It’s now been about 2 weeks since I installed Apple’s Leopard on my two Macs, and without a doubt this upgrade is the worst OS upgrade experience I’ve ever had. I think that’s saying something – I survived Windows 98, however many iterations of XP there were, and fled to the Mac in part because I was tired of spending so much time on forums and technical support pages trying to get my systems to work as advertised.
Well, I’m back on the forums. From start to finish, this experience with Leopard has been a complete nightmare, and I’ve needed a lot of research and help to get me through it (conservatively, I’ll estimate about 100 hours of time spent trying to fix things so far) – and it’s still not over; there are still several issues I’m trying to resolve. I’m sticking with the Macs, but my trust in Apple has been beaten soundly about the head and shoulders, and I’m going to be a lot more careful about early-adopting Apple products in the future. Comments are open, so go ahead and say I told you so. But first, walk in my footsteps for a little while as I set the scene.
Step 1 – enthusiastically open the Leopard box and insert DVD into Mac #1, a MacBook Pro. First mistake: even though I have a full backup, it’s a couple of days old. But I don’t freshen it up, because nothing ever really goes wrong with a Mac, right? Not so much. The install screen that asks where I want to install Leopard says I have no hard drives. This will come as a considerable surprise to my Mac. I reboot and retry – a few times – with the same result. The forums report that this is a common problem and a number of fixes are suggested. I go through several of them and after about 3 hours I find one that works.
Step 2 – based on advice from a number of sources, I install using the “Archive and Install” feature – this does a fresh install but saves all your apps and files to a folder so you can add back in whatever you want to keep in the new system. Except that after the several hours it takes to install, I’m presented with a screen telling me that the install failed. I reboot, and my files – everything – have disappeared. Leopard, however, is on my Mac. I think it’s laughing at me. It’s going to be a long night.
Step 3 – I spend several hours looking for my files. I notice that there are about 50 gigs of disk space unaccounted for, so I go online looking for info about hidden files. I find a terminal command to reveal them, and after digging down through many layers of directories I find my files – most of them, anyway. Between the files I’ve just found and my backup, I’m up and running after about 5 hours of work. I reboot to get a fresh start, and when the Mac restarts there is a question mark on the screen. I’ve heard about this question mark – it means the rest of my day is shot, because the Mac can’t find an OS to startup from. Yes, my Mac is definitely laughing at me.
Step 4 – I reinstall Leopard, this time choosing a simple upgrade. How one can upgrade an OS that isn’t there, I don’t know, but the Mac seems unaware of this inconsistency. After several more hours, the upgrade is complete, and I’m back to where I was at the end of Step 3.
Step 5 – my keychain is gone, so I start rebuilding it. I can’t access email, because my account info was on the keychain and in an encrypted passwords file. I contact the vendor of the encryption app, 1Password, from a web form on their site, and with their (very excellent) help I restore my backup. From one task to the other, I spend several more hours getting up and running.
Step 6 – I try to get a video chat with iChat AV going with a friend. It worked fine on Tiger, and we’ve both upgraded to Leopard. It won’t work. I venture online and find many posts from people with the same problem. Different solutions are offered, from tinkering with port forwarding on the router to banging your head against the wall and screaming. None of it works for me.
Step 7 – Now that I’m back up and running, I spend some time cleaning up old backups and the like on an outboard 320G USB drive I use. I built the drive myself with a simple enclosure and a nice Western Digital drive and it’s been an Old Faithful for me. I move all of the files off of it so I can partition the drive with Apple’s Disk Utility. The partition fails, and I get an alert telling me that there’s been a disk input/output error. I try it again, and again and again. I try everything. Same result. Again, I go online. I don’t find much (perhaps because the disk worked until I tried to erase and partition it, something people would generally do only rarely), but after some digging I find a few posts that suggest that Leopard may not work properly with some USB controller chips. I haven’t wanted to know anything about USB controller chips since 2004, so I spend some more time banging my head against the wall. Later, after the crying, I find a post that suggests that the drive can be restored using Western Digital’s disk utility, on a Windows machine, if the partition is formatted with FAT32. I try it, and it works. I try reformatting it on the Mac, and the disk fails. I don’t want FAT32 partitions, so the disk goes on the shelf until Apple issues a fix. I order a new drive – LaCie is having a big sale on eCost, and 500G-1TB drives are pretty affordable. I order the firewire 400 drive. Nervously I look at my other main outboard drive. Is it laughing at me? I start backing files up to DVD.
