Should I get Leopard now or wait?

I can get it at my campus bookstore for $70. Is there any bugs/stability issues? As a student would not have time to deal with them. It was already hell to go a week w/o my mbp when the keyboard died.

 

I have leopard and it feels faster than Tiger, still, you have to find out if the programs you use are compatible. Which are your main programs?

 

If you don't want to deal with them, stick with Tiger for now. I would assume that the $70 price will stay, right? Its not a promotion, is it? If the $70 price will stay $70, then I'd suggest you wait a while to let everything get smoothed out, and let third parties get their applications compatible with Leopard.

 

I rushed to get Leopard for $69 (+tax=$75) from the university bookstore, and here's my 1.5 cents:

Leopard does feel much faster with certain applications. Its overall visual appearance is more coherent, and 'sleeker' as well.

Spaces is an excellent feature for those who don't like cluttered desktops; and contrary to the expectations of many, Quicklook is no mere gimmick, and could come quite handy. The new Mail with integrated RSS, etc. is also a serious improvement over the previous version.

However, these are about the only positive things I have to say about this build of Leopard at least.

First: A certain reference program on which I'm dependent just quit working, putting me in a rather dire situation.

Also: While the visuals are 'prettier' on the whole, many people, including myself, are of the opinion that Apple has squandered the menu bar and the dock with useless transparency, reflection, whatnot effects. It's as if they've made a deliberate effort to make the menu bar and the dock less useable.

The Stacks feature is a huge fiasco, and you'll be able to find several reviews online as to why.

I've also experienced really odd bugs, such as Spaces deciding not to work for a while, and then becoming operational again.

I've actually gone back to Tiger after 3-4 days' experience with Leopard. The main reason to switch back was the incompatibility issues with software I absolutely need. So I'm thinking that if substantial improvements are made in the next couple of months, I'll go back to Leopard.

 

What do you mean by Stacks being a fiasco? I love Stacks. The only thing that's a bit inconvenient is when in the Fan mode if you have to many programs in the stack it forces you to go to the Finder for the others. No biggie because I only use the Fan mode for downloads and grid for my Applications in a stack. Stacks is several steps up from the start menu in Windows to access programs. Nothing is perfect but a FIASCO? I wouldn't go that far.

 

I dont care what the Mac users will say to this but Leopard has not been getting the best reviews, and this is expected when a new OS comes out...one title or headline of a news article listing ( http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/this-cat-has-fl.html) says "this cat has fleas!"...referring to bugs in the new OS.

I have also heard some similar complaints from new Mac users. Of course this will get settled out in good time.

 

I'm sorry dude but your post makes ZERO sense. To say that you don't care what the actual "Mac Users" say but the negative reviews from news articles have more of voice than people that use Leopard? I use Leopard and my iMac has never run better. It's much faster and I have no issues. Did a clean install and all is well. When you say the things you say you are labeled as the infamous troll.
Leopard has actually gotten very good reviews. Install issues have surfaced do to people upgrading rather than clean installs. Don't embellish untruths.

 

The biggest problem with Stacks is that it runs out of room. There is a limit to the number of files it will display even in grid mode. Also, many are complaining about the inability to choose an icon besides the first file/folder in the stack. They say that it is confusing trying to figure out what is what. Most people would love to have the drag a folder to the dock feature. You could choose your icon and it had a scrollable list that was limitless.

For the OP, I am going through the same dilemma, and to be honest, I am having a real hard time justifying the need to spend $69 for Leopard at this point. Tiger is doing very well for me and things like the menu bar, stacks, and the dock are really scaring me off. As for compatibility, you will likely be fine. Devs are releasing compatibility patches very quickly. I don't think compatibility will be much of an issue for most users.

 

What I had in mind was pretty much the same. In addition, there's the fact that in grid mode filenames all have to run into each other and hence have to be abbreviated, hence they become unreadable.

Besides, if you like to keep your stuff organized in folders within folders, in that case Stacks are *utterly* useless, in that they won't show you inside the folders unless you click 'reveal in Finder' anyway.

Unless you have more than 12 or 15 files in any Stacks-folder organized within sub-folders, *then* Stacks really is a good feature----but then, it's a step BACK from Tiger's Dock. None of the above issues come up when you choose to drag folders on your Dock in Tiger, and right-click. (There's again a certain limit to the number of files the menu will display, but it's FAR greater than what Stacks will show you.)

