Leapin’ Leopards

Question: What do you get when you cross a Morganica with a Leopard?Answer: A desire to make the Leopard (at least the Apple version) just a little more endangered

I’m beginning to think that Apple just Vista’d me (it’s embarrassing, really). Every week that Leopard lives on Freddie Mac is a week that I discover some new and ridiculous issue. This week looks to be no exception.

For those of you that haven’t been following this, I upgraded my MacBook Pro, Freddie, to Leopard on Halloween. It wasn’t a happy experience.

I thought I’d recovered mostly, but now Leopard’s decided to convert my admin account into a “standard” account.

Without asking. That means I no longer have an admin account on Freddie and therefore can’t install software, alter settings, etc. The help instructions say that I need an admin account to add an admin account so I can fix it.

–sigh–

Did a search on apple.com’s support site, where the only suggestion I could find required that I have an admin account to fix the problem (geeeez, guys). I gave up and–despite their track record with Leopard to date–called the Geniuses at Apple Support. They’re still experiencing heavy call volume (surprise, surprise), so while I waited on the phone I did a search on Google for “leopard changed administrator.”

Result #1 took me to the correct answer on apple.com, where I learned that this is a known bug, and received instructions for fixing it. Too bad Apple’s own search tool didn’t find it, but at least now I had the fix. Since I’d been on hold for 16 minutes with no sign of someone actually answering the phone, I hung up.

BTW, I need to regain admin privileges so that I can upload the new Leopard OS patches that Apple just released. I need those patches to see if I can persuade Freddie to permit network access to anything that isn’t named “WORKGROUP.”

And also to see if the patches fix a few other minor annoyances…such as the really long time it takes to display folder contents in Finder. The little quirks in printer installation. The adorable way it moves files around when I’m not looking.

Freddie, I love you, but we gotta figure out a way to find this cat a new home.

Update 11/20/07: Regained admin privileges, downloaded the patches, restarted the computer (about 10 times), mostly restored the network access (turned out that Leopard’s default “Location” settings cause a lot of trouble and the fix is to establish Freddie in a new “Location” on the network). However, I’m still having trouble with Freddie’s file sharing. My Windows machines can see her now, and she can see them, but they can’t find any folders on Freddie except “Drop Box” in the Public folder.

Pre-Leopard, this was a no-brainer. I use Freddie as my business machine, visiting offices and such, and so she was also the document repository. The Windows machines simply mapped a folder on Freddie and stored work there. Not having it work has been a pain, and for the time being, I’m resigning myself to simply sticking the files in Drop Box and then moving them once Freddie can see them.

There has GOT to be a better way than this, but so far I can’t find it.

Update 11/20/07 (later): Well, I can SEE the Drop Box on Freddie. I just can’t save anything to it, thanks to Leopard. I’m resisting a terrific urge to go big game hunting about now.

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