I was one of the folks that immediately had my copy of Leopard in hand for the update. Ordered the family pack for installation here at the Mactropolis offices and I was pumped. I’ve been using Leopard now since launch in late October. The last few months have given me a great opportunity to experience and share what I’ve found.
Installation on my MacBook pro was flawless and without any hang-ups. Immediately following the upgrade I of course began fooling around with the new features. Spaces was cool, the new ‘look’ I thought was OK, and Time Machine intruiged me. ‘I’ll have to get a huge external hard drive’ I thought to myself.
Initially Leopard was a hit here at Mactropolis. I installed Leopard on 3 more macs, each without any problems. With a few systems still running Tiger, I decided to leave things as is. I thought it might be interesting to see first hand the differences from Tiger to Leopard in terms of stability and usability.
Over time this became clear to me. In Tiger, I very, very rarely had any issues with applications locking up and freezing on me. In Leopard, I’m sad to report that this is a daily occurrence. In fact, shortly before sitting down to write this post, Safari froze up on me while I was doing some browsing. Frustrating to say the least.
On top of that, not only are things freezing on me, but applications are running a heck of a lot slower. I use Photoshop on a daily basis and work with some relatively large files. With Tiger I could hop right in and get to work on my files. In Leopard, it seems that files are taking a long time to open, and when working on files I often have to wait for the ‘watch’ or the ‘spinning beach ball of death‘. (I then hold my breath and hope that Photoshop does not crash!)
With all this said, I’m going to stick it out with Leopard at this point. While I could downgrade to Tiger, I know that Apple will be working hard on updates to correct issues and problems with the OS. I’m doing my part, sending in reports to Apple on a daily basis when apps crash on me 
What are your thoughts? I know I’m not alone here, as I’ve read a lot of disappointing reviews and reports all over the web.
How are you enjoying/not enjoying Leopard so far? Do you regret making the upgrade?
Mick // 28/12/2007 at 1:44 pm
Unfortunately……I too am not completely happy on this upgrade. It is much slower on my Powermac Dual 2 ghz G5 Tower than tiger ever was. It’s pretty obvious that the Adobe CS3 Suite is not as happy as it was before. In fairness……I did a straight upgrade and I believe that these days a fresh install may be norm and not the exception. I think the days of a straight migration are over because of the shear size of the OS. Memory usage has increased as well……2 gigs of ram was managable in Tiger but not nearly enough for Leo. Sprinkle in that my scanner is no longer usuable/ Rights issues for files created by me and place on a Tiger server are annoying and I pretty much have to have other create the folders to keep them from being locked out.
Glad I decided not to upgrade more than my mac……it will get better. I do like a lot of what I see…perhaps after macworld we’ll get a meanigful update.
Still love my mac…….just growing pains…I guess.
Mick (the Leo Crash Test Dummy)
Art // 28/12/2007 at 4:51 pm
I love the new cat, but there are some issues. Safari does crash from time to time, especially when clicking tabs closed. Photoshop was a long install with strange, lengthy pauses that didn’t inspire confidence. It does seem to take longer to start up.
Haven’t noticed anything else so far. I did a fresh install because I read about people having difficulty with other upgrade options. And I run a pretty lean system, avoiding hacks whenever possible.
All the new features do make me quite a bit more productive. I’m eagerly awaiting 10.5.2 update as well. It would be very difficult to go back to Tiger. Leopard is that big of an improvement.
Other than a few Apps, the general snappiness of the new OS is impressive. And that’s with 2GB RAM on a mid-range 24″ iMac.
mat!-) // 28/12/2007 at 5:37 pm
What can I say? Using Leopard from the very beginning in full force I experienced really nasty things on my just barely recommended PB 12\” 1,5GHz with 1,25GB RAM, from not being able log in to freezes and crashes to finally having a daily \”shut down Your computer\” screen of death… I had\’em all…
Being pretty frustrated and sobered by these facts I decided giving it one last chance to make it right, performing a full time machine backup followed by clean format/ reinstallation of the OS on the system partition- using the time machine recovery of system preferences when being asked for it… and mamma mia, what a difference: NOT ONE crash, NOT one hangup, NOT ONE severe crash of a program- While I can see that this cat is drawing much more energy from the battery as well as needing a LOT more resources, I am more than happy to have the whole thing as is in Leopard… and although I still consider downgrading a realistic option I will try to stay with Leopard because of time machine and the new finder features…
cause they really are addictive to say the least…
cheers, mat!-)
Richard // 28/12/2007 at 8:30 pm
I’ve had Leopard up since day one. Small problems. Nothing earth-shattering. Safari crashes twice a day. Sometimes Finder crashes (leaving everything else up), this usually with Word. Love all the new stuff. They’ll nail it down. People forget earlier versions of OS X had similar, and in some cases worse problems.
Tony // 29/12/2007 at 12:37 am
I’ve done 7 Leopard instals to date - all since 10.5.1 - and have followed the same procedure on each occasion. SuperDuper! to create a complete bootable backup on an external disk in Tiger. Clean instal of Leopard. Let the Leopard Installer run the Migration Assistant to transfer from the bootable backup. System Update to 10.5.1 before running any apps. Sit back and enjoy!
This has worked for systems from a barely acceptable eMac, iBook G4s, to a decent 24-inch Intel iMac.
No crashes, and only minor issues like having to readd printers for them to be seen. And the overall view is that Leopard seems just as quick as Tiger and even more responsive on the iBooks.
I used this MacFixIt and Macintouch recommended procedure so why ignore what seems like good custom and practice?
Charles Martin // 29/12/2007 at 3:27 am
Safari crashes are ALWAYS the result of broken plug-ins, either for Safari itself (like AdBlock or PithHelmet) or the verdammnt Input Managers folder (no longer useful in Leopard), particularly anything involving SIMBL.
Clear those out, check your startup logs to find any other hidden startup crap, clear it out, and I *guarantee* Leopard will magically become fast and slick as intended.
Partners in Grime // 04/01/2008 at 9:57 pm
Safari is working great. Generally runs for days with multiple windows and tabs open.
John Scott // 22/02/2008 at 6:41 pm
I have used Leopard since its intro. I have gone back to using Vista on my Dell more and more. I have had too much trouble with Safari freezing, kernel panics and have reinstalled Leopard 3 times! I had Leopard on a MacBook and also on a Mac Mini core2. I think Apple has spent too much time developing other products and Leopard paid the price. I sometimes feel the computer line is taking a back burner to the iPhone and Apples other media products. My next laptop will not be a Apple because my MacBook ran hot, had cracks in case from heat stress and fails in features compaired to a PC laptop of similar price.
I truly cannot justify spending the money.