Step 8 – One of the things I couldn’t properly recover is my iTunes library – I have the music, and I have the library file, but for some reason iTunes can’t figure out where the music is. I’ve checked all my settings 18 ways to Sunday, and can’t figure this one out. That’s 100 gigs of music, laboriously tagged and starred and playlisted over about 18 months and sync’d to various iPods. Poof. Again, with the head-banging.
Step 9 – I try to add music to iTunes. Again, an error message. This time, I don’t have permission to access my Music folder or a file in it. I’m the admin on this computer, so that makes no sense. I check permissions, then repair them. No change. I can’t add new music to iTunes. This time I don’t even bother to go online. I’ll just wait a few days and see whether anything changes. Of course it won’t – but I need a break.
At some point, I suppose there will be a Step 10, 11 and so on. And there will probably be an OX 10.5.1 etc before too long as well. But whatever happens, this experience has soured me. I spent 20 years managing multiple machines through several iterations of MS operating systems and this is the single worst upgrade experience I’ve ever had. And it’s not over. I’m still a convert, but much less happily, and certainly much less credulously, so.
Update: Fake Steve Jobs is not impressed.
Updater: To its credit, Apple has released the rumoured update. It did this because, if you’ve read the comments to this post, I broke Leopard.
Updaterer: I wonder if I broke Scoble’s Mac, too.
Updaterest: Scoble unloads and gets hit with a busload of clueless commenters.
{ 90 comments… read them below or add one }
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Sounds like an unfortunate experience. I have upgraded both of my machines (a white MacBook and a Mac Pro) and have had, touch wood, no problems over the last week.
DK
First: the first guy’s comment was perfect.
Second: Let me put it in clearer terms: your issues are your fault for not doing all you could to fix this issue BEFORE installing.
Thirdly: I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible experience. That having been said, you should be ashamed to put out an article that essentially garners attention because it is the first to attempt to seriously bash a product that on the whole is quite possibly the best OS release in computer history. Sure, Leopard has its shortcomings, all things do. Yours just happens to be blaming people for your problems. I just don’t get where you get off writing a nightmare piece. It just feels like fear-mongering/scare-tactics.
Fourthly: I’ve upgraded 4 machines in my house, one of which wasn’t Intel, and I haven’t had a single real issue. One of them even took 45 minutes exactly start to finish.
Fifthly: Love! Or as FSJ would say, NAMASTE.
Uh, Bob Barker, Son, hypocrite…
look up the meaning and get my gist, numb-skull…
Namaste to you Bob, till we meet in the ring where I run circle around you logically…
Er, is not “namaste” supposed to be a gesture of respect to another? A kind greeting??
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/namaste
Calling someone a dummy does not match with the definition of “namaste”.
And niether does “numb-skull”, you arrogant shit.
(please note that I did not finish this or any post with “namaste”)
Wow Bob,
You are quick.
Your mom called and said she wants her shoes back.
Oh and,
Namaste, may your inner light guide through the whelm of that which you consider your self to be a grandiose ASS in a community full of Butts.
It is times like these when those with the ability to criticize show whom they really are. Unhappy souls. Those whom never were able to find peace and joy in anything in life. Yet they are the first to cast a cruel jagged finger in ones direction to imply a sense of superiority, only to find that their diatribes of self dough drown out there rantings, thus making them look small and insignificant, dried up blow fish shit.
Namaste you dick
Re “namaste”, this entry has been linked by Fake Steve, so I would guess that is from one of his readers, and is of course ironic.
