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Time for an official Snow Leopard thread - Page 2

post #31 of 165
8/26/09 at 11:56pm
 Speaking of Pogue, he tweeted: "@Pogue: RT @bxchen: Our tests confirm that the 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD works for Tiger Macs, too (even though Apple says "requires Leopard")!"
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post #32 of 165
8/27/09 at 6:28am
Macworld's review was very helpful to me; Pogue's was too breezy, though the positive tone told me a lot. I'm more upbeat about Snow Leopard; there are some user-facing tweaks to Expose and Dock that sound good. I'm glad Apple is removing some of the suck out of that lousy yellow Minimize orb.
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post #33 of 165
8/27/09 at 6:40am
Quote:
But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.

Reviews indicate that the "upgrade" pricing is honor system, like a Family Pack. 10.6 "upgrade" disc works as a complete install disk per se.

Hopefully I'm safe to discard (or eBay) my Leopard Family Pack after upgrading Snow Leopard. No worries should I have to completely reinstall in the future?
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post #34 of 165
8/27/09 at 6:55am
 So the upgrade/clean install question seems to be answered. From the Macworld article:

Quote:
 

Apple continues to rely on the honor system for Mac OS X. Not only does Snow Leopard not require the entry of any serial numbers, but the standard version of Snow Leopard is a bootable “full install” disc that doesn’t actually check for the presence of Leopard in order to install. This also means that if, at a later time, you want to wipe your hard drive and reinstall Snow Leopard, you won’t have to first install Leopard and then run a separate Snow Leopard upgrade on top of it. (That sound you hear is a thousand IT managers sighing with relief.)

 
 I think I will probably pick it up right away now.

-Keith

 

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post #35 of 165
8/27/09 at 8:24am
According to FedEx it appears mine should be here today.  I can't be the only one.  I thought the receipt said delivery ON 8/28, but it actually says BY 8/28.  Like I said before, I've never had an OS on release date.  Not even close.  I hope I am safe to install it.  Of course, I will make a bootable backup first.
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post #36 of 165
8/27/09 at 8:48am
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/26/snow-leopard-review.html
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post #37 of 165
8/27/09 at 10:38am
I can understand the occasional complaints of the new OS lacking lots of dazzling new stuff, but to me it seems like a valuable change.  Clearly Apple is laying the groundwork for global improvements that will come with time.  Cleaning out the old code and (so it seems) enabling it to be as much as 50% faster across the board, and all for $29.  Not bad, in my book.
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post #38 of 165
8/27/09 at 12:33pm
I think the issue is whether customers should pay for "groundwork" or get it as a free update. As a Mac loon, I'm buying SL without complaint. But part of me wonders why I'm paying for Apple to remove extra printer drivers?
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post #39 of 165
8/27/09 at 2:58pm
Er, the "groundwork" they are laying is to be able to support a completely new way of writing applications to harness the power of today's computers in a way that just wasn't possible before (Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL). Why should that be free? Not to mention all the other work they have done, more 64bit, Finder re-written in Cocoa, new Services Automation features, new QT.

Leopard was the first step in modernizing Mac OSX. There was some new eye candy etc., but there weren't that many new features in it compared to Tiger (with Time Machine being the big exception). I remember reading John Siracusa's in-depth report at the time that showed where all the work was really done.

Now with SL we get even more under-the-hood changes that bode well for the future, for a price that is $100 below the one for Leopard.

Also, they didn't just leave out all the printer drivers from the installation, they implemented a new way of basically auto-installing the driver for you.

And finally, sounds like the CS3 situation was totally overblown by Adobe. MacRumours reports that "the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, PS CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard".

The only issues I'm personally aware of with SL is that basically all my OpenGL screensavers currently don't work on SL, and iStat Menus needs an update as well.

-Christian
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post #40 of 165
8/27/09 at 3:54pm
I hope this is phones only and doesn't apply to our Palm Zire 72's! That would be very bad if Palm devices don't synch with 10.6.

http://www.appscout.com/2009/08/snow_leopard_drops_palm_os_syn.php
Edited by DaveF - 8/27/09 at 4:17pm
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post #41 of 165
8/27/09 at 4:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Christian Behrens View Post

Also, they didn't just leave out all the printer drivers from the installation, they implemented a new way of basically auto-installing the driver for you.

