Buyer beware. Everyone is out to sell you something. Or, in the case of Mac software, they’re out to get you to try before you buy. Sometimes the Mac software we try out hasn’t been tried out enough. Is their danger in trying new software on your Mac?

The answer, of course, is an unqualified yes, there is always a danger that putting new software on your Mac will cause some kind of malfunction and fry all the rest of the files on your Mac.

That doesn’t happen often, but, as with any new release of software, whether Mac OS X Leopard, subsequent upgrades, or even polished applications and utilities from Microsoft, Adobe, and Bob’s Fly-By-Night Mac Software House, there’s always a risk.

Nearly one in four Mac users has upgraded from previous versions of OS X to Leopard since the launch in 2007. For those of us who took the plunge right away, how many of us had no issues whatsoever? How many of us had a few niggling problems here and there?

How many Mac users had a small catastrophe with data loss and hours of rebuilding a Mac system from scratch? It happens.

Overall, Mac OS X Leopard seemed more buggy at first than preceding versions of Tiger, then Panther. And, overall, it wasn’t a horrible experience, just one that was more memorable on the ugly side, though somewhat mitigated by the juicy new features and functions.

My Mac notebook has never had a problem with Leopard. None. Zero. It just worked. My main Mac, a honking hulk of G5 power with a gazillion cores and more RAM than Dodge has trucks, faltered badly with kernel panics and freezes until 10.5.2.

That particular Mac is loaded with every USB and FireWire device known to man, or nearly so, forcing me to cut loose the old, embrace the new. The Mac returned to a more stable state once the old devices were purged.

My day-to-day Mac, the one I use to browse and handle email and iTunes and iPhoto, chugged along with a few problems here and there, but, again, became more stable after 10.5.2. Thanks, Apple.

I have a Mac mini running Leopard which I use to test and try out new software, rather than endanger my pampered suite of Macs. Yesterday, Kate sent me a link to a new graphics application for creating resolution independent graphics. It’s called Opacity.

It’s a version 1.0, and has a few capabilities not found on the recent spat of Mac graphics applications such as Pixelmator, Acorn, and others. About 10 minutes into my initial round of dinking with Opacity it crashed my Mac. Hard. Froze solid. Twice.

I don’t remember the last time my Mac just froze and refused to do anything, even Force Quit. But it did. I was manipulating a graphic, and expanding the resolution to see how independent it could become, and got the spinning beach ball of death. I waited. Then Opacity wouldn’t let me in. Then Leopard kicked me out. Time stood still. The Dock wouldn’t move. No other application or utility would open. I waited. I waited.

Gulp. Hard stop, reboot. Fortunately, nothing was lost, and normality returned quickly, but without further dinking in Opacity. Yes, some new utilities will crash from time to time. Even Safari and Mail go wonky from time to time, though not on a regular schedule. Seldom does software these days take down a whole machine, but it happens.

I’m not one to collect Mac horror stories. I’ve shared mine latest. What’s yours?

I’ve had my share of horror stories through the years, but most of them have been Windows based, not so much on the Mac. However, I agree with your assessment of Leopard. The early version was buggy and took awhile to track down old or bad drivers and get updates to software to work with Leopard. The latest release is a very big, as in BIG, improvement. I’ll try new Mac software, too, but I throw it away if it crashes two or three times early on. I don’t like being a guinea pig or a beta tester.

I still find it disturbing how applications are able to completely hang MacOS X.  It is admittedly rare, but the fact it can occur at all is disturbing for a modern OS.  In this respect, MacOS is less stable than both Linux (where at least you can remote log in via a terminal and kill the hung process) and ... shock, horror ... Windows.

Paul just took the words right out of my mouth. I’m stumped at how software can hose one system and be relatively tame on another, running the same OS and Apps. I once tried a beta of Cocktail and ended up un-procrastinating (TM) my fresh install of Leopard + stuff. My computer was doing things at log-in that I’ve never seen or read before. Flashing panels and sudden, disappearing text and icons followed by the inability to do anything but sit back and enjoy the strange show that was running before me. I should have taken some video and put it on youtube.

Then there was the time I reminded myself why I typically spend more than $100 on laser printers. Amazon had a rare misprint and I bought a Brother. Perfect for my son, who prints multiple copies of everything he does. That device tortured me as I had to troubleshoot and curse my way all around the OS to get it to actually print. Then, suddenly, following the directions worked where the previous 3 hours, it hadn’t.

That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me humble.

I was charging my old PowerBook one time back in the day and with my wireless card still turned on i pulled into my bank ATM. To my horror the program scanning wireless networks went off. Pulling off to a parking space I hit connect to the mysterious signal. THen up pops do I want to view video, so I do. To my horror the banks wireless security camera setup started displaying! I could see into the vault!!!

