Typing this post within the brand new and still shiny Leopard environment, I’m now completely setup and running with the new evolutionary operating system from Apple - OSX 10.5 Leopard.

Leopard turned up two days earlier than I had expected - landing on my doorstep on Saturday afternoon along with a few other goodies. I’d seen many photos of the Leopard software packaging on Flickr in the days leading up to its arrival here in New Zealand, and knew exactly what to expect.

I was impressed right from the word go. The packaging is elegant and simple. Apple has something as simple but important as product presentation nailed down, they know what they’re doing right down to the small details. Leopard was no exception, impressing right from the word go.

Installation

On Friday I wrote about how I planned to install Leopard using the Archive & Install option. That didn’t go exactly to plan..

Before inserting the Leopard DVD I backed up my boot drive to an external LaCie Porsche drive. I made sure my entire home folder was stored safely on the drive just in-case the install went to mush.

I came across the first problem when the Leopard DVD only picked up my Storage drive, I promptly rebooted into Tiger and did a quick search on the Apple discussion boards for this problem. I was relieved to find a few others had experienced the same issue as it was quickly fixed by booting back into the Leopard DVD, opening Disk Utility, and un-mounting the drive. When I navigated back to the install screen, both drives were available for installation.

To my disappointment the Archive and Install attempt went sour, I was presented with a screen where Leopard told me the drive was corrupt and it needed to be wiped before I could proceed. It kicked in at this point that an Archive & Install wasn’t on the cards, Erase & Install was the only way to go.

Although a little disappointed with the option I had to take, the Erase & Install gave me an opportunity to play with Leopard from scratch, and let me properly organize my files in a structured format. Sure - it look a few hours longer than I’d have liked, but all in all, I now have the system running without hitch. I’m thoroughly impressed.