies. The reason for this is pure mathematics — there are more pre-existing technologies than there are new technologies, and everything in the system, new or old, has undergone changes. Which means, bugs.
Examples of bugs in Leopard that were not in Tiger but affect features that were already available and working fine in Tiger…
* Sporadic difficulty dismounting external hard drives.
* Mail crashes.
* Widely reported flaky WiFi connections that did not exist on the same machine in Tiger.
* Admin password becoming inaccessible after install, and admin accounts being downgraded to standard accounts.
* Repair permissions taking many times longer than it used to in Tiger for no good reason.
* Printer drivers disappearing, requiring workarounds to reinstall.
And here are the two most widely reported and talked about bugs in Leopard, *neither* of which affects any new features, but rather severely and critically cripple things that were working perfectly before, namely:
* Permanent Blue Screen of death during restart for those who had older versions of Application Enhancer installed in Tiger.
* Volume-to-volume file moving bug in the Finder that can cause your data to permanently disappear.
With all of this in mind, one has to ask, where did you get the impression that most of the bugs affect new features? Because it just isn’t true. Most of the bugs (and the most serious bugs, to boot) affect things that we are all used to doing smoothly in Tiger. This is why I’ve advised everyone I talk to not to upgrade until at least 10.5.2 or .3. The first update will deal with issues that Apple already knew about internally but which couldn’t be fixed in time for the release date. It won’t be until the second and third updates that the knowledge gained from the massive post-release testing done by consumers in the field actually makes it into Leopard. To upgrade the systems you rely upon to Leopard before then is risky — to counsel others to do it as if there’s nothing to worry about, is just irresponsible.
Sorry… I have yet to encounter, much less validate most of the issues you’ve presented. I will say that Repair Disk Permissions does take longer, because in Leopard it has become a much more extensive set of tests. However, at the same time, Apple has worked on Installer and Apple Software Update to avoid permission errors, so you should need to run it much less.
As to Unsanity’s APE. Sorry, but I don’t feel sorry… Unsanity is squarely to blame. Apple says APE is a troublemaker, and just about every Mac developer agrees. The only ones that don’t, appear to be quietly using APE code (Logitech rings a bell). When you try to break the rules of Mac OS X, it will eventually bite back.
If Apple were to “attack” APE, it could be viewed as an antitrust action against an application or enhancement that Apple doesn’t like. Apple has responded to every inquiry explaining the problem. Apple cannot make single-item exceptions, that’s one of many things that got Microsoft into deep trouble. The best Apple could have done was to slip a note in the manual… that most people running APE probably wouldn’t have read.
Unsanity should have implemented a disable code that turns the app off until it has been updated for a generational Mac OS update… not doing so would be, well, unsane.
Most validated, reproducible bugs appear to be affecting new features in the system… granted, that is my analysis of all the known issues out there, and I could have gone more in-detail (I didn’t even get to Back to my Mac), but due to time constraints, I just focused on the main point… don’t fear Leopard.
Should you backup? Of course, you’re playing with fire… and your data if you don’t. That’s not a Leopard constraint on the equation however… Leopard is generally stable at the things it does.
Now, I did passively address the file-to-file transfer bug. It has been present in previous versions of Mac OS X, and as I said, Leopard didn’t address some glaring bugs in previous versions. This bug reared its ugly head because, as with any OS upgrade, people are likely to shuffle files around (backing up, etc). Apple should fix it, but it shouldn’t stop you from upgrading to Leopard.
In your case, you seem to be having issues that could indicate more trouble. For example, a RAM problem could be to blame (Leopard is much more intensive at RAM access… I’ve seen systems pass all diagnostics and it still wind up being bad RAM on Leopard). Try swapping back to Apple memory if you’ve installed third-party RAM, and see if your system suddenly becomes more stable.
These are not my issues. The ones I referenced were all ones that I have read multiple reports of on Macintouch on other sites. (I left out many, many bugs that I have only seen reported once, since this is really too anecdotal to make any conclusions from.) Some of them I was able to reproduce. Some of them were not an issue for me. Not every system is the same — many bugs only affect particular configurations.
As for Unsanity, I don’t understand the quote marks here: ‘If Apple were to “attack” APE, it could be viewed as an antitrust action against an application or enhancement that Apple doesn’t like.’
I don’t recall making any such allegation of an attack. Who are you quoting here? I simply said that if you had an older version of APE installed (newer versions do exactly what you suggest and have for a while), then your Leopard install would be borked from the get-go.
I am an Apple fan, so there’s no need to leap into a kneejerk defensive posture — I simply disagree with your assessment of the distribution of bugs among features in Leopard. I also strongly disagree with your advice that everybody upgrade without worry. Leopard is heavily plagued with potential issues, at this point, across the whole spectrum of features. This isn’t a criticism of Leopard — it’s a simple fact of life of operating system releases. Tiger wasn’t really ready until 10.4.4. Panther’s first truly good release was 10.3.4. Jaguar wasn’t at all stable until 10.2.3. I won’t even begin to go into other operating systems like Vista — many of their early adopters have been ruing the day. What makes you think Leopard is magically different? The prudent course, as always, is to wait.
It’s not a kneejerk or defensive posture… Macintouch forums are ancillary references that sometimes are confirmed, and sometimes are single-person reports.
My reference to the word “attack” was based on the inference that the Mac OS X installer should attempt to disable Unsanity APE.
Finally, I found Tiger to work quite well on 10.4.0 through 10.4.3… yes, there were some minor bugs, but I had no regrets about upgrading.
As to Vista, things are indeed problematic. However, after disabling UAC, and going through the Control Panels to turn off many of the features, I’m quite happy with Vista. In fact, I no longer have XP running on any system (except in virtualization)… all my PCs have been upgraded to Vista.
Again, this falls back on many of the fundamentals… keep your software up to date, and back up all your data. I do both, and have few issues. Other people I find don’t, and so I think the best efforts should be put on working on those two things, rather than blaming early versions of software.