While Mac OS X Leopard shipped in late October of 2007, it’s rare that the first release or two of a computer operating system will be free of serious bugs. Indeed, with nearly five million users as of the end of 2007, even a small percentage of troublesome installations or irritating bugs can represent one huge problem.

Apple addressed some serious stuff early on with the 10.5.1 upgrade that repaired a Finder-related bug that could result in a lost or damage file if something, such as a crash or power outage, interrupted its transport to another drive or network share. Now, it doesn’t matter if that bug existed in earlier versions of Mac OS X. It was tagged as a Leopard show-stopper, and that’s how it goes.

Among persistent issues were flaky Wi-Fi connections, erratic printing performance with some applications and printers and a bunch of other irritants that could result in serious hair-pulling episodes. That assumes, of course, that you have enough hair left to pull.

In any case, rumors arose of a 10.5.2 update for many weeks before it appeared. However, assuming such a thing would arrive was a no-brainer. After all, Apple is constantly engaged in updating its products to fix bugs and add new features. They come fast and furious, which is rather unlike the Windows platform, where the desperately-needed Service Pack 1 update for Vista won’t arrive until next month, 14 months after the OS’s original release.

This time, Apple also demonstrated that they do listen to customers. I know some of you think that Apple simply dictates and expects you to accept whatever product configuration they deliver. As much as they strongly believe in their products, you can change things if enough of you present an opposing point of view.

With Leopard, while it didn’t bother me much, I know a fair number of you loyal readers just didn’t take to the translucent menu bar and sought third-party hacks for solace. Apple took care of that and the overly translucent menus with 10.5.2. You can switch off translucency in the Desktop & Screen Saver preference panel, and the menus are now appropriately opaque.

When Steve Jobs proudly showed off the Stacks feature of the Leopard Dock, it wasn’t a rousing success either. Some of you prefer just being able to click on a folder in the Dock and produce a hierarchical menu of its contents. With 10.5.2, you have a choice.

Now it’s fair to say there other other Leopard features that may not be ready for prime time. With Apple’s Time Capsule still not shipping, what about the ability to use Time Machine with a wireless connection? That was a feature originally promised for Leopard, but withdrawn before release.

Unfortunately, 10.5.2’s release notes mention nothing about it. But I don’t believe that Apple will confine this feature to their own backup product. Instead, I think whatever software or firmware update allows you to use Time Capsule with Time Machine via Wi-Fi will be made available for those of you who have the most recent versions of AirPort Extreme. There may even be a software update that spreads the feature to other Wi-Fi products, but that may present a far more difficult obstacle.

Of course, the most important part of this update is the huge list of bug fixes. If something is broken, you have to hope that 10.5.2 repaired most of the issues, and that, if any are left, they fall within the purview of a third-party company.

In the few hours since 10.5.2 came out, I have given it a thorough workout on my desktop PowerPC Mac and my Intel-based note-book. In both cases, I have nothing to complain about. Everything runs butter smooth for me, but even the original release of Leopard was a great performer, except for some printing issues that have since been resolved.

Alas, with updates of this nature, I am willing to bet that the Mac troubleshooting sites will be rife with problem reports. Why that should be is anyone’s guess. It may be that certain configurations, that Apple didn’t test, because they can’t test everything, exhibit unexpected defects. It may be the result of the interaction with someone else’s software or peripheral, or the result of a bad installation or hardware defect. Or, to be fair to everyone, there may be things left unfixed in 10.5.2.

What you can bet on, too, is that there will eventually be a 10.5.3 with even more fixes. But, as of today, I think most of Leopard’s worst ills are pretty well resolved.

After being rumored for weeks, the sprawling Mac OS 10.5.2 update showed up in millions of Software Update preference panels on Monday afternoon. With over 75 improvements and bug fixes, this 343MB upgrade has plenty to chew over, and I’ll leave it to you to see if your particular Leopard problem has been fixed or not. Oh yes, the version you see may not be so large, but this is the standalone updater, which is always to be recommended if you run into trouble. Perhaps the most intriguing updates, though, are actually feature changes. Transparent menus are less transparent, and you can switch off the controversial transparent menu bar in the Desktop & Screen Saver preference panel. The Stacks feature has also gotten lots of negatives, and the 10.5.2 version appears to reflect changes first suggested by Macworld’s Dan Frakes: “The single biggest complaint about Stacks could be remedied if an option were added for forcing the stack to display in a Tiger-like hierarchical menu….Another simple improvement would be to let the user choose — via a similar setting in a stack’s options menu — a stack’s Dock icon: the actual folder icon, a generic icon, or the current ‘determined-on-the-fly’ icon.” Apple clearly listened. Way to go Dan.

