As you may already know, Leopard (the much anticipated release of Apple’s new operating system) was officially launched Friday the 26th. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to see lines wrap around several blocks of retail stores or even winding through the middle of your local mall. Completely normal.

I didn’t waste anytime getting my copy but I did wait until the next night to install it. Why? Well, for whatever reason I thought it might be best to get what work I needed to catch up on completed first. Turns out that was in my best interest.

Like most OS updates, it is always best to do a clean install. In the effort to save some time with reinstalling all of my software again, I chose just to upgrade. After the 2 - 3 hours installation, my excitement to use Leopard was building.

Leopard boots up shortly after the upgrade is complete and welcomes me with a beautiful introduction. Odd. No sound. Maybe Steve has to cut the video budget and add some engineers on dev to hit the 26th deadline. Hmm.. Oh, nope.. no sound anywhere! Ah, let’s resolve this issue with a restart (naturally).

Here’s a few clips of my frustration while lifecasting the installation:

I was greeted by the Setup Assistant, entered all of my information (again) and clicked done. I was quickly cycled back into the same screen I started with. Oh great — an endless Setup Assistant loop.

I tried a number of things, including booting into single user mode to turn it off and/or delete it! With no luck, I figured I’d back up the rest of my drive and just do a clean install. I used my Mac Mini and put my Macbook into target disk mode and did a complete backup to an external drive just in case.

Shortly after the backup was complete, I did an archive install and the next morning Leopard was waiting for me. <3 *heart*

Oh, by the way.. I want to be John from the Leopard Guided Tour when I grow up.