[bousozoku]

Unfortunately, I've run into tremendous slowdowns compared to 10.4.10. 10.5.3, at best, runs about 2.5 times as slow as 10.4.10. At one time, things were running 4 - 5 times as slow with 10.5.0 and 10.5.2. This is the first time I've had a machine go slower on a newer release of Mac OS X.
There are a lot of little odd things happening, such as application icons disappearing when I click the Apple menu, but overall, it's just a lack of stability and speed. Oh, and a broken Java 5 and no availability of Java 6.
It seems to me that Apple need to re-assess their development process, security focus, and priorities before continuing to work on Snow Leopard or anything else. They've definitely lost their way.

[hayesk]

I agree completely on Back To My Mac. Simply put, it doesn't work. Maybe if Apple put some logging information to tell us why, it would help. But nothing in the Console - I just get Connection Failed every time.

[Jason Snell]

Jarmo said:

Had this article been released before snow leopard announcement, I'd raise my hat.
As it is... just typical example of kissing donkey.

Might want to read the first line of the article again... this piece was written about a month ago (and appeared in Macworld magazine this month). We posted it today online because it's germane to the discussion of Snow Leopard.

[macFanDave]

For me, Leopard has been by far the best version of OS X.
I tried Spaces, but when I found you don't get an independent Dock per space then I found it useless. (I've got dual monitors anyway so desktop space is not that critical a factor.)
Networking and printing work better than ever. I thought I was going to stick with SuperDuper! but I found Time Machine to be rather compelling.
Sorry I haven't written about this in the past 8 months, but happy users aren't generally motivated to shout it from the rooftops!

[pcharles]

I feel quite honored never to have had any of these problems. The main problem I have is with Access Control Lists popping up and preventing me from doing things like deleting or renaming a file. I do not know if this was a result of how I upgraded, or what, but it got so bad that I decided to perform a clean install. Not sure I get any other real problems since I performed a clean install.

While I like spotlight, I miss the way that tiger displayed results.

It would be nice if there was a simple way to automount SMB shares from my university network.

[Namdlog]

What I hate about Leopard (I am posting this again in the forlorn hope that a high-up Appleite is reading this and relays to his Godness) is that Apple is selling hardware - the NVidia FX4500 and 5600 carded MacPros and touting software (eg PyMol; it's still on the webpages) that touts the hardware stereo capabilities of MacOS/X - but Leopard ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY does not run this s/w in stereo. We have a number of the most expensive MACs that money can buy that we can not upgrade (er, is that the right word?) to Leopard because they don't do stereo properly.
Excuse this rant, but Leopard and its X11 system is NOT, even at 10.5.3, ready for prime time. Maybe a small pilot on some local station between the hours of 1am and 3am.
Thank you for listening.
Adrian

[Raymondo17]

I have to agree -- IMO, Leopard is the most unpolished OS release since the launch of OS X. I'm usually the guy telling my friends to upgrade, but I still can't recommend it. 10.5.3 fixed some of the frustrating problems, but it was a loooong time in coming. And still, weird stuff continues to occur. Stuff like "Fast" User Switching randomly logging you out completely so you have to start from scratch. Or how about file icons not showing up on the desktop? Goofy stuff like that which you can expect during the first rev, but eight months and three revs later, things should be pretty dialed. Come on Apple, put down the dang phone and focus on your core audience!

[Schneb]

A mixed bag of posts here. A mixed bag favors the article as being accurate. Apple did an injustice to their flagship OS by concentrating effort on a phone. I totally agree with Raymondo17, I too have had the disappearing desktop icons. Is Apple some teenager we have to yell at to get off the phone and feed the yowling cat?!

[enamic5]

Mostly I am quite happy with Leopard.
But the few little things that drive me crazy are:
Why was Search so much better in TIger? The Leopard Search results window is really bad. I cannot sort my search results by file size, or by Last Modified. I only get Name, Kind and Last Opened. Why can I not select other categories?
The other little thing I miss, was the ability to use my addressbook to connect to my Mobile Phone to send SMS messages via Bluetooth. Why was that feature removed? It was so useful.

[Rhywun]

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones - few to no problems after upgrading to Leopard. Sure there are some annoyances - the print dialog that won't go away by itself, the sometimes strange behavior of Finder - but nothing that even comes close to the OS recently put out by you-know-who (I used it for two straight, painful months). The one big problem I had was with Boot Camp's slightly altered procedure when installing that other OS. I skipped a step that wasn't required in Tiger and rendered my machine unbootable in any OS, until someone suggested attaching an older keyboard to it. But daily problems? Nothin' here. I don't use "Back to My Mac" (I don't know what it is, frankly). I do fear Apple's apparent lack of attention to the Mac in favor of certain hand-held devices, but since they all run OS X I have hope that improvements will be shared with the Mac too.
That said, I wouldn't pay more than $30 or so for "Snow Leopard", at least knowing what we know so far.

[AaronShep]

I think we're finally seeing the same thing we saw pre-OS X. People have so much system-modifying junk on their computers that there's no way they can preserve stability when updating the OS. Then they blame the OS for the instability.
I remember everyone saying that Mac OS 9 was so unstable, and that it crashed all the time. But mine was rock solid and almost never crashed -- because I kept everything off it that tinkered with the system unnecessarily.
MacWorld has been absolutely awful in constantly recommending risky freeware and shareware with no thought of the future effect on the system. The chickens have come home to roost.

[whitedog]

The problem with a lot of the comments here is that they reference the experience of individual users. It's hard for the reader to know whether the enumerated problems, or lack of problems, have to do with specific hardware and software configurations or whether the results truly are intrinsic to Leopard itself. The only way to get even a general idea of the veracity of particular issues is to spend enough time on Mac forums and blogs to see which ones come up most often.

To judge other people's experience by ours alone is generally unreliable. Just because I don't have this or that problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For instance, I don't use Spaces so I am certainly not qualified to critique the feature, much less contradict those who are having trouble with it. I can guess, however, by the number and frequency of complaints I read about Spaces that it is, indeed, not ready for prime time.

Apple is in a soup of their own devising. They drew off resources from Leopard development to expedite the iPhone and, as a result, missed their original target release date for OS X 10.5. Now we find out that Apple is putting major effort into a new version of OS X, Snow Leopard, while they are pushing a major iPhone update out the door, including hardware and software changes. At the same time, .Mac is getting a major facelift. In the meantime, OS X 10.5 still seems to be riddled with bugs after it's third update in five months.

It's hard to avoid the impression that Apple is stretched too thin, trying to do too much with too few qualified people. One is also left to wonder about their priorities. Since Apple dropped the word Computer from their name, the company has seemed to loose focus. New products are great and all, but not at the expense of quality control in their existing lineup.

As for complaining about the complainers, it's clear Apple wouldn't know what's wrong if we weren't speaking up. Next time I'm out and about I'll raise a frosty one to the squeaky wheels and say "keep up the good work!"

[demolition21]

I totally agree with this 100%!!

seriously.....does apple pay you for consumer research or something???

If they do, tell them this update should be 100% FREE

[jodamo]

Leopard is the first Mac OS that has disappointed me. It's clunky - Dashboard won't work; the Dock crashes; Mail quits. To me, it looks cheap, blah, and bland. Those folder icons! Maybe I can't find the preferences that turn on the eye candy. It's slow. Office 2008 was no speed demon on Tiger. With Leopard, I can go make a coffee. Oh, I am truly ticked off. Leopard feels like a Friday afternoon OS.
David
And, yes, I did a completely clean install - zeroed out the data on the drive and imported the accounts from an external drive. And I waited until 10.5.3.