Leoptard

This article on PC Magazine sums up my feelings about OSX 10.5 (Leopard). Many of my most problematic calls at work have been caused by:

  • Updates from Tiger to Leopard
  • Stupid usage changes from Tiger to Leopard.
  • Bugs and failures in Leopard (specially when using AirPort).
  • The faith people have in Apple. They actively refuse to believe their brand new 2000 dollar computer might have a problem.

Quick example: Try checking the configuration of an account on Mail 3.x. It makes you think you’re using Outlook Express.

The version change gave permission to Apple to change a lot of small details not taken into account when provided technical support. Some more examples:

  • From Mail 2.x to Mail 3.x the name and positioning of many options was changed (like SMTP authentication).
  • Network Preferences is now really confusing to people. On Tiger using PPPoE on Ethernet was easy, people understood it was a connection type available on the port. On Leopard people see “PPPoE” on the port list and they begin looking for a PPPoE port on the outside of the computer
  • For AirPort to work properly (if at all) you need to have a recent wlan router. If not, you’ll likely have to upgrade the firmware on it; if it turns out this is not possible you’ll have to get a new one.

I’m not taking into account stability issues yet. Before you could use Force Quit on any application without issues. Now OSX might kill itself just by looking at the desktop.

OSX 10.5 certainly came up to expectations but the price was losing the stability that made macs famous.