Leopard Release/Details/Questions [merge]

Sad Professor

triple h wrote: »

sorry to be such a thick-o here, but can someone please explain erase and install for me please , and what is BSODs ?

BSOD = blue screen of death.

An erase and install (or clean install) is when you erase your hd and install a fresh copy of the OS.

Type 17

triple h wrote: »

sorry to be such a thick-o here, but can someone please explain erase and install for me please , and what is BSODs ?

BSOD = Blue Screen of Death - System Crash/Hang

Check the Leopard (or earlier Mac OS) install instructions - one of the screens has a button at the bottom called Options - click here to choose one of these three:

Upgrade: - updates the relevant system files, but doesn't replace some files (especially in third-party applications) which may later cause BSOD or other issues - has been a troublesome method of install for Leopard so far.

Archive and Replace: - de-activates your old system and installs the new Leopard system alongside it. Good, because system is new and fresh, but all files from old one are there if you want to access them (note that you can't start up from this old system, and that you are recommended not to copy preference files etc from it into the new system.). You can delete the old system after a few days/weeks or when you are happy that you don't need any files from it. The main reason to use this method is to get a fresh system install without having to wipe the whole hard drive (see below).

Erase and install: - wipes your whole hard drive (system, apps, and users' documents - EVERYTHING!) and puts in a fresh install. Really clean, but a total pain, because you have to back up all third-party apps, and all of the users' documents and anything else that you want to use ever again. Don't forget keychain contents and all licence keys!

Most feedback on Leopard is that Upgrade is causing problems for some users, so Archive and Replace is the minimum that you should choose when installing. You can re-install Leopard using this method if you have already installed it using Upgrade and are having problems.

Gerard_Smith

Has anyone heard of anyone performing an upgrade and getting INCREASED performance speed?

As far as I can see people who are doing the archive and install are saying its faster and people who did the upgrade are saying its slower.

Also what applications are actually calling the BSOD? Is there any information beyond the rather vague "application enhancers?

440Hz

Been away a week and everyone is still saying mean Leopard things :-o hehe

Ah well, I can stop physically shaking in anticipation now, im home to my MBP and its install night!!! YAY happy days.

Basq

Gerard Smith wrote: »

Has anyone heard of anyone performing an upgrade and getting INCREASED performance speed?

As far as I can see people who are doing the archive and install are saying its faster and people who did the upgrade are saying its slower.

I did an upgrade and things are definitely slower than with Tiger.

Startup is considerably slower.

Creamy Goodness

triple h wrote: »

sorry to be such a thick-o here, but can someone please explain erase and install for me please , and what is BSODs ?

yeh sorry it's usually a windows acronym

one cool thing is that when you connect to a windows machine through smb connection it shows an old monitor with a BSOD on it in the network folder.

don't know if it's new or not but it got a giggle from me.

Sad Professor

basquille wrote:

I did an upgrade and things are definitely slower than with Tiger.

Startup is considerably slower.

You probably should have done an archive and install. You get a fresh OS and all your settings are transferred over. And the old system folder is still there in case you need to retrieve anything.

eirlink

well, i did an ugrade after removing the APE files which were causing the BSOD.

at first the system was WAYY slower but on investigation i put it down to spotlight indexing ALL my drives. When spotlight finished, time machine kicked in with its first / initial backup...also took ages and everything was at a crawl during this. I seen the spinning beachball with every mouse click.

when time machine finished things got faster, happy days...but it gets better.
I then restarted and it got a little quicker. Used leopard for the day and shut down again. After about 10 restarts ( due to software / program updates ) it was purring nicely.seemed to be running smoother with every restart

The biggest improvement happened when i downloaded the latest leopard version of Onyx ( maintenance software) , followed by mandatory restart and ran onyx overnight.

now leopard is running at a blistering pace on a 1.25 PPC G4 mini with 1 gig RAM which i installed myself month ago.

Sad Professor

eirlink wrote: »

now leopard is running at a blistering pace on a 1.25 PPC G4 mini with 1 gig RAM which i installed myself month ago.

Interesting.

