Aral Balkan

That's it, I've had it with Leopard. All the issues I've been having are driving me nuts. Leopard is just not stable enough for professional use. I almost feel like a Windows user again. (OK, not entirely, but I definitely don't feel like a Mac user anymore!)

So today, I bid adieu to Leopard and downgrade to Tiger.

I have to say that I am not looking forward to the hassle. Instead of being arrogant pricks and making fun of Vista, I wish Apple would provide a downgrade option like Vista has to make this easier.

Comments

• Here are my two big problems: 1. I cannot print from Leopard to my Epson Photo R260 through Airport Extreme. It works fine direct connect and works fine on my Tiger machines through Airport. A google shows there are many people having the problem and with other printer brands as well (Lexmark, Brother, HP, etc) apparently it's not all models but Staples gave ma an Epson R280 upgrade and that doesn't work either. 2. MS Word in my old MS Office X (with all patches applied) doesn't print at all. Even when I just do a Print Preview or print to Preview I get a blank page. The same is true printing to Acrobat 6.0 and Acrobat 8.0. There may be a fix to this but I'm out of time to explore for one. I'm going to downgrade too (thank heaven I only upgraded one of my family's five machines) and upgrade later after Apple has fixed more problems. BTW I even dragged my laptop (Powerbook G4 1.3 GHz) and printer to the Genius Bar and they confirmed my problem. I still love Apple. I've been using them since Lisa for personal use and PCs since early DOS for work. PCs have never been competitive with Macs but Apple jumped the gun with this one.

  by billp on 2008-01-11 16:47:15

• Sadly my girl did the same thing. Leopard sux bigtime. Better wait till the first upgrade to install again. :(

  by Rackdoll on 2007-12-17 09:34:54

• Folks, I'm looking at the move from Leopard -> Tiger option too, which is how I found this site. Leopard has some fancy new features which would be fine if I were 13 and wanted to use special bells and whistles in AIM for doing real "cool stuff maaaan" with some mates. Trouble is I'm not, and I don't. Leopard is a disaster as far as I'm concerned. Loads of things don't work, many very useful features have disappeared - such as the drawer in iCal, the non-optional removal of which is an act of pure stupidity and arrogance. Tiger on a Mac-Pro was my first introduction to the Apple world (since the Apple-II anyway), and when it finally gives out, I shall not get another one. The way Apple likes to do business, with half-baked upgrades and a "We know best what you want, you stupid user" approach, is not for me. Now Linux looks more and more attractive by the day...

  by Ian on 2007-12-19 14:52:46

• I have yesterday just downgraded to Tiger from Leopard on my MacBook. I realised the only thing I liked about Leopard was Time Machine (for wireless backups to my home mac/server) and the new finder - that's it! I love the way Tiger is soooo stable, it boots from cold in under 30 seconds, the 2D dock is just far better looking, it works perfectly with airport extreme base stations (namley automounting drives attached to it) its cleaner and simplier to use. As Steve Jobs said at one point about Tiger "We created a beautiful seamless version of OS X" and "Use a computer, that just works". For backups i will use Retrospect or SuperDuper, the new finder I will live without with. Leopard IS better than XP and Vista, but its NOT better than Tiger.... Tiger is the best operating system Apple has produced to date Period.

  by Stuart Denton on 2008-03-13 13:07:01

• But it's only $129 !!! (sorry couldn't resist)

  by FlashBookMarks on 2007-12-15 12:36:20

• Hey Aral, Sad to hear you're downgrading. Had a hard time getting Leopard to run smoothly, but since I got that far I had no more troubles at all. Let's hope Apple is working on these issues to bring Leopard back to the level, which we knew in Tiger. Good luck downgrading.

  by Ronny on 2007-12-15 12:55:27

• I've not had many problems with Leopard. I did a fresh install and manually migrated over my documents, and it's more or less been ok. I guess you must be very unlucky, Aral :(

  by James Urquhart on 2007-12-15 13:11:47

• I do not have ANY problems with leopard (been on it for 3 wks). Since the install (witch took less than 1 hr) to now. The only minor problem that i had was Spotlight, witch apparently reactivated and caused trouble due to misconfiguration (Finder quitted after closing QL, everything quitted after the last window closed, etc), but after being configured correctly everything was fine.

