!Caution!
I haven't updated this section in a long time... since 10.5.2, Leopard has been pretty stable. I am leaving this page up for archival purposes, but as of now, OS X 10.5.5 is quite stable. Download the Combo Update here if you haven't brought your system up to date.
Please see the tab to the right for precautionary information! Please visit our Leopard Issues page for a more complete listing of issues reported, updated daily. The 10.5.1 update has solved a lot of problems, but there are still software incompatibilities and other problems covered.
Apple updates Leopard to 10.5.1
And here it is - the Mac OS X 10.5.1 update. There is a single download for both Intel and PowerPC machines. More info from MacFixIt here. Use the Combo Updater rather than Software Update, as some have reported issues after using SU. Miscellaneous responses to the 10.5.1 Leopard update here.
12-20-07 Leopard Cache Cleaner 4.0.3 released.
12-10-07 Apple Support Article Mac OS X 10.5: Setting up Mail, troubleshooting Mail issues
12-10-07 MacFixIt AirPort problems in Leopard continue: Better fixes
12-07-07 MacFixIt UserEventAgent process hanging, causing system slowdown
12-03-07 MacFixIt Special Report: DiskWarrior and Leopard: be careful. Running DiskWarrior on startup volumes with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard installed can have a problematic effect on permissions.
11-30-07 MacInTouch FAQ page has a section on Time Machine
11-29-07 MacFixIt Special Report: Troubleshooting Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard), including 10.5.1
TechToolPro 4.6.1 released today, with full Leopard compatibility.
11-28-07 MacInTouch Leopard FAQ updated.
Quay 1.0 released, a utility that brings back hierarchical popup menus for folders and hard drives to the Leopard Dock. In addition to hierarchical menus, it adds sorting of menus by name, date modified, data created, or kind, along with options to show small or large icons, see invisible items, or browse into packages and bundles. Quay is 7 Euro for Mac OS X 10.5 (Universal Binary).
11-19-07 MacFixIt Miscellanous reports after the 10.5.1 Leopard update
Mail on Leopard: Some reports of difficulties
Before you install Leopard....
This is a collection of articles and advice to help you keep glitches to a minimum. Leopard at 10.5.1 is pretty stable, but some apps are not yet updated to work with it. Use caution in critical installations!
Crash Test Dummy
If you can, I recommend that you back up your data first, then install on a separate partition or drive (see Installing Leopard to an external firewire drive from MacFixIt). Be cautious with your apps and add-ons, testing with non-critical data. This is a cautious approach... I will take a more aggressive stance myself, and report back here. Consider me your Crash Test Dummy!
I have 10.5.1 installed on a Dual 2.7 GHz G5 desktop and on a MacBook Pro 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo. Both are running perfectly, but some add-ons I personally like (Window Shade, for one) are not updated for Leopard yet. Otherwise, I am enjoying the experience. I haven't yet done a Time Machine restore, bit will report when I do.
What preparations should I make before installing Leopard?
Attitudes toward OS updates range from recklessly optimistic to deeply paranoid, with a smattering of magical thinking throughout. On the one hand, most people have no problems simply following Apple's default path for an upgrade installation. On the other, if installation problems bite you, you're not going to care much what happened to others. With those points in mind, we feel that prudence dictates the following preparations, at a minimum.
Before you do anything, burn any critical data to optical media (DVD+R should work well).
If you do nothing more, at least do this: Create a complete backup of your current system, preferably by creating a bootable clone on an external drive. (SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner both offer this function for free.) If your installation goes horribly wrong, you can get back to normal in the time that it takes to reboot or clone back from the external drive.
Search for Application Enhancer files (which may have been installed by other programs) and eliminate them to avoid the possibility of the Leopard "blue screen of death".
Disconnect all peripheral devices from your computer, except for the mouse and keyboard. This means all USB and FireWire devices, such as printers, scanners, hard drives, iPods, modems, etc.
If the Mac you're upgrading is critical to your livelihood or well-being, verify that your must-have software and peripherals are Leopard-compatible by checking the developers' web sites (or phoning them) before you install.
Resist the temptation to upgrade when you are facing a tight deadline or are in the middle of a crucial project.
For the best odds of success, use the Archive & Install option rather than the Upgrade option to avoid the chance to bringing corrupted files into the Leopard system. Also, if you have hardware modifications or additions, check with the manufacturer to make sure it is compatible, or to download software or firmware upgrades if necessary.
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard FAQ
Reports gleaned from forums, websites and lists:
First reports indicate "snappier performance" and no particular issues. Installations were on G5 Dual processor towers, Intel iMac, PowerBook and MacBook Pro. A couple of people wrote that they did a simple "install" over their 10.4 system, one did an "Erase and Install".
Small and not so small oddities and glitches...
- Some have had issues with their Keychain. Apple released a Keychain 1.0 update on 10-27-07.
- Eudora seems to have an odd glitch visually, but seems to work fine. This may not have anything to do with Leopard, tho. Another person's Eudora works normally with Leopard.
- At least one individual got a bad install disk. If you have trouble installing, take a look and see if it looks OK, and perhaps try on another machine.
- Spotlight seems to want to reindex all drives, and if you switch back to Tiger, reindex again.
- One report of failed installation on a G5 Dual 5GHz, but successful on a Intel Mini.
- One person did an Upgrade install and his keychain was deleted. Other User keychains were retained, fortunately.
