Kevin Hoffman, a former developer of Windows software expressed his amazement for what he felt was excellent response and developer support of Apple for its developer community in the Leopard beta run-through.

"Apparently there are a few traces of good customer service left," he said when comparing the experience he had in the respective development loops of Apple and Microsoft.

Hoffman is referring to an experience he had when he was tinkering with code to develop small applications for the new OS X Leopard. Using Objective-C code, he finished the work and tried running it. He then discovered a few bugs he can't fix, so he copied the source code and sent it to Apple for a look.

Here's what he didn't expect: The people at Apple had a quick peek at the program, examined his work and pointed out possible causes of the bug. They then made some adjustments and optimized the app he sent in and sent it back to him better than ever along with a few expert pointers.

Hoffman says that in contrast, what you get in Windows is "a faceless "submit" button to which you can send your bug reports, but in all my years of testing Microsoft products, I have never received a reply to any of the bugs I've submitted, let alone confirmation that the issue was truly an issue and not a mistake on my part."