Leopard: This Kitty Has Rabies
Update 2007-11-30: PC Magazine has jumped into the fray with the op-ed piece Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off, noting:
Let’s see, Tiger crashed—oh yeah, NEVER. Ten months and I’m installing everything from production-level Office for the Mac 2004 to 0.x releases of VLC, Seashore, and Ecto—even betas of Firefox and Parallels. Whatever my nerdy little heart desires. I’ve had those early apps crash, but Tiger never faltered.
A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times. That’s six cold reboots for Oliver. Apple isn’t even honest enough to admit that Leopard is crashing: The OS just grays out my desktop and pops up a dialog box telling me I’ve got to reboot. Like the whole thing is my fault. I even snapped a picture of it. After all, I HAD PLENTY OF CHANCES!
I think there’s one big difference between Leopard and Vista: Apple has a chance in hell of fixing Leopard. Microsoft, I think not so much.
Update 2007-11-28: Seems the primary source of the Atheros airport driver death problem has been determined, according to Apple Insider:
The exact behavior of affected systems can vary slightly, but appears to largely be connected to the computer’s power supply. While the connection remains largely stable when plugged into an AC adapter, switching to battery power renders the wireless link intermittent and in many cases drops network access entirely when idle.
Amusingly, I proved confirmation of this myself moments ago when I accidentally knocked out the mag-safe connector and… my access died and then my machine kernel panic’d (the mag-safe connector remains one of my favourite laptop features of all time, honest).
——————–
After a month of using Leopard it saddens me to say that this is the first release of any Mac OS that makes me regret having installed it. I’d roll back to Tiger in a heartbeat if I could. If you haven’t updated yet and you’re on the fence I recommend waiting at least a couple more point releases before taking the plunge because this OS crashes, and when it goes, it goes hard.
Empirical evidence speaks louder than anecdotal so here’s the crash report windows for the latest four application deaths: Airport (the first two, from different crashes - a seemingly common occurrence), Front Row, Software Update and Transmit (you’ll note that three out of four of those are Apple apps).
The net result has been a whole lot of these, roughly once every two days:
(Yes, all of these crash reports have been dutifully submitted to Apple.)
Ordinarily I’d be tempted to write it off as an isolated occurrence, perhaps something to do with this machine, but I see the same sorts of things happening on my iMac. Eventually it dies a hard, slow death the worst being the complete unresponsiveness of all applications.
Every now and then on launch an application will bounce for a long, long time and then fail to start though the icon appears in the Dock - evidently inhabiting some sort of semi-started purgatory. After that no applications can be quit or launched successfuly. I suspect this is the result of a failure within launchd somewhere but the net effect is that the OS becomes useless.
My gut impression is that Apple bit off more than it could chew with Leopard and made too many fundamental changes to the internals that haven’t been tested nearly enough. The things I really like about Leopard, like Spaces and Time Machine, are stand-alone applications at best and not fundamental improvements to the state of the art worthy of this grief.
The net result is a half-baked, rather unstable OS that I just cannot trust. My laptop and the iMac are now backed up to different external drive hourly by both Time Machine and SuperDuper!.
As such I’ve geared myself up to set aside a day next week to do a complete clean re-install of everything to see if that helps.
I cannot tell you how much it saddens me to be cursing the daily operations of my Mac as much as I would a PC.
Update:
Seems some commenters have some strong feelings about how it is in effect my fault these are happening so I thought I’d link to some other folks noticing these issues. Share the comment rage people, don’t waste it all on one blog.
100+ messages about the Atheros kernel panic situation.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that program stability in Leopard is definitely not up to what I’ve come to take for granted in Tiger, and I’ve had a more application crashes in two days than I’ve probably experienced in the past six months with Tiger. Some might dismiss this as less than optimum program optimization for Leopard, but that doesn’t explain the Finder locking up, and Pixelmator 1.0.2, another app. that has proven crash-prone in Leopard, was just released last week. And those aren’t the only ones that have crashed. I’m becoming a lot more re-acquainted with the Dreaded Spinning Beach Ball of Death than I ever wanted to be.
- Learning to Love Leopard
Anyway after this installation everything seemed fine and Apple had just released the 10.5.1 update. Then the lock ups started, intermittent keyboard lock ups, programs just stopped responding (force quit wouldn’t quit them), trying to mount DMG’s or extract zips failed with all manner of errors. Bizarrely enough a reboot resolved all of these- until they started to happen again. The my iDisk started to complain, by complain I mean I noticed it wasn’t doing what it should. Finally this was just one hard reboot too many for Leopard and I got a massive corruption of the drive - it would crash as soon as it tried to load the boot loader.
