Snow Leopard came in the mail today (finally). Thank you Apple, for killing a small tree to deliver me one DVD. Using a box large enough to house at least 16 retail packages to ship 1 single disc to an end line consumer is definitely the right choice!! Seriously, if I'm paying you $40 for the rights to kill a tree, I better be the one doing the killing, not you!
The upgrade took just about 1 hour from inserting disc to the green check mark with "Install Succeeded" text... Maybe they could've done it faster, I don't know. But what's important is I am now on Snow Leopard.
The upgrade was, unfortunately, not quirk free. Read on for a few problems that I encountered and how I fixed them.
One of the very first things I noticed is that my "Tap To Click" no longer works... This was an easy fix though. System Preferences > Trackpad, and enable it. But, in the process of attempting to launch System Preferences, I noticed that my Quicksilver no longer works.
Quicksilver required not only an upgrade, but also removal of a few plugins. The plugins I had to remove are:
- AirPort Module
- File Tagging Module
- Services Menu Module
They can be yanked from ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/PlugIns/
Slightly annoyed with Quicksilver not working, I had many many many safari windows open to help me search for a solution. And this is when I really started to dig the new expose. The new expose have two things I really enjoy: Application specific expose, allowing you to show all windows of one application, and the nice little blue glow that tells you which one you're highlighting. This enables me to have a much better work flow than the older version.
After Quicksilver was fixed, I wanted to listen to some music. It appears that my USB DAC is some how choppy if I plug it in directly w/o sound flower. I do not yet know why, and will need to check it out again. So I tried to launch sound flower, only to find that sound flower was not installed. Attempting to install also gave me some kext error. It was a short lasted problem though, there is a fixed 3rd party package available, google for Snow Leopard Sound flower and you'll be on your way. DAC sounds great after that.
I started chatting with some friends, and got quite a pleasant surprise when I tried to change language. The new international (input manager / kotoeri) have a "command + tab" like interface for selecting the language. Very nice, no longer need to stare at menu bar for the tiny icon to change to the right language I want... If you're wondering I work with Romaji (English), Hiragana, Katakana, Pinyin - Chinese Traditional, and Pinyin - Chinese Simplified, so this really helps.
Other things that doesn't really work for me...
- Menu Meters -- Dev says will fix soon
- Insomniax -- Not sure when it will be fixed
- Several apps thinks it is downloaded from the web and need me to approve again, not really a problem, just a pest...
- WireTap Studio required re-activation, that isn't an issue, but when it did re-activate, I lost my recording library... haven't dug the file system to see if the files are actually lost yet though.
- 1Password 3 Beta doesn't really work for popup passwords (IE: .htaccess + .htpasswd sets) for me yet... not sure why, but since its beta, its only as expected...
- 1Gb = 1024Mb, 1Mb = 1024Kb, 1Kb = 1024b, not 1000. Apple, PLEASE don't be lame and count like harddrive manufactures!!??
- Snow Leopard seems to make the system warmer in general. I'm coasting at 60℃ to 64℃ as opposed to the usual 45℃ to 50℃...
Other things that I like but not sure if its new or not...
- Spaces changing icon on screen (the one with white box traveling to the space you're going to) seems to look a bit prettier than before?
- System Preference's spotlight some how magically fixed itself (I lost the highlight last week and can't get it back for whatever reason).
- Mail.app's db upgrade was ridiculously quick, even for a 6gb db like my.
- Spaces / Expose's edge of screen feature (throw your mouse to edge of screen to activate feature) no longer have ugly hit zone.
Lol SL is nice hmm?
That spaces thing. It used to have an arrow showing the direction of switching. Now you just see the white box move if I haven't forgotten. ... Weirdly, cursor at edge of screen doesn't work for me anymore, is there an option to enable it or something?
And the temperature is really getting annoying. 70C just normal browsing.
And seemingly SL uses more memory... and I keep running out. =/