- A Mini owner's internal drive was trashed during an Archive and Install. I suspect he had problems with the drive before the install.
- One instance of the Apple-Shift-3 or 4 key combos for screen captures is broken.
- Photoshop 7 doesn't seem to work under Leopard.
- EMC Retrospect 6.1 supports Apple's Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). However,
there are two conditions users must be aware of to ensure a reliable
backup and restore: Known issues with Retrospect 6.1.126, 7.5.387 and Retrospect Client 6.1.130 on Leopard. Time Machine: Attempts to backup a Time Machine volume with Retrospect will result in the backup stopping during the scanning phase. The Retrospect error log will report "duplicate DirId" errors for Time Machine volume. Your Time Machine volume should be excluded from all backup scripts. Live Restore of 10.5 system volume not supported. When performing a Restore Entire Disk operation to a Leopard startup volume, you must startup the computer and run Retrospect from an alternate startup drive. * Retrospect 6.1 users will be able to download a free update which will provide full compatibility with Leopard. This update should be available for download within 30 days of the Leopard release date. Customers with Retrospect 5.x or earlier, please contact your EMC Retrospect reseller for discounted upgrade pricing to the latest version or visit http://www.emcinsignia.com/upgrade - Stuffit 11: working in 10.5 and is quite stable.
Features: Love 'em or hate 'em... quotes and solutions from around the web
- Initial reaction to Spaces and Quicklook is "major league positive"
- Filppy Finder... definite "maybe"
- The translucent menu bar is horrid as are the drop shadows on everything. The 'new' brushed metal is way too dark and gloomy. Document windows look much, much better when they're in the background and they lighten up.
- They finally killed hierarchical menus dead. From David Pogue:
" Bypass the fan. As I noted in the column, I'm not totally sold on the Stacks feature. That's where you click a folder icon on your Dock, and rather than a complete menu of the folder's contents, you get a fan or a grid that shows an array of the actual icons inside. Trouble is, if there are more than 24 items in that folder (depending on your screen size), you get only a partial list. To see the rest of the contents, you have to click the icon that says, "35 more in Finder," which opens that folder's actual desktop window.
There's no way to make the Dock show the complete list of folder contents anymore; nor can you stick your hard drive's icon in the Dock and have complete, drill-down, hierarchical access to your entire computer, as you could before.
But here's a small consolation: if you Command-click a folder on the Dock, you go directly to the Finder window that it represents, bypassing the fan or the grid altogether." note: DragThing, FinderPop (beta) and other apps can modify the finder to provide features now missing from Leopard. Innermind Media has released Dock Doctor, a Dashboard widget that restyles your Dock from 3D to 2D without a trip into Terminal. OldFolder adds a folder icon to the Leopard Dock that features Tiger-style hierarchical menu access to a selected folder. HeirachricalDock restores Tiger-style behavior as well.
Here's another way to change Dock behavior: To make a folder that actually displays as a folder when you click on it, simply make an alias of the folder somewhere logical, and put that on the dock. Because the behavior of empty folders is to display the contents of the folder rather than the stack (fan or grid), the alias is perpetually empty and thus displays the contents of the referenced folder.
It is also true that CMD-clicking on a real folder in the dock will display its contents in the Finder. However, I have had frustrating problems with that facility: I cannot seem to make the folder stay on the desktop in a predictable place, or predict where it will appear when CMD-clicked. Not so with a folder alias. I suppose that's because hard info about the folder is stored in the alias file, such as last window display coordinates. Make sure you force the window view to be what you want, so the one-size-fits-all default view will not confuse. - The Dock was better in Tiger. DockSwitcher allows switching between the 3D default dock, and the 2D dock. I had my Applications folder as a quick program launcher- Stacks ruins that totally. I'm gonna look for a hack to disable Stacks. Please contact Lindauer Mac Consulting for more info on modifying the Dock.
- Upgrade installed on a 1.33GHz iBook and a 1.83GHz CD MacBook.
The installation is much slower than Tiger on the same hardware.
Setup Assistant runs on each machine, even with the upgrade install.
The new Finder is a mixed bag: can't disable the Sidebar without turning off the toolbar too (BOO!! I hate the Sidebar but love the toolbar!), folder icons are a bit drab, the path bar is a nice idea but ugly; however, performance is improved and I like the new options (Cover Flow, better handling of View Options, no warning when changing file extensions.)
On the iBook, Photoshop 7.0.1 dies at startup. I'll try reinstalling later.
Why would Apple remove a bunch of the firewall config options?
Spaces is nice.
iCal's icon now shows the current day even when it is not running.
Disk Utility has some nice additions.
Putting scroll arrows together at both ends still works but is still not an option in System prefs. - " side step the spinning ball ??
Was finally getting Time Machine to work and of course the excessive HD I/O started giving the spinning beach ball (cursor). No problem, with Spaces turned on, I moved to a different space and presto, no spinning beach ball - no delay in response - operate as normal while hearing HD work merrily away in other space. Now that is an improvement. - I thought Back to My Mac would be difficult to set up with 2 Leopard Macs, but it took just one extra trip back to make the home Mac Mini not put the computer to sleep and open up extra sharing serivces through the System Preferences, and Back to My Mac through .Mac worked like a charm.
Obviously there is some delay in executing things across the Internet, but the slight slowdown for purposes of accessing a file or opening a document are minimal.
Very impressive as far as I am concerned, and it now means I can "leave home without it", and get files later if I need them.