Just how many songs are in your iTunes lib? ;-)
Posted on 08/28/2009 1:22:02 PM PDT by Swordmaker
With Snow Leopard, Apple has streamlined and simplified the process of installing Mac OS X. While older versions of OS X made you decide what kind of installation you wanted to perform before you even specified what to install, Snow Leopard's installer gives you a single installation path. It's considerably easier.
Gone, for example, is the old Clean Install option--which moved your existing OS and system add-ons to a Previous Systems folder and installed a fresh copy of the OS, requiring a good amount of tweaking and transferring of files afterward. Instead, Snow Leopard provides a more intelligent installation process that makes such tweaking largely unnecessary. The Erase and Install option is now gone, too (at least as a discrete Installer alternative; see "Simple steps, easy decisions," below).
What you need
According to Apple, your Mac must meet the following minimum requirements to install Snow Leopard:
While these are the official requirements, I recommend 2GB RAM and at least 10GB of free hard-drive space for a much better experience (both during installation and afterward). Before you begin installing, it's also worth checking to see if your Mac requires any firmware updates; Apple offers a support article with more details. Similarly, if you've installed an aftermarket video card in your Mac, be sure to check with the card's vendor to see if there are new Snow Leopard-compatible drivers you need to download and install.
Let me also suggest that a major OS upgrade is the perfect chance to check your drives for problems, clean house, and check for updates for your frequently used software. (Don't forget to check for new versions of preference panes and other add-ons that run in the background.) Finally, as with any major software update or upgrade, you should be sure to back up before installing Snow Leopard.
Simple steps, easy decisions
When you insert the Snow Leopard DVD in your Mac and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon, you aren't immediately prompted to restart as you have been with previous installers. Instead, you get to choose your install options immediately: just click Continue, accept the license agreement, and you're taken to the options screen.
(The exception to the steps just mentioned is if you want to check, repair, or erase your hard drive, or use other utilities, while booted from the Install DVD. If so, click the Utilities button and follow the instructions to boot off of the Install DVD. For example, to erase the hard drive before installing, choose Utilities -> Disk Utility from the first Installer screen after rebooting, and then manually erase the drive; you can then exit Disk Utility and proceed with installation. For more on why you might want to choose this route, see "Why Erase and Install?" below.)
On the Installer's second screen, choose the disk on which to install Snow Leopard; if you have only one disk, it's selected by default. Next, click Customize to access a slew of available installation options:
Printer Support Snow Leopard makes choosing which printer software to install much easier than previous installers did. For starters, the installer automatically figures out what printer models you've previously used and installs drivers for them. By default, it also installs drivers for printers it detects on your local network, as well as for printers Apple deems "popular"--commonly owned printers from major manufacturers.
With this collection of drivers installed, chances are you'll be able to use any printer you come across. If you move around a lot and regularly use many "new" printers, you can check the box for All Available Printers, which installs every printer driver on the OS X DVD (see this Apple support article for details). But that may not be necessary, as Snow Leopard can download and install printer drivers on the fly (more on this feature in moment).
Additional Fonts This option installs fonts for Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tibetan, Armenian, Cherokee, and Inuktitut. While you can't choose a subset of these fonts, the whole package is small enough--somewhere between 40MB and 120MB, depending on which fonts you already have on your drive--that there's little downside to installing them all. In fact, by doing so, you gain a number of specialty fonts that could be useful even if you don't speak any of these languages.
Language Translations This option installs support files that let you use Mac OS X--in other words, view menus, dialog boxes, and other OS-related text--in other languages. Though enabled by default, you can disable it to save a few hundred megabytes. You can also opt out of specific language translations; click the disclosure triangle to reveal the individual languages, and then check only the languages you think you'll actually use.
X11 X11 is a windowing system used by some Unix software to provide a graphical user interface under Mac OS X. If you use X11, chances are you'll know it. On the other hand, at approximately 64MB, it's worth installing just in case you ever come across an app that needs it.
Rosetta Disabled by default, Rosetta is the behind-the-scenes program that lets you run many PowerPC applications on Intel Macs. If there's a chance you have older Mac software that never made the jump to Intel code, you should install Rosetta--although, as with printer drivers, Snow Leopard is forgiving here (see below).