The beginning of what may be a long skirmish between Microsoft and Yahoo is now underway. So far, Yahoo has given a big fat negative to the offer of nearly 45 billion dollars to merge the two companies. This didn’t come as much of a surprise, as there were clear indications in recent days that Yahoo wasn’t about to accept Microsoft’s bear hug without a fight, or at least a demand for more money.

However, it’s not as if Yahoo is going to find another suitor easily. With a long decline in its stock price — except after the Microsoft offer went public — it’s one huge question mark how many large companies are willing to pay tens of billions of dollars for such a troubled company.

Certainly News Corporation isn’t interested, and what other media or technology company is interested or even capable of taking on such a massive deal? Even Microsoft doesn’t have the cash. They have to go into the lending market to get the extra billions they need.

In other words, whatever happens in the end, it may take years to pay off that debt. I know if I held stock in Microsoft, I’d want to hire a psychiatrist and have him or her examine the mental health of Steve Ballmer and all the other executives who signed off on this wrong-headed offer. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that action would be short of a shareholders lawsuit where Microsoft would have to explain their incredibly desperate scheme in court.

So where does that leave Yahoo Well, certainly most Yahoo stockholders are in it for the money, and if they can make a bundle on a merger, that would assuage their short-term concerns, even if the combine company ran into difficulty on the long haul. They could always bail if the stock price began to tank, and put their money in a more secure stock. Apple?

Now we know that Google has already offered to help Yahoo somehow. The financial writers suggest that Yahoo would pass off their searches to Google and keep the rest of their businesses in house. That’s easier said than done, however, because the antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe are sure to be upset if the number one and number two search providers in the world decided to hook up in such a fashion.

This isn’t to say a Microsoft and Yahoo deal wouldn’t get extensive scrutiny as well. It may take months or years for this mess to be sorted out. Even if the merger could be successfully consummated, Google will have had a lead time of another two or three years to build its brand, while its combined competitor was otherwise occupied shoring up the network, getting employees to work together and all the rest. That assumes there are no obstacles, and there will no doubt be plenty.

Another possibility is for Yahoo to buy the remnants of AOL. No, not the dial-up online service, which has little value. That ought to be passed on to Net Zero for chump change, so they could add it to their $9.95 per month portfolio. But the AOL portal has real value, and having it in Yahoo’s control might actually yield a positive benefit. Plus, Time Warner would probably let it go for the low billions and be happy that the final and fitful remnants of that horrible merger have been disposed of.

But what about Apple?

Well, as far as Apple is concerned, any tech pundit or financial analyst who suggests they might benefit somehow by acquiring Yahoo is smoking something something nasty.

As far as I’m concerned, Apple ought to sit back and let it all play out. Apple already has deals in place with Google and Yahoo They work with Microsoft in some ways, particularly development of Office for the Mac.

Sure, a combined Microsoft and Yahoo might attempt to ditch the remnants of Mac support, but Apple still has Google. Besides, if the Micro-Yahoo company wanted to abandon millions of potential visitors to its portal, and users of its products, so be it. It’s their loss.

In the end, it may well be that Microsoft and Yahoo will some day be one. But it won’t be a match made in heaven.

Imagine if you were one of the hundreds of thousands of people who waited for the iPhone to be released, and you ended up buying one. Although you were pretty satisfied with the product, you got upset with Apple, and sold it a few months later.

Despite the fact that the iPhone has extremely high levels of customer satisfaction, no product is perfect. But why would someone who likes their iPhone decide to give it up?

That’s the question I asked on the tech show this week, when I talked with former industry analyst Joe Wilcox. Although he covers Microsoft these days, Wilcox owns Macs, and has always had a soft spot in his heart for Apple. But they did something that rubbed him the wrong way, so he sold his iPhone in protest.

So what did Apple do? Well, it seems that one of the iPhone updates had the side-effect of bricking — or disabling — units that were unlocked through one of those third-party jailbreaking programs. Now, if you bought a hot-selling gadget for $599 or even the reduced price of $399, I can understand being upset of it’s turned into a door stop.

But what if your phone was never affected?

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.