Leopard speed and issues
 

Leopard seems to work faster for me now that I installed the 10.5.1 fix. Wacom tablet refused to work, and I had to completely uninstall the old driver, repair permissions and then reinstall Wacom tablet drivers.

What bothers me is that seems that Apple engineers are pushing stuff out that isn't fully tested or compliant. Is it just me, but I do not recall this happening to Tiger.

I agree with you completely.

It seemed to start nearly a year ago when they began to release patch after patch for the Airports intending to fix the wireless problems, then 10.4.10 was a disaster for many MBPs regarding connectivity, then more and more patches that didn't work right.

It became a real crap-shoot whether the installation of the S/W & firmware releases would do more damage than they would fix.

It used to be said that Microsoft never really releases software, it just escapes. Sad to say, I have been forced to conclude that Apple has caught up to Microsoft in that regard.

I believe it would be in Apple's best interests to fire the manager responsible for S/W quality assurance for the past year or so, and somehow begin to overcome this recent history.

There will be many to defend Apple, I am certain, using the iPhone and other developments as an excuse for not having sufficient resources to do the S/W job up to a high level of buglessnes. However, I believe there is no acceptable excuse for putting out S/W as immature as many of Apple's recent offerings seem to have been.

I wish you could point out specific complaints about Apple's software releases and exactly how you were effected by them. I have a MBP and experienced no ill effects from the installation of 10.4.10 nor did any of my clients. I did run into a couple of minor problems with the installation of 10.5, but not more than I expected having many 3rd party applications on my Mac. So far nothing that's put me behind in my work. My clients have also run into a few problems. Most of them were solved over the phone. Most were PEBCAK*. Some problems required I visit the client... They were all due to third party software or devices.

(*PEBCAK = Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard…)

I think Apple has built its reputation by taking the computer's slowest, most error prone component and making it better. Whenever they don't manage to do that, it is cause for some concern. ;)

Let me start with these two important points:

I, personally, was minimally impacted by what I consider to be buggy releases mainly because I never installed them until I became convinced that they were worth installing. I generally don't install new S/W until rev 1 or 2 or sometimes 3, and the clamor about problems seems to die down to what I consider to be an acceptable level.

Also, you will note that Apple rarely acknowledges problems when they release a "fix" to something. The accompanying knowledge base article generally says only that it "improves stability" or other such weasel words. Because of this, establishing the existence of a problem in the first place can not be "proven", but can only be demonstrated inferentially by noting the volume of complaints about an issue on sites like this and MacFixit, and others of this type, in addition to the discussions on the Apple forum pages. Essentially, my observations about poor S/W quality result from the agglomeration of individual anecdotal complaints, either from acquaintances or via the fora I mentioned previously.

That said, let me point out the following (and these are just some of the highlights (or should I say lowlights):

1. When Apple released an update for its base station last year, it rendered one owned by a friend essentially inoperable. It had worked moderately well before, but with occasional drop-outs. After having consulted the Apple boards, and finding many posts identifying apparently insoluble problems (and no help from Apple), he got a 3rd party wireless router, and was able to at least get back on line again. >>> not a PEBCAK issue (in the military, we used to call it "operator headspace"), since he was able to configure it to working condition both before applying the update, and after having gotten a replacement.

2. Shortly afterwards, the next update for the base station came out. Again, several discussion boards had numerous posts about how this did not fix previous problems, but actually made them worse. Again, no meaningful response from Apple.

3. In June of this year, when the MBPs were upgraded to 2.4KHz, I bought mine. It was delivered with 10.4.9, and integrated well with my home network. Shortly thereafter, after having upgraded to 10.4.10 on my G4 MDD and finding it to work well, I also upgraded the MBP to 10.4.10. It was consistently unable to connect to my home network for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, no matter what I tried. I researched everything I could at Apple, MacFixit, and other sites (this is when I first found OSXHints forums, btw) and found a frighteningly large number of complaints, not just about the same issues I was seeing, but also about different, though related, issues, and nowhere a solution that worked. I downgraded back to 10.4.9 on the MBP, and everything worked just fine. Again, no operator headspace in this instance. (Admittedly I'm not the brightest person in the world regarding computers, but I have been able to follow directions and had my own network operational before the 10.4.10 fiasco, as well as after.) Just as an aside, as of before the 10.4.11 upgrade, there were still numerous complaints about essentially unusable wireless connectivity with MBPs, since the 10.4.10rev1.1 update didn't seem to fix many of the problems, either.

