Re: Mac OS X Leopard (Re: new problem)

[Diana Bloomfield <dhbloomfield@bellsouth.net>]

Hey Judy,

That's really interesting.  I guess that's a real tightrope walk--   
do you just get your product out there, so everybody views you as the  
innovator-- always ahead of your competitors, regardless of whether  
it works or not-- or do you work really hard at a product, ensuring  
its reliability/compatibility, before you get it out there-- ensuring  
that your customers know that you and your products are reliable.    
How many customers do you alienate, either way?

Well, the main reason that  I installed Leopard when I did was simply  
for its feature, Time Machine.  I have all my digital images on my  
desktop, and I have a huge number of scanned film (negatives) on  
there as well.  In the last several months, I had scanned, organized,  
and cleaned up a ton of film, which took an excruciatingly long  
time-- hours, days, weeks, rolling into months-- and although I back  
things up every so often, I wasn't doing it nearly often enough.   
Except for negatives I've never scanned, everything else I have  
photographically (images) are on my iMac.

So, for me, Time Machine was enough of a draw to install Leopard.   
It's an automatic backup -- keeps an up-to-date copy of everything.   
If anything crashes, you can go back and recover everything.  It  
backs everything up hourly.  That's an amazing capability to have, so  
well worth it (for me) for that feature.   I just didn't know it  
would screw up everything else.

Obviously, this isn't an earth-shattering situation-- just really  
really annoying.  I'm mad at both Apple and Epson (can you tell?),  
though I do like my 3800 and I do like my iMac, and I do like Time  
Machine, which appears to be working.  Hopefully, by March, if Epson  
is telling the truth, things will improve at my house.

First, John Edwards drops out and disappears, and now this.  What's  
next??  ;)

Hey-- when you get a chance, do ask your son what he decided to do--  
does he now send out the innovative, albeit half-ass, product--  or  
does he send out the late "perfected" product instead.  Though he's  
still in business, did he lose any loyal customers in the process?

Thanks, Judy.

Diana

On Feb 5, 2008, at 10:08 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Diana Bloomfield wrote:
>
> > I just think Apple shouldn't put out anything until it's ready; I  
> > don't like being a guinea pig for them (unless I'm being paid to  
> > do so).   Apple should tell you that their OS updates don't work  
> > with some printers, some scanners, and that you might lose other  
> > functions on your computer as well.  If they did, I missed the memo.
> Ah, Diana... you remind me of a line I quoted in Post-Factory #1:   
> page 31, quoting Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future, Menlo  
> Park, CA (circa 1998):
>
> " I would fire the CEO of any company that held its product until  
> it was ready."
>
> My son ran into this problem in the early days of his company.  He  
> was OF COURSE waiting to put his software on the market until it  
> was "perfected." A well-meaning expert from an allied business  
> advised him that if he kept that up he'd soon be out of business.  
> (I haven't asked him if he followed that advice, tho he's still in  
> business, so who knows?)
>
> But, Diana, you pique my curiosity (I'm still back with tabby cat):  
> What is the promise of Leopard?  Was it a particular feature (or  
> features) that drew you? When you get it going, will you share the  
> verdict?
>
> J.