  by Henri on 2007-12-15 13:49:02

• No he's not unlucky, I'm having tons of problems too. Unlike Aral I don't have the time right now to take a day out and setup my machine from scratch - even though it would be the wise thing to do. My MBP won't shutdown after I wake it from being asleep, I have to do a hard reset every time. @ Jason: you mention Coldfusion, my Coldfusion install ceased to work after the Leopard upgrade and I have not yet been able to get it up and running again (despite the hack posted on several blogs)... Needless to say it was running very smoothly under Tiger. Pants. PS: Aral, my Vista upgrade had no downgrade option... :-/

  by Stefan on 2007-12-15 13:46:39

• I think you have been just really unlucky Aral, neither of my Macs have given me any problems. (Or maybe expecting too much?). And as you probably noticed at Ralphs PV3D workshop most of the Mac users were all on Leopard, even Ralphy. Sure he whinged a couple of times about it, but for no reason as the system just worked. It never froze, nor crashed. And if any Notebook there was to start sweating it was probably going to be my poor little Powerbook. A few of the Freelancers we use at SQC have Macs/Leopard and they seem to get along with it. Better luck with Tiger, mate.

  by George on 2007-12-15 14:57:20

• Hey Aral, I am very disappointed that you are having such problems. But I am also very disappointed to hear you spreading such FUD about a company you have always supported. Its not like you to look at the bigger picture and see that a very small percentage of users are having problems, but you speak as though everyone who upgraded to leopard is unhappy. Which is so not the case. Leopard has been a wonderful upgrade for me. I love the features and increased speed I enjoy with the OS. I am personally responsible for 5 macs running leopard and offers support to a large community of family and friends and none of them have had any of the issues you have. I understand that you are not alone in your frustrations and that many other people are having problems as well. I am certainly not trying to diminish the problems you have, it sounds like your computer has been nothing short of unusable. Hell go grab a new Dell with Vista. I bet it wouldn't take long to be wishing for the predictable instability of Leopard :) I am glad you have tiger to go back to. Leopard offers too much for me to ever be able to go back. But like I said, my computer is stable.

  by Simeon on 2007-12-15 16:55:24

• There! You said it! Vista has actually an advantage over Leopard!! The next step you will go downgrade to Vista (which is actually an upgrade to your current situation :) )!

  by sascha/hdrs on 2007-12-15 18:42:36

• Aral, try using Vista to work. It'll make you *love* OSX -- whichever bugged version Apple wants to push. And keep in mind I'm a windows zealot.

  by Zeh on 2007-12-15 21:45:27

• It seems to me that most of the problems with a Leopard upgrade are because of the presence of certain 3rd party software or customizations made by the user prior to upgrading (as well as your typical early adopter issues any OS release encounters). For me, the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard went perfectly on my ibook g4. However, even with the RAM maxed out, I'm going back to Tiger simply because of the weight of Leopard. It was designed with dual core processers in mind, after all. My poor little g4 simply can't keep up and I can't put any more memory in the system. Aside from the performance, I thought Leopard was very nice. Perhaps some of the 3rd party software vendors will catch up in the coming months. Bottom line is you've got to do what's best for your own needs. If Leopard doesn't suit them, stick with Tiger. It doesn't mean Leopard's bad. It just doesn't suit your needs.

  by Chris on 2008-02-29 18:00:22

• I understand your feelings towards Vista. I'm an avid Windows user (hey, I can make it purrr, if no one else can), but wouldn't touch Vista with a disjointed, robot operated, telescopic titanium barge pole with rubber tip. However, I don't like Macs, either ;-)

  by Lee McColl Sylvester on 2007-12-17 11:43:42

• is there any chance that you had some third party utilities/plugins/etc. installed that should be uninstalled(not yet compatible with Leopard) before the upgrade? when I forget about the fact that I need to do this, I get an unstable system 100% of the time. how to fix it?, remove anything not compatible with Leopard and reinstall anything you can get already updated to work with Leopard and that should do it. btw. I have my macBook running Leopard smoothly, still waiting to upgrade the iMac as I have too many plugins and stuff of all kind to be revised for updates before doing the move.

  by Freddy on 2007-12-18 00:00:25

• I have a mac book pro and went to leopard last week (clean install no upgrade) and I also run parallels with XP and VISTA and I have had no problems at all. I always have all three OS's running at the same time and I love it...