I still can't decide whether to install Leopard on my iBook or not. It's a 1Ghz G4 with 1GB of RAM. Tbh I find it slow enough as it is and given how RAM hungry Leopard is... I have 2GB in my iMac and even that doesn't seem like enough anymore.

eirlink

im not sure about this but i recall from somewhere that leopard is optomised to run well given 1 gig of ram.

If you have an external drive, you can use superduper to make a bootable clone before you try any of the install options. ( PLEASE NOTE superduper is NOT leopard compatible at moment, but update version is imminent )

I had a bootable clone of tiger on an ext HD prior to upgrading and tried all 3 upgrade options. The most troublesome was upgrade till i found the cause of the BSOD ( which was the APE listings ) once they were removed all was fine.

Of the 3 here were my findings:

1. erase and install....cleanest BUT a pain in the ass trying to reimport everything using migration assistant.

2. archive and install...worked well but still needed to pull everything back across

3. upgrade...the best by a mile. Took a while to complete but everything, and i mean EVERYTHING was there, as in tiger, but with a beautiful fast running OS called leopard.

Tip: make sure you CHECK FOR upgrades to all your installed apps BEFORE installing leopard. that way leopard will not hang while its installing if it finds something it dont like !!

for what its worth, SuperDuper saved my sanity during all this cause i could always restore back to tiger and start again.

IMO, time machine is the one and only reason to really persue leopard. the other improvements pale into the background in comparison. if Time machine was available as an upgrade to tiger then leopard would be hard to market on its own. it really is the jewel in the crown

Type 17

Sad Professor wrote: »

Interesting.

I still can't decide whether to install Leopard on my iBook or not. It's a 1Ghz G4 with 1GB of RAM. Tbh I find it slow enough as it is and given how RAM hungry Leopard is... I have 2GB in my iMac and even that doesn't seem like enough anymore.

Be aware that it does use a lot more memory - my new iMac (2.4 GHz aluminium) used to be using about 300-500MB with just Mail and Camino open, but now that same scenario uses about 900-1100MB (of the available 2GB, as seen in the menu bar with Menumeters)

Gauge

I haven't noticed any performance issues at all- no difference in speed, spotlight is working fine, etc. Thankfully!

Only thing annoying me is that if I want to use my MyBook (or any drive) with time machine I need to reformat it to Mac OS Journaled It'd be a lot of trouble to reformat my MyBook because there's so much stuff on it... and I use it with my PC as well, so I can't format it to Mac OS Journaled...

Breezer

Gauge wrote: »

I haven't noticed any performance issues at all- no difference in speed, spotlight is working fine, etc. Thankfully!

Only thing annoying me is that if I want to use my MyBook (or any drive) with time machine I need to reformat it to Mac OS Journaled It'd be a lot of trouble to reformat my MyBook because there's so much stuff on it... and I use it with my PC as well, so I can't format it to Mac OS Journaled...

I haven't used Leopard so I don't know this for sure, but isn't Disk Utility now capable of repartitioning drives without wiping the partitions? Could you make a separate partition and format that with journaling?

440Hz

Running Leopard, some mad stuff happening already argh!!! Full report to follow.

Gauge

Breezer wrote: »

I haven't used Leopard so I don't know this for sure, but isn't Disk Utility now capable of repartitioning drives without wiping the partitions? Could you make a separate partition and format that with journaling?

I've never partitioned a drive before, guess now's a good time to start doing it!

Type 17

Breezer wrote: »

I haven't used Leopard so I don't know this for sure, but isn't Disk Utility now capable of repartitioning drives without wiping the partitions? Could you make a separate partition and format that with journaling?

It's not that big a step forward - You can move the sizes of existing partitions about, but you can't form new partitions without losing all data.

Example:
If you have a 3-partition drive, you can make the second partition bigger by stealing space from the third one, and the first and second will be unaffected, but you will lose all data from the third one.

If you split a previously one-partition drive, you will lose all data...

Jonathanpbk

how come boot camp can do it without erasing the drive?

Type 17

Jonathanpbk wrote: »

how come boot camp can do it without erasing the drive?

