May 5th, 2008

Mac OS 10.5.2 = Apple Vista? (updated)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 5:00 am

Categories: Bug, Leopard, Software, Software Update

Tags: Apple Mac OS, Apple Macintosh, Operating System, Apple Inc., Jason D. O'Grady, It, Jason D. O'Grady

I’ve heard many different complaints about Mac OS 10.5.2 since it was released, from my own Skype/podcasting problems to issues with just about everything else, including: printing, third-party wireless routers, software freezing and problems with Time Machine. The Apple discussion boards are littered with stories about all kinds of crawlers in 10.5.2, and while hardly an epidemic, they’re not exactly isolated incidents either.

Chuck Freedman from the PowerPage Podcast shares his problems with 10.5.2 on his MacBook Pro – he thinks it’s the buggiest software update in years. So much so, that his friend Dennis (updated to give proper credit) coined a new term for 10.5.2 – “Apple Vista.”

The picture below isn’t a screen grab of the latest maze game, it’s Chuck’s MBP screen after a spectacular 10.5.2 crash.

Read more about Chuck’s tale of woe and check out six more gallery images after the jump.

Late in 2007 Apple began releasing its new operating system, Mac OS 10.5 (a.k.a. Leopard). With new hardware announcements in early January 2008 Apple began shipping this new OS with all new computers they sold, and wow, what an OS. There were tons of new features to knock your socks off. From then on, all Macs purchased came with Leopard pre-installed – life was supposed to be good.

During the early days of 10.5 Apple found a few bugs and tweeks and released an update to Leopard called 10.5.1, and again, all was well. I continued to operate my MacBook Pro running this new OS with near flawless behavior. I could go days (sometimes weeks) without rebooting my machine. I could run a dozen applications simultaneously and all was good.

In February Apple began shipping their Time Capsule backup appliance which allowed me to have a wireless network and shared network attached storage – something I’d been waiting for. Time Capsule allowed Apple’s new Time Machine software to automatically back up my data to a shared network drive and restore it easily. A great concept, but it still needs some bugs worked out (that’s a topic for another article.)

In order to get my machine to see, utilize and understand the Time Capsule, I had to upgrade my Mac to 10.5.2. Without hesitation, I did. From that day forward I’ve been running the worst operating system I’ve run on a Mac in years. My machine now runs slower and if I run more than a few applications at a time, it barely operates. It takes nearly six minutes to wake from sleep, and when it does finally wake, the mouse bounces around uncontrollably and requires a hard shut down to fix.

Again, time on my side, Apple released a keyboard firmware update to fix some issues. I applied the update, but didn’t see any fixes. Shortly thereafter Apple released EFI firmware update 1.5 - well things can’t be any worse (so I thought), so I applied it. Boy was I wrong. See the screen shots. Only days later Apple released EFI Firmware 1.5.1 which fixed more, but at this point my machine was dead. I’ve sent it in to Apple repair to get it fixed, and I’m waiting for its return.

If I wanted to run on a buggy crappy operating system, I’d pickup a PC running Microsoft Vista. I don’t expect this from my Mac. Mac OS 10.4.11 (Tiger) ran great whereas Apple Vista just appears to be immature and needed more time to cook.

Also, I know that Apple wants to push sales of Leopard but I don’t like being forced to upgrade because of some new piece of hardware is released. Rather than force 10.5.2 down my throat because I spent more money on a Time Capsule, why not just give me a driver or application to install. The OS should be hardware independent.

In the meantime, my Apple Vista machine is in for repair, and I’m writing this on my trusty Tiger machine.

Well, I guess the good news is that 10.5.3 isn’t too far behind. It’s pretty far along in testing with Apple developers and could be released to the public in the next two weeks.