I had a few problems upgrading to Leopard, though nothing as extreme as you Rob. and I do adopt a belt and braces strategy for it. Run Disk Utility (or applejack), including repair permissions, then Disk Warrior, then backup with SuperDuper, then upgrade to Leopard, and finally repair permissions once more. I did discover in the course of all this that my old external iSight webcam when connected could cause I/O errors with my external disk connected to the other firewire port. However this was not solely a Leopard issue as it also happened under Tiger, and it is mentioned in the troubleshooting documentation of SuperDuper as a known issue.
Nuts. I did an archive and install of Leopard on my three home Macs: a G5 iMac, a G4 PowerBook and a Santa Rosa MacBook Pro. All three installations took about 40-45 minutes. All of my principal applications survived, no problem. I had to reinstall a couple of printers and my scanner but Leopard found them all and they work.
Leopard broke my Parallels 3.0 application but I am quite confident that the problem is in Parallels, not 10.5.
I agree that the Panther-to-Tiger upgrade seemed easier than Tiger-to-Leopard. Nevertheless, 100 hours is a LONG TIME; difficult to imagine what weird and wonderful stuff you have on your machine.
For what it’s worth, a few months I also tried to “upgrade” a three year old ThinkPad to Vista — not only didn’t it work, there was no way to make it work — the hardware was instantly rendered obsolete by Microsoft. I know which experience I prefer…
Dear Rob,
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on how professional you are at replying to all these comments. It is very uncommon to see professionals such as yourself not loose their cool when being attacked by many less educated web-surfers. Myself just like many others had to redo their installation of Leopard from a normal “upgrade” to a full “clean install”. I was expecting a clean install since most OS “upgrades” are hardly ever successful. However, I thought It could be different with Leopard and I was wrong. I do have to say that with windows I have had worst horror stories than with any Mac I have ever owned or used both at work and at home. I am glad you sorted out your problems with Leopard. I did wanted to mention that you have a 90 day free technical support hotline from Apple ( Canada: 1-800-263-3394). You can call them and get them to help you fix any problems you may have with your transition from one OS to the other. They are usually very helpful answering your questions about the new OS, that’s all. Cheers!
Sorry to hear you had these problems, Rob. Let me also apologize for some of the knobs here who dump on your for the problems you have had, as I agree with you that Apple should have tested its installer a bit more before unleashing it (and I say that as a 17 year running certified fanboy). I installed Leopard on 2 computers on day 3 after release and had only one of the problems you describe, that with losing the keychain on both computers. I found a fix on the apple forums, though, which involved something like finding a keychain called login_renamed.keychain, and then renaming that back to login.keychain. This fixed it on both my computers. And there is little I do not like about leopard – I even like the transparent menu because my desktop switches every 30 minutes to some of my wife’s photography, and the menu bar changes along with them, allowing that big white strip to recede into the background.
Tis thou who cast the first stone in yonder lawyer’s direction, asshole.
I just found such two contrasting aspects of philosophy being tossed together as you did… well, weird.
[/conversation]
Backup.
That’s all. Just a bootable backup, and you’re all set.
I know it’s hard when you have the fever, and your hands are trembling with impatience to have your machine upgraded. Just be patient for the few extra minutes. Sure paid off for me this time.
I had one trouble-free upgrade, one (intentional) bare-metal reinstall, and one upgrade that was a bit wonky (though usable) at the outse that turned into a bare-metal. I’d have lost my iPhoto library (through carelessness on my part) if I hadn’t had a full, fresh, bootable backup.
Despite the hundreds of people crying foul about the Leopard upgrade, don’t forget the silent majority of MILLIONS of users who have upgraded with absolutely no problems whatsoever.
I had a similar problem with the ‘Archive and Install’ option, but because I actually took the time to read and understand what this meant, I was able to quickly recover my old files which are safely deposited in a folder called ‘Old System’ at the root of your hard drive.
Andy – Like I said, I used Archive & Install, but it failed. As a result, the old system wasn’t in the “Previous Systems” folder. it was buried deep in a hidden folder. You perhaps didn’t, um, take the time to read and understand what my original post meant. As far as the “millions” are concerned, not sure what you mean – no one is forgetting anyone. I’m simply writing about what happened to me. But even just a quick read of Apple’s own forums shows that there are many others out there who had problems, some serious, with this upgrade.
