Comments on David Alison's Blog: Upgrading to Snow Leopard

Just so that people know, 'If you upgrade' to Snow...

2009-11-06T10:25:21.634-05:00

Just so that people know, 'If you upgrade' to Snow Leopard you will have problems with printer drivers not appearing correctly. If you do a clean install you should not have any problems.
e.g Ricoh printers may not appear to auto detect in a Snow Leopard upgrade contact Ricoh and they should send you a patch to get it working until they release offical 10.6 drivers.

Thanks for this info. I'll be installing SL 10.6....

2009-10-03T09:36:31.495-04:00

Thanks for this info. I'll be installing SL 10.6.1 in a few days and I hope to have a clean experience. I do make a clone of my HD every day though, and I'll certainly do one right before the install.

Very cool. I enjoy your blog, David. I have one ...

2009-09-30T21:00:59.327-04:00

Very cool. I enjoy your blog, David. I have one that discusses very similar topics. The number of similarities in posting topics are kinda freaky, actually. Please have a look:

I also got that System Event.app problem, but i ju...

2009-09-30T11:28:55.849-04:00

I also got that System Event.app problem, but i just did a google search and found this blog! Thanks :)

I have just upgraded my 2008 Mac Pro to SL and eve...

2009-09-18T14:57:14.209-04:00

I have just upgraded my 2008 Mac Pro to SL and everything is smooooth. I am using the 64bit beta for Letterbox for Apple Mail (v0.24b4), the v1.2b3 beta for Growl and the v0.6.559 (non-beta) for Dropbox. Even my previous logitech control centre drivers for my MX Revolution work as stable as can be in 32bit mode (as soon as I copied Expose.app and Spaces.app into the main Applications folder).

I have also installed all of these updates and SL on my 13"MBP and iMac in my office and so far absolutely no troubles. I am hoping that some of the drivers above are released in 64bit versions soon though...

@Eytan: Thanks for the comment! I am looking forwa...

2009-09-18T09:40:18.131-04:00

@Eytan: Thanks for the comment! I am looking forward to upgrading the Mac Pro but I'm still holding off for a little longer. I'd like to run Safari in 64 bit mode and 1Password v2 requires 32 bit mode; that's one hold back. I may just switch to the 1Password Beta 3 and not worry about that.

The second is Growl support. Growl is my primary notification medium (Mail, Tweetie, etc.) and not having those notifications means changing up some underlying apps I'm not quite ready for. If I don't see a Growl update that supports Snow Leopard within the next week or two I'll just bite the bullet and do the upgrade anyway.

I really would love to see that performance improvement with the multiple cores though!

I experienced dramatic speed improvements in my 20...

2009-09-16T14:06:43.500-04:00

I experienced dramatic speed improvements in my 2008 Dual Quad Core Xeon, and I am running the 32 bit kernel.
I found that many of Apple's application, and a trickle of my updates, seem to do a MUCH MUCH MUCH better job at distributing the workload among my cores. While the upgrade on my MBPro went well, and I saw a slight speed improvement, the extra cores in the Xeon REALLY benefit from the upgrade. I hope you'll get all your ducks in a row to upgrade your tower, because that is where you will see the really dramatic changes...

Still waiting, but it's my fault. I recently purch...

2009-09-15T12:33:48.764-04:00

Still waiting, but it's my fault. I recently purchased a MBP, so I got the $10 upgrade. When it arrived (early, woohoo!) I stuck it in, started installing, then I picked up my MBP (probably with one hand) and got a disc failure. After several attempts I ejected the disc and notice deep circular grooves in the disc...D'oh! Called Apple and they're sending me another for free. Great service! But I have to wait now... :(

Just installed SL this morning-- everything works ...

2009-09-13T14:07:33.712-04:00

Just installed SL this morning-- everything works (and it's extremely nice that my scanner now works from the Preview app). There was just one thing-- deleting files took a lot longer. Turns out this is due to a change in the default Finder preferences-- deletion is done 'securely' in SL by default rather than quickly. I changed it back to fast, but now I'm thinking-- maybe secure deletion is what I want. Just have to think about it.

@Sim: While I'm sure that a completely fresh insta...

2009-09-08T13:58:00.148-04:00

@Sim: While I'm sure that a completely fresh install of Snow Leopard would probably be best, the upgrade should be fine.

i am getting a new macbook pro tomorrow and i am w...

2009-09-08T12:43:42.685-04:00

i am getting a new macbook pro tomorrow and i am wondering whether i should do a clean install of snow leopard or simply upgrade. i am curious what your thoughts were on this, david.

Quicksilver is working for me on Snow Leopard. I ...

