Almost two weeks ago, on 11/16/07, I upgraded to Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X. In spite of some negative experiences I’d read about, my upgrade went smoothly and I didn’t lose any data. All of my applications worked afterwards. A couple of them, like 3D Home Architect, required Leopard updates to make them stable again. My version of EyeTV needed to have its most recent upgrade re-applied.

There were a couple of hiccups that I wanted to mention. One occurred during the upgrade process itself, and the other afterwards.

1. I started the upgrade process and booted from the DVD. Went through the various steps, but when it came time for the Leopard installer to find our iMac’s boot disk, it couldn’t see it. I waited for about 5 minutes, then I clicked the Back button a couple of times, went through those screens again, and after I waited for about 2 minutes, it finally saw the boot disk and allowed me to go on to the next step. I have a feeling this might not have been a hiccup, but that the installer was busy calculating the free disk space on the drive. I thought I’d mention this just case some of you have the same problem.
2. After the upgrade completed, I configured Time Machine to back up to one of my external drives, and it started the initial backup. It kept going through the evening and overnight, then it crashed in the morning, and the iMac required a hard reboot. In other words, everything was frozen and I had to power it off manually. After I started it back up and restarted Time Machine, it finished the initial backup and it picked things up exactly at the point where it crashed. In other words, it didn’t start backing up the entire drive once more, which I thought was a nice touch.

One thing I did before starting to upgrade was to disconnect ALL peripherals. I figured there was no reason to complicate the upgrade process by having extra USB and Firewire drives, printers and other gadgets connected during that time. When the upgrade process completed, I re-connected them, and found, to my delight, that a new driver for my printer had been packaged with the OS. I didn’t have to run HP’s crummy, old drivers from 2005. Very nice!

I’m very happy with Leopard since we installed it. Our iMac runs a little faster now, thanks to the better memory management and pre-fetching features in Leopard. I love Time Machine and the Remote Desktop features included with the new iChat. These two features were my reasons to upgrade to Leopard, and I’m very glad to see that Apple delivered the goods.

Another feature I love is Spaces. I love being able to separate my applications so easily, and I love being able to assign them to different screens. I know that when I start up a certain app, it’ll run in a certain space and won’t clutter up my primary space. That’s awesome.

One thing I didn’t like about the previous version of OS X (Tiger), was the fact that when I used a key shortcut to access my home folder (Command + Shift + H) or the apps folder (Command + Shift + A), it would commandeer any existing open window and go to that location. I wanted to keep the existing location and open a new window, but Tiger wouldn’t let me do it. The same thing still happens in Leopard, and what’s more, when I use Spaces and I’m in screen 2, for example, pressing a key shortcut to access the apps folder will open it up in Screen 1, defeating the purpose of using separate screens. This is one piece of interaction that should be changed.

I’m otherwise a very happy customer, and I think Leopard is a worthwhile upgrade from Tiger. The new features are awesome.

If you’re thinking about upgrading, I would highly recommend watching the guided tour so you know what to expect. If you can’t watch the video, the booklet included with the Leopard DVD disc is another great resource.

More information

• Mac OS X Leopard (Apple)
• Mac OS X Leopard (Amazon)
• Mac OS X Leopard (B&H Photo)