Leopard vs Tiger? Is 10.5.1 more stable than 10.4.11

Hi osxnewbie1;

I think it is still a bit early to answer that question but I would not say that 10.5. is more stable the 10.4.10. I would say they appear about equal because I have had no problems with either of them. It is bit difficult to get better then no problems don't you think.

Allan

I haven't had ( knock on wood ) any issues with either Tiger or Leopard.

I do like Leopard and see it as a very good upgrade, but the "wow" wasn't all that.

I'm expriencing problems with Microsoft Office components suddently just quitting.

In my experience to date, 10.5 and the recently released 10.5.1 are far more buggy than Tiger ever was. I still use it from time to time (mostly for testing purposes) but 10.4.x will remain as my main, production OS until Apple resolves the numerous issues that remain (particularly Finder related bugs, mouse cursor hesitation/freezes etc...).

Don't get me wrong, Leopard has great potential but it requires a great deal of bug fixes before that potential can be fully realised.

Hi Patrick Ellis1;

Are you trying to do anything about your problems with Leopard?

I have Leopard on both of my Macs and I have not seen anything like what you are describing with Leopard.

Allan

I have not seen a freezing problem with either TIger or Leopard - have you run disk utility and verified your hard drive - a disk problem could explain your freezes

I find both Tiger and Leopard very stable - under leopard I have had a couple of unexplained program aborts (Apple mail and MS entourage occasionally just die for no known reason) but that is a very minor inconvenience

I am still exploring Leopard but like it and it seems more responsive on my G5 iMac

Bottom line I personally have found Leopard as reliable as Tiger - But I'm thinking that it is unlikely that Leopard will solve your freezing problem - I suspect it will follow you since it sound like either a hardware or corrupted software issue to me


Larry Nebel

Message was edited by: LarryHN

what can be done besides filing numerous bug reports?

My Leopard install was fresh on a newly formatted drive with no legacy apps, preferences etc... I have tried everything that I know of from using Mac OS X since the initial public beta.

The mouse cursor hesitation on the MacBook occurs fairly regularly following the simplest of functions (quitting an app, saving a file...) but does not occur under Tiger. This seems to be a widely reported problem.

Secure Empty Trash still doesn't calculate the number of items properly and, more often than not, leaves a Finder progress window despite apparently finishing, requiring a force quit of the Finder.

Disk Images will no longer eject/unmount within the Finder without using Disk Utility (but did, ironically, for me with 10.5)

These are just some examples that are reproducible on multiple machines while other bugs, such as the Preview app crash that occurs while saving (after having made a colour change) occurs on a MacBook but not an iMac CD - even if using the same boot drive.

As a Mac user since 1987 and technician since 1991, I can troubleshoot until the cows come home but many of my friends and family can't or won't... which use to be a selling point of the Mac. Until a vast majority of the bugs are eliminated, I won't be recommending the upgrade just yet...

osxnewbie1

I can of course only answer for myself, so you may take my response with as many grains of salt as you like 🙂

My personal experience is that Leopard have far more problems/bugs/issues than I have ever experienced when using OS X 10.3 and 10.4 (longest experience with 10.4 - Tiger).
However, after upgrading one of my computers which still run 10.4 to 10.4.11, I suddenly could not access my bank to pay bills. This has to do with Safari 3, which is included in 10.4.11. I also experienced, for the first time, that Safari froze and also a far slower Safari (meaning that on my computers Safari 2 was faster than Safari 3).

I have installed Leopard on both G4, G5 and Intel computers and have experienced several problems:

- Safari has froze several times
- Safari is slow
- Sluggish dock (can be fixed by turning off the cool mirror effect, but still...)
- Sleep problems - my computers rarely go to sleep now, regardless of what I have set the System Preferences to
- When turning off my iMac G5, it only puts one of the two external drives to sleep, while if I force it to sleep, it puts both external drives to sleep
- Importing mail backed up through Backup 3.1.2 did not work (all the folders were restored but not their contents) - I had to import via Mail, which luckily worked fine
- When trying to turn off Bluetooth in the menu bar, my iMac G5 froze and I had to force a restart
- Secure empty trash does not work properly - it shows the wrong number of files being trashed and hangs - this was a problem on both the G4 and the G5, but after Leopard update 10.5.1 it is only a problem on the G5....
- Network preferences in System Preferences does not show the correct encryption level of my Airport network
- .mac does not synchronize properly after Leopard
- Access issues with my bank (has to do with Safari 3)
- Uses far more memory than Tiger (not necessarily a bug, but annoying sometimes all the same)

I can mention several other issues, but think this is enough. And just to make it clear - my computer is not full of tweak/fiddle/diddledoo programs. I have a very puristic approach to my computer and do not use programs that "mess" with my system and when I installed Leopard, I erased and installed. The programs I use and reinstalled, are quite "normal" programs, like iWork 08, iLife 08, Office for Mac, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Aperture, Stuffit and a couple of others. Have never wanted to fill my computers with programs I do not use.

Still, even with a careful and puristic approach I have experienced issues I never experienced before with OS X, and which was something I thought I had left behind when switching from Windows and pc´s a few years back.
Personally I think this has to do with Apple changing from Power PC to Intel processors - after Intel, my impression is that people started experiencing bugs in a way they were not used to on a Mac.
But of course - this is only my impression 🙂

Having said all this, I want to stress that I do like Leopard and instead of planning any reinstallation of Tiger (at least not yet), I instead put my faith in Apple and hope that they fix all the issues/bugs/challenges. It is a nice improvement over Tiger, especially some of the features like templates in Mail, the new Finder, "cover-flow" in Finder and so on. The much hyped Time Machine is not what appealed most to me - I have never used my computer for storage anyway (Documents, Pictures, Music and so on are all on external drives).

