So I took the plunge.

I was going to wait to hear what other people’s experience was like upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard, but after visiting the Apple Store in Pasadena, I could not wait. I purchased Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) for $129. In fact, I purchased 2 copies. One for me and one for my work computer.

The upgrade was extremely easy. I turned on my Mac, inserted my DVD and after the screen poped up a big “X”, I clicked the Restart button.

The computer rebooted, I selected the destination of my upgrade (my default Macintosh HD) and then clicked “Install”.

I then walked away and went to my room to watch a movie with my wife (we watched Chasing Amy, by Kevin Smith, I highly recommend this movie, extremely funny…but that’s for a different blog).

I kept coming back every 10 to 15 minutes to check how the upgrade was going. It said it would take about 45 minutes. It took about that long (actually a bit less time) and it required around 5.5GB of free space for the upgrade. After the upgrade was done, it asked me to “register” Leopard, which I did, and then checked for new updates, downloaded them, and asked me to reboot the machine so that it can finish installing the updates.

After it rebooted, I went ahead, logged in, it played a very cool movie, typical Apple, and then I started checking all of my applications. There is an optional install in the DVD (which is not installed with the default install) which installs a variety of extra things such as printer drivers, language packs, etc.

I recommend you install that. If you select everything in the optional pack, it requires about an extra 6 gigs.

Talk about eye candy. Leopard is full of them. I mean so much cool new “eye candy” that I had to get an insulin shot to calm down. I mean, I got cavities just looking at the new desktop! I can’t think of any more lame jokes, so I’ll move on…

The new Finder is beautiful and so easy to use. The 3-D dock…what can I say. It’s freaking 3-D! Awesome. I love the new cover flow view to see your files just like you see your music in iTunes. The new Mail rocks! I really like it, especially the ability to add RSS feeds. The new iCal application looks much nicer. That’s something I also noticed, all windows, applications, etc. look the same now, no more different looks for each application. Nice touch Apple! I will write another blog talking about the many new features in this version of Mac OS X 10.5 in the very near future.

So far I love Mac OS X Leopard, however, is not perfect. I immediately ran into a variety of issues, which I’m going to document in my next blog, so this is it for the “I love Leopard” blog and the free advertising plug I’m giving Apple and now on to “Reality Hits; Issues with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard After My Upgrade“.

Cheers!

- Marcelo

The Digital Media Dude