So the reason I couldn’t reinstall Tiger on my laptop was not because the failed Leopard upgrade had broken my filesystem but because I was using the DVD which came with my iMac and not the one from my MacBook Pro.

Which means I erased the filesystem and lost files for nothing.

How kind of Apple to explain why the installation couldn’t proceed. How nice of them to say "Sorry but this DVD can only be used to install OS X on an iMac."

Oh, wait. They didn’t say that.

They didn’t say anything at all. Just "bugger off; OS X not yours."

I am very, very upset about this.