I then ran inside and ask to speak with someone in charge. I then calmly explained what I found, trying not to sound like a hacker. After some explaining the gentle woman wanted me to show her. So I went a retrieved the Powerbook and brought it and showed her the simple way I found it. She thanked me and sent me on my way. A week later I did the same drive stop and found the secured the setup. I then made the decision t transfer my bank account to another neighborhood bank.

The moral of the story is know what you are getting into. Don’t trust anyone with blind computer software advice because all computers are differently setup according to user’s preference. Know you preferences and how the new software will be used. Also the importance of ALWAYS having a viable backup that is kept up is a necessity.

satcomer - 17 February 2008 12:57 PM

I was charging my old PowerBook one time back in the day and with my wireless card still turned on i pulled into my bank ATM. To my horror the program scanning wireless networks went off. Pulling off to a parking space I hit connect to the mysterious signal. THen up pops do I want to view video, so I do. To my horror the banks wireless security camera setup started displaying! I could see into the vault!!!

I then ran inside and ask to speak with someone in charge. I then calmly explained what I found, trying not to sound like a hacker. After some explaining the gentle woman wanted me to show her. So I went a retrieved the Powerbook and brought it and showed her the simple way I found it. She thanked me and sent me on my way. A week later I did the same drive stop and found the secured the setup. I then made the decision t transfer my bank account to another neighborhood bank.

The moral of the story is know what you are getting into. Don’t trust anyone with blind computer software advice because all computers are differently setup according to user’s preference. Know you preferences and how the new software will be used. Also the importance of ALWAYS having a viable backup that is kept up is a necessity.

I personally would have transfered that vault to a swiss bank and moved!!! LOL.

Ron McElfresh - 15 February 2008 02:24 PM

Buyer beware. Everyone is out to sell you something. Or, in the case of Mac software, they’re out to get you to try before you buy. Sometimes the Mac software we try out hasn’t been tried out enough. Is their danger in trying new software on your Mac?

The answer, of course, is an unqualified yes, there is always a danger that putting new software on your Mac will cause some kind of malfunction and fry all the rest of the files on your Mac.

That doesn’t happen often, but, as with any new release of software, whether Mac OS X Leopard, subsequent upgrades, or even polished applications and utilities from Microsoft, Adobe, and Bob’s Fly-By-Night Mac Software House, there’s always a risk.

Nearly one in four Mac users has upgraded from previous versions of OS X to Leopard since the launch in 2007. For those of us who took the plunge right away, how many of us had no issues whatsoever? How many of us had a few niggling problems here and there?

How many Mac users had a small catastrophe with data loss and hours of rebuilding a Mac system from scratch? It happens.

Overall, Mac OS X Leopard seemed more buggy at first than preceding versions of Tiger, then Panther. And, overall, it wasn’t a horrible experience, just one that was more memorable on the ugly side, though somewhat mitigated by the juicy new features and functions.

My Mac notebook has never had a problem with Leopard. None. Zero. It just worked. My main Mac, a honking hulk of G5 power with a gazillion cores and more RAM than Dodge has trucks, faltered badly with kernel panics and freezes until 10.5.2.

That particular Mac is loaded with every USB and FireWire device known to man, or nearly so, forcing me to cut loose the old, embrace the new. The Mac returned to a more stable state once the old devices were purged.

My day-to-day Mac, the one I use to browse and handle email and iTunes and iPhoto, chugged along with a few problems here and there, but, again, became more stable after 10.5.2. Thanks, Apple.

I have a Mac mini running Leopard which I use to test and try out new software, rather than endanger my pampered suite of Macs. Yesterday, Kate sent me a link to a new graphics application for creating resolution independent graphics. It’s called Opacity.

It’s a version 1.0, and has a few capabilities not found on the recent spat of Mac graphics applications such as Pixelmator, Acorn, and others. About 10 minutes into my initial round of dinking with Opacity it crashed my Mac. Hard. Froze solid. Twice.

I don’t remember the last time my Mac just froze and refused to do anything, even Force Quit. But it did. I was manipulating a graphic, and expanding the resolution to see how independent it could become, and got the spinning beach ball of death. I waited. Then Opacity wouldn’t let me in. Then Leopard kicked me out. Time stood still. The Dock wouldn’t move. No other application or utility would open. I waited. I waited.

Gulp. Hard stop, reboot. Fortunately, nothing was lost, and normality returned quickly, but without further dinking in Opacity. Yes, some new utilities will crash from time to time. Even Safari and Mail go wonky from time to time, though not on a regular schedule. Seldom does software these days take down a whole machine, but it happens.

I’m not one to collect Mac horror stories. I’ve shared mine latest. What’s yours?

