Upgrading to Leopard from a Mac Consultant’s Point of View

by Nathan

Assuming my package does indeed arrive some time today (tuesday, 2008.04.15), I’ll be installing Leopard on my MacBook. I’m thinking about keeping a Tiger partition in case things go crazy. Then again, maybe I should simply go Leopard only on the internal drive. I can always keep a Tiger clone on an external hard drive.

The Leopard upgrade plan:

1. Back up data partition.
2. Back up account preferences.Boot into Leopard install disk.
3. Wipe drive.
4. Repartition into boot and data partitions (possibly a slightly bigger boot partition than I have now for Tiger).
5. Custom Install of Leopard.
6. Run Leopard updates.
7. Install applications.
8. Transfer data to data partition.

Chapter 2

Early returns are in and I believe the update can be tentatively called a success. Update is a bit of a misnomer as I did a clean install, sans Migration Assistant, instead preferring to bring over a few select preferences. FIOS made short work of the rather hefty updates. From my earlier posted list I only need to finish 8 and start 9 to complete my Leopard transition.

Interesting Leopard differences:

• Software updates install after selecting restart not immediately after downloading. Much better than the previous OS X way of installing while apps are running and then tending to strongly suggest an immediate reboot anyway.

• Launching a disallowed app when using an account with parental controls, now forces a dialogue prompt to appear instead of silently failing to run.

Access Prompt

This dialogue explains why the app did not launch and as an added bonus, an admin can simply enable access to this app to Always Allow or Allow once straight from the dialogue. I like to work from a Limited user account and only give myself access to apps that I actually use.

Makes me feel safer to know rogue apps can’t run without me granting explicit allowance. In Tiger, immediate access to an disallowed app was not possible. Instead, I had a six step process:

1. Open Accounts in System Preferences (spotlight is you friend).
2. Unlock Accounts preference panel.
3. Select my account and add the new application to the “okay” list.
4. Logout of my account.
5. Log back into my account.
6. Launch app.

Not anymore. Try three quick steps.

1. Launch the new app.
2. Choose one of the two allow options from the prompt.
3. Authenticate with admin password.

• Spaces has proven a lot more useful than I thought possible.
  Haven’t run into any of the reported quirkiness yet. Anyone who is currently having problems with Spaces, feel free to give me a heads up to what sorts of bugs/quirks I should expect to find.
• Finally! No more Brushed Metal.

Will continue my reports as I dig deeper into this “new” cat’s territory.

Chapter Three

I had neglected to configure my MacBook to use my Nokia 6086 as a Bluetooth modem. With some trepidation I approached this task. Would the modem script I used in Tiger still work? If not, was there an updated modem script floating out on the web somewhere? Hey, where’s my faith in Apple?

Configuring my phone with Leopard was a breeze. The correct modem script is already included with Leopard. Typed in my telephone number (access point actually), account name, and password. Now I’m posting this update from T-Mobile’s EDGE.

However, iSync still doesn’t have native support for my phone, but early research leads me to believe that I should be able to use the Tiger method of iSync patching.

Patched iSync. So far everything I’ve tried has been the same or easier to configure in Leopard than in Tiger. I’m impressed. Thankfully, I don’t need to perform actual work (bitmap manipulation, vector art, page layout, or anything sound related). Makes for a much easier migration.

Wait, I did forget one thing. The Leopard firewall is strange. I’m not sure exactly how well I’m currently protected. I liked the Tiger firewall better. Need to dig deeper.

Conclusions

Wow! Alex, the newest OS X voice, is certainly impressive. Definite step in the right direction. I wish the best OS X voice was still a lady, but I’ll manage with Alex.

Tiger is not a bad OS. It’s darn near perfect for my needs. I usually am the last Mac user to upgrade to a new operating system, but business concerns (read as me not being able to troubleshoot clients’ Leopard powered Macs) made the Leopard upgrade worth the trouble. Thankfully, there hasn’t been much for me to stumble over.

Here’s another neat trick. Once you activate Spaces, the Exposé All Windows option still functions. Makes sense. How else could you reorder windows if you can’t see all the open windows once you’ve activated Spaces.

Note: Other Exposé functions such as Application Windows and Desktop don’t allow manipulation of windows from within Spaces. Instead, they operate with normal functionality-Application Windows will show all application windows from the prior application before Spaces was invoked. Desktop will show the desktop.