Ha! Go Derik!

If he works for PC Magazine, why isn't he using Vista? No operating system is perfect right out of the box, so he should just wait for some more updates and stop whining.

Don't go singing Leopard's praises too loudly, Derik. Vista certainly isn't great, but Leopard is equally not great - it's the single most buggy and premature release Apple have ever made. Definitely avoid -- for now

I love how he's comparing crash issues of 10.5.0 to 10.4.10.

Is the magazine/journalism industry in that bad of shape that they hired this guy?

I'm not a sophisticated system administrator like Oliver so I haven't experienced any Leopard crashes. My Macs work better than ever since upgrading to 10.5.

You lose a lot of credibility when you write grade school nicknames like Leoptard, Microshaft, etc. For anyone who's tempted. No, it is not witty or clever. All it does is make you look like you have little actual argument on your side that you have to resort to recess style name calling.

Retrospect has been a disaster to everyone I know who has used it. I have dealt with a half dozen different installations, from my own, up through ISPs with dedicated staffs, and I have yet to meet someone who can reliably restore from a Retrospect backup.

I have used Time Machine over a network though I'm still working out some kinks. It seems to use a different method when backing up locally and remotely so I seem unable to run the first backup locally and then incrementals remotely. Since the first backup can take on the order of 24 hours over the network, I may need to hardwire the computers for that part.

You lose a lot of credibility when you write grade school nicknames like Leoptard, Microshaft, etc. For anyone who's tempted. No, it is not witty or clever. All it does is make you look like you have little actual argument on your side that you have to resort to recess style name calling.

Retrospect has been a disaster to everyone I know who has used it. I have dealt with a half dozen different installations, from my own, up through ISPs with dedicated staffs, and I have yet to meet someone who can reliably restore from a Retrospect backup.

I have used Time Machine over a network though I'm still working out some kinks. It seems to use a different method when backing up locally and remotely so I seem unable to run the first backup locally and then incrementals remotely. Since the first backup can take on the order of 24 hours over the network, I may need to hardwire the computers for that part.

You`re so right man! I downgraded to Tiger. Some people are saying "Yea it is the same with all OSXs at the beginning." Well, I don`t remember same thing with Tiger! Leopard = many many problems, Tiger rules!

Be carefull.. by defending Leopard you're just going to be labeled a Fanboy..

I pre-ordered it - installed it, and somehow - its worked for me. Not a single crash. Not a single incompatibility issue.

And I guess I'm the only guy that LIKES the new dock! Yes, the black triangles were easier to see than the little blue circles but just like I could find tools to change the black triangles to more subtle ones, I can find tools to make the blue dots stand out more. If I wanted. But I don't - cause I like it.

Good job dude.

People like this Oliver moron are just trying to pull readers with unorthodox points of view, even though their arguments are based on no technical or even user experience. Reading his article it's so obvious that he's merely gathered a bunch of hollow arguments from the web, and probably never even touched a mac in his life.

This apple bashing trend among psuedo technical journalists pisses me off. Not because I'm in love with mac, but because they rely only on their rethoric and corner everyone who disagrees as a fanboy.

First it was the iPhone, now Leopard. Yes there are some flaws, but they are both still superiour compared to the competition.

There are aspects of Leopard I definitely don't care for (the 3D dock was the first thing to go) but it has yet to crash or do anything else that makes me yearn for Tiger. And as for Time Machine, it is by far the easiest approach to backups I've ever seen.

Vista? Wouldn't install it on my Windows laptop if you paid me to.

"I love how he's comparing crash issues of 10.5.0 to 10.4.10."

Like when we compared Vista with XP SP3?

We, as people into technology CAN'T make impartial judgments. If he doesn't like OS X, fine, go to Windows.

If you like OS X, fine, use it.

Why are you doing this? Do we have to prove that OS X is good every time someone says it isn't? Why? Apple is not paying me to use there computers.

i have tiger on my imac and leopard on my macbook. i dont use time machine but i have expereience the same stability on both machines-my macbook wireless works fine and the keyboard issue has only popped up once.

Wonder how much PC Mag paid this guy to write that?
Been using 10.5 for weeks and it hasn't crashed once.