4. A few weeks ago, Apple released a fix for the Titanium iMac problem. Didn't help, according to many who posted on various fora.

5. Then another iMac problem fix, right on the heels of the first. Again, didn't work.

6. A day or two ago, another iMac "fix". Apparently, this one works (finally).

7. There's a litany of real problems with Leopard. I won't bore you with details, just look around at many of the threads. Many are, indeed, related to operator headspace, while many require fixes that could only be devised by "experts" such as, fortunately, can be found on this site. The "normal" user (tough to define, but you understand what I mean) would be extremely unlikely to ever find such solutions. Then, of course, there are the "real" Leopard bugs: Time Machine not working reliably for innumerable users, DiskUtility problems, wireless password problems, Mail irregularities, and so on ad nauseam. (if you're really interested, you can find them here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306907) Yes, it's subjective, but in my opinion, it is well below the historical quality standards of Apple that I and many others had gotten used to over the years.

My fingers are tired, so I'll stop here. I hope this was a satisfactory reply.:)

It does seem that everything starting from photoguy76s last sentence warrants a new thread.

I have no idea how to extract the extraneous material and place it in a new thread.

Perhaps you or another moderator could do the honors, please? :)

Created new thread as requested.

Trevor

A feeling of deep futility washes over me. I see threads like this all over the place, and I want to say so many things to show people that their observations are not what they seem--make them feel better--but every time I try to start, I realize that I cannot dissuade the river. It's always so clear that people are hard-set to believe what they've come to "know".

Each time, I want to ask, "What would you need to hear to convince you otherwise?" and wonder how different the answer is from what I would've tried to explain.

Apple does far better work than many people--I spot two in this thread--give them credit for. Far, far, far. They're damned good engineers and they understand their responsibility to the people and markets using their software. Posts like iampete's big list are so full of misconceptions that those with technical backgrounds tend to be shocked at the levels of arrogance they contain.

I await your non-arrogant elucidation with bated breath.

You obviously were unacquainted with System 7. :D

I can't remember a time when there was bug-free software. From anybody. Generally what happens, is that bugs get reported, and some get fixed. A few don't. Has it ever worked differently?

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.

It's easy to get a warped view of 'major troubles with the OS', when the majority of users choose not to report that they have no problems at all, or minor problems that they choose to work around. I suspect that Mac users are similar to the Windows part of the population, at least in regard to their relative satisfaction with their 'user experience'

I answered tech support calls for Dell for a couple of years (glad that's over!), and we (the call center folk) were reminded occasionally that only a small percentage of Dell users (they estimated 4-6%) ever called for tech support help.

You get to see these problems reported here and other similar sites (often out of context), in spite of the fact that most folks have computers that provide them with the experience they perceive as satisfactory.
So, by my experience, I conclude that most users never get 'show-stoppers', and don't need to report that here, or anywhere else for that matter. Even with Windows PCs, most users are satisfied with the function of their computer. (well, OK, with Windows: blissfully unaware.. :D )

Nice wording! Funny thing, it rains a lot more often in Redmond than it does in Cupertino. :-P

Trevor

yes, Apple has been over-extending itself (the iPhone and a major overhaul of os X). yes, they are both buggy - or maybe sloppily designed is a better phrase - to a very un-Apple like extent. yes, it's very annoying at times. and yes, they're unresponsive; they've always been kind of unresponsive (though I always get the sense they're paying attention; they just don't communicate very well).





still better than Windows.

That says it all really. Q.E.D., even? ;)

I realise that this is probably meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but how did a thread which initially discussed problems with Leopard, end up with the (implied) conclusion: "Windows is rubbish"??

I was always a firm believer that this forum didn't descend into bashing Windows (and Microsoft) as readily as others can. Slagging off Windows will not get Leopard fixed any quicker. It will not produce better quality software. If anything comes of it, (and this is highly unlikely) it'll be that the engineers at Apple stop trying as hard, because they'll see that as long as their OS is better than Microsoft's latest offering, the users will be happy.