- Leopard - My painful experiences… So far
Fight!
Scott responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 4:53 pm #
One thing that helped me was looking at the log files using Console.app. There were three or four things that were routinely failing in the background (some logging a failure every 10 seconds). As soon as I resolved these problems, Leopard became a whole lot nicer.
On the other hand, I had no kernel panics so this might not help.
PC responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 5:05 pm #
Did you do a clean install from the start? I’ve never recommended any major upgrade (ie, XP -> Vista, 10.4 -> 10.5, etc) for users since there’s too many issues to deal with (which are mostly 3rd party app related). These days probably a community yea/nay site for working/non-working apps/extensions would be useful…
chris responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 5:24 pm #
@Scott: interesting. What sort of things were you seeing?
@PC: No, it wasn’t a clean install from the start. I try to avoid those as it usually takes about a day to get everything back to mostly-working and then a week of copying over the lesser-used and forgotten items. Its particularly problematic when your system has a lot of things like PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ruby gems etc. all installed on it as well - it’s not as simple as just copying back the Users directory.
That said, I think tomorrow will be a clean install day.
JohnDoe responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 5:24 pm #
Dude - You have bad Ram.
chris responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 5:55 pm #
Could be but I don’t think so. The RAM tests all checked out, the two distinct machines share absolutely no common physical RAM and in my experience bad RAM crashes tend to be different and far more frequent than this. Its also fairly uncommon for RAM to spontaneously fail - it’s usually bad from the start - and even more so to spontaneously fail immediately after an OS update.
Occam’s razor: I’ll stick with the software for the time being.
Ruel Smith responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 6:20 pm #
What person in their right mind, no matter what Apple or anyone else says, upgrades an operating system to a major new release without doing a clean install? You’re asking for problems.
While we’re on this, Apple and others need to take a look at the Linux model. I can upgrade to an entirely new and different Linux distro altogether, put all my apps on there I want, and have it running exactly how I want it in less than 2 hours with a fast cable or ADSL line. All inclusive package installation schemes that download software via repositories and keep them up to date spank the old scheme of installing software one title at a time.
guest responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 6:20 pm #
You didn’t mention whether you did an upgrade or an archive/install… big difference. I’d never recommend the former for a major OS install like this.
(Also, if you have two machines, it would probably generally be a good idea to space out the OS upgrades, so you can still work on the old system on the second one if things go awry with the new system on the first.)
chris responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 6:26 pm #
@guest: I absolutely agree about spacing the machine installs; I blame my temporary install insanity on New OS Euphoria causing a lack of “right mindedness” at a time it was needed most.
I should point out that there’s been no data loss from this, largely because years of computer use have made Cmd-S the most common key combination my fingers hit.
And despite what some people seem to think I would not be posting this if my tales were isolated or unique. Au contraire, a quick Google for either form of crash will yield you numerous current hits. It seems the airport driver quality issues has become a particularly prevalent bane.
DocB responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 6:34 pm #
Rule#1: On major point upgrades ALWAYS do a clean install. Yes it takes more time but you’ll have a happily functioning Mac at the end. It gets rid of all that cruft that collects between major upgrades. It gives you a reason to discard applications you rarely use and archive documents you haven’t looked at in a year. It assures that you have a known baseline functioning install before you start adding things on. It’s probably a good time to clone that install as well before you tinker.
Rule#2: Resist the temptation to do a clean install and then use Apple’s migration assistant to bring over your old user. It unfortunately is not fine grained enough to let you pick and choose what is safe and what is not. It will happily pull over plugins and other stuff you installed in your old user that will cause problems in your new setup.
Rule#3: I guess this should have been #1. ALWAYS unplug all peripherals before you start a clean install. This seems to be true especially for USB devices. I failed to follow this rule the first 3 times I tried to install Leopard on my heavily peripheraled PowerMac G5. Once I stripped it down to just keyboard and mouse all went well. You may find that some things just aren’t going to work anymore such as old external hubs. You may also be surprised that somethings you didn’t expect to work do work right out of the box - my Epson Perfection scanner works great with Image Capture without any additional software installed.
There you have it. Nine out of ten times if you follow these simple rules the upgrade bug won’t bite you in the behind. The tenth time is just blind dumb luck.