Try running Vista on 512MB of RAM Oliver.

Try getting a Windows PC to see the Mac - Takes a genius to get that done - my Mac (with all versions of OS X including Leopard) sees my Win box every time and access the files without a hitch.

And I'll still take the 3 or 4 known viruses for the Mac to the 170,000 + for the PC crowd.

I haven't run a virus checker on my Mac in over 8 years! (if you notice the virus checkers for Mac actually ask us to run them to help our PC friends eliminate viruses... I say let them eat their clock cycles!

Nicely written. Im in total agreement. I too loved the part when he said Retrospect was easy. I have used the software for years and it's full of problems. I think what he really meant to say was he is using Retrospect and it's much easer to use then some of the Windows backup software on the market. Time Machine would be much simpler to understand then some one trying to figure out Retrospect...

All those comparing Leopard's teething pains to Tiger are forgetting all the major issues with Tiger that affected a small percentage of the base just like the Leopard issues have. I currently still have a G4 on 10.3.9, becuse I never got around to upgrading to Tiger because of issues with Mail.app and FireWire in the early releases.

I haven't had a single Leopard crash that I couldn't trace back to bad hardware, or bad third party drivers. My Mac Pro had a bad video card that Leopard seemed to stress a lot more than Tiger did and caused crashes, but after Apple replaced the video card it's been solid. And I have an m-audio mobilepre USB that doesn't have Leopard drivers yet. The Tiger ones work, but changing the sample rate panics the computer. I can't really blame Apple because an old driver for a third party product can cause problems.

Leopard isn't perfect, but neither was Tiger, and neither is Vista, or XP, or Win2k, or DOS.

I can't even imagine what he's done to his machine to make it act like he's described! And I'm truly empathetic to the Mac users who have had (and still have) issues with the latest release of OS X, but I tried Vista when it came out, which is why I bought a Mac in the first place, and I bought Leopard as soon as I could (pre-ordered, but didn't receive it until about a week later) and I simply have not had any major problems! De Nada! Minor problems? The only one was Time Machine initially caused my backup drive to grow exponentially - but someone in the Apple Discussion Forum gave me a suggestion that worked - don't back up the VMWare Virtual Machines Folder. Don't ask why, I don't know, but TM works like a charm as does Leopard as a whole. This has been the smoothest most enjoyable upgrade I've experienced in over a decade!!!

"I can't even imagine what he's done to his machine to make it act like he's described!"

He hasn't done a thing, he is flat out lying to get hits, simple as that.

I guess Oliver was not around for
10.0, 10.1.0, 10.2.0, 10.3.0. & 10.4.0.
Somebody tell me they are still using a x.0 or x.1 system & enjoying it.

It is not even the operating system usually at fault. It the drivers & conflicts with all of the third party software & hardware waiting to catch up.

That is why it is best & easiest to wait for .3 to .5 to update. Apple & Third party developers will finally have it all together.

Every major OS X release has been dragged out in the street & beatin to death. That is what makes the .5 to .9 versions so perfect & so sweet.

I use Retrospect in my studio, backing up 10 Mac's every night.

Been using it for over 10 years now in various incarnations.

My views on using it?

Awful... just, just awful... Words cannot describe how utterly terrible the experience is. Anyone who says the experience is good, either has never used it or lying.

I'm upgrading my Macs to Leopard when I have time in Jan 08 and I cannot wait for Time Machine. It's THE reason to purchase Leopard.

I guess Oliver wasn't around for System 7.0 . Nothing like an OS eating all of your files.

Hell, once I clean installed Leopard and Used the built in utility to copy back my settings and data, Leopard has been rock solid. No more stinking mail lockups. No more Safari Memory leak bogging my system down. Yeah, some of the UI improvements were jarring, but at least Apple only changed the look, not the location of the commands. Vista on the otherhand moved many commands to very difficult to find locations, without any real effort to help XP users to find the new way of doing things.

Vista still needs tons of help, Leopard just needs some slight tweaking.

