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Apple's (AAPL) Leopard OS released too early?

Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) much-anticipated release of its new operating system, Leopard, is being met with some lukewarm reviews. Said Tom's Guide, a review site of both software and hardware and typically an Apple fan, "[this] Apple operating system, Mac OSX Leopard, was released before it was ready."

Cited as one of the most troublesome bugs is a glitch with the Finder program, the Apple equivalent to Windows Explorer. Again, Tom's Guide put it succinctly: "In Leopard, when Finder moves a file from one drive to another, it deletes the file from the originating hard drive, without first checking to see if the file arrived safely on the destination hard drive. If anything goes wrong during the file transfer, such as a momentary power glitch on the destination hard drive, the file would then be destroyed on both hard drives."

Apple has already issued an update on its website to fix some of the problems. There are a lot of bug fixes there: everything from email to iCal to Finder.

While Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has had a long history of launching large OS upgrades only to follow them on with numerous patches, Apple has always prided itself on releasing fully-baked software.

More disturbing, though, is Tom's accusation regarding lousy customer service. This is an issue I've addressed a couple of times before. My assertion has always been that for Apple to truly take on Microsoft, it would have to take a page out of Microsoft's playbook in terms of service levels. You can take a Microsoft product anywhere in the world and find someone qualified to fix it. Living in Israel and a loyal Mac user myself, I've almost considered giving up my Mac because it's so darn hard to service it.

I've put up with some of the quirks because "it just works." If more trouble rears its head, I wonder how many people may consider switching back to the "dark side"?

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund. Author holds no position in any stock mentioned above.

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Last updated: August 29, 2008: 03:15 PM

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