2009-09-07T10:20:53.425-04:00

Quicksilver is working for me on Snow Leopard. I had to set the Spaces preference item to recognize it on all my Spaces, but other than that there weren't any problems. What kind of error are you seeing?

Is anyone still using Quicksilver? I can't seem to...

2009-09-06T09:36:44.644-04:00

Is anyone still using Quicksilver? I can't seem to get it to work with Snow Leopard.

My upgraded was flawless. My biggest worry was VM...

2009-09-05T23:37:38.160-04:00

My upgraded was flawless.

My biggest worry was VMware but it seems ok so far. Did not get any system Event msg either.

I have gained about 5-10 Gb as I remember. But this could be due to sole reason of SL has changed the way it represent the HDD capacity.

Now if you gotta 8GB flash, it shows exactly as 8GB, not 7.34Gb something. With bigger and bigger drives this gap can be in GBs I guess. So space gains are just marketting jargons.

I thought he apps are slimmed down but in fact I can still reduce new applications using Xslimmer or Monolingual as before.

Apart from most of my pref panels (I miss SmartScroll) all apps seem to work fine.

So far so good.

Hi David, I got the Where is the system event? di...

2009-09-04T04:07:12.495-04:00

Hi David,

I got the Where is the system event? dialog on my sisters Macbook 13"
Just clicked cancel.
Everything works fine.

The dialog didn't appear on my Macbook Pro Unibody

iStat menus has been updated: http://www.islayer.c...

2009-09-03T15:31:52.294-04:00

iStat menus has been updated:
http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/

-Kevin

@Kevin Thanks for the list, I'm lucky to see my p...

2009-09-03T15:24:53.436-04:00

@Kevin

Thanks for the list, I'm lucky to see my printer there.

There's a promise on iStat's site that they'll come up with the Snow Leopard version soon. I use this software all the time so it'd be great to use it after the update too.

@brian- I completely get it now, thx.

2009-09-03T13:50:32.802-04:00

@brian- I completely get it now, thx.

@tai - Srry for the confusion. Let me see if I can...

2009-09-03T13:14:31.364-04:00

@tai - Srry for the confusion. Let me see if I can remember how I worked it out...

I'd noted having 169.74 GB (really GiB) before upgrading and 190.86 GB after. 169.74 GiB converts to 182.26 GB, giving me around 8GB difference.

Right?

@brian - I either misunderstood your statement or ...

2009-09-03T13:05:22.522-04:00

@brian - I either misunderstood your statement or there's something off with your math. 21GB (decimal) is equal to about 19.6GiB (base 2), certainly not 7GiB

@Gabor Did you check Apple's printer list: http:/...

2009-09-02T16:11:56.354-04:00

@Gabor

Did you check Apple's printer list:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669#epson

-Kevin

Wow, you've scared me guys, my update is on the wa...

2009-09-02T16:08:53.362-04:00

Wow, you've scared me guys, my update is on the way, but before installing it I'll probably make sure my important programs will work under Snow Leopard. If not, I'd rather wait.

I'm not sure about my printer either: Epson RX585.

@Brian: I did not notice that - thanks man. Glad t...

2009-09-02T08:50:46.915-04:00

@Brian: I did not notice that - thanks man. Glad the blog has been helpful.

@Kermit: I did find that initially things didn't seem faster. It took several reboots and playing with the auto-loaded extensions I use before I started seeing the real speed improvements and yes, they are impressive.

On my 18mth old MBP 4,1 it took 37mins. I selecte...

2009-09-02T08:48:52.983-04:00

On my 18mth old MBP 4,1 it took 37mins. I selected customise and deselected Common Printers and Languages, thus saving about 1.3GB. After reboot I'd lost my screen saver, desktop pictures, Brother MFC ControlCenter, along with iStat Menus and a whole host of other 32bit kernal extensions. I also really miss Glims but I believe that will be updated soon.

I've got a repeatable issue with Time Machine where everytime I enter it my time line on the right is greyed out except for Now. I quit and re-enter it and all is well. If you are a TimeMachineEditor user you'll need to upgrade but one of its nice features is the ability to easily view your Time Machine log.

Overall everything is so much zippier and I can highly recommend every Intel Mac owner does the upgrade just for the speed improvements.

Not sure if you know this or not, but the 17GB you...

2009-09-01T23:01:14.326-04:00

Not sure if you know this or not, but the 17GB you got back probably isn't 17GB. In Leopard GB were counted in base2 whereas now they're counted in base 10. GiB vs GB. After I upgraded I thought I got back 21GB but after doing some math I found it to be the 7GB Apple said I would get back.

I love your site by the way. I've just bought my first Mac (13" MBP) and your site has helped a lot. Thanks!