Rob – thanks for the tip – where were you when I needed you? Just kidding.
dbsmith – no weird and wonderful stuff. Parellels, but that was easy to recover. Just the cumulative time of having, researching and then fixing successive problems with the install.
nikkunikku – thanks for dropping by. Glad to find out my Leopard problems are my fault, particularly since I did everything exactly by the book, and experienced problems that in most cases have been experienced by many other people, and in response to which Apple has in at least one case publicly acknowledged Leopard has a problem. Oh, and the patch Apple is rushing to market even as we speak – I guess that’s my fault too. Second – “you should be ashamed to put out an article that essentially garners attention because it is the first to attempt to seriously bash a product that on the whole is quite possibly the best OS release in computer history.” You really just have got to be kidding me. By all means, let’s not let the facts get in the way of Leopard love.
Michal – Leopard is running smoothly now except for the (apparent) problem with USB drives, so I see no reason to switch back. (The iTunes issue is also troubling, but when the new LaCie arrives I’m going to move all music over to it so I’m hoping that will fix that problem.) The two main features I switched for were, ironically enough, Time Machine, and Data Detectors in Mail. And I like both a lot. Oh, and I really like the look of the new Front Row, too.
As I said, 100 hours is a long time. Your claim that it took “several hours” to run the archive and install, coupled with your claim to have spent “about 100 hours of time spent trying to fix things so far” makes me think that you are either (a) embellishing (in the extreme) to generate web traffic or (b) somewhat Macintosh inept. Something is fundamentally wrong here and I will bet it’s not with Leopard. Yes, the discussion forums indicate that some people have had issues — some people ALWAYS have issues. Yes, my personal experience is that earlier Mac O/S upgrades have, perhaps, been smoother. But Leopard isn’t the unmitigated disaster you want your readers to believe. As for the 100 hours — you are either fibbing, or you have no idea what you’re doing. I suppose either is possible.
I installed Leopard on two machines. The first, went fine; but I had some issues with my iTunes like you… but I attributed this to changing the drives where the music was stored and creating a new fresh user account.
On my second machine, it failed to install (drive did not show up). It seemed deeply damaged. After some fixing with Disk Warrior, I was finally able to install Leopard. This was a upgrade install, and it has been working great since the initial hiccup.
There can only have been some underlying problems with your disk or file structure or–
I can truthfully say that I unhooked all peripherals, repaired the disk with DiskWarrior, etc., and then did a straight “Upgrade” encouraged by a tech guru, and it worked nigh-perfectly after half an hour. I’ve heard of some cases where people experienced the opposite, but I don’t know anyone personally who had this sort of problem. I think that you should keep a complete, bootable backup drive just in case, and if your first attempt at an upgrade runs into trouble, you do yourself no benefit by trying to jerryrig the file system by making all files visible, etc. If the Archive & Install doesn’t work, the alternative is to “Erase and Install” and then Migrate your applications and settings via the Migration tool from the cloned backup drive you keep. You do keep one of those handy, don’t you?
Jim – what app do you prefer for disk cloning? It seems to me that the right backup strategy is to keep a) Time Machine backups, b) a current bootable clone and c) an offsite copy (I like Mozy) of docs. What do you do?
“if your first attempt at an upgrade runs into trouble, you do yourself no benefit by trying to jerryrig the file system by making all files visible, etc. If the Archive & Install doesn’t work, the alternative is to “Erase and Install” and then Migrate your applications and settings via the Migration tool from the cloned backup drive you keep”
Exactly right! If you’re in there rummaging around for 100 hours to make it work, you’re just setting yourself up for the same experience when 10.6 comes along!