Neil Anderson responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 7:36 pm #
Leopard 10.5.0 has been beautifully stable on my Intel iMac. Just checked iStat Pro and it shows the OS uptime as 18 days 3 hours. I’d call that pretty stable.
Steve Jenson responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 8:40 pm #
Chris!
Do you have any kernel extensions installed by third-party app developers? It would be easier to try removing kernel extensions first before wiping out your entire system. For what it’s worth, I upgraded both my Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro to Leopard and have only had one kernel panic in the ensuing time.
Jim responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 9:25 pm #
Did you install with FireWire drives connected or any USB devices (particularly old ones like floppy drives?) Such kernel panics often occur when peripherals are attached that are not supported by the OS. It’s always a good idea to disconnect peripherals prior to an installation, and as been said, whenever possible, do an archive and install rather than an upgrade.
Tracy Valleau responded on 22 Nov 2007 at 11:22 pm #
Sorry for your troubles, but it’s not Apple’s fault: it if was, it would apply to everyone, eh? If it applied to -everyone- there’d be a HUGE stink online, not < 1% of the 2,000,000 copies sold the first week. I did an update (by accident) and it caused problems. Went back and did an archive and install, and paid attention online to what’s not compatible, and yanked it (input managers et al) and Leopard has been stable as a rock on two different machines ever since then. No crashes; no issues at all. Everything “just works.” (MacBook and PPC Quad.)
chris responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 1:07 am #
Absolutely no kernel extensions installed on either machine. My OS is only extended through shell scripts the way god intended it to be
However this statement:
“I upgraded both my Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro to Leopard and have only had one kernel panic in the ensuing time”
is symptomatic of what I’m talking about, though to a lesser degree. I remember a sum total of 0 (zero) kernel panics using OS X 10.4 and my software, save for the OS and any apps upgraded to run on 10.5 hasn’t changed. The same half dozen apps I use this month are the same ones I used last month.
I’m fully expecting this to be the result of multiple software incompatibilities or the nature of the kinds of software I run, against low-level changes to Apple’s core code. The issue that’s most interesting to me is in fact the one with the Airport Atheros driver because it does seem so random and more and more people are noticing it happen.
Like I said, if I thought I was a truly unique special snowflake I’d never have mentioned it but the Google doesn’t bear that out (as much I do in fact like to think I am unique and special).
As for the “if 1,000,000 other users don’t have a problem then it must be the fault of the 1,000 who do” argument, that doesn’t wash with me. I’d have to see what you’re running and how you’re using your computer. I’m used to laptop uptimes measured in weeks not days or hours, running against an always-on internet connection hosting two different web servers and two database servers, amongst other things. Before anyone says “well, with that what do you expect???” I reply: “it ran just peachy under 10.4, and 10.3 and 10.2″.
Regardless, a read back through the comments shows that even here people are in fact having issues. Perhaps not the degree I’m seeing but the comments here do hint at issues. I’m just sayin’ is all.
chris responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 1:11 am #
One other thought to the “always do a clean install crowd”: that’s really only feasible for certain types of users, mainly those for whom everything they use and need is either in the Applications folder or the user’s home directory. In such cases, which may in fact be the vast majority of Mac users, a clean install is a trivial issue.
The developers amongst us will note, however, that for development machines such things are rarely the case. Its not an exaggeration when I say that to rebuild this machine for development purposes would take days (see other posts about the breakage of PHP and MySQL to name a few issues).
No one’s arguing the value of clean installs, just that their utility as a carte blanche solution is not universal.
LKern responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 5:21 am #
This is not just an update to Tiger, but a re-write at kernel level. No clean install = asking for trouble. I did NOT do a clean install myself (me being kind of a tech director and all), and had to fix a number of things when it became apparent that the warnings I read about on sites like MacFixit were rearing their ugly heads. Most of it had to do with App enhancers and other items in the login pane. Others were “old” apps like TB2 v7.0 which HATES Leopard. Once I tracked down the 4 or 5 culprits, this OS is rock-solid and quite impressive.
SO instead of finding just WHAT was causing the issues, you decided to write that it’s the OS that’s bad, not the user, then announce you’re doing a clean install, which you SHOULD have done in the first place in order to give the OS a fair appraisal.
Shame on you.
Scott Schuckert responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 6:16 am #
Clean install every time? I do Macintosh tech support; 90% of my customers would be completely lost if they tried that. On my own day-to-day computer, I’ve ALWAYS simply done an upgrade, all the way back to the Public Beta - and I moved the software install to a newer computer during the interval!
