I’ve never run into trouble with a new Apple system UNTIL Leopard, and even then, my troubles (my wife’s actually) are extremely minor. Of course, I NEVER, EVER upgrade a new OS onto an older, rather always do either a clean install or an archive and install.

My wife’s MacBook Santa Rosa, entry-level) came with Leopard and has the strange habit of losing access to the dock from time to time. Relaunching the finder always brings it back through, so it is only a minor glitch.

My daughter’s MacBook (pre-Santa Rosa, entry-level) originally ran Tiger and now runs Leopard without issue after an archive and install.

My MacBook (Santa Rosa, Black), which also came with Leopard, is also flawless.

This mirrors my experiences as well. I have very rarely run into issues with Apple products and I do tend to customize my Macs quite a bit. Bigger (or just plain more) hard drives, more RAM, OS haxies to make my environment as I like it, etc… I tend to install new operating systems about 2 days after release, after I have had a chance to see what issues are common. When Leopard was released I was still working at the Genius Bar and frankly had I had my copy of Leopard installed on the date of release, my home systems could have had major issues. Why? Because I might or might not have remembered to disable my application enhancer from Unsanity before upgrading. As it turned out, my upgrade path was smooth as silk. A fresh install on a blank drive in my Mac Pro with Users and Applications migrated, and an Archive and Install on my MacBook. After 4 weeks I completely ditched all vestiges of Tiger by reformatting the Mac Pro drive and deleting the Previous Systems from the MacBook. With any new “cat” I always use one of these options over “upgrade”.

I spent well over 2 years as a Mac Genius. Most of the Genii I know have a long history of success supporting Macs before taking that job, but the average “in position” life span of a Genius is considerably less than my tenure. Also, if there is an Apple store nearby, that is the first place people go with problems, especially after just purchasing the product in question. The number of times I had brand new systems, or newly upgraded operating systems, come in for trouble was shockingly low. Far less than 1% of the product I saw sold in our store. For computers we are talking single digits for truly DOA systems! The vast majority of OS upgrade troubles I saw ended up being compatibility issues with non-Apple software.

Are Apple products perfect? Heck no! Are they amongst the best to hit the market? I think so. That also raises the bar for Apple, though.

FWIW: I discovered Other World Computing about 7 years ago. I shop around – a lot – and I nearly always end up going to them for RAM, hard drives, and other miscellaneous upgrades. I have recommended them innumerable times, including when appropriate at the Genius Bar – even if we had a competing product in stock. Along with SmallDog they are one of the best companies I have ever dealt with as a technology consumer.

Cheers!