Hi Rob,
sorry to read about your troubles. I usually refrain from early adopting any kind of software. The same thing with Tiger. I stuck with 10.3. until about half a year after Tigers rerlease date. This time I broke with tradition and preordered and installed Leopard on my Mac Book Pro 2.4, after cloning the HD to a external drive, I might add. I expected to resolve the droping W-LAN connection issues I was experiencing with 10.4.10. I was lazy, so I choose to update Tiger instead of a clean install. In the end all went well, I am didn’t experience any problems while installing, nor while running the machine since then. Later on I installed another copy on an iMac with no problems at all. I know, this no help or relief for you, just my 2 cents, but I wished to inform that it can turn out differently. Still, I believe Apple needs to put more efforts in product quality.
Blogging about Leopard is like sticking your head in a hornet’s nest.
It is well documented that Mac fans are the internet’s creationists.
My Leopard experience has been a nightmare as well. One particularly vexing problem I have encountered is an inability to use USB devices (such as the MetaGeek Spectrum analyzer) that ran fine under Tiger. The ssh client no longer interoperates with the ssh server on SuSE Linux 10.2.
Also I am encountering very strange data corruption bugs with USB hard drives. When I copy fils over from the drive and do a diff, they are differences that seem unexplainable (e.g. letters added to words, etc.).
Also, it seems that there is an explosion of badware targeted at MACs. Aside from the codec attack, I am seeing Firefox spontaneously going to new websites, possibly in response to badware advertisements.
Configuring the Leopard firewall is baffling, since it is not clear whether “block incoming connections” actually does that, or what the “application” firewall actually does, if anything.
Overall, this is a terrifying upgrade. I probably shouldn’t have done the upgrade at all, given that my Powerbook G4 was working fine with Tiger, but now my machine is virtually useless, and I’m facing hours of work to downgrade to Tiger.
At this point, Windows Vista is looking very good. With SP1 beta, it is running like a champ. The application compatibility is *far* better than Leopard.
I know the Apple engineers have been really stretched having to do Apple TV, iPhone and now Leopard all within a year. But Leopard is so far from being ready that I would barely qualify it as meeting the bar for a Beta 2.
“The two main features I switched for were, ironically enough, Time Machine, and Data Detectors in Mail. And I like both a lot. Oh, and I really like the look of the new Front Row, too.” — Rob Hyndman
Thanks again for answering, Rob, and glad I asked: sounds like zero reason for me to upgrade… Since I’m in the habit of backing up via SuperDuper! before bed each night, I’m not dying for Time Machine. I no longer use Mail because I prefer to forward all my mail to Gmail, so it’s always backed up and reachable, no matter where I am or whose machine I am on. And I have never used Front Row.
So, seems Leopard will creep into my life with the next Mac I buy, hopefully years from now.
Best!
“The two main features I switched for were, ironically enough, Time Machine, and Data Detectors in Mail. And I like both a lot. Oh, and I really like the look of the new Front Row, too.” — Rob Hyndman
Thanks again for answering, Rob, and glad I asked: sounds like zero reason for me to upgrade… Since I’m in the habit of backing up via SuperDuper! before bed each night, I’m not dying for Time Machine. I no longer use Mail because I prefer to forward all my mail to Gmail, so it’s always backed up and reachable, no matter where I am or whose machine I am on. And I have never used Front Row.
So, seems Leopard will creep into my life with the next Mac I buy, hopefully years from now.
Best!
I’m divided. On the one hand, I want to help support the correct (I hope) impression that most of the time these things go really well, and that it is only people who (unfortunately for them) have problems who blog it or post to the forums. On the other hand, there are some valid points brought up here.
I have read some media comments referring to the Apple Discussion Forums to support that Leopard is a bad OS upgrade. This is absurd. The Apple forums are for people with problems, so if you look there — in any area — you will find only problems. Quite biased evidence.
I installed using some of the precautions advised, making a backup with SuperDuper and upgrading all software, checking disk permissions and repairing disks, etc. Because I read a good article in MacWorld about it. But then, I’m pretty savvy, if I do say so myself, and I doubt my mom would do these things.
