# Tiger vs. Leopard



## niclem (Oct 19, 2007)

hey everyone.. just wondering your thoughts is it really worth the upgrade from tiger to leopard... personally i don't see that many differences...THANKS!


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

- oh indeed it is. 

I've seen them all.

OS8 was brilliant and saved the company.

This is something far far beyond that ...the next big thing??....you bet.


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

Past experience has shown me that "upgrading" any OS can lead to bloat and infinite issues. That means that if I do go up to Leopard, I am formatting my drive and installling from scratch and restoring all my settings manually from personal backups... Needless to say, I'll be waiting till the first few patches come out before even attempting this on my computers.

Just my 2cents.

Also, Leopard looks nifty, but I can live without the enhancements.


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## Demosthenes X (Sep 23, 2004)

Obviously it's tough to say since none of us have used Leopard yet (I'm not sure if we have anyone with a beta on the site, actually?). "Worth it" is a personal call - there's absolutely nothing wrong with Tiger, and I agree with you that most of the enhancements are minor enough, or things you won't use often enough, that it might not be worth the effort.

That said, Leopard does bring with it 300 new and improved features, so it is a big release. I'd say, for the $130 it costs, you might as well upgrade. You'll have to eventually. I think I'll be waiting until the dust has settled and Leopard has established itself, but I'll take the plunge.


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## Jeepdude (Mar 3, 2005)

green_ears said:


> Past experience has shown me that "upgrading" any OS can lead to bloat and infinite issues. That means that if I do go up to Leopard, I am formatting my drive and installling from scratch and restoring all my settings manually from personal backups...


I was just about to post a question about just this. I know this to be true from my Windows days, but wondering what everyone's experience is upgrading on a Mac. Is it better to reinstall than upgrade?


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## niclem (Oct 19, 2007)

thanks for all your comments, they are greatly appreciated.. this is my first mac and i love it to pieces... i have no current issues with tiger.. but from what i can see the leopard does have a lot of neat features that tiger doesnt... just it is enough to backup all my data and reformat.... which like another user said.. i would rather go that route instead of just upgarding... its definatly the sharper choice.. altho i dont have any experience stritctly upgrading a mac.. so maybe its cleaner than a pc, because i know that can be a nightmare!! and of course fork out the 130 bucks


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

Something I just read about: » Memory randomization (ASLR) coming to Mac OS X Leopard | Ryan Naraine’s Zero Day | ZDNet.com

*Memory randomization (ASLR) coming to Mac OS X Leopard*

Apple has announced plans to add code-scrambling diversity to Mac OS X Leopard, a move aimed at making the operating system more resilient to virus and worm attacks.

The security technology, known as ASLR (address space layout randomization), randomly arranges the positions of key data areas to prevent malware authors from predicting target addresses. It is used in tandem with additional security features to reduce the effectiveness of exploit attempts.​


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

niclem said:


> ... just it is enough to backup all my data and reformat.... which like another user said.. i would rather go that route instead of just upgarding... its definatly the sharper choice.. altho i dont have any experience stritctly upgrading a mac.. so maybe its cleaner than a pc, because i know that can be a nightmare!! and of course fork out the 130 bucks


I don't know........I went from 10.2.8 to 10.4.3 to 10.4.8 to 10.4.10 without reformatting and starting from scratch.
Seems like a lot of extra work to wipe everything clean - download these hundred applications I accumulated over the years and then set each one up again the way I like it.

One question - is there a list anywhere of which applications are Leopard compatible or is this not a concern?
Alchemy TV/DVR broke when I went from 10.4.8 to 10.4.10, but fortunately they had an up-issue on their website. That fixed the problem.


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## Harvey (Oct 9, 2005)

I'm sticking with Tiger; Leopard doesn't do OS9 and there's one graphing app (Deltagraph) and a couple of games (Civ II and Master of Orion II) that I use which are classic based. If Numbers did error bars I'd ditch Deltagraph and keep a bootable Tiger external drive for my old time gaming!
Regards
from Ottawa
Harvey


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## Elric (Jul 30, 2005)

krs said:


> One question - is there a list anywhere of which applications are Leopard compatible or is this not a concern?
> Alchemy TV/DVR broke when I went from 10.4.8 to 10.4.10, but fortunately they had an up-issue on their website. That fixed the problem.


I was wondering the same thing, will half of my current programs be useless, like what Vista did?


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## jlcinc (Dec 13, 2002)

I don't know about Leopard, but I do know that with my Intel iMac with Tiger I am having some problems with programs like SoundTrack Pro. It always locks up and crashes when I try to close it. Often when the finder is going to preview a long mpeg I get the beachball and I have to do a force relaunch of the finder, I do maintenance and repair permissions but nothing seems to help. I hope Leopard will help.

John


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

Anyone with a Core2Duo chip really should update. The reason is Leopard will do a much better job of utilizing the 64 bit architecture and you already lack the ability to run Classic applications.

That said my old G4 simply lacks the processing & video horse power and is also short on HD free space. Even when I had a fairly fast laptop I ran Tiger with spotlight and Dashboard disabled and I don't see that grabber that I just have to have in Leopard.

