Dear Steve, it doesn’t ‘just work’ anymore!

Art said:

I have to agree with Mr. Reeee…

He and I must have gone to the same school of “take the time to do it right.”

I suspect many of the problems are due to installs over old OSes and running OS hacks. We saw one client tweak the permissions all over his hard drive so much that upgrading was the kiss of death for his stability. Others just apply the smaller delta updates and never run maintenance apps.

We have 4 brand new iMacs and run them hard, every day. Leopard, past 10.5.2, has been very solid on all machines.

This is industrial accounting apps, graphics, MS Office, all the usual Apple apps, and more.

The one blemish, and it’s a big one, has been MobileMe. We are being very cautious and backing things up often.

I hope these reports represent the vocal minority. I do agree that Apple needs to focus more on quality for v1.0 products. I especially hope that crashes with the latest gen iPhone aren’t going to tarnish a hard won reputation for Apple!

I"m not saying that because we don’t have issues they don’t exist. But I would follow Mr. Reeee’s prescription for Mac health and at least alleviate factors that are known to cause trouble.

pissed off pete said:

I have 3 Macs, 3 iPod, 2 iPhones, and Apple’s .Mac/MobileMe, and I can attest that absolutely nothing works right. Nothing. My iMacs crash repeatedly, sometimes my MacBook doesn’t even boot up, the iPod touch crashes regularly, sometimes even when it isn’t being used. Don’t get me started on the iPhone. I bought a first gen iPhone last year and had to replace it twice to get one that actually worked. It worked OK until iPhone 2.0 software came out last month. We bought a second iPhone and regret it entirely. Neither phone has ever worked at the same time as the other. Apps crash all the time, sometimes locking up the iPhone so bad that it won’t boot and can’t even be used as a cell phone. That mess requires a restore just to get the phone to work.

It just works? Sure. When. With all this trouble I might as well own Windows products.

bob atkinson said:

huh. I have about 5 ipods, an iphone, apple wireless, 6 macs around the house, I use mobileme and work with macs all day long.. what the hell are you talking about?

It just works for everyone in my extended family and among my friends… I saw this and thought… classic americana.. build it up, hype it and then slam it down…

way to go…

Jarod said:

I couldn’t agree more with this article. As ACN, it’s almost embarrassing to have to tell clients that no, Leopard Server is not stable and won’t always work as advertised. Apple has got to slow down. This ship first, fix later policy is bullshit and will blow up in Apple’s face if they’re not careful. We don’t need the world to convert overnight!

And yes, if you’re doing nothing on your machine, then Leopard is very stable. If you’re actually *working* in an enterprise environment, you’ll very quickly see how it’s *NOT* simply working!

Mr. Reeee said:

Sheesh, Leopard isn’t as bad as all that.

Yes, Leopard is complex. Think of everything it can do, even compared to Tiger. It can be a little finnicky, but I’d hardly call the up the ghost of System 7 or even OS 9! Wait for a few more System Updates, then we’ll talk about it…

This issue is what Snow Leopard will be all about.

Most Leopard problems boil down to a few things. The MAJOR reason for Leopard instability… which is too strong a word, I prefer finnickyness… starts in the way you install it. SECOND is how to deal with System Updates.

For a full OS version upgrade (ie: 10.4 to 10.5) it’s important to backup, wipe your hard drive and do a clean system install. Yes, you “can” just upgrade your existing OS, but with that, you’re asking for trouble. Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

To install incremental OS Updates (10.5.3, 10.5.4, etc.) it’s important to run Cocktail or Onyx, etc., before updating. I take the extra time to run Disk Warrior, too. It’s very important to download the COMBO Updater. It applies all the incremental updates from previous updates, which tends to clean things up and makes for a more stable installation.

I run Cocktail even before installing Security Updates.

Yes, it takes a bit more time using this method, but it’s worth the extra effort. Any problems I have tend to be on the Application side, NOT Mac OS X.

Check out http://www.macfixit.com for their take on it.

zahadum said:

yep, the QC at apple is just appalling these days!

it feels like the dark days again ... circa System 7.5

one of the main problems is that the design process itself is flawed ...

there is no use of UML (or even SDL) to enforce/verify the correctness of the code ... Unit testing & design-for-test contracts are cute but they are like closing the barn door after the horses have already bolted.

instead, there is just the same lazy-ass statistical ‘coverage’ approach that is used to rationalize the “good enough” school of design.

it is time for apple to hold people accountable (ie fire large swaths of incompetents) and to start using state-of-the-art design tools & methodologies.

Art Vandelay said:

Try OpenSolaris. Rock solid UNIX just like OS X but without the bloat. It is small and stable. Reminds me of how much fun I used to have with BeOS before the company ran itself into the ground. Sun did a great job with OpenSolaris and I use it as an adjunct to my Macintosh system.

Partners in Grime said:

Hi AdamC

I’m a pretty heavy Apple user. I own a PowerBook, 33 iBooks, 4 iMacs (the 24-inch aluminum one rocks with a second display), an eMac, a Mac mini, plus several iPods.