That said, I did a standard upgrade and got the famed “bluescreen” due to my old Logitech software. (Damn that it was the only thing I didn’t upgrade prior to installing because it didn’t have an easy upgrade button…). So held my breath and did a clean install, using Migration Assistant to transfer everything from the backup to my HD. This worked perfectly, and I have only had good experiences with Leopard since. There are a lot of serious productivity improvements, like Quick Look and Spaces.
I want to conclude by proposing that this should be the upgrade for the rest of us, and that users like my mom should not have to know about reparing permissions or anything else of that sort. The installer should indeed do necessary checks and repairs beforehand. I think an extra 30 minutes in the installer doesn’t matter since it takes so long anyway.
buddy, you deserve a typewriter for being such a retard. along many here who added likewise zero computer knowledge.
Ouch!
I didn’t have any of your problems, and my Leopard install is from one of the pre-release seeds. This sounds really nasty, with a lot of cascading f-ups from the initial bad install :(
Out of curiousity, where did the hidden archive of your system directory end up?
PS sorry you have had so many fanboys getting upset that you had a bad time :(
If it makes you feel any better, my first powerbook was absolutely perfect in every way, and I went from linux geek to mac enthusiast. My second one would crash randomly, and I got really upset. I eventually traced it to the memory: with two sticks in, it would always eventually crap out. It was soooo frustrating.
Now I’m on a macbook. About a month after I got it, it started to turn off randomly whenever I put it to sleep. That lasted two months, and it hasn’t done it since — that’s 4 months without a problem now!
So, “Everything Just Works” is the Apple mantra, even though it isn’t always true. I’d switch back to linux or windows if they started to beat the OSX experience on average. Tried Vista lately? I had to set it up on my parents’ new pc… let’s just say it reaffirmed my happiness with OSX :)
Did the upgrade on an ALU iMac and a iBook G4. Both took well under an hour, both had no problems. This was on release Friday, with a newly purchased disk from the apple store. Not sure it’s fair to scare potential users when the majority of installs are going fine.
Bob, I have been using OSX since 10.0 never had to do any of the steps you are saying.
I upgraded 2 machines with 10.5 both are fine.
Upgrades can reveal existing issues with a system, but for most users they will upgrade and everything will work.
Is it smart to back up – of course it is.
I’ve worked on Windows ever since it came out. Two weeks ago, I decided to switch and bought a MacBook Pro. It didn’t have Leopard pre-installed, but it included the Leopard disk, so I had to install it.
As you can see, I knew NOTHING about the Apple interface, or Macs. I put in the Leopard disk, followed the prompts, and did the upgrade. Painless. Everything worked perfectly afterwards. I did the same thing, by the way, with AirPort Express — no problems.
I believe that my experience is much more typical than yours. It’s obvious to me that the third-party password file is what screwed your system up. Not that it’s your fault, but people listen more to the one guy whose system didn’t go well than the fifty people who had no problem.
And by the way, I LOVE Leopard!
Roz, it’s a big world of software out there. Sometimes apps get broken by major OS upgrades. If a user is just using the typical bundle with OS X, then there would be little to concern oneself with. While problems may not be widespread, one shouldn’t assume there would be no problems.
For example, a piece of software called “APE”, used by unsanity.com among others, can cause problems if active during a Leopard upgrade.
Leopard has a “move file” bug where, if you are moving (not copying) a file from on e drive to another, and any disk volume is removed during the process (power failure, cord accidentally removed, etc.), the file(s) being moved is lost on BOTH drives.
In fact, Apple just this afternoon released 10.5.1. Among the many fixes is a solution for the problem I just mentioned. Check Software Update.
Here is a list of apps that have problems with Leopard:
http://guides.macrumors.com/List:Applications_Not_Compatible_with_Leopard
This is not “the sky is falling” paranoia; it is prudent steps at ensuring that one keeps operational. Many users have clients to keep happy and deadlines to meet. It’s prudent to be aware of any potholes along the way.
**boilerplate disclaimer**
Since 1995, I have been a major Mac user and supporter.
Mac fanboys, stop living in denial. Macs aren’t perfect.
And stop being so defensive when someone points that out.
