Mac OS Leopard, first encounter

Well, late as usual, I could finally manage getting my free copy of Leopard from Apple store (I bought my Macbook Pro on October, so I was entitled to receive a copy) after talking to almost all staff!

The first thing I’ve done was to backup my data (da!), then I decided to give upgrade a try.
I read many texts about upgrading from Tiger to Leopard is faulty and almost everybody recommends a fresh installation. Well few hours would be the last thing I lose and I had almost 60GB of files and apps to copy (in case of a fresh installation) so I inserted to DVD and started the upgrade.

It took more than an hour and I guess Leopard occupied 5.5GB more on my 120GB hard disk.

After final restart -the moment of truth- I almost stopped breathing and suffocated myself with nightmares about a possible blue screen (BSOD) and going thru all that software re installation and file transfer.

All of a sudden the login screen appeared. That was relieving but I read about people who got stuck behind the gates of leopard authentication! Not very confident I started typing and WOW I was in!!!

A nice demo welcomed me and I started seeing my apps icons. After a quick look around (it was such a buzzword on the net for last 3 months that the GUI didn’t look that strange!) I found out that all my applications (which I tested so far) are working properly. MS-Office, Adobe CS3, TextMate, Zend Studio, MAMP, ande even my small VPN program were all working properly.

I have to admit that Leopard is a bit slower that Tiger and it is kinda annoying cos’ you expect to have a faster Leopard than Tiger but I think I’ll get used to it. I hope more patches improve it. Apple needs to work harder since Vista is getting better and is going to be even better after SP1. Apple’s recent marketing focus on business users needs more to prove than talking about iLife or iChat or even iWork.

Upgrading to Leopard is a hassle-free process (at least for me) and it is a must anyways for people who have the right hardware (especially when you get it for free!). If you didn’t do it yet, give it a try with upgrade option, but back up everything first. You can’t trust computers when you can’t trust their creators!