When Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on October 26, 2007, “the company immediately had to deal with scattered technical problems,” Robert Lemos reports for CIO.
“What a difference a year makes. Apple has weathered the problems, morphed both its iMac and MacBook systems to aluminum cases with clean lines, and plans to release the sixth revision, code named ‘Snow Leopard,’ to its flagship operating system,” Lemos reports.
“Next year, the company could hit a milestone that it’s missed for a long time and claim at least a 10 percent share of U.S. computer shipments. The company has regularly grown its shipments in the United States, reaching a 9.1-percent share in the most recent quarter, according to data from IDC,” Lemos reports.
Leopard at 1. Five lessons learned:
1. Fix problems fast
2. Style and substance matter
3. One OS to bind user community
4. Don’t Let Your Rival Shape Your Brand
5. Macs Must Mean Business
Full article here.
Problem in most cases lies between chair and keyboard when impatient person STOPS the upgrade because THEY think it’s not reacting fast enough. It’s doing stuff! Leave it alone!
As an IT I have found in most cases, those that got the supposed “Blue Screen of Death” just had a lack of patience. When the install goes blue walk away and go do something else. I loaded Leopard on a heck of a lot of Macs, near 100 from towers to laptops to mini’s to iMacs and not one hung up permanently with a blue screen. Not at work, nor guiding people through it at home.
When someone tells me something is hung up I tell them to go do something for a half hour. I say a half hour because that is overly generous and if it’s still hung then, well, then it really is– then call me. Same with Leopard’s “Repair Permission” you need to start that and then go to lunch or get your coffee down the hall.
Nikke, sounds more like you have a network problem. What kind of router/access point are you using?
We have 8 month old Vista machines here at work that have sleep problems, freeze problems, comunication problems of various sorts, are eternally slow and a multitude of other minor faults and annoyances that come and go. No one even tries to fix many of them them or they are simply unfixable and certainly nothing is heard from Microsoft that even accepts them as a reality. Oh and our server is continually slow or down and our web server was infiltrated recently by those nasty Russian fraudsters despite all the apparent protection Fort Knox can only dream of or so MS and their cronies would have us believe. Of course its easy to ‘correct’ things if you refuse to accept they actually exist. Meanwhile their users just begin to believe this is normal.
Meanwhile on the odd occasion we get a small problem with our Macs (usually pc network related) the PC brigade immediately start to point fingers. Funny old World innit.
@Randian: You said “a few facts:
<There’s no Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy is bogus, the Great Pumpkin is hogwash,> True <and glossy is so much preferred by Apple’s customer base, it’s not even arguable.> Where’s your evidence to back up this claim. As it happens, I have an iMac with a glossy screen which only makes using the computer difficult for about 2 hours on bright, sunny days. However, I work with people in the media industry (graphic designers, video editors, etc.) and have found glossy to be a really person preference situation. Some like it, some hate it.
<Yes, cries such as yours do rise from the throng of malcontents, but your voices are few, comparatively speaking.> Again, please show us where you get your information.
<And, by the way, the world is actually NOT out to piss you off, so save up a few extra pennies over the next year or so and purchase an MBPro . . . which DOES have the anti-glare screen you so vehemently call for.>
The 15 inch MBP is too big and too heavy for many people who need to take them to and from school or work. I deal with tremendous back pain every day and have done so for my entire adult life (roughly 20 years) so the last thing I want to do is add a 6LB laptop to my already textbook heavy bag. Even my 5LB 12inch PB G4 adds a good chunk of weight. I’m sure you can see my point.
<Oh, and get over it.> As if nothing else you wrote was rude enough, this was completely uncalled for. I respectfully suggest that you get over yourself and be a bit more civil when responding to comments.
The other thing no one else is mentioning – this article is from CIO magazine.
As in Chief Information Officer. That Macs are getting any mention at all in such a publication indicates that a major change is starting to happen.
@ Nikke – have you taken your problem Mac to an Apple store and had Genius take a look at it? Yeah, I live in the boonies too, but it might be worth the trip.
How about lesson 6:
Don’t break things that work OK already! (ie dock folders, iMovie 8)
Un-Fix (go back to what was, dig?)
Finder Search Results View Options – when searching a folder, drive, etc
Those View Options are VERY limited – only 3
Need also – size, date created/modified, comments, etc
All of them were in 10.4 and past going back to OS9
Perhaps something in this is involved with Snow Leopard, and will be “fixed” with that release ?
We’ll See
BC
It works both ways maczar. Your preference appears to be glossy. If all Apple offered was matte, in all probability we’d hear you complaining because Apple didn’t offer a glossy screen.
