One of my favorite action scenes ever is in the Matrix Reloaded. Towards the beginning of this awesome 25-minute action sequence, Neo does battle with about 15 henchmen, all of whom are wielding medieval weapons. At one point, one of the henchmen swings at Neo with a sword, and Neo, untouched up to this point, stops the sword with the side of his hand. As the henchmen watch, a trickle of blood drips from his hand. Then, the enigmatic line: “You see, he’s just a man”.
Why would I quote such a line? It accurately demonstrates the principle of going around trashing everything when you are only human.
When Windows Vista first debuted, and its shoddy, patchwork nature began to show, Apple geared up for a long campaign of mercilessly picking apart Vista. To be fair, initially, Vista was a piece of work. But, as a slew of updates poured in, and as the market technologies shifted to Vista being the norm, Vista went from unbearable to niggly to tolerable to average. Now, over two years after its debut, Vista is the operating system that it should have been when it first came out. And just in time for Windows 7!
So, yes, Microsoft really blew it with this one. They rushed to ship out an operating system that boasted to do so much, but was riddled with problems. And they paid for it! Apple is now pushing an 8% market share, well above what they were prior to Vista. Apple, the opportunistic company that they were, jumped at the chance to become a legitimate competitor that wasn’t just another Linux. Now, with Apple sales soaring and the prospects of another version of OS X keeping this sales trend going, Apple considers themselves the superior of Microsoft because they could never create such a creature. Apple wouldn’t – couldn’t – make that mistake. Or did they?
As Apple states on their website,
“Mac OS X is renowned for its simplicity, its reliability, and its ease of use. So when it came to designing Snow Leopard, Apple engineers had a single goal: to make a great thing even better. They searched for areas to refine, further simplify, and speed up — from little things like ejecting external drives to big things like installing the OS. In many cases, they elevated great to amazing.”
“Snow Leopard is up to 80 percent faster when shutting down and up to twice as fast when waking from sleep with screen locking enabled.“
“When you plug in a new printer, your Mac with Snow Leopard can download the most up-to-date driver over the Internet. It periodically checks to make sure it has the latest driver, automatically downloading the newest version through Software Update.”
“Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It’s read-only to prevent PC viruses from affecting Mac OS X, but you can easily save your work to your Windows partition and access it later from Mac OS X.”
Apple, not surprisingly, gently informs us of the boons of Snow Leopard like a fraternity pledge gently sips beer.
Judging purely by the slew of Apple commercials that spend their time bemoaning the incompetence of their competition, I would guess that there would be not a thing wrong with Apple operating systems! After all, they are based on Unix!
“Many difficulties centered on HP printers surfaced over the weekend, the main one being that the OS upgrade removes necessary drivers. Error #9672 appeared for dozens of users attempting to connect HP LaserJet P1006 — and other printers — to their Snow Leopard Macs.”
“Apple released an official list of incompatible software that just won’t work with Snow Leopard. Some of them include: Parallels Desktop v2.5 and earlier, McAfee VirusScan v8.6, Norton AntiVirus v11.0, Internet Cleanup 5 v5.0.4, Application Enhancer v2.0.1 and earlier, UnsanityAT&T Laptop Connect Card v 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.10.0, launch2net v2.13.0, iWOW plug-in for iTunes v2.0, Missing Sync for Palm Sony, CLIE Driver v6.0.4, TonePort UX8 Driver v4.1.0, ioHD Driver v6.0.3, [and] Silicon Image SiI3132 Drivers v1.5.16.0″
“If you’ve tinkered under the hood of your Mac and install Snow Leopard, watch out. The forum regarding these crippling faults stretched for miles.”
—PCWorld.com
“Apple did not give third-party software and hardware vendors enough time with the final code before general availability. Microsoft released Windows 7 to manufacturing at the end of July with general availability on Oct. 22. Apple sent out final code about week before Snow Leopard went on sale. Microsoft has been using this period as a sort of extended beta; setting up a new Win 7 machine today with the gold master code, I discovered that there were already three updates available. I didn’t check what they were, but my guess is either bug fixes or new drivers.”
—BusinessWeek.com
“Apple’s data loss issue is also yet another problem related to its most recent operating-system release. Snow Leopard has been plagued with bugs since its release, including problems with the Finder hanging or crashing, incompatibility with certain apps, and the AirPort connection dropping.”
—cnet.com
“Think your Snow Leopard woes are finally over? Don’t go logging into that Guest account, then. A flurry of reports have surfaced around the web explaining that even an accidental login to one’s Guest account within Snow Leopard could lead to mass deletion of all user files on the primary account, and when we say “mass deletion,” we mean “mass deletion.” The problem goes something like this: if one clicks on the Guest account after upgrading their machine to OS X 10.6, and everything hangs, there’s at least a decent chance that all of your data will be evaporated whenever you surf back over to the main profile. Apple has yet to address the issue (at least publicly), but we’d probably recommend disabling Guest accounts on your rig(s) until all of this gets sorted. You know, unless you actually enjoy watching your data vanish.”
—Engadget.com
Well sh*t, look at that! Apple’s knight in shining Unibody armor got cooked by the bug dragon!
As Vista went, so will Snow Leopard. By Easter, Snow Leopard will be mostly fixed, and Apple will be off again lifting it’s shirt and showing off it’s glorious perfection for all the world to see. It is good, though, to see Apple have a hiccup. Every day I see MacHeads delicately caressing their MacBook Pros like it is a stone tablet sent down from Yahweh, and turning up their noses to all other laptops that don’t run an operating system named after a furry animal with fangs. It drives me crazy to see these people walking around thinking Apple is the savior of the computing world!
Apple is as imperfect as the next guy. Sure, Snow Leopard is not as big of a bust as Vista was, but it damn sure doesn’t just work.
