Tiger seems pretty stable here. The Finder is the main place where I waste time and swear out loud often. Which, come to think of it, is the main place I encounter the OS.. my CS2 apps run okay, itunes, iPhoto and Word are the only things that crash once in a while. Is leopard really any better? Is the Finder better? more consistent? Why should I buy it? Can it handle speed any better? I mean, working fast. The problems I run in to with OS X are when I go to quickly – between apps, functions, etc. using the keyboard. Seems like it was built to be used via menus with the mouse, which makes me insane!

I always like to be up-to date... kind of a pride thing I guess.... but right now I've got work to do and can't handle any BS. So, is it better or what?

Tri

I've been finding Leopard buggy and slow on a PPC-based Mac (G5 dual).

There are features I'd like, if they worked, but so far this seems to be one of the poorest releases of OS X to date. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed.

For what it's worth, I upgraded (if that is the term) to Leopard for a while, but went back to Tiger. Like thalo I found too many things of questionable utility and things that just didn't work right. Right now I don't see any compelling reason to change. My decision is to revisit the issue in about six months. Maybe by then Leopard will be a better OS. I've pretty much put it out of my mind until the summertime.

Thanks for the replies... guess I'll just give Leopard a miss. Too bad. I remember the days of eagerly awaiting a new release.. even in the early X days, well that was more just hoping it had improved to the point os usability, but 10.3 and 10.4 are better than their predecessors. Now it seems they have stopped developing the actual OS and are merely tacking on so-called "features" and developing new candy coatings.

Mac OS has gone from a nice crunchy Macintosh to a mealy, candy apple. It's a shame.

Tri

Don't listen to these milksop panty-waisted graybeard, luddite, whiner-'9ers...*

Leopard rocks.



*Hahaha! I miss you all...

Brother Mighty!

Leopard most assuredly does not rock for me. But hopefully it'll change its spots before it friggin' kills me here. I just spent an hour trying to order some dumbass christmas present but Safari and/or the retailers web site fought me every step of the way.

I've had two gray screen kernel panics so far with Leopard, requiring hard starts (the last one was after the latest software update). And I've had more instances of the OS simply hanging (again, requiring a hard start) than I've had with any previous version.

Now either this crap is HOBBLED, to make me buy an intel Mac (which I won't do before Macworld), or it's buggy as shit.

1,000 pardons, sir...

I forget that you are on PowerPC still.

I've no doubt it is better on Intel, I mean, worse on PPC.

I'm sure I need Intel at this point. But if I buy now, come January there'll be some new high end quad core machine. So I'm caught waiting til Macworld to make the switchover.

And it's been rough. When they say this beast works Universally, with Power PC, they're basically leaving out the "yeah, but..."

Oh my sweet mercy, the Finder crawls for "Shared" servers... the icon previews take forever to fill in. Way longer than Tiger.

Honestly, this is the same old shit. Yeah, the new OS XYZ is superior... ...on the NEW and FASTER machine, what kind of bullshit is this? Of course it's faster on the faster machine. Brainwrecking!

After Leopard the story goes: "Oh, the new OS 10.6 is so fast and rocksolid... ...on the new 3.8GHZ Quadcore-Intel Mac" .. "I'm sorry i doesn't run so fast on that oldfashioned 2 GHZ Core2Duo Mac" ... Displaying Listviews with more than 1000 files is such a big task, your machine is simply too slow."

gnarl, gnarl, gnarl...

This place is sooooo 2007...

Wake up, you drunks!!!!!

Where are you?

<Bangs a spoon on a pan while wearing a pot on his head.>

I am so great! I am so great! Everybody loves me, I am so great!!!

STOMP STOMP STOMP

HEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

whazzat? Humpfh? AAAAAhhhh rassa frassin' brubbr mi'iy. Sn. ZZZZZZZt.

I now get at least 4 total application failures per day, usually about one every 2 hours. I dutifully send Apple the crash reports.

At this point I'm ready to accuse Apple of hamstringing the PPC side of the operating system to pressure people into making the switch to Intel. They're leaning on me. Of course now I can't spend that kind of money right now, like I could have before the holidays. Unless I get a lower-end Mac Pro. But I'd rather have the hardware power to grow into, if such a thing is possible with Apple anymore. Wasn't really true of this G5. The best thing it did was run CLASSIC well, very fast. Now that's history.

The worst offenders for crashing: Adobe products (except for Flash), and Safari. As far as I can tell, Safari is a fucking mess. Seems back to beta. It will just up and crash without seemingly doing anything. Plus it seems slower.

I would strongly suggest migrating to Intel for Leopard. It's been very solid on my macbook, spaces works well for the most part and overall it's decently responsive. I was also reluctant about it but it performs well.

I dual work in Vista, so Leopard in comparison is heaven. It's amazing how huge the gap between Mac OS and Windows is; OSX has gradually grown into a refined beautiful beast.

And yes, regardless that the Finder still sucks and stacks suck, OSX is the superior OS.

I'm heavily configuring network options, and it's just amazing how streamlined and intuitive Leopard's network options are vs Vista's. Microsoft redesigned the networking control panel in Vista and it's a HUGE AMAZING MESS. You have to run through a dozen different windows in different places to configure stuff. The GUI is inconsistent, not intuitive. It's just a mess, a pain to configure. Leopard's is a bliss.

