Friday
Aug282009
Happy Snow Leopard Day!
Friday, August 28, 2009 at 10:03PM 
Well, on Monday Apple announced the release date of Snow Leopard as Friday 28th August 2009 - ScreenCastsOnline publication date! Despite several people suggesting that Apple scheduled it on a friday to coincide with ScreenCastsOnline, that wasn’t the case, really!
However, the issue was... do I do an install show using the developers build in my possession and hope that the final retail build had no surprises? Or do I wait until I get the final version of the build and leave it a week before doing a Snow Leopard install show? I figured that they Apple wouldn’t change that much, at least not in the install so I opted for the first.
So the results of my labours are published in this week’s show - SCO0213 -Snow Leopard Prep & Install. This is a full free show and the links to download the show or stram it are on the webpage.
As I write this on the release day, it transpires that the build I used to record the show, is actually the final build released on DVD to developers, so I had no last minute changes to cope with. Just as well really as the show took twice as long to put together as normal as I had to resort to using some live video footage to capture parts of the install process - I hate doing that!
Anyhow, I hope you find the show informative and helps when you do your own Snow Leopard installation.
As an aside, after seeing all the buzz surrounding the release, plus Snow Leopard updates being available for Mail-Act On, DropBox, 1Password3 and SuperDuper, I threw caution to the wind and installed Snow Leopard on my main production Mac Pro (having several backups and a spare machine of course).
The install seemed to go fine except for a rather worrying kernel panic at the end. All seems well following a reboot and I have to say that everything does feel a lot snappier. I'll probably take some time off over the Bank Holiday (yeah, Don, sure...) so may not be able to give it a full workout until next week but I'll keep you posted.
I hope your upgrade goes swimmingly!
Reader Comments (7)
Hey Don
Terrific show, really enjoyed it this week and looking forward to a proper Snow Leopard show next week.
I had the same kernel panic occur twice, once on my iMac, and then later when I installed SL on my MacBook Pro. Everything froze on the final blue screen, but worked fine when I forced a re-start.
Bit worried doing it, but thankfully all seems fine now.
Keep up the good work!
I have just watched that free show.
It is seriously, a piece of art.
I cannot imagine the effort and time and resource that took.
You make it look effortless.....
Many thanks.
Another great show, Don. You truly are a professional. I have your show on my iMac as I install SL on the MB and MBP. Fingers crossed. Thanks again.
Well my Macbook Pro upgrade failed 1/2 way through with a black screen and white sleep light. Nothing would revive it. So rebooted and all seemed to go ok. Waited for Spotlight to reindex before another reboot and some benchmarks.
Despite Don's warning about expectations I have to say I am very underwhelmed, at least on the Macbook Pro. Launch times for the apps I benchmarked prior to the upgrade are no quicker and in 1 case 10 seconds slower! But that is MS Word..
The machine does not feel any quicker and what have they done to the menu bar aliasing? It is horrible, very blocky pixels with jagged text. The rest of the display is fine, just the menu bar.
Waiting for the 4 Core Mac Pro to finish cloning, as per Don's Screencast, then going for a fresh install of everything as I mucked up the first install name anyway and ended up with a machine called 'MacPro's Macpro'! See if thats any better.
But so far, underwhelmed.
J
Hell I love it when you go to the camera! I love the way you make it appear on the actual machine with the graphics and overlay. The effort you put in is what makes me watch every show, even if I shrug my shoulders at the end and go "that one wasn't for me".
It's an interesting release for me, especially as I am seeing a Windows 7 roll out at work. I guess time will tell but for £25 a worthy adventure I am happy to undertake.
Well I got my upgrade disk in the post today and after making sure of backup(s) I went for it.
Initial time was reported as 54 minutes but it rebooted initially after closer to 30. But it did not go anywhere. Powered off manually and all seems okay and upgrade (I hope) completed.
This is on an iMac 20" (bought June) hence the cheap upgrade disk. I have saved about 3Gb of space because of the upgrade.
Rob
Had two minor issues after the installation of Snow Leopard, only one of which was related to SL itself:
1. A problem related to 1Password 3 beta when automatic syncing keychain syncing was activated in the MobileMe system prefs. After the sync occured, no other application would start anymore. I must admit, I don't truly understand what went wrong, but the hints on http://tinyurl.com/l6lm3z solved the problem for me.
2. My multifunctional device Canon MP750 refused to scan. Printing, however, worked fine. Solved it by deleting the device in the Printer system prefs and then adding it in again.
Apart from that I must say I like Snow Leopard pretty much. A great release.
Christian