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After confirming Adobe CS3 compatibility with Leopard, I headed to the Michigan Avenue Apple Store to pick up a copy of Mac OS X Leopard. Here is a status timeline of the OS installation on my MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM). Your mileage may vary…

0:00:00: Brow furrowed as I insert Leopard into my MacBook Pro’s DVD and click the restart button to being the installation

0:09:15: Installer is still determining if I’m the owner of a valid DVD

0:19:23: DVD is confirmed as valid and containing all the necessary files to upgrade my Mac OS X Tiger to Leopard

0:24:00: Install screen has changed from “Time Remaining: Calculating” to “Time Remaining: 2 hours and 58 minutes”. What?

0:36:30: Install screen recalculates installation time: “Time Remaining: About one hour”

0:40:13: My external firewire drive turns on. I guess Leopard found and mounted the disk

0:45:17: “Time Remaining: About 25 minutes”

0:51:28: Only 6 minutes later, “Time Remaining: About 10 minutes”. I guess Leopard installed Time Machine, jumped in, and traveled to the future?

1:00:54: “Time Remaining: About 4 minutes”

1:08:09: “Mac OS X was installed on your “Disk” volume.” Installer then decided to reboot my Mac by itself. Thanks, Installer.

1:11:13: Login screen visible. Touchdown!

1:17:43: After wading through the animated introduction screen, the .Mac account verification, and the Apple Registration, I’m asked to install some software updates (for Backup and Login/Keychain).

1:22:04: My MBP restarts in response to the update. Leopard is finally up and usable (without remaining nag screens and installation steps). Just under 1.5 hours for the entire process. Not too shabby.

Note about the installation: It’s incredibly boring. Not that I’d ever call a software upgrade an incredibly exciting event, but there is no information about Leopard’s new features displayed on the screen. At least when I upgraded my old PC to Windows XP, I got a poorly designed “presentation” of the new features I was about to enjoy (and later loathe). So if you’re planning on monitoring the upgrade, grab a book, flip on the TV, or write a post!