I thought I would run down how and why I plan to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard tomorrow. I have a 2008 13″ White MacBook with OS X 10.5.8 and iLife ’08. I became a “switcher” last September when I asked for a MacBook as a college graduation present. I quickly delved deep into the Apple ecosystem and learned everything I could about OS X, Apple, and Mac software. I learned the differences between OS X and Windows and I soon came to love much about OS X.
I began getting into Linux a couple years ago and had many experiences (good and bad) with both server and desktop installations of Linux. I enjoyed the command line once I learned how to use it, and I quite enjoyed the nature of free and open-source software. Linux was intriguing, complex, free, powerful, fast, and flexible but not without its own flaws. I found it very difficult to use Linux as a desktop OS. Sure I COULD do it, and I have done it many times and I still do it. I’m a geek. I can make anything I really want to work, work. But that wasn’t the point. I was used to Windows, but now I was using this OS that was very cool and cutting edge, but it was complicated and difficult to use.
Along comes OS X. I got my Mac last year with a deep history and knowledge of Windows and a few months of using Linux. I have to say I was completely blown away. This thing is based on UNIX?! It’s incredibly stable, it’s absolutely beautiful, it’s fast, sleek and easy to use. I could run all the software I wanted, I could talk to any type of software or OS including Windows and Linux. I could do just about anything and the overall experience was simply better. It just worked. What an idea.
Flabbergasted I continued on my journey into the world of OS X. I soon learned about all the great blogs I could read to learn about Apple and Mac news. TUAW, MacWorld, Apple Insider, etc. etc. After a few weeks of reading these guys I quickly learned another lesson. Apple is not perfect – far from it. OS X is not perfect – far from it. I browsed some of the forums and people do experience a significant amount of problems with Mac hardware and software. Now to be clear, I firmly believe that Mac hardware is better than any PC hardware. I also think OS X is better than Windows in many ways, but it’s mainly just different.
So I learned that OS X was very cool and everything it was cracked up to be, but it also suffered from bugs, security holes and general fixes that came down the pipeline from Apple. No big deal. I enjoy software updates, probably more than could be considered normal. So I relished the fact that I got random updates from Software Update and typically I’m excited when I see the app pop-up to tell me it has something new for me to download.
(This is turning into much more than an upgrade post)
Fast forward to the present day. I’ve done some serious damage to my Mac in the form of software installs and uninstalls, boot camps, beta software, experimental software, and all kinds of other stuff that makes my Windows machines very corrupted. OS X doesn’t flinch. I haven’t ever had OS X crash on me. I’ve had apps crash, but the underlying operating system is rock solid. Either way I decided that I’m going to wipe my hard drive clean and install Snow Leopard fresh when I get it tomorrow. Here’s the plan.
Step 1: I will run a quick Time Machine backup to make sure that everything is safely stored on my external WD MyBook hard drive.
Step 2: Pop in the Snow Leopard DVD and get to the point where I can launch Disk Utility. I’ve read in many places including TUAW and Lifehacker that you can install Snow Leopard clean by erasing your hard drive. That’s what I’m going to do.
Step 3: After Snow Leopard is completely installed I’m going to play around with it a bit and get excited.
Step 4: Start the somewhat tedious process of reinstalling all my apps from scratch. I’m going to avoid apps that are PowerPC (PPC) so I don’t have to install Rosetta. I also will likely hold off on installing apps like Growl which I have heard will be released in a new version soon that will fully support Snow Leopard. I want to install Office 2008, but it forces an install of Rosetta so I might just see if I can get along with OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice for now. I don’t use them much anyway.
If I had my way all software on the Mac would be 64-bit and completely written in Cocoa within a year. That would make me very happy. Then hopefully OS X will boot into a 64-bit kernel by the next OS version (10.7). According to my sources this might happen since the hardware and software in the Apple ecosystem will likely be syncing up at that time to the point where a 64-bit kernel makes sense.
For now, OS X 10.6 boots into a 32-bit kernel but nearly all of the native apps will be running in 64-bit mode. That’s nice.
I can’t wait for the day when everything is 64-bit on the Windows, Mac, and Linux parts of the world. I think it’s long overdue and I think it’s just silly. Right now, from the research I’ve done both Windows and Mac are bridging the 32-bit to 64-bit gap by using hybrid methods. OS X isn’t 100% totally and completely 64-bit and neither is Windows. Windows gives you the option of installing a 64-bit or 32-bit OS, but even on the 64-bit side of things Windows has some serious systems in place to ensure 32-bit programs run just fine. These are hybrid measures to ensure compatibility, but I want to see the day where it’s all 64-bit and that’s just how life is.
I’ll try to detail my experience with Snow Leopard tomorrow or over the weekend.