Remember, your here Steve Jobs decided to mock Windows by using Win9x BSOD icons to represent windows network shares. He did this in the Leopard beta, which is fine, but then felt so good about himself that he went ahead and did it in the shipping product as well. After doing that, Leopard had better be perfect and beyond reproach, and sadly, it is anything but. So accept the criticism gracefully. Many of you got a good laugh over that BSOD thing (it made me almost embarrassed to be a Mac user), well if you’re going to “dish it out” then you’ve got to “take it” as well.
I’m afraid I had similar problems. My wife had zero problems going from XP to Vista which is a much bigger upgrade. I’m looking enviously at her Vaio now. I’m going to have to think about this one.
There is a simple solution to the install mess: Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised most of the time when your worst fears turn out to be unfounded.
I spent a few minutes the night before the upgrade and cleaned up my hard drive (tossed old programs, repaired permissions, etc), then used SuperDuper to make a clone of my drive to my FireLite drive. I did the upgrade install on a two-year old MacBook the next day. I kept the bootable copy of 10.4.10 on that drive for a week or two just in case, but reformatted the drive last night after the 10.5.1 update has performed without a hitch.
Within the family, we have upgraded an iMac G5 (iSight), 2 iMac (Core2Duo) and a PowerBook. No problems on any, each of which was approached in the same manner.
As for the MacBook, I didn’t have any squirrelly 3rd party utilities on it (like the password program) and all my apps were already Leopard-compatible, so that should have had sometime to do with my success. Again, I was prepared for any kind of bad behavior–there is that “expect the worst” thing again–but found none.
I haven’t yet had the first iChat since the Leopard upgrade (on both ends), which will be on Thanksgiving. If there is a problem, I will deal with it then. In the meantime, I don’t have a single complaint.
Likewise. I have done one Vista upgrade and by comparison to my Leopard experiences it was as lengthy and intolerable as traveling on a bus, with a drunken rugby team singing “99 Bottle of Beer on the Wall” repeatedly over a 12 hour ride. I don’t know how simple or complicated moving from XP to Vista is, compared from Tiger to Leopard, but the Windows upgrade made me drink. Others may have had no problems with Vista upgrades. As always, your mileage may vary, and if rash persists, discontinue use and see a Doctor.
I’m sorry you had the Leopard problems you recounted, but it has been smooth sailing on the Love Boat for me and the rest of my family. I don’t know that any reader should automatically extrapolate their ultimate experience from your post or mine. Just prepare for battle, take it slowly and carefully and I believe most results will echo my own.
Well all I can say is I have two imacs, a PPC and an Intel and both upgraded to leopard with out a hitch. With any new OS your bound to run into applications that cause some trouble and it sounds like you did. Now let me tell you a bout my Vista install. This was Ultimate 64 on a brand new system I built myself, all hardware was Vista compatible and had 64 bit drivers.I put the DVD in a fresh new system and low and behold just a few minutes into the install BSOD yes BSOD not an upgrade but a fresh install on a new system. I was beside myself with anger, I could not believe my eyes. After some time of running ram tests and removing hardware it was that I had 4 gigs of ram yes even though Vista 64 supports 128 gigs it dies on 4. I had to install Vista with 2 gigs, run some manual hot fixes and then add the other 2 gigs back in. Now each time I install Vista I will have to do this unless this is fixed is SP1 and I make a slip stream disc if possible. I was really hoping that with Vista none of this old crap would resurface, boy was I wrong. Since getting this issue fixed and a few other problems with NERO, which I have decided never to use again. The system has been pretty stable so far, have had some wacky stuff with games and but I contribute that to the drivers for the SLi setup. So I feel your pain, but not on my macs just the Windows front, I can honestly say my mac experiences have been fantastic.
I have had problems not only with Leopard out of the box, but also as a “CPU drop-in disc” upgrade. Leopard has some problems that Tiger never had! USB 2.0 FAT32 discs report folder permissions problems on admin accounts… hard to even explain to anyone who doesn’t know what any of these things mean. I feel sorry for people who have been sold on the simplicity factor of Mac. They won’t know what any of these things mean. They just know they can’t delete folders for some unknown reason and that Windows doesn’t have any of these problems. Of course Mac zealots will come to the defense of Apple like religious fundamentalists. When Apple does something right, no one can do better and when they screw up, they haven’t really screwed up it’s our fault.
