[X4U] Diving into Leopard . . .

[Randy B. Singer]

On Oct 27, 2008, at 2:55 PM, Joe Sporleder wrote:

> Any gotchas I need to worry about as I begin to worry about with  
> Leopard as I start upgrading our newspaper publishing office ...

I gave a talk on this subject at last January's Macworld Expo.  Here  
is a summary.

Before you upgrade use Disk Utility to "Repair Disk."  If Repair Disk  
can't repair any disk problems, use Disk Warrior...or don't upgrade.   
Upgrading your Mac with a damaged drive is just asking for huge  
problems.

Do an "Archive and Install" (NOT a straight "Upgrade" install or an  
"Erase and Install") and choose to "preserve Internet settings".   
Doing an Archive and Install will leave all of your files and  
applications untouched.  You will end up with a pristine copy of OS X  
10.5, and any third-party software that modified your OS will be  
uninstalled (to avoid software conflicts) and available in a  
"Previous System" folder.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306517>
Software conflicts due to doing a straight "Upgrade" to Leopard is  
the biggest potential gotcha.

Update all of your utilities, such as DiskWarrior, iDefrag and  
iPartition, SuperDuper, Onyx, and Cocktail.  All required an update  
to be compatible with Leopard.

If you use FileMaker , it needs to be updated:
<http://filemaker.com/support/leopard.html>

Update to the latest version of Leopard as soon as you have installed  
it.  Early Leopard versions of Disk Utility were flawed and can take  
over an hour just to repair permissions.
<http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4401956>

Many of your applications may need to be updated:

The TidBITS compatibility list:
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9281>

MacRumors list:
<http://guides.macrumors.com/ 
List_of_Applications_Not_Compatible_with_Leopard>

Leopard Software Incompatibilities from Macintouch:
<http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/compat.html>

MacFixIt: Incompatible third-party software and hardware
<http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071030122926454>

Leopard includes a new application-based firewall, as well as the  
older one.  Both are OFF by default.
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/151948/.html?tk=rss_news>

There was a massive data loss bug in Leopard 10.5.0 that was fixed in  
10.5.1.
If you MOVE (not copy) files or folders between disks or network  
volumes, its possible that all of the files being moved will vanish -  
both your originals and the ones on the destination end.
<http://tomkarpik.com/articles/massive-data-loss-bug-in-leopard/>
<http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/movebug.html>

The functioning of the Dock under Leopard was also updated  
significantly with 10.5.1.

___________________________________________
Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
___________________________________________