Review and Install of Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard

By Jim on November 12th, 2007

As you probably already know, Apple recently released the final version of its Mac OS X Leopard operating system. And, judging by its initial sales (more than 2 million copies sold already), Apple seems to have hit a major home run. So what’s the big deal about Leopard and why should you care? In this review we’ll answer those questions and we’ll take a look at what’s good and bad in Leopard.

Why the Hell Should I Care? I Don’t Own a Mac!
Some of you might be thinking “So what? I don’t own a Mac, what the hell do I care about Apple’s stupid operating system, Jim?” Well that’s a fair sentiment if you’re not a Mac owner since Leopard doesn’t run on any other hardware…yet. But as we saw with Apple’s switch to Intel processors a while back, what seems incredible or even impossible can sometimes be quite possible. There may come a day when Leopard or its successor is available on non-Apple hardware.

Plus it’s worth knowing what Leopard has to offer because Microsoft tends to use Apple as its research and development lab at times. In other words, if there’s a great feature on Leopard that’s not on Windows then you can bet Microsoft will steal…er…excuse me…borrow the idea for a future version of Windows at some point. Who knows…you may even see some of Leopard included in a future Windows Vista super-duper mega-patch or “service pack” or whatever Microsoft is calling it these days.

Installation
I installed Leopard on my new Intel based iMac and Macbook Pro.

Here are the stats for each computer:

iMac

* Model Name: iMac
* Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
* Processor Speed: 2.4GHz
* Number Of Processors: 1
* Total Number Of Cores: 2
* L2 Cache: 4MB
* Memory: 2GB
* Bus Speed: 800MHz
* Video: ATI Radeon 2600 Pro (256MB VRAM)
* LCD Resolution 1680 x 1050
* Storage: 300GB

Macbook Pro

* Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
* Processor Speed: 2.4GHz
* Number Of Processors: 1
* Total Number Of Cores: 2
* L2 Cache: 4MB
* Memory: 4GB
* Bus Speed: 800MHz
* Video: GeForce 8600M GT
* VRAM (Total): 256MB
* Resolution: 1440 x 900
* Storage: 160GB

I opted to do an upgrade rather than a clean install, something I would not have dared to do if I had been installing any version of Windows. But Mac OS X has a pretty good track record when it comes to upgrades, so I figured I’d give it a shot, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Read the Rest