Kiran Jonnalagadda ([info]jace) wrote,
@ 2007-12-17 03:06:00
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Leopard
If you have a Mac and aren’t on Leopard yet, do yourself a huge favour and upgrade. If you don’t have a Mac, do yourself a huge favour and get one.

Man, this has got to be the best OS upgrade ever.

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[info]sidcarter
2007-12-16 11:00 pm UTC (link)
Leopard is not as stable as Tiger used to be. It has crashed more often in the 1 month I've had it than Tiger did in the 2 years I had it on my Powerbook.

And I don't see any major improvements with Leopard that really warrant an upgrade, apart from Time machine and the other "aesthetic" changes.

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[info]jace
2007-12-17 03:27 am UTC (link)
I found the cosmetic improvements alone to be significant enough to be very pleased with.

It's not been long enough to discuss stability, but I guess it's the typical .0 syndrome.

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[info]sidcarter
2007-12-17 07:54 am UTC (link)
It's not been long enough to discuss stability, but I guess it's the typical .0 syndrome.

I am on 10.5.1 :)

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[info]fus
2007-12-18 09:51 am UTC (link)
Havent had crash problems with Leopard, and in fact I am doing more intensive stuff on the book in the last 2 months than I have earlier.

And as Jace said, the cosmetic changes alone are worth it.

Just for the autorecognition of addresses as map addresses and the show on map service, and the multitabbed dictionary/thesaurus/wikipedia version of the dictionary i'd more than gladly change

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[info]arucard2
2007-12-19 02:33 am UTC (link)
My install experiences with Leopard have been bad. First, I had to re-install the OS once. And now, I am getting intermittent crashes on Terminal.app. Even iTerm refuses to startup.
A reboot does seem to get things working. The past two days I have been seeing a new oddity, with the menubar drop down menu appearing in the middle of the screen. ah well! I guess I need to live with it. 10.4.11 killed my system.

I do not use the other cosmetic enhancements.

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[OT]
[info]ashwinne
2007-12-17 12:02 am UTC (link)
Now that's a cool userpic!

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Re: [OT]
[info]ashwinb
2007-12-17 05:39 am UTC (link)
+1

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Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]mmk
2007-12-17 12:37 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately it's going to be 10.4.6 for a while.

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]sidcarter
2007-12-17 07:53 am UTC (link)
Stick with it if you don't care for the cosmetics. This Leopard has black unwanted spots.

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]jace
2007-12-17 08:17 am UTC (link)
Just out of curiosity -- what's broken for you?

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]sidcarter
2007-12-17 08:41 am UTC (link)
Crashes/hangs when using CS3 for a while.

Camino/Firefox/Safari hang or crash once in while. And all of these are native Intel Apps.

And at one point, my macbook would just boot into a blue screen (after a crash, of course). I had to reinstall Leopard. That's a first since I've started using Mac OS X.

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]jace
2007-12-17 08:56 am UTC (link)
Do you happen to be using Unsanity's Application Enhancer? It's known to cause blue screen problems in Leopard.

I did a clean install (new HD) and asked Leopard to reimport everything from the old disk. It did, and I returned to the exact same working environment as I had before the upgrade. The only instability was caused by DoubleCommand, which too was fixed by upgrading it.

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]sidcarter
2007-12-17 09:18 am UTC (link)
I had a lot of applications before I reinstalled, including Onyx. Didn't change anything using Onyx though.

Now, I only have the basic applications. And no, never installed the Application Enhancer.

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Re: Did I mention a new macbook?
[info]abdulqabiz
2007-12-17 11:29 am UTC (link)
Read the various post by Aral here:-

http://aralbalkan.com/category/leopard

He finally downgraded to Tiger... I bought Leopard installer around a month back but yet to upgrade, not sure I am gonna do it sooner.

-abdul

(Reply to this) (Parent)
No way...
[info]kingsly
2007-12-17 03:43 am UTC (link)
This is the best OS "upgrade" ever.

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Expensive
[info]sandy_tr
2007-12-17 04:27 am UTC (link)
>>>If you don’t have a Mac, do yourself a huge favor and get one

This weekend I happened to walk in to an apple store in Forum Mall, Bangalore. When asked about the prices i got to know the high end Mac notebook cost about 80k. When I say high end I mean a 2.2 Ghz Processor with 1 Gb Ram and 160 Gb Hard Disk and a VGA camera built in. With the same 80k I can get the best off the shelf laptop that runs Windows Xp (Yes i know Vista sucks I love Xp).

But anyways I would still love to own a MAC some day, Give the current price I guess i can wait for some more time.

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Re: Expensive
[info]teemus
2007-12-17 07:45 am UTC (link)
Repeat after me - Do not buy Apple products in India.

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Re: Expensive
[info]sandy_tr
2007-12-17 08:08 am UTC (link)
Any other reason apart from the price, I do understand the price difference is huge considering the US and Indian Market, But any other factor that makes you say that?

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Re: Expensive
[info]jace
2007-12-17 08:13 am UTC (link)
Apple offers international warranty on all portable devices (defined as any device that can operate without a power cord). Apple India has huge markup, particularly at the high end of the range, where it exceeds the cost of a one day trip to another country to buy a Mac.

