It would appear that even the mighty Apple isn’t infallible when it comes to releasing a new operating system. Ars Technica has reported there have been some who, on an OS X  upgrade installation, have encountered bugs. Fortunately Dave (owner of PC Mech) didn’t have to deal with any of this because his Tiger-to-Leopard upgrade was done on a new “clean slate” system with nothing on it, save for the OS itself.

It really bothers me that in the history of operating system upgrades, no company has ever been able to get this quite right. Microsoft certainly hasn’t; that much is obvious. One would assume that an Apple Macintosh computer - which is a proprietary system mind you - wouldn’t have issues when upgrading OS X. It is totally understandable (and almost expected) that upgrading a non-Mac PC would encounter problems because of the fact they’re non-proprietary, but a Mac by design just should not have upgrade issues. Yet it does for some.

As is said in the Ars Technica article, you’re always best served by backing up your system before installing a new OS. If you’re currently running OS X and are thinking of a Leopard upgrade, it might be best to hold off just a bit, wait for the early adopters to discover the bugs, let Apple fix/patch them, then upgrade.

I will note again that this is for upgrade installations of Leopard, not brand new installs.