Rating: - Leopard is simply everything you can wish for
Having used TIGER for more than six months, I was at first reluctant to shift to LEOPARD. But having done the shift, one can only but admire the many value added options one is now entitled to with the touch of a trackpad! From the time machine, to the new photobooth application, one is continually amazed at how easy it is to do so many complicated tasks such as previewing, rearranging and shifting from one desktop to the other. The price is also fairly competitive. A detailed comparison with TIGER would have made my switch quicker.

---

Rating: - Amazing
Leopard is amazing. It installed perfectly and within two hours. The app upgrades are amazing, and I cannot even begin to describe how nice the finder is now. Basically Apple did it again.

---

Rating: - I Installed Leopard, Now I Crash Every Ten Minutes
Hello,
My G5 with Tiger worked perfectly for years.
I saw an ad for the Leopard Upgrade, installed it on my computer and the computer began crashing every 12 - 15 minutes which it had never done before. Also I got a huge surprise - none of my Adobe software is now working.

So I called apple and they recommended the following:

Add RAM
Add a New Hard drive
New Video Card
New Adobe Software
Upgrade from FCP 4.5 to FCP Studio 2

Do a clean install on the new hard drive, then install all new software.

So here I am $3,000 dollars later and my mac is basically useless. This Leopard 10.5.2 is crashing every 10 minutes. There is an apparent conflict between flash/fcp/quicktime and leopard.

You know that commercial running on American Idol - where the Vista users are doing yoga and pulling their hair out? Mac is lucky that ad company sold them that ad before they sold it to Vista, because that ad well defines my leopard experience.

Of course if you call the apple they will tell you "its your hardware" "Leopard has been the smoothest rollout in computer history!" etc. What they cant explain however is why ppl who gave up on leopard who reinstalled tiger, cease to have a problem. Hmmm.... Perhaps the real reason Apple skipped NAB this year ---after having a HUGE presence there every year for the past decade-- is so they did not have to deal with ppl demanding a fix for this so called upgrade. If I were Steve Jobs I'd run for cover too!!

Before purchasing this software please google the phrase "How Can I Fix Leopard?" and/or "Leopard Crash" and see the 150+ blogs devoted to this very topic.

If your mac and software are running OK do yourself a major favor and pass on this product.

And no, I don't work for any PC company.

---

Rating: - Substandard
I am a systems programmer interested in human factors and usability. For that reason, I very strongly dislike Microsoft Windows, etc. Years ago, based on that dislike, I purchased a Mac G5 2.0GHz swearing to Mac and never look back.

I only lasted six months on the Mac as it was even worse than the PC. Currently, I have been forced to use a Mac exclusively for the past few months so I upgraded to OS-X Leopard hoping that things would be better?

They are not. Apple had that snob-oriented "Think Different" ad campaign almost ten years ago. Not "better" but "different". Almost entirely unusable if you are in the least bit discerning.

1) Installation was reasonably painless
2) Crashes, etc. Had to upgrade from 512MB to 1GB.
3) Crashes, apparent memory leaks? Had to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB.
4) Absolutely no accessibility for people with epilepsy. Blinking cursor cannot be disabled. Stupid ( "Think Different" ) rotating colored disk that comes up at the most inopportune moments. ( this is epileptogenic for some people ). Stupid rippling progress bars ( "Think Different", again. Unfortunately Microsoft has gone to this abomination, too. This, again, is epileptogenic)
5) Worthless help and documentation ( even worse than Microsoft )
6) Apple applications are generally junk. Preview is worthless but you are basically stuck with it.
7) Idiot bouncing dock icons that DEMAND attention. Again, epileptogenic
8) File management is a PAIN. "My kingdom for 'cut and paste'"
9) Totally idiot ( "Think Different", as usual ) implementation of "invalid password" when switching users. The whole display frame vibrates, so to speak. I have seizures every time this happens.
10) Boot times take about ( at least ) twice as long now. Before, Leopard, we would turn off the computer. Now, we can't as it takes too long to reboot. When switching back and forth between our two accounts, in mine, the mouse speed is always hyperfast when I log in. That I don't understand. Once I open an application it reverts to the speed I set in preferences.
11) As far as crashes, i've lost count. ( this is a simple installation with nothing unusual, btw ).


OS-X is so unfriendly, unusable, undocumented that, to me, it is worthless. I would throw this Mac away if it were mine. ( I made a mistake of having my ex-girlfriend get a Mac as I thought it would be easier for her to use then a PC. BIG MISTAKE ). I don't use computers because I like jerking off with them; I use them to get work done on them. Apples are for snobs, not people.

Comments:
1) Microsoft is trying to out-apple this lemon operating system and Vista is totally inaccessible to people with epilepsy, too. If you have photosensitive / pattern sensitive epilepsy you had better stock up on XP computers.
2) If I had to chose between the Microsoft Vista juggernaut and this Apple Leopard lemon, I would chuck both computers. Hence staying with XP 'til death do us part. ( XP is fairly inaccessible, too, but at least you can disable the blinking caret. I notice that any newer, Vista compatible application that also runs on XP, is generally inaccessible. The trend seems to use indeterminate progress bars ( the ones with the group of squares rapidly cycling across the progress bar or the one ( used by Norton Internet Security ) that ... Both of those cause very unpleasant seizures. I can't tolerate this Apple blinking cursor as I have trouble so enough

---

Rating: - Leopard nice to look at, but still unstable.
Like those who know about major upgrades, we waited until now to purchase the Leopard upgrade.

Leopard installed easily on our six-month-old iMac, then downloaded a large collection of updates that we hoped would resolve the problems associated with the initial release.

We have been happy with the interface improvements and the improved parental controls.

We still found the release to be buggy. Profile details, like backgrounds and account photos changed randomly, and we now experience application hangs on a frequent basis. Occasionally we experience an entire system hang. Prior to installing Leopard, we had never experienced an application or system hang.

The parental controls are better, but the attempt to block porn sites is half-hearted at best and not particularly reliable. Most alarming was the fact that installing Leopard completely removed the parental controls we had originally had in place for our 8-year old.

We continue to apply updates as they are released, and are hopeful that these bugs will be resolved.

Overall, we are disappointed that we had to pay so much for an upgrade that caused us (and so many others) problems. I wish we had waited until Leopard's stability improved.