You can also get good deals on eBay.in sometimes.

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Re: Expensive
[info]teemus
2007-12-17 09:35 am UTC (link)
Nothing that I can think of. If you are obscenely rich, then it doesn't matter.

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[info]fatalerror.wordpress.com
2007-12-17 08:16 am UTC (link)
Can't agree more, though I have to say that I am total Mac noob. Was checking out the prices yesterday, between US and India, for the MB and MBP. The quotation I got for the MB was 63K INR, while the Apple website lists it for 1000 USD, which is a huge difference. Got my MBP for 93k INR, while the Apple website lists it for 1999 USD, which is a lesser difference.

On the whole, my experience has been nice, other than Firefox, which sucks now equally bad on both Windows and the Mac (uses up almost the same amount of memory and freezes up in the same manner; talk about being platform agnostic in terms of user experience suckage). More detailed version of that here: http://fatalerror.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/leopard-macbook-pro-first-impression-from-the-trenches/

That said, does Freemind freeze up on you, if you do use it all?

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[info]jace
2007-12-17 08:23 am UTC (link)
I use it a lot, but haven't banged it enough since upgrading. No crashes yet. I'm on FreeMind 0.8.0.

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strange
[info]fatalerror.wordpress.com
2007-12-17 09:13 am UTC (link)
it just refuses to go beyond the splash screen for me, while Eclipse runs without cribbing, so it can't be a Java issue.

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[info]fatalerror.wordpress.com
2007-12-17 09:36 am UTC (link)
Figured what the problem was: OOME when there was about half a gig free. Dumped it and moved to the 0.9.0 beta 15. Runs like a charm now :-)

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[info]tushar
2007-12-17 05:05 pm UTC (link)
How long have you been using Leopard? I've held off upgrading for fear of something breaking and the mrs breaking me. Was yours an upgrade? If so, how smooth was it?

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[info]jace
2007-12-17 05:39 pm UTC (link)
Mine was meant to be an upgrade, except for a glitch: I had just installed a new 160GB HD (having first mounted as USB device, partitioned and cloned via SuperDuper), and Leopard refused to install on it because the partition table was not of GUID type (whatever that is). I had no option but to boot off the old HD (now in turn mounted over USB), rsync the day's changes, repartition the disk, and install Leopard on a clean disk.

Post installation, however, Leopard asked if I'd like to re-import settings from the attached volume and proceeded to restore my working environment exactly as it was before (except for minor changes around /etc in smb.conf and postfix/main.cf).

Several sites around the web recommend turning off all InputManagers, APE haxies and SIMBL plugins before installation. APE in particular is incompatible with Leopard and known to be a leading cause of failed installs.

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[info]saiprasad
2007-12-19 08:35 am UTC (link)
Good to hear that. I've ordered my copy few days ago - can't wait to upgrade. Also, 10.5.2 is on its way. That should iron out good number of bugs.

Few questions:
1. I guess installing new HDD for MacBook Pro requires you to remove the casing (unlike MacBooks) and that voids the warranty. Did you install the new HDD yourself or got it done by Apple?
2. Any specific reason you decided (initially) for 'Upgrade' rather than a clean install?
3. What application did you use to migrate the data from your clone? 'Migration Assistant' or is there something new in Leopard?

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[info]jace
2007-12-19 09:15 am UTC (link)
It requires removing the casing. The process requires some tugging and pulling in a manner that is very likely to void warranty -- the front of the case has no screws and is held in place with clips and some light glue. My laptop is a couple of months past warranty now. I did it myself.

I figured installation from scratch and restoration of my working environment would take far longer than I could effort, so planned an upgrade. Leopard's installer on first boot now asks if you'd like to restore settings from attached volumes or elsewhere. It handled everything and brought me back to the exact environment I had left with (but with the new OS interface).

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[info]shortindiangirl
2008-01-07 12:58 am UTC (link)
OT: Noticed you'd visited. More updates to include photos on the Hindu tradition pages since your visit.

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Cosmetic improvements a worthy need?
(Anonymous)
2008-01-07 02:28 pm UTC (link)
What cosmetic improvements are so important that made you want to upgrade? I have been looking at Leopard for a while now and none of the improvements really matter to me that much.

In fact, I would go as far as saying the backup utility isn't that useful either (TimeMachine) as I simply use a weekly backup using SuperDuper! which works amazingly well using the incremental backup option.

Now, getting a new Mac gets you iLife. That's a bargain.

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Re: Cosmetic improvements a worthy need?
[info]jace
2008-01-08 03:45 am UTC (link)
Several. The Finder is finally usable, Stacks is great for the Downloads folder, Spaces is nice, X11 autolaunch is super, Spotlight actually works, Safari can search within the full text of its browsing history, Preview does the most common image touch-up functions I need, and that horrible brushed metal is fully gone.

There are more, but these are what come to mind immediately.

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[info]locks
2008-01-09 11:08 pm UTC (link)
Been dipping into your journal off and on... and today, I saw that you're working on your diploma in Cultural Studies. And today is the day I had a class on Research Methods in Communication where the professor mentioned Cultural Studies atleast five times... and today's the day I tore my hair out after reading some of the articles in the prescribed textbook... an eventful day!

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