Hence, Leopard's Stacks is a fiasco, in that it doesn't improve Tiger's Dock, but makes it less functional.

NB: I'm not bashing Leopard; I *did* say that it *does* run faster, and that it *really* has some really useful improvements GUI-wise. That doesn't mean however that we ought to turn a blind eye on its shortcomings. Let's hope they'll be cured in 10.5.1

To Vaio2k7: People voicing their opinions here have actually had some experience with Leopard. Why are you making an attempt to sabotage the forum with this meaningless trolling? Apparently you haven't used Leopard, thus you can't have opinions on it. And Leopard HAS been getting very good reviews, and for the most part it deserves them. Or do you go around finding forums threads with the least criticism of Leopard inside, just to start flaming?

 

Yeah, my MBP feels much faster and more crisp in click action (if you know what I mean) now that I got Leopard.

 

Just upgraded ot leopard a few days ago. Paid full retail price of 129euro. I could have paid less but my wife can claim it back on tax so not concerned about the cost.
Anyways I also did a clean instal, and while installation was very easy and painless, I still had some issues getting everything back up and running. First I couldn't get the migration assistant to work with my old tiger instal, as I had upgraded the hdd as well, the old tiger was now in an exteranl usb case.
But that said, for the most part the manual drag and drop approach worked much better than I had expected.

I did have one program which failed to work (papers), which was a huge huge problem for me, but thankfully by the time I had sent an email, they had released an updated version.
So far, office 04, PS CS3, papers, endnoteX, skype, parallels, niceplayer, marcopolo and most of my old widgets are working well, if not faster than before. Although with a new faster hdd as well not all of that could be down to leopard.

I personally haven't found the menu bar a huge problem or a problem at all...is it a bit fugly, yes, does it render the OS unuseable No. Also I prefer my dock on the side so the 3-D issues doesn't exist for me, and have yet to really get into stacks or spaces yet. Stacks could really use a right click function though.
Spotlight is just sooooo much better, and I am very glad from that point of view. Also mail is at the moment my fav upgrade so far. I just turned on timemachine last night, for me I'm still on the fence about this feature. I personally like having just a simple one to one clone backup, but will give it a go and maybe I can change.
Unfortunately the only major issue I have now is that logmein fails to work with either safari or firefox, I wonder if this has to do with the reports that Java 6 failed to make it into leopard.
Oh I forgot, the best thing so far is actually the super fast, and automatic networking with my PC desktop. No more connect, pray for no spinning ball, and that the finder doesn't crash.


So in summary, am I happy that I have upgraded
Yes, but not as happy as I was buying it and thinking about upgrading. But I'm sure many of the smaller issues that I have will be fixed, and in the long run compared to my upgrade experience from XP to vista this has been fantastic.
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tiger performs much much better than leopard, and quicklook alone is worth the price of admission in my opinion, honestly, you have no idea how much time can be saved with the upgrade.

the only issue that I have is that stacks is so uncustomizable at this point, but I think that is something we will see very very soon.

I huge improvement overall for OS X, the new finder is also a massive improvement, much more efficient.

the rule of thumb usually is. if you are in the middle of something important, wait, and just as a precaution make sure to back up all of your stuff before you do the install.

I just ran an upgrade with absolutely no problems, if you aren't having any problems with Tiger, you should be able to run the upgrade without any issues at all. and if there is an issue you can just do an archive install. so there really isn't much worry of going without a computer honestly, if you know what you are doing.

I would highly recommend making the switch to Leopard, having Tiger won't necessarily hold you back in any way necessarilly, but I know that I will be getting much more done and getting it done more efficiently than I ever have before now that I have upgraded to 10.5

Be wary of tech reviews in general, especially if they are published by biased writers. that is the beauty of forums like this, you don't have to follow my opinion. but I can honestly say that all the complaints I have heard only come from very bored people on the internet. actual users are absolutely loving it.

people complaining about the "look" of the OS are wankers, it is all personal opinion, don't listen to any of it, you know whether you like it or not. I absolutely love it, looks fantastic, and I don't find it obtrusive at all. and the new dock looks fantastic as well, but it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks about that but you. if you are making your decision based off that though . . .