OS X Leopard 10.5 with over 300 new features including Time Machine, Spaces, Screen Sharing, Stacks, new Mail, iCal, Address Book and Photo Booth just to name a few. Sounds good right! But wait, what about all this stuff on the web like the “Blue Screen of Death”, or problems with “Windows SMB shared networks”, how about some of the “Permissions issues”, and then there’s the “Time Machine backup failures”… So what’s going on here! Did Apple drop the bomb on this one??

Historically, Apple OS updates usually go off without a hitch, sure there are always going to be some broken programs along the way but they are usually just minor and temporary inconveniences that get fixed with a quick update a week or two later.

So what’s so different this time around? Did Leopard come out too soon, did Apple get sloppy on this one???

This is what I think is contributing to the resent Leopard related issues:

1. More people are using Macs which means any problems will seem magnified due to the fact more people are talking about it.
2. Macs are more popular now which means there are more developers getting on the Mac bandwagon making 3rd party Applications which may not run as intended until they are updated.
3. Again, because of Apple popularity and the fact that Apple is notorious as the Computer system that “Just Works”, when something doesn’t “just work” it becomes very news worthy. Kind of like if I shaved my head a few of my friend may notice and comment on their likes or dislikes, now if I was Britney Spears and I shaved my head that would be another story!
4. Many new Mac users are Switchers, they are running programs like Parallels and other 3rd party programs to do what they used to do on their PC. As compared to the Lifer Mac People who tend to use more Apple branded programs and are less likely to run 3rd party enhancement applications.
5. Leopard was a BIG update, there are going to be some bugs, if you don’t like bugs, don’t upgrade right away. This is similar to a person running out and buying a new technology the day it comes out, you are going to pay a premium for it, if you wait that premium will go down. In this case the premium is time, your time trouble shooting and dealing with first release bugs.
6. As a company Apple is growing very fast and in all directions (Computers, iPhones, iPods, Airports, AppleTV’s) and I’m sure Apple is experiencing a strain on their staffing requirements trying to juggle people into different projects like the recent “iPhone”, this could take manpower away from the Leopard project which caused the delay and may have caused some of the bugs that did not get caught.
7. People love to hate, what I mean is I would be more likely to discuss something bad that happened to me then something good, it is human nature to complain!! There are lots and lots of very happy Leopard people out there just minding their own business.

My advice is if your computer is mission critical, always wait before upgrading anything on it. This applies to Applications and especially the entire Operating System! Getting the latest and greatest always comes at a cost. I have three Macs at home, two where upgraded to Leopard using the upgrade install method and one still has Tiger on it (That would be my main work machine) The two Leopard machines are working great!, I only had one glitch due to a third party NDAS network program that made my Wife’s G4 iBook run extremely slow, once I removed this her iBook now runs Leopard faster then it ran Tiger and it only has 512 MB of ram.

Do I think Apple could have done a better job? Sure, that “Blue Screen of Death” thing that took down thousands of computers could have been easily fixed using a simple script to remove the offending 3rd party driver on install of Leopard. Apple likes to run a very tight ship, that can come back on you especially if you go through a massive growth spirt like Apple is experiencing right now. Apple needs to hire more qualified people, pay them good money, expect a realistic amount of time involvement from them and give them some sense of security. In Canada that has not been the case, I can’t comment on other countries.

All in all I think Leopard is an amazing upgrade for your Mac as long as you don’t jump in blindly and make sure to use some common sense. Does your lively-hood depend on your computer, will your business die if you just don’t have Spaces or Stacks??

In my opinion, Tiger is already way better then Vista and when comparing Leopard to Vista in terms of compatibility and features, Leopard is the clear winner again.

Leopard may not be perfect but it is still the best OS available bar none…