I've actually seen a few reports of people having trouble with the upgrade - their computer hangs at the bootup screen for hours on end. Since I didn't "upgrade" (like a good boy, I reformatted and started over) I didn't experience the hour-long hangs, however, I did experience some delays during boot. The first time I inserted the Leopard disc and it prompted me to click the button to restart, I waited for about 20 minutes at the "grey screen" waiting for the Apple logo to appear.

After powering down the laptop, ejecting the CD, and starting the process over again, everything worked just fine. I reformatted the main "System" partition (leaving my Vista bootcamp partition untouched) and less than an hour later I had Leopard completely installed, including Xcode, Interface Builder, "Instruments" (I think this was called Xray before...) and it only took me another few minutes to re-install iWork '08. The only thing left for me to do is copy my iTunes and code libraries off the portable HD and I'll be back in business.

The thing that I absolutely loved about the installation experience was that because I had previously synchronized all of my dock settings, my dashboard settings, calendars, contacts, e-mail settings, and everything else - a few minutes after booting up the retail copy of Leopard for the first time, I configured .Mac and re-synchronized. All of my settings re-appeared and my dock had all the icons on it that I expected and it even knew about the hot-corner settings to which I have grown extremely accustomed.

If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll know how my Windows Vista Ultimate installation experience went. To recap: I had to format the drive twice because the first install failed to boot. Overall installing Leopard was insanely easy. As you would expect with an Apple OS, everything just worked, and it looks freaking gorgeous... though I am considering using the preferences tweak to return the Dock to 2D...  I find it a little difficult to find the "running program" indicator amid the 3D glass and reflections.

So, next on the to-do list is to do a Leopard code sample, which I should have done before the end of the day. Oh, and even more exciting is that after installing the retail copy of Leopard, my blog site admin control panel now works properly with Safari! I don't know if Safari changed or if the people who run this blog finally woke up and did some compatibility testing. Either way, I'm a happy camper now as I don't need to switch to IE to blog! 

tags: leopard  install
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