Snow Leopard - I have the disc but should I upgrade yet?
Hay all,
Like most Mac users I've been looking forward to OS X Snow Leopard since it was first announced in 2008. Since then I've bought a 3.06 24 inch iMac with 4gb Ram and 512 Nvidia graphics card (2008 model).
I was strong enough to hold of buying Snow Leopard for the first few weeks and I'm glad I did because I read that lots of people had problems ranging from hard disk errors, data loss, the computer going slow, or freezing or just crashing altogether - some even Snow Leopard as Apple's Vista (Frightening!). On the other hand I've read posts from lots of happy customers stating their computer is and some going as far to say after the upgrade their computer feels like a new machine.
On Thursday afternoon I went out on a limb and bought Snow Leopard from Amazon. The postman woke me just a few moments ago and gave me my eagerly awaited parcel.
Now I'm sitting in my room and I can't decide what I should do. I was hoping you kind people will tell me your experience of Snow Leopard and advise if I should wait until 10.6.2 is released? I've got some work to do now so I'll come back this afternoon to make up my mind....
For information: I mainly use my computer for Microsoft Office, Safari, iTunes, Spotify, watching films, Photoshop, X-Plane, Civilisation 4 and downloading etc.... Please note though that I still use a few applications that were designed for the old PowerPC chip - ie. Photoshop CS (before CS2) and Microsoft 2004. Will these applications stop working?
I look forward to receiving your comments.
Regards
Jon
Like most Mac users I've been looking forward to OS X Snow Leopard since it was first announced in 2008. Since then I've bought a 3.06 24 inch iMac with 4gb Ram and 512 Nvidia graphics card (2008 model).
I was strong enough to hold of buying Snow Leopard for the first few weeks and I'm glad I did because I read that lots of people had problems ranging from hard disk errors, data loss, the computer going slow, or freezing or just crashing altogether - some even Snow Leopard as Apple's Vista (Frightening!). On the other hand I've read posts from lots of happy customers stating their computer is and some going as far to say after the upgrade their computer feels like a new machine.
On Thursday afternoon I went out on a limb and bought Snow Leopard from Amazon. The postman woke me just a few moments ago and gave me my eagerly awaited parcel.
Now I'm sitting in my room and I can't decide what I should do. I was hoping you kind people will tell me your experience of Snow Leopard and advise if I should wait until 10.6.2 is released? I've got some work to do now so I'll come back this afternoon to make up my mind....
For information: I mainly use my computer for Microsoft Office, Safari, iTunes, Spotify, watching films, Photoshop, X-Plane, Civilisation 4 and downloading etc.... Please note though that I still use a few applications that were designed for the old PowerPC chip - ie. Photoshop CS (before CS2) and Microsoft 2004. Will these applications stop working?
I look forward to receiving your comments.
Regards
Jon
Comments
Snow Leopard makes the transition to full 64-bit, which is what caused some of Vista's issues. Snow Leopard does not have the usability problems in Vista though like nagging popups nor is it only full 64-bit or full 32-bit. The system is both in one package and the system boots into a 32-bit kernel by default for driver compatibility.
PPC apps will still work, you just have to install Rosetta, which is an option on the upgrade disc and even if you miss it, it will ask to install when it needs it.
Performance is snappier - they went through 90% of the OS supposedly and optimized it. The performance boost isn't as noticeable as you'd think from that much of a reworking of the system but you can tell in very important areas like listing lots of items in the Finder is 3-4 times faster, Stacks don't stutter when you open them any more, some film decoding is hardware accelerated so it uses less CPU.
Before doing a system upgrade, you should always make a cloned backup to an external. This way if you aren't happy with Snow Leopard in any way, you just clone back and you're back to where you left off.
Personally, I have a main work machine and a personal machine. The one at work is always updated last; any problem would be disaster. I first install on my personal, non-essential machine (I have versions of all my main work apps on it) and test everything. Snow Leopard had problems with two of my most important apps; one has been fixed by the maker and the other one is pending. As soon as everything checks out, then I will upgrade my work machine.
Before you upgrade, backup all your data (you should be doing this regularly anyway) and, as Marvin said, make a clone.
Go for it. You won't notice any amazing improvements, but you should get no issues. Actually - wait for 10.6.3.
My MacBook Air has much better start-up and shut-down times with Snow Leopard.