  by surfingcaliforniacoastline on 2007-12-18 20:13:13

• Aral - Apple posted a Macbook Pro Update today that fixes the keyboard problem. If you haven't already downgraded, be sure to check it out. http://www.macrumors.com/2007/12/18/apple-fixes-keyboard-freezing-on-macbook-and-macbook-pros/

  by John on 2007-12-19 02:35:48

• I haven't had any trouble with Vista. Might be time to switch back to a real OS.

  by Luke on 2007-12-19 22:21:49

• I understand where your coming from Aral. What I don't understand is some of the Mac users that don't want listen to users that are experiencing problems with there system that should work. I've been getting sick of hearing "try going back to Windows or all the viruses, etc", is the answer for everything, kind of like your attacking a particular user. Eh, I must say I've had nothing but trouble since the upgrade to 10.4.10. First my new bluetooth keyboard that worked flawlessly for almost six months started to drop it's connection then eventually Tiger 10.4.10-10.5.1 started to show that I had no bluetooth module installed. Other problems started to occur such as when I put my comp to sleep it would wake up automatically in twenty minutes. I too am going to try tiger again and hopefully things will work like they did before. Every OS has there issues (Macs now included in the bunch).

  by AgreeP on 2008-01-04 21:32:15

• Hi I've had awful trouble since installing Leopard. Unfortunately Neither of my machines I "upgraded" will accept either the tiger disk or original disks to downgrade. I'm F*****D. I no longer have the right to save any documents (even one I created 5 seconds ago) I've done all root reauthorisation and allowed myself to administer but to no avail.so I've given up. I ran out and bought one of the quad cores with Tiger on it to get out of the problem and relegated my retouching machine to emails. SO this F***up created a couple of grand in extra turnover to apple. I'm an old school (since Mac SE) mac guy, but s*** like this really makes me dislike a company I used to love.

  by boneym on 2008-02-03 23:35:47

• Was curious about the statistics on Leopard Keyboard Freezes. Don't think we can put too much stock in the ratios (site may be attracting people with the problem) but 10,000 users who have noticed something strange seems fairly significant. If we did look at the ratios Simeon, it appears to be 50% of mac users...not so small a percentage. http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/15/poll-macbook-keyboard-problems-anyone/

  by BE on 2007-12-22 08:24:22

• I'm not a graphic artist, I'm a musician. The main program I use for recording is Digidesign's Protools. In my studio, there is a Mac Pro tower which runs Tiger. Protools is blazing fast, and I can record as many tracks as I like with a ton of effects and software synths...no problem. It's especially good if you have a Control24 or a TDM system. But, I was going to buy an imac for my home studio - just to make scratch recordings to take to the larger studio. The new iMac, though quite lovely and very desirable, comes preloaded with Leopard. If the salesperson hadn't asked me what I planned to use this for...then checked the Digidesign website right in the store (great customer service, btw)... I would have brought home a $2500 system that was worthless for my needs. I don't care about email and widgets if I can't record tracks, plain and simple. The salesperson said I could downgrade to Tiger to retain functionality. Given that I only wanted the new iMac to take advantage of it's speed, I could live with the downgrade. So now, I have retrieved my Tiger cd (thankfully). Now I'm just wondering if I can even downgrade once I finally get a new iMac? Judging from what I've been reading in user forums, it's not so easy to do. But is it complicated if I have a cd? I don't know how Apple communicates their changes to other software companies like Digidesign...but I know that every time there's an upgrade or new release, ever musician, producer and studio owner dreads having to go through another set of manuals and the possible loss of functionality...especially if they have hundreds of $$ of plugins, software synths and the like. If you just want to use better looking email...then Leopard may be great...but if you really want to create, this type of thing is a real letdown. Btw, I make my money using PC's. I make my life using Macs. I go both ways. And I like it like that :)

  by Vitamin A on 2008-01-07 21:14:23

• Leopard is wrong, They never told me I was signing up for beta testing. Thats what the past 3 months has been. I reckon a year from now maybe it will be the best thing since sliced bread, but till then its only a total head-fuck. Apple won't admit there is a universal problem ever, about anything, just advise a clean install then archive install, safe boot, re-set p ram.... like no shit I have done alot of those already and am looking for a better solution I don't have enough days in the week for it.I bought an Applecare protection plan for one reason alone, not for Apple's stella customer service or support, what a joke... one reason because I am pretty much guaranteed that this fucking machine is gonna take me to hell in a handbag. Fuck You Apple!, I am never buying this crap again.

