Halloween came early for many a Mac user over the past few days, as reports are coming in of bumpy and/or failed upgrades to "Leopard," the latest version of the Mac OS. While it appears most Macheads managed to upgrade their systems without a hitch, others got quite a fright as their Macs seized up, ground to a halt, or displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" (yep, Macs get them too). Despite what Apple says, it doesn't always "just work."

Ars Technica reports that Apple's support forums lit up with complaints shortly after Leopard's release last Friday. Of course, it's almost impossible to quantify exactly how many users had problems—and hey, OS upgrades always have a few bumps in the road. But the install glitches illustrate why I despise those smug, oh-so-superior "Mac vs. PC" ads: they're not quite so funny when you're staring at a blinking "sad Mac" on your screen.

Anyway, Ars Technica has details on how some users got the "blue screen of death" during their Leopard installations—a house of horrors when all your data is hanging in the balance (here's Apple's suggested fix). Indeed, Ars Technica writer Eric Bangeman reports that he ran into trouble with his brand-new MacBook Pro (he ended up having to create new users on his system, and while his files were fine, all his user settings were MIA). I've been having problems of my own: after installing Leopard on my G4 PowerBook, the Finder kept crashing. After a few restarts, I saw one of the scariest icons you'll see as a Mac user: a lone Finder folder with a flashing question mark, which means the system can't find a drive or a DVD from which to boot. Not good. I was about to reinstall Leopard from scratch when I discovered the answer in the Apple Forums: an obscure DivX application directory was the culprit, and I had to launch the Terminal app (a window that gives you an old-style command-line prompt) to fix it. Meanwhile, my other Mac—a new MacBook Pro—has been suffering from a twitchy Finder as well, rebooting takes about twice as long as it used to, and the system as a whole feels a little, well, listless.

Again, I don't expect any OS upgrade to go perfectly—I'm sure Apple will release a slew of patches in the near future to iron out the kinks, and soon our systems will all be back to normal. But Apple needs to cool it with its childish, ill-advised digs at Windows (such as this groaner from Engadget: a network icon for Windows systems that displays the Windows blue-screen-of-death). Mac OS X may be one of the slickest operating systems around, but as we've been seeing in the past few days, it ain't invulnerable.

OK, now than I'm done with my rant, some practical advise while upgrading to Leopard (or any OS, for that matter): back up your hard drive first. All of it. Trust me, that flashing question mark is a lot less spooky when you have all your data squirreled away on an external hard drive. And if you're looking for the smoothest transition to Leopard possible, wait a few weeks until Apple releases the first round of Leopard patches.

Related:
Some Leopard early adopters bitten by installation bugs [Ars Technica]