I am running OS X 10.4 right now and am looking to upgrade to Leopard soon. I was browsing online for OS X and came across two types one that listed as being an upgrade only requiring you to have 10.4 already installed I believe and one that did not list any requirements. Obviously the one listing no requirements seemed the better option but I would like to know if this is correct. If I just get the version that doesn't specifically say I need 10.4 installed as a requirement(upgrade version). Will the other one do both upgrade and full installations of OS X? I just want to be sure so if anyone can verify this please. Thanks Sone. Edit: Oh by the way does OS X ship with serials? Maybe a obvious answer to this question but I don't know for certain.

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I just brought Leopard from the store 2 days ago and installed it. It did the upgrade and so far my existing applications seem to continue to work which is awesome. I was able to get iphone SDK installed and run my very own virtual iphone . I haven't had much time to look into it because of assignments but I will hopefully try and make my own one day.

OS X Leopard costed me $199 NZD retail here so its a bit pricey but worth it I guess. Its has a lot more features then 10.4 so yeah. There was no serials provide it just installed straight away from the DVD. I am wondering how they implement their security to prevent people pirating. The disk is over 4.7 GB so you can just copy it with any old burner and DVD. After the install I was about to register my info well update but it took so long during the connection phase to the internet then I just canceled it and rebooted to do some updates. It never prompted me again to register my updated info. Is this not necessary? I'm puzzled at how OS X implements its registration process and prevent people from passing on that DVD to do another install on other machines. I've seen OS X Leopard DVDs on sales on auction sites but I wonder if they are just reselling the DVD since they already installed it and no longer need it.

Not that I plan on reselling mine but I would just like to know what is the deal. My sister has an imac and I am wondering if it would be ok to use that DVD to install on hers. I didn't buy the other one where it said something about being a family pack.




Update:

after reading this http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=371714 I take it apple does not enforce any licensing procedures on you and trust you will purchase the right number of copies you intend to install them on. Thats probably why people are reselling the OS back in auction sites.

 

 

 

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I usually don't do upgrades just because a fresh installation or the full version would be better just because you don' know what kind of problems you could run into if you install the upgrade. Although I am bit shocked that you haven't had any problems with leopard just because when it first came out, problems for the new OS were popping out of no where. So I guess you were one of the lucky ones that didn't have any problems. With my knowledge of Mac OS or the lack there of, I believe apple doesn't do the serial numbers, or set the amount of times you can install an OS before you have to by a new one (Vista). I know Watermonkey is a Mac freak so you may want to get a hold of him to talk about leopard.

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Even though you can, it is never a good idea to sell back a copy of your OS. That disk is extremely important even if you already installed it. If you ever forget you administrator password, need to reformat, want a disk to boot off of so you can do things such as defrag etc... you will need to keep your leopard disk. You have no idea how many times I've gotten calls at the apple store of people who have a problem where the solution would be a mac os x install disk and they have giving theirs to a friend or lost it.

For the piracy, you must remember that the os x install disk is not just any old dvd that you can just copy onto another disk by dragging the files over. You MAY be able to make a copy using disk copy but I'm not too sure i've never tried it. But why are you trying to pirate apple software anyway? I think leopard is well worth the $129 USD for all the extra features you are getting.

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I'm going to keep it like I do with most my possessions I do not like to sell things back even though I could in this case and make some money back from it. Its cheating in a way if I do do that but I'm not going to. Your right if I need the disk again in the near future I will be in trouble and the price I paid for it is reasonable enough. A lot less cheaper then windows OS. Apple just seems to amaze me by not enforcing any restrictions on you and trust you will not violate the agreement. Since you can only use it on a mac and they are making their money off selling hardware anyway piracy wouldn't really affect them as it does Microsoft.

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