Macgasm

Howdy, fellow Macintosh fans. As I’m sure most of you know, Leopard dropped yesterday. We here at Macgasm are super excited about this wonderful update, but it is important that you prepare yourself before you make the plunge into the world of Leopard.

First off, BACK UP! At best, use an application like SuperDuper! to make a bootable copy of your entire Tiger install. If anything goes wrong during your Leopard install, you’ll always have Tiger to fall back on. At minimum, make sure you have at least one secure copy of all of your data (Documents, Music, Movies). If things go south, you’ll be thankful you listened to me.

Secondly, boot up from your Tiger discs (or a second harddrive), and repair your boot disk. You don’t want a funky harddrive to come back and bite you later.

Third, disable any application that modifies Apple-made software. If you have screwed with Uno, APE, TinkerTool, or anything of that ilk, disable them before upgrading.

Lastly, choose which install is right for you. I’d say that the standard upgrade is fine for most users, but “Archive and Install” is probably a little bit safer for the paranoid.

If you follow these steps, you should have a happy and healthy Leopard running inside your Mac. Happy trails.

Grant Brunner