I was being a bit hyperbolic. As I said, I've bought SL and by all accounts it's a solid technological improvement. And I'm hoping it fixes some flakiness that's developed in 10.5 on my MBP. But Snow Leopard will feel worthwhile when apps take advantage of its new features. Until then, it does feel a bit like my auto mechanic telling me that, for a nominal fee, he's going to change all the nuts and bolts from English to Metric hardware; and make the gas tank a gallon larger. Sure, I won't notice any of it right now, but really the car will be easier to service in a few years.

 

And finally, sounds like the CS3 situation was totally overblown by Adobe. MacRumours reports that "the Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard, and to the best of our knowledge, PS CS3 works fine on Snow Leopard".
We're still waiting to hear about the other 80% of CS3: Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver.
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post #42 of 165
8/27/09 at 4:39pm
I have to shake my head at the continued shrugging off of the long term impact of SL.  Double the power of your computer for $29.  What a rip-off.  Yeah, it will take a little time to fully implement, but anything this global takes time.  I would MUCH rather have real performance improvements, cheap, than bells and whistles immediately for 5 times the price.
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post #43 of 165
8/27/09 at 5:05pm
Honestly, if you still have to sync an old Palm with a Mac, you really should have the Missing Sync for Palm. Anything else is just not working the way it should.

-Christian
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post #44 of 165
8/27/09 at 5:51pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Christian Behrens View Post

Honestly, if you still have to sync an old Palm with a Mac, you really should have the Missing Sync for Palm. Anything else is just not working the way it should.

-Christian

Actually, there are some software conduits that have never worked right under Missing Sync that still work under the old Palm Desktop software on 10.5.
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post #45 of 165
8/27/09 at 5:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnRice View Post

I have to shake my head at the continued shrugging off of the long term impact of SL.
And that's the selling difficulty. Pay now for what might come later. Typically we pay for immediate benefits. Snow Leopard is some perks now, but mostly promises of greatness to come. (Unlike 10.5 which came with frilly silly gee-gaws like Time Machine and Spotlight.)

I'm not shrugging it off: my $40 spent speaks to that. But I appreciate the few hesitations I've read.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Christian Behrens View Post

Honestly, if you still have to sync an old Palm with a Mac, you really should have the Missing Sync for Palm. Anything else is just not working the way it should.
Be that as it may, I've been syncing to Palm Desktop for 2 years on the Mac and it works and my wife and me. I'd like to upgrade but there is nothing but expensive smartphones now, and that's not in the budget quite yet.
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post #46 of 165
8/27/09 at 8:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael_K_Sr View Post

Actually, there are some software conduits that have never worked right under Missing Sync that still work under the old Palm Desktop software on 10.5.

Really? I only remember how hard it was even find the latest version of Palm Desktop for the Mac a few years back. At that point I had it. We got a license for Missing Sync for my wife's laptop years ago at Macworld for a reduced price. That was even before Leopard. Worked like a charm. But she's been using her iPod Touch for a while now :-).

-Christian
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post #47 of 165
8/27/09 at 9:40pm
Anyone know if there is an update to Bootcamp past 2.1 for Vista 64 on the SL disk?  Anything that eases Win7 Bootcamping?
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post #48 of 165
8/27/09 at 10:07pm
Thread Starter 
Any stragglers that use Parallels Desktop and are still using version 3.0 better not upgrade to 10.6. Won't launch at all.
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post #49 of 165
8/28/09 at 7:08am
FedEx is supposed to deliver 10.6 today! I doubt I can install it 'til Sat or Sun, but I'm eager to get answers to my worries.

I wonder if I can install CS3 on my machine for my wife to test? She has upgrade versions; need to talk to her about that. It might be a good way to test it.
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post #50 of 165
8/28/09 at 11:22am
I am upgrading my 2.33 C2D MBP right now. I have Design Premium CS3. I'll let people know if this breaks it. I cloned my 10.5.7 OSX last night so I can just clone back if Snow Leopard blows up my system, but somehow I don't think I'll need to.

