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Apple has angered thousands of Mac users with the release of Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 because the new operating system has caused some computers to fail. After a startup failure, users are greeted with a continuous icon described as the “spinning ball of death.”

In most cases, a spinning color wheel or beach ball indicates that a system is engaged in a processor-intensive activity. The ball usually disappears after a few seconds. However, when the ball spins for a much longer period, as users of Snow Leopard have reported, it is referred to as the “spinning beach ball of death.”

Apple touted the Snow Leopard upgrade as refined. And Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted Apple would sell five million copies of Mac OS X 10.6 through the end of this quarter. The OS was touted as having faster startup and shutdown times, higher resolution for iChat, and a more powerful Safari 4 browser.

But for some it has been nothing but a slow crawl after installing the upgrade.

Slew Of Complaints

Users are flooding forums complaining of a major glitch in the OS that was supposed to be — according to Apple — “better, faster, easier.”

Apple support forum poster Ravenx2012 said: “So many on so many different Macs seem to be getting the spinning wheel of death from snow leopard. How can so many people have their Macs bricked by this paid-for service pack?”

The upgrade bricked James Sheppard’s iMac 24, according to his post on the support page.

“I also have a MacBook Pro, installed Snow Leopard, and now have a totally non-functioning machine — just a spinning wheel and then black screen,” posted Jer78. “It won’t stay on or ‘lit’ long enough to try any remedies. The Apple phone tech told me as much after an hour of drills and then pointed me to my closest Apple repair shop. This should not happen — period.”

Not Prepared for the Enterprise

Apple was not only reaching out to individual Mac users when it released Snow Leopard on Aug. 28. The company was also looking to gain small business and enterprise customers with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. So far, it has failed.

Apple included Exchange support for Apple mail, calendar and contacts. Analysts, who were already skeptical, don’t see it as a progressive move for Apple.

“While Exchange support is appealing, it does not signal Apple’s enterprise readiness,” wrote Gartner analyst Michael Silver in a recent report.

“While native support for Exchange will allow users to run their Macs at work more easily, this does not mean that Macs can more easily replace Windows PCs in most organizations,” Silver added. “Apple is not addressing enterprise needs for service or support, and most organizations will continue to require Windows to run a majority of their applications. Furthermore, to the extent Mac users may still require Office, either natively on Mac OS or running in a Windows virtual machine, native Exchange support, which does not support Outlook personal store files (PSTs), will address only part of the user need.”