Mac OS X - Snow Leopard Available for pre order

JAG72

SatelliteGuys Master
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Feb 16, 2006
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Snow Leopard is now available for pre order on the apple website with a delivery date of 8/28.
 
I ordered mine a few weeks ago from Amazon, it says I will get it on the 31st... I was kind of hoping to have it on release day. :(

Although I am hearing the adobe CS3 stuff I am running like Photoshop does not work correctly on Snow Leopard, so I am kind of concerned about that, I dont want to pay to upgrade to CS4 when I wont use any of the new features.
 
I heard about this yesterday but with everything going on I did not have a chance to order it until today. Can't wait to get it on Friday.
 
OK, why do I want to upgrade?

Is there a handy site or thread someone can point me toward? I'm actually pretty happy with the current OS.
 
OK, why do I want to upgrade?

Is there a handy site or thread someone can point me toward? I'm actually pretty happy with the current OS.

Never mind. Went to the Apple site. At $29 its kind of a no brainer, if just for the improved finder.
 
Well Snow Leopard is here and has been installed. Now it is time to see whats different.
 
I am mad at Amazon,

I preordered it with next day air, normally pre orders arrive the day of the release. My copy wont get here until Monday.

I was almost tempted to stop by the Apple store on the way hope to pick up a copy. I tried to cancel my order with Amazon this morning and was told that I couldn't because the order was in process.
 
Scott, First I sure hope you didn't pay extra for shipping.


After the installation, I have found my first issue. My Macbook is only showing that it booted into 32 bit mode instead of 64 bit. I found a few things on the internet that I need to try to resolve this issue.
 
Just picked up my copy at Best Buy (couple miles away compared to 20+ miles for nearest Apple Store) via store pickup for 24.99 plus tax. Just did an upgrade install just to see how well it works. It worked pretty darn well but as I have Time Machine etc I'm going to start over with a fresh install and copy all my files from an external drive back onto my internal drive and use Time Machine from that point on.

I just now as I'm typing this finished the clean fresh install of Snow Leopard and just wanted you guys to know that you can do a fresh install and not just an upgrade. I believe you just need to press "C" at bootup and it will boot into the installer and you go from that point like a normal Leopard install.

I also stopped at my nearby Compusa and picked up a 128GB SSD drive for a few hundred bucks along with a 4GB memory upgrade for the brand new Mac Mini I got at Best Buy. I'm giving my imac (I'm using the iMac now) to my mother as I'm tired of fixing her windows vista computer. I got the 600 buck Mac Mini and once I upgrade the RAM beyond 1GB the video memory will increase from 128MB to 256MB nvidia just like on the more expensive Mac Mini. I'm going to install this new SSD drive as well.

I'm hoping sometime during the weekend I can give you all a good idea of the performance with the upgraded Mac Mini. I think the SSD drive will make a big difference. To be more specific I have one 64GB SSD which will be installed in place of the stock hard drive on the Mini and I have another 64GB SSD which can be both an internal drive or a Firewire 800 hard drive. This should be quite fun once software (video encoding/transcoding) start using Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL because man the system could really start flying like crazy.
 
Snow Leopard dumped the driver for my networked OkiData printer. For now I'm printing through my other Mac using print sharing.
 
After the installation, I have found my first issue. My Macbook is only showing that it booted into 32 bit mode instead of 64 bit. I found a few things on the internet that I need to try to resolve this issue.

There is NO advantage to running a 64-bit operating system on the Mac unless you have more than 32GB of physical memory, because 32-bit Mac OS X doesn't have the limitations you'd assume a 32-bit OS has, specifically:

1) 32-bit Mac OS X is not limited to 4GB. If you're familiar with Intel's PAE (physical address extension), or even bank switching techniques going back 30 years to PDP-11s that could access 256kb of memory even though they were 16-bit machines, you know how this works. PAE enables 32-bit systems to use up to 64GB of memory. 32-bit Mac OS X supports PAE and allows use of up to 32GB of RAM (I've also heard "at least 32GB", so 32GB might not be the upper limit on a Mac).

2) 32-bit Mac OS X can run 64-bit applications

The only reason to run the 64-bit kernel is 1) you have more (a lot more) than 32GB of RAM, or 2) you're developing and testing 64-bit kexts.
 
There is NO advantage to running a 64-bit operating system on the Mac unless you have more than 32GB of physical memory, because 32-bit Mac OS X doesn't have the limitations you'd assume a 32-bit OS has, specifically:

1) 32-bit Mac OS X is not limited to 4GB. If you're familiar with Intel's PAE (physical address extension), or even bank switching techniques going back 30 years to PDP-11s that could access 256kb of memory even though they were 16-bit machines, you know how this works. PAE enables 32-bit systems to use up to 64GB of memory. 32-bit Mac OS X supports PAE and allows use of up to 32GB of RAM (I've also heard "at least 32GB", so 32GB might not be the upper limit on a Mac).

2) 32-bit Mac OS X can run 64-bit applications

The only reason to run the 64-bit kernel is 1) you have more (a lot more) than 32GB of RAM, or 2) you're developing and testing 64-bit kexts.

There was no need to explain any of this as I already knew. I am a Unix engineer so this issue is very familiar with me. The reason I want to run the 64 bit kernel is because I am a geek and that is all.

As far as possible having a 32GB limit I understand that is what they say but I know that other PAE kernel extensions allow much more. PAE in Linux allows up to 64GB of memory on a 32bit platform.
 
There was no need to explain any of this as I already knew.

If I had intended the message only for you I would have sent a PM. That's great that you have the technical background to understand the issue, but you and I are in the tiny minority that understand it, and I bet there are others who actually learned something new from that post.
 
If I had intended the message only for you I would have sent a PM. That's great that you have the technical background to understand the issue, but you and I are in the tiny minority that understand it, and I bet there are others who actually learned something new from that post.

Sorry that I took it that you were directing it at me but that is what happens when you quote somebody.
 
From what I have heard, this is pretty much a SP upgrade disguised as a new OS. In fact, Windows SP 2 has more added features than Snow Leopard and it is free.
 

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