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Sunday, November 25, 2007
I don’t get it, but I’ve had more headaches with Leopard since installing it than I did with Tiger the entire time it lived on my Mac Pro. From permission issues that neither Disk Utility from the DVD, Onyx, or Mac Pilot could resolve to crashing programs left and right to my iTunes now telling me it can not sync my Contacts because it is unable to merge my data (which gets a zero hit on Apple’s support site,) I’m starting to feel like I’m running Windows again. Shesh, this is the kind of pain I expect from Microsoft, not Apple.
When I first installed Leopard shortly after its release via Archive and Install, my NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive would not come up in the Shared section. I could ping it, I could access it via Safari, I just couldn’t get to it via SMB. When I called Apple Support, not even Tier 2 could help. I was then told that it would be “sent up” and I would get a call back in a day or two. Thank God I didn’t bank on that. Three weeks later, still no call back. Ugh. A Format and Install fixed that issue.
After that, then I couldn’t upgrade programs, access files, and on and on and on because of permission issues. Even when I took ownership of all the files and Applications, I still would receive errors. It was maddening! So I did a Carbon Copy Cloner of the system, redid the Format and Install and then opted for the migrate procedure. That resolved the permission issues.
Now I’m left with crashing applications and this new iTunes issue. Why it will not sync my Entourage data, I don’t know. It worked fine in the last two messed up Leopard installs. What changed here? Oh ya, iCal no longer shows my Entourage events but mysteriously, all the Birthdays do (which come from Entourage.) Go figure. Ugh.
So, after blowing away backup folders in the Library and reseting sync logs in .Mac, nothing seems to work. I’m stuck trying to figure this out on my own until I break down and call Apple again and see if this time, maybe, they can help.
You know, I’ve heard a lot of people having no issues with Leopard and I think for the most part it is a fine upgrade; however, with all the issues I’ve had, I’m holding off on my MacBook Pro, PowerBook, and Mac mini upgrades. One headache is all I need right now.
November 26th, 2007 at 0:06
what happened to “all is great”…yeah…go ahead with the upgrade?
Fletch
November 26th, 2007 at 7:53
I have two machines personally, that have been upgraded and used in a production environment since 10.5 was released, and I’ve had virtually zero problems. Same goes for friends and colleges I know who’ve also upgraded.
You don’t think it’s a little suspicious that at least two of the problems you mentioned are related to a Microsoft product ? I don’t suppose they will be particularly forthcoming with a Leopard compatibility fix either.
There’s no way I could go back to Tiger now.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:37
Sorry to hear it. Apple seems to overly rely on developers to test their apps with the OS AND they don’t release the GM to them for testing. Apple has taken many pages from Microsoft and number one is that anything .0 is a public beta at best. I still haven’t put Leo on my Mac Pro but did put it on my MBook as a test mule.
Your permissions problem came from the nuke and pave install as your Unix userID changed. You could have fixed the permissions with a unix chown most likely but you shouldn’t have had to go to that level. A chmod may have been required as well, but unlikely. I don’t know how to do that in the Leo GUI yet.
No clue how to fix the MS apps, but you probably need to reinstall any app that is crashing. I’ve not had problems with any crashing on my MB — for apps that are compatible. I did have to upgrade Audio Hijack Pro twice as their Leo version was crashing at startup.
From my experience, an Archive & Install saving settings is the best means to upgrade. You may want to try that on your Leo install as it is useful for reinstalling the OS. Just go slowly when moving stuff from the Prev System folder that isn’t moved by the installer.
Check out http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/compat.html and macfixit.com for a compatibility list.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:41
Hi,
Bashing Windows XP SP2 in this regard doesn’t compute; it is a very stable, if somewhat ugly, OS.
Bash Windows vista if you must, since it had its upgrade issues galore, and even now is somewhat unstable, even on newer PCs.
November 26th, 2007 at 10:00
“redid the Format and Install and then opted for the migrate procedure. That resolved the permission issues”
You don’t do this normally on a Format & Install?
November 26th, 2007 at 11:17
@Brian, I ran XP for seven years and SP2 is very dated. Even with all that time and security updates, I had issues. Windows is notorious for “bit rot” and if XP is so stable, why the root-kit issue then? That’s not stable, that’s a sad statement about the largest software company in the world that has more than enough resources to resolve such issues.
@Jabrwock, Archive and Install has always been tried-and-true for me since 10.1, so this is what I did for Leo. It was after it’s failure that prompted me to go the wipe and clean method (which is all I ever did with Windoze.)
@ Pecos Bill, I did change ownership and even made files wide open (777) via the command line which fixed many of my problems, but still, I encountered others daily. I know it’s because I was just missing other paths and it really isn’t smart to apply these commands (esp. 777) from the root directory.
@ Fletch, what can I say? The honeymoon is over.
As Andy states, most do not have problems, but it seems us power users are the ones that do. We use more of the OS than mom and dad and thus really put it through it’s rounds. Pecos Bill is right, Apple has gone the MS way and not allowed real people to test the finished product before calling it such. Even 10.5.1 has issues as noted with my iCal events no longer displaying as it did properly in 10.5.0.
Truthfully, I think Leopard is hands down better — far better — than Vista, which is now being referred to as the next Windows ME blunder. But for two years in the wait with very little “outside of the hood” changes, you’d think it would be better than it is. Heck, I didn’t even touch Back to My Back issues via the Internet everyone is having.
I just hope Apple realizes that its secretive nature is begining to hinder it from truly remarkable products.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:59
Sven, since upgrading I’ve noticed that every five minutes or so my Mac Pro will freeze with the spinning beach ball for about 4 seconds. It’s very frustrating. And then today, I had Adium crash when I was in Safari, and when I selected Relauch, Safari crashed, and the after I got Safari up, Entourage crashed. I had to reboot. No idea what is going on…
November 26th, 2007 at 14:24
Your contact and entourage syncing problems could be related to .Mac. I’d suggest doing a reinstall and not using the .Mac syncing at all.
November 26th, 2007 at 14:31
Thanks, Nak. I actually got the Contacts issue resolved just after the post went live. I blew away (well, actually backed up,) the SyncServices/Local folder in the ~user/Library folder and then .mac wanted to resync (I had Mac over write .mac) and then it worked. So good call, it was .mac. Now if I could only figure out the iCal issue and I’d be happy.
November 26th, 2007 at 23:13
We’ve been fortunate… we’ve installed Leopard on over two dozen machines (PPC and Intel) and had zero problems. That’s on PowerBooks, MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros, PPC Mac Towers, you name it…. not a hitch.
What seems the most odd about your scenario is that you even did a format and install. Do you have some kind of weird daemon’s or extensions loaded up that may be the culprit?