OS X Leopard (10.5) Views

[wbarnhill]

I'm just wondering if anyone else has dealt with 10.5 yet. My initial reaction to Leopard was "This is gonna be great", until I got to the hour long "Disc Verification" stage PRIOR to the actual install which took an additional hour. So OS X installs now take longer than Windows installs.

Ok, so I'm installed and ready to go, and Leopard boots for the first time. Odd, it's a bit slower than Tiger... Maybe that's just the first start up. Ok, Time Machine, my 500GB external drive should be perfect for this... Oh, wait... Mac wants to reformat it first which means Windows won't be able to read it. There goes that idea.

A restart just to clear out any installation residue in memory, and once again, it's slow booting. When Tiger would literally jump to life, Leopard reminds me of XP Pro slowly loading piece by piece. Dock, menu bar, hard drive icons, and finally the rest of my icons. Ok, it's booted, how about programs. Crap. Bouncing icons for 20 seconds before the program actually shows up.

This is a 2.4 Ghz C2D with 4GB of RAM. What the heck is going on here.

Then finally this morning I get to work and go to wake it from it's sleep, and the login screen pops up but lo and behold, they beach ball of death just sits there spinning and I can't type in anything, just move my mouse pathetically around without being able to click anything either. So a hard power down and started back up and here I am.

As soon as I have the patience to do so, I'm going back to Tiger. Leopard has disappointed me greatly.

Other thoughts and opinions?

Edit: Before anyone suggests spotlight indexing, the system ran all day Monday and Tuesday, and there's not much on here. Index should be done by now.

 

[Ken Ibold]

Now you know the powah of the dark side!

 

[mikea]

The slowness is because Spotlight is indexing every file on the disk. Leave it running overnight and it'll be speedy in the morning.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Hmm. It's *supposed* to be faster.

Check macintouch and macfixit, they probably have some pertinent info. I haven't done the upgrade yet, but I was gonna buy it today.

 

[wbarnhill]

Hmm. It's *supposed* to be faster.

Check macintouch and macfixit, they probably have some pertinent info. I haven't done the upgrade yet, but I was gonna buy it today.

It's bearable, just not what I expected. We'll see how things go the rest of this week.

 

[rpadula]

Repair permissions?

How did you install? Clean, Archive & Install, or <shudder> Upgrade?

Have any potentially incompatible apps installed?

Did you have a Bootcamp/Windows partition?


-Rich (haven't made the leap yet)

 

[mikea]

Repair permissions?

How did you install? Clean, Archive & Install, or <shudder> Upgrade?

Have any potentially incompatible apps installed?

Did you have a Bootcamp/Windows partition?


-Rich (haven't made the leap yet)

Me neither. I want to take the opportunity to do a clean install because I originally did a migration from a G4 iMac and since added vary and sundry all kinds of crap, including hacksies, with really no ill effect.

I'm only nervous about listing and reinstalling all of the apps I use that I've added.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

William,

You must have "issues." I timed some things before and after.

The DVD verification did take forever (~1 hour). For me, the install took 25 minutes. Both required no babysitting whatsoever.

10.4: Cold boot 1:36, Safari first launch 8 bouncemarks, subsequent launch 1.
10.5: Cold boot 1:06, Safari first launch 3 bouncemarks, subsequent launch 2.
However, the dock didn't come up until 1:46 after booting.

I think one thing that may also take time is it seems more detailed previews are generated for the "Cover Flow" view. FWIW, I'm just over an hour in and Spotlight has already finished indexing.

Oh yeah... Spaces is coooooooooooooool.

 

[wbarnhill]

William,

You must have "issues." I timed some things before and after.

The DVD verification did take forever (~1 hour). For me, the install took 25 minutes. Both required no babysitting whatsoever.

10.4: Cold boot 1:36, Safari first launch 8 bouncemarks, subsequent launch 1.
10.5: Cold boot 1:06, Safari first launch 3 bouncemarks, subsequent launch 2.
However, the dock didn't come up until 1:46 after booting.

I think one thing that may also take time is it seems more detailed previews are generated for the "Cover Flow" view. FWIW, I'm just over an hour in and Spotlight has already finished indexing.