QuickTime 7 Snow Leopard includes a new version of QuickTime that claims to offer many improvements over QuickTime 7. However, the new version may not support some older media formats that QuickTime 7 handled with aplomb (see this Apple support document for details). Check this option to install QuickTime 7 for backward compatibility. If your Mac has an active license for QuickTime Pro 7, this option will be enabled by default.
Even though you have all these options to consider, don't spend too much time worrying about what to install: unlike Leopard and earlier OS versions, Snow Leopard can automatically download and install some software on demand. For example, if you didn't chose the All Available Printers option and you later try to use a printer that's not supported by your original installation of drivers, OS X will connect to the Internet and download drivers as needed. Similarly, if you didn't install Rosetta or QuickTime 7, and you later try to open a program or media file that requires that software, OS X will offer to download and install it on the fly (assuming you have an Internet connection, of course).
In addition, if you forget to install something the first time, or if you're having problems with an application and you want to get a fresh copy, you can easily install it from the Snow Leopard DVD by double-clicking on the Optional Installs.mpkg package inside the Optional Installs folder. After the installer launches and checks your drive for Snow Leopard, you can choose to install Rosetta, QuickTime 7, additional fonts, printer drivers, language support, iPod support files, X11, or any of the stock OS X apps (Address Book, iCal, iChat, iTunes, Mail, Dictionary, or Safari).
After choosing your options, click OK and then click Install, verify that you want to install, and enter an admin-level username and password. The installation will begin immediately--the computer doesn't need to restart first. If you're using a Bluetooth mouse or keyboard, you may have to re-pair it at some point, but otherwise, the next interaction you have with your Mac should be when it reboots with Snow Leopard successfully installed.
If you've set up your Mac to be able to boot into Windows via Boot Camp, you'll need to update the Windows drivers using the Snow Leopard DVD. Be sure to boot into Windows, insert the Snow Leopard DVD, and follow the instructions to update those drivers.
Faster and smaller
Apple claims that the Snow Leopard installation process is "up to 1.45x faster" than Leopard's. Indeed, installing Snow Leopard on a 2009 Mac mini took just under 29 minutes from the time I provided my username and password to the post-install restart--noticeably faster than installing Leopard on the same machine. (Restarting was faster, as well: the initial restart after installation, which is usually the slowest type of restart, took just over one minute.)
Apple also claims that installing Snow Leopard on a Mac running Leopard will free up "about 6GB" of hard-drive space, but you'll see this gain only if you installed a full version of Leopard, including all printer drivers. My testing on a 2009 MacBook Air that had only a subset of Leopard's printer drivers installed showed more modest gains: just under 2GB of "new" free space.
Smarter installs
One of the other big changes the Snow Leopard installer brings is that it's much smarter about ferreting out possible software conflicts than previous OS X installers. For example, the installer disables most input managers, kernel extensions, mail plug-ins, and system hacks that are incompatible with Snow Leopard or are known to cause problems.
Some of these items, such as input managers and contextual-menu plug-ins, remain in place but aren't loaded, because Snow Leopard no longer supports the mechanism by which they function. (For the most part; we'll have more on this soon.) However, others--incompatible kernel extensions, for example--are actively relocated. If you have any such items installed, you'll see a dialog box, near the end of the Snow Leopard installation and setup process, alerting you to that fact. The dialog box will also tell you that these files have been moved to a new folder called Incompatible Software at the root of your hard drive. (See Apple's Knowledge Base article about software that's incompatible with Snow Leopard.) You'll obviously lose the functionality provided by these add-ons until their developers update them for Snow Leopard, but you should see fewer problems due to outdated and incompatible code.
How does the installer know what files to move? According to Macworld senior contributor Joe Kissell, author of Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, the installer has a built-in list of incompatible software, and if you have an active Internet connection, the installer even checks Apple's servers for updates to the list at the time of installation.
The Snow Leopard installer is also smarter about interruptions. If your Mac loses power or if an installation is otherwise interrupted, you can simply start over without having to worry that your drive or the OS has been been left in a nonfunctional state; installation will pick up where it left off.
Remote Disk
Snow Leopard is the first only-on-disc upgrade to Mac OS X since the MacBook Air debuted. For many MacBook Air owners, this means Snow Leopard marks their first use of Remote Disc, Apple's technology for installing software on one Mac using the optical drive of another. Remote Disc isn't limited to the MacBook Air, however; you can use the feature to install Snow Leopard on any Mac currently running Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later. Here's how:
First, make sure both Macs are on, awake, and connected to your local network. On the computer sharing the Snow Leopard disc (this computer must be running OS X 10.4.10 or later, as well), open the Sharing pane of System Preferences and enable DVD Or CD Sharing. (If the hosting computer is running OS X 10.4.10 through 10.5.2, you'll first need to install DVD Sharing on it.)