  by Lukey112 on 2008-01-08 10:22:21

• Hi Vitamin A, It's cool that the Apple salesperson went that extra step. They're not always top notch. I had one sell me a copy of Final Cut Express saying that it would work "with any camera that works with iMovie" when he really should have said "It only works with DV cameras". I should really have taken it back but it was in Chicago and I only had a day to sightsee and I chose to take photos of the city instead. (Still have the useless app here, if anyone wants it!) :) I don't see why downgrading a new system should be a hassle. Please someone chime in if I'm wrong but surely Apple doesn't cripple new hardware so it doesn't run older versions of its operating system, right? It should just be a case of a clean install of Tiger. At least I hope so. Perhaps someone who has done this can share their experiences?

  by Aral on 2008-01-08 09:54:03

• @Luke: Vista a real OS? LOL, that's a good one! :)

  by Aral on 2007-12-24 13:22:10

• I'm in the process of downgrading a machine as I type and idea that "luck" has anything to do with this is absurd. And even if you haven't had any problems, I've had four days worth on the install alone, you're still enduring the mess over of the UI. Leopard is the worst OS release in Apple's history. It's fairly obvious that the talent they have has been moved to the more lucrative iPod/iTunes franchise and Leopard is the result of poor design and even worse quality control. I'm sure a decision was made at some point in Leopard testing to concentrate on the hardware they currently sell rather than upgrade scenarios to at least avoid returns. And that is why I will wait until I buy a new machine before attempting to use it again.

  by The Almighty on 2008-01-10 19:52:32

• I too am seriously considering the UPGRADE to Tiger, which is also how I found this site. From a graphic designers standpoint, switching to Leopard has been a nightmare. A number of Adobe products, which Adobe claimed were compatible, will simply not work. I've spent hours upon hours searching forums and websites for answers and have come up with nothing. All Adobe can say is to update their software and it should work, but the updates won't work! Also, we use multiple large Canon large format printers and the drivers will not work. Fortunately, I only upgraded two of our six Macs to Leopard. I think Apple should just be more forthcoming with information in regards to updates. Everything is so hush, hush until after the update has been released. They do the same thing with the iPhone. Why can't they let us know which issues are a priority and are being worked on. That way for those of us considering a downgrade, we can be informed so that we don't switch back and a day later the update is released. Don't get me wrong, I love OS X and would never consider switching to Windows, but I'm definitely frustrated. Nate

  by Nate on 2007-12-28 00:32:24

• hey Aral, enjoy your blog. Just out of curiosity, what problems have been having, beyond the keyboard freezing? I ask only because I was a die-hard Windows user for 15 years up until getting a MacBook Pro a few months back. I scoffed at Macs, but noticed, as you did in another post, the growing sea of macs in the audience at developer conferences. And having made the switch, I am every day dumbfounded by the sheer brilliance of Apple design, usability, engineering. I've done quite a bit of work with the MB too (Eclipse, iMovie, iDVD, ColdFusion dev server, and many others) and have had no problems. I'm still mystified by the point of a single-button track-pad and having to eject thumbdrives. But otherwise I'm startled to hear anyone say anything bad about Leopard...

  by Jason on 2007-12-15 12:15:56

• Thanks for posting about all issues, I have not yet upgraded to Leopard (now thinking I wasted money buying the installer DVD which is not going to be used for long time).. -abdul

  by Abdul Qabiz on 2007-12-15 18:00:26

• Hi Simeon, I'm not spreading FUD but reporting on my own experience (and linking to other people's experiences in my previous posts). Leopard is hit or miss. Some people have no issues whatsoever whereas others, like me, have found their experience to be so unsatisfactory as to warrant a downgrade. Going back to Tiger feels like a breath of fresh air after my experience with Leopard. @Sascha: LOL, pigs would not only have to fly but do aerial acrobatics before I'd use Vista as my primary operating system :) No offense but Tiger is the closest we have to operating system nirvana at the moment.

  by Aral on 2007-12-15 20:27:51

• Aral, just wondering ... did you do a clean install of Leopard or an upgrade of it on Tiger? Because from experience I would say that such problems usually arise from upgrading instead of a clean install. That counts for Windows too and the makers can tell me what they want about that upgrading is 'safe'! There are always issues to consider when doing an upgrade. Therefore I always decide to do a clean install when installing a new OS.

