Ars Technica's massively detailed review of the new Apple OS, Snow Leopard.
A lot of it is super high-level tech stuff you can skip, but the gist is all good news. It’s faster, leaner, and a great step forward for $30.
Comments
This plunked into my “read pieces of it throughout the day” file.
Have you upgraded yet? If so, how is it?
I just started reading this as well, seems like something to keep me occupied for awhile.
I haven’t upgraded yet, I want to get a new external harddrive to use as a backup before I do anything.
I did at home. So far, it’s barely noticeable without any new features. But little things keep popping up that catch my eye. Faster boot times, right off. And yesterday, finder didn’t crash when the laptop I was transferring files from disconnected from the network (usually this was an unrecoverable crash 100% of the time). But it did completely hose my apache web server set up because it was heavily customized with 32-bit libraries that are no longer valid and need to be recompiled as 64-bit. I’m excited to hear, though, that once I get that back online, I can actually put my mac to sleep instead of leaving it on all day cause it’ll wake on file requests over http. Which rules.
The one thing I’ve heard about that makes me happy is a fix for that lingering pause on connecting to a wireless network after opening your laptop. It’s a small thing, but it’s always a noticeable lag.
Is upgrading the OS a simple thing? Or does it take a long time and have a lot of steps to it to insure I don’t lose any of my data or my settings or any of that?
They brag, and Ars Technica confirms, the installation is quicker. Less than half an hour.
With past upgrades, the experience has been seamless and I’ve never noticed any wonkiness or missing data. Still, never hurts to Time Machine your drive beforehand.
Kevin said:Is upgrading the OS a simple thing? Or does it take a long time and have a lot of steps to it to insure I don’t lose any of my data or my settings or any of that?
Yeah, everything Justin said. You put in the CD, you hit “install,” it shuts down your programs, for a half hour to 45 minutes, and then it comes back. No problems. If you do, perchance, have problems, you can restart your computer with the CD in the drive and do an erase-and-install. It wipes your HD, installs the OS, then puts everything back that’s on your TimeMachine. It’s pretty sweet.
Kev, you should find out whether or not you’re on Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5) first. If you’re on the former, you’ll need the $169 package cause you’re effectively skipping the more expensive Leopard upgrade. Though I seem to recall you mentioning that you use Time Machine, so you’d have to be on Leopard.
Yeah, I’m on Leopard. My Mac is only a year and a half old. Sounds like it’s worth the upgrade. Do you have to do it via disc or can you download the upgrade?
You have to do it via disc, but if you can wait till the next time we visit, I can just bring my copy. There are no serials or cracks anything to worry about.