Ooh, heck, Allison’ll KILL me, if she find’s out I caught her in that shot of the cover of Snow Leopard: I’ve already had a comment about being a someone being made a Mac Widow …
But, in truth, I really can’t complain.
We had something of a dinner party game, yesterday, during Christmas Dinner.
Kicked started by Liz, who’s a family friend who’s joined us, for the past few years: and, funster that Liz is, suggested a Game of Best Things/Worst Things of 2009.
But one of Allison’s answers definitely put a smile on my face …
Not, I’m not telling you.
Allison definitely knows how to flatter a boy’s ego.
At any rate, that’s not what I’ve been meaning to tell you about …
What I’ve been meaning to do is tell you about … da DA DAH
Yep, bless ’er, my mother managed to get hold of the upgrade disc version of Snow Leopard — Mac OS X 10.6 — for me.
And I’ll admit to a couple of things, so far.
For one thing, I’ve got to admit how bloody nervous I was, during the actually install.
Which was as smooth as any Mac OS X or Mac OS install I’d seen.
But, of course, what made this slightly different was the simple fact that the Mini is my main Machine.
You DON’T want thing’s going wrong there … !
But, in spite of the (few) reports of data loss some users have had, so far the actual transition, for me, has gone pretty smoothly.
Saying that, however, I did, as various sites recommended, did as complete Time Machine back-ups, plus manual back-ups of Allison’s and my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, along with documents, Address Book files, and iCal files.
Along with that, most of the sites I checked also recommended I check that my firmware drivers were up-to-date — they were, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure — and to make sure that I’d used the version of Disk Utility on my Install Disk, to check and repair any permission’s issues.
With that done, is where I got nervous!
Main machine, remember?
Now I’ve done installs, before: Mac OS, Mac OS X, and various shades of Ubuntu.
Not managed to do a Windoze install, as yet, but …
Any way, Installing Mac OS X 10.6 onto the Mini was actually less painful than I thought it would be.
As Apple had said in various forums, while the back-up and Permission’s check process took a while, the actual install took roughly forty-five minutes.
I did what the sites call an Automatic Install: where I booted from the Mac OS X 10.6 disc, and hit the Continue button you can see in the picture.
Which — as opposed to wiping my main hard drive — merely adds the extra code, files and folders needed, and moves or deletes unneeded ones.
Well, a custom version. I did what I usually do, and made sure I kept the very few printer drivers and (one) language I actually need, and made sure I didn’t add any others.
Now, as Leopard was the last version of OS X to support the PowerPC processors in older Macs, Snow Leopard removes any of the PPC code on an Intel Mac.
Now, Apple have said that this should lead to around 7Gb of hard drive space being freed up, depending on how ruthless you are with this procedure.
But, of course, I’d heard — from various friends, customers, and whoever else — some pretty wild stories.
Or what I thought were pretty wild stories, until today.
When I found that installing Snow Leopard onto the Late 2007 era Mac Mini I have — with 1Gb of RAM, and a 120Gb hard drive — had freed up approximately 22 Gigabytes.
Yes, that’s what I said.
22 Gigabytes.
Granted, I have — pretty much as I’d’ve expected — to leave some 10 gigabytes of hard for the OS, itself, that leaves some ten to twelve gigabytes free.
Which, as I’ll tell my mother when I see her next, makes Snow Leopard a very good buy.
∞∞∞∞∞
But as to the use, in practice?
Well, so far, it’s been a very smooth transition.
Ahhh …
Hmmm …
There’s not much that seems radically different, to be frank.
Many of the actual changes are under the hood.
However, I’ve noticed that, graphically, Mac OS X seems to have enriched the actual display on the BenQFP71G+ I use as my main monitor.
Which seems reflected in the look of Quicktime X, which seems to be handling the video files I have slightly more crisply than it’s immediate predecessor, Quicktime 7, or VLC, which has been my default video player for many years.
It also apparently allows for trimming of video files, which means, if I can learn how to do it, means I can possibly replace MPEG Streamclip.
Who knows.
Actually, that’s a minor issue, I’ll be frank.
While I’m pleasantly surprised at how smooth the transitions between Spaces are, I also know the Mini can — going on the evidence so far — get a little bogged down running some of the Flash games available on Facebook.
However, I’m going to put this down to the fact that, while Apple say that I only need 1 gigabyte of RAM to effectively run Snow Leopard, most of the reviews I’ve seen suggest upgrading to 2 gigabytes, as and when.
Hmmm …
My birthday’s in March …
∞∞∞∞∞
Now, there’s a couple of other thing’s I’ve noticed, while I’m here.
One thing is that my ol’ friend TextEdit seems to have gotten something of a boot up the proverbial!
There seems to be a lot of extra items in both the File Menu, and the Format>Font menu.
For starters, the File Menu now includes a Save As PDF item.
Mac OS X, and Mac OS before it, have always included an ability to save a given file as in .pdf format, but you usually have to go through File>Print, and then pick the .pdf button from there.
Including a Save As PDF option makes this a touch simpler than before.
And still as handy, for when you need to give a file to a non-OS X using friend, and want to make sure that the file in question shows up on their machine in the same layout as you designed.
There’s also an Attach Files option, which I’m intent on exploring, and a Show Properties menu item, which will come in handy.
As well as a Format>Font>Outline option: something I know I haven’t seen since Claris the Dog-Cow was running around in the Print menu …
∞∞∞∞∞
Overall, I’m well pleased with the experience of Snow Leopard.
Whilst there’s one or two minor quirks that I can remedy my upgrading the amount of memory on the Mini, I’m quite pleased at being able to make the transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard, relatively unscathed and without a hitch.
About my only problem, so far, is that the internal SuperDrive spat out a cd I attempted to import into iTunes.
WHAT the solution to that is, I don’t know, quite yet: but as soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.
This much I do know.
Having 12 gigabytes of extra hard drive has made the upgrade a worthwhile process.
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