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Skeet Says:

Been using it since the day it was released and no problems? I use Adobe CS3, MS Office and various other apps on a Dual 2.0Ghz G5. Are you sure you don’t have any system extensions on there?

Posted on November 19, 2007

Dick Applebaum Says:

How about some specifics?

I have been using Leopard since the first beta in a testing environment…

I put it into production on my 3 Intel Macs about 3 months ago.

I am in an always-on environment, using several “live” stock market programs, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, FCP, CS3; 10, or so, Safari windows (one with 16 tabs), email, Parallels (for one stock market program), active web site (development) using ColdFusion, BBEdit, SQLite, Terminal…

Spaces and Time Machine, alone, justify Leopard, for me.

I have had very few OS problems.  Actually, I’ve had hard drive failures on 2 machines (iMac 17 and mini) but was able to recover.

When the released version of Leopard arrived, I installed it on 4 PPC iMacs, without problems.

Posted on November 19, 2007

war Says:

I have been using Leopard for a couple of weeks now without a single problem. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash have had no problems.  Calling this an Alpha release is being a bit of a drama queen, don’t you think?  Seriously, if you are going to make such a claim perhaps you should give specific examples of your problems rather than sweeping generalizations. Is leopard perfect? No. However, it certainly deserves more credit than you are giving to it.  Give specifics and your argument would certainly hold more weight. You cannot say something is crap without the information to backup that claim.  It’s just sloppy writing. Although, you could have a bright future writing for fox news if you need some additional income.

Posted on November 19, 2007

MikeonMacs Says:

No problems on any of my Macs - old or new(er). Only issue was dragging attachments to Mail.app in the dock to send was opening two new mgs, but 10.5.1 fixed that.

I did all of the TAGteam recommended upgrade tips and it worked like a dream. Still does.

I’m sorry you are dealing with some woes, but I am lovin’ life.

Posted on November 19, 2007

tundraboy Says:

Drama Queen—funny dat.

I am amazed about how effortless was my Leopard install for a PowerMac G5 and a C2D MacBook.  I’ve never updated a Mac and I was very hesitant given the headaches I got from updating my 2 PCs.

Problem free? No.  Leopard killed the Apple Remote function on the MacBook and I’m hoping a fix will be coming soon.  But that’s it.  Pretty good for a .0 version, eh?

Posted on November 19, 2007

dru Says:

There are issues, but the above open letter has no specifics, so we cannot even attempt to offer help. 

Some of the most glaring issues are occuring with ‘upgrade’ installs where old APE’s exist.  The problem is that many people don’t even know they have PE’s installed.  The other problem is the inability for people to perform even basic maintenance on their computers.  Disks need maintenance, and while HFS+ is better than most, it can get just as fouled as any other FS.  Running FSCK and Disk Repair tools is something that should be a regular habit more most users. 

If we had some details, I could offer more specifics.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Kendell Travis Says:

Sounds to me like Frank suffers from the same problem that a past co-worker of mine used to demonstrate. The problem of making assumptions by using words like “We, Us, A plethora of Mac users” instead of using “I and Me.” One of my pet-peeves is people assuming to speak for others.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Bill Klemm Says:

frank,
you need to call your tech support guy. Seriously...you need do a clean install and review the comparibility chart and do less ignorant ranting.

Your open letter has no substance and your data is anecdotal at best.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Frank Petrie Says:

Let me answer your remarks:

Skeet - no system extensions.

Dick - Mail completely ignoring my rules is the most aggravating thing and on the boards many people are suffering the blue screen of death.

war - I have been trying to correct several problems through Apple’s boards and MacOSG’s (PS I like the Fox News remark). As for the title of ‘drama queen,’ I would say that you and others are being the ‘drama queens’ because you react about criticism of Apple as if somebody was saying slanderous remarks about your mother.

MikeonMacs - I performed all the stuff you’re supposed to and even though it always worked before…

tundraboy - Installation was smooth. Problem free, no, I don’t expect that. Although if Microsoft released something this buggy, Macaholics couldn’t bad mouth it enough.

dru - Here’s one specific:
Repairing permissions for “Air Bob”
Warning: SUID file “usr/libexec/load_hdi” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DiskManagementTool” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Locum” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconfig” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writeconfig” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “usr/libexec/authopen” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent” has been modified and will not be repaired.

Permissions repair complete. Enjoy.

Kendall - No assumption involved at all. Go to Apple’s discussion list and add up the post numbers and then remember that’s just one Mac forum.