Good point, but there seems to be a difference in the functionality in Boot Camp:

"Boot Camp Assistant
Install Windows without affecting your existing files. Boot Camp Assistant carves out the necessary disk space required by Windows automatically."

...and the functionality in Disk Utility:

"Live Partition Resizing in Disk Utility
You may be able to gain disk space without losing data. If a volume is running out of space, simply delete the volume that comes after it on the disk and move the volume’s end point into the freed space."

(Text from Apple article on the 300 new features of Leopard)

Jonathanpbk

yeah, theres a few pain-in-the-ass things like that hiding around os x!! :rolleyes:

dan99989

Anyone know where in Dublin has stock? I've tried 3G stores in Dundrum and Henry street. Oh, and the Spectra stores in Dundrum and the one at the bottom of Grafton street...

Help!

Oirthir

Did you try the o2 stores?

Type 17

Be careful out there:

Loss of data possible when moving between volumes in Leopard

Chardee MacDennis

it's only when moving although copying and pasting works.

440Hz

Plugged ye olde blueberry in today, Leopard did not like it - kernel panic. Rejecting the non-iphone foreign bodies hehe!! I'll show that cat!!

Type 17

Call_me_al wrote: »

it's only when moving although copying and pasting works.

and it's only if one of the drives becomes unavailable during the move, so it won't affect many people, but if you are the person who knocks a cable while moving your edited film/beautiful photo/essay/thesis, you'd be pretty annoyed (understatement) - I'll be copying and then deleting the originals until it's confirmed fixed...

triple h

I think i will wait till after xmas to upgrade to leopard. What do others waiting in the leopard line think ????

thed4king

Just to say, I'm running leopard now and its fantastic! Both my dad and bro have MacBook's(Pro) but it also is running perfectly on my iBook G4. I love leopard! Its fantastic!. A pitty microsoft had to copy apple for vista app's?? Still a vista fan? Check out this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaIUkwPybtM

Macs RULE!!!!

jtsuited

thed4king wrote: »

Macs RULE!!!!

Yarr!

i'm also thinking of waiting until after christmas. Digidesign need to get their act together regarding PT.

triple h

I am waiting to upgrade, but i am getting ready for it. This is the harddrive i am going to buy, it seems to be the best one on the market as far as my research shows http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=322613 I have ordered something else from these guys ( first time buyer from them) and i am waiting to see how things go with my first order, just incase they are a bunch of cowboys, but i don't think they are.

Anyway i have some questions, if ye do not mind because i am going to do a erase and install ( i will do a really detailed report ( even describing the chair i am sitting on... kidding) for new mac users when i have done this, as i have said before i know what it is like to be a new mac user.

Here goes.

1)-- When i back up my computer hard drive onto my WD harddrive, i will unplug the WD and i will install Leopard, erase and install. When Leopard is installed and i plug my WD back into my computer ( i will not open time machine at this point) can i install stuff from my WD back into leopard ?
2) -- Will some apps i re-install back to leopard ( if i can do it) cause the blue screen to appear ?

3) am i going about this the right way or arse ways ?

I may have more questions later.

Sad Professor

triple h,

I have two WD mybook drives as well, both ordered from komplett. You won't have problems with them. Just don't bother installing any of the software that comes with them, won't work anyway.

You can use OSX's migration assistant to transfer your old files over, although this probably has a result similar to an archive and install. Might make doing a clean install kinda pointless.

And don't worry about the blue-screen error. Not everyone had the problem and afaik it was caused by doing an upgrade.

triple h

Sad Professor wrote: »

triple h,



You can use OSX's migration assistant to transfer your old files over, although this probably has a result similar to an archive and install. Might make doing a clean install kinda pointless.
.

Thanks professor. that is why i asked these questions cause it struck me about the pointlessness of erase and install and i was a bit confused.

Have to go back and see what someone ( forget who) said about archive and install.

triple h

eirlink wrote: »

im not sure about this but i recall from somewhere that leopard is optomised to run well given 1 gig of ram.

I had a bootable clone of tiger on an ext HD prior to upgrading and tried all 3 upgrade options. The most troublesome was upgrade till i found the cause of the BSOD ( which was the APE listings ) once they were removed all was fine.