Tried formatting the drive to Mac OS Extended using Disk Utility… It would just hang…
Leopard seems to run slower on my new 24″ iMac than Tiger on my Powerbook G4. That should just not be.
Recent convert, won over by my Powerbook G4 with Tiger. Jaded by my unfortunate “upgrade” to Leopard. When Apple does something great, I can agree that it is in a caliber all its own. When they err, their mistakes are profoundly stupid. All in all, they now look like hypocrites. As for their commercials, I suppose they can get away with it. After all, setting the bar with Vista is pretty low.
I work in a mixed environment with mostly PC’s and I have to say that my preference is older PCs with XP which seem to run without any problems. The Vista machines are problematic because Vista is just not that mature. We have held back on upgrading the Macs as there is just not the time to be upgrading all the time and a stable machine is more important that a cutting edge one in many businesses and we have heard too many horror stories about Leopard.
In the meantime, the XP Machines chug away without problems which is why many of us don’t want MS to keep the OS for a few more years. Incidentally, we keep a rough tally on crashes and the MACs are definitely to most crash-prone.
XP may be boring, but it works and we get more useful working hours out of those machines than the MAC/VISTA ones.
Installed Leopard on a PowerBook G4 (12″ aluminum) – using an external drive (internal has been pooched for a awhile). Went very smoothly, works perfectly, significant improvement over Tiger. 100 hours, you say? You aren’t given to hyperbole? That’s two and half weeks, working full time. Maybe you should spend less time dinking around with your computer – if you leave them alone, they seem to work pretty well.
Sorry for the problems you had, it had to be so frustrating. We are fooling ourselves to think that no one will ever have a problem with this install. There is nothing perfect out there (including OSes, Software packages, Peripheral devices, humans etc). I am glad that we have the forums to help us in fixing our problems. Even those users that have had a seemingly GOOD experience with their LEOPARD installs, can recall when other installs, whether applications or device(s) did not go as well as expected.
No one on this forum, including those so-called-experts that choose not to say anything worthwhile, can state that everything has gone fine 100% of the time over the years (even with Apple products). Thank you to those that offer solutions and suggestions.
I am a windows user that has converted to MAC within the last year and I love my MAC (I am rarely on my PC at home, work is another matter). I do not expect perfect installs or perfect products. I do like forums such as these to help me when I need it.
Now to get to what I need to ask: I was successful in doing the Leopard “UPGRADE” install on my MacBook Pro. I backed up my laptop using “superduper” and the upgrade went smooth. I have not had any issues that I know of, although I have not opened every single application. I had set “Time Machine” to an external drive. I noticed the extra long logins and log outs. In addition, I ran out of space real quick since doing the LEOPARD UPGRADE and decided that I need to upgrade my internal hard drive. I have purchased Hitachi’s Travelstar 5k500 internal HD and plan to re-use the current hard drive as an external drive (OWC external case).
Based on the information from this forum, I have outline my steps:
1) Clean up old drive
2) Update software
3) Perform disk permissions and perform Cron jobs (maintenance)
4) CLONE the drive using the latest SuperDuper 2.5 (which I have and used on the last UPGRADE.)
5) Install Leopard using the “Archive/Install New OS” method
Question 1: I read in this particular forum how to change the ROOT password using the Leopard Install disk… Should I do this prior to my clean install of leopard? or after?
Question 2: Did I miss anything? (I already know about some software that I own that has troubles with Leopard that I may not bring those back over (Parallel for Desktop installed with Windows VISTA).
Sue
Rob, you didn’t do anything wrong. But you are one of the funniest writers I’ve seen who actually banters back with these pseudo-erudite computer geniuses.
I mean seriously, “By all means, let’s not let facts get in the way of “Leopard love”.” Great.
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