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Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off

I had to be talked, wined, dined, and peer-pressured into buying my first MacBook Pro this past January. But once I plunked down the bucks for the slightly less hardware oomph per dollar than I’m used to, I was impressed by one thing: Everything. Just. Worked. Period. Tiger just works. End of story.

But Apple marketing has the swinging pair of crabapples to actually print “Leopard Just Works” on its Web site. Hey, at least Microsoft reps have the decency to look a little abashed when you point out their product’s screwups. Apple reps just glare at you like they’re daring you to say something. Well, I’ve got something to say. Several somethings.

Vista Similarity 1: Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually
Vista Similarity 2: Needless Graphics Glitz
Vista Similarity 3: Pointless User Interface “Fixes”
Vista Similarity 4: Nuked Networking

And my personal favorite:

Vista Similarity 5: Bundled Apps as New Features That Suck
For Leopard, the sad bundled app-as-feature is Time Machine. To hear Mac moonies tell it, this is the best thing to happen to backup since the letter b. In reality, however, it sucketh and it sucketh huge. Then there’s the annoying marketing ploy showcasing how amazing it is that Time Machine takes a snapshot of the entire file system. News flash: EVERY backup app can take a snapshot of the entire file system. That would be the reason we call them “backup programs.”



  1. Myrddin Emrys says:

    Leopard works fine on my G4 from Jan. 2003; however, not all systems will act the same way since it is still early adoption times.

    1) Apple does not make you use any “bundled” apps, you can use any app that you want to, and as usual it takes time for third party apps time to get up to speed.

    2) The use of the term “service pack” is wrong in this case. The term usually means the company wants to fix bugs for their enjoyment every year or so and not when they are just needed.

    3) For needless glitz you don’t have to look further than Vista’s desktop, I personally don’t know how people can handle all the transparency.

    4) I don’t use Time Machine but I may in the future if the need arises; however, there are excellent programs out there that will do the job quite nicely.

    5) All new things should be met will simple rules, 1. Ask around before using, and 2. Never use things on something that has not been backed up or that you cannot afford to use.

  2. GregA says:

    Been a while…

    When I upgraded to Vista, I was still able to get to xp, yes, I had an install failure, no it didn’t brick my computer the way OSX does.

    Im still not certain what exactly it is that Time Machine does as it doesn’t actually back up your computer as much as it make a copy of your files locally. I don’t get whats so hard about letting your backup agent point to a shared directory on your backup server.

    For all the changes in the Vista networking stack it certainly is not suffering the same sorts of problems that OSX has. Wireless has been testing between patches throughout the OSX lifecycle, so that is nothing new. Apple simply hasn’t gotten around to making wifi work reliably yet… As I understand, there are now problems with plain old wired networks now too?

    It is unconscionable that garage band still has clicks and pops occasionally for the osx being the alleged multi media powerhouse that it is.

    When I am copying data around from computer to computer I would rather it be slow then fail and lose all my data…

    Quicktime has become the virus and exploit vector of choice over the last year, looks ready to surpass ie5 in overall suckagness for security.

    Don’t give up on Leopard?

  3. Cranky Brad says:

    If you think Leopard is bloated and sucks try Leopard Server! If you make one little mistake while configuring it you’re screwed and have to start over from scratch. Just look in the Apple Server discussion forums and see how many people have reinstalled it about 10 times! And these are experienced network admins!

    Apple marketing should be sued for false advertising. It just DOESN’T work! They clearly are following Microsoft as John mentions in his article.

    Guy Kawasaki exposed how Apple (and other software companies) think…”Ship it now and fix it later!” These people deserve no financial reward in life IMHO.

  4. John S says:

    I installed Leopard right from the get go. Installed OK no problems their.
    But my MacBook went from almost never freezing up to freezing up at least once a day and sometimes needing a reboot. Minds you this was a clean install and right now I am running nothing 3rd party what so ever!
    Now I have not spent a lot of time with Vista since it’s intro in which I upgraded one machine to Vista and had so many network problems I had to downgrade back to XP. The folks at Apple spent too much time with the iPhone and not enough time finishing Leopard it looks like.
    Of course not wanting to look like Microsoft and delay Leopard again.
    They thought it was good enough to throw out there and patch the problems. My simple comment on Time Machine is that its great for desktops, but who wants to carry a backup drive around with them.
    They should allow a big thumb drive or a partition on the main hard drive to use as a backup. Otherwise it’s no good to me!