Funny I never thought about this but it’s true. I upgraded to Leopard the same day the released it and let me promise you the next OS I am waiting for at least six months before I buy it. My Mac Pro with the dual Intel (four cores) just gave me hell day after day, I mean I can’t count how many times I was ready to throw the computer out the window but it is to cold out side so I refrained from doing it. Now my Mac/Book never gave me one problem, nothing! I really never though about this until I read above that your power book never gave you a problem. I think they are just now getting the proper firmware and drivers for the Mac Pro because after the release the 10.5.2 my Pro is finally running like Tiger if not better.

Back in the pre-OS X days, my wife used to ask me why, when I thought the Mac was so good, did I spend so much time tracking down errant CDEVs and extensions trying to fix freezes. (What was that program I used that would disable one-half of these during rebooting , and it would ask if the problem was gone?) Well, I told her it wasn’t the Mac. It was me!  I just like to fiddle.  You know, try new system modifications and utilities that promise to add the functionality that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t include.  My “fiddle computer” is typically the one I use most often, and even in the modern OS X days, problems still arise.  Installing 10.5.2, my aluminum iMac would begin to freeze one application at a time.  My menu bar would disappear!  The spinning beach ball became ubiquitous.  Obviously, the problem is that software updates can only take into account so many variables, and by fiddling, the number of variables increases and is directly proportional to the risk of update disaster.  Thank goodness for Archive and Install.  Oh, and SuperDuper!

RayCon - 22 February 2008 08:03 PM

Back in the pre-OS X days, my wife used to ask me why, when I thought the Mac was so good, did I spend so much time tracking down errant CDEVs and extensions trying to fix freezes. (What was that program I used that would disable one-half of these during rebooting , and it would ask if the problem was gone?)… Thank goodness for Archive and Install.  Oh, and SuperDuper!

Thankfully, I don’t remember those days. What a pain that must have been. I’ve been rather fortunate with my Mac OS X experience. It just works. I usually wait a few days before installing an update. You know, just to make sure the dust settles down. If all is well, and it usually is, I’ll run SuperDuper as suggested by Mac 360’s folks, then run the update. So far, so good.

RayCon - 22 February 2008 08:03 PM

(What was that program I used that would disable one-half of these during rebooting , and it would ask if the problem was gone?) Well, I told her it wasn’t the Mac. It was me!  I just like to fiddle…

I remember those days and that little utility. It was called Conflict Catcher by Jeffrey Robbins who also did the original Sound Jam MP3 player, and, if I’m not mistaken, went to work for Apple as the lead engineer on iTunes, and was one of those responsible for the iPod click wheel GUI design.

I remember those days and that little utility. It was called Conflict Catcher by Jeffrey Robbins who also did the original Sound Jam MP3 player, and, if I’m not mistaken, went to work for Apple as the lead engineer on iTunes, and was one of those responsible for the iPod click wheel GUI design.

Ah, yes!  That application was essential!  I can visualize the packaging and, as I recall, the company that produced the software (just beyond recollection in that 55-year-old brain of mine) went out of business.  I hope you’re not mistaken with that information.  The man deserves good fortune.

Ah, yer all wimps! Never has OS X hung on me without a hardware problem at the source, and back in the day I found my own conflicting extensions. I was big on tracking everything and noting dates of install, so it was not too tough.

Then again, I go in for a lot fewer exotic installs than most of you, so maybe I’m the wimp.

Andrew Purvis - 11 March 2008 10:22 PM

Ah, yer all wimps! Never has OS X hung on me without a hardware problem at the source, and back in the day I found my own conflicting extensions. I was big on tracking everything and noting dates of install, so it was not too tough.

Sounds like folks from the pre-OS X era. The good old days.

Most of the freezes and hangs I’ve had with OS X can be traced to hardware; either RAM or something plugged into the Mac. It happens so infrequently and is usually cured with a restart that it’s hardly worth tracking down.

I used to read //macintouch.com/]Macintouch[/url] and often wondered what it was that those Mac users were doing to their computers to cause themselves so much grief.

I have the same experience with MacFixit.  then I remind myself it is a troubleshooting site and therefore the vast majority of the reports are about peoples problems.

This discussion brings to mind two things. First, of course, is the scourge known as Windows, which I am forced to use in my work environment (my manager was surprised, in the interview, to learn I am a Mac user, yet I still know Windows quite well). The second is the rising tide of articles about such things as, in the words of one title, “Apple’s Icarus Effect”: the rising number of reports of problems (notably viruses) on Macs.

I can’t do much about the former, but I can theorize about the latter. More users=more reports. Only when the number of incidents, as a percentage of users, changes by a statistically significant amount upward will I start to care about such reports.

BunsenHoneydew - 01 April 2008 03:09 PM

I have the same experience with MacFixit.  then I remind myself it is a troubleshooting site and therefore the vast majority of the reports are about peoples problems.

I have a similar problem. Reading about problems I don’t have is depressing.