Leopard is finally in the hands of thousands of Mac owners who are now getting their “new Mac” set up the way they prefer. While some found frustration with the Upgrade install, I backed up my important stuff and performed a full Erase and Install, resulting in a fresh system with no lingering apps or tweaks from the previous system. So far, my experience with Leopard has been a great one, with only a few software updates required to make things run like new. Here’s a run-down of some of the notes I made while getting software working:
- Backup
Apple’s .Mac-bundled “Backup” application received a small update bringing it up to Leopard standards, meaning many users can now successfully retrieve backups created before installing the system. Since I erased my previous OS install, being able to bring forth my backups stored on my networked G4 fileserver was one of the first things I needed to accomplish — something I’ll hopefully only need to do once with the advent of Time Machine. (Thanks for the tip, Jaron!) - Adobe CS3 Compatibility
I had read a number of reports concerning CS3 compatibility with Leopard, and was wary of even installing them again, but I was glad to find that Adobe CS3 seems to work just fine in Leopard. I’ve run Photoshop, Illustrator, and Bridge for a few hours now without issue! - VMware Fusion
I’m a big fan of using VMware on Windows to try out software before actually installing it on the host PC, and couldn’t be happier with the implementation on the Mac side of things, as well. VMware Fusion for Mac just hit 1.1 RC, and is nearing the final 1.1 release. The update brings, among other things, Leopard compatibility which works great. - Transmit & Unison
My two must-have utilities from Panic, Transmit and Unison, are now Leopard ready and run with nary a hitch. Way to go, guys! - Font icons
Images, PDFs, and Keynote presentations aren’t the only icons branded with the actual content they contain. Font files’ icons are updated to show the actual typeface on right on the icon. How cool is that?
I’m sure there’s a mountain of other cool things in Leopard just waiting to be discovered, and software developers will be publishing Leopard compatibility updates for the next few weeks at least. Keep an eye on MacOSXHints.com, one of the best places to check for the latest Leopard tweaks and tips!
Very smoothly. I decided to upgrade install so I could get right to it quickly, but plan on doing a clean install in the coming days.
Leopard is much more zippy than Tiger was, I’d love to feel the speed change coming from Panther to Leopard now. Like coming from a Honda to a Ferrari.
Last.fm seems to be having a little bit of trouble I’ve found, otherwise everything else has been seamless.
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The issue with CS3 that I encountered is that it won’t install if you format your drive as ‘case sensitive’ journaled.
I had to reformat as regular journaled and everything installed and works fine.
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Server Admin 10.5 will not manage a 10.4 server (no surprise I guess), however 10.4 Admin would not install on my Macbook Pro. A dragged copy of the backup I made before a clean install works fine.
FMPro 7 installed and seems to work OK
Safari 3 crashes on a work web site though the 3 beta under 10.4 did not.
Office 2004 seems to works OK as did the various updates to it.
Changes:
No internet connect application, VPN connections are now done in the Network System prefs
Firewalling is now under Security System prefs , interesting as it now allows blocking of applications rather than ports.
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