Rist spends he rest of the article trying to illustrate that wildly overblown conceit.
Mainly, Rist seems upset that Apple is telling people to buy Macs instead of OS-limited PCs. How appallingly galling of Apple’s marketing department!
Supposedly Ollie’s Mac is crashing with Leopard even using the the same software he had under Tiger. Perhaps you should update your apps and haxies, Oliver?
Our Macs have crashed exactly zero times since we installed Leopard on the night of its release. But, of course, we know what we’re doing. We don’t try to install new OSes with things like interface hacks running all over the place. We repair permissions first. We disconnect external drives. You get the drift. Basically, we follow the directions. Some people don’t; perhaps so they can complain later. We’re also not trying to invent some nonsensical angle in an attempt to garner hits.
Anyone who tries to equate Mac OS X Leopard with Windows Vista either hasn’t used both or is a fool and/or a liar.
Rist spends interminable pages trying to invent issues that utterly fail to back up the ludicrous headline (“Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off”) that PC Mag has plastered on this obvious FUD festival. Simply look at the independent reviews in the related articles below to see that Rist is one very lonely voice in the wilderness; likely mumbling to himself while squirting into the wind with his deeply-discounted Zune.
In the end, Rist looks the fool and PC Magazine looks even worse for publishing it, but we all know from whence the bulk of the butter for their bread comes, now don’t we?
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Now, before you think that we think that Leopard is perfect, we want to say something about Stacks, which Rist actually grazed with one random sentence in his steaming manure pile. Mac OS X Leopard’s Stacks’ default curving fan is ugly and virtually useless. The optional grid view is better looking, but just as pointless. Of course, users of former versions of Mac OS X who are now on Leopard know that what we’re really bemoaning is the loss of hierarchical folders in the Dock. What a stupid backwards step Apple made here! Where users could simply drag their drives to the right side of the Dock and “Boom!” in previous Mac OS X versions, now they just get an ugly dead end. “Stacks. An ugly dead end.” Some slogan. So, Apple, what was the goal, to make the Dock much less useful? To force users to go through the new Finder to see the snazzy new Cover Flow view? Seriously, what’s the point?
Here’s hoping Apple fixes this (a third-party fix would be nice, but Apple should restore the lost functionality themselves) in a future Leopard update as soon as possible.
So, after one full month of living with and poring over all aspects of Leopard, our biggest complaint by far is the loss of hierarchical navigation from the Dock. That’s a world apart from Windows Vista sufferers’ myriad ongoing complaints a year after release.
My issue with Leopard is the lack of the rounded upper corners on the finder. God, I don’t know what I’m gonna do without those pixels!
On second thought, maybe it’s having extra white pixels that is the issue. Whatever–it makes the entire Leopard experience a downer. Woink (wink and oink combined).
Even worse than the article by Oliver Rist is the fact that others are now quoting his article in trying to make their stand that Leopard sucks. It’s up on slashdot. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has published his blog on ZDnet that is quite a hit piece itself, and Gearlog Radio bothers to repost it as well. Funny how everyone is quoting Rist’s article as though it were the final say.
Although it’s certainly not on the scale of Vista, I have to say, I’m disappointed that while Leopard does add some interesting new features, it also downgrades appearance and functionality in many areas… so it ends up being something of a trade-off, although on the whole it’s obviously a significant improvement. It would have been nice to get the good without the bad, but there’s always point releases and the next OS to fix some of the mistakes.
For example, whose bright idea was it to mess with the internet controls and actually make them MORE confusing and LESS powerful than in Tiger?
So to summarize, this guy’s an idiot, but he has some good points about flaws in leopard that shouldn’t be ignored just because his initial claim was ludicrous. This is a trend I see disturbingly often on MDN: The idea that because their conclusion is false (or doesn’t follow from the premises), that none of their reasons have merit and none of the points they make have any basis in reality.
I find Cover Flow pretty useless in the Finder.
The article is indeed a pile of steaming FUD but, as MDN says….
“Mac OS X Leopard’s Stacks’ default curving fan is ugly and virtually useless. The optional grid view is better looking, but just as pointless.”
I couldn’t agree more. Fix it Apple.
there are some weird things that happen with spaces; for example when i have an app like bbedit in one space and i open an attachment from mail that is a bbedit document it stays in the mail space but with bbedit in the upper left and i have to use the cmd-tab and cmd-shift-tab to get to bbedit.
CU is the best litmus test.
@ El Guapo. I’ve found Cover Flow useful when searching through albums. But I can’t work out why some sets of jpgs are crystal clear in this view, whereas other sets are pixelated to the point of uselessness.
I must say that on my laptop I had a nasty experience–slowing and slowing computing–until I fully wiped my hard drive, reinstalled Leopard, and reimported everything from my (Time Machine) backup.
The process was fairly painless, but it took the better part of 4 hours and previous to that my system was a mess.
On the good side, I haven’t had a single crash or much weird behavior at all since then, so at least it solved the problem!
I have had more problems with this release than any in Apple’s past, which is to say, “I had A problem” – The problem surfaced on one machine out of three and was relatively minor. So yes this is Apple’s worse release ever and it is far better than any of my best experience with a Microsoft OS
I love leopard, just as I loved Tiger!
FOR ONCE I think MDN is being negative about the wrong thing. I like stacks/grid app-launcher. Maybe not to navigate through layers of folders, but as a quick way to launch an app without taking up dock space is great. Otherwise, its more a temporary work flow feature that you figure out how to suit your needs over time, rather than a true navigation/search fucrtion. Thats the finder.
