Catching Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6)

This weekend I upgraded my iMac to Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6). I wanted to upgrade my iMac because I just want to keep current with my operating system and also I could not beat the $29 price tag. I have been very happy with my iMac’s operating system, coming from a PC world and experienced in all things Windows, OS X is a far better OS.

Snow Leopard is not evolutionary. It is not chuck full with new features. Apple has spent a great deal of time reworking under the hood. Which is a good thing for any software vendor to undertake.

My installation was pretty painless. Very little input from me. I popped the DVD in and an hour later I was up and running. I was able to recover approximately 5GB of space on my hard drive. In terms of performance, I must admit I don’t see much of a speed increase. My iMac is pretty snappy as it is.

Issues:

• Time Machine was taking a long time to back after the installation. 3 hours before I got tired. I decided to redo my Time Machine and erase my external harddrive. This helped resolved the initial long back up. I run multiple backups on different external drives so erasing my primary Time Machine drive was not a big deal.
• One of my 3rd party apps stopped working; specifically my video conferencing software, Oovoo, failed. Oovoo stated that it would work but I guess they did not test with the final beta versions. Again, video conferencing is not critical so I can wait for a new version to be released. I am sure the folks at Ooovoo are working on it.
• I am quite happy that MSOffice 2008 is working. This is very important to be able to get into my Word and Excel files.

Some New Features I like:

• Being able to activate Exposé from 
the Dock. Being able to open windows in the application you selected will unshuffle is a nice feature.
• My iMac is faster shutting down and restarting and also wakes from sleep faster.
• Time Machine backups are faster to complete.
• Safari crashes less. Since I upgraded it has not crashed at all. This was a frequent daily occurrence.

Overall, I am happy with my upgrade and would recommend it to fellow Apple users. Let’s see what Apple comes out with over the next few months to add or enhance Snow Leopard.

For a complete list of improvements please look at Apple’s website:

Mac OS X – Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update

I just updated my iMac with the new update 10.5.7. So far no issues.

Like previous updates, this updates the general OS. Enhances the stability, compatibility and security of the OS. There is no added functionality or new features.

It is rumored that this is the last update before Snow Leopard is released later this year. So far this is the most stable OS I have worked with. I am not naming names but you can figure out whom I am speaking about.

I am looking forward to the Iphone update later this summer.

Apple just keeps on improving on something that is already perfection…