Next, on the computer on which you're installing Leopard, open a new Finder window and select Remote Disk in the sidebar; the computer sharing the disc should appear to the right. Double-click the computer sharing the disc; you'll see a Connected message, and the Mac OS X Install DVD will appear. (If the computer sharing the disc has the Ask Me Before Allowing Others To Use My DVD Drive option enabled, you'll see an Ask To Use button; click it and, once the request is approved, you'll see the Connected message.) Double-click the Install DVD icon, and then double-click the Install Mac OS X icon that appears.
From this point, the installation should proceed as described above, albeit more slowly: installing Snow Leopard onto a 2009 MacBook Air from a 2009 Mac Mini over an 802.11n network--with the Nearby And Popular Printers, Additional Fonts, X11, Rosetta, and QuickTime 7 options enabled, and Language Translations disabled--took just over 56 minutes.
Why Erase and Install?
If the new installer is so good, why would you want to erase your drive first--a process equivalent to the old Erase and Install option?
The most obvious reason is if the standard installation procedure produced problems; an Erase and Install, followed by a restoration of your data from backup, could solve those problems. You might also want to consider this approach if your Mac has been acting buggy under Leopard and you suspect you may have some hard-drive or directory corruption; erasing the drive before installing Snow Leopard could fix such problems.
After installing Snow Leopard this way, you'll be asked if you want to transfer applications and data from your backup. If you choose to restore everything, you'll end up essentially where you would have been if you'd used the standard install procedure. (Under Leopard and earlier installers, using Erase and Install and then restoring your data using Migration Assistant would often fail to transfer over all your data; specifically, some settings and add-ons would be left behind.)
Two versions
The $29 retail Snow Leopard upgrade disc--as well as the $10 upgrade disc available to people who purchased a Mac on or after June 8, 2009--is for users who already have a license for Leopard (OS X 10.5). Apple says those with Intel Macs running Tiger (OS X 10.4) must buy the $169 Mac Box Set, which includes a full version of Snow Leopard bundled with the latest versions of iLife and iWork.
However, the Snow Leopard upgrade DVD does not require that you have Leopard installed; it's a full install disc that works on any Intel Mac. Similarly, as with every version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard does not require activation or a registration code; Apple continues to rely on the honor system. This is great for Leopard users, as it makes it much easier to install Snow Leopard on your Mac without having to jump through hoops; for example, if you decide to erase your hard drive before installing Snow Leopard, you don't have to first install Leopard.
Install away?
Snow Leopard appears to be the easiest, and smartest, Mac OS X install yet. Just be sure to perform a full backup beforehand; as long as you have that, you should be set.
If you already have a Windows partition you will not need to reinstall Windows via Bootcamp after upgrading to Snow Leopard.
Just how many songs are in your iTunes lib? ;-)
There has been some decent progress in getting EULA terms that represent abuse of copyright judged unenforceable. Copyright is what protects their works so they can't have more power through a EULA than copyright gives -- unless of course the government goes unconstitutional, which they've been known to do from time to time (like every other minute).
Unfortunately the current big-news case involves an apparently dishonest company. That makes bad precedent. The Universal v. Reimerdes DMCA case was largely lost because of who the defendant was even though he had a great free speech defense.
> Lets say Apple authorized Dell to sell dual boot computers. After they checked out OSX for a while I'm sure most users would end up using Windows 7 most of the time
Hodar, your wish shows that you don't understand that Apple is a SYSTEMS company, that makes their money on their hardware, not their software. Apple can't "compete directly against Windows" -- they make and sell SYSTEMS. Not just software. Totally different business model. It's like wishing that a football player would model lingerie -- it just doesn't work that way.
Dennis, I agree with you that eyeball-to-eyeball, most users would end up with Windows rather than OS-X. But the reason is that most users (90%) presently use Windows, and most Windows users have at least one Windows-only application they depend on. They won't switch arbitrarily to Mac.
It has nothing to do with which OS is "better", or "prettier", or "easier to use", or "stabler", or "more secure". The decision would be made, most of the time, on the basis of "Does it run my Windows-only application that I'm used to?", answer = "No", result = stick with Windows.