As Craig pointed out, software inevitably contains bugs (sad but true). Additionally, given the sheer number of people that use the OS (compared to an individual application, say) it is just the law of averages that some people will be less happy than others.

Given the publicised changes made under-the-hood, it should be understandable that there are a few more problems, since the system is less familiar to the engineers -- regardless of how long they've already spent developing it.

As far as I'm aware, Tiger was less of a technical jump from Panther, as Leopard is from Tiger, so the former of the two was less problematic.

Because Mac users tend to do this, sadly. It makes us all look like foaming-at-the-mouth idiots, honestly, and I wish people wouldn't do it. How much Windows sucks or doesn't suck is completely irrelevant to a technical discussion about Mac OS X.

There is no such thing as a perfect OS

There is no such thing as a perfect OS

There is no such thing as a perfect OS

There is no such thing as a perfect OS

Okay now that I copied and pasted that a few times to get the point across, let me perhaps shed some light on the situation. Every OS has its faults, every OS has its benefits. Every user is different and has different needs/wants so therefore there is never a perfect OS.

I have been using Leopard on my macbook pro since release. I must admit it does run a bit slower than Tiger in a few areas. Mainly boot time. Tiger booted a tad bit faster. And by tad bit it is probably maybe 7 or 8 seconds longer, not a deal breaker for me. Really, the only major problem I have seen or read about with Leopard is Time Machine. I would like to point out something now though about Time Machine. TM is meant for an end user, not meant for any kind of back up solution other than for the end user. Apple is trying to accomplish something that no one has ever done before, getting their entire user base to use back ups. It is not perfect, and yes it is also flawed. However, it is included in the OS. Netinfo manager is gone so I am learning to use the directory utility to bind my macbook pro to the ODM at work. So far I am bound and can authenticate but my home won't sync. But, that is most likely the fact that I have not had the time yet to care about it and tinker with it.

I use Unix, Linux, Windows, and OS X and each of them have something I really like about them to make me want to use them. Windows is not flawed, it is just different. Remember, there is no such thing as a perfect OS. I think that a lot of early adopters to Leopard need to realize how far OS X has come. I hated the classic OS with a passion. Nonintuitive, ugly, ran chunky, and then came OS X. First off, it was Unix based so I was already interested in it (coming from a semi Linux background). 10.0 sucked, it was buggy and had real crappy third party support. 10.2 you started seeing it get better, 10.3 you could actually half way integrate your mac into an existing non mac environment and have it work, 10.4 came out and you see it really get stable and way more compatible. Now with 10.5 Apple is basically scraping the fat off the OS, streamlining it, and changing some things here and there to make it more compatible down the road.

So, really for what they have done in the past 6 years with 5 major releases I think it is great how the company has progressed. As long as OSes are made by humans they will never be perfect, because humans are far from perfect.

I don't think it did! It seems to me that every once in a while it's good to remind ourselves that things could always be worse: Don't like your job? You could be working in a factory town in China, where long hours and low pay are SOP. Don't like where you live? That job in China could be in a town so polluted that you can't drink the water. Don't like the political situation? Try living in Darfur. Got a problem with OS X? Try using Windows.

true but you are mixing fact with opinion. You could say that any job in the US is better than slave labor over in china is fact. Saying OS X is the best OS is opinion. Which is why we should refrain from using opinions as facts unless we clearly state, that it is an opinion.

You could say that, but I'm pretty sure there are at least a few people working those jobs in China that do not want to go to the US, and as we are seeing in the market, lots of Windows users are very happy to switch when they realize that they do have a choice. Fact or opinion, which is which? ;)

Let's keep the discussion above the 'he said, she said' level, shall we?

This isn't a social networking site, after all. :p

Before the thread started to diverge, it started out as a discussion of the quality (or lack thereof) of Apple's s/w releases, and, of course, the opinions did not agree. I believe that differences of opinion in this case seem related to different experience and background, and it seems to me that many of the posters have not considered the bigger picture of what I consider to be "real world" s/w development methodologies, standards, and quality.

