The Danger In Trying Out New Mac Software.

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 from time to time 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?