  by sascha/hdrs on 2007-12-16 04:43:23

• PS: And with clean install I mean: Format harddisk and start from the beginning.

  by sascha/hdrs on 2007-12-16 04:44:19

• I bought a new MacBook Pro yesterday at the Apple store. Leopard was super fun for a few hours. Then I installed some software to configure a universal TV remote that I bought yesterday. Suddenly, I lost the ability to copy and paste and drag and drop. Very difficult to work without those. Mucked around with repairing File Permissions but that hung. Currently re-installing Leopard. Hrmph.

  by Tim Scollick on 2007-12-16 18:50:20

• I'm also downgrading to Tiger from Leopard, and I wonder how many others are like me. My problems are a basic lack of stability. I'm seeing the beach ball just too much. I start Safari. I see the beach ball. I resume my Macbook from sleep. I see the beach ball. I'm using 10.5.2, so Apple should have fixed the major issues by now. My other annoyance with Leopard is the speed at which it boots. It's about twice as long as Tiger, which was really sprightly in comparison. I don't sleep my computers if I can help it but boot afresh, so this is a serious annoyance. I agree that, essentially, Leopard is just too green for serious use. Tiger has been through 11 service packs so far, with a 12th rumoured to be on the way, and is pretty damned good. The only thing I'll genuinely miss is the new Finder from Leopard. The only issue is see is that some software demands Leopard or better, which is one reason why I upgraded in the first place. But this policy seems limited to various bits and pieces of shareware right now. We've reached a strange impasse right now with operating systems, where the three main contenders -- Windows Vista, OS X Leopard and Linux -- have various quite serious flaws. The only way to avoid these flaws is to revert to previous versions, and unlike previously, the previous versions don't involve any significant loss of functionality.

  by John on 2008-03-10 18:16:37

• I love you, Aral, for expressing exactly how I feel about Leopard! I know I'm relatively late to the game here, but I'm a dedicated Mac user, and the tech gurus at my school just recently upgraded some of us from Tiger to Leopard. Since then, I've had nothing but trouble with my much-beloved PowerBook G4. Programs crash. I've lost my ability to use Adobe Photoshop Elements, as well as access to iLife (the first can be blamed on Adobe, but the 2nd?). I've discovered that Leopard doesn't like Eudora mail alerts that use the name "Eudora" in the title, causing my mail system to crash (now fixed). I've had frequent crashes with Dreamweaver as well. How weird is this going to get? I love my computer. I can't say I'm a pro, but once these strange things started going "bump," I started checking out online chats and reference sites. When there's an entire site devoted to software incompatabilities with Leopard (see http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/compat.html), it makes you wonder. Now the tech folks want to downgrade me to Tiger. They don't know what might happen to my iTunes files (some burned, but a lot downloaded). I love my Mac. I have always defended it. But it's like I just found out my husband of 25 years has cheated on me. I am a sad chick.

  by Jen Mooney on 2008-07-11 01:34:17

• I have the latest Macbook Pro(Dec 07)(3rd Replacement) and Leopard does not even like that. Just does not dig WPA, wont get along with logic express or Pro Tools and today I discover my Optical DVD drive is faulty when I try and watch a DVD(distortions or no picture at all). I mean what an insult 3 DOA machines in a row for the $3,500AUD price tag. I have to settle for a repair over replacement this time because I cannot go another 3 weeks without a machine while waiting for a replacement. Not that getting a replacement was ever meant to be easy. So don't any of you feel bad because Leopard will not work on your older machines, because it's no better for new ones. I miss Tiger like sleep, but since my new machine is Leopard native those days are history.

  by Lukey112 on 2008-01-13 08:01:53

• I love MACS and everything about them. But I have been greatly disappointed by Leopard - it has actually come as a shock to me that Apple has put out an OS this unstable. All my CS3 applications crash on me on a regular basis. My colleagues on the other hand have had few or no problems! I came across this blog post researching downgrading to Tiger. I hope Apple does something real soon.

  by DreamzMe on 2008-01-18 19:28:23

• I lost the ability to copy and paste and drag and drop. Very difficult to work without those. Mucked around with repairing File Permissions but that hung. Can someone help me ? Thanks

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