For more years than I care to count, I have been involved in design and development in several s/w intensive programs involving multi-billion dollar contracts, starting as a low level worker and progressing to management at various levels. These programs involved hundreds of thousands of lines of code developed in-house as well as utilizing already developed s/w components to assist in the test, simulation, and management functions. In a typical program, the operational s/w segment performed tasks of command and control, navigation and path control, sequencing functions, communication functions, attitude and flight control functions, data acquisition, processing, culling, compression, and formatting functions, target analysis, acquisition and tracking functions, threat detection, assessment and avoidance functions, as well as control of sophisticated sensor packages. All of these functions were integrated within an in-house developed real-time operating system. All of this, when delivered to the customer, worked consistent with the specifications of the contract. As a matter of fact, one of these programs has been operating for well over a decade 24/7/365, essentially unattended except for sequence upload and data download periods. Throughout this time, only one, repeat one, s/w performance fault has occurred that is not attributable either to operator error, hardware failure, or environments outside of what was defined in the specification.

This, then is my background which forms the basis of my contention that the quality of the s/w released by Apple, especially in the recent past, is of inferior quality. Even if one were to believe (and I don't) that more than 99% of Apple s/w users experience no s/w problems, such a "success rate" is considered totally unacceptable for released s/w in most "real world" situations.

There are numerous examples of high-quality software releases in the "real world". Consider the software required to fly a modern airliner - would they even be allowed to fly if the on-board s/w reliability was on the same order as Apple's? Or the s/w involved in the financial industry which processes billions of financial transactions daily - who would patronize a financial institution that guaranteed that 99% of financial transactions would be correct? Or the s/w required to run an automated factory. Or the s/w required to operate a nuclear power plant. Or, even in mundane applications, like the controller involved in microwave ovens. No, when delivered, this s/w has to be virtually error free. If it is not, it is not considered ready for release, period. These are examples of the high standards of s/w that can be achieved by organizations with competent s/w developers competently managed.

I do not state that Apple's s/w developers are incompetent, nor, necessarily their managers. The fact remains that, as a corporate entity, they do not release s/w that even approaches the quality levels that many people are familiar with in their daily lives. Note that the operative term here is "released" - my position is only that Apple releases its s/w a few (quite a few, actually) interim build cycles earlier than the high quality s/w developers do.

I do believe that the fault lies with the particular business model. There is no formal contractual specification between Apple and the people to whom the s/w is delivered. As a matter of fact, in Apple's case, the recipients of the released s/w have no direct control over the specification. When Mr. Jobs makes presentations about the features and capabilities of a coming s/w release, that, at least in my mind, represents an implied de facto contractual specification that he is obliged to fulfill in exchange for my money. Based on what I have seen, heard, and read, 10.5.0 represents a non-fulfillment of this implied contract, to wit, some features he seemed to "promise" were not present or did not perform in accordance with the implied performance. Given past history, he will probably eventually fulfill his promises (more or less, anyway), in a .2 or .3 or later (perhaps a much later) release. In the "real world" with which I am familiar, this type of s/w delivery to a customer would result in at least the loss of millions in contract fees, and very likely the loss of billions in follow-on contracts that would be awarded to another company. In Apple's case, there is no credible alternative company. That is why they have gotten away with these practices. And, unless a viable alternative emerges (and I'm not holding my breath), they are likely to continue to release immature s/w of substandard quality.

I will grant that Apple's business model does not require high quality s/w to be delivered with each release. Neither does Microsoft's. To claim that Apple's is superior to Microsoft's is just the "honor among thieves" argument.

I use Apple s/w. I have used it with whatever version was delivered with the original Mac Classic all the way through 10.4.11, and I will probably continue to use it. After a fashion, it meets the needs I have for personal s/w usage. I also accept that Apple s/w is of much lower quality than other s/w which I encounter in my daily life in the real world. The reason I accept it is because neither my livelihood or my safety depends on it; it is merely a convenience for some of the things I like to do. However, that does not mean that I have to like it or to sing praises of how great it is, as others are wont to do.

I hope you didn't develop carpal tunnel syndrome while writing that.

Where can I go to purchase the retail copy of your product? What is the list price?

If you affiliate with certain gov't organizations and have the necessary clearances, you can get it for free.

Then it's not of much relevance to me, is it?

