Punzi's Corner Blog

As promised, I'm posting my initial thoughts on Leopard so far.

1. Installation

As I stated yesterday, I was surprised how easy installation was compared to how the online literature portrays it to be. But of course, I took note of the "horror stories" out there and made some safety measures, as follows:

• Upgraded to 2Mb RAM
• Used the "Archive and Install" option instead of the "Upgrade" option, though most of the online literature agree the safest (but very painful) option is the "Erase and Install" option that is also known as a clean install
• Disconnected all (as in all) USB devices attached Scarlett until I could boot Leopard first

It took about 2 hours for my installation (I took a short nap while it was doing its thing). Curiously, it ran a process that checks the readability of the installation files on the disc first before attempting to copy files and install the OS. That's a prudent move for a conservative install. It avoids any mishaps on your system caused by a failed install due to file corruption. If you are in a hurry, you can skip this step. But I don't recommend it. You should have set aside the time to do this important task anyway.

I'm grateful Apple was thoughtful enough to include this step, unlike Microsoft that leaves you, your computer and your data at the mercy of possible defects in the installation CD you got. I can only say this for XP only because I have never installed Vista... yet. My Vista experience comes from two HP machines with pre-installed Vista Home Basic.

That process of checking the integrity of the disk took a good hour I think.

After that, the copying of the files went without issue and was relatively quick.

Then came the most scary part of this experience: the reboot.

There were a lot of people who got a typical PC experience called "The Blue Screen of Death" or BSOD for short. For the PC it looks like this:


But for the Mac OSX, it's just a plain (sky) blue screen that refuses to go to initial login screen.

My own experience was more focussed than the anxiety over possibly having BSOD than what actually happened. Scarlett went to the login screen almost as fast as in Tiger.

After this, it was pretty much finished, except for the optional installs I performed afterwards. I had to put X11 for Open Office, the language options, as well as the printer drivers.

2. First Impressions

As an upgrade (opposed to a totally new OS), Leopard is still OSX. This means this was not a totally new experience but only an improvement of it. So I was not actually lost when I handled it the first time.

And when I finished installation, Apple manages to fulfill its promise that it will "simply work."

Leopard simply works.

And as I said yesterday, I was pretty much finished after installation, since I chose to preserve my Tiger settings. I could already live (and work) with the setup I had right then and there.

I had some error messages when I ran Twitterffic while performing optional installs. But after downloading the 10.5.1 update, I did not have problems up to now.

On the other hand, I kind of miss troubleshooting a PC install. Perhaps using OSX is becoming too boring. But what I don't miss is the trouble I had with Vista.

So far, almost all of my previous applications also work with Leopard. And this is just as well because as I said, this was supposed to be an upgrade and not a totally new operating system.

3. The experience so far...

At first I thought there will be no major changes in the experience I will have with Leopard. And for the most part it is true. But going deeper, you will know that it delivers as an upgrade.

For my purposes, I appreciated two improvements: Quick Look and the improved Spotlight.

"Using Quick Look in Leopard, you can view the contents of a file without even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video. See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click."

That's very useful for me since I already have a lot of pleadings in my files that I still use for reference in making new ones. With Quick Look, I don't need to open my word processor, spreadsheet or presentation programs (which still runs on Rosetta).

Spotlight now searches contents of files rather than only filenames and now allows Boolean searches. Again for my purposes, this is very powerful. Sometimes I remember a legal principle or a case, or a provision of law I used in a pleading, a letter or an opinion that I need to use again. With Spotlight, I can search these from my existing files easily.

I just started setting up Stacks for my documents and downloads and haven't even explored Spaces. But I anticipate these will be useful for me.

Also, I feel my computer is faster, even with Leopard. But I think that's because of the 2Gb RAM upgrade I had in preparation for this upgrade. And my 500 Gb external hard drive mounts faster in Leopard than in Tiger...

4. Summary

All in all, it's a good experience. The installation was easy, unlike how online literature portrayed it. Leopard simply works out of the box for me. And the upgrades, so far, will only improve and not hinder the OSX experience.

I'm grateful I finally decided to upgrade. The experience is good so far.

Of course, if there's something wrong, I will blog about it here...

Have a great week, everyone!