Well since I queued outside the Apple store in Regents street for my shiny new copy of Leopard I have had nothing but issues. Firstly I did an Archive and Install (this went well except it totally screwed my bluetooth setting to the extent that I could no longer connect my phone to use as a modem. This is pretty important to me as I regularly spend a few hours a day travelling to client offices (as it happens I’m writing this while doing the very same).
So I backed up all of my files (both on a network and on an external disk, this time opting for a totally fresh installation. Boy that was an eye opener. It appears that Leopard disks may not be created equal as one would assume – After this installation I went on to install XCode tools – This crapped out, my disk saying there were “issues” with the package and I need to take it back to Apple (something I will be doing next week).
OK, well that botched installation (as XCode has started to install stuff and it resulted in a VERY unstable machine), was duly wiped and yet another installation was attempted – all I can say at this point is that goodness it wasn’t Windows as those installs take days! Anyway after this installation everything seemed fine and Apple had just released the 10.5.1 update. Then the lock ups started, intermittent keyboard lock ups, programs just stopped responding (force quit wouldn’t quit them), trying to mount DMG’s or extract zips failed with all manner of errors. Bizarrely enough a reboot resolved all of these- until they started to happen again. The my iDisk started to complain, by complain I mean I noticed it wasn’t doing what it should. Finally this was just one hard reboot too many for Leopard and I got a massive corruption of the drive – it would crash as soon as it tried to load the boot loader.
So on to install number 4 (if my calculations are correct). Now during all my “fun and games” I started to notice some constants, lock ups and apps not responding, plus DMG’s failing to mount all appeared to be linked with .mac running an automatic synchronization, or iDisk having it’s own attempt at auto syncing (as it always fails now). So I have turned all of these off and all seems to be stable. For the moment at least.
Now iDisk and iSync worked perfectly until they released 10.5.1 so perhaps if the fix for the security hole in “back to my Mac” has screwed it all now. That way if none of it works no-one can connect – Problem solved.
Oh and yesterday I lost sound – It bongs on startup, Leopard is convinced I have no audio hardware. Thankfully Audio Hijack fixed that issue.
Am I pissed at all these issues? Well yes and no. Yes, as I rely on this machine to do my client work on and if it goes down it costs me revenue (and potential data loss). No, because I run a lot of bleeding edge stuff, a lot of my old apps are not confirmed as Leopard compatible and well if it annoys me that much I could go back to Tiger.
What does really piss me off is that Time Machine doesn’t support network backup if you don’t happen to have a shiny new XServer running Leopard Server….
Would I recommend you upgrade, sure go for it…If you like installing stuff :p
