When I first updated to Snow Leopard, I thought things looked ok. Since then, there have been a steady stream of small annoyances. The biggest three:

• Random 2-3 minute "beach ball" events, where the Mac just locks up, and then comes back
• Cameras plugged in didn't get registered
• QuickTime X crashes whenever I try to export video (for web use) and change the default directory location

I don't know if the first one is gone; as I posted a few minutes ago, I'm hoping that the removal of the library spawn failure will clear that. The jury is out on that, as it's been less than an hour. The other one was maddening. After Googling, I ran ImageCapture, and used a switch in the lower left corner of the UI to tell the Mac to use iPhoto as the default app for cameras. Why Snow Leopard turned that off is beyond me; it wasn't at all obvious how to fix that. In fact, I wonder how many people have turned up at the Genius Bar complaining that their Macs don't see their cameras any longer?

Microsoft caught a lot of grief after Vista came out, on the grounds that they had released it too soon. Well, I think we can say the same of Snow Leopard. Apple had to rush 10.6.1 out to fix a slew of early issues, and I don't think they're done with all the problems yet. It's better to hit the market late with a working product than to hit it early with a buggy one. Microsoft got pounded with that message over Vista; I think Apple needs to learn the same lesson now.

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