Of the 3 here were my findings:

1. erase and install....cleanest BUT a pain in the ass trying to reimport everything using migration assistant.

2. archive and install...worked well but still needed to pull everything back across

3. upgrade...the best by a mile. Took a while to complete but everything, and i mean EVERYTHING was there, as in tiger, but with a beautiful fast running OS called leopard.

What is APE listings ?

This post was very very good ( have read it a million times so far) but it has cause me to wonder a lot.

mikemac

triple h wrote: »

I think i will wait till after xmas to upgrade to leopard. What do others waiting in the leopard line think ????

I'm the same.
Any issues will be known and resolved hopefully by then
There's no need to rush to buy it.

decob

triple h wrote: »

I am waiting to upgrade, but i am getting ready for it. This is the harddrive i am going to buy, it seems to be the best one on the market as far as my research shows http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=322613 I have ordered something else from these guys ( first time buyer from them) and i am waiting to see how things go with my first order, just incase they are a bunch of cowboys, but i don't think they are.

nah komplett are pretty decent from my experience, never had a problem using them even with returns. As for WD drives - well we almost bought some for work earlier in the year, that was until i read this blog... http://www.tomrafteryit.net/western-digital-my-book-pro-edition-ii-sucks/
I was weary about using WD's again, due to a wd passport II i got that died, as the cable supplied was not sufficient to power the drive - it basically needed a dual usb cable to power the thing. We now have a fre seagate freeagents and so far haven't had any issues with them.

triple h

micmclo wrote: »

I'm the same.
Any issues will be known and resolved hopefully by then
There's no need to rush to buy it.

I agree 100%, but i am just getting ready.

The only thing that is bugging me more so, is the fact i have an item on hold in the apple store ( did not click buy. Yet.), it is command and conquer and i will be charged for delivery ( which does not bug me most times), but seen as i am going to buy leopard i may as well get them sent the same day and not be charged for post. But if i get leopard in the post i will not be able to look at it on my desk unopened. I am not ready to upgrade yet. I want command and conquer, although i did not look hard enough to see if i can buy it elsewhere, i may. I will see.

Sad Professor

Tbh if you have the money I'd just upgrade now. Many of these issues are being blown out of proportion. There's always somebody who claims such-and-such-update bricked their system. Most of my criticisms probably won't be fixed.

The main reason to wait is if you use your mac for work and are waiting on 3rd party Leopard updates or stability fixes.

10.5.1 should be out soon anyway.

Cabaal

Did an upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5 and no issues what so ever, system is running along fine and no issues, even with programs that many are saying are incompatiable

As for WD drives, I have 3 WD MyBook 500GB's and 1 WD MyBook II 1TB external drives and have had no issues with any of them, although I did recive one of them and it looked like the box was kicked around the place but that was AnPost's fault

see - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055090849

I have yet to have any WD drives fail on me past or present, I have however had two Seagate and 4 IBM Deathstars fail on me

triple h

Feck it. i am going to order leopard now, right now. I will most likely have it on wednesday or thursday but it may be saturday before i can get the time to upgrade my computer.

culabula

Any of you lot using Leopard AND 3 mobile broadband? Now, I know the latter doesn't work too well at the best of times but leaving those problems aside does the wretched thing work with Leopard? I am terrified to re-apply this OS (and all its attendant problems) if it simply refuses to work with the Huawei USB yoke.

PS -all MacHeads should check out the latest edition of Viz and the strip "Osama Ben Laden's Computer Nightmare". Very funny.

triple h

eirlink wrote: »

im not sure about this but i recall from somewhere that leopard is optomised to run well given 1 gig of ram.

If you have an external drive, you can use superduper to make a bootable clone before you try any of the install options. ( PLEASE NOTE superduper is NOT leopard compatible at moment, but update version is imminent )


for what its worth, SuperDuper saved my sanity during all this cause i could always restore back to tiger and start again.

Question, 1)--i have just ordered my very very first, ever, hard drive ( i will have it soon) --- Should i have ordered two drives ?

2)-- When i set up time machine this clone copy i have of tiger will be erased from my new WD hard drive, yes ????

