June 1st, 2008
While reading through the ad-infested paper version of MacWorld’s July 2008 issue, I stumbled upon the Spotlight column by Rick LePage: What I Hate about Leopard, “After two years of development, the latest OS X should be better.”
Great. I’ve been looking for some solid criticism of Apple’s latest and greatest, especially considering WWDC is coming up — which I hope will reveal a little about 10.6.
LePage starts off with The Little Things: three admittedly minor issues that plague his very existence.
Fair enough. Things like these can drive people bat-shit insane. The problem I have with this list is, though, is that it’s supposed to point out that Leopard shows “… a lack of polish throughout.”
Just off the top of my head I can point out three major areas which indicate that Leopard was all about polish. The new Aqua look makes OS X more consistent than ever, especially with brushed metal gone; the new Finder incorporates design decisions pioneered in iTunes, again being made standard across the OS; and under the hood a large number of enhancements and additions have made the OS more consistent to work with for developers: think APIs like Core Animation.
Honestly LePage, even the Leopard review by your own publication points out that Leopard is more consistent in these areas.
But, as LePage continues, he points out that there are “entire features that don’t work right.” The culprit? Spaces. Why? Microsoft Office 2008 is hopelessly broken by Spaces. I fail to see how this is not Microsoft but Leopard’s fault. Admittedly Apple has fixed a large number of issues with Spaces in the 10.5.3 update.
There seems to be only one actually credible complaint in the entire article, and that’s a loosely put together diatribe about how Back to My Mac didn’t work. Fair enough, lots of people had trouble with it, but that hardly makes the entire OS unpolished. It’s a .Mac issue, no?
Not wanting to be seen as Mr. Crankypants, LePage ends on a somewhat positive note:
OS X has been in steady development for nearly a decade. It should be getting better and more stable with age, not the other way around. By the time 10.5.7 or 10.5.8 rolls around, much of the pain that I’ve been feeling will likely go away.
Way to go at making a consistent argument there. I’m off to go shush all the crying babies.