Official Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Thread & FAQ

[Doctor X]

--J.D.

P.S. I have normally waited about a year or two for "upgrades" just to see that the "bugs" get worked out. Worked for X initially. Also, I could get the OS cheaper--from reputable Mac Dealers--when I am an "OS behind."

But . . . now . . . I am tempted.

So will it be faster? I heard rumors--from a Mac Guru who is an idiot in many ways--that it will "sap your processor" and may even "let the terrorists win!" Will it be better? Will all of my 10.5.8 programs run on it? Will it make me popular? How is it on acne and halitosis?

And I have this rash. . . .
--J.D.

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by chevy

I just ordered the upgrade DVD.

How did you order it?

I put my name on the e-mail alert for when it is available. Is that it?

--J.D.

[fryke]

I guess he either meant through amazon or via the Apple up-to-date program for when you've bought a Mac recently. He's bought an MBP 13", so I guess it's the latter.

About whether to upgrade at 10.6.0 or 10.6.5 (or something):

I have Adobe CS3 and CS4 running fine, Office 2008 running fine. I haven't encountered a real incompatibility yet other than iStat menus, which probably will be updated once it's actually released.

But I _have_ to say: If you're planning on installing in a production environment and rely on that machine, you'll probably want to listen to problems in the first week of its release at least. I can only voice my experience on three machines so far (two of which handle very basic tasks that don't offer much incompatibility-issues, my MacBook Air is for TextEdit, my Mac mini is for running VLC, iTunes and Quicktime), and the experience has been only _good_. I've had Flash Player Plugin crash in Safari one time (and one time only!) and it didn't bring Safari down. Just showed me a message about it that I could click away. (Obviously, the Flash content on the page I was on did get removed from the layout and I had to reload the page.)

In my opinion, there is exactly _one_ straight way of going to Snow Leopard from Leopard that is safe:

1.) Make sure you have an up-to-date Time Machine backup or clone (via CCC for example) of your 10.5.x installation.

2.) Disconnect the harddrive your backup is on.

3.) On the 10.5 desktop, pop in the 10.6 disk and start the installer. Choose upgrade if asked (it's the default, anyway) and customize it, so you can deselect stuff you don't really require. (And admire what they've done to the printer driver installation. It defaults to installing printers you've previously used and printers available on the network.)

4.) Start working on your upgraded Mac and look for _any_ problems. If problems crop up that seem like they stem from the upgrade process, you can now do a clean install and move stuff back from the backup later and safely, or you can try the upgrade process again by clean installing using your Time Machine or clone backup.

For me, it's been the cleanest upgrade I've ever seen on a Mac OS X release. In the past, there have been a lot more incompatibilities with smaller utilities and larger applications. Granted, Apple themselves call Snow Leopard "Leopard Refined.", so it might seem like a "smaller" upgrade of some kind, but actually, they're just saying it's not about large user-seeable features. Under the hood, Snow Leopard is as big an upgrade as any of the past.

[Doctor X]

No, that is helpful.

I mainly surf and write papers. I am willing to wait, of course, for the responses. It just seems that what I can glean from discussions HERE and on other pages that the responses to those testing it have been good.

--J.D.

[chevy]

Here my friend: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...ticate=entitle

Or, for a smoother approach: http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/

[fryke]

Of course you have to use your country's Apple site. The American store or uptodate page wouldn't work for Switzerland, for example. But for the uptodate-page you'd just add "/chde" or "/chfr" (for Switzerland) after "www.apple.com". -> http://www.apple.com/chde/macosx/uptodate/ for the Swiss German page for example.

[chevy]

Back to 10.6, I hope it will help making the AppleTV green with this new technology:
http://www.apple.com/environment/energyefficiency/

i hate my AppleTV being a heater during the whole summer !

[Doctor X]

Unfortunately, I bought my computer before 2009.



--J.D.