September 11th, 2009
Snow Leopard 10.6.1 – Vastly Improved
I’ve been wondering for the past week while Apple seemed to rush Snow Leopard out the door last week. Apple enthusiasts like me weren’t complaining, but there are always concerns about being the first on the block to install a new version of an OS.
My normally overzealous enthusiasm was muted. I spent a good bit of last weekend trying to get Time Machine to work. There were other odd little quirks like mail.app’s disinclination to show you the contents of the inbox when you first opened mail (in case you’re worried, the mail is there … all you have to do is click on another folder and back to the inbox).
Imagine my surprise last night when I logged into Snow Leopard and saw that an OS upgrade was already available; 10.6.1.
My first reaction was, “good – hopefully this will fix things that should never have been broken”. But it also got me wondering if Apple should have held off for another week.
Apple – long known for quality products – sells in part because of the perception that their products are trouble-free. Last week’s upgrade was the 3rd Max OS upgrade I’ve done, and it was by far the most troublesome.
This all comes in rather interesting contrast to Microsoft’s release candidates of Windows 7 that have been surprisingly stable. Almost always on the butt-end of jokes from Apple owners, Microsoft’s bold (and largely successful) prerelease of Windows 7, and Apple’s premature release of Snow Leopard makes me wonder just what’s going on in Cupertino and Redmond