Glitches in a new release, or…?

Recently there have been a lot of issues surfacing around Apple OS/X Tiger quality — typically application-specific problems that seem to be pointing toward a general down-turn in the usually fanatical consistency and robustness of Apple software.

Personally, I think it started just about when we first saw variant application windows — with no apparent rhyme or reason, some applications used a metal interface and others the original Aqua. Now, with Tiger Apple has thrown “Plastic” into the mix. (Personally, I like the “Plastic” look just fine — but I hate inconsistency and hope Apple will refocus efforts on uniformity — and please get rid of the funky Mail.app buttons, if that’s actually part of the “Plastic” look, I don’t want it).

My own experience with Tiger has been fairly good. We upgraded one machine (an iMac G5) to Tiger as soon as it came out and, certainly, experienced various ups and downs, not the least of which was roughly one lockup a week. Now that 10.4.2 is out we’ve upgraded all of our machines and I’m happy to say the instability has — at least so far — vanished. We haven’t seen any more crashes or “CPU pegs,” and most of the critical application issues appear to have been corrected. Most of the remaining trouble seems to be Mail.app, which sorely needs some quality assurance attention.

Incidentally, the aforementioned iMac did have a lot more trouble with Tiger than any of our other machines. So much so, in fact, that we took it in for service — after roughly it’s tenth hard crash. Lacking any definite diagnosis, Apple obliged us by reinstalling Tiger and replacing the power supply (the latter simply because flakey power supplies can lead to all kinds of instability problems). Since the new OS/X and power supply have been installed, the iMac is rock solid. I can’t say whether it was the completely fresh operating system, the power regulation, or both — but based on current experience a clean iMac with Tiger is a solid machine.

I suppose we are witnessing a kind of inevitable size versus quality entropy effect in action. As Apple becomes larger and needs to meet the demands of a wider — and less zealous — user base, is it necessary that quality diminish as well? Where will this lead us?