Die-hard Windows User? OSX is now a real option (part 2).

By now you will probably have seen a ton of content about Leopard, its many features, and why you should or shouldn’t upgrade if you own a Mac. I upgraded my 1-year-old Macbook to Leopard over the weekend, so I here’s my experience of the process from a ‘previous windows user’ point of view…

If you’re a Windows user, OS upgrades can be a serious challenge. In fact, for Windows I usually tend to favour a ’scratch install’ - i.e. format the hard drive and start fresh. So in moving from Tiger to Leopard, I followed the same approach - not that I really needed to in reality, as OSX/Unix tends to be a lot more compartmentalised in terms of where your user-files are. But hey, I wanted to make the most of the chance to ‘clean up’.

Preparation

So, I started by turning off File Vault (Home directory encryption) and then doing a full-disk backup to an External Drive using SuperDuper. As I was planning to format the internal drive, I knew I would have to use the ‘Migration Wizard’ to bring my data and applications back from the external drive - I have been caught before with the wizard failing if your home directory is encrypted, so I though I would take the precaution.

The Actual Install

Next, I simply put the Leopard DVD in the drive, and ran the upgrade process - which reboots and starts the install. After a few minutes I was prompted for which install I wanted to run. Here I chose not to take the default upgrade, and chose the ‘Format’ fresh install. Without much further ado, it started ‘doing its stuff’ and politely let me know that it would take about an hour… (If you choose to verify the integrity of the install DVD, it could take you another hour before it even starts! Probably not necessary with an out-of-the-box DVD.)

Eventually, a large friendly message pops up to say the install is complete, and it reboots again, coming up for the first time with the full Leopard 10.5 Operating System.

User-Data Migration

Because I chose the ’scratch’ install, I now had a ‘virgin’ system, so the ‘Migration Wizard’ automatically popped up and asked me where to import my user-data from. I told it which partition on my external Firewire Drive and very quickly it identified my data. I selected my ‘Documents’ only, and away it went. After about 5 minutes it finished and presented me with my usual log-in prompt. I logged on with the same password and there was my normal desktop, just as I’d left it. Flawless.

Applications Install

As you may have noticed, I chose not to migrate my applications - which I probably should have. Again, this is probably just a ‘left over’ from my Windows days where freshly installing your apps often made a real difference. For Leopard, it has just meant a whole lot of work that I probably could have avoided… oh well.

The End result

So what do you get when you’re finished? Essentially the same ol’ OSX with a few rather nice bells and whistles added in. The main ‘big’ features I immediately noticed were Time Machine, Spaces, a revamped Mail and a revamped Finder - all of which seem pretty substantial so far. Smaller things like 64-bit (my laptop has a 32-bit processor so not applicable), enhanced security, stacks, and an enhanced Preview are also nice.

Overall I think a very reasonable upgrade - flawless for me, and no major issues so far. I have noticed some minor graphical glitches here and there - perhaps almost a Release Candidate feel - but no major failures yet. Also, the way OSX handles SMB Shares (Windows Shares) still seems as unforgiving as Tiger was - just try disconnecting the network without first unmounting the Network Share! Hopefully there will be a bunch of updates from Apple in the near future to address the not quite finished stuff - maybe the SMB bug will be fixed one day too.