Best way to upgrade from Leopard to Lion?

I would be hesitant to do so because of the differences in OSX. It wouldn't be a restore from the same version OSX that the backup was made under. Your safest route is probably purchasing the usb thumb drive version....I presume they have an upgrade option there to upgrade from 10.5.8 to 10.7. If not than I think the official path is to install 10.6.x first than 10.7.x.

Guy Carmeli wrote:

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade a number of computers in my household and am trying to figure out the best upgrade path for each one of them.

Specifically, my dad uses an iMac running OS 10.5.8. Due to this fact I obviously cannot upgrade it to Lion from the app store, so I will have to do a clean install - meaning erasing the hard drive.

Since I do not want my dad to reorganize his whole computer environment from scratch, I was wondering if I will be able to use Migration Assistant to restore his user with all his files, preferences and cluttered desktop from his Time Machine backup.

Hello,

to perform a upgrade, you must have at least 10.6.8 on the machine in question.

And yes, even on a clean install, you are able to restore personal data from a TimeMachine backup. Even the cluttered desktop will reapear at least partial as Lion have some new features with desktop.

To upgrade more than one machine you own or being responsible to for private use, you need only one download from the store. After downloading you may extract the "Lion" 10.7 from the downloaded package and put in on a bootable thumbdrive.

Alternatively you may pay once and download Lion to multiple computers, as described here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4854

At last ... I would recommend to wait for a few weeks with the upgrade until 10.7.2 is released. This version will contain some updates and fixes for several issues; e.g. with wireless.

Cheers - Lupunus

Things to keep in mind

1: Old Rosetta PPC based programs will NOT work in Lion.

2: A machine using PowerPC processors can't upgrade to Snow Leopard or Lion, 10.5 is it.

3: A machine with Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) processors cannot run Lion.

4: Lion is a RADICAL change, to the UI and everything, Snow Leopard is very less traumatic and offers performance tweaks in the video drivers over Leopard, as well as strips out the PPC code your not using on your Intel Mac's.

5: A machine as old to run 10.5 likely has old software, all that will likely need to be replaced under Lion, but perhaps not so much under Snow Leopard.

6: Lion is somewhat unstable, the 2011 Mac's with EFI 2.2 Firmware are being truckloaded into Apple Repair for new logicboards.

7: Lion has issues on older hardware that likely be last on the list for repairs as they are gathering information now about it's problems.

My advice, perhaps upgrade to Snow Leopard and leave Lion alone for a 2011 Mac or beyond hardware when you replace it.

Lion has got at least another YEAR of repairs ahead of it before I consider it as stable as Snow Leopard.

Everything from the AppStore, EFI firmware changes, Thunderbolt fixes and well as UI fixes, MAJOR security issues I can't disclose as well as all the third party programs requiring their fixes and updates.

Leave Lion alone for the time being, unless your a masochist.

And here's one bad security feature, anyone can hack your Mac with Lion like this.

1: Boot the Mac holding Command R keys and select the Terminal

2: Type resetpassword and press enter.

That's it. No disk needed. 😀

Good words, indeed.

I've never understand "normal" users running always to upgrade to "the latest" like mice for the cheese.

Definitively ALL major operating system changes I had to deal with since my very first TI99 A4 where "Banana ware" regardless of the manufacturer. Like bananas they mature to a useful product at the customers desk.

Sure, I run Lion ... but not on any workhorse. In a virtual machine though.

Remember WinXP? Now called the most stable Windows ever. It was a real crap and a feckin buggy product before SP1 and became at last really useful with SP2.

It's obvious ... humans memory is a strange thing. They tend to repeat every failure they've made if enough time has past.

Lupunus