@ Jimbo…
True, it sucks.. but people hate to admit that they have made the wring choice. All of these Windows Zealots are grasping at anything they can to make themselves look less foolish. They seem to think that contrived pieces of fiction like the referenced article gives their sad cause some sort of merit.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much… the truth is out there and is finding more and more people every day
I am one of those users that is benefitting mostly from what I don’t see. Stacks? Bleh. Spaces? Haven’t cracked into it a all. I DO like iChat theatre and the funky iChat backgrounds. No major complaints.
I agree with El Guapo to a point. Nice to use for video folders and even some office files etc. but much easier to use column view. What would be great is having the right hand column display a vertical cover flow with quicklook available. Anyways, for those wanted to enhance QuickLook, here is a nice article with links to two files for better coverflow/quicklook viewing of folders and zip files. I’ve actually used both a fair bit today.
http://macapper.com/2007/11/30/tip-enhance-quick-look-with-plugins/
Definitely worth it for the Zip file alone. Works and looks great.
I find Spaces way more useful than I thought I would – it especially works well if you assign apps to stay in a particular space.
I never used that nested folder feature on Tiger, but I do like the stacks thing in Leopard, it could be better (be able to create a stack and add stuff to it directly instead of creating a folder and adding aliases to it) but other then that it’s a nice feature to hold all my developer tools in one stack and my media editing tools in another, stuff I don’t want to dig around the applications folder for but also don’t want taking up space on my dock when not in use.
I agree-stacks is pretty useless. I dislike that the ‘Downloads’ folder can’t be discarded too; and honestly, I’ve played with spaces a bit and found that it’s easier to work the way I did before (virtually every app has a ‘hide’ keyboard shortcut, and I use that when I leave an app for awhile. Poof! It’s gone and out of the way until I need it again via command-tab. With spaces there are too many extra steps involved to do basically the same thing), though I understand everyone has different methods. Time machine though, is brilliant. I love it. So easy to use, so pain free, I think it rocks. It was worth upgrading just for that in my opinion.
I have to disagree. Fresh instal of Leopard here on a new Aluminum iMac and this thing crashes every couple days. This is the worst update to OS X in the way of stability. Even if you haven’t had any problems, to go saying “we know what we are doing is BS” I’ve been using Mac since 84, used to work for Apple in Canada and I damn well know what I am doing. But, it still crashes.
It’s just like anything in the world. The more complicated it gets the more there is that can go wrong.
I’ll be switching back to Tiger tonight and dream of the day 10.5.3 is released. Should be all good then.
James,
I’ve long used “SpiritedAway” which automatically hides open apps after a period of time that you specify. You can choose to exclude any app you do not want to be hidden automatically. Keeps things nice and clean. It’s a tiny app and works perfectly in Leopard, too.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15844
There are alot of things I can complain about in Leopard, BUT who says cover flow is useless?
I haven’t been able to stop using it!!! It has speed up my work flow amazingly. I fly through the files, double click the folders, space bar to see it better like video. ITS AMAZING AND TIME SAVING
MDN
Some of us actually like the stacks feature! Especially in grid mode. I use it quite a bit.
Time machine is the best!
Then Spaces!
Parental Controls however is causing me some grief due to bugs. Its not enforcing the time limits and it also interferes with the other accounts not under Parental Controls and some other stuff.
Everything else is in Leopard is running great. Pretty stable but so far not as stable as tiger.
I stumbled on that article this morning. What a waste of electrons! I had to laugh, because the poor bastard sounded really quite desperate. Most of the nits he was picking were actually fixable either by looking through different preferences or with 3d party patches and add-ons. Some of the responses were ridiculous, too.
Windows users, whaddaya expect, eh? Some people just can’t BUY a clue!
I was all set to write some snappy retort, when I just decided not to waste my time!
I must agree, though, Leopard isn’t perfect.
Stacks are kinda dumb.
The Dock… at least Apple let us reskin it. THAT is a great move forward for Apple. It’s more important than the feature.
I don’t use the Dock much, so I don’t care that much.
I have trouble with the general darkness of Leopard. It feels kind of dark and dismal compared to the cheery brightness of Tiger. The text and icons on the Sidebar are too small, too dark and NOT adjustable. The way Tiger’s Sidebar scales up and down is brilliant.
The thing is, as with EVERY release of Mac OS X, Leopard is a work in progress. Things will change, refine and solidify over time. The next Leopard update will improve things. As developers release Leopard compatibility patches and new versions for Leopard things will improve further.
We certainly KNOW we won’t have to wait a YEAR or more for a Windows-esque Service Pack to fix things in Leopard.
Leopard has a different group and permission setup than Tiger, and the updater does not convert the Ti;ger setup to the Leopard setup. The result can be a lot of crashes. That’s the experience I had. The solution, until Apple comes out with a fix, is erase and install.
I think this accounts for most if not all of the problems.
“Our Macs have crashed exactly zero times since we installed Leopard on the night of its release. But, of course, we know what we’re doing.”
You’re sounding an awful lot like the local Windows IT guy (see: “Nick Burns”). Macs are supposed to be above having to “know what you’re doing” or risk hosing your machine. That’s half the reason for abandoning Windows.
How hard would it be for Apple to test some of the most popular “haxies” and other programs, and then put checks in the Leopard installer that will warn if the known-incompatible ones are installed, and offer to switch to “archive and install” mode (or just do it for you)?
I know that working around 3rd-party misbehavior is a very Microsoftian thing to do, but it might be worth it for at least the “80% case” of common issues.
P.S. Upgraded to Leopard last week and have had virtually no problems with it. And I for one kind of like the new visual appearance (though I will admit I have my Dock on the side). But yes, Stacks has some problems. Mainly that they look like a mess in the dock (a bunch of icons just pasted on top of each other)