Will Leopard be a spectacular OS one day? You bet. For now, I would equate this situation to buying a brand new car and discovering that it has no brakes while you’re driving it. You contact the company and they inform you that ‘yes.’ they knew about the problem when they sold the car to me. but promise to fix it in the near future.

Now what would you like to argue about?

Posted on November 19, 2007

wasabi doggy Says:

My initial install was problematic ... resulted in a sluggish system that hung all my apps like so many pictures in a gallery.

A clean install made everything better than good. Snappy and stable.

Who knows- might have been those darn games my kids play on my MacBook that caused the mess up ...

Posted on November 19, 2007

dru Says:

Thanks for the specific situation. Permissions is interesting, but in this case, voodoo too.  It would appear that something you installed along the way (one of the .pkg installers in the Receipts folder) installed something into a sensitive location and has altered your permissions.  Judging by the range of errors, I’m also guessing that you have the “root” user enabled (you really don’t need root enabled, you can accomplish everything root can using ‘sudo bash’ to get a root level shell). 

Having read a bunch of the issues on the boards, they generally fall into 3 categories:

BSOD: which are generally either failed Cache rebuilds, which isn’t in fact a BSOD, it’s a Blue Screen of Extended Waiting (I have an iMac that I did an upgrade install on that took 3.5 hours to get through it’s cache rebuild ‘Blue Screen of WTF is that thing doing!’) or APE / Mach_Inject code segments that are left in place prior to an upgrade install.

The other two items are the Install went fine, but stability is gone group, and the install tanked and now all I get it the grey ‘you must reboot’ kernel panics.  Oddly, both of these seem to stem from two issues, disk, or kext’s.  I *strongly* urge anyone experience odd slowdowns, beachballs and kernel panics to review the kext’s and reboot into Single User Mode and run fsck -fy on the primary disk.

Finally there is the most frustrating issue, and it effect Tiger too.  That is the occasionally occuring all of the sudden opening applications and using anything that references the Keychain gets abysmally slow and beachballs.  This is a cache issue, and simply deleting the correct cache file resolves the issue. 

All of these are things that occur in 10-15% of the installations, and so they are hard to fix in a general way

Posted on November 19, 2007

brett_x Says:

Frank, you should have put that stuff in the story, not the comments. Your “open letter” is practically baseless if you don’t disclose any of the specific problems you are having.  Without details, you just sound like an ignorant user.
I did a quick discussion search on “System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool” and most of the discussions say “don’t worry about the errors”. In other words, the files have been modified, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are problematic at all. In fact, if you run the 10.5.1 updater (again, possibly).. most of them will go away.
So what other problems do you have besides the mail rules and disk permissions? Surely you must have enough problems (A multitude must be at least 10 or so...) to warrant a rant such as your open letter calling Leopard such names as “Alpha”. Really.
Seriously, going to Apple discussions to find out what percentage of people are having problems is like going to the YMCA pool to find out what percentage of a population belongs to the YMCA.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Dick Applebaum Says:

Frank:  I didn’t bother re-reading the forums… I read them at the time of release.

Also, I assumed that you weren’t experiencing “all” the problems discussed on the forums (some of them are hardware-specific, for example).

But, I do recall that most of the problems were avoided with an archive install, or a clean install. 

From the looks of your repair permissions errors, it appears that your existing system was messed up.

As a note in passing, I have had great success installing Major OSes releases (Apple OS, OS X, Windows 3.1 thru Vista, various Linux distros, etc., by:

1) Clean install on an external drive, if possible
2) Complete Backup
3) Attempt Upgrade option (if available)
4) If problems, restore & archive install
5) if problems, clean install.

Admittedly, it is a lot easier upgrading Windows or Linux on a Mac because virtualization is available for these OSes.

Hopefully, Apple will learn from the problems with the Leopard release and enable OS X to legally run in a virtual environment.

Dick

Posted on November 19, 2007

Frank Petrie Says:

Dick,

I have always done ‘Archive and Installs.’ I had always found them to be very stable. And i perform my maintenance (cron scripts, et al.) religously. According to Disk Utility, my copy of 10.4.10 was clean.

It’s gonna require a good deal of precious time to straighten out.

Forward we go.

Frank

Posted on November 19, 2007

Dru Says:

I suspect that a single user FSCK and a quick review of your kext’s may be all you need, possible a quick delete of your cache files to clear most problems.  I’ve had a couple of machines where I thought the problems where more severe, that took care of the situation.  FWIW, running Disk Repair on a partition that is the currently booted OS partition is a worthless exercise, don’t bother, and the cron versions of it have the same issues.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Dick Applebaum Says:

Frank:

Ahh… I tried an an archive install ( from a beta version ) and experienced the problem of long wait after reboot.  Fortunately I was able to do a clean install & everything works fine.

