OS X Leopard

Early in March I decided to give Leopard another try on my mini. There have been a few updates, namely the graphics update and 10.5.2, that were rumored to fix the issues I was having. After a couple of weeks with Leopard, I again removed it in favor of Tiger (10.4). Either there are problems with Leopard or OS X is the most finicky operating system I’ve ever used (people tell me to reinstall).

I just can’t get used to the look of Leopard, the darker gray with the even whiter menus is just too harsh. I had apps that would crash repeatedly at random times. Thunderbird would sometimes crash while checking mail and Firefox or iTerm would crash when the system was resumed.

Ok, so iTerm, Firefox and Thunderbird aren’t Apple apps, people writing the software should make sure it works with Leopard right? Well it wasn’t just third party apps that went haywire on me. iMovie 08 would start, but nothing would show up. The menu bar would be iMovie, the app was running, but there was no actual window to work in. I reinstalled iMovie and it worked just once. Loading it again resulted in the same issue.

I also found that I ran out of memory far faster in Leopard than in Tiger. There *is* a lot more to Leopard but the difference was too much for me to handle. In the end, I’ve concluded that Leopard is either not right for me or it isn’t a good fit on the generation of Mac mini that I own.

3 comments

  1. If you search the web, you will hear some of the same complaints about OS using more memory and apps failing. I wonder if it is like Vista. Clean install works fine but upgrade has nothing but problems.

  2. You it’s a good point but my understanding is that doing an archive and install is virtually the same thing. It’s like installing Linux on a system but keeping your home directory, all the apps are new but your settings remain. I didn’t want to take the time to blow wipe the drive clean and then reinstall everything, that’s a pain if you ask me.

  3. I still haven’t upgraded to Leopard. I don’t use most of those i-apps. Paying for virtual desktops that other operating systems have had for decades, along with a mirrored dock that I don’t like, seems like a waste of beer-making money. I suppose that I will upgrade sometime though, probably before my BootCamp beta become a Mission Impossible-esque ticking time bomb that borks my laptop.

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