Simple advice -- do not install Tiger today 



In the history of personal computers, there is one iron-clad rule: never, ever, no matter what, do not, www.noway.com, no-how, nada, NEVER install an operating system upgrade the day it comes out. Brand new operating system upgrades are for loons, people who use computers mostly to watch the cute screen savers and reviewers who get paid to, in the words of author Jerry Pournelle, do these silly things so you don't have to.

Apple's new OS X release is out today. It's getting great reviews and I'm sure it's worthy. But it's also for sure going to break a bunch of things -- that key software program you need for work, a 2-year old photo scanner you're using for a current project, the firewire drive you use to back up everything, whatever. For example, there's already been a report that Tiger breaks VPN client software for connecting to Cisco-equipped networks. That's really serious if you use your Mac to tunnel into a network at work, as I do. The previous upgrade to Panther broke access to many firewire drives, crashed when viewing some PDFs and required an upgrade for one of my must-have utility programs, X-ray.

If you wait until, say, next Tuesday, all the thousands of morons who did install will be reporting what broke. You can follow the action at a site like Macintouch or MacFixit. After a few days, you'll be able to determine whether an install is worth it based on your own particular needs.

Don't be wowed by hype or the reviewers or even truly useful new features. Wait. To paraphrase the sneaker vendors, just don't do it -- not today.

ps Apple is already planning the first bug fix, 10.4.1, due out in just a few week...

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Posted: Fri - April 29, 2005 at 10:49 AM          

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