Tasha

I don't often step into arguments like this, but it's pretty obvious here that all Mac users do when somebody attacks their favourite operating system is bash the person who said it. I've had quite enough, personally. Please note that whichever machine I use on a daily basis is beside the point. We're here to talk about your rebuttal, which deliberately sidesteps a few points the original author is trying to make with his article.

"It's one sentence. Think about that, and then let's continue"
There were 6 sentences in that quoted section.
Oh, and you misspelled 'user' once. Find that, and then continue.

"It's all about Oliver. The only use case that matters is him."
Well, then, next time you have a problem with anything at all in life, don't ask others for help on it. Chances are, everybody's copy of life is working better than yours, and they're not having any problems with it, thank you very much. Or, why do you even post on this website then? You're just an end user - therefore, by your logic, your opinion doesn't matter. Neither does anyone else's, then - including you, me, and Rist.

"Dude. That dialog has been there since like 10.1. Get with the program."
As (I hope) you can see here, deliberately sidestepping the point, which was that it appeared way too often for his comfort. 'Same forum traffic existed' with Tiger, Panther etc? So you're saying that OS X has been crashing since time began? Couldn't you at least say something about Leopard crashing, or, as you like to put it, simply asking the user to reboot? Ah, but you see, you can't! because you're not the only user case that matters!

"Someone from your magazine backs you up? Shocking. (And please note the “probably”. This is strawman 1.) Next."
Hey wait a minute now, Oliver's bringing someone else's opinion into the argument! but I just noted that the only opinion that matters for Oliver is his opinion... ah well, I'll just go on really quickly, and nobody will ever notice. Next.
Note to self: when someone comments on this point, all I'll just say is that Oliver should have quoted several forum users' posts on how Leopard sucks. Because for whatever reason I still haven't figured out yet, I just don't trust the crap that spews from his keyboard.

"Yeah, window transparency was a big deal for Mac OS X… when it was released in 2001. Sense a recurring theme? Sigh. Next."
The recurring theme seems to be that most of the problems, including but not limited to window transparency, have been in OS X from the start. Nobody cares if Tiger or Panther can make windows transparent - but if it's used assiduously, cheapening my menu bar (you can't even turn it off!) and making me squint twice when working with the UI, of course it's a problem. The point you're sidestepping here is that OS X uses transparency beyond the realms of good taste. Don't ask me, I didn't make that point - anyone who read the article and actually thought about it would see the argument though.

"but Apple’s tried to make the OS look great and for the most part, they have insight into that."
If they had insight into that, how is it that after months and months of being in development, nobody mentioned that the new dock was slightly harder to use than the old dock within Apple? That this may not have been the case doesn't matter - what we see is still the same hard to use dock. A UI expert, which I'm sure Apple has plenty of (or is it 'had'?) should have caught that - that's what he's saying. Notice, he's not 'chocking' it up to a programmer's pet project - he even said 'could'. Please, read the article.

And then there's a lot of fighting between you two next, which I won't go into, because I don't see a problem with your later arguments. Plus, I remember in Hannibal's (arstechnica.com) article that the Time Machine does make incremental backups.

The author of this article seems articulate enough to express his opinion in a calm, intelligent manner, unlike some Mac fans:
http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/2/1004390464/ShowThread.aspx
However, what seems to be intelligent, witty rebuttal actually is avoiding the point. It's pretty clear, but I'll sum it up again: Oliver Rist's opinion doesn't matter, it's only his experience, bla bla bla... what it fails to mention, then, is why on earth you would frequent this site if end user experiences weren't true... I give up. You know what, I'm interested in just how many people read my comment in its entirety - that then will be your homework. Don't avoid it!

I'm quite disappointed with the Mac community, frankly. At first everybody was bashing Vista and singing Tiger's praises. Leopard came out: and when somebody bashes Leopard and sings Tiger's praises, you all jump on him. Clearly, anything made by Apple doesn't deserve a bashing. Right guys? Wake up. Leopard does have problems. It's the first release, after all. Case in point: why can't you turn transparency off for the menu bar? At least the Vista users are honest enough to admit their OS has problems.

I like the Dock's blue orbs better than the black triangles. A light means something is on. A triangle means?