If I were updating I would create a disk image (using SuperDuper) of my current system. Then I would test it on my spare external partition. At that point I would erase and repartition my main HD from the Leopard install disk. I would expect archive and install to work well but there were minor differences in the way partitions were mapped between Jaguar and Panther and again between Panther and Tiger. Assume this will be true again. More importantly it is a great chance to weed out garbage.

For me a clean start is easier than it is for a lot of folks. I do not use iPhoto and I do not use bookmarks. I just started using Mail again but only for an occasional bulk mailing so I only need to save my address book. iTunes stuff is aleady backed up. Personal files are not saved to my boot partition and are routinely backed up to my external drive. More work to set up, but it pays off big time when installing a new system or if the need arises to reinstall the current system.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

green_ears said:


> Past experience has shown me that "upgrading" any OS can lead to bloat and infinite issues. That means that if I do go up to Leopard, I am formatting my drive and installling from scratch and restoring all my settings manually from personal backups... Needless to say, I'll be waiting till the first few patches come out before even attempting this on my computers.


I've always just done a drive backup to be safe and then a standard upgrade. I've been doing this since using Macs - that goes back to System 6.

Experience also shows that each successive release of MacOS X runs better on the same hardware than the previous version - I don't know if Leopard continues this trend though.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

Harvey said:


> I'm sticking with Tiger; Leopard doesn't do OS9 and there's one graphing app (Deltagraph) and a couple of games (Civ II and Master of Orion II) that I use which are classic based. If Numbers did error bars I'd ditch Deltagraph and keep a bootable Tiger external drive for my old time gaming!


There is a MacOS X version of Deltagraph.


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## Harvey (Oct 9, 2005)

hayesk said:


> There is a MacOS X version of Deltagraph.


Yes, and I've tried the demo; not much better than the classic version (4.5) for $299.
I don't think so.
Regards
from Ottawa
Harvey


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## Sean.Perrin (Aug 13, 2007)

Demosthenes X said:


> Obviously it's tough to say since none of us have used Leopard yet (I'm not sure if we have anyone with a beta on the site, actually?).


Don't be so sure... 

I will be legitimately upgrading on the 26th. It's a great OS...


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## Bjornbro (Feb 19, 2000)

Harvey said:


> I'm sticking with Tiger; Leopard doesn't do OS9...


No, Leopard won't support "Classic", but if one owns a dual-boot Mac, one will still be able to natively run OS 9.  :clap:


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## MACinist (Nov 17, 2003)

I have been /am using the beta and here are my takes:

1) if you care about speed - Leopard acts and is faster. Consider the $130 you spend on Leopard like buying a 2GB ram upgrade. Except, you will notice a bigger speed bump on Leopard then the RAM (assuming your system already has about a gig and is G5/Intel. Multi-Core's are just better utilized and assign tasks more consistently throughout it seems. 
2) Compatibility - I have had no issues with any software yet and I use most of the common apps. I migrated from Tiger using migration assistant and nothing is causing conflicts - so far. Vista was a much bigger programming overhaul. Leopard still has a lot of it's roots in previous versions of OSX. 
3) Time Machine - ok, so it's not bootable like SD or CCC but it's so well integrated, easy to use and the coolest looking backup software ever. I could just stare at the Time Machine warp hole all day. Wish it was a screensaver. 
4) For you multi-taskers that like to keep your desktop organized, SPACES will grow on you. It has on me. 
5) Mail is much better. I actually use it now. 
6) Bootcamp. Once Leopard is released, the beta Bootcamp will expire. Only way to get Bootcamp, is buying Leopard. 

The aesthetic things like the new dock, transparent top menu bar, no brush metal, covers in finder, new icons, etc. are just extras that don't add much value. However, the above listed improvements/new features, are definitely worth the $130 to me when it comes out.


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## Demosthenes X (Sep 23, 2004)

D'oh. I just upgraded from 1GB to 2GB or RAM today... Ah well, I guess Leopard will just be that much better when I do upgrade.


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## Sean.Perrin (Aug 13, 2007)

MACinist said:


> definitely worth the $130 to me when it comes out.


And def. worth the $9.95 to me... I purchased my new Mac on the evening of sept 30 but the order got processed on October 1 at around 5 am. Talk about lucky, my pre-order is in the system because their computer knows no difference... and Leopard will ship to me on the 26th!


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## mac_geek (May 14, 2005)

MACinist said:


> I have been /am using the beta and here are my takes:
> 
> 1) if you care about speed - Leopard acts and is faster. Consider the $130 you spend on Leopard like buying a 2GB ram upgrade. Except, you will notice a bigger speed bump on Leopard then the RAM (assuming your system already has about a gig and is G5/Intel. Multi-Core's are just better utilized and assign tasks more consistently throughout it seems.
> 2) Compatibility - I have had no issues with any software yet and I use most of the common apps. I migrated from Tiger using migration assistant and nothing is causing conflicts - so far. Vista was a much bigger programming overhaul. Leopard still has a lot of it's roots in previous versions of OSX.
> ...


Assuming you have a legitimate copy through ADC, doesn't this constitute a violation of your NDA? (I know it's only days away from release...)


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

mac_geek said:


> Assuming you have a legitimate copy through ADC, doesn't this constitute a violation of your NDA? (I know it's only days away from release...)


Isn't most of the above freely available on Apple's website?

http://www.ehmac.ca/anything-mac/56718-300-leopards-new-features-glance-apple-com.html


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