Leopard is the FIRST time this procedure has bitten me. It may well this is the only way to get this OS working (though after a clean install it was still slightly glitchy) but this is not, and should not be, the norm. If so, Apple should remove the Upgrade option.
TimK responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 6:27 am #
Chris - the problem with your article is the sensational headline, and the common developer assumption that the whole world is made up of developers. I have been in software development for over 25 years. I was programming for the Mac when it had to be done on a Lisa. I have developed code for the vast majority of the os/hardware combinations that have been in the world over the last 25 years.
The problem with your article is that the world of computer users is made up of very few people like us! Most people using their computer just want to use it. This article makes things sound like a flaky release for the world.
Being the technically adroit person that you claim to be, you should understand that with what Apple has been talking about for the last few years, and given how they are setting up to use a common OS base, that there would in fact be a lot of changes under the cover, and yes, people, like developers, who are pushing their systems would be affected. I have lots of servers and services running on my machine - some third party, some my own, and I decided that for an OS that has probably changed a lot, that it would be well worth my time to take the two or three days (plus all those aggravating d’ohs for things you forget) in return for a stable system. I received my OS in the courier the day it shipped. I updated all my machines over that weekend (and into the next week). I have not had a SINGLE kernel panic and my system works great. We can argue about new features in the OS, but to trash a release for the reasons you have stated, to ignore what you should know about OS’s and how they are going to interact with what you are doing, seems pretty sensational.
Steve responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 11:51 am #
Sorry, but I disagree with your position on clean installs. People should take upgrading major OS releases so casually. In fact, the more customized your installation (i.e. your developer setups), the more important it is for you to do a clean install, despite the extra time required.
Articles like this are bothersome, because the are written by people that “should know better” yet ignorantly dismiss conventional wisdom of doing things like clean installs and playing with the new OS on a test machine first. Then, instead of acknowledging your own mistakes, you blast the vendor. Brilliant!
chris responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 12:59 pm #
@TimK: thanks for the thoughtful post. I agree it’s easy to forget the world isn’t all like us. That said, the crash reports and log files currently point to the OS as the culprit and given that the OS is the primary change-point thus far, I still lay blame there.
No one’s arguing the complexity of Leopard or the scope of the changes under the hood, but difficulties at that level should not leak through to the user. Those unlike us who might be seeing such issues will likely suck it up in silence, thinking that all computers should work this way. And if that’s the case it would be a great shame.
(I do concede that describing 10.5 as having a disease that’s terminal is probably - hopefully - going too far. I hold out great hopes for the next few point releases and would not wish it dead by any means. Alas, the title is the title and it shall live on in infamy.)
@Steve: I assume you meant to write “People should not take…”. Fair enough, however keep in mind that, as it pertains to TimK’s and other’s points, not all Mac users are able to, or know how to, do a complete clean re-install of their OS. If that is a requirement for stability then should it not fall on the vendor’s shoulder’s to ensure it happens rather than the user’s? To expect the world to do “clean installs and playing with the new OS on a test machine first” is a bit unrealistic no, given the nature of this particular software, the nature of its release, and target market?
chris brown responded on 24 Nov 2007 at 8:55 am #
zero Lep crashes for me, three weeks in, knock on silicon…
John Boyce responded on 24 Nov 2007 at 2:04 pm #
I have installed Leopard on a 733MHz tower with no problems at all other than if my CPU goes to sleep, I have to force reboot it. It will not wake up. But seriously, that’s the only problem I have had and I did an upgrade install, not a clean install. Also, I had to install Leopard from a computer that was fast enough to run it since my old crate obviously did not make the cut.
Paul responded on 24 Nov 2007 at 3:22 pm #
I have a colleague running Leopard. He’s pleased with it.
Since I’m depending on some software (4th Dimension) not being compatible yet, I stuck to 1.4.11.
For stability-sake I cannot say that 1.4.11 improved ,my life so far. Weird spinning beachballs I’ve hardly seen in 1.4.10 are now a more regular occurrence.
The infamous Safari 3 comes with 1.4.11.
Some functionality like being able to command-click java-directed links is gone with Safari 3.
What always worked in Safari 2, doesn’t anymore in 3.
If I can find a way to revert to Safari 2, I will.
All in all: If you’re the owner of a Powerbook G4 like me, you might consider sticking with 1.4.10 just a little bit longer.
