New York Times gadget guru David Pogue wrote in his review of Apple's brand new operating system, Snow Leopard, that he experienced "frustrating glitches" with several applications and parts of the user interface. We asked him to stretch it out a bit and tell us what exactly the glitches were. The glitches turn out to be Windows-grade failures that could stop you from doing your job.
Hey Paul! It's very difficult to say whether my experiences will reflect everyone's... Snow Leopard isn't out yet, and only a few people had it in advance, so I can't really speak for anyone's experiences but my own! But here's what I experienced: * Photoshop CS3. Crashes every 5-10 minutes--just exits and loses all changes. I asked Apple about it, and they told me that there are "known issues," but that there would be no fix. Adobe suggests only that you upgrade to CS4. * Word 2008 also exits abruptly from time to time. Also I saw a couple of bizarre cosmetic glitches (empty white rectangle on the screen). * It also disabled an old laser printer of mine, too. Had to add it back using its IP address, whereas Leopard used to just find it. Again, I have no idea if the masses will see these problems. (Others, like the TextExpander and CyberDuck incompatibilities, are documented and universal--a fix came out for TextExpander yesterday, in fact.) Hope this helps! --DP
I'm nearly as much of a Mac loyalist as Pogue is, but my practical advice to VentureBeat readers is: Don't spend your $29 on Snow Leopard for about a month, until Apple releases the first big upgrade. There are plenty of people who will happily live with Snow Leopard's bugs, who'll eagerly help Apple find and fix them. You're not one of those people.
[Photo: Randal Schwartz]