Oh yeah... Spaces is coooooooooooooool.

More problems:

At the end of the day I generally put the macbook pro to sleep since I have windows relating to work open that I want to look at the following day. Tiger had no problem with this, Leopard just freezes after I come out of sleep mode. Yesterday I couldn't type in my password, just had the funky beach ball of doom and I could move the mouse around, but no clicking, no typing. Today it let me type my password in, went to the desktop for a second, then gave me a black screen and same issue as yesterday.

I'm sure it's not just me, particularly considering I followed the instructions to a T. These issues should not be happening, and it makes me feel like they rushed it out the door to meet their October deadline.

I'd hate to wipe this drive, but it may just come down to that if that's the only way to get a decent install of Leopard.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Two things the "genius" at the Apple Store told me:

1. Logitech devices are causing problems.

2. Application Enhancer causes problems.

Don't wipe the drive. Do do a clean install (choose "archive and install.") You may have some sort of third-party thing that's incompatible.

 

[wbarnhill]

Two things the "genius" at the Apple Store told me:

1. Logitech devices are causing problems.

2. Application Enhancer causes problems.

Don't wipe the drive. Do do a clean install (choose "archive and install.") You may have some sort of third-party thing that's incompatible.

Nothing logitech on here.

External devices: Apple wired keyboard, Apple wireless mighty mouse, HP OfficeJet 6310, Western Digital MyBook Premium Edition 500GB External HD.

Software installed: Adobe CS3, Aperture, MS Office 2004, iWork 08, Adium, Firefox, Remote Desktop Connection.

I've got a Boot Camp partition with Windows XP Pro SP2 as well. Let me know if you see anything here that could cause issues. Startup is still slow.

(I've also got issues with my external keyboard from time to time, but that was occurring in Tiger as well. Bleh.)

 

[mikea]

Two things the "genius" at the Apple Store told me:

1. Logitech devices are causing problems.

2. Application Enhancer causes problems.

Don't wipe the drive. Do do a clean install (choose "archive and install.") You may have some sort of third-party thing that's incompatible.

I'd like to what Logitech device requires a software install. Bluetooth and USB are standard. I'm glad I usually don't bother installing the software that often is just crapware.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I'd like to what Logitech device requires a software install. Bluetooth and USB are standard. I'm glad I usually don't bother installing the software that often is just crapware.

IIRC I had to install something to be able to configure the 3rd button on my old Logitech mouse. Sure it worked fine without, but I didn't buy a 3-button mouse to only be able to use the "standard" parts.

William, Nothing you posted really jumps out at me... Just be sure you have the latest versions of everything, including your firmware. Also, if you are getting full-blown kernel panic crashes, go to Applications->Utilities->Console, click "show log list" and navigate to /Library/Logs/panic.log and look for where it says "Kernel loadable modules in backtrace" or somesuch. That might provide some clues.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

OK, I've had it for several days now, and I still like it.

The biggest improvement? It's FAST. Very rare for an OS upgrade! I don't have much in the way of hard data, but I'd say it's subjectively at least 50% faster overall than Tiger was. Things that used to take a second are now very snappy.

Haven't seen a beach ball yet. Also, not yet a single system or application crash. I'm sure I'll be able to do that sooner or later, I've managed to crash nearly every system, gadget, etc. I've ever had.

Spotlight indexing was way faster than previous systems, I think when I got this computer and put all my data on it, Spotlight took in the neighborhood of 24 hours to index. This time, it was less than one hour. Plugged in my 500 gig external drive, and it indexed very quickly as well. Also, spotlight searches are now blazing fast. I'm one of the folks who's been using Spotlight for launching applications that aren't in my dock, and I used to have to type, for example, "activ" for Activity Monitor and then wait about 3-4 seconds for the menu to pop up. Now, it's almost instantaneous. I like!

I've never been very good at backing up (neither has the rest of the world) because it's pretty much always been a royal pain. Time Machine was a VERY good idea. I just turned it on, so we'll see how that goes. It says that it keeps hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups until the backup drive is full. It's also very painless to set up: Plug in a new external drive and it'll ask if you want to use it for Time Machine. Click "Yes." Done. There's not much in the way of options, but I guess you don't really need too many options when it's backing up everything on the schedule listed.