Paul responded on 24 Nov 2007 at 3:27 pm #
@Steve responded on 23 Nov 2007 at 11:51 am
It *should* be as easy as an Apple would be.
Having done a lot of Mac service, I’ve also done a clean install of 1.4.11.
Spinning beachballs are my share. Wake from sleep can sometimes be problematic.
Much in line with the leopard release.
It just makes me wonder. QA? Has it been tested properly before release?
The hunch is: not enough.
Over the past years, my first-release Powebook G4 17″ has been quite stable during its daily mistreatment. Now it’s suddenly acting up.
Pure coincidence? Naaah!
Kurt responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 4:58 am #
For what it’s worth, I have had all the problems listed above with Leopard, and none with Tiger. I did a “zero all data” erase and install (to be sure nothing would mess it up). No third party apps, nothing connected except for an Apple keyboard, mouse, iPod and iPhone. I also do Mac tech support.
I am sticking with Tiger for now.
A.J. responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 5:51 pm #
No crashes here… on any of my five machines… PowerPc to new Intels…. ??? I didn’t so any “clean” installs, either. All regular upgrades. This isn’t to minimize your problems, I’m just quizzical… good thing “rabies” is a rare disease when compared to the entire population
william responded on 25 Nov 2007 at 6:21 pm #
I noticed flakiness such as you described from 10.5 but the 10.5.1 update seems to have resolved it pretty well. No serious complaints here, I’ve got it running on a MBP (original release, CoreDuo 1.83) and a Core2Duo 24″ iMac.
Keith responded on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:43 am #
Ugh, there have been myriad problems with Leopard in our office.
A bunch of us upgraded early because we really, really need the latest Java build. Currently we spend half our time on XP machines, which is really annoying.
But now Eclipse is wildly unstable for me. I have to shut it down every two hours or I risk a brutal crash that will ultimately require a reboot. The Flash IDE runs comically slowly for the guy next to me. It takes him 20 seconds to move a square two pixels to the left. It’s funny, but also unusable. Not sure what he would do if Flash were a major part of his job. And the real killer: Java wasn’t even updated like Apple said it would be. Apparently they pulled it on the day before launch.
So for all this trouble we got, umm, transparent bars, I guess? Ridiculous.
Sorry folks, but If MS pulled an OS release this bad we’d be hearing about like… well, like Vista.
Joost responded on 04 Mar 2008 at 11:27 am #
AHHH!
I’m getting really sick of my MBP now, after upgrading to Leopard last week. Landed on this page after a wake fail: spinning beachball, no login, no response whatsoever. Half a day of work lost.
This is like my Windows days. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But that doesn’t get my work back.
I want to have a computer to do things, not to do computers.
I am really angry. Apple, go fix 10.5, rip out unnecessary features if that benefits stability, but DO SOMETHING!
FINDER / SPOTLIGHT / NETWORK MOUNT & SHARING / SAFARI: ‘SBBOD’ ALL THE TIME
Haven’t shut off my computer the normal way a single time. All freezes.
Phil responded on 08 Mar 2008 at 8:05 am #
I’ve been having these kernel panics since installing Leopard (Archive and Install to those interested). Again, like the others, Tiger was about 98% stable. When Leopard kernel panics for me it’s always the Atheros driver. This is corroborated by multiple posts I see from multiple users on multiple forums (including Apple’s own discussions). People with Broadcomm chipsets or no wireless (Mac Pros, PowerMac G5s) don’t seem to have any issues. I’m a little worried that Apple hasn’t been able to fix this in two updates, one of which specifically targeted the AirPort kernel panics. It makes me wonder if it’s a flaw in the wireless card’s firmware. If so, I hope the firmware can be patched and that all those cards don’t need to be replaced.
Anyway, to all those blaming the end users for being lusers and not doing clean installs etc. and claiming that a clean install is necessary for every OS second digit upgrade know that I spent years with a PowerBook G4 DVI upgrading from 10.1, to 10.2, to 10.3, to 10.4 and all third digit upgrades in between and nothing was ever reinstalled. The hard drive was even changed and imaged with Disk Utility bit for bit with no faltering. This is purely an Apple issue randomly affecting people with the Atheros chipset. There have also been numerous cases of people doing Erase and Installs and getting the kernel panics before installing any third party software. Keep submitting those reports people !!!!
And to those who need their productivity back and want to return to Tiger, just do an Archive and Install from your Tiger disks. You’ll need to ensure that all 3rd party software is Tiger compatible.