The implication is yours, my friend, not mine. I don't think Windows is a bad operating system; I think Mac OS is a better one. that may be a function of the way I use computers, or because I happen to be a sophisticated user, or because I don't happen to do the things (like FPS games) that Windows has an edge on. I'll add that I'm agreeing with both sides here. on one hand, I recognize that apple did less than their normally stellar job of preparing 10.5 for release (though I'll remind everyone that the first shipping of os 9 just didn't frigging work). on the other hand, I'm pretty damned impressed with 10.5, bugs and all. it's a nice piece of engineering. I'm sure they'll get 85% of the bugs fumigated over the next few months, and there is always going to be that stubborn 5% that won't get resolved until 10.6, if then.

in short, it's all good. :)

>>>> Reply to Craig Arko

Well, I was merely attempting to explain personal experiences which influence my definitions of high quality and low quality. Feel free to discount that if you wish.

However, the (non-personal) examples of aircraft s/w, financial s/w, other industrial s/w, etc., are credible examples of high quality software deliveries for everyday, common-experience cases.

Does the fact that that s/w is probably proprietary and not available to the general public to evaluate also invalidate them as examples of what I consider to be high quality s/w in comparison with "personal computer" s/w?

Flying a plane is certainly complex, but I doubt it compares to the almost limitless possibilities facing anyone developing any OS. An operating system is used by many different people for many different purposes, and while an application may do some impressive things, it is limited to a much narrower field, so any comparison will not be apples to apples.

I'll point out that there is quite a difference between designing a piece of software that's designed to do a particular task (no matter how complex), and designing on operating system, where you cannot know in advance (except in a general way) what the goals and intentions of its users are, what software they will have access to, what conditions they will be working under, or even what machine they are going to be running it on. I bet if you surveyed state governments, you'd find that the machines they have processing our taxes and monitoring us in our sleep were mostly build back in the 80s and 90s, chugging away on Fortran programs. you don't need to be up to date if you've got a system that does exactly what it's supposed to already.

dagnab it, you type too fast!

I think you are underestimating the difference in difficulty level of developing software that will be used by relatively few people, for relatively few purposes, to given specifications, and the difficulty of developing a commercial operating system that will be used by millions of people, who use their computers to do an uncountable number of things, who have not given the developers any specifications. The latter is far more difficult than the former, even if neither are easy.

If you think Apple is doing such a terrible job, and that is feasible to release perfect software in the initial release, then you should be developing consumer software instead of specialty software. I expect that, best case, you would have similar very minor bugs as what Apple has in Leopard. There are many users who have long awaited the perfect OS, so feel free to prove me wrong if you think it is as easily done as you imply; there's definitely a market.

Yes, this is not a valid comparison. High-reliability (not to be confused with bug-free) software is developed using an economic model which is not suitable for assessing consumer grade software. I wouldn't, for example, enjoy paying a thousand or more dollars for each OS upgrade, after waiting a few extra years for them to go through qualification committee testing.

These are not life and death products.

Here is a real-world example of how release decisions get made for consumer grade software:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-squashed.html

Well, I made the jump to leopard last night. Initially I tried the upgrade install, which failed very near the end. Went back, started over, and did a clean install. It took forever on a 1.25 ghz G4 Mini (forever, in this case, was a little short of two hours) but eventually it finished, rebooted, updated, and started the fun task of reinstalling software. Luckily I had saved the disk images of most things on my windows box (and sharing folders in leopard is a snap). Two hours later, the system was all set up just like I want it, synergy was working nicely, and the clipboard is even synching between machines. The original problem I had with that was because, apparently, there is more than one version of Synergy's GUI.

However I digress... The point of the post was, so far, I haven't run into a single snag with Leopard. Everything works just like it did with Tiger, only faster.

To those of you who are Windows bashing, whoever made that comment about "no such thing as a perfect OS" is quite right. I don't "like" a lot of things about Windows, and yes, there are some things OS X does better, and some things you just can't do on a Mac. Yeah I know, playing Utopia isn't that important to most people, but the truth (this is an *fact*) is, my Mac (even better in Leopard than Tiger) integrates quite flawlessly with my Windows network, giving me (this is an *opinion*) the best of both worlds.