Users like that don't want to hear about VMware or Parallels or BootCamp, either. So arguments that they can have BOTH Windows and Mac cut no ice.
i’ll never buy an ibm again - OSX is awesome
305 albums, 19.5 days worth of listening time, 43.66 GB. This is after I trimmed out albums I stopped listening to; my library used to top 75GB.
Regardless, iTunes 8 is not 64-bit while most of Snow Leopard is. Even Safari is 64-bit. Heck, even Finder is 64-bit now, after it was completely rewritten in Cocoa. iTunes needs the same treatment. A total rewrite in Cocoa, clear out all the old code, slim its memory footprint down, improve its performance (especially when loading album covers in Grid and Coverflow views), etc etc.
iTunes needs the update. I hope iTunes 9 delivers it. Probably won’t, though.
Unfortunately, I think you are correct. Most users would opt to stick with Windows due to the critical mass of applications that are available for Windows.
However, I think you are overlooking the silent majority; Mom and Dad who are close to, or in retirment who only want to send email, read the news and maybe put together a photo-album DVD of their family vacation.
My parents are in their 70’s; and teaching them to use Windows - alone - it a very frustrating experience. The ease of use, and base elegance that is OS X makes this a great candidate for this demographic.
Now, is this demographic 90%? No, but it’s far greater than the ~6% that Apple currently enjoys.
It's slowly changing, but there's a lot of resistance, and Apple doesn't particularly want to compromise their elusive "user experience" factor (which, to be fair, I enjoy myself!) just to gain access to a bunch of dowdy-but-familiar Windows apps.
I run mostly Macs these days, with VMware and BootCamp to support my Windows, Linux, and other OS needs. But I'm not a typical user by any means...
> However, I think you are overlooking the silent majority; Mom and Dad who are close to, or in retirment who only want to send email, read the news and maybe put together a photo-album DVD of their family vacation. My parents are in their 70’s; and teaching them to use Windows - alone - it a very frustrating experience. The ease of use, and base elegance that is OS X makes this a great candidate for this demographic.
That's a very good point.
> Now, is this demographic 90%? No, but it’s far greater than the ~6% that Apple currently enjoys.
Interesting thought -- Macs have long had the reputation of being toys for young'uns, but I'll bet you're right, that older folks are good candidates.
My mom just turned 85, and has been using Windows for years, having migrated up from DOS in the early 90's through Win95, 98, and into XP. Switching to a Mac would be tough on her at this point, since her experience has all been Microsoft mindset. When I visit with my MacBook, she looks at it, chuckles, and says, "that's nice looking, but it doesn't make sense to me".
So there's a familiarity factor in there too...
But I agree with you that long-distance tech support of a Mac would be a lot easier.
Your drive will not be changed in any way except that Snow Leopard will be installed on it. If you are using VMWare Fusion or Parallels 4 (I hear that Parallels 3 or lower does not work with Snow Leopard) with a virtual Windows PC Hard Drive file, you will not have to partition your drive to run Windows.
If you prefer to boot into Windows, then, yes, you should repartition the HD but that can be done after installing Snow Leopard.
I disagree. I have no desire or need to dual boot, except if the other OS is Linux.
The US government has decided that Microsoft can strangle any opposition, so I suppose it's not surprising there isn't opposition in any in brick and mortar stores. Apple tying Mac OS X to their own hardware is self defense.
The eternal defense of an indefensible system. Can you name three?
Why sure. I’m running an HP with a 64 bit Phenom 2.5 quad-core, 6 gigs of ram, 512 meg nvidia gpu. built in wireless, raid ready, 640 gig hd, lightscribe DVD.
The mac that comes closest is the Mac pro,$2499 2.6 quad-core, 3 gigs of ram, 512 meg gpu. Oh, but wait, I have to get the built in wireless to equal my hp +$700, and a DVI adapter $29, and three more gigs of ram $150. just to make it close.
that puts my HP at $599 plus shipping.
Mac pro at $3428 plus shipping.
It’s actually well over five times the cost.
This would be an upgrade slightly, as the clock speed of the CPU would be slightly higher.
Or, I could pop over to the refurb side and buy a dual quad-core for $3299 plus shipping, but that one only has two gigs of ram. I’d most likely need to upgrade that, plus add in the wireless. so that takes it off the table for comparison purposes.
lol bro
> The eternal defense of an indefensible system. Can you name three?