The only known incompatibility is my 3.0 Parallels, which I haven't used in months and should probably uninstall anyway.
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post #51 of 165
8/28/09 at 12:29pm
Installed! (spontaneous half-day off and early FedEx delivery...)

Almost 12 GB more free space on my drive! I'm impressed, as I'd stripped out a bunch of stuff with Monolingual when I bought my machine in '07. Though maybe I didn't re-run that after the 10.5 upgrade?

The intro movie is the original Leopard movie. Really, nothing to announce that you've gutted and rebuilt your OS.

A Rosetta installer dialog came up post haste, so MS Office 2004 can run its updater.

And that's all I know. Time to see what's what and if it all runs.
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post #52 of 165
8/28/09 at 12:52pm
I need a simple to use and cheap hard drive for backing up files and such before I install snow leopard - would this one be okay? http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8994485&type=product&id=1218008588879
I'm kind of worried it wouldn't be enough space. What do you guys use?
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post #53 of 165
8/28/09 at 12:57pm
Installed as well. The Apple apps function (duh), iWork 09, iLife 09 and Logic Studio (new version). Excel and Word of Office 2008 also ran successfully.

I won't get a chance to test out CS3 more fully until tonight but Photoshop opened successfully a RAW file and I did minor edits (didn't save).
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post #54 of 165
8/28/09 at 12:58pm
My install took right around 45 minutes and was totally painless. I did a pre-install Time Machine backup, and the post-install backup is going on as I type this.

My knee-jerk reaction so far is that the display on my 24 inch iMac (with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS card) seems like it has more contrast (this is a good thing IMO.) But, since I do a lot of CS4 work, I may have to switch to a different calibration setting if it throws off my pre-press evaluation judgement. Also, something about the internal sound appears to be different, (more spatial?) but I can't say for sure what it is. BTW, I did a quick boot of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator and all appear to run without incident. GarageBand '09 definitely struck me as being more robust. Bear in mind these are very preliminary, knee-jerk reactions right after upgrading...
Edited by pitchman - 8/28/09 at 1:09pm
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post #55 of 165
8/28/09 at 1:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Southpaw View Post

I need a simple to use and cheap hard drive for backing up files and such before I install snow leopard - would this one be okay? http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8994485&type=product&id=1218008588879
I'm kind of worried it wouldn't be enough space. What do you guys use?

There are three main considerations:
* For a bootable copy, as from SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner, get a hard drive at least as large as your used space. Better yet, get a hard drive at least as big as your Mac's hard drive.
* For Time Machine, get a drive at least 50% larger than your Mac's hard drive
* If you have the newer Intel CPU, USB drive is fine and is bootable. But if you have a PowerPC system, you need a FireWire drive (and you also can't install 10.6)


I'm reliving my ambivalence from the initial install of Leopard, back in '07: Logitech drivers aren't up to date and I'm missing important functionality in my MX Revolution.
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post #56 of 165
8/28/09 at 2:12pm
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/

This is a must read.

Someone just posted a hack to enable missing Logitech mouse functionality (hooray!). I'll be watching this page. I'd like to get in to add some missing entries, but it's quite busy and always locked.

Palm Desktop still works. Palm OS sync still works.
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post #57 of 165
8/28/09 at 2:22pm
 So does anyone have info on whether Office 2004 works/doesn't?

According to the Apple status page, my SL update ($10 variety) (ordered on Aug. 11th) still hasn't shipped.
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post #58 of 165
8/28/09 at 3:31pm
Office 2004 works. It will prompt you to install Rosetta at first run. I launched Word, took a quick look, and quit it. I've not played extensively with it.


Tivo Desktop does not work. This is bad. I use our two TivoHD's to stream iTunes in the Living Room and Bedroom. Losing this feature...not good.
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post #59 of 165
8/28/09 at 4:26pm
Thread Starter 
 I still use Toast 9 Titanium and while Toast itself launches okay, the TiVo Transfer application included with it no longer works.
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post #60 of 165
8/28/09 at 4:28pm
Thread Starter 
 Also looks like Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection is crashing for me at launch
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