First, "better than Vista" and "better than Windows" are not the standards to which Apple should aspire. Long time Mac users expect more than that.
Second, the inability to use Time Machine with a drive attached to an AEBS is both a reversal of what was promised and a serious gap in the usability of Time Machine, especially for laptop users. I'd love to hear a real explanation for why they haven't already updated the AE firmware to address this after all the time they've been working on Leopard.
There are a couple of reasons I get frustrated about problems in early releases of various versions of Mac OS X. One is that there are always useless -- sometimes even detrimental -- changes that work while new, useful features are broken. (My transparent menu bar works like a charm at making my menu bar harder to read, but Time Machine is virtually useless to me without AE compatibility.)
The other is that Apple could do better. They have inadequate internal quality control, relying instead on developers with prerelease copies of Mac OS X to report problems, based on my years of experience as a Mac developer. I've seen cases where something in the OS didn't work simply because someone forgot to write the code for it. Users are usually shielded from these problems because developers find ways to work around most of them (which reduces the amount of time we can spend improving existing features and adding new features users want), but it's clear too much code is written at Apple that doesn't work correctly until one or more developers bring it to Apple's attention. Is Windows like that? I don't care and it isn't relevant. There are better ways to produce software, and Apple should be using them.
Sorry, but I think Apple dropped the ball on this one.
First, "better than Vista"
First, "better than Vista" and "better than Windows" are not the standards to which Apple should aspire. Long time Mac users expect more than that.
Second, the inability to use Time Machine with a drive attached to an AEBS is both a reversal of what was promised and a serious gap in the usability of Time Machine, especially for laptop users. I'd love to hear a real explanation for why they haven't already updated the AE firmware to address this after all the time they've been working on Leopard.
There are a couple of reasons I get frustrated about problems in early releases of various versions of Mac OS X. One is that there are always useless -- sometimes even detrimental -- changes that work while new, useful features are broken. (My transparent menu bar works like a charm at making my menu bar harder to read, but Time Machine is virtually useless to me without AE compatibility.)
The other is that Apple could do better. They have inadequate internal quality control, relying instead on developers with prerelease copies of Mac OS X to report problems, based on my years of experience as a Mac developer. I've seen cases where something in the OS didn't work simply because someone forgot to write the code for it. Users are usually shielded from these problems because developers find ways to work around most of them (which reduces the amount of time we can spend improving existing features and adding new features users want), but it's clear too much code is written at Apple that doesn't work correctly until one or more developers bring it to Apple's attention. Is Windows like that? I don't care and it isn't relevant. There are better ways to produce software, and Apple should be using them.
Sorry, but I think Apple dropped the ball on this one.