A cold day in hell
That's when I thought I would switch to Apple. Let's face it, all of the Apple hardware is way overpriced, and there just doesn't seem to be a way to be bleeding edge even if you could afford it. Sure, there are the brave souls who have managed to get OSX on "normal" hardware, but I have a family and $599 for a Mac mini was way cheaper than being one of them. So, yes, I am writing this on a mac, watching the silly little bar at the bottom for when my email comes in on a mac, all so that I could build software for the iPhone. But this article isn't about me switching to Mac, it's more a dairy entry, detailing my experiences upgrading to Snow Leopard.
First thoughts: on a <a href='http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/faq_core/mac-mini-intel-ram-upgrade-instructions.html'>early 2009 mac mini loaded with 4gb of ram</a> and stock 5400 rpm hd, it took 1 hour and 15 minutes for an in-place upgrade. Somehow this saved over 10g of drive space, so I'm ok with it. One a 5400rpm drive, it would have taken 30 minutes just to delete 10g. Seriously, someone remind me to upgrade to an SSD immediately!
Of course, that process went by, and though it was not quick, it was painless. My data and preferences were all still in place, and most everything worked. The system seemed snapier in performance, but that may have just been successful advertising. One of the nice new features with 10.6 was Xcode 3.2. This is the environment I use to program iPhone apps. Anyway, XCode 3.2 appears to be a minor upgrade, though I have noticed that some of the menu bars appear more intelligently place, and most importantly, it crashes a LOT less.
With every good there should be some bad, and here is what I found so far:
1> MS RDP Client for 10.5 no longer worked -- it kept wanting to run in Rosetta mode. Not being a Mac guy from birth, this didn't make sense as I recall Rosetta was for Mac 9 apps running on OSX. A few minutes of search brought me to the new <a href='http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx'>RDP client</a>, installed it, and wow! I am a developer and a system admin, so I spend as much time in RDP as I do in XCode. So the improvements in this app, its stability, user interface, and general usability, were life saving to me. Sadly, those are all attributed to Microsoft's good works.
2> GV Connect. I use Google Voice constantly, whether it's to have a single contact number, or for that yummy long distance. Unfortunately, the GV widget for dash board does not appear to be working. Could not find an update, so I will live without it for now.
3> iMovie. This really doesn't pertain to the upgrade, but is something that I see seriously lacking. Right now, iMovie can import mp4 or mov files, and that's it. I use a Canon FS200 to shoot my rather low quality home videos (my wife does not like to spend money on gadgets), and it saves MOD files to the card. In most video editing systems (Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier so far), you can use these files by renaming them to VOB and loading them. No such luck with iMovie. To get a video into iMovie without paying $20 for video conversion app du'jour, I have to plug the usb from the mini into the camera, and plug the camera into the electric socket. It starts to feel like a bad horror movie as the wires are strewn about the office -- Video Cords on a Plane, and they are annoying!
4> NetGear SSL VPN. These little devices are a great way to get into your network without all the hassle of, basically every other VPN. Sadly, at the moment, I can't use them. Seems if I try to install the tunnel software with my user (safe), it says I have to use root (unsafe). Well, I gave in to be unsafe, and it still didn't work. So, here's at least one place where I have to resort to windows.
And that's it so far. I'll keep looking for apps in need of an upgrade. while I ponder whether I am really running a 64 bit os now.. <a href='http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/02/inside_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bits.html'>Apple Insider</a>