Sure:
My central work desktop is XP installed on the metal. It also has VMs of Win7, Vista, Fedora Linux, CentOS Linux, and NetBSD.
My work laptop is a MacBook with Leopard, a BootCamped XP install, and a VM of Win7.
I've been at this a long time.
Home is a different matter.
One MacBook and two MacMinis, with a varied mix of Leopard, WinXP, Win7, Win2K, Win98/MSDOS, Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc., mostly VMs of course. Plus older PC hardware with metal installs of WinXP, Win2K, Win7, Fedora Linux, etc. Plus older iMacs with OS 9.2.
I spend 90+% of my time in OS-X; the rest are for Windows-only apps and special project work.
You will have to forgive me, I’m having trouble finding your computer on the HP Web site. The one I saw one that is $599 has a 2.3GHz processor that retails on Newegg for $109. Swordmaker would know better than I, but it looks like the Mac Pro’s chip retails for $280. I believe it is the next model up that has the $1000 dollar chip in it.
This HP also allowed the free upgrade to 6GB of RAM, DDR2-800MHz. The Mac Pro does only come with a base of 3GB, but it is DDR3-1066MHz.
Now in some ways, the differences may become a wash, but I wouldn’t say these are immediately comparable computers. Especially considering the different markets each are designed for.
I would think a better comparison would be an iMac.
Way back in the day, when Mac was about the only company that as pushing into the education market (which was a burst of briliance, familiarize the young) - your lowly Kindergarten teacher was the IT support person for the entire school.
Now, with Windows - while prices have plummeted - technological expertise in these matters has skyrocketed. What the untrained Kindergarten teacher used to do for free, now requires a certified and trained IT professional.
I would like to be able to go to Costco (Amazon, whatever) and purchase the MacOS and load on my home PC. Just as in the old days, today we have no choice but to buy whatever computer Mac has deigned to offer us.
I beg to differ. I’m the consumer, I should tell them what hard drive, what size monitor, what speed, how much memory, ect, that I think I need, and at a price point I think is reasonable. Back when Mac was a tailor made piece of hardware, they could justify their exorbinate prices - today, they use the same design, the same silicon and the same mounting hardware that everyone else uses - and charge prices that are out of line with the competition.
So, they can sit with 5-7% marketshare and make a profit; or they can potentially hit 30% marketshare on lower profit margins - but then the snow ball will gather speed. While software developers are not motivated to migrate software to compete to pick up 5-7% marketshare - they will be more likely to migrate to pick up 20-30% marketshare.
I believe that the untapped population (poor students who cannot afford the luxury of Apple’s price, non-IT users who do not need AutoDesk or custom software, the elderly who want to keep pace and keep in contact with distant family ) will gladly embrace a stable, easy to use OS like the Mac.
I think it is a mistake for Apple to insist that the only population who will buy thier OS, are those who are heavily invested in their hardware.
Ya, me too. It's a discontinued model apparently. Some 9500 series, but I"ve seen the same computer with the same numbers with a variety of different configs. I ca'nt remember the exact model number, but when I first bought it, I was googling and found different descriptions.
Now in some ways, the differences may become a wash, but I wouldn’t say these are immediately comparable computers. Especially considering the different markets each are designed for.
I'm comparing hardware regardless whatever market it's designed for. My point stands: To get a similarly equipped Mac, I have to pay over five times as much for the same power. The only advantage to me is to get a new OS. Not worth it in any scenario in MY market. When I can afford a Mac, I can have a LOT more computer in a PC. Macs just don't fit.
THe HP site wasn’t working for me for a few. Here’s a comparable computer to what I have:
But I don’t see my processor and it’s shorter of RAM.
One thing I don’t like about mine is the weenie power supply. One of these days, I’ll replace it.
How much is having 4 hard drive bays worth? How much is the design of the internals of the computer for easy expansion of everything worth? In a quantifiable cost, how much is an aircraft grade aluminum case worth?
Again, I’m not sure why an iMac isn’t the closer comparison. It won’t bring the cost of the two computers into exact comparison, but it starts out much cheaper with similar specs to what you have. It doesn’t have a RAID option, but I’m not sure the necessity of that for home use when you have programs like Time Machine built in. A 20in. iMac with a 2.66GHz processor, with 4GB Ram (again the faster RAM, than what you likely have this can add a lot to a price) and a 640GB HD is only 1,374. That includes a screen though and again an aluminum case.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.