I'm still getting used to Spaces, but for someone like me it's very useful. I only have four virtual desktops set up so far. You can switch using option-arrow keys (right and left will also flip through sequentially) and other methods I haven't used. Also, if you have all of an application's windows open in one space, and you switch to that app, it'll automatically take you to that space. That's been the most disconcerting part, but the animation makes me realize what happened and it actually works out OK for me. I normally have a metric assload of windows open for the various projects I'm working on at any given time, so Spaces helps to massively declutter my screen.

You can easily move windows between spaces by holding down the mouse button on the title bar as if you were going to just move the window, and then switching to a different space. It's very nice to be able to have the various spaces organized for various purposes! For example, I have one space right now with all my open work stuff in it: My logbook program which is a Windows program running under CrossOver, a written test I'm writing for the company to use for testing upgrading new drivers, and some other documents I'm using for ideas. Then, i have another space with some "fun" stuff in it, like PoA, etc. A third space is holding all of the apps like iTunes and Mail that I just tend to leave open all the time, and the fourth is empty so I can show off my kewl "Space Shuttle in orbit" desktop picture.

Overall, in case you can't tell... I'm very happy with it. It's a definite improvement over 10.4 "Tiger," and one of the rare upgrades that involves not only an increased feature set but increased speed as well.

 

[jesse]

OK, I've had it for several days now, and I still like it.

The biggest improvement? It's FAST. Very rare for an OS upgrade! I don't have much in the way of hard data, but I'd say it's subjectively at least 50% faster overall than Tiger was. Things that used to take a second are now very snappy.

Haven't seen a beach ball yet. Also, not yet a single system or application crash. I'm sure I'll be able to do that sooner or later, I've managed to crash nearly every system, gadget, etc. I've ever had.

Spotlight indexing was way faster than previous systems, I think when I got this computer and put all my data on it, Spotlight took in the neighborhood of 24 hours to index. This time, it was less than one hour. Plugged in my 500 gig external drive, and it indexed very quickly as well. Also, spotlight searches are now blazing fast. I'm one of the folks who's been using Spotlight for launching applications that aren't in my dock, and I used to have to type, for example, "activ" for Activity Monitor and then wait about 3-4 seconds for the menu to pop up. Now, it's almost instantaneous. I like!

I've never been very good at backing up (neither has the rest of the world) because it's pretty much always been a royal pain. Time Machine was a VERY good idea. I just turned it on, so we'll see how that goes. It says that it keeps hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups until the backup drive is full. It's also very painless to set up: Plug in a new external drive and it'll ask if you want to use it for Time Machine. Click "Yes." Done. There's not much in the way of options, but I guess you don't really need too many options when it's backing up everything on the schedule listed.

I'm still getting used to Spaces, but for someone like me it's very useful. I only have four virtual desktops set up so far. You can switch using option-arrow keys (right and left will also flip through sequentially) and other methods I haven't used. Also, if you have all of an application's windows open in one space, and you switch to that app, it'll automatically take you to that space. That's been the most disconcerting part, but the animation makes me realize what happened and it actually works out OK for me. I normally have a metric assload of windows open for the various projects I'm working on at any given time, so Spaces helps to massively declutter my screen.

You can easily move windows between spaces by holding down the mouse button on the title bar as if you were going to just move the window, and then switching to a different space. It's very nice to be able to have the various spaces organized for various purposes! For example, I have one space right now with all my open work stuff in it: My logbook program which is a Windows program running under CrossOver, a written test I'm writing for the company to use for testing upgrading new drivers, and some other documents I'm using for ideas. Then, i have another space with some "fun" stuff in it, like PoA, etc. A third space is holding all of the apps like iTunes and Mail that I just tend to leave open all the time, and the fourth is empty so I can show off my kewl "Space Shuttle in orbit" desktop picture.

Overall, in case you can't tell... I'm very happy with it. It's a definite improvement over 10.4 "Tiger," and one of the rare upgrades that involves not only an increased feature set but increased speed as well.

Sounds like I need a Mac.