I suppose I could / should have done a full erase and clean install, and can always do that if I experience problems.  But I took the easy (read that, lazy) way out and just inserted the Install DVD and went to work.

It took just a bit over an hour.  Of course, on the surface I don’t see anything different, but will poke around and check out the subtle differences (if there is much to find.)

Bottom line, I started with an ‘older’ Developer Preview build; 10A421a.  I hadn’t applied the last couple of upgrades since that version was running fine.  The only other thing I checked was Safari, to see if there had been much (or any) change.  Before the installation, Safari reported 4.0.3, build 6531.7; after the install, build 6531.9.

Upon reboot, SnapzPro had an update available.  I also installed (my sorely missed) Server Admin Tools for 10.6.  I was pleasantly surprised to see there were no compatibility issues with the tools and my OS X Server,  a PPC running Server 10.5.8.  I had read a few articles where often the new tools don’t work with the “old” server operating system but that isn’t the case.

I’ll go through the rest of my installed software and check to see if anything else has a release to coincide with Snow Leopard.  To sum it up, Snow Leopard is an affordable upgrade ($29USD) and in addition to taking a considerably smaller footprint (about 3GB less) than Leopard 10.5, it is quite snappy and several new features under the hood.

Snow Leopard pre-order announcement

Ok, what we die hard Mac fans have been waiting for, the next release of OS X!  There was a reported leak on the UK Apple Store the other day that indicated Snow Leopard would be available, ahead of the announced “sometime in September” timeframe we had been hearing.  They pulled that, but it was spot on.

Today I received two emails, one directly from Apple this morning (Alaska time) and this afternoon from MacMall.  Both announced ‘pre-order now’ to get your copy on Friday the 28th.  Of course, I plopped down the $29 to Apple (which included shipping.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been running the Developer Preview for a while on my 17″ MBP.  It works great and I haven’t suffered too many issues with the beta.  For the most part, all my software runs fine.  There is the new release of Remote Desktop, and with the anticipated release of Server Admin Tools for 10.6, I will be all set.

Icing on the cake, in my small world, was the addition of the beta build of VMware.  I had been selected, but to date, hadn’t installed it.  Since the release version of Fusion doesn’t run with the 64-bit OS X kernel, I decided to see if this is addressed in the beta.  Sure enough, I started up VMware beta and it works great!  I loaded all my images, including 32 and 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Ubuntu.  Updated all the VM Tools and things are running stable.

So, run, don’t walk and pre-order your copy of 10.6.

I did a full backup of 10.5.7 last night. This morning, I started the install. I decided to “risk it” and didn’t do a clean, full install. Essentially I did the ‘upgrade’ since I didn’t want to lose what I have on this laptop. In my opinion, while this may not be the best approach, it is a real test. I would think most people would want to preserve their environment and simply “upgrade” the OS. We’ll see if in the end this was the best decision considering a pre-release operating system.

About This Mac - 10.6

The install process was painless. I then went through three rounds of updates, the last being the 10A411 release, at a bit less than 750MB. (The 10A402 update was 1.31GB!)

My absolute first impression… Wow! Not for the new features, but for speed. The speed increase over my previous 10.5.7 install was more than just noticeable. Apps load faster, Expose is faster, the machine is just more responsive and ‘snappier!’ I don’t know if this is because the PPC code is not included (older Macs are not supported; this OS requires an Intel processor.) In any event, the footprint is about 6GB smaller than before. That is significant, especially on a laptop. Hats off to Apple in any event.

I have found a few quirks in this pre-release OS. I do use this machine everyday, and rely on it. The caveat when you install a developer or pre-release (beta) version is that if you can’t live without it, don’t install on that machine. The same holds true here… So I can’t complain if something doesn’t work quite right.

I’ve stumbled upon three apps that aren’t supported. Apple’s Remote Desktop is only supported to 3.2.2… Snow Leopard requires 3.3 or later. (Screen Sharing with my Leopard Server and 2.5 G5 Desktop still works fine.) Apple Server Admin doesn’t work. I assume, without question, they will update when 10.6 is released to the public.

I also noticed an anomaly with Quicktime Pro. The latest Leopard version is 7.6.2, but Snow Leopard includes version 10 (build 47) in this release. My plugin to allow viewing WMV (I know, the horror!!!) doesn’t work quite right. However, I found that the old M$ Windows Media Player still works just fine in a pinch.

So, all in all… SPEED! Lean and mean… That is the key. Will continue to explore, but the major apps don’t seem to have any problems. That includes Microsoft Office 2008, Adobe CS4 Creative Suite apps, SnapzPro, and many others. I will run through the list of installed apps on this machine, and will see if there are any other issues. Remember however, this is a beta release, and all apps are not necessarily compiled to run on this version.

First impression… two thumbs up!

Two Thumbs Up for Snow Leopard