I prefer matte. I’ve sat behind my brothers glossy MBP long enough to realize a glossy screen is not for me. Why is it that some people can’t accept the fact that some of us just don’t like glossy?
Man, I’m hearing a lot of hate speech from some of the glossy people.
Now, that’s not being inclusive, is it?
Why do some people think that providing the matte option threatens their glossy preference?
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“Can’t we all just get along?”
Oh… BTW:
As far as “All the BS about reflections etc is crap.”
Let me refer you to an article from last week.
Watch the video. At points you don’t know if you are looking into the room or the screen.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/18974/
Verily, it is Steve’s way or the highway. I once had the gall to make a point somewhere (or so is my claim) and it was misconstrued as anti by the fans. Upon the usual tearing me down to size, I was well advised to mind the door that it doesn’t hit my derriere on the way out. Seriously, I have been on the highway a few times, and it is not all that pretty out there.
Allow me, then, to afford all you Apple-whiners the same courtesy laden advice, “don’t let the door hit your ass on your way out.”
“What we want to do is deliver an increasing level of value to these customers, but there are some customers which we choose not to serve.” – Jobs 2008.
Don’t agree? Highway’s that way.
Steve’s way can change.
He once said, “People don’t want to watch video on their iPod.”
Market forces change his mind.
It’s our job to remind him when the occasional turd slips out.
This whole problem started because J.I. didn’t like the unsightly iSight in his design.
Why alienate some users so he can win another design award?
Wake up Steve! Bring back choice.
@ Nikke (again)
Nah, you still don’t know any of the details of what you refer to as your answer highlights yet again. You’ve also had a couple of hours to go look this stuff up if you wanted to.
This statement right here:
“… My MB Air’s airport STILL doesn’t work like it should work… “
Shows you’re an idiot right off the top.
That is unless by “airport” you mean there are a tiny model aircraft landing on top of your laptop.
And of course all the top computer technicians know that when you use the phrase “doesn’t work like it should” you are supposed to spell it … “dont werk lik it shud” and affect a Hillbilly accent while doing so.
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“be thankful for the superior products we enjoy that come out of Cupertino.”
Every new Mac Pro comes with a built in Jobsian Click Eliminator which examines your trackpad clicks for ones which are offensive to Steve and bans them.
You don’t get to know which click will be banned ahead if time, but you are welcome to modify your click and submit it again.
If only every PC maker could match that technology.
Fortunately the Macbook Pro has a sexy rigid aluminum case which protects it when frustration at it continually ignoring your clicks causes you to hurl it into a wall.
7. Scrolls like butter.
Haha, I don’t know how these comments get off topic so much. AirPort problems should be fixed with firmware updates by now.
The whole point of this article: “A positive article about Apple in a magazine written for corporate IT managers. This is a very, very good thing.”
Vista has been out for almost three years now, and it STILL hasn’t been fixed. I don’t have any clue about Windows Server 2008. Microsoft needs to strip everything away and go back to the NT4.0 version and build from there. UI shine and sparkle should come during the development so you are sure it doesn’t bog down the system…cough…Æro…cough.
So M$ hasn’t fixed an older OS while Apple had fixed it’s yearling OS a few months in. Touché…
Leopard was a great example of how to deal with launch issues, again demonstrating how Apple gets it right.
As for Steve’s way or the highway, I do hope his way eventually incorporates desktop gaming…
The real significance is the source of this article: CIO magazine, a mainstream IT publication geared to executives in larger corporations!
“… My MB Air’s airport STILL doesn’t work like it should work… “
Shows you’re an idiot right off the top.
???? because he paid for a MBA?
“demonstrating how Apple gets it right.”
Apple F**ks the Dog with every new product introduction. Can you point to a product they’ve launched recently which hasn’t had some major problem?
Sure they get fixed sooner or later, at least for those who don’t buy 1.0 hardware. Those people get software workarounds of varying effectiveness.
#7 PPC Support is important to the existing customer base.
My biggest gripes about Leopard was that many of the applications stopped working (including Apples own applications). Even some hardware like the older Airport stopped working correctly. You weren’t given a choice in the upgrade. You had to do a delete and install. And finally, the Apple apologists and fan-boys would never admit to any of these short-comings, forcing new users to try to come up with that on their own.
In all fairness, a lot of the blame of Leopard’s woes needed to be put on the Apple developers being shifted over to the iPhone development to get that out in time. The thinner resources showed in the slower support and development of both Mac OS X and the iPhone’s OS. Everything is working a lot better now, but you had to wait a bit. Lessons learned? I don’t know about that.
Still, it’s a lot better than Vista, but that’s not much of an excuse.