Snow Leopard, First Thoughts from an ACTC

Apple does make it simple.

Put in the DVD, tell it to do the upgrade, let it do it's thing for an hour or so, first time loading after the upgrade will take some time, 10 or 15 minutes, other than that, no hassle upgrade. Time machine backups should be updated right to the very last minute prior to upgrade, just in case.

Seat of Pants

• No great changes to the look and feel of overall system, no downtime figuring out where everything went.
• Even all the recent items lists and browse histories are saved
• Twice as fast running on first generation macbook pro.
• 5-10 times faster on startup and shutdown, not important to me, I only restart every 45 days typically
• Abundant user interface enhancements, like enhanced print to pdf, enhanced services dialogs, enhanced screen captures.
• Custom Applescripts/automations seem to all still be working
• A prettier face, better font sizes and such, on a laptop LCD

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• Quicktime Player MAJOR USER INTERFACE updates
• File, New Movie Recording using computer webcam
• File, New Audio Recording, using computer microphone
• File, New Screen Recording, captures screen activity as a movie for sharing/later viewing.
• The first two could be achieved before with some expert setup. The screen recording is new and super nice for instruction.

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• Safari web browser history, along with text search, has a superfast thumbnail review of historical page loads, graphical instead of textual makes it easier to find the exact page you remembered
• textedit, "correct spelling automatically" is a new preference setting. Had to turn this off, too many acronyms that it wants to change. Also save to pdf without requiring print to pdf, "save as.." includes .odt Open Document Text, along with .html and .doc, .docx.
• tabbed terminal windows, ssh, bash, into tabs titles, cool
• dual display, iPhoto screen saver, different pic on each screen, cool
• still no simple way to change iCal fonts, not cool

Noteworthy problems..

Daylite app requires an update if using the DMI - Daylite Mail Integration module. Apparently the Mail api has changed, I don't use daylite any more, so not a big deal.

Address Book, Go To My Card while a search term is in effect, fails silently if My Card is not within the search.

Developer tools, mysql and php in particular, require developer knowledge to make them work after the install, probably no biggie for 95 percent of users. Don't see that Apple had much choice in this, can't really upgrade mysql to 5.1 without knowing what kinds of tables and table names are in the 5.0.x databases. Ditto for PHP and extensions, default replacement of existing with no quick recourse to past version would be support and PR suicide.

On startup, an obscure toolbar reference pops up that wants me to install compatibility with old-old macs (Rosetta). The whole startup and launch systems seem to have changed (duh when startup is so much faster). That will mean poking around to see how stuff launches in the new system. I will probably just get rid of all my old apps that I never use and hopefully one of them is the source of the problem and it will self-correct. It would be nice if Apple had built the intelligence into the machine, so it would tell me which app(s) requires this functionality and I would immediately know which to delete. Since I only reboot every 45 days after an upgrade that forces a reboot, no biggie.

Notes RE Disk Space.

Before and after images tell the story best.

System Partition before Snow Leopard::::

System Partition after Snow Leopard:::::

Partition 2 before Snow Leopard::::::

Partition 2 after Snow Leopard:::::

Draw you own conclusions, misinformation seems the order of the day from most sources.

Service Pack

Final note, cannot believe anyone in their right mind (or left mind for that matter) is calling this more of a service pack than an upgrade. Just because Apple makes it easy to install, does not mean great changes to power and usability have not occurred. How would you like to have a computer that is twice as fast and has plenty more storage space for your files?

Don't go out and buy one, buy Snow Leopard for the same results. And you get to keep working right where you left off. Good job Apple! I don't want or need a bunch of new bells and whistles that I will never use to justify an upgrade.

Fan Boy

Lots of changes, complexity and feature bloat only make it more difficult to use and upgrade systems. Not to mention how long it takes users to get productive again, when everything changes for the sake of change. If great changes, great complexity, re-training and re-learning is what you need to believe you have been upgraded, you have an obvious alternative.

Apple makes users more productive, and keeps them more productive. Is that being a Fan Boy or harsh reality? Just start looking around at who is doing "stuff" with computers and who is fixing their own computers.

Why in this day and age buy a computer you have to constantly "fix", defrag, backup, and attempt to secure? The satisfaction of knowing how to fix things that shouldn't be breakable in the first place is hollow victory.