I find Leopard to be cool and I sincerely hope it will be as fast and stable as TIger was. But I admit I am disappointed, as I have had more issues with Leopard in a month than I had with Tiger for years.

But do not let me discourage you - Apple can of course not live with customers having problems with their operating system and will surely do all they can to fix any issues and will release updates accordingly. I just wanted to share my thoughts and experiences since you wondered 🙂

Sincerely,
Espen

I'm a techie - I generally check everything twice before I proceed.

The MacBook hardware is fine. It's been run through every possible diagnostic. The same hardware runs Tiger without issue.

I'm not stating that Leopard is unstable only that I'm finding more bugs in it that Tiger, some of which other users may or may not experience depending on what they do (i.e. Secure Empty Trash). The Preview crash that occurs on MacBooks, Minis and some older PPC Macs but not, for example, an iMac CD is annoying. Disk images that would unmount with 10.5 but no longer do under 10.5.1? It's bizarre. I'll be looking at solutions to fix this but I would have hoped that it would not be necessary...

The 'freeze' that I mentioned is a very slight one, more of a hesitation and I'm not the only use to experience this (count yourself lucky). This happens irregularly with the MacBook's trackpad under Leopard but not under Tiger. I've also seen this behaviour on another MacBook and a friend's new MacBook Pro. I'll be trying this later with an external mouse and then on a desktop unit such as the iMac CD.

The Software update patch worked although Permissions repair constantly yielded SUID errors whereas running the large, full update didn't. It may be insignificant to a techie who knows what this means (and knows that it can be safely ignored) but try explaining it to an average user.

Fortunately, unlike some, my sidebar shares have always worked as has Airport and I do thoroughly enjoy (and make use of) Quick Look. Great potential but not there just yet IMHO.

Espen S. wrote:
osxnewbie1

I can of course only answer for myself, so you may take my response with as many grains of salt as you like 🙂

My personal experience is that Leopard have far more problems/bugs/issues than I have ever experienced when using OS X 10.3 and 10.4 (longest experience with 10.4 - Tiger).
However, after upgrading one of my computers which still run 10.4 to 10.4.11, I suddenly could not access my bank to pay bills. This has to do with Safari 3, which is included in 10.4.11. I also experienced, for the first time, that Safari froze and also a far slower Safari (meaning that on my computers Safari 2 was faster than Safari 3).

Interesting. I must admit that I haven't experienced that issue with my bank whether running the beta or final release of Safari 3.

I have installed Leopard on both G4, G5 and Intel computers and have experienced several problems:

- Safari has froze several times
- Safari is slow

I have experienced delays, at times, that don't appear in FireFox. Looking at the Activity window, it seemed to be hung with some websites Javascript. If I recall correctly, this also occurred with other browsers that use WebKit unlike FF.

- Sluggish dock (can be fixed by turning off the cool mirror effect, but still...)

More noticeable to me on a MacBook C2D with Stacks (arghh!) containing a large number of items but not annoyingly so. I'm assuming that this is likely related to the graphics card more than anything. Admittedly, the glass shelf has sort of grown on me although the white dots are still not as visible as I would like.

- Sleep problems - my computers rarely go to sleep now, regardless of what I have set the System Preferences to

No issues on my end yet although I no longer have PPC, only Intel Macs.

- Secure empty trash does not work properly - it shows the wrong number of files being trashed and hangs - this was a problem on both the G4 and the G5, but after Leopard update 10.5.1 it is only a problem on the G5....

still happens, more often than not, on the MacBook. I will be testing the iMac CD as well. I was hoping this would have been resolved with 10.5.1.... I guess I will have to wait.

- Network preferences in System Preferences does not show the correct encryption level of my Airport network

Same here. I'm not sure why but....

- Uses far more memory than Tiger (not necessarily a bug, but annoying sometimes all the same)

my memory increase has been negligible - somewhere in the 75-100MB range. Spaces uses up a bit of that.

Personally I think this has to do with Apple changing from Power PC to Intel processors - after Intel, my impression is that people started experiencing bugs in a way they were not used to on a Mac.
But of course - this is only my impression 🙂

Well, OS X was apparently being developed and run on Intel simultaneously with PPC since it was first released so I'm not sure how much the switch played a part. The OS is growing/evolving/becoming more complex so bugs are inevitable but I wasn't prepared for this many. Still, great potential...

Patrick

Thank you for an interesting post.

First - I totally agree with you: still evolving and great potential 🙂

Regarding the "bank-thing" and Safari - it may have to do with what you mention in response to me finding Safari 3 slower - javascript. My bank now think I have an older version of Java, while I do have the same as we have had for a long time, 1.5 and 1.4.2. In Safari 2 my bank recognized this, while in Safari 3 it does not.

Not sure whom I should blame - my bank or Apple... 🙂

I have a MacBook also, but I have not had time to use it as much yet, which is why I have not mentioned it much and therefore is not sure whether my experiences are processor related or not.
However, what was certainly noticeable, was that the graphic niceness was faster on my intel MacBook than the others.
And you are right - some of the graphic coolness is experienced differently depending on which graphics card the computer has.

My old 12" PowerBook with G4 does not have a translucent menu bar, while my iMac and MacBook does, something I do not consider a bug since it has to do with what the graphics card can process. However, my iMac ought to have a smooth dock, though, but it is actually just as smooth (or rather not quite smooth...) on the G4 PowerBook.

Oh well - as you said - it is evolving and I guess we just have to be patient.

All the best,
Espen 🙂

now that i think about it, I have had some issues like this with office. but also with some ilife apps. They seem to be very intermittent and don't happen enough for me to be too concerned with.