  5. David Kerman says:

    I for one am sick of all these people saying Vista sucks.

    The usual complaints of software/hardware incompatibility are ridiculous.

    I cannot point to a single problem with any software that I have had, aside from a few xp designed programs needing to be run as administrator.

    As far as hardware the entire complaint seems to be based on HP not being able to keep up with their printer drivers.

    *News Flash* HP had plenty of time with all of the various betas and release clients to update their drivers.

    Seriously all there seems to be are general compalints that it “sucks” or various claims of incompatibility which are usually not backed up with any specific examples.

  6. Myrddin Emrys says:

    #33 Windowites have such a fundamental view.

    1) I never said that they did, are you sure you are reading the right post?

    2) Funny, I thought that people have been using the term “service pack” just because they are ignorant and want to shift some of their guilt of being an early adopter or that they refuse to except that there actually are other OSs than Windows.

    3) I have been using computers since ’85, how about you? I loved using Plain Jane on my //E. In your opinion OS X started the glitz, that may be but it is quite subdued in Leopard. In my opinion Vista looks like the whore that is always looking for attention, and Johns to pay for promises of ecstasy, and Ballmer is it’s pimp. To take a line from Star Wars, “Who is more foolish? The Fool or the Fool that follows him?”

    4) Sorry for making a personal statement, I guess this is the wrong place. You do have a limited vocabulary, or would that be just a limited comprehension?

    5) Well it seems that you haven’t been using computers for long or you would be acquainted with these guidelines. Here is a question for you, do you use a computer or does the computer use you?

  7. James Hill says:

    Dugg down for inaccuracy: Nothing could be worse than Vista.

    Wait a second. This isn’t Digg! It’s worse!

    LMAO – Too easy. Owned again.

  8. TonyB says:

    Glad I didn’t rush out to buy Leopard. I’m very happy with Tiger.

  9. Angel H. Wong says:

    #40

    Don’t you have anything to say other than the same one liner over and over? You’re starting to sound like a writer for an NBC sitcom..

  10. Steve Jobs says:

    All you Apple fan boy,s can suck my ass.

    You would apologize if Steve Jobs shit his pants.

    You don’t hear Dvorak stroking Bill Gates Tiny penis do you.

    PS The fact the Windows sucks, doesn’t automatically make apple the rule.
    Thats like saying Bee Arthur is so hot, just because Courtney Love is gross.
    Would you rather sleep with.

    Answer Linux

  11. BubbaRay says:

    Yes, that Apple software is so great, it takes an hour to get a new CD to an iPod if the pod is full. Apple’s gui interfaces are non-intuitive. Didn’t iTunes ever hear of ‘drag and drop’? Nah, that would eliminate DRM. Maybe I’ll get an iRiver or Creative.

    From the sister site:
    http://tinyurl.com/2kqb8z

  12. OmarTheAlien says:

    I haven’t yet quite figured out why, but I bought a new laptop with Vista, and other than a couple hours spent cleaning the pre-bundled crap out of it, it’s doing a good job. Once I opened the door, it jumped up into my home network like it was home, and the few apps I’ve installed went in with no pain. I haven’t tried anything exotic, like 3d modeling/animation, or sound recording/mixing, but for now it’s working the way it should. I was thinking about maybe trying a Mac, but from what I’ve read and heard the platforms (Mac and PC) seem to be heading for the same place, kind of like one of those galactic collisions, where two, or even more, galaxies just seem to merge together.

  13. CarpathiaMan says:

    #46 made a heck of a lot of sense.

    But you know, it’s getting to the point where it’s practically impossible to decide which OS to permanently stick with nowadays.

    I have a PC in which I dual-boot between Vista and Ubuntu Linux. I just installed Ubuntu the other day, and it impresses me in many ways. I’m looking forward to using it and learning more about it.

    But then, I also like Vista a lot too.

    And to top it off, I own an iMac which runs OS X 10.2.8. It too is a good machine — the only thing that HASN’T worked on it is MIDI recording.

    My advice to the world: If you have the time, patience, and resources, try out as many operating systems as you can. Broaden your horizons. Harness the best things out of the different competing platforms.

    After all, they each have their strengths and weaknesses, and since an OS is such a large, complicated entity, we’re bound to have problems with them from time to time. I’m sure neither Apple nor Microsoft actually WANT things to go wrong with their systems.

    Just my two cents.


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