You guys should spend a few weeks on Vista, get acquainted with it. I assure that you will come back to Leopard with loving eyes.

Trif, I've been trying to network an Epson Stylus Photo 925 printer today via Windows. Pure unadulterated hell. It's hard to believe they've spent tens of millions of dollars on this only to have it be so geeky and problematic. At least half of this is Epson's fault. I'm talking XP, but a buddy of mine does Windows networking for a living and Vista is going to give him a steady income for some time to come.

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
a buddy of mine does Windows networking for a living and Vista is going to give him a steady income for some time to come.

I'm very sure of that. It almost feels like they do this on purpose.

I keep wishing Apple would just license OSX and do the Mac OS justice.

Oh God, same here. Since I upgraded to Vista (I pronounce it "Veesta"), I haven't been able to get any of my friggin' network inkjets to work on it. I had it working in XP, but I forget how I did it.

No problem printing from the Macs. The server, the laptop (wirelessly) all work.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
Oh God, same here. Since I upgraded to Vista (I pronounce it "Veesta"), I haven't been able to get any of my friggin' network inkjets to work on it.

Whoa, you are running Vista? May I ask if you get the windows explorer amnesia bug? If so how do you cope with the insanity? Because it's completely driving me nuts. Whenever I press CTRL-W to close a window, Vista resets all folder settings. It kills all my custom settings: view type, sorting, column types, column widths, icon positions, thumbnail sizes, window size etc. It reminds me of the OSX amnesia days. Insane

Oh God, same here. Since I upgraded to Vista (I pronounce it "Veesta"), I haven't been able to get any of my friggin' network inkjets to work on it. I had it working in XP, but I forget how I did it.

No problem printing from the Macs. The server, the laptop (wirelessly) all work.

I do all my proofing via email so, believe it or not, I just have very little need for a color printer. Yeah, I dare anyone to snip anything I've ever said where I claimed I was a pro. I'm semi-pro all the way. But a friend gave me a perfectly good Epson Stylus Photo 925 printer the other day. It had just been sitting around his office gathering a layer of dust (which it took some time to clean off). It was actually supposed to be a donation to someone's political campaign. I'm donating an old (very old) PC (running Windows ME…that's how old) and he donated the printer. And then I was going to get all that stuff to work together. The only problem was that, although there are official drivers for ME for this printer, I can't get this Windows ME computer to actually print to it. The computer knows its there. It just won't print to it. I figured the printer was broken. I hooked it up to OS X and "it just worked" as they say.

Long story short (short?), I'm keeping the printer because it won't work with the computer I’m donating. So I figure I'll hook it to my OS X box and share it with all the computers in the office just like I do with my HP laser printer. It's really geeky and not automatic at all to get a Windows machine (XP in this case) to see the computer that is attached to OS X (with printer share on, of course), but throw in an IP address and get the name of the printer right (and get all the back slashes right, etc.) AND do this whole routine twice (because the first time through the IP address works but it won't take the printer name)…and finally (and I am indeed making this story short because there are two sub-nightmares I haven't even gotten into) the Windows XP box sees the printer. Success! Well…not so fast. I feel like Jerry Seinfeld in that great sketch where he goes into the rental car agency at the airport and he tells them. "You know how to take a reservation. You just don't know how to hold it." And that about sizes things up. "Windows knows how to see the printer. It just doesn't know how to print to it."

I honestly owe my brothel an apology for the steady stream of tourette's syndrome swearing that was coming out of my mouth. And I'm not kidding. My tongue is not firmly planted in my cheek. Lots and lots of: "Windows is such a fucking piece of shit." Of course, I say that about OS X as well, and it's true about so many things. But in this case it was XP's turn. I swear, if you had an actual video tape of me while I was screwing around trying to make this work, you might laugh yourself to a coronary. I'll probably see if I can get it to work tomorrow, but I have little hope. Normally when Windows has problems printing, it will pop up with some kind of "can't print it" warning. But on both XP machines that both see this networked Epson printer, you can hit the print command and it acts like it's printing, but the stream of bites containing the print data just drifts off into outer space or something. Poof. Gone. Not even an obscure and unhelpful warming message. Nuttin.

I'm beginning to think that tourette's syndrome is an acquired disease.

---

Postscript: Oh, forgot to mention that the politician I'm helping out is a Democrat. No wonder the karma sucks trying to get that printer to work on that ME machine.

quote:

"Windows knows how to see the printer. It just doesn't know how to print to it."

LOL!
Oh sweet mercy, I've been there.

Vista is pretty much crap. Like OS X, it seems the more I use it the worse it gets. Installing software is a... I don't know what. All I know is that if I turn up dead from apoplexy, and you hear about it on the news, tell them it was Windows Vista that did it to me.

Yes, brother Trif, amnesia up the wazoo. Same here. And I also get these persistent windows that keep popping up (usually after force-quitting something that stalled). There seems to be no way to stop them.

Oh, and god forbid you have to reinstall some Adobe software, where you forgot to friggin' de-authorize a copy, then try to reinstall. Just don't even go there.

But printing is my king headache. I've given up. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to print from the windows machine through my network. But it's fought me every step of the way. Some setting is eluding me.

My network guru tells me that Service Pack One for Vista will be out fairly soon. That's usually a major step. Or it's just wishful thinking. But at least it's something.