I did archive installs on the PPC Tiger machines and Intel Tiger machines.  This worked fine.

Sounds like the archive install caused your problems, and backed you into a corner-- you were enticed by prior successes with archive install.

Sorry to hear that and I, now, understand why you feel as you do:  Apple’s upgrade process to Leopard is not up to Apple’s usual standards.

However, once you get a successful install. I think that you will really like Leopard!

Dick

Posted on November 19, 2007

DAG Says:

I have now updated to 10.5x on Mac Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, and G4 systems- from minis to eMacs to iMacs to laptops. I strongly recommend a clean install. Even with a clean install, problems are going to come up.

Before the install, check all of your applications & plug-ins to make sure they are the latest available. Back up, back up, back up.

Even with clean installs and updated apps/plug-ins, you might see a KP every now and then. It is getting better.

I think they should have polished the Apple a little more before release and despise the emphasis on eye-candy, but it is more of a late beta than an alpha.

The fact that Apple didn’t post that installing 10.5 would result in a system with the Firewall off is my biggest single gripe.

Posted on November 19, 2007

war Says:

Frank,

I do not doubt that you have had problems with your leopard installs.  My issue was with the article itself as it never gave any proof.  I just keep hearing my high school English teacher (so many years ago) telling me to back up any points made in a paper with supporting evidence.  The initial article did not provide such information.  This of course seems to be the standard MO for any of the FUD windows writes whenever they write an Apple related article.  Nothing personal towards you but the initial article was full of generalizations.  I don’t believe in attacking anything critical of Apple as some authors do have a valid point in some criticisms. Heck, I am still mystified of their inability to put out a mid tower that would be between the iMac and MacPro systems. Or why they won’t put DVR functions into Apple TV (i know they want me to buy from itunes). Starting to ramble here but always remember.. no matter how terrible my mac experience is it is still leaps and bounds better than any experiences with windows (it’s why I switched nearly 7 years ago now).

Posted on November 19, 2007

Mactotum Says:

Frank,

If you’re going to write a letter to Steve, I think you should list some of your own experiences and particular troubles that solidify your points about the product being “Alpha Quality.” You’ve made an entire generalization about numerous complaints on discussion boards--not exactly the the most scientific way to measure quality (especially since many users are clueless).

Discussion boards are usually full of “me too” and feature confusion posts--these are usually people who haven’t read the documentation or the “known problem” or compatibility lists.

However, you do make a good point about how operating systems are delivered to meet arbitrary corporate fiduciary deadlines rather than vetting for quality before announcing a release data.  All the big software companies are infamous for this hence the term “Dot Oh!” release.

As a professional Mac support person, I personally smack the hands of anyone who even thinks about running out and buying updates just for the sake of updating. 

Apple is a big company and their bean counters expect things to ship on time or the stock prices drop. Is that good for quality? Hell, no. Is that reality in corporate America? Yes--we just have to deal with it.

I tell my customers to wait until a “dot 3” release if your uptime is crucial. If you’re willing to be an early adopter, you’ll need to face the fact that the first release has a few bugs.

If the quality of any product is lacking, I would suggest that you vote with your wallet: don’t buy it until you think the discussion boards are full of people praising the product (good luck there, buddy).

Personally, I think anyone that buys a software product on its release date is either a good tech support person keeping abreast of what’s coming down the pipeline or someone who loves living on the edge in the face of danger--or maybe just a sucka who drinks too much of the company Kool-Aid.

Posted on November 19, 2007

Frank Petrie Says:

Folks,

Thanks for all the suggestions. As far as the letter not dealing in specifics, I can see that. And that was after letting it stew for a day.

As for the use of the word Alpha, I used that after reading all of the problems with so many things. There was no common thread. There were many different issues that required attention.

DAG, I spent time religiously checking and rechecking VersionTracker. And if I could not glean any information from there, I went to the app’s site.

Mactotum, my frustrations were only hightened because I am a shareholder. They’ve finally achieved major brand status among the populace and then a lot of fumbling this year. And then add to it that Vista was a sitting duck, this should of went off like shooting fish in a barrel.

Please keep responding to the article. I like the dialogue and Dennis likes the hits. :-)

Frank

Posted on November 19, 2007

Bpb Says:

“From the looks of your repair permissions errors, it appears that your existing system was messed up.”

Just an FYI, it’s not. I have a clean install of Leopard on a brand new hard drive and I get the same errors.
Apple just tells us to ignore the errors.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306925

Posted on December 03, 2007