3) -- Before installing leopard should i delete superduper ( just downloaded it) from my system ???

Sad Professor

10.5.1 is out now. Complete list of fixes here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306907

Basq

Ouch... got this earlier when i plugged in my external drive:



The word "null" strikes fear into every programmers mindset.. but the fact that it encompasses in quotes means my drive's label was probably marked as "null" but first time it's appeared.

440Hz

basquille wrote: »

The word "null" strikes fear into every programmers mindset.. but the fact that it encompasses in quotes means my drive's label was probably marked as "null" but first time it's appeared.

Nasty!!

hupyago

the software update faculty on the mac solves the upgrade question
whenever there is an upgrade just download it for free
I just downloaded and installed the newest version

triple h

Just did the upgrade option to install Leopard. No problems, it's up and running. it looks so cool. I will mess around for the next day or two. Everything on my computer is the way i left it when i finished up with tiger. I am happy.

I was afraid of upgrading too soon, especially after hearing of problems people had. But a special thanks to everyone in here for leaving comments, but the biggest thanks i want to give is to eirlink and sad professor.

I will be writing down my upgrade report in the noobie thread ( I know new people that have switched to mac will be afraid) I was a bit, but i found eirlink's post on page 8 (i think page 8) very very helpful and sad professor calmed me down. So when i write my report i am really only repeating what ye guys said. I am just talking to new mac people that have left windows and expect trouble.

triple h

oh sweet jesus, upgrade to Leopard as soon as possible people. Even though i am a half an hour messing around i love it. It is way better than tiger.

I will set up time machine tomorrow. This leopard system is perfect.

ZENER

Try highlighting a file/song/picture file and hit the space bar. Handy or what ?
Time Machine is very neat but really needs an external drive to be truly useful.

In a finder window if a networked machine has remote admin enabled then when it's selected from the left pane 2 buttons appear over the right pane:

"Share Screen" and "Connect".

Clicking Share Screen gives you immediate access to the remote machines desktop. Remote Desktop isn't needed anymore. Very handy.

Spaces is also useful if you regularly open a lot of apps which might clutter up the desktop.

On the downside the bluetooth facilities that were available in Address Book - SMS, Answer Call etc. are no more .

Back up again and A2DP works - bluetooth stereo headsets are GO !! They sound pretty cool too !

ZEN

zeris

Screen Sharing works a little different from your typical VNC client. Instead of referencing the screen number it is done by port. So while using Chicken of the VNC it is screen 4 in Leopard it is vnc://<hostname>:5904

The biggest change for me is how better behaved Finder is regarding network shares. Especially regarding connecting to errand shares (ie misbehaving atalk due to file database corruption) and abrupt disconnects due to the ethernet cable being removed.

Without knowing the internals and specifics it would appear that Finder has or has better threading support.

This is +1 for Leopard.

That and the very cute way of file renaming. In Tiger the whole file name was highlighted while in Leopard the filename up to the extension is highlighted.

Apart from that I have noticed no difference. Well, apart from perl doesn't build from pkgsrc and Gimp.app (and no, AquaGimp is broken in other ways) is/glib2 based apps are broken.

pontovic

I got leopard yesterday and installed all the updates tonight and I must say it's an absolute pleasure to work with. I used to have a windows PC but I got a macbook pro recently and I'm not disappointed. Everything just 'works' with no arsing around. It has the power of unix without having to wade through a ton of documentation just to find out how to install something. Solid as a brick. Highly recommended.

triple h

I must say i am very very happy with leopard. Funny thing is i was sorry for buying it too early before i installed it onto my computer. But after the upgrade that feeling changed, and very quick. Only for i wanted to buy a game from apple and did not want to charged for P&P, i would have waited till after xmas. Thank you command & conquer.

anyway to the point of this post.
MY TOP 5 FAVOURITE FEATURES IN LEOPARD.

1) Mail
2) Time Machine
3) Cover flow in finder
4) Spaces
5) Stacks ( in the Dock)

by the way, is it just me or does Safari seem more clear looking. I noticed ( before i upgrade to leopard) first when i updates tiger from 10.4.10 to 10.4.11