The week in your words: Leopard, Ofcom and Eee PC

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 2 Nov 2007 at 16:10

In a week that saw Apple release its fastest-selling operating system, Ofcom get a tongue-lashing from the EU and the battle for the low-cost laptop market begin in earnest, we take a look back at what our readers have made of it all.

First up, Apple, which this week managed the impossible task of delighting both the Mac and Microsoft faithful by releasing Leopard onto the market, then watching its forums fill up with disgruntled customers complaining of the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.

"Oh...this is just priceless!!" says MDSmith 71 obligingly getting the ball rolling.

"After years of every Mac user saying how wonderful they are and how stable they are and how much better than PCs, they get a Blue Screen of Death after an OS upgrade"

Quite, but just as we prepared ourselves for a full-blown forum riot, something peculiar happened. Consensus.

"I'm still sitting on the sidelines with Leopard. My gut feeling is that there is goodness in it somewhere, but Apple have done its level-best to bugger up my user experience," ruminates HeatherKay, before uttering the unspeakable.

"See? We're not all fawning fanboys and girls, hanging on every utterance of St Jobs of Cupertino."

Time for a sit down I think. But the forum wasn't done yet.

"Has it been the year of wrecking your new OS?" Wonders pcernie. "I have to say from what I've read of both Vista and Leopard (I'm resisting calling it Leonard, but dunno how long I can hold out), neither has anything that especially stands out."

Harmony on the boards, but could it last? Not with earlybomblight around to restore our beloved discord. "How ironic that the first blue screen of death I've seen in years should be on a Mac. Am I laughing? You bet."

No cash for iPhones

However, Apple would soon deliver us something else to argue about when it announced that it would be making the iPhone the gift money really couldn't buy, by refusing cash for the handsets, a decision that left the majority of our readers with furrowed brows and well scratched heads.

"All the card information will tell them is who bought it, so unless they look at the electronic serial number of the phone and match it to the credit card (enemy of the state anyone?) then it's really not much more than a curiously un-customer friendly approach from Apple," ponders hjlupton.

Potentially, but it's still going to sell a bucket-load, or so our resident fortune teller Churchcat predicts. "This WILL sell. One percent of the phone market is a given. At this point Apple don't want everyone to buy one."

"Then we will have the iPhone 2 - this may aim to push the bounds to say 5% of the market. Five years from now Apple Telecom will be its own division of Apple selling phones for the masses."

And feeding the poor and establishing a small country and invading Microsoftland, undoubtedly. And we couldn't leave this thread alone without reposting gavomatic57's assertions that the iPhone "locks you into iTunes as well, which is probably